The old metal door, its paint peeling away, opened with an abrasive screech as Lee Jin-gu turned the handle.
The savory aroma of soybean paste stew drifted through the cramped entryway and brushed his nose.
Lee Jin-gu stopped dead before he could even remove his shoes.
Something hot surged from deep within his chest.
This was the everyday life he had believed lost forever when he died beneath the rubble of a collapsed large-scale Gate, his body torn apart by monsters.
The fluorescent light hanging from the living-room ceiling flickered faintly, nearing the end of its life. The evening news played quietly from an old cathode-ray television.
“Ugh, my whole body aches. Is it going to rain?”
A familiar groan came from one corner of the living room.
His father, who had just returned from the construction site, sat heavily on the vinyl floor and thumped his bent back with his fist.
In the kitchen, his mother bustled about preparing dinner. She wore an old, faded apron and adjusted the flame beneath the stove.
Nothing had happened yet.
They were exactly as he remembered them before their health had deteriorated beyond recovery—before they had collapsed or suffered serious accidents from overwork.
This was a time before the hopeless future in which his family would sacrifice everything for his empty dream.
His family was still here, alive and peaceful, exactly as they had been ten years ago.
Even the musty smell of mold and poverty that he had once despised and desperately wanted to escape now filled him with such gratitude that he nearly burst into tears.
Lee Jin-gu bit his lip and roughly wiped his face with both hands, forcing back his emotions.
Then he relaxed his stiff expression, pretended nothing was wrong, and removed his shoes in the entryway.
“I’m home.”
His father turned at the seemingly casual greeting.
“You’re back. Come eat.”
After that brief response, his father resumed pounding his aching back.
Before his regression, Lee Jin-gu would have been so ashamed and furious over receiving an F-rank classification at the Hunter Association that he would not even have greeted his family properly. He would have stormed into his room and slammed the door behind him.
But this time, he silently crossed the room and approached his father from behind.
He placed both hands on his father’s rigid shoulders and lower back, still coated in cement dust, and began firmly massaging them.
The knotted muscles beneath his fingertips spoke of all the grueling labor his father had endured over the years.
“H-Huh?”
Startled by his son’s uncharacteristically affectionate behavior, his father cleared his throat.
“What’s gotten into you all of a sudden? You’re giving me the creeps.”
“Your muscles are really knotted. I’ll stop by the pharmacy tomorrow and buy you some pain-relief patches.”
“Forget it, you brat. Where would we get the money for expensive patches? Go wash your hands and eat.”
Although his words were gruff, the corners of his mouth had quietly curved upward.
Lee Jin-gu’s gaze settled on his father’s frayed work clothes and the battered safety boots lying in the entryway.
The seams along the sleeves had come apart, leaving loose threads dangling from them. The soles of the safety boots were so worn that holes were about to appear.
Even after they gathered around the dining table, a heavy weight remained in Lee Jin-gu’s chest.
Their only side dishes were over-fermented kimchi, stir-fried anchovies, and the soybean paste stew his mother had just prepared with only a few cubes of tofu.
It was a pitifully meager dinner.
Before picking up his spoon, Lee Jin-gu made a cold, unwavering vow.
He would break this vicious cycle of poverty with his own hands.
His parents would no longer have to endure the pungent smell of pain-relief patches. He would move them out of this old, drafty rental and into a proper house where they could stretch out their legs and sleep warmly through the winter.
***
“I’m home!”
The metal door opened again, and Su-a rushed inside wearing her worn school uniform.
She had just returned from her cram school.
After carelessly tossing the heavy backpack weighing down her shoulders into a corner of the living room, Su-a dropped into a seat at the table.
Before even picking up her spoon, she cautiously studied Lee Jin-gu’s expression and spoke in an exaggeratedly cheerful voice.
“Jin-gu, I heard you got an F-rank result on your hunter examination today.”
“Yeah. That’s what happened.”
“Oh, it’s fine! There are tons of ways to make a living these days, even if you don’t become a hunter. My friend’s brother gave up on being a hunter and enrolled in a civil-service exam academy. Honestly, that sounds much better. Being a hunter is dangerous, and you get injured all the time.”
Her lively chatter carried a distinctly forced cheerfulness.
She did not mention the approaching deadline for her university application fees.
Nor did she bring up the cram-school tuition they would be unable to pay beginning next month.
She kept babbling thoughtlessly, but her intentions were obvious. She was worried that his F-rank classification had hurt him and was desperately trying to cheer him up.
