Dust-covered clothes.
A face haggard with exhaustion.
My entire body sagging, I entered the restaurant as usual and dropped heavily into a seat.
“Phew…….”
Another exhausting day.
It had already been twenty-five years since mana, a revolutionary new resource that could put superconductors to shame, had first appeared. So why was Earth’s temperature still rising?
I wiped the sweat from my forehead, sank deep into the restaurant chair, and practically melted beneath the cool air from the air conditioner.
Once I had cooled down, I stared blankly at the television blaring nearby.
-Rookie Kim Taeseong, who recently made headlines by clearing the Tutorial Tower within two weeks, has now cleared an A-rank Gate single-handedly.
-At this rate, could Korea be about to produce an S-rank Hunter?
-It is certainly possible. Kim Taeseong may even become the one to clear Zero Gate, the bane of the entire world!
The announcers talked over one another, practically spraying spit as they argued.
Every one of them was shouting about the man with cropped red hair on the screen.
Just then, a metal cup was placed in front of me with a CLACK.
“Taeseong has really made it big, has he not?”
“Boss.”
“No one around here would believe me if I told them that only a few months ago, he was working construction right alongside us.”
HEH HEH.
The scruffy, bearded man chuckled deep in his throat.
I gulped down the water he had brought me and nodded.
“I would not believe it either.”
On a construction site, trust was everything.
In that respect, Kim Taeseong had never once let me down.
Despite being the same age as me, he had always come running over with an eager Senior! and treated me with warmth and respect.
Then, all of a sudden, I had stopped being able to reach him.
I was used to people disappearing without a word, but Kim Taeseong was not the kind of person who would do that.
When I went to his house and found no one there, I reported him missing. Two weeks later, he cleared the Tutorial Tower, became a super rookie, and rose so high that he was already beyond my reach.
I watched Kim Taeseong scratch the back of his head awkwardly during the interview and muttered.
“Ah. I want to become a Hunter too.”
“Forget it. Awakening is pure luck. Do you really think unlucky fools like us stand a chance?”
“……Did you not throw away your own luck?”
“You little bastard.”
“No one told you to invest in crypto again.”
“I am telling you, this time was different!”
I gave an innocent shrug and glanced at the clock.
“12:30…….”
There was not much time left before the afternoon shift.
Just thinking about it made me feel suffocated.
How long was I supposed to keep living like this?
Even I had to admit that my life was terribly dull.
I grew up in an orphanage.
Throughout middle school and high school, I could not attend private academies or even visit a PC café. All I could do was work part-time jobs.
Now that I was an adult, I was still doing construction work at the age of twenty-five.
Not that I had anything against construction work.
It paid fairly well.
I needed money to fulfill my dream of buying a fifty-pyeong apartment overlooking the Han River.
Construction was the only way someone with no education like me could earn decent money, so I had started working on construction sites as soon as I became an adult.
Did that make me materialistic?
A person needed at least one goal like that to survive in this harsh world.
The problem was that the monotony was beginning to wear on me.
It was not the construction work itself that I was tired of.
It was simply that my life, endlessly turning like a wheel in a cage, had become unbearably tedious.
I had always felt that way, but the feeling had grown much stronger lately.
Perhaps it was because Kim Taeseong had Awakened and become a super rookie who was attracting attention from across the world.
Someone who had once stood in the same place as me had suddenly taken flight, all because he had Awakened.
Even I thought it was ugly of me to feel this way, but I was only human.
“Han Mir. Even if you Awaken, do not start looking down on us like Taeseong did.”
I frowned at the older man’s words.
That reminded me of something unpleasant.
That bastard Taeseong.
The moment I heard that he had conquered the Tutorial Tower in two weeks, I sent him a congratulatory message.
His reply told me not to contact him again.
Was saying thank you really so difficult?
What an ungrateful bastard.
Even if I Awakened, I would never become like him.
“As if I would. Once I Awaken and start making money, the first thing I will do is come here with enough meat for everyone. Do not worry.”
“HEH HEH. You had better keep that promise. I would like to eat free meat for once.”
It was the same conversation we had every day.
How many times had we repeated it?
I did not know, but whenever that conversation ended, I always said the same thing.
“Ah, I really want to Awaken.”
If I Awakened, I could make money far more easily than I did through construction work.
If I Awakened, I could escape this monotonous life.
Those thoughts often crossed my mind, but I knew better than anyone that I had no chance.
Awakening was determined entirely by luck, and someone as unlucky as me was never going to be chosen.
Had I possessed any luck to begin with, I would have been born into a wealthy family instead of becoming an orphan with no one in the world.
I let out a quiet sigh, shoveled a spoonful of food into my mouth, and chewed mechanically.
Outside, the midsummer noonday sun continued to blaze.
***
Hot.
It was strangely hot today.
Sweat poured like rain beneath my hard hat as I climbed the stairs with a sack of cement on my back.
“Nnngh…….”
A groan escaped me before I could stop it.
Damn it.
My vision was beginning to blur.
After barely managing to move all the cement, I collapsed onto the floor.
“Huff, huff.”
GULP GULP.
The water had already grown lukewarm, but it tasted as sweet as the water of life.
I drained all 500 milliliters in one go, took off my hard hat, and wiped away the sweat streaming down my face.
After crawling into the shade, I slowly exhaled and looked ahead.
“Nnngh……!”
The older man was carrying cement just as I had, his face twisted with every ounce of strength he possessed.
The moment he set the sack down, he dropped heavily onto the floor.
“Damn. Is there something wrong with the weather today?”
“They issued a heat wave advisory.”
“Even for a heat wave, this is too much.”
I agreed.
As I caught my breath beneath the shade, I suddenly sensed that something was wrong and furrowed my brow.
