Only the sound of the mouse wheel broke the stillness of dawn.
Ju-min’s eyes, illuminated by the monitor, had been bloodshot for days.
The screen was packed with real-time price listings from a Hunter-only exchange.
'B-grade full recovery potion. Average sale price: eight million won. Rises to around ten million won when supplies run short.'
Urgent purchase requests from high-grade Hunters seeking the potion appeared endlessly on the board.
With such a miraculous item capable of saving someone from fatal injuries during a dungeon raid in an instant, overwhelming demand was only natural.
He glanced at the finely crafted crystal vial on one side of his desk and rubbed his face with his hands.
Even after witnessing the miraculous ability with his own eyes, he had not rashly rushed into his next dungeon run.
Instead, he had stayed shut inside his home for several days, conducting a thorough market analysis.
He instinctively knew that blindly amplifying anything and everything a hundredfold would send him to an early grave.
"A C-grade Hunter suddenly sells several rare items like this? The Association’s audit team or the major guilds’ informants would be on me immediately."
Ju-min leaned deeply into the back of his chair.
It was a hundred times better to keep such high-grade consumables and equipment for his own emergencies than to sell them and pocket some small change.
Items obtained through 100× Value were far too conspicuous to put on the Hunter market. If he could not properly account for their origins, he would surely be treated as a black-market fence or become a target for powerful bastards.
But when he switched to the low-grade mana stone tab, the situation was completely different.
Each stone was worth only a few tens of thousands of won. Yet the volume pouring into the market every day easily exceeded hundreds of thousands.
If he split up a few hundred stones he had amplified a hundredfold and mixed them into that enormous wave of transactions, no one would have any reason to suspect him.
'100× Quantity on common junk items when I need money. 100× Value when I need to protect my life and develop my abilities.'
Once he established those two principles, his buoyant excitement settled into cool composure.
He rose from his desk and stretched his stiff back. It was about time to get moving outside.
***
A few days later.
Ju-min left home in an ordinary windbreaker, with a baseball cap pulled low.
He spent the entire day traveling around the city, visiting several small and medium-sized Hunter exchanges.
To eliminate any unforeseen risks, he accepted the trouble of doing the legwork rather than selling hundreds of stones at a single location.
"Thirty low-grade mana stones. They’re in good condition. I’ll deduct the fee and transfer the money straight to your account."
"Thank you. Have a good day."
He visited three exchanges, selling the stones in separate batches of thirty or fifty.
A diligent low-grade Hunter who had repeatedly run ordinary E-grade dungeons. Leaving only that impression, Ju-min departed the exchanges without incident.
In return for his legwork, a fairly substantial sum of cash was recorded in his worn bankbook.
Standing in the middle of the street, Ju-min opened his smartphone’s banking app.
Despite suddenly having a lump sum, he did not buy expensive designer clothes or search for places to eat out.
With practiced movements, he selected his parents’ account.
Without hesitation, he entered a generous amount several times greater than the living expenses he normally sent in small installments, then pressed the transfer button.
'They’ll probably cover the most urgent loan interest payments first.'
The guilt of being unable to provide properly for them because of his strained finances had always sat like a hard knot in one corner of his chest.
Seeing the transfer confirmation made that heavy blockage seem to ease a little.
Just as he was about to put his phone into his pocket, it began buzzing.
The caller was his mother.
Ju-min’s lips curved into a gentle smile as he answered.
"Hey, Mom."
- Ju-min! Where did this money come from? Why did you send so much?
His mother’s flustered voice came urgently through the phone.
"Oh, that? The party I’ve been running with has had some luck lately. They gave me a good share of the rewards, too."
- Even so! Coming back safely without getting hurt comes first. Why push yourself to earn more money? You’re not doing anything dangerous, are you? You haven’t gotten mixed up in anything strange?
Ju-min gave a small chuckle at her worried scolding.
"I’m not pushing myself. I just help the porter a little and safely collect things from the back. Have I ever made you worry, Mom?"
