I looked around at my surroundings. The building that I emerged from, the Seoul branch of the Korea Hunter Association, was right in the middle of a forest of buildings in Jongno-gu.
âI think I need to get a better understanding of the situation.â
It wouldâve been easier if I had even a few of the memories of the guy I was possessing, but unfortunately, that didnât seem to be the case. There was no other choice except to figure out the things I wanted to know one by one.
I took an old leather wallet out of my bag. Besides my Hunter ID, there was a resident registration card inside. The address that was written on the card was about an hour away by train.
When I swiped the one-way ticket at the turnstile, it made a noise.
Maybe it was because I hadnât been on a train in so long, but the sound felt both comforting and unfamiliar at the same time. Except for things like dungeons and Hunters, this world was very similar to my original world.
I sat down on an empty seat and placed my bag on my lap before taking out my phone. Since the ride home would take a while, there would be plenty of time to search for information.
âThis is definitely much better than the first time I got transported to a different dimension.â
Back then, Iâd been abruptly thrown into a forest without any explanation at all. I only learned that the forest was a den of monsters, the so-called âDevilâs Forestâ, after Iâd lived there for three months. My survival there wasnât certain either, and I canât even begin to explain just how much trouble I had trying to establish a place for myself.
If I hadnât met Luciel, then forget about saving the world, it wouldnât be a stretch to assume that I wouldâve stayed in that forest for the rest of my life without ever knowing anything.
[The next stop is Geumjeong Station.]
At the voice of the announcer that rang out above me, I quickly grabbed my bag and left the subway. I walked about ten minutes from the station to a residential area.
The address written on the resident registration card was this semi-basement apartment. Searching around in my bag, I fished out a worn key. I put it in the keyhole and turned the key. The door opened.
âBingo.â
I went inside and took off my shoes before turning on the light. There was mold growing on the wallpaper in the corners of the room. If I was the person I was before experiencing the continent of Arbelicia, I wouldâve probably bolted immediately.
Studying isnât easy by any means, but in a world where money is everything, being given an environment where, from a young age, all you had to do was study, meant that you had some sort of monetary freedom.
In fact, both of my parents were professors.
Even though I say it now, itâs a useless thing of the past.
I took out a notepad and a ballpoint pen that was inside of the bag.
It was a habit from the time that I was studying a lot, and also because Arbelicia didnât have anything like smartphones, I was much more used to writing things down using paper.
I wrote down a rough outline of the information that I had.
24 years old, Kang Han-kyul.
Living in a semi-basement apartment with a bank account balance of around 3 million won.
D-rank Unaffiliated Hunter.
This was basic information up to here.
Next was what I had searched online on my way to the house.
This world was similar, but different, from the world that I had lived in before Iâd been summoned to Arbelicia.
The biggest differences were the existence of Hunters that they called âAwakenedâ and the dungeon gates.
These âGatesâ that led into dungeons randomly appeared all around the world. There were a variety of missions within the dungeon involving monsters, and clearing dungeons meant that you could receive rewards. Conversely, if the dungeon wasnât cleared within a fixed number of tries, or for some types of dungeons, a âbreakâ phenomenon would occur where the monsters could go outside the gate and appear here.
The main goal was for those who had been endowed with special abilities through Awakening to become Hunters and prevent the invasion of these monsters by conquering dungeons. Those who were Awakened had a status window like in a video game where they could see their abilities and skills.
âNext, the Association and guilds.â
The place where Iâd regained consciousness was the Association.
To put it simply, the Association was like a public company, and the Guilds were like private corporations.
âNext up is affiliation.â
What Iâd read on the internet was basically like this:
[Question: Why do unaffiliated Awakened get so much hate?]
âłAnonymous412: is it even possible to be unaffiliated lol
âłAnonymous42758: the unaffiliated honestly have no right to be called hunters
âł(OP): I mean Iâm asking because Iâm not Awakened, but whatâs so bad about being unaffiliated? One of my Awakened friends says the unaffiliated arenât even humanâŚso if im a 0% fit rate civilian does that make me livestock thenââ
âłAnonymous784: lol damn your friend is harsh
âłAnonymous42758: iâll explain it simply for you. not all awakened are created equal, if you compare it to a game, awakening means you get the right to play the game, and affiliations are like classes in the game. unaffiliated is being jobless. since you donât have a class, of course youâre weaker than everyone else.
âł(OP): Then what about Choi Soo-hyun? Isnât he unaffiliated?
âłAnonymous158: lmaoooo op, how is it even possible to not know this shit?? prev anon was just using a metaphor, real life can be different. choi soo-hyun wasnt jobless from the beginning, hes like a special case lol. usually other gods dont accept the unaffiliated. idk why, but guys like that are rare. i bet though if choi soo-hyun says heâll go somewhere, theyâd all follow him lmao MVPs arenât MVPs for nothing.
âłAnonymous548: whoever said unaffiliated is like being unemployed is so genius lol choi soo-hyun is an s-rank jobless fr fr.
All Awakened needed an affiliation, and there were differences in what abilities you could use based on your affiliation.
The problem was that affiliation.
âWhat gods do you follow anyways?â
If you capture monsters or obtain a new achievement that others havenât gotten, something called the âMerit Pointsâ will rise.