Lee Jin-gu silently studied his sister’s youthful face.
It overlapped with the image of her from before his regression—the day she secretly tore up her university application because she wanted to help pay the installments on his hunter equipment.
He remembered her hands growing rough after working at a factory and drifting between part-time jobs at barbecue restaurants.
He remembered the sight of her narrow back.
Lee Jin-gu quietly placed his spoon on the table.
Then he reached out and gently patted the top of Su-a’s head.
“Hey, what are you doing? You’ll mess up my hair while I’m eating!”
Su-a recoiled in disgust, but Lee Jin-gu ignored her and spoke calmly.
“Don’t worry about not having enough money for cram school.”
“What?”
“And don’t worry about your university tuition later, either. I’ll earn all the money we need, so don’t get distracted by anything else. Just focus on preparing for your college entrance exams.”
The table instantly fell silent.
Su-a stared at him with wide, round eyes.
His mother froze with the ladle still in her hand.
Even his father stopped midway through clearing his throat and closed his mouth.
Every member of the family stared at Lee Jin-gu.
Those were not words anyone expected from their immature son, who spent every day shut inside his room watching videos of high-ranking hunters and rambling about striking it rich.
Lee Jin-gu calmly endured their bewildered gazes and offered them a faint smile.
“I mean it. I’ll take care of earning the money, so let’s eat.”
He did not need some grand ambition like becoming a top-ranked hunter, saving the world, and earning the media’s praise.
He had only one goal in this life.
Survive at all costs and rake in as much money as possible.
Then he would become the firm pillar his family could depend upon without fear of it ever collapsing.
That alone would be enough.
***
The night deepened.
It was well past midnight, and his entire family had fallen asleep.
Only his father’s rhythmic snoring echoed softly through the dark living room.
Lee Jin-gu silently opened the wardrobe in his room.
He pulled out a set of old but durable outdoor clothes from the back, put them on, and tightly laced his hiking boots.
He also retrieved the cheap hardware-store dagger he had once purchased for self-defense.
It was a crude weapon with layers of black electrical tape wrapped around its handle, but the edge had been sharpened well.
Compared to the mana blades sold at weapon stores, it was little more than a toy. For now, however, he had nothing better.
Taking care not to awaken his family, he quietly opened the front door and slipped outside.
The cold night air stabbed sharply into his lungs.
Without hesitation, he headed toward the most neglected district on the outskirts of the city.
Before long, he reached a twenty-four-hour late-night request station operated under contract with the Hunter Association.
The shabby prefabricated structure had a slate roof. The smell of cheap instant coffee mingled with sour sweat and thick cigarette smoke around it.
A large corkboard was plastered with dirty, low-ranked requests that offered little money—the sort of work major guilds and high-ranking hunters would never spare a glance.
Nearby, several low-ranked hunters sat in small groups, smoking after completing overnight porter shifts or manual-labor jobs.
As Lee Jin-gu approached the structure, a man with dyed yellow hair tilted his head and looked over.
“What the hell is that little bastard doing here?”
His unpleasant gaze traveled over Lee Jin-gu from head to toe, filled with blatant mockery.
The man had been part of the group that laughed and pointed at him in the First Examination Center’s waiting room earlier that day, when Lee Jin-gu received an F-rank classification with a mana capacity of twelve.
“Hey, F-rank runt.”
The yellow-haired man spat his burned-out cigarette butt onto the ground, ground it beneath his foot, and picked a fight.
“You came for that sewer-rat extermination request, didn’t you? You know the reward is barely worth anything, right? If you’re unlucky enough to get bitten or scratched by a pack of mutant rats, your hospital bill will cost more than whatever you earn.”
One of his companions snickered and joined in.
“He’s right. Just go to a day-labor agency and load boxes like a good little boy. Don’t risk your life for pocket change with some hardware-store knife while pretending to be a hunter. You’ll wind up dead in a ditch without anyone even noticing.”
Their insults were painfully predictable, but Lee Jin-gu did not even glance in their direction.
In the past, his pride would have been wounded. He would have lost his temper, veins bulging as he hurled curses at them.
Unable to endure the contempt in their eyes, he might even have attempted something reckless just to prove himself.
But Lee Jin-gu had spent ten years as a C-rank hunter, crawling through every imaginable cesspit and repeatedly brushing against death.
The provocations of these low-level thugs sounded like nothing more than flies buzzing around his ears.
They did not understand.
They had never witnessed a companion’s head explode beneath a monster’s claws inside a large-scale Gate where death was brutally real.
