#001_The Forbidden Library (1)
Orphan, poverty, outcast… a minor incapable of doing anything.
Was it because of that background?
I had always been that way.
There was nothing I wanted to do.
Instead, I only ever pursued what I could always do, what I could do well.
Only then could I break through the vicious negativity surrounding me.
…No, perhaps that alone was what I truly wanted to achieve.
I had always struggled to escape the deep quagmire I was trapped in, to grab the rope that must exist somewhere.
—It’s a Double Core.
And so, at age seventeen.
The day I took the Hunter early screening exam on a whim became the day the rope I had never dared to desperately wish for descended upon me.
The rope that could pull me from the quagmire.
Core.
Twenty years ago, when dungeons opened and monsters emerged as a new threat to humanity, the source of an unknown power that appeared in only a small number of people, as if to counter them.
The heart that comprised a Hunter’s power.
Its existence was the qualification of a Hunter, and the qualification of a Hunter meant obtaining the right to become the most special and extraordinary human in this world where a new order had arrived.
Double Core.
Moreover, having been granted two Cores when the absolute majority of Hunters were allowed only one proved that one possessed the qualification to become an even more special and extraordinary person among those special and extraordinary humans.
Thanks to that, from that day onward, I could instantly approach the goal I had dreamed of for so long.
[This is Sadaemun contacting you.]
[This is Guild Amhaeng. We wish to work with Hunter Kim Heeseong.]
[This is Hermes Guild. Please contact us.]
…
A minor early examinee.
My Core had only just formed and was incomplete, so the system, ether, unique abilities—not to mention even simple physical strength… I lacked everything befitting a Hunter.
I didn’t even know what unique ability I would later awaken, and at the time, I was essentially a complete ordinary person who couldn’t even be called an F-rank Hunter.
However, with nothing more than the name of Double Core Hunter, calls from guilds across the nation poured in.
Twenty years since the emergence of dungeons and Hunters… seventeen, based on that time.
Even including the deceased, fewer than a thousand Double Core Hunters had appeared worldwide, and without a single exception, all of them had grown several times faster and higher than ordinary Single-Core Hunters. Thus, the name Double Core Hunter alone made such expectations possible by the simple fact that they possessed two Cores.
[Join Cheonhye.]
Thanks to that, at the worthless age of seventeen, I was able to join Cheonhye (天惠), the greatest guild in the Republic of Korea. Naturally, it seemed a brilliant light was cast upon my life from that moment.
A contract payment that felt excessive.
Lodging and meals at a level provided by hotels, courtesy of the guild.
Training assisted by famous Hunters until official awakening.
Seniors who welcomed me, and future comrades who would one day have my back.
Everything was the exact opposite of before, and I naturally grew distant from the negativity of my past.
I believed that the day I officially awakened as a Hunter, that negativity would not merely fade into the distance but vanish beyond the far horizon.
But all of it shattered in a single moment.
At the moment of awakening I had so long awaited, it broke into pieces.
No, like the foolish tiger of lore who climbed high only for the rope to snap, I was plunged into a quagmire far deeper than before.
Name: Kim Heeseong
Rank: F
Unique Abilities: [Curse Immunity] [Kascheulien-style Deciphering (解讀法)]
The status window, proof of full awakening and connection to the system.
As befitting a Double Core, two unique abilities appeared as expected.
…And that was precisely the problem.
[Curse Immunity]
—Ignores all conditions and nullifies curse effects.
That was the first one.
True to its neat name, Curse Immunity was an option of utterly monotonous simplicity.
At a glance, it didn’t look half bad.
Just as there were themed dungeons for fire, ice, and other attributes, it seemed like it could be utilized when entering a curse-themed dungeon.
Perhaps I too could become a curse dungeon specialist Hunter, just as the ‘Blue Flame Emperor’ or the ‘Ice Blood Spear’ effortlessly smashed through dungeons with opposing attributes.
…If such dungeons existed, that is.
[‘Curse’ search results: 2 entries.]
