Wait—I Leveled Up Already?

I blinked, so startled I forgot even to check my inventory.

No way. Seriously? That easily?

Of course, linked as we were through Soulmate, I would have taken a share of the experience from every monster Gyeol cut down. Even so—Awakeners who had only just awakened, sweeping a goblin pack and leveling on the spot... Then again, fair enough. A level 1 had just slaughtered the whole lot. A level-up was only natural.

"Eun Ha-jun!!"

Gyeol's face was flushed bright red.

"Did you level up too?"

"Huh? A level-up? No? Did you?"

"Uh... oh. Yeah, I did. Right—our ranks are different. A higher-rank Awakener needs a lot more experience to level up."

"...That's amazing."

Gyeol's eyes glittered like a child's. He seemed to have forgotten entirely that we'd been brushing death only moments ago.

"Amazing, what. I only leveled that easily because my rank's lower than yours."

"Even so. And the level-up isn't what matters. You were really incredible just now. If you hadn't been there, we couldn't have won. We might have died."

"Mm. You're not wrong."

"...You used to come home getting thrashed all the time, or with something broken."

"What. Digging up ancient history..."

Then again, to the Gyeol of now, those things were only a few years back.

This guy's worked up way more than usual.

Of course he was. A storm of overwhelming things had hit all at once. He still hadn't adapted to the awakening energy, and it was probably scrambling him in every direction. Plenty of Awakeners lost their reason and went berserk right after a first awakening for exactly that reason. I hoped his mental stat would climb soon and settle him down. In a state like this, mistakes came easy.

I absolutely could not let Gyeol get hurt.

"The monsters are all gone..."

"My god, did those people take them out?"

"They must be Awakeners."

Somewhere behind us, a handful of people who had gathered without my noticing began to murmur among themselves.

Not a scrap of fear—still loitering nearby instead of running. Or maybe they were too scared to even think of fleeing.

Beneath the bridge, something enormous was swimming across the surface of the Han River. Those were horrors for professional Hunters to handle. They didn't even compare to the goblins we'd just tossed out as a meal.

"Hey, Gyeol. Check your inventory."

"Huh? Inventory?"

"Yeah. You can open it just by thinking you want to see it. It's like an Awakener's personal cyber vault. Nobody but you can look inside."

"Oh..."

He stared into empty air with his mouth hanging open, so he'd opened it.

All right. My turn.

Whoa! Low-grade, sure, but five Ether Stones.

Among dungeon byproducts, Ether Stones fetched the highest price of all—jewels that held a dungeon's power, the base material for crafting high-grade items. Even a low grade could bring a few hundred thousand won, and if you found a generous buyer, you might clear into the millions. This many Ether Stones from a first fight. And since we hadn't formed a team, the whole haul was mine alone.

Normally, even clearing a single dungeon meant a whole party of Hunters going in together. Profits got split, and the share that landed on any one person shrank. The lower your grade and the smaller your contribution to the clear, the harder your earnings hit the floor.

Either way, the result was far better than I'd expected.

I thought I'd heard that monsters fresh out of the Second Open dropped this generously—even though there were far fewer of them than a normal dungeon would spit out. From the start, that damned thing called the System had far too many variables.

"Hm?"

Among the pile of items, one thing in particular caught my eye. Three Soul Stones. Soul Stones? What were those? An item I'd never seen before. Something I hadn't encountered once in twelve years of living as a Hunter—and I'd gotten it off goblins, monsters you could call beginner trash?

Come to think of it, did this have something to do with the Soul Points on my status window earlier?

"Gyeol, how much did you get?"

"Yeah. Fourteen goblin teeth, twenty goblin hides, nine goblin ornaments, five rusty halberds, twelve Ether Stones."

"Twelve Ether Stones?! You're insane! We hit the jackpot."

A haul like that between just the two of us. I hadn't done any of this aiming for it, but the profit was enormous. At this rate, if Gyeol and I took down a few more monsters—or ran one or two of the lowest-grade dungeons—we could get out of that two-room semi-basement.

