The world was turned upside down on an ordinary day eleven years ago when thunder rumbled as if the sky was falling.
People awoke to the unusually loud thunder and looked up in unison to see a giant black hole in the sky. As if waiting for a crowd to gather or for everyone to wake up, the thunder stopped when they looked up.
Out of the black hole poured monsters the likes of which had never been seen before.
The rift sucked in everything around it in an instant, and the monsters crawled out of the open dungeon entrance like a swarm of ants. In their sudden invasion of life, they tore down buildings and smashed the ground. Countless people were injured, missing, and dead. Humanity's weapons, the products of scientific civilization, were useless against these monsters.
People despaired in the face of an insurmountable supernatural phenomenon. They thought the earth would be destroyed by nuclear war, not by monsters from a fantasy novel! Mankind was helpless in the face of this sudden catastrophe.
But there was no such thing as doom without action, for there was a being that stopped the destruction....
A mysterious white window that looked like a status bar in a game, known as the System.
The System appeared before some people and awakened unknown powers. Those who came in contact with the System awakened with new powers and began to fight back against the monsters. The first generation of humans awakened, and it was the signal for humanity to fight back. This was the moment when the beings that would later be called the Raiders appeared.
Humanity was an adaptive species; they quickly began to rebuild their shattered civilizations and adapt to the new era. Leading the way was the United States, followed, surprisingly, by South Korea. South Korea was one of the few countries whose government and security were not paralyzed on Rift Day, and it was safe to say that this was due to the comet-like arrival of J, an S-Class Awakener.
The only information released was his hunter name, "J," and his gender. With his name, face, age, and everything else hidden, the mysterious Hunter J made a spectacular entrance with a white scarf covering his face and sliced the Grade 2 monster Sasquatch in half. He went on to save countless lives by diving into crevices and dungeons, a hero of the ages, Captain Korea himself.
[J ripped a Sasquatch (physical)]
Later, after communications were restored, J became a worldwide celebrity when someone uploaded a video to YouTube that was viewed billions of times. Although J was only the size of a dot in the video and could barely be seen, the sight of a black dot tearing apart a monster the size of a building was mesmerizing.
It was a heroic act from the information and communication powerhouse of South Korea, where even if the world was ending and monsters were doing sword dances, the cell phone camera was still alive. The world seemed to calm down a bit with J's performance.
But the hard-won peace was short-lived.
Three years later, a Grade 5 rift opened in the waters off the west coast of Korea, and despite the efforts of the Awakening Bureau and nearby hunters, all contact was lost, and the rift continued to feed greedily on time. It was predicted that if left unchecked, the mushroom heat would engulf the islands of the West Sea and even Incheon.
After the government raised the danger level of the West Sea Rift from Class 5 to Class 1, the decision was made.
"We will send S-Class Hunter J, 14 more A-Class Hunters, and 30 more B-Class Hunters to prevent the rift from expanding."
The sent fighters entered the rift to the cheers of the people. Soon after they entered, the rift gradually stopped expanding, and a month later, it was completely destroyed. The people cheered and waited for the heroes to return, but they never did.
Three months later, after an investigation, the Awakening Bureau concluded that they had been consumed by the rift. They officially announced their deaths and delivered the unfortunate news. The government erected a monument to honor the hunters for their bravery in entering the rift. J's name was placed at the top of the monument.
Eight years later.
Eleven years after the first rift, the government was actively researching the use of monster carcasses and dungeon byproducts as alternative resources, so naturally the guilds shifted their focus from wiping out dungeons once and for all to picking a main draw and closing the rift. If they were lucky, they might get a byproduct that they could process and use.
The Great Hunter Age replaced the Fifth Industrial Revolution. The Metaverse bites! The center of the modern age was none other than the hunters.
Korea was a country where hero movie series had long been popular, so it was no wonder that hunters, who fought like heroes right before your eyes without CG, exploded in popularity. Their popularity was at an all-time high.
