Six days later, day 18 since his re-Awakening.
A secluded alley behind the Exchange.
Hyun-jun was duplicating Runes of Stamina and absorbing them.
[You have absorbed <Duplicated F-Grade Rune of Stamina>.]
[<Stamina> has reached its limit.]
Stamina reached 100.
He immediately went into the Exchange, sold the Rune of Stamina, and bought a Rune of Strength.
[You have duplicated <Rune of Strength>.]
[You have duplicated <Rune of Strength>.]
[You have duplicat......]
Back in the alley, he duplicated the Rune nine times.
He absorbed them all, then ran off to the grassland field.
Now, even sprinting at full speed for several kilometers didn't tire him.
“Whew.”
The grassland field.
After taking a breath, Hyun-jun immediately began hunting Rune Rabbits.
Day 18. Strength 19.
Day 19. Strength 29.
Day 20. Strength 39.
Day 21. Strength 49.
Day 22. Strength 59.
His growth and hunting continued every day.
As his Stamina stat rose, the body aches lessened, and once his Strength rose too, even the slight muscle aches disappeared.
Now his body had reached the point where catching Rune Rabbits alone didn't tire him out.
That was around day 26.
A post went up on the free board of HunterNet, the largest Hunter community in the country.
[Chat] Did the Rune Rabbits at Boramae Grassland go extinct??? [6]
Came for some quick farming after a long time but haven't seen a single hair in 2 hours;;;
Wasn't this place basically a fishing pond?
[Comments]
-If you're going there you have to go at the right time
⌞That's old news too, I heard he pitches a tent there and lives there now
-Why'd you go to Boramae, IQ level
⌞No, I went because it's near my house!!! This place used to be a Rune Rabbit farm!
-Another BRS victim
⌞What's BRS?
⌞Boramae Rabbit Slayer. If you ask me, that bastard should be reported for animal abuse. At this point I feel sorry for the Rune Rabbits.
-Is that guy still there? Seriously relentless, he should've moved on to a higher hunting ground by now
-I came back empty-handed yesterday too, glad it wasn't just me, nice lol
⌞Get lost
There were countless users on the HunterNet free board.
The post was quickly buried, but the nickname Boramae Rabbit Slayer was clearly etched into the minds of a few users.
And at that moment.
Hyun-jun, who had gained a new nickname without knowing it, was yawning so wide his mouth might tear.
“Hwaaam.”
Inside a tent pitched all alone in the grassland field.
Hyun-jun blinked his sleepy eyes.
“It's morning.”
Since his recovery had sped up, Hyun-jun had settled down inside the dungeon itself.
It had already been four days since he started living like this, unwinding in the tent instead of going home after hunting.
Now it was time to put an end to that life.
[You have absorbed <Duplicated F-Grade Rune of Strength>.]
[<F-Grade Rune of Strength> has reached its limit.]
He duplicated 10 Runes of Strength and absorbed them, then absorbed the original too. With this, Strength, Agility, and Stamina were all at 100.
“Today's the last day.”
Hyun-jun stepped out of the tent.
The Rune Rabbits that had respawned while he slept were hopping around here and there.
“Goodbye, Rune Rabbits.”
He folded the tent, picked up his bag full of loot, and came out.
He went straight to the Exchange, disposed of the loot, including the Rune Fragments and Mana Stones, and newly bought a Rune of Willpower.
“Ugh...... my hard-earned money is going out as fees.......”
After checking the deposit message, Hyun-jun's stomach churned.
He would have liked to sell everything after reaching E-Grade.
But he had expenses to pay, so it couldn't be helped.
“Still, at this rate, I might be able to pay off the principal soon, right?”
Thanks to the money he'd saved up before, he had already set aside the monthly fixed costs long ago.
All the money he'd earned for the past few days was surplus income.
“If I use that money to pay off the principal...... no. Do I have to do that? I think it'd be better to just buy Runes.”
The number of Runes remaining was 180.
In days, that was 18 days.
Even if he saved money this way during that time and paid off the principal, the interest wouldn't drop dramatically.
