“Haa... It’s completely dried up. This isn’t going to work.”
It was the third day since Hae-jin had met Guard.
As usual, he had been grilling meat to lure in monsters, but he eventually shook his head.
There was a simple reason his energy had drained away first thing in the morning.
For three whole days, he had not encountered a single monster.
“I guess we really wiped out every monster around here. Right, Guard?”
“BARK BARK!”
“You’re the only one having a great time, Guard. You get to stuff yourself with beef every day. You really lucked out with your owner, didn’t you? Heh.”
Perhaps it was thanks to the recovery effect of ‘My Comfortable Home’ that he had acquired before.
Guard, who had once been painfully thin, rapidly recovered his health and had now completely returned to his proper condition.
That part was nice, but Hae-jin’s thoughts had become rather complicated now that monster hunting, his primary source of income, had dried up.
‘Well, even if this is technically a frontline region, it’s not like we’re deep inside some extremely dangerous area.’
People could not live here, but it was still located within the country’s defensive perimeter.
He had always known there were not that many monsters around.
He was simply disappointed that they had disappeared much faster than expected.
‘Should I go scavenge for more stuff? Now that I have Guard, Scavenger work should be easier too.’
Perhaps it was because Hae-jin had tamed him through his ability, but Guard understood his words remarkably well.
Despite never receiving any actual training, he could already follow commands such as paw, sit, stay, and bite.
More importantly, he hardly ever barked unnecessarily, so Hae-jin felt comfortable taking him outside.
‘Most of the monsters are gone now, so it should be fairly safe. As long as I don’t go too far, even if we do meet one, I can just run back into the lodge like last time.’
He could not stay holed up inside forever, practically performing a rain ritual and praying for monsters to appear.
Having reached that conclusion, Hae-jin packed his Long Spear and a few basic supplies before leaving the lodge.
“Let’s go, Guard. Time for you to earn your meals too.”
“BARK BARK!”
Perhaps because dependable Guard was beside him, Hae-jin felt considerably more at ease than before.
‘This whole area really has been completely abandoned. Nothing’s changed at all.’
For now, he headed toward downtown Odoek 4-ri.
It was where he had first worked as a Scavenger.
Since this was the only place nearby that could even remotely be called safe, he did not have many other options.
Unfortunately, the results were equally unchanged.
“Haa... This is driving me crazy.”
Perhaps there had been a reason even the Scavengers had stopped coming here.
He checked not only the jewelry store and convenience store he had searched before, but several other buildings as well.
He found nothing worthwhile.
Whenever a place looked as though it might contain something valuable, every shelf, counter, and display had already been stripped bare by other Scavengers.
Hae-jin could only sigh.
‘They say beginner’s luck never lasts. I really was absurdly lucky on my first Scavenger run.’
There were no people.
No monsters.
Not even anything worth money.
Being alone with Guard in an abandoned town like this made him feel like the protagonist of some famous movie about humanity going extinct.
Still, he could not simply give up.
He stubbornly moved toward another building nearby.
Then—
DING!
“Hmm?”
A System screen appeared without warning.
As Hae-jin read the message, his mouth slowly fell open.
[You have entered an ownerless building!]
[Would you like to acquire this property?]
“Huh? What’s this?”
He had never seen a message like this before.
With confusion written all over his face, he stepped back and entered the jewelry store again.
Nothing happened.
No screen appeared.
Wondering if his guess was correct, he returned to the building from before.
[You have entered an ownerless building!]
[Would you like to acquire this property?]
Once again, the message asked whether he wanted to become its owner.
Hae-jin stopped and thought for a moment before arriving at his own hypothesis.
‘Could it be... something like this? Even if a building has been abandoned, I can’t claim it if the owner is still alive. But if the owner is dead or there simply isn’t one anymore, I can take possession of it for free?’
If that hypothesis was correct, it was quite astonishing.
It meant that as long as he found a property with absolutely no remaining owner, he could instantly make it his own without paying a single won.
For now, he entered the building that had triggered the acquisition message.
It was a shabby fruit shop covered in dust.
Calling it a shop was being generous.
With so much of it broken and smashed apart, the abandoned building looked as though it might collapse at any moment.
Even so, the moment Hae-jin expressed his intention to acquire it—
[Ownership of the property has been transferred!]
-A new property has been acquired!
-The list of available properties has been updated!
“Oooooh!”
He had suspected it, and he had been right.
He had actually obtained real estate for free.
But the truly astonishing part came next.
RUMBLE-!
The ruined building, now Hae-jin’s property, began trembling violently with a tremendous noise.
Then it started repairing itself at an incredible speed.
Broken walls restored themselves.
Torn flooring returned to its original state.
Dust-covered fixtures scattered around the shop floated through the air and returned to their proper places.
He had not been able to watch it properly when it happened to the lodge, but seeing it from inside this time was nothing short of spectacular.
“Whoa... Wahahaha! This is incredible.”
Had even a full minute passed?
