The First Soul Stone

"Soul... points?"

The status window I'd checked right after awakening rose up in my mind. I'd looked at it only a little while ago—why hadn't I thought something was off?

Soul Points. I'd had them. Another thing that hadn't existed before the regression.

"So I can use them..."

I switched to the stat window at once.

Stats that had barely moved despite the level-up, and a hundred Soul Points. Those points, whose meaning I hadn't been able to grasp, were still sitting in the window.

"It did say I could allocate them."

Even so, I had no idea how I was supposed to do it.

"Just a little. Only a little..."

Endurance was my lowest stat. I fiddled with the window, meaning to try about five points on it.

I swallowed. The sound of it was loud enough to fill the room.

I didn't hesitate.

A faint crackle chased over my skin. Something that felt subtly different from an Awakener's energy seized my whole body, and the numbers in front of me began to change.

"It—it's real. It went up!"

I all but shouted it. This was a jackpot. Did that even make sense? It was straight-up cheating.

After regressing, unlike everyone else, I'd been handed a bonus that let me grow by an extra hundred points. No—count the Soul Stone on top of that, and it was a hundred and three.

Truly insane.

Whatever madness was unfolding, what mattered was simple. I could definitely become stronger than I had been before the regression.

Soul Points had even been added in proportion to the Soul Stone I'd used. Which meant growing this way wasn't a one-time thing. The more Soul Stones I gathered, the further I could grow.

"Haaah!"

I'd been so stunned I'd forgotten to breathe. The air rushed out of me all at once.

"Haha, hahaha... What is this. Is a god actually helping me? To stop the end of the world? Hahaha."

It was so absurd that laughter burst out of me. But I was genuinely happy.

"All right. Then the problem is... how to spend what's left."

I propped my chin on my hand and stared a hole through the stat window.

"Do I raise all three more or less evenly and get reasonably stronger, or do I push a single trait as far as it will go?"

Honestly, if I split the remaining ninety-eight points sensibly among Strength, Agility, and Endurance, my rank could climb to C—no, even to B. But if I dumped everything into one function...

"I could drag a single stat all the way up to S-rank."

And the truth was, I didn't need to be strong across the board.

Gyeol was already S-rank. His attack power and defense were high, and I knew from having lived it that he would grow absurdly stronger still.

"But he could never fight at his real level, because he was always watching out for me in the middle of a battle."

To Gyeol I was a friend he could lean on, and at the same time a burden. Coldly, if you judged us by Awakener ability alone, that was the fact of it.

"Then it wouldn't be bad to dump the points into whichever stat keeps me from being a burden. I'd be able to support him that much more efficiently. The urgent thing is not being dead weight. So the stat I should pour everything into is..."

And then I remembered.

Captain Seong would be in touch before long. There would be Awakener registration, too.

That would look far too strange. Every other stat clearly D-rank, and only one of them S-rank? I had never heard of an Awakener like that, not up to the day I died.

Even now, after the regression, there wouldn't have been one in thirteen years.

Drawing attention while I still had no real power could invite trouble I didn't need.

"Should I hold off, just until registration is over?"

I gathered the will-o'-the-wisp into my arms and crawled under the blanket. I had just enough time to think how soft it felt before I was out cold.

Sniff, sniff.

I woke to a delicious smell. The room was pitch-dark. I staggered up and out into the living room, and there was Gyeol, bustling around the kitchen.

"Oh, Ha-jun. You're up?"

"Why are you awake this early?"

I scratched at my mussed hair and checked the clock. It wasn't even six in the morning.

"Woke up starving. Figured I'd at least boil some ramyeon."

The early days after awakening were like that. For a while every sense ran hot, the way an unsteady mind does. I, maybe thanks to the regression, wasn't really feeling it.

"Hm? What's that on your shoulder?"

I followed his gaze. The will-o'-the-wisp was burning there, small and dainty.

Oh. Is this little guy the reason?

The strange, buoyant feeling that had clung to me all day after awakening was definitely gone. I wasn't suddenly ravenous, and my emotions weren't swinging all over the place.

Pretty good performance for a level 1 pet.

"It's my pet. When I leveled up yesterday, I got another skill."

"A pet? Isn't that an insanely rare skill?"

"...Well. Yeah, I guess?"

"Ha-jun, you're actually incredible!"

Gyeol grabbed both my arms and shook me. A reaction that fierce meant he was still a long way from stabilizing.

"I'll cook yours too."

"Yeah. Thanks."

