Seueu—

Jung-woo felt an indescribable energy physically seeping into his chest.

A skill.

It was the sensation of a supernatural phenomenon taking root, one that, combined with his aptitude, would elevate a hunter to superhuman.

At a time like this?

His thoughts paused for a moment.

‘Please! Anything!’

He prayed desperately for a countermeasure to break this deadlock.

Ttiring!

The interface materialized.

【No more worrying about bad villains! Skill: [Children Need Heroes!] is unlocked!】

【Warning! Missing prerequisite skill! Summoning the skill!】

【Children should only see good things! Skill: [All-Ages Filter] is unlocked!】

Jjijik!

Along with a burst of static, an additional supernatural ability bloomed within his chest.

Two skills at once.

There was no time to figure out what they were.

Jung-woo hastily shouted.

“Activate!”

Then, a miracle occurred.

Paaaaang—!

Puffy clouds spread outward.

They looked exactly like the explosion effects from a children’s cartoon.

Jung-woo felt a wave of exhaustion washing over him.

What changed?

He wondered, and the answer came from an unexpected place.

“Krongi…?”

Se-gi spoke.

Peeking her head out, Se-gi’s gaze was fixed on the spot where the magical beast had been.

Jung-woo turned his head.

Only then could he see it.

【[All-Ages Filter] is activating!】

Jung-woo’s eyes widened as if they would tear apart.

“Huh?”

Kkweong!

Where a grotesque magical beast should have been, a massive dinosaur plushie stood with its jaws wide open.

Its appearance had transformed.

That was not the end.

【Prerequisite conditions met.】

【[Children Need Heroes!] is activating!】

【No available summons! Summoning a new slot!】

Ppi—

Ppi—

Ppi—

Ppam!

【Slot 1 Opened: Bear Hero (S) is summoned.】

Ppok!

Ppok!

Accompanied by adorable footsteps, a life-sized teddy bear plushie appeared.

Equipped with a red cape and a toy sword, it stepped in front of the dinosaur, blocking its path.

The dinosaur plushie and the teddy bear plushie faced each other.

The infantile atmosphere was completely detached from reality.

Jung-woo’s jaw dropped.

But regardless of Jung-woo’s bewilderment, the situation continued to unfold.

With a flourish! the teddy bear swished its cape and raised its sword.

Black smoke gathered in the dinosaur plushie’s mouth.

“W-Wow…”

The moment Se-gi’s eyes sparkled,

Paaaaaaang—!

The teddy bear brought its sword down.

A golden beam shot diagonally, piercing through the sky.

The wave of extremely compressed physical force sent shivers down his spine.

But the surprises were not over yet.

“…?”

Where the light of the beam faded.

The dinosaur plushie’s head had been pierced, exposing the cotton stuffing at its neck.

And then,

Pweong!

With a popping noise, the dinosaur vanished, leaving behind a puff of gray clouds like a cartoon villain making an exit.

Dalgeurak!

Leaving behind a single red magic stone.

Second gates were the most troublesome disasters to deal with in urban areas.

Instead of dozens of easily manageable lower-tier beasts, it spawned a single, powerful entity.

One might argue that having only one target makes it easier, but that was a statement born of ignorance.

Ever since the Millennium Shock when gates first erupted, champions had always been the ones to inflict greater casualties in cities.

Their unique characteristics, which required new analysis every single time, along with stats that surpassed their rank, made them notoriously difficult to control.

There was one particularly famous incident in South Korea.

An A-Rank Champion, identification name: Longinus.

It was a monster that fired wedge-shaped projectiles generated from its spine like artillery fire, creating craters 300 meters long and 10 meters wide with every shot, devastating the center of Chuncheon.

With such a history, A-Rank Champion magical beasts became a symbol of terror to the public.

It was only natural for people to scatter in panic the moment a crimson gate appeared.

Sure, South Korea was known for handling gates exceptionally well, but that fact didn’t guarantee absolute safety from the magical beast bursting out right now, did it?

However—

“Is… is it caught…?”

The bustling downtown area, which had been a warzone mere moments ago, fell dead silent.

Only the street music continued to thump away, completely oblivious to the atmosphere.

People stared at the man standing in the middle of the street, clutching a child to his chest as he gasped for air.

His gentle features and tall stature gave off a favorable impression, but his sweat-drenched, trembling eyes betrayed his anxiety.

Still seemingly detached from reality, he held the child tightly, visibly bewildered.

But the onlookers could understand why.

