— I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Something suddenly came up at work, so my half-day leave got canceled.
…This damn world… Should I just wipe it out already? What value of survival? What nonsense… maybe there’s nothing like that at all.
— Did you get your report card okay?
— Sorry, I’m just a rookie, so I don’t have any powerㅠㅠ
— Let’s at least have a late dinner after your part-time job. I’ll buy meat. We can grill it at home.
But seeing message after message come in, clearly meant to cheer me up, my irritation melted away. Honestly, the one who should be most annoyed was the one whose half-day leave got canceled.
— Why aren’t you replying?
Yeah. What wrong did my brother ever do? The real villains are the company that casually rejects a rookie employee’s requested leave just because it’s busy, and a corporate culture that forces people to constantly read their boss’s mood. A bunch of corrupted demons of capitalism.
After some thought, I sent a reply.
Want me to smash your company for you? —
As if reassured by my response, a laughing message came back.
— Hahahahahahahaha
— I finally got a job, I can’t have you destroy it. I wouldn’t get paid.
Well then. Another company survived today.
— What kind of meat should I buy?
Turning down an offer from a demon to work for free, what an idiot. Thinking that, I still sighed and replied.
Buy beef. —
What’s unfortunate is unfortunate, but what can be eaten should be eaten. I sighed again. At this point, I might as well just go to my part-time job. With that decided, I trudged out through the school gate and waited for the bus I always took. Across the street, inside the convenience store at the bus stop, I noticed a small TV mounted on the wall.
Breaking news was flashing on the screen.
This is breaking news. Today, during an ability assessment conducted at a high school in Eunpyeong District, Seoul, a new S-rank Hunter with unprecedented ability scores has been discovered. This marks the 11th S-rank Hunter to awaken in our country. Further details are pending additional reporting.
That’s about me.
It hadn’t even been a few hours since the ability test ended; talk about fast. Then again, since the test is conducted nationwide, they say they send one or two rookie reporters to every school just in case something newsworthy happens. Looks like they hit the jackpot.
Come to think of it, maybe it’s better that the half-day leave was canceled.
If something urgent came up at work, there’d be no time to pay attention to breaking news or anything like that. Better this way than hearing the unsettling news that your little sister was rated S-rank and running out of the office in a panic.
That was about all I thought. After all, I was still a minor, so I didn’t think my face would immediately be plastered all over the media. At the very least, that would happen only after contact with the Hunter Management Agency.
But that assumption was wrong. I had seriously underestimated the competition among reporters in this media-saturated modern society. Just what is going on with South Korea’s personal information laws, anyway?
“Hey, I said I don’t know that person, so get out already!”
“Come on, ma’am. Please, just—”
“If you keep this up, I’ll report you for obstructing business, got it?!”
“Ah, no, that’s not—!”
After some back-and-forth, one reporter holding a camera couldn’t withstand the broom the shop owner was swinging and was chased out of the old supermarket. In the process, the reporter spotted me, let out a startled “Oh—” and pointed, but before they could say anything, they were forced outside as well.
The opaque glass door slammed shut with a thud. As if worried the reporter might open it and come back in, the owner locked the door. Sure enough, there were a few loud bangs against the glass, but they soon stopped. The owner pulled out some tissue and spat phlegm into it.
“Tch. Today’s business is ruined.”
“You make it sound like you’re running an illegal operation, Boss,” I replied as I set my bag down on the floor near the chair I usually sat on. “And why wouldn’t you be able to do business? You could’ve just given an interview and told them to buy something expensive.”
“Forget it. What expensive stuff would a hole-in-the-wall like this even have?”
“Expired eggs?”
“Oh, stop talking nonsense.”
A shabby supermarket in a hillside slum neighborhood. And an elderly grandmother nearing seventy. This was my workplace and my employer. I’d been working here since middle school, so it was coming up on almost four years now.
We went way back.
As soon as my brother became an adult, he took me and left the orphanage. With the support money given to orphans, the only place we could afford in Seoul was this neighborhood.
When the owner of this supermarket saw a twenty-year-old young man show up with a little girl in tow, she struck up a conversation. As we passed by now and then, she’d give us slightly wilted vegetables or a bag of snacks, and naturally we got to know each other. Over time, whenever she left the shop for a few hours to go to physical therapy, I’d watch the store for her. Then she started giving me pocket money. Eventually she said that if I was going to be helping out so often, I might as well officially work part-time; so that’s how it started.
Of course, even if it was called a part-time job, there was no way a run-down supermarket like this could afford to pay me a proper hourly wage. I was paid far less than the legal minimum wage, so I suggested it might be better for me to work at another convenience store instead, but my brother was against it.
“I’ll earn the money. And I’m worried the old lady might collapse someday, so you should keep an eye on her. She’s getting up there in age. And besides, this is a place where you can work while studying, right?”
Moved by that unbelievably soft-hearted concern, I ended up working here… Or rather, to be honest, I tried several times to get a part-time job at other convenience stores, but every time I did, my brother nagged me until I gave up. It’s impressive, really, how he can nag so much it’d make a demon’s ears bleed…
“By the way, Daon, ‘tis really true?” The owner pointed at the small TV mounted in the supermarket, her expression serious. She’d moved up to Seoul from Gyeongsang Province thirty years ago, but whenever she relaxed around people she was close to, her dialect slipped out. “That S-rank Hunter there, they talkin’ ‘bout you? Says Eunpyeong District High School, and that’s the school you go to.”
“Did my name already come out?”
“‘Didn’t give a name, but reporters came by askin’. So I wondered if ‘twas true.”
“It is. That’s why the reporters showed up.”