Gods used Merit Points to compete, and itâs structured so that if youâre an Awakened, the higher your Merit Points are, the more power you can gain.
The Awakened that lived in the modern day thought of Merit Points as something like experience points, and they didnât seem to have that much interest in how the gods used it to compete.
However, there wasnât concrete evidence to suggest that they did. It was a conclusion that was closer to reasoning that this could be the case based on the gods that I knew.
âThereâs no rule saying that a god can only manage one dimension, but isnât something a little strange here? Hmmm⌠Iâll leave this alone for now, itâll be better to think about this some other time.â
Hunters had a ranking system that went from D-rank to S-rank. You could get more information as well as enter more difficult dungeons the higher your rank was.
To get up to B-rank, you only needed to meet a specific criteria. Above that, you would be evaluated in many different ways, including level and Merit Points. Of course, listening to the stories of what the gods were supposedly doing meant that it was definitely a shame that Iâd come to possess the body of a 20-something-year-old D-rank who lived in a semi-basement, but this wasnât a problem that could be solved immediately.
âBeing unaffiliated seems kind of like a good thing, but kind of like a bad thing at the same time.â
Affiliation wasnât really anything special. If I had to call it anything, it just seemed like religion.
âAnd thereâs aliases on top of that.â
The name of the god âLuceâ that Iâd seen on the news wasnât their real name. Itâs not because I knew the names of every god or anything. It was just that this wasnât an issue with the name.
Each name is unique. If a country didnât have a name, it wouldnât even have a reason to exist. In particular, humans were more sensitive to names than gods.
The second a godâs true name leaves your mouth, you would feel its power.
Out of the many other gods that I searched for on the internet, there wasnât a single one where I could feel the godâs power properly, including Luce.
Thatâs because the popular names of the gods were aliases.
Even though the unaffiliated in this world had a harsh reputation and were looked down on, I was much more relieved to be one.
Because I had run away from the gods, it didnât make any sense for me to want to be under any specific god now.
After grasping this basic understanding of the whole situation, I finally opened my status window.
[Kang Han-kyul]
Strength: C (0%)
Stamina: D (0%)
Mana: D (0%)
Healing: D (0%)
Skills:
Talents:
Achievements:
âAre you serious? Thereâs nothing?â
This was much worse than I expected.
I said that if I could escape the gods Iâd be able to do anything, but this was on the level of throwing away your main account to completely start over on an alt.
I got up from the floor and swung my fists in the air a couple times. Afterwards, I kicked my feet out. Then eventually returned to swinging my fists.
Even though I hadnât even moved around that much, I was already out of breath. Compared to his good-looking face, this guyâs stamina was truly awful.
I thought to myself:
âI should exercise soon.â
I then sat back down on the floor. I brought up the search engine again and entered the name âChoi Soo-hyunâ.
Public Official Choi Soo-hyun
Affiliated with the Korean Hunter Association
Record Youngest Awakened
- Over 1000 dungeon clears
- 3 SS-grade dungeon clears
âŚâŚ
- ĺ (Former) Cheongwol Guild Premier Affiliate
- ĺ (Former) ăSerbiaăAffiliate
- Korea Hunter Association, Seoul Branch - Hunter Education Manager
âSo fancy.â
Come to think of it, even on posts asking about unaffiliated Hunters, Choi Soo-hyunâs story was bound to pop up.
Even though I was just barely beginning to understand the situation, I could grasp that he was pretty elite.
I took Choi Soo-hyunâs business card out of my pocket. Printed on white paper with a red stripe, it was a personal business card that only listed his name and his phone number.
The current Choi Soo-hyun was unaffiliated.
Based on the rumors circling around the internet, after being the sole survivor of a specific dungeon, he suddenly resigned from his guild. After leavingăSerbiaă, it was revealed that he chose the path of being a Hunter for the Association without any affiliation.
Considering that I had no idea what happened to the previous owner of this wack-ass body before I arrived, it was now necessary to think a little bit more about why Choi Soo-hyun had gone so far as to take care of me and give me his personal business card.
âMaybe he felt sympathy for me for also being unaffiliated?â
That was a stretch.
This one was unaffiliated from the start, and the other had kicked off the affiliation voluntarily, so it was a different feeling entirely.
It was highly likely that there was some deeper reason for the fact that an elite at that level had given me a business card.
âIf itâs Choi Soo-hyun, he must know something.â
Information was life itself. Iâd felt that ever since Iâd lived in Arbelicia.
Even if you could only make one decision, it was better to have 10 possible choices than 1.
Although I didnât have any intention of calling him right away, or even any plausible reason to contact him, I felt a little relieved thanks to this.
I lifted my pen and started writing a list of what I had to do. Out of the many things on list, the one that had the highest priority was:
âExercise, of course.â
* * *
As per usual, I woke up early in the morning. While I was exercising, the phone that was in my pocket vibrated.
[Hunter Trainee Kang Han-kyul,
âBasic Hunter Studies Lectureâ 10/23 (Thursday) 7:00 AM, Seoul Jongno-gu Hunter Association Seoul Branch, 3F, Training Room 201.]