“T-That man. Just now…”

“Yeah, he awakened…”

“It turned into a plushie, right? The magical beast…”

The magical beast that had burst from the blood-red gate had clearly targeted the man.

The instant puffy clouds burst from the man’s body, the beast transformed into a giant dinosaur plushie.

Immediately after, a sword-wielding teddy bear plushie, seemingly summoned by the man, fired a beam that struck down the dinosaur plushie.

The magic stone sitting in the center of the uplifted, crushed pavement where the beast had stood proved that the previous moment was absolutely not a dream.

Was it not utterly surreal?

A disaster caused by a magical beast had instantly turned into a scene from a children’s cartoon.

And not just any beast, but an A-Rank Champion, an entity known as an urban calamity.

The sheer absurdity of the contrast preceded any thoughts of relief, leaving everyone too stunned to speak.

In the midst of that confusion,

“We’re entering! Citizens! Evacuate this w— huh?”

Fashionably late… though it hadn’t even been five minutes since the incident began, the hunters finally appeared.

However, the situation was already over.

The hunters, too, stood dumbfounded with their mouths agape.

Bik!

All of it was captured on someone’s camera lens.

One attention-seeker, who had been filming the life-or-death situation from the very start, snickered and tucked his smartphone into his jacket.

‘J-Jackpot!’

The gate’s rank was probably A.

An A-Rank Champion turned into a dinosaur plushie and got killed in a single strike by a teddy bear.

Anyone with even a passing interest in hunters knew.

That such a feat was only possible for a hunter possessing the combat power of a top-tier A-Rank or an S-Rank.

The onlooker glanced at the tall, handsome man holding the child.

‘S-Rank? Did a new S-Rank just appear in Korea?’

Not just any S-Rank, but judging by the situation, a Born S-Rank who awakened at S-Rank from the very start.

The undisputed pinnacle of superhumans.

If he uploaded this to the internet before anyone else?

‘G-Gotta edit and upload this video fast!’

This was huge.

This one video would turn his life around!

Feeling like fireworks were going off in his head, the man quickly turned on his heel and left the scene.

A grin so wide it looked like his face would split stretched across his lips.

An accident that nearly escalated into a massive disaster had occurred in the heart of Seoul.

While the fact that the incident concluded without casualties was a relief to all, there were inevitably those who could not simply breathe easy.

For instance, the administrator responsible for the safety of this sector.

Kwaaang!

“Do you stupid bastards not understand what kind of situation this is right now!?”

Baek Geun-ho, the guild leader of the Maram Hunter Guild, slammed his fist against the wall, veins bulging on his forehead.

The concrete wall warped from just a single punch.

There was only one reason he was this furious.

“Get your heads out of your asses! A gate appears in the middle of Seoul! In our district, no less! What the hell were you doing that you didn’t track it until it popped up—!”

Over thirty years had passed since the era of gates began.

In the modern era, gates that spewed out magical beasts were no longer calamities of unknown origin; they were disasters that could be sufficiently prevented.

Tracking their flow from the pre-formation stage, laying down a safety net at the expected spawn point, and preparing for subjugation was the standard procedure.

It was precisely because of this trust and reliability that people could walk the streets safely.

What did it mean that they failed to do so?

It meant they had been negligent in controlling their jurisdiction, and simultaneously, it meant they had failed to prove they were qualified to hold the lucrative rights to regional defense.

It was a massive blunder.

After all, it was the defense position for inner Seoul, not just some random region.

Considering the profits the Maram guild had raked in from this position, this incident was a severe enough problem to threaten the guild’s very existence.

Geun-ho irritably loosened his tie.

He had to clean this up.

Fortunately, a way out wasn’t entirely invisible.

“What about him?”

“Y-Yes, sir! He’s been transferred to the Nowon-gu Hunter Management Bureau!”

“Did you secure all the CCTV footage? What about information control?”

“All done, sir! Information about him hasn’t leaked yet.”

“Let’s go, move immediately!”

Lady Luck was on their side.

Since casualties were practically zero, damage control wouldn’t be too difficult.

Most importantly, the one who resolved the situation wasn’t an elite hunter from another guild.

Beyond that, he was the greenest of greenhorns.

A newly awakened rookie hunter.

Though the scale of his power was nothing to laugh at.

‘S-Rank! And without a doubt, a Born S-Rank!’

Geun-ho had also reviewed the CCTV footage.

On the surface, it was an utterly absurd and childish ability, but analyzing it as a hunter’s skill revealed more than a few chilling details.