“Oh my goodness!” She grabbed both my hands, practically shrieking. “What in the world is this? I’ve never ‘erd of anything like it. You, an S-rank Hunter?”
“I guess so.”
“I hear those make good money.”
“Probably.”
“Still, even so, it’s dangerous. I don’t know if that’s alright.”
“It’s not that dangerous. I’ll be fine. But more importantly, what did the reporters ask?”
“Don’t even ask. You don’t need to know,” she cut me off firmly.
Honestly, I didn’t need to hear it to know. My family background could be uncovered in no time just by asking around near the school, and if the reporters were quick on their feet, they’d already have heard about what happened in the auditorium.
A student with a tragic family history, a victim of school violence, who still ranked first in the entire school, and on top of that awakened as an S-rank Hunter.
Perfect clickbait for video-site scavengers. Or something to be dramatized into a tear-jerking “triumph of the human spirit” story on public television. Just thinking about it made me want to throw up. Naturally so, considering what’s inside me is a former Demon Lord.
“Still, everyone rushed in like a pack of hyenas, and now it’s suddenly quiet.” She pressed her ear against the opaque glass window for a moment, then shook her head. “Looks like they’re all gone. That’s a relief. But wait, aren’t they probably camped out in front of your place, too?”
“No, our neighborhood should be fine. More importantly, Boss… I don’t think I can keep working here anymore. If I continue, it’ll just be a nuisance.”
Now that reporters had come all the way here, normal life was basically out of the question. S-rank Hunters were rare not just in Korea but worldwide. And this was a sudden awakening with no prior signs, so attention was inevitable. Given the immense economic and social value of a single S-rank Hunter, there was also a high risk of personal danger.
Once I got in touch with the Hunter Management Agency, there was a good chance they’d arrange housing for me. I thought there wouldn’t be any real trouble until at least the end of today, the day of the supernatural ability test. But judging by how quickly the reporters showed up, my calculation had been off. It seemed likely I’d need to move much faster.
As if she already knew what I was going to say, tears welled up in the owner’s eyes. Her wrinkled hands held onto mine. “Oh my, why would you say that? I couldn’t even pay you much to begin with. I should’ve taken better care of you.”
“You already did more than enough.”
I knew she hadn’t paid me less than minimum wage because she didn’t want to. It’s just that capitalism, money, something people created for convenience, ends up making people pitiful instead. She’d looked after me and my sibling as much as she possibly could. That kindness was genuine.
“Thank you for everything.”
Given who I was in my previous life, I don’t particularly believe in human goodwill. Not because I deny its existence, but because I’ve seen how easily it crumbles in the face of human desire, how quickly it rots under the absolute flow of time. It may exist in moments, but it is never eternal.
Still, I was grateful for it because my brother had welcomed the warmth she gave us.
In a society where goodwill so often turns into malice, this place had at least been somewhere we could grow attached to. That alone was worth being thankful for. Humans are such fragile creatures; without a place to belong, they wither away so easily.
“You’re not going to skip your physical therapy just because I’m gone, right? I’ll come by to visit often.”
“Of course, of course. Come by anytime. I’ll even cook you a meal.”
Up to this point, it really could have been one of those heartwarming stories you’d see on public television. There was just one thing I’d forgotten.
Namely, that I am probably the person least suited in this world for a “touching true story.”
Click. The supermarket door opened.
A man stepped inside, as casually as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
“Excuse me, are you open today?” he asked.
The owner wiped away her tears, let go of my hands, and stood up. “Ah, yes. Welcome.”
And I froze stiff, like ice.
The person who had come in was a young man who looked to be in his early thirties. Nothing about his clothes stood out, and his face was the kind you could see anywhere. He didn’t have a camera, and he didn’t look like a reporter either. The man casually picked up a bag of snacks from near the counter.
“How much is this?”
“1,200 won.”
“Do you take cards?”
“Oh yes, of course. Cash would be appreciated, though. Kids these days don’t carry cash anymore.”
It was an everyday exchange between the owner and a customer. To anyone watching, he was just an ordinary shopper.
But that made no sense.
I truly was…far more shocked than when the system had recognized me just a few hours earlier.
“How on earth…?”
In fact, when I saw reporters swarming outside and started talking with the old lady, I had cast a spell to prevent anyone from approaching this place. Otherwise, reporters would have already poured into this cramped supermarket the moment they noticed me.
My mana had only recovered to LV. 12, so it was a very basic illusion spell; but that didn’t mean it was easy to break because it was my own original illusion magic, and demonic magic cannot be undone unless you know the exact method to dispel it.
Yet that man had walked right through my spell as if it were nothing!
It was as absurd as setting up a payment system that requires a PIN, only for someone to drain my entire bank account without entering any code at all. Like a monkey doing multiplication, or a fish flying through the sky, the premise itself was completely wrong!
Yet the system message was calmly telling me that this impossible thing had, in fact, happened.
“Spine of the Waterwheel” has been dispelled.
These idiots’ collective intelligence, this so-called system, had to be malfunctioning. As a Demon Lord and archmage, I say this with authority: this simply cannot happen!
As the magic has been neutralized, a penalty is applied.
Your actions are temporarily restricted.
Remaining time: 00:01:00
On top of that, a penalty like this?!
Paralyzed by shock, rage, and the penalty itself, I could only watch as the man slipped his hand into his pocket, as if reaching for his wallet.
Knowing something was about to happen, yet being forced to witness it helplessly…there was nothing more humiliating.
And then, in the man’s hand, a flash of light burst forth.
“Grandma!”
Bang! An explosion erupted. Light exploded outward, swallowing the space in an instant.
The last thing I saw was a system message floating up, as if mocking me.
A Dungeon Break has occurred.
Conquer the dungeon.