[Balance: 90,792,100 Won]
On the way home, I refreshed the smartphone bank app screen more than ten times.
The 47 million won—my blood, sweat, and tears that the state had plundered under the pretext of legality—had not miraculously returned as I had hoped.
"Haah…"
I plopped down onto an old work chair tucked in a corner of the scrapyard and let out a deep sigh.
A tax bomb.
Just because I was an ordinary person with nothing to my name, they had mercilessly stripped away the earnings I had shed blood and sweat(?) for.
"Safety or taxes…"
I muttered and called up the system inventory window in the air.
I reached out and grasped a small glass bottle filled with sloshing red liquid.
[Dragon Heart Mana Circuit Activator]
A miracle elixir that forcibly opens dormant mana circuits.
At the bottom of the system information window, a chilling warning was written in red letters.
[Warning: May be accompanied by extreme pain. Risk of death by shock if the body's durability is insufficient.]
Because of that terrifying clause, I had capped it out of preemptive fear.
My life was what mattered most, after all.
If I died, what good would 100 million won be?
But now, I was half-crazed.
"Right, he was a royal alchemist in name. Surely he wouldn't sell a poison that would kill a man who drank it."
With firm resolve, I pulled the cork stopper off the glass bottle without hesitation.
A fragrant scent I had never expected brushed past the tip of my nose.
"Ah, screw it!!"
Gulp—
Inhaling deeply, I dumped the red liquid down my throat in one go.
The liquid that slid past my esophagus settled heavily in my stomach.
A brief silence passed.
1 second,
2 seconds,
3 seconds.
"Huh…… it doesn't hurt as much as I thought?"
The moment a clumsy sense of relief tried to wash over me.
"Kuaaaaaargh!!"
Screaming, I toppled off the work chair and thrashed madly across the cement floor.
"I-it's hot!!"
Beyond my whole body blazing like a ball of fire, a terrible bursting pain swept over me—as though molten lava flowing through my veins was burning every corner of my internal organs to a crisp.
Was this what being burned alive felt like?
The veins visible on my skin swelled up blue, as though they might burst at any moment.
Crack—!
Crunch—!
The sound of every joint in my body shattering and being forcibly stitched back together tore through my eardrums.
I howled like a beast and scraped at the rough cement floor with my bare fingernails.
"Krrgh…! Gack…!"
[Forcibly opening dormant mana circuits.]
[Progress: 15%… 42%… 78%…]
Even the mechanical voice of the system ringing in my head scattered into distant tinnitus.
As the pain crossed the critical threshold, my vision, flickering red, soon plummeted into deep, bottomless darkness.
***
I couldn't even guess when I had lost consciousness.
"Ugh…"
Sensation slowly returned starting from the tips of my hands sprawled on the floor.
I pushed up my leaden eyelids, and a stained ceiling pattern came into view, hazy and blurred.
The terrible pain that had whipped through my body as if to burn it away had vanished as cleanly as if washed away long ago.
Instead, a foul stench piercing my nose filled the interior of the scrapyard office.
"Ugh, what is this, a rotting sewer smell?"
I raised my upper body, swaying, and looked down at my condition, unable to hide my shock.
My entire skin was thickly coated in black, sticky, mud-like waste.
It seemed the impurities that had been layered inside my body had been swept along by the flow of mana and forcibly expelled out through my pores.
It was identical to the classic symptoms of a bone-cleansing transformation I had only read about in murim or fantasy novels.
I suppressed the rising urge to retch and dashed into the makeshift shower installed in the corner.
I turned the water on full blast, scrubbed viciously with a coarse towel, and repeated soaping up three times.
Only then was I barely able to wash away the disgusting smell and regain a human appearance.
While toweling my wet hair, I roughly wiped the fogged mirror—and froze there like a stone statue.
"This… is me?"
A completely unfamiliar man stood in the mirror.
The complexion that had been dull and rough, as though I had stayed up for days on end, now flowed with a smooth luster. The shoulders that had been hunched from crouching over work all day were pulled back and squared.
Most of all, my stomach and forearms, which had been pathetically scrawny, now held clearly defined, firm muscles as though carved with a sculpting knife.
I lightly clenched and unclenched my fist.
I could feel a heavy, massive energy starting near my heart and shooting in a sharp, stinging current all the way to my fingertips through my blood vessels.
It was unmistakably mana.
"Status."
I called the system with a trembling jaw.
[Name: Gwon Daeseong]
[Class: Multidimensional Repairman]
[Strength: 45 / Agility: 38 / Stamina: 40 / Magic Power: 65]
[Skills Held: Dimensional Exchange (EX), Unstable Dragon Heart (A), Mana Restoration Repair (C)]
"What the hell is all this…?"
The average stats of a normal adult male are around 10.
Even low-ranking F-Class combat hunters who strut around throwing their weight in the neighborhood barely surpass 15.
And yet my Strength was 45, and my Magic Power was a whopping 65.
"And what's this Dragon Heart?"
I closed my eyes and quietly observed the inside of my body.
I could clearly feel a bizarre, alien lump of mana crouched near my heart, pulsating.
A real Dragon Heart had taken root inside my body.