In the blink of an eye, the building completely returned to its original appearance as a fruit shop.
Everything gleamed as though the building had just been constructed.
Hae-jin could not stop himself from laughing.
It was the automatic repair effect of the Trait ‘My Comfortable Home.’
Now that he had seen it in action, the Trait was far more extraordinary than he had imagined.
“Kah, this is insane. Wait, then can I just go around looking for abandoned houses and keep picking them up? The System decides whether they qualify anyway. Ooh?”
He had thought there was nothing left to gain around Odoek 4-ri, whether monsters or valuables.
But if this was possible, things were completely different.
Until now, he had mainly entered stores and commercial buildings that looked as though they might contain something worth looting.
However, this had once been a residential town.
There were still countless houses and low-rise apartment buildings left behind.
And compared to commercial properties, residential homes were more likely to have no remaining owner.
That did not necessarily mean the owners had died.
After North Korea became a Demonic Zone and monsters began pushing south, the government had evacuated the residents and sealed off the region.
To help refugees who had lost their homes, and to make managing the abandoned area easier, the government had offered assistance in purchasing new housing at a low price to anyone willing to relinquish ownership of their old home.
‘Of course, I heard some people still refused because they couldn’t bear to give up their homes... but maybe residential properties are a much bigger gold mine than I thought?’
Good.
He had made up his mind.
From now on, instead of scavenging for items or money, he would start scavenging for houses.
A thought suddenly occurred to him.
‘Maybe this is the ultimate form of being a Scavenger?’
The pinnacle of effortless profit.
He had finally reached the point where he was farming entire houses off the street.
To give the conclusion first—
He was right.
“This is incredible. An absolute jackpot.”
Perhaps this was what people meant when they said rain finally came after a drought.
As if compensating him for all the days he had wasted coming up empty-handed, Hae-jin obtained profits far beyond anything he had imagined.
-A new property has been acquired!
-The list of available properties has been updated!
[Owned Properties – 24]
[Leased Properties – 2]
He spent the entire day, all the way until evening, visiting fifty-six houses scattered throughout downtown and the surrounding village.
As a result, an astonishing twenty-three of them became Hae-jin’s property.
At the same time, he gained another major benefit.
Cash and jewelry.
‘So once I claim an ownerless property, the System genuinely treats me as the actual owner of everything inside it too. Kah!’
He discovered something else afterward.
Whenever he acquired a property, information about the locations of important items inside it was automatically entered into his mind.
It was as though Hae-jin had truly become the owner of the abandoned home.
Thanks to that, he could thoroughly collect every valuable item hidden throughout the houses he claimed.
There were golden toad ornaments left behind during rushed evacuations.
Gold rings tucked away deep inside cupboards.
There were even bundles of cash hidden beneath the flooring.
There was far more than he had expected.
The backpack on his back had become noticeably heavy.
That alone said everything.
There was, however, one disappointing point.
“I thought this might happen, but still... Tsk. My Attack Power isn’t going up.”
It would have been perfect if this also synergized with ‘A Landlord’s Gravitas.’
Perhaps it was because the houses were located inside a Demonic Zone and had been abandoned without owners.
The properties he had claimed today were not assigned even ten won of value.
As a result, Hae-jin’s Attack Power remained completely unchanged.
Still, this was more than enough.
‘If I ask for anything more, I’ll burst from greed. This is already enough to make me satisfied, satisfied, completely satisfied!’
He had finished an extremely profitable farming session.
Now it was time to settle his earnings.
Hae-jin took the jewelry he had diligently collected and returned to the Hunting City.
He went back to the jewelry store and pawnshop whose owner he had become acquainted with before.
The moment Hae-jin emptied the contents of his bag onto the counter, the owner’s jaw dropped.
“Goodness... Sir, you gathered all of this?! The Scavengers around here have been complaining nonstop that they keep coming back empty-handed these days. You must be extremely capable.”
“Oh, not at all. I just got lucky.”
“Lucky? This is skill! Between the gold rings and everything else, this should be worth a fair bit. Hehehe. Since you trusted me enough to come back again, I will appraise everything quickly and give you a good price.”
After selling everything he had collected, Hae-jin ended up with a thick envelope of cash in his hands.
It was packed with crisp, newly issued fifty-thousand-won bills.
Grinning from ear to ear, he counted the money.
It came to an astonishing 5.6 million won.
“Kahah! This is it!!”
He finally failed to contain himself and shouted in triumph.
Dozens of additional properties.
And a huge amount of cash as a bonus.
He had never profited this much in a single outing since becoming a hunter.
“This is great. This is so damn great!”
The enormous grin refused to leave Hae-jin’s face.
Guard, standing beside him, also looked delighted as he wagged his tail nonstop.
“No, this won’t do. Guard, we’re eating real beef today. Not imported stuff. Proper Korean Beef! I’ll grill yours too. You can look forward to it, okay?”
“BARK BARK! BARK BARK BARK!!”
The happy days of effortless profit that Hae-jin had thought were over were continuing after all.