A regressor really was the best. Worth it!

"Did it drop well?"

"Yeah, completely. Normally, monsters around goblin level, at this kind of difficulty, don't hand out rewards like this."

"Normally?"

"Uh... you've been working as a dungeon porter and you don't even know that?"

"...You're the one who knows too much. You haven't even been a dungeon porter for a month."

"Ahem. Anyway, did you get something called a Soul Stone?"

"Huh? A Soul Stone? I don't have anything like that."

"Really? Check your inventory again."

"I'm telling you, I really don't."

I glared at Gyeol for all I was worth, but he didn't seem to be lying. Right—Gyeol didn't lie to me. For a brief moment it looked as if his mouth were sticking out a mile.

Then a helicopter tore across the sky, rotors hammering the air. Ropes dropped beneath it, and people in black came sliding down one after another.

Strange, uncanny uniforms that looked like techwear, and helmets. People wrapped tight from head to toe in goggles and masks. Red lasers raked the ground, then me, then Gyeol—sighting from the helicopter, maybe.

If I remembered right, these people were...

"Capital Defense Monster Special Forces. Are you all right?"

A soldier built so solidly he could almost have passed for the goblin boss came up and asked me. A woman, voice husky. Even through the layers of uniform, hard muscle seemed to stand out clear.

Whew. People like this were on our side. And the Monster Special Forces were a unit made up mostly of Awakeners. We'd live.

As it happened, the mana I needed for skills was almost entirely spent. Leveling up didn't fully recharge you the way a real game did. The system only raised your maximum mana; you had to recover the rest through rest, items, or skills.

"Hey, Eun-yeong. They already got wiped out over here, didn't they? Those two—doesn't look like civilians. Hunters, maybe."

A soldier standing off to the side called to the one in front of me. The others were staring at the goblin corpses Gyeol had roasted crisp.

"...Are you Hunters?"

The soldier called Eun-yeong glanced toward whoever had called her, then turned the question back on me.

"Ah, we're not Hunters. We just awakened. Right after that weird light burst outside."

"...! Please wait a moment."

Better to explain in detail for now. With the Second Open underway, the Hunter guilds and the military alike had to be in a full state of emergency.

The soldier named Eun-yeong ran over to the one who had called her and started making a report. A soldier who looked like a superior—the one who had been examining the goblin corpses—listened closely, then strode toward me. Up close he was smaller than Eun-yeong, but his build was far better than mine.

"I was told you just awakened. Is that true?"

"Yes. When the subway flipped. Both me and my friend. We handled the monsters. There are a lot of civilians back there, too."

"..."

A low voice swallowed what sounded like a troubled groan.

Yeah. It was strange. Fresh Awakeners beating down a goblin pack—and not just the trash mobs. The boss was lying there dead as a doornail. They could drag us off for questioning on the spot if they wanted. Well, anyway, as citizens of the Republic of Korea in a worldwide emergency, I intended to cooperate fully.

"Second Lieutenant Ahn, escort these two and connect them with the Awakener Management Department. We have to finish the emergency dungeon clear right now."

Behind him, the soldiers who had come down from the helicopter were sprinting hard in the direction the goblins had come from. And far off, something glittered in a color like the aurora covering the sky.

A dungeon entrance. Right. A dungeon entrance had opened in the middle of the bridge.

"Sir? Captain Seong. Then the formation we set up in advance..."

"It's fine. We can cover a variable of that size."

"That's... no! Not in this situation!"

"Are you refusing an order?"

Captain Seong spoke with complete confidence, but I was with Second Lieutenant Ahn Eun-yeong. On a day when the world had gone completely off the rails, I couldn't create a variable that might cost lives because of me.

"Uh, Captain. It's all right. We can just mix in with the group evacuating the civilians over there."

"..."