‘It’s a reality manipulation type. Less than 1% of the entire hunter population has it!’

The academic community defined the ability to twist physical laws and rewrite reality to suit a hunter’s power as a “reality manipulation type.”

Since the ability itself forced utterly illogical phenomena, its rarity was extraordinarily pronounced. Considering it could be applied not only to the surrounding environment but also to enemies, it was among the top 1% of reality manipulation types.

Did it end there?

No.

‘Summoning aptitude!’

Low risk, high return.

It was an aptitude that excelled in various fields, from reconnaissance to combat, due to the low risk to the main body.

Of course, there was the chronic issue of a “low ceiling,” but the entity that man had one-shot was an A-Rank Champion.

Considering that even Geun-ho, an active A-Rank hunter, could never solo such a monster even if he died and came back to life, that clearly wasn’t a problem that applied to him.

In short, Geun-ho summarized his ability as “reality manipulation that forces combat advantageous to his summons.”

It might have looked a bit ridiculous, but in terms of ability classification, it was at a level that could easily be called Tier 0.

“What about his profile?”

“N-Name is Shin Jung-woo. A 22-year-old orphan, with a 4-year-old daughter. He’s an unmarried father, and it appears he was struggling quite severely financially.”

“Lucky him, hitting the jackpot in life.”

It wasn’t a sarcastic remark.

Hunters were a species born with that kind of luck to begin with.

“What about the contract?”

“As a Rank 1…”

“You stupid bastard! Redo it! Strip all the clauses attached to Rank 1! Take it down to a level where he just has to sign his name!”

“Y-Yes, sir!”

He had to bring him in, no matter what.

As for the inevitable public fallout, they could spin a media narrative that a guild member handled the situation internally without casualties, using the opportunity to introduce him. That would flip the script entirely.

Yes, it would even resolve the Maram guild’s chronic problem of lacking military might.

Geun-ho was a quick calculator.

From the moment he confirmed the appearance of a Born S-Rank hunter, he had controlled all information and footage while simultaneously preparing to recruit him.

It was an attempt to cover the sky with the palm of his hand anyway.

By tomorrow morning, the whole world would know of his emergence, but as long as he sealed the deal tonight, it wouldn’t be a problem at all.

He urged his men to hurry.

He immediately changed into a meeting-appropriate suit and slicked his hair back with product.

Strapping on his watch, he got into the car and told the driver.

“Step on it! I don’t care if you get a ticket, just get us to the Bureau as fast as possible!”

“Yes, sir!”

Bureureureung!

Geun-ho bounced his leg.

He constantly mapped out how to conduct the negotiations and resolve the situation in his head.

His mind was filled with nothing but the thought of meeting him as soon as possible and making this negotiation a success.

Thus, with anxiety and anticipation intertwined, he arrived at the Bureau.

He stepped out of the car, intending to handle this quietly.

But—

“Let us in! Hey!”

“Hey, Bureau! Don’t try any tricks to enslave the wrong guy!”

“Get Council Member Gu! Do you know how much money that bastard took from me to stab me in the back like this!?”

“This is DBS! Just give us permission to cover this! Please, just let us ask him directly!!!”

Geun-ho’s jaw dropped.

“W-What is all this…”

The front of the Nowon-gu Bureau was already a madhouse.

It wasn’t chaos created by an angry mob.

Reporters, broadcasting crews, and beyond them, scouts, executives from major guilds overseeing various parts of Seoul, and even familiar-faced guild leaders.

All of them were raising a ruckus, trying to get into the Bureau.

How on earth?

Why already?

It was the moment Geun-ho’s mind went completely blank.

“G-Guild Leader!!!”

His aide, who had rushed to catch up, arrived drenched in sweat and gasping for breath.

Then, with a pale face, he held up his smartphone.

“W-We have a big problem! Here…”

Only then did he realize.

Veins popped on Geun-ho’s forehead.

“What the fuck…”

[Can you see this, bros! Here! Here! Right here, the Hunter totally! Shielded the kid!!!]

It was a video screen on a global video platform.

A man with acne on his face was spitting as he passionately ranted, and the screen he was showing displayed the combat footage of Shin Jung-woo that Geun-ho had thought was completely under control.

It looked like footage the man had filmed himself.

“The footage has already spread across the entire country.”

The aide pointed to the view count below the video.

[2,341,546]

It was a number that spoke for itself.

It was something Geun-ho had completely failed to anticipate.

The fact that in a life-or-death situation, there would be crazy bastards filming it on their smartphones.