Chapter 5 – I've Awakened (1)

Suddenly, my surroundings went dark. Then, a spotlight just for me shone down from the sky.

A pillar of light that no one else could see, visible only to me.

So suddenly?

-Program installation will now begin.

It’s real. I’ve really awakened.

I feel a warm light seeping into my body. To think I’d feel this again.

It felt like vitality was coursing through my entire being.

When the light faded and my surroundings came back into view, Blondie was staring blankly at me.

“Coach-nim?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you going?”

“I should. Yes, I should.”

A smile spread across my lips as I spoke.

Seeing my expression, Blondie tilted his head.

It didn’t matter what he thought. I’ve finally awakened.

A status window, indicating my connection to the system, hovered before my eyes.

Watching the installation bar slowly fill up naturally satisfied my anticipation.

When you connect to the system, you’re granted the ability that suits you best.

Like a manga protagonist who awakens in a critical moment, needing the strength to save someone.

But now that I think about it, I’m a little anxious. There’s no crisis or anything right now.

I just awakened naturally as soon as I entered the dungeon.

I’m curious what kind of ability I’ll awaken, what kind of power I’ll possess. Well, since it’s my ability, it’s bound to be something good.

I’ll get popular. Money will roll in.

I pictured myself getting into a scandal with a beautiful celebrity, my face plastered in the newspapers as I drove a luxury sports car.

Of course, I don’t have any material desires, but if you live too frugally, the economy won’t circulate. If you earn a lot, you have to spend a lot. That’s a fact.

“Coach Lee. Is this the new guy you’re in charge of?”

“This is Hunter Kim Tae-yang. He’s from the Hwarang Guild.”

“Oh my, you got into a good place, didn’t you?”

The man we were greeting was a forty-two-year-old active hunter.

Given his age, his physical abilities were naturally lower than the younger guys. But his experience allowed him to hunt with stability.

“If he’s being trained by Coach Lee, he must be something else, huh?”

“Oh, please. He’s still a fledgling. Look at his hair color. It’s exactly the color of a chick.”

“Young hunters these days have all sorts of hair colors—red, green, you name it.”

With that trivial joke, we parted ways.

Besides the hunter in his forties, everyone I met in the waiting room was a familiar face.

Hunters. People who, as the name suggests, move to hunt.

But the public sometimes calls them miners.

They enter gloomy dungeons, smell the stench of blood every day, and collect stone fragments from monster bodies, so it’s no wonder they’re called miners.

In fact, they even say they’re going ‘mining’.

Of course, hunters hate being called miners.

“Coach-nim, you know a lot of people.”

“Well, I’ve been coming and going from this place for about half a year now. Seeing them often makes them feel like coworkers, so it’s nice to see them. But not everyone is a welcome sight.”

I said, looking at an annoying face I saw in the distance.

Hunters, you could say, commute every day. But a trainer isn’t a hunter, so there’s no need to show up daily.

And yet, there’s one guy I run into with strange frequency.

“Lee Hyunbin.”

A musclehead with a body like an overturned cockroach came my way.

“You here for training too?”

His name is Seon-su. Did they name him that hoping he’d become a strong athlete?

True to his name, he looked like the type to do nothing but work out, aside from eating and sleeping.

“Yeah, this is a new guy at our center. He’s pretty good. Kim In-ho, a prospect from the Tushin Guild.”

“Hello. I’m Kim In-ho from the Tushin Guild.”

The Tushin Guild.

The name made me uncomfortable. They were the ones who ridiculed me during my second interview, telling me to summon a sword since I was a ‘Hero’.

“And this is Hunter Kim Tae-yang. A prospect from the Hwarang Guild.”

“Hello. It’s my first training session today.”

I saw the musclehead’s eyes narrow as he looked at the curly-haired blond, Kim Tae-yang.

I knew what he was thinking. It was because Tae-yang looked just like a punk, reeking of delinquency.

Guys like that don’t train.

At first, I was a bit worried Blondie wouldn’t listen to me either. But contrary to my expectations, he trained very hard.