“……Hm?”
What was it?
Something felt inexplicably strange.
I knew something was wrong, yet I could not tell what it was.
“What are you looking at?”
“I just thought something seemed a little strange.”
As I spoke, I pointed to the side.
The older man followed my finger with his eyes, then shook his head.
“What is strange about it? Everything looks normal.”
“……Does it?”
“We should get moving. The foreman will give us an earful if he catches us resting.”
I nodded and rose to my feet.
At that moment, I felt that same inexplicable wrongness again.
Narrowing my eyes, I turned to ask the older man about it once more.
Then I saw it.
“……Boss.”
“What?”
“Was this building always uneven?”
“What are you talking about……?”
CREAK, CREAK.
The older man turned his head in the direction I was looking.
The water in his bottle had gathered heavily against one side.
“Get downstairs, Mir!”
THUD, THUD, THUD!
The instant we realized what was happening, the sound echoed throughout the entire building.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
I immediately spun around and ran toward the stairs.
The building had not collapsed yet.
We could still get down.
I was running with that thought in mind when—
“Aaagh!”
A scream came from behind me.
I turned and met the eyes of the older man, who had been in such a hurry that he had lost his footing on the stairs.
It was fine.
There was a railing beside him, so he would not fall—
“Hah.”
What bastard had installed that railing?
How could the entire thing have shattered from one small tremor?
The railing that should have been there had broken away completely.
The older man’s body tipped over the edge.
Without even thinking, I reached out toward him.
Our hands met.
I pulled him toward me, and—
“M-Mir!”
The force sent me tumbling over the edge instead.
Wow.
This was high.
We were on the fourth floor. Could I survive the fall?
It would have been normal to feel terrified at the thought of dying.
For some reason, however, I was not particularly afraid.
That allowed me to chuckle and speak to him as casually as I always did.
“Boss. Stop investing in crypto. Unless you want to see your wife sobbing again.”
“You little bastard—!”
WHOOSH.
My body plummeted.
The ground rushed closer and closer.
Just before I struck it, I closed my eyes.
[Welcome to the Tutorial Tower, Han Mir]
A fanfare rang out, and I opened my eyes.
***
When I opened my eyes, I found myself in a pure white space.
At first, I wondered whether I had arrived in heaven, but the window floating beside me suggested otherwise.
“I wonder if he is all right.”
He had probably made it down safely.
I must have disappeared before reaching the ground, so I hoped he would not worry about me.
After all, people only vanished like that when they were taken to the Tutorial Tower.
Sitting cross-legged, I tapped the mysterious window floating beside me with my index finger.
[Searching for a Unique Skill suited to Han Mir…….]
A Unique Skill.
Every Player possessed one, and it was granted at the moment of Awakening.
I had heard that if a person received a useless one, they would be forced to rely entirely on Common Skills.
According to what I had seen online, the decision was normally made in an instant. Yet from my perspective, the system had done nothing but search for the past thirty minutes.
“What is taking so long?”
Was it broken?
Just as I tilted my head and seriously began to consider the possibility, the system window started shaking wildly.
[Search complete]
[Unique Skill ‘Black Dragon’ has been generated]
At last, I had obtained a Unique Skill.
My eyes widened as I stared at it.
Black Dragon.
A name like that sounded immensely powerful.
Could I really become an S-rank Hunter?
My heart pounded as I pressed Black Dragon on the system window with my index finger.
[Black Dragon]
[You borrow the power of the Black Dragon, the Master of the Twisted Netherworld who is watching you, and unleash it within your body]
The description was remarkably short and concise.
From that alone, I could not tell what kind of skill Black Dragon was supposed to be.
As I rubbed my chin, I noticed that another explanation had appeared below it.
[※Growth-Type Skill]
[The skill grows stronger as your Synchronization Rate increases. Higher Synchronization Rates allow you to unlock additional body parts and more of the Black Dragon’s power]
[Synchronization Rate: 0.1%]
[Currently unlocked body part: Right hand]
[Currently unlocked Black Dragon power: None]
“……?”
BLINK.
I blinked as I stared at the explanation.
A Growth-Type Skill.
I had heard of them before.
They were late-blooming skills that started out weak but grew through constant training and eventually became powerful.
That was why guilds recruited people with Growth-Type Skills for their future potential.
The problem was—
“I heard some people with Growth-Type Skills took more than a year just to clear the Tutorial Tower.”
Growth-Type Skills were notoriously ill-suited for clearing the Tutorial Tower.
The name had stirred my blood and raised my expectations, only for it to turn out to be a Growth-Type Skill.
As always, one should never judge a skill by its name.
“Still, I really did Awaken.”
A thrill ran through me.
Now that the system had granted me a skill, it was finally beginning to feel real.
My life of running endlessly in place was over.
I could save money much faster and finally achieve my dream of owning a fifty-pyeong apartment overlooking the Han River.
“To do that, I need to leave the Tutorial Tower first.”
If I escaped the Tutorial Tower in two weeks like Kim Taeseong had, my life would be a bed of roses.
The problem was that Black Dragon was a Growth-Type Skill, so accomplishing that would be difficult.
Still, it was fine.
Possessing a Growth-Type Skill made me valuable. As long as I presented myself well, I might be able to join a good guild.
Before that, I decided to try using Black Dragon—
[Entering the first floor]
A system message appeared at precisely that moment.
A brilliant light rose from beneath my feet and engulfed my entire body in an instant.
“Wait, hold—”
The light swallowed me before I could finish speaking.
A moment later, I felt my body floating.
When I opened my eyes—
[First Floor]
[Defeat 50 Goblins]
[0/50]
I was standing in a dark forest.