- That’s true, but I know perfectly well my son struggles in dangerous places every day. Did you keep enough money for yourself? Should I buy groceries tomorrow and make some side dishes to send you?
"I have plenty of money. Buy yourselves some meat. And take Dad to the hospital for a checkup. He said his knee kept hurting last time, remember?"
- All right, all right. Just be careful out there. Make sure you eat properly.
"Yes. Don’t worry, and get some rest."
After hanging up, Ju-min’s gaze settled calmly.
An ordinary daily life with his family.
It was his only refuge, something he had to protect even if the world split in two.
He could not recklessly show off just because he had received an extraordinary stroke of fortune and lose that ordinary, precious life.
He had to conceal his power thoroughly and carefully secure his gains in the safest way possible.
***
After easing his family’s burden, Ju-min checked his account balance again and headed into a secluded alley behind the busy streets.
He arrived at a Hunter equipment repair shop with an old sign hanging outside.
When he opened the grease-stained door and stepped inside, the acrid smell of metal dust rushed over him.
"Come on in. What’s broken?"
The elderly repair worker perched on the workbench cleaning parts pushed up their glasses and looked Ju-min over.
Ju-min set down the bag slung over his shoulder, took out his worn leather armor and dull one-handed sword, and placed them on the workbench.
They were low-grade pieces of equipment, badly scratched in places, with the leather thoroughly worn out.
Normally, he would have begrudged the repair costs and settled for having the chipped edge touched up and the leather patched. But today was different.
"Please repair everything. Replace all the worn parts and restore the durability completely. I want them in perfect condition."
The repair worker looked between Ju-min and the worn equipment in surprise.
"Fixing all this will cost you quite a bit. Wouldn’t you be better off adding a little more money and buying something new? The leather’s so deteriorated it’ll be hard to salvage."
"I’m used to them. Please just give me an estimate."
At Ju-min’s firm attitude as he took out his wallet, the repair worker shrugged and tapped on a calculator.
The repair bill was by no means small, but Ju-min handed over his debit card without complaint.
This equipment was his lifeline inside a dungeon. Pointlessly saving money on it would be foolish.
After leaving his equipment at the shop, Ju-min headed straight to a quiet café nearby.
He took a corner seat, opened his laptop, and logged into a paid Hunter community website.
He did not even glance at the unsourced rumors or boastful posts circulating on the general discussion board.
He went straight to the secured information trading section.
Paying steep fees, he gathered detailed material from professional information brokers: dungeon clear data organized by grade, monster ecology, trap patterns, and more.
His cash dwindled rapidly, but he did not begrudge any of it.
Having a miraculous ability might make it seem that charging straight into B- or A-grade dungeons would bring sudden riches, but reality was not so accommodating.
With neither powerful attack skills nor exceptional combat talent, he would surely lose his head to a monster’s savage claws if he recklessly entered a higher-grade dungeon, before he even got lucky enough to receive a reward.
'I’ll stay strictly within the level of risk I can handle. Information is life.'
Carefully sorting the vast amount of downloaded data into folders, Ju-min stared intently at the screen.
Countless passages of text and dungeon photographs flashed before his eyes.
He went beyond simple monster lists, closely analyzing the conditions under which the system issued official rewards.
Low-grade dungeons whose rewards were so stingy that major guilds would not spare them a glance. Unpopular areas where the monsters’ troublesome attack patterns made it difficult to find a party. Old abandoned mines that no one cared about.
In the past, these had simply been inefficient places to avoid. But things were different now.
To others, they might be garbage dumps offering nothing but wasted effort. To Ju-min, they were the safest, most fertile ground, capable of yielding a hundredfold harvest.
I’ll use quantity to secure ample funds and consumables, and invest value only in rare rewards for myself.
Engraving that clear, unwavering long-term principle in his heart once more, Ju-min clicked on the details of a dungeon in the list.
The monitor’s blue light cast a cool reflection in his resolute eyes.