“What if I buy Runes and raise my stats instead?”
His hunting efficiency would increase, and he could reach E-Grade faster.
And if he reached E-Grade faster?
The date he moved up to the next Grade would be moved up as well.
“Besides, Runes get more expensive and rarer the higher the Grade.”
The higher the Grade, the more the Duplicate Skill would shine.
In other words, the only time he could most efficiently upgrade his specs with money was now, while he was F-Grade.
“Of course, there's no guarantee the Grade of items I can duplicate will go up along with my Grade.”
The likelihood was high. Most Trait Skills grew along with the rise in the Soul Circuit's Grade.
In percentage terms, 99.9% did.
“Whew. Let's not worry for nothing. There's no way I'll be in the 0.01%.”
Hyun-jun shook off the anxiety in his heart and made his decision.
He would buy Runes and absorb them.
“There are two stats left right now. It'd be nice to buy both, but I don't have that much money.”
Mana and Willpower.
Of the two Runes, the more expensive one was the Rune of Mana.
That was because it was closely related to the damage of magic Skills.
Its price hovered around 300,000 won.
“On the other hand, the Rune of Willpower? 180,000 won as of today.”
For 90, about 16 million won.
He could easily buy them with the money he'd saved so far.
“Good, let's go.”
Hyun-jun headed to the Exchange again.
There, he bought 89 more F-Grade Runes of Willpower.
[<Rune of Willpower> has reached its limit.]
With this, he had raised every stat except Mana to the max.
His balance was empty, but his heart was full of hope.
“Now it's 9 days until E-Grade.”
The day he had longed for was only a little over a week away.
***
“Haa.”
The F-Grade Swamp Hunting Ground.
A young man let out a sigh with his hands on his hips.
“Why can't I see any monsters?”
Once you entered a hunting ground, monsters were supposed to be everywhere.
But for 30 minutes, he hadn't seen so much as the tip of a nose.
The only ones around were flying-type creatures that were hard to catch.
Even those weren't very numerous.
“I think it was like this once before too...... when was it?”
The young man carefully retraced his memories.
“Ah, that time.”
He remembered his last hunt at the grassland field in Boramae Park.
It was where he had gone to catch Rune Rabbits to warm up a little.
Back then, too, he hadn't seen so much as the tip of a Rune Rabbit's nose.
“That BRS bastard swept them all up.”
Could it be here too?
The young man thought so, then burst out laughing.
“No way. Rune Rabbits may be hard to catch, but in the end they're rabbits. Could a guy who caught those do the same thing here?”
Not all F-Grade hunting grounds had the same difficulty.
The difficulty was divided in fine detail depending on the internal environment, the monsters that appeared, and so on.
There was no official system, but Hunters had made their own levels among themselves.
The grassland was the lowest.
The swamp was near the top.
“Even that guy couldn't sweep this whole place clean. It's probably someone else.”
The young man clicked his tongue and got up.
Since there were no monsters anyway, there was no reason to stay in the dungeon any longer.
“Still, at least one.......”
At that moment, a monster just crawling up out of the swamp entered the young man's sight.
A turtle monster called a Marsh Turtle.
It wasn't aggressive and its weaknesses were clear, so it was an easy one to deal with.
“Whew. Heaven hasn't abandoned me after all.”
It was just as the young man was about to approach the Marsh Turtle.
CRACK—!
A figure that suddenly leapt out from somewhere smashed the Marsh Turtle's hard shell in an instant.
“Okay, one more.”
The man casually picked up the limp turtle corpse.
The young man stared blankly at the man with his mouth open.
‘H-He broke a Marsh Turtle's shell in one hit?’
The Marsh Turtle's shell was famous for its hardness.
Breaking it in one hit was difficult unless you were at E-Grade level.
‘And with just a hammer?’
The weapon in his hand was an ordinary iron hammer used as a tool.
If the weapon were at least good, maybe.
But breaking a Marsh Turtle's shell with a hammer like that.
It was hard to accept.
“Y-You.......”
“Hm?”
Sensing someone, the man turned around.