Maybe it’s because he hates getting hit more than I thought.

The newbie was the complete opposite of Blondie; he looked like he’d be obedient. You could see grit and effort written all over his face.

“So you’re both here for your first session. You’ll be seeing each other often. You’re practically in the same cohort, so it would be good to get acquainted.”

“Yes, senior. I’ll be in your care.”

“Ah, yes.”

Kim Tae-yang and Kim In-ho shook hands.

They seemed to be around the same age, and I could sense a rivalry brewing. A feeling that they were sizing each other up?

Come to think of it, Blondie did punch someone on his first day at the center. He wouldn’t throw the first punch, would he?

“Still, for a prospect from the Hwarang Guild, it would be better to be trained by a former hunter.”

Ah, here he goes again.

“No, I’m not looking down on him. Hyunbin is good. But there are things only an actual hunter would know.”

He glanced at me and smiled. At first sight, he seemed like a nice guy. But he was still sulking.

Not long after I started working as a trainer, Musclehead challenged me to a sparring match.

He said it was something of a rite of passage for new trainers.

He asked for a spar, so I got in the ring. The result was my overwhelming victory.

The next day, he claimed he’d been careless and asked for a rematch, only to get K.O.’d again.

Rumor has it that a female hunter he was hitting on dumped him because of it.

“That’s why I told you I don’t spar.”

“What? Why are you bringing up sparring now? Huh?”

From my single comment, Blondie seemed to understand what I meant. He was the one who’d sparred with me most recently, after all.

Blondie immediately looked at Musclehead with an expression of shared misery.

As for Musclehead, his face turned red, as if recalling an unpleasant memory.

The only one who didn’t understand what was going on was the new hunter, Kim In-ho.

“In our guild, they acknowledge Coach Lee’s skills. I think so too.”

I should probably go a little easier on our Blondie from now on.

The kid’s become a decent person, he really has. I knew it from the moment I first saw him. Yep.

“A trainer who hasn’t awakened is like someone driving without a license. You only say that because you don’t know any better yet.”

“I’ve awakened too.”

The installation just finished.

Now, a status window I could activate at any time was visible in my field of vision.

-■■ Lee Hyunbin LV1

-Strength: 27

-Agility: 32

-Stamina: 27

-Mana: 03

-Luck: 27

This is my current status.

Normally, a hunter’s initial stats are around 10. Only the stat specialized for their class barely reaches 20. At a glance, my stats are high.

However, I was once called the strongest in another world.

Compared to that, these stats are somewhat disappointing. Especially the low mana.

‘Anyway, now that I’m properly connected to the system, I can raise them as much as I want.’

There’s one thing that bothers me.

The mosaic in front of my name.

Hero Lee Hyunbin? Warrior Lee Hyunbin? Knight Lee Hyunbin?

I can’t see my class. Come to think of it, the abilities and skills that should be at the bottom of the status window are all mosaicked too.

I think I heard that sometimes data with a very large capacity shows up like this.

“Huh? Coach-nim, you awakened? For real?”

“Yes. I did, didn’t I?”

“No, when? Uh. Did you awaken just now when you were standing there drooling and spaced out?”

What. I was drooling? Spaced out? It’s a little embarrassing, but I’ll let it slide since I awakened.

At my words, Musclehead’s face twitched.

He looked downright pitiful.

The usual reaction would be like that of the newbie Musclehead brought along, with an expression that says, ‘What’s the big deal about awakening?’

But I’m different. It’s only been half a year, but many people are interested in me. Especially the former team leader of the Hwarang Guild.

That man couldn’t protect his own hair, but he’s trying to protect me. He even gave me his business card, telling me to call him as soon as I awakened.

“Really? Congratulations. What did you awaken as?”

“Yeah, thanks. I’ll have to check it out later when I’m outside.”

“We should get going now. Keep up the good work.”

I could see Musclehead’s expression sour. Blondie’s eyes immediately sparkled as he asked.

“Coach-nim. What did you awaken?”

“I just told you. I have to check, right?”

“Huh? Mine showed up right away.”