—2025. Appearance of a boss monster using ‘Curse’ in a Busan EX-rank dungeon.
—2029. Occurrence of an S-rank ‘Curse’ attribute dungeon in Chile.
Unlike the hundreds or thousands of attribute dungeons appearing daily, curse attribute dungeons numbered only two in the past twenty years.
No, to be precise, one.
One appeared in a foreign country on the other side of the world, and the other involved merely a single boss monster using curses in an entire dungeon.
That was all the curse-related incidents in the entire world over twenty years.
In other words, [Curse Immunity] was completely useless.
What good was immunity when there was no curse to receive?
Unless there was some madman willing to invest in this ability for the off chance that one or two curse dungeons might appear in the next twenty years… but there absolutely wouldn’t be, so it was indeed worthless.
[Kascheulien-style Deciphering (解讀法)]
—Deciphers language in the manner of Kascheulien.
Next was this one.
It was prefixed with suspicious, incomprehensible words like ‘Kascheulien-style,’ but they didn’t mean much.
This was an anomalous phenomenon seen in all Double Core Hunters, and occasionally in Single Core Hunters as well.
What mattered in this unique ability was the latter part: ‘Deciphering.’
Deciphering (解讀法).
Not neutralizing poison (解毒), but merely the ability to read and interpret (解讀) scraps of writing.
This could be considered even more trash than [Curse Immunity].
The reason was the same.
There was simply no use for it.
Hunters connected to the system through their Cores fundamentally ignored language barriers.
Ordinary foreign languages, of course, but even ancient languages or pictographic scripts found only in literature.
They could read and understand them at a glance as if they were their native tongue.
In other words, this was nothing more than a degraded version of a basic Hunter ability.
[Curse Immunity], which might see some use someday, was far preferable; this was truly, utterly useless.
"…Fuck."
And so, I was discarded.
It was only natural.
The value of a Double Core Hunter lay entirely in having two unique abilities.
The core of a Double Core Hunter was amplifying their capabilities several times over through the synergy created by combining two unique abilities… yet I couldn’t use even one, let alone two.
In Cheonhye, a guild that only dealt with the best, there was no reason to keep someone like me, who effectively had no unique abilities.
"Fuck."
I could still accept things up to this point.
I could understand the guild’s position in casting me out, think of the past three years as a fleeting dream that had briefly brushed by me (一場春夢), and return to my roots.
…But why did they have to go this far?
[Notice of Penalty Fee Regarding Unilateral Contract Termination]
"Son of a bitch!"
It had clearly ended amicably.
The rank one Hunter in the nation and the Guild Master of Cheonhye.
Nam Cheonu, the Singer.
He had personally come to me and recommended I submit my resignation and terminate the contract, and I did as he asked.
Yet now they were saying my resignation was a unilateral contract termination and demanding a penalty fee.
Moreover, the amount was staggering.
—In the event of unilateral contract termination, the terminating party shall pay the opposing party compensation equivalent to 15 times the contract payment within 3 years of termination.
A mere 15 times.
The problem was that as the de facto rookie of the future, the contract payment I had received alone was a whopping 2 billion won.
In other words, the debt hanging over me now—
"How the fuck am I supposed to pay back 30 billion won when I'm not even a Hunter anymore, you bastards!"
The words: a whopping 30 billion won.
I, who had been a beggar three years ago, had now become a man 30 billion won in debt.
If there was one fortunate thing…
[Please pay the full amount within the designated period.]
… it was that the 2 billion won was still sitting in my account, and I didn’t have to pay it back for three years.
"Maybe I should blow it all partying hard for three years and then drop dead."
Beyond that, no answer was in sight.
If I beat odds with several tens of zeros after the decimal point and won first place in the lottery about ten times, it would all be resolved neatly, but that obviously wouldn’t happen.
Had I awakened suitable abilities like the other Double Core Hunters as expected, maybe… but if that were the case, I wouldn’t have been discarded in the first place… In this state where I could only use my physical body, it was impossible.