Not only did they get birthday posters like idols, but they were also showered with love by the advertising industry, and there were so many movies and dramas starring hunters that people lost count. There were even hunters who were models and did double jobs, like Honeybee.
The world was full of people who admired hunters and dreamed of awakening. A world where more than 80% of kids said they wanted to be a hunter, where dungeon slime ASMR videos were trending, and where a leisurely hunter was broadcasting the opening of a package with an A-class longsword. This was the Korea of today.
Is this... true?
But to me, a man from eight years ago still adjusting to life in the present age of the Great Hunter, it was all just... a lie. As I stared at the books displayed in the bestseller section of the bookstore, I frowned.
1st place, [Hunter is New to Hunting, Too].
2nd place, [Noryangjin Hunter Civil Service Academy's Star Instructor's Secrets to Finishing the Exam in Half a Year!]
3rd place, [I'm a hunter because I'm sick].
.
.
.
What the hell did it mean to be a hunter because you're sick? If you're sick, you're a patient. I made a shuddering face and shifted my gaze to the bottom of the list. My expression crumpled even more when I saw the titles of the books further down. They put 'hunter' on everything that doesn't need it... That's pretty lame.
I looked away, pretending not to see, and my eyes met something again, this time a poster of a mild-mannered man in a suit giving me a thumbs-up while holding up a thumbs-up sign.
Hotline 777 for Awakened registration inquiries, 555 to report unregistered Awakened and Awakened crimes!
Even as I tore my eyes away from the bestseller list, my scowl refused to lift.
Nine years ago, when the Dungeons and Fissures were relatively stable, the government, plagued by crimes committed by Awakened with nothing better to do, was considering the creation of a government agency to manage the Awakened. Just then, news reached the ears of the officials that a student at the police academy had awakened as an S-class Awakened.
This was a heaven-sent opportunity. Seizing the opportunity, the government immediately established the Awakening Bureau and pushed the newly awakened police academy student into the Bureau with special privileges.
He was the man on the poster, Hunter Jungbin, an S-class official.
I had also met Jungbin a few times when I was J. We didn't have a personal relationship, but we still exchanged pleasantries. At that time, we were the only two S-class Hunters in the entire country, so there was a certain closeness between us.
How did you end up like this?
What the hell has happened to you in the last eight years? There was even a hint of bitterness in my eyes.
To add to the lie, Jungbin showed his face in all the existing public service announcements. As far as I was concerned, he was an official, so it was easy to recognize him.
Just yesterday he was promoting smoking cessation in a TV commercial, the 33-3 brushing rule in a bus commercial I saw the other day, and here he was promoting Awakening registration. He was probably the most recognizable hunter in Korea.
As I was mourning the loss of a former colleague, a young girl with her hair in a ponytail walked by with a star-shaped name tag pinned to the zipper of her backpack.
Park Haeun, second grade, Saetbyul Elementary School. The phone number and address of Haejang-guk House were clearly written underneath the crooked but tightly pressed handwriting.
"Uncle, I chose all the books."
When I saw her uncle's name, I naturally turned my head in her direction. Of course, we weren't really uncle and nephew; Haeun was Grandmother's only granddaughter, and my entire family had died on the day of the rift.
But at some point, Haeun started calling me uncle, and I never corrected her. Just like my relationship with my aunt in the past.
"What did you choose?"
"This."
[What? The Day of the Rift]
(Note: The "What?" here is written in English on the Raw.)
The cover of the comic book Haeun gave me showed some cute glorified monsters and a masked young man. It was a children's educational manga series that I was familiar with.
The world could have ended, but these educational books were still being published. The face of the young man in the drawing appeared before my inwardly admiring eyes. Aside from the black hair and the white scarf, the mask over that face was all too familiar. He must be...
Isn't this a violation of my right of publicity?
...because it was a mask I had worn for many years to hide my identity when I was J.