The moment he saw that face, the young man's eyes went wide.
A familiar face.
It was the very person he had just been thinking about.
“B-BRS......!”
“What?”
“Y-You were definitely catching rabbits in the grassland. But how......”
The young man couldn't finish his words.
That was because he belatedly noticed the large bag slung on the man's back.
‘What is all that?’
All kinds of monster loot sticking out of the bag.
All of it came from monsters found only here in the swamp.
‘No way.......’
The guy who'd been catching and beating down Rune Rabbits in the grassland as if he meant to make them extinct.
Was now doing the exact same thing in the swamp?
And against every monster, at that?
“Excuse me?”
“Y-Yes?”
Realizing the situation, the young man spontaneously switched to polite speech.
“Do you know me? What's BRS?”
“Ah, i-it's nothing!”
The young man turned around and ran off like the wind.
Watching his back, Hyun-jun tilted his head.
“What a weird guy.”
.
.
.
It was a few hours later that a post titled [Anyone who knows BRS, get in here.] went up on the HunterNet free board.
[Anyone who knows BRS, get in here.]
-Went to the swamp hunting ground near Sadang today and there wasn't a single monster.
Wondered why, turns out BRS swept the whole place.
[Comments]
-? Isn't that place upper-tier among F-Grade hunting grounds?
-Swept the whole place? That'd be hard unless he's E-Grade?
-Someone said back then that he only seemed to have high Agility, was that bullshit?
-Talk some sense. How does a guy who could only catch Rune Rabbits in the grassland because his stats were lacking sweep a swamp?
└It's possible if he raised all his stats in the meantime
└How much can you earn catching those Rune Rabbits, however hard you try? If he's sweeping the place like the guy above says, he'd have to be E-Grade.
-Who's BRS?
-I think you just got it wrong yeah
└Nah nah, I didn't. I only saw one person there and that was BRS.
Countless questions were left in the comments.
And several posts branched off from those questions.
Unlike last time, the story of BRS became quite the hot topic on the board this time.
Back then, he had only the image of a weirdo who caught nothing but Rune Rabbits, but now he had proven that he had truly become strong through that bizarre method.
[I'm going to catch Rune Rabbits too]
[I calculated the probability of BRS assembling Runes from Rune Fragments]
[Pretty sure he just broke open his savings]
At that moment, Hyun-jun was also sitting in the Exchange's waiting area, looking through HunterNet.
“Hmm...... so this kind of rumor was spreading where I didn't even know about it.”
BRS, an incomprehensible word he'd heard from the Hunter he met in the swamp.
When he searched online with that word as a keyword, posts uploaded on HunterNet came up right away.
Hyun-jun skimmed through them.
A psycho who only catches Rune Rabbits, a genuine Hunter who got strong through Rune Fragments, someone who broke open his savings and went all in, a promising prospect a Guild is investing in, a golden spoon, and so on.
All sorts of things came up as supposed identities.
Other than that, it was all nonsense.
‘They don't know my Skill, so this kind of reaction is natural.’
Who would even think that someone was duplicating Runes and absorbing them?
There wasn't even anyone who had guessed something similar.
“Should I start covering my face from now on?”
Right now, his Grade was low, so the reaction stopped at this level, but what if he kept growing at the same speed even after his Grade rose higher?
By then, someone might guess that a duplication ability could exist.
Hyun-jun didn't even want that kind of guessing.
‘I should give this some serious thought.’
Just then, Hyun-jun's number was called.
Hyun-jun picked up his heavy bag, stood up, and headed to the counter.
“Wow, you brought even more than usual today.”
The South Exchange, which Hyun-jun frequently used.
There, Hyun-jun was quite well known.
That was because Hunters who brought in a full bag every day could be counted on one hand.
“There was nobody at the hunting ground, so I caught more than usual.”
The staff member neatly packed the items into a basket and carried them to the inspection room.
Having emptied his bag completely, Hyun-jun left the Exchange.
Once the inspection was done, the results would arrive by message.
“I should hurry home.”
Hyun-jun walked home faster than usual.
Today was the day his sister was coming home.