The only thing I knew how to do was hand-to-hand combat honed through three years of training, and with that alone, even if I worked every day for three years, I’d barely scrape together around 100 million won… and even with luck helping me, I’d be hard-pressed to get close to 200 million.
"Ha… fuck…"
The more I thought about it, the more it felt like my blood pressure would burst.
Cheonhye and the Guild Master who had backstabbed me when I had nothing.
The connections I had believed to be friends, yet not a single call came during this time, proving to be nothing but hollow.
And myself, who had been so stupidly naive, ignorant of the ways of the world, and played for a fool.
I was fucking furious at everything surrounding this situation.
But what stoked my anger even more than all of that was that there was still nothing I could do.
Strength, power… there was truly not a single way to resist the colossal enemy who held everything.
The only thing I could do now… was to ride the same shabby village bus as when I had left this place three years ago and head back to my miserable hometown.
"…This is really shitty."
A hillside slum perched halfway up a steep slope.
A place crammed with houses so cracked on the outer walls they looked like they’d leak rain… structures more befitting the term ‘lumps of concrete’ than houses.
The scenery evoked nothing but squalid, unhappy times, and merely looking at it brought back memories of those days.
But what felt even worse than that was this body of mine, which had acted like a new person during the three years away but had, in fact, never forgotten that day and was now moving purely on its own.
Beep—
My arm, which knew when to rise, pressed the button on the wall, and I got off the bus.
The place I found my way to was the end of an exceptionally narrow alley among countless others, a decrepit, unsightly house crammed into some corner.
I had completely forgotten the address over the three years, but my legs, which had never truly escaped this place, still naturally walked and stopped before the paint-peeled front gate, while my hand habitually searched for the key hidden beneath the dead flowerpot.
Clack!
The stubborn front gate lock unique to old houses rang out.
Left to rust, the sound was even louder and harsher than I remembered.
Screech—
The same went for the chilling groan of the gate.
Just by the sound, one would think it was an abandoned house in some remote rural corner.
No, in fact, its appearance fit the part too.
For three years… true to a house long left empty, cobwebs coated every corner starting from the outside, and the yard was hazy with thick, settled dust.
Passing through the small yard—though it was embarrassing to even call it that, with its cement floor—and opening the front door made the feeling all the more certain.
Dust settled white as a winter landscape swept by snow blanketed the floor and furniture cleanly, and all that remained upon it were the long, trailing tracks of insects.
From the furniture, visibly soaked and rotted by moisture, and the blue mold blooming here and there, a scent unique to poverty wafted out.
This was the state of the house I had returned to, hoping to save as much money as possible since I had no idea what to do going forward.
"……."
From the day my parents passed away and I was left alone.
Through the three years I had briefly escaped this place thanks to the miracle at age seventeen.
I had returned.
To that house.
To those lonely, impoverished days.
I had come back completely.
…And in a state that suited this place even more than before, at that.
"…Hoo, damn it."
It was then.
Just as I was about to exit the last room, the small storage room tucked into the furthest corner.
Suddenly, system messages rustled into view before my eyes.
[This is the personal domain of Kim Heeseong, acknowledged by ordinary others.]
[The possibility of another's access is extremely remote.]
[Acknowledged as a secret place belonging solely to oneself.]
"…What the hell?"
[The legacy of Kascheulien is confirmed.]
[All conditions have been satisfied.]
[The Forbidden Library is converted and inherited in accordance with the System's existence.]
[The entrance to the Forbidden Library is transplanted to match the structure of the personal domain.]
And then, immediately after, the floor began to open.
Rumble—!
As if such a mechanism had existed all along, the narrow floor—barely wide enough for one person to lie down—slid to one side, revealing a strange door beneath it.
But what was even stranger was that the door swung wide open on its own without anyone touching it.
Bang!
The thick iron door, which looked too heavy for an ordinary adult to move, toppled backward with a crash, and below it, a staircase stretched downward into darkness.
And then, another message flew in.
[The Forbidden Library is opened.]