They could never comprehend the cold rationality of someone who had.
Receiving an F-rank mana score had not erased ten years of blood-soaked combat experience.
Wasting his emotions on people like them would be pointless.
He focused solely on the request notices pinned to the board.
[SLIME CLEANUP AT ABANDONED FACTORY, SECTOR C
Reward: 5,000 won per slime]
[ELIMINATE STRAY GOBLIN REMNANTS NEAR OUTLYING FARMS
Reward: 30,000 won per request]
[MUTANT RAT EXTERMINATION IN SECTOR D UNDERGROUND SEWER
Reward: 10,000 won per rat
Submission of severed tails required]
Without hesitation, Lee Jin-gu tore down the yellowed sheet pinned in the farthest corner.
Mutant Rat Extermination in the Sector D Underground Sewer.
It was one of the most notoriously dirty, dangerous, and difficult assignments. Hunters avoided it because of the sewer’s confined spaces and unbearable stench.
Moreover, the mutant rats were fast, and their teeth carried venom, making them troublesome opponents for low-ranked hunters who could not properly wield mana.
However, they reproduced rapidly, so there was never any shortage of them. Payment was also guaranteed as long as the hunter brought back their tails.
For anyone who knew what they were doing, there was no better way to accumulate starting capital.
Lee Jin-gu folded the request sheet in half, shoved it into his pocket, and silently left the structure.
“Huh? Look at that bastard. He didn’t listen to a damn word we said!”
He heard the yellow-haired man cursing furiously behind him, but his steady footsteps never faltered.
***
It did not take Lee Jin-gu long to reach the entrance of the sewer system in Sector D on the city’s outskirts.
A massive iron gate connected to an abandoned drainage channel blocked the way.
A horrendous stench surged through the bars and struck his nose.
It was the worst possible mixture of rotting waste, animal excrement, and musty sewer grime.
An ordinary person would have started retching from the smell alone and immediately turned back.
Lee Jin-gu did not so much as grimace.
Instead, his gaze grew cold as he stared into the darkness.
The instincts of a seasoned hunter, carved deeply into his body through ten years of surviving countless brushes with death, were awakening.
The survival instincts he had developed while drenched in monster blood and trampling across entrails slowly came back to life.
He pulled a compact flashlight from his pocket and switched it on.
A narrow beam illuminated the curved concrete walls of the pitch-black underground passage.
The moment he opened the rusted gate and stepped inside, he felt a subtle change in the surrounding air.
Damp, humid currents brushed against his skin.
In the distance, he could hear the faint trickle of water—and mingled disgustingly within it, the scratching of claws.
His pathetic F-rank mana capacity did not matter.
His true weapon was the vast combat experience that allowed him to read the terrain and understand monster behavior down to the smallest detail.
The sewer’s mutant rats had an extreme aversion to light. Their eyesight had deteriorated, but their sensitivity to vibrations and smells had sharpened to compensate.
To minimize his presence, he needed to avoid the central waterway, remain close to the wall, and breathe shallowly.
His current body possessed a meager mana capacity of twelve.
Both his strength and agility were pitiful compared to what he had possessed as a C-rank hunter before his regression.
If he confronted a large pack of mutant rats head-on, his chances of victory would be slim.
But it would be a different story if he slipped into their blind spots and targeted their vital points.
He would start with the weakest, foulest prey and kill them one by one.
That was the best hunting method currently available to him.
Lee Jin-gu clamped the flashlight firmly between his teeth and adjusted his grip on the dagger in his right hand.
Then he muttered under his breath.
“Ten thousand won each.”
His objective was clear.
“I’m killing a hundred tonight.”
One million won.
Enough to replace his mother’s worn-out sneakers with a comfortable new pair, contribute toward his father’s overdue medical bills, and pay Su-a’s cram-school tuition—with money left over.
Keeping his body pressed close to the wall, he silently melted into the darkness of the narrow passage.
His footsteps precisely avoided the sludge covering the floor, producing no unnecessary sound.
Just as he was about to round the first corner—
Bzzzt—
Blue light rippled at the edge of his vision alongside a strange wave of energy.
Lee Jin-gu stopped and narrowed his eyes. A translucent system window flickered into existence and displayed a clear message.
[The special skill Trace Collection is searching for a valid activation condition.]
Lee Jin-gu read the glowing blue message and adjusted the flashlight between his teeth.
His crude dagger glinted coldly in the pitch-black darkness.