Chapter 3

The world was turned upside down on an otherwise ordinary day 11 years ago, when thunder struck so loudly it felt like the sky was falling.

Awoken by the unusually loud thunder, people looked up to see a massive black hole in the sky. As if waiting for everyone to wake up and see, the thunder suddenly stopped when people gazed at the sky.

From the black hole, monsters no one had ever seen before began to pour out.

The rift instantly sucked in everything around it, and monsters swarmed out of the newly opened dungeon entrance without a moment’s rest. These invaders from another world destroyed buildings and ravaged the land. Many people were injured, went missing, or died. The weapons of humanity, products of scientific civilization, were useless against the monsters.

People despaired in the face of these insurmountable supernatural phenomena. They had thought the world would end in a nuclear war, not due to monsters straight out of a fantasy novel! Humanity was powerless before this sudden disaster.

But then, an entity appeared that stopped the impending doom, as if defying the law that said they had to do nothing and perish.

It was a mysterious white screen resembling a status window in a game, commonly referred to as “the System.”

The System appeared before certain individuals and awakened mysterious powers within them. Those who came into contact with the System began to awaken new powers and fight back against the monsters. This marked the advent of the first-generation Awakened, who would later be known as hunters.

True to the saying that humanity is an adaptable species, people began to quickly adjust to the new era and rebuild their fallen civilization. Leading this charge was the United States, and surprisingly, South Korea was right behind them. South Korea was one of the few countries whose government and law enforcement did not collapse on the Day of the Rift, largely thanks to the sudden appearance of an S-grade Awakened known as J.

The only publicly known information about J was the hunter name and gender. J was a mysterious hunter who concealed their name, face, and age. J first appeared dramatically, slicing a second-grade monster, Sasquatch, in half while covering their face with a white scarf. From then on, J plunged into rifts and dungeons without hesitation, saving countless lives. Truly, a hero in troubled times, the very embodiment of Captain Korea.

[J tears apart Sasquatch (physically)]

After communication networks were restored, a video someone uploaded to YouTube amassed billions of views, turning J into a global celebrity. Even though J was just a tiny dot in the video, the sight of a single black dot tearing apart a monster the size of a building was captivating to anyone who watched it.

It was fitting for a hero from South Korea, an information and communication powerhouse where even amidst world-ending chaos and monster attacks, mobile phone cameras remained functional. Thanks to J’s exploits, the world seemed to regain a bit of stability.

But the hard-won peace did not last long.

Three years later, a fifth-grade rift appeared over the West Sea. Despite the efforts of the Awakened Management Bureau and nearby hunters, all contact with those who entered the rift was lost, and the rift continued to voraciously consume everything. It was predicted that if left unchecked, the rift would eventually swallow not just the islands of the West Sea but also Incheon.

The government escalated the threat level of the West Sea rift from fifth grade to first grade and made a decision.

“We will deploy S-grade hunter J, 14 A-grade hunters, and 30 B-grade hunters to stop the expansion of the rift.”

The dispatched hunters entered the rift to the cheers of the people. Soon after their entry, the rift began to gradually stop expanding, and a month later, it completely disappeared. People rejoiced and waited for the return of the heroes. But they did not come back.

Three months later, after an investigation, the Awakened Management Bureau concluded that the hunters had perished along with the rift and officially announced their deaths, delivering the tragic news. The government erected a memorial to honor the brave hunters who had ventured into the rift. J’s name was inscribed at the top of the memorial.

Eight years have passed since then.

Now, 11 years after the first Day of the Rift, the government was actively researching how to use monster corpses and dungeon by-products as alternative resources. Naturally, guilds shifted their operations from simply destroying dungeons to extracting as much value as possible before closing the rifts, hoping to find useful by-products.

In this era of great hunters that replaced the fifth industrial revolution, the Metaverse stepped aside! The central figures of the current era were none other than the hunters.

Given that hero movie series had been hugely popular in Korea for ages, the explosive popularity of real-life heroes who fought like superheroes without CGI was only natural. Their popularity soared daily.