A little later, pale steam curled up from a pot of ramyeon on the folding table. We really had eaten a lot of this back then. For me it was long ago. For Gyeol, it was still happening.

Now that he was an Awakener, I'd be weaning him off ramyeon.

"Anyway, I'm worried. There's basically no information."

Gyeol's tone had gone quite serious as he ladled ramyeon into my bowl.

"I got up and searched around this morning. It's all scratching the surface. Almost nothing that would help in a real fight."

He was right. Awakeners in this period were wrapped in secrecy—there were so few of them, and the state managed them with a tight fist. Information about them was kept from ever reaching ordinary people, which was why even we, just starting work as dungeon porters, had known next to nothing. The guilds made the porters themselves sign nondisclosure agreements and did everything they could to keep us from crossing paths with an Awakener.

Even after awakening, it took a long time for the people who had come into their power during the Second Open to actually work as Hunters. There was simply no system in place to train and raise all of them.

But.

I knew exactly what we had to do if Gyeol and I were going to grow far faster than anyone else.

"Yeah, that's true. But don't worry too much. We've always managed."

I smiled, meaning to reassure him. It wasn't an empty smile. Confidence was pouring off it. Gyeol gazed at me for a moment, then nodded.

Those deep black eyes glittered with trust, and a prickle of guilt ran through me. I wondered if I ought to tell him the truth even now—but if I did, there was no telling how the future would change. Simply carrying what I knew from before the regression had already kept this past from matching the old one perfectly. And some things had changed without my touching them at all. Better not to manufacture any more risks than I had to.

Gyeol's always been sensitive to lies, sure, but...

This was a white lie for the both of us.

Brrrr. The vibration startled me. An unsaved number. Normally I wouldn't answer an unknown caller, but this was probably Captain Seong.

"Hello?"

"Ah, yes. Hello."

"No. Conditions outside were too bad yesterday, so I went straight home. I was going to check how things look and head over today."

Up the chain? Was this really something that needed reporting? Countless people had awakened yesterday. It felt like overkill—but the Second Open itself was a variable far bigger than the state had ever expected, so they were probably trying to collect data on even the smallest things.

As a citizen, this was the sort of thing I ought to cooperate with. And if I wanted to work as a Hunter I'd need the license anyway, so the Awakener Management Department was somewhere I'd have to go even if Captain Seong told me not to.

Still, it would take ages for the streets to settle, and they wanted me there right now. Special case or not, weren't they being a little high-handed?

Scratch that last thought. High-handed? What was I saying. Thank you. I'd only done it to stay alive, and there was a reward? How much were they giving? This was huge. Truly, thank you.

"Wow, thank you."

"Yes. Take care."

Once I hung up, something felt off. We'll meet again?

"What. Who was that? At this hour. No manners. The crack of dawn."

He'd been right beside me for the whole call and could probably guess who it was, but Gyeol still asked with his hackles up.

"You know, that soldier who came in on the helicopter. He's badgering me to make sure I go to the Awakener Management Department today."

"We'd go on our own. Why call at dawn? It's still dangerous out there."

"I know. You think he worked through the night?"

Right. The Awakeners had probably been cleaning up this mess without a wink of sleep since yesterday.

"Since we're up anyway, want to eat quick and head over when they open? The Department's probably been on emergency status since yesterday too. Those people are ordinary civilians. Must be rough on them."

"You're really going today?"

"Why. You scared?"

Gyeol's face went bright red in an instant.

"I am not scared."

"The sooner we register as Awakeners and get our Hunter licenses, the better."

"..."

There were items in the inventory that needed selling, too. Plenty to do. And just how much was that reward going to be? If the supermarket was open, we could have beef for dinner.

Gyeol put on the Awakener documentary he'd said he found after waking early, and we ate ramyeon while it played. I had no need to watch it at all.

This is honestly terrible.

It was a government-made documentary, no less, about Awakeners and dungeons, and it contained almost no real information. Worse than I'd expected. So this was how tightly they'd been controlling information in this period.

Thinking back on the chaos of before, I had to admit my memories had been prettied up quite a bit. It didn't matter. Even information that hadn't been released yet, at this point in time, was information I already knew.

We finished eating, got ready in a hurry, and stepped outside.

Would the subway even be running? There was no telling what dangers were out there, so if we left with plenty of time to spare...

A dark shadow fell across my face.

"Mr. Eun?"

"Hello! Mr. Eun!"

"Good morning. We've come from Guild Sunrise!"

"Mr. Eun! Our guild..."