“That’s because I’m on a different level. It means my ability requires that much more data.”

“Ah, I see.”

But that wasn’t just nonsense.

Hunters with mass-produced classes can download and confirm them quickly.

The fact that it can’t be confirmed right away is good news in itself.

When I awakened as a Hero in the other world, the program installation took several hours.

“Now, shall we hurry to the training? You know you need to get a goblin token to be issued a proper hunter license, right?”

“Don’t you need to apply for training too, Coach-nim? Then we could collect them together.”

Now that he mentioned it, that was true.

“Nah, it’s your first session. I should focus on you, Hunter Kim Tae-yang.”

Even as I said that, I was itching to analyze my new ability. But I’m still a trainer, not a hunter, so I have to be patient.

I took Blondie and headed to the goblin respawn point.

The Anyang Amusement Park Dungeon consists of three floors.

On the first floor, the weakest monsters, like Lesser Goblins, are summoned.

The second floor also has goblin-level monsters, but they move in parties. Sometimes there are stronger individuals too.

The third floor is the deepest part of the dungeon, so it has higher-level creatures like orcs.

The reason stronger creatures are found deeper inside is simple.

A gate opens. A dungeon core is planted there.

And the area around this dungeon core becomes the dungeon’s territory.

The place where it first formed becomes the deepest part. And the last place to form is the first floor.

In other words, the third floor isn’t necessarily underground. It’s not like they’re moles. The closer a creature is to the dungeon core’s central area, the more mana it receives, making it stronger.

The hunters undergoing training were gathered in the respawn area. There were some new faces, and I also saw the familiar musclehead who had picked a fight with me earlier.

Musclehead stood with his arms crossed, watching as if to see how well the Blondie I trained would do.

The guy Musclehead trained, Kim In-ho, lived up to his reputation as a prospect.

He exchanged blows with a goblin and subdued it without a single scratch.

The time it took to kill the goblin was about a minute.

That’s incredibly fast for a rookie hunter’s first real battle, especially when you look at the other trainees in the beginner hunting ground.

One hunter was locked in a life-or-death struggle with a goblin, making his trainer pace nervously beside him.

Another was too scared to even charge at the goblin. There was even a guy crying that he couldn’t do it.

They may have awakened as hunters, but some people just don’t have the right temperament or aptitude for it.

“You may begin, Hunter Kim Tae-yang.”

“Yes, Coach-nim.”

Blondie walked toward a Lesser Goblin that had just respawned.

He reached his hand into the air. Slowly, his hand disappeared into a dark space.

This was the inventory ability one gained upon becoming a hunter and connecting to the system.

Being able to pull out a weapon from a storage space only you can see, without needing a bag, is convenient.

Of course, an offensive hunter’s inventory usually has one slot, five at most.

Literally, you can only carry around a weapon.

The weapon I recommended to Blondie was a kukri.

This weapon is ridiculously overpowered, specialized for slashing. The Lesser Goblin saw Blondie approaching and pulled out a worn dagger.

A classic monster trait—instinctively preparing for battle even after being summoned to an unfamiliar place.

*Thump.*

Blondie took a running start and accelerated. The goblin swung its dagger threateningly at him.

*Slice!*

The goblin’s eyes widened in shock. Its head slid off the severed plane of its neck and tumbled to the ground.

I already knew his physical abilities were good. He’d trained diligently, after all. Now, let’s see his aptitude as a hunter.

“Wow, this thing cuts really well, huh?”

Blondie said, flicking the blood off his kukri’s blade.

The system provides an attack correction.

But some people have personalities that are physiologically unsuited for combat. Blondie, however, had excellent aptitude as a hunter.

I knew it from the way he went around hitting people.

“What, did he just take it down in one hit?”

“Isn’t that guy a rookie?”

“Is that another one trained by Lee Hyunbin?”

Listening to the murmurs of the people around me, I casually looked over at Musclehead. I didn’t forget to give him a smile.

-System reconnected.

-Inventory expanded to 50 slots.

The system, having finished its installation, sent a message.