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Hunters had birthday billboards like idols, were flooded with advertising offers, and there were countless movies and dramas starring hunters. Some hunters even juggled dual careers as models, just like Honeybee.

The world became where people longed to become hunters and dreamed of awakening powers, with more than 80% of children named “hunter” as their future dream job. Dungeon slime ASMR videos became a trend, and idle hunters broadcasted unboxing videos of deliveries with A-grade long swords. This was the current state of South Korea.

***

‘Is this… really okay?’

However, to Cha Eui-jae, who lived through the transition to the great hunter era, all of this just seemed… surreal. Cha Eui-jae frowned as he glared at the bestsellers displayed in the bookstore.

1st place, [Even Hunters Were Once Newbies]

2nd place, [Noryangjin Hunter Public Official Academy Star Instructor’s Secret Tips! Finish the Exam in Half a Year!]

3rd place, [It Hurts Because I’m a Hunter]

What do you mean it hurts because you’re a hunter? If it hurts, you’re a patient. Cha Eui-jae frowned even more as he looked further down the list. Putting “hunter” on every useless thing… how pretentious.

As he glanced away, pretending not to see, he made eye contact with a man with a kind expression, wearing a suit and giving a thumbs-up in a public service advertisement on the wall.

[For inquiries about Awakened registration, call hotline 777. To report unregistered Awakener or Awakened-related crimes, call 555!]

Even after turning away from the bestseller list, Cha Eui-jae’s frown did not disappear.

Nine years ago, when dungeons and rifts had relatively stabilized, the government, troubled by the increasing crimes committed by idle Awakeners, was planning to establish a new government agency to manage them. At that time, news of a police academy student awakening as an S-grade reached the officials.

Ah! This was surely a heaven-sent opportunity. The government seized the chance, immediately establishing the Awakened Management Bureau and recruiting the newly awakened police academy student.

That person was the man in the advertisement, S-grade public servant hunter Jung Bin.

Cha Eui-jae had encountered Jung Bin a few times while he was active as J. They weren’t personally close, but they exchanged greetings. Back then, there were only two S-grade hunters in the entire country, so there was a certain internal bond. But now…

‘What happened to you?’

What did you go through in those eight years? Cha Eui-jae’s eyes now carried a hint of pity.

To exaggerate just a little, Jung Bin appeared in every public service advertisement currently in existence. In Cha Eui-jae’s opinion, since Jung Bin was a public servant, the management bureau just found it convenient and cheap to send him everywhere.

Just the other day, he was promoting smoking cessation in a TV ad, and not long ago, he was promoting the 333 brushing rule in a bus ad. Now, he was here promoting Awakened registration. Jung Bin might be the most famous hunter in Korea, at least in terms of face recognition.

While Cha Eui-jae was mourning his former colleague’s path, a girl with a determined expression and her hair tied in a ponytail approached with quick steps. A star-shaped name tag dangled from her backpack’s zipper.

[Park Ha-eun, Saetbyeol Elementary School, 2nd grade, class 2]. Beneath the clumsily written words, the hangover soup restaurant’s phone number and address were neatly inscribed.

“Uncle, I picked my book.”

At being called Uncle, Cha Eui-jae naturally turned his head towards her. Of course, they weren’t really uncle and niece. Park Ha-eun was the only granddaughter of the hangover soup restaurant’s owner, and Cha Eui-jae’s family had all died on the Day of the Rift.

But at some point, Park Ha-eun began calling him uncle, and Cha Eui-jae didn’t bother to correct her. It reminded him of his past relationship with his aunt.

“What did you choose?”

“This.”

[What? The Day of the Rift]

The cover of the comic book Park Ha-eun held up featured several cutely drawn monsters and a masked young man. It was a familiar children’s educational comic series to Cha Eui-jae.

Even after the world nearly ended, these educational comics are still coming out. As Cha Eui-jae admired this, his eyes caught the face of the young man in the drawing. Aside from the black hair and white scarf, the mask he was wearing looked excessively familiar. It was because…