I pointed back at the people behind us and the civilian rescue teams that had arrived, but Captain Seong said nothing. I could guess his worry. On a day of cataclysm like today, suspicious Awakeners who had only just awakened and burned a pack of goblins to a crisp. Letting them walk would sit wrong.

All right. My finishing move. Time to fire off the invincible I'm a harmless person smile.

"If you're worried, I'll leave my contact—or you can give me yours. I can report in person. I have no intention of causing trouble at all. Getting the situation under control comes first, doesn't it?"

"...It isn't by the manual."

As expected. Few people could hold out against my killer smile. The voice that had been weighing it came back a good deal more generous.

And what manual—there probably wasn't even one written for a day like today. What could you do? This was a disaster no one could control. The kind that belonged in a movie. And in truth, the Monster Special Forces of this period were pretty sloppy in places.

I dug through my back pocket and pulled out my phone. What a relief it hadn't broken in all that chaos. Domestic brands really were the best.

I handed it to Captain Seong. He tapped in a number and pressed the call button hard.

"Please be sure to contact us. That is..."

"Eun Ha-jun. That's Han Gyeol over there. Oh, I'll show you my ID too. Here."

"Yes. Mr. Eun Ha-jun. Mr. Han Gyeol. You must contact us. The Republic of Korea manages Awakeners strictly. And do not overlook the fact that the two of you are a special case."

Captain Seong pressed the point again and again, then vanished with Second Lieutenant Ahn toward the dungeon entrance to carry out the original operation.

"Whew. Let's go, Gyeol."

"Huh? Where?"

"Where else. The hospital, first."

More precisely, the Awakener-only hospital run by the Awakener Management Department.

Calling it exclusive was a stretch—it was an Awakener ward set inside a large university hospital. There were exactly two in the whole country. One in Seoul, one in Busan. Shocking, but true. Awaken out in the provinces and you had to go all the way to Seoul or Busan. After today, they'd spring up in quite a few places.

Anyway, we followed the soldiers moving civilians and left the Han River behind. The bridge growing distant, the subway growing distant. Every sight was familiar, and new.

"You done with the tests?"

Moved to Korea University Hospital, Gyeol and I had gone to the Awakener ward and been run through all sorts of tests. The result: nothing abnormal.

After the checkup I talked a little with the doctor and came out, and Gyeol, who had been waiting, shot to his feet to greet me. His face was anxious, like a puppy that couldn't come into the shop and had been waiting ages for its owner. Seriously—when was this kid's mental stat going up?

He didn't feel like the Gyeol I knew. A little unfamiliar. Like a child.

Well. He was a child, wasn't he.

"Yeah, they said I'm fine. You're fine too?"

"Yeah. They said I'm healthy. Numbers are good, too. They said it's normal to have some anxiety after you awaken."

"Right. So even if you're rattled, don't worry too much."

I tapped his shoulder, and he gave way without any strength behind him. A voice that had lost its steam followed soon after.

"You don't seem bothered at all."

"Hm? Well, I'm the hyung, aren't I. Hahaha."

"What kind of bullshit is that. You're the one with the early birthday."

A look that might have been suspicion, or grievance, stung.

Honestly. Here I was trying to say my hapless friend was getting a bit more mature, and there was plenty to be rattled about besides.

"We did make it to the hospital we were originally heading for. Haha—want to grab some gukbap around here before we head back? Oh, right. Everything's probably a wreck. Wonder if the soup place is even open..."

I muttered as I led the way, but somehow I couldn't feel him following. I turned. Gyeol was standing stock-still, staring at something.

"Huh? Gyeol. What are you doing. You're not coming."

"Ha-jun. Over there."

What he was staring at was a big TV in the hospital lobby.

People sat packed tight, watching the news. Breaking reports poured out, and the ruined face of Seoul filled the screen. And then—

After the anchor's line, the screen cut to a crude video shaking wildly. A familiar mess.

The reporter's voice carried over it, and a moment later my face and Gyeol's filled the screen.