It seemed that old alchemist hadn't been running a scam after all.
'Just how much stronger has my body become?'
I wanted to confirm the overflowing strength with my own two eyes right away.
I picked up a hefty steel wrench rolling around in the corner of the workbench.
A crude tool used when tearing apart car engines, far thicker than an adult man's thumb.
I gripped both ends of the wrench tightly with both hands and lightly applied force.
Screech—
With a chilling metallic groan, the solid steel wrench bent as easily as pliable taffy, and then the middle snapped cleanly in two with a pop.
Using nothing but pure grip strength and muscle power, I had torn apart thick steel with my bare hands.
"Ha…?"
A hollow, disbelieving scoff slipped through my lips.
There was only one thing left to do.
"I gotta get my license first."
I needed to run to the Hunter Association immediately and get a re-evaluation.
My origins were as a non-combat repairman, so it was uncertain whether I could receive a combat hunter's license. But with these extraordinary stats, it was worth a shot.
"Me, raiding gates myself?"
My heart pounded like mad. A combat position—exactly what I had always wanted!
I hummed a tune, quickly threw on clean clothes, and roughly pulled down the shutter of the old scrapyard.
***
Appraisal Room No. 3 of the Official Exchange, Seoul Hunter Association Branch.
Chief Appraiser Jeong Yuna carefully set down the magnifying glass she held and swallowed dryly.
At the end of her gaze, three B-rank mana stones that some shabby young man had casually tossed out were emitting a brilliant blue light.
"Team Leader, is it really that incredible? He gave the excuse that they were his grandfather's heirloom."
"Deputy Choi. You wear an appraiser badge, and you believe such shallow nonsense at face value?"
Jeong Yuna cut off the new employee mercilessly, as if she couldn't believe it.
She picked up one of the mana stones with tweezers and tilted it toward the fluorescent light.
An immaculate, transparent blue. Not a speck of impurity could be found to disturb its internal structure.
"Purity 99 percent. No, at this level, it's safe to call it 100%."
There had never been a case in the history of the Republic of Korea where mana stones of such purity had been naturally mined from any Gate.
Even if they scraped and gathered everything around an S-rank dungeon's boss core, they'd barely reach the low 90s.
This meant someone had artificially interfered.
"B-but… is that realistically possible? Artificially processing mana stones to raise their purity?"
"That's precisely why it's driving me crazy."
Jeong Yuna clicked the mouse nervously and brought up the personal details the young man had left behind on the monitor.
[Name: Gwon Daeseong]
[Rank: F-Class (Non-Combat - Repairman)]
[Affiliation: None]
[Address: Outskirts of Seoul, Daeseong Resources (Scrapyard)]
Deep wrinkles formed on Jeong Yuna's brow.
A bizarre list of information that made no sense whatsoever in context.
Some measly F-Class repairman waltzing into a neighborhood exchange and dropping off three top-grade mana stones that even state-level hunters rarely laid eyes on, as casually as pawning a watch?
It was absolutely unacceptable within her framework of common sense.
'A repairman… repairman. Could it be?'
"Team Leader Choi, shall we immediately hand this over to the Association's Investigation Department? The probability that these are smuggled goods or stolen loot from an illegal gate is very high."
"No. Keep it quiet for now."
Jeong Yuna blocked the employee's mouth with a firm gesture.
"If we hand it over to those hyenas in Investigation, it'll just pile up annoying paperwork, and in the end, they'll obviously take all the credit. For now, let's just keep a quiet eye on him from our side."
The source of the mana stones didn't matter at all.
'If I could receive a regular supply of such unbelievable items…'
Jeong Yuna was an appraiser, but also a scientist who studied mana engineering.
The decisive reason most of her experiments had hit a wall was the abysmally low purity of mana stones.
But if she could get her hands on 99% purity mana stones with all impurities perfectly removed, she would finally be able to prove the revolutionary experiments she had until now buried in regret as mere theory.
"This is no time to be sitting around. I need to meet that man immediately."
Jeong Yuna kicked her chair back and hurriedly grabbed her coat.
***
1st Floor Central Measurement Hall, Seoul Hunter Association Headquarters.
In the vast lobby and waiting room, rookies swollen with dreams of striking it rich as hunters waited with severely tense faces.
"Next waiting candidate. Mr. Gwon Daeseong?"
The staff member sitting at the guidance desk looked at the chart record on the monitor and my face alternately with an extremely puzzled expression.
"Is it really you, Mr. Gwon Daeseong? When I looked up your records, you already received a final evaluation as an F-Class production staff member three years ago. Do you have a special reason for requesting a re-evaluation? The basic examination fee alone is 2 million won, which must be quite burdensome."
Beneath the staff member's businesslike tone, a sticky, subtle sneer lay coiled.
The implicit contempt of a measly F-Class repairman failing to know his place and throwing away his own money on a worthless act.
"I believe I've undergone a Second Awakening."
A Second Awakening.
It was rare but not unheard of in the hunter industry.
Quite a few Awakeners in our country had achieved a Second Awakening through dramatic opportunities.
"Ah, a Second Awakening? You are quite fortunate. Then would you please place your hand on the machine over there?"
The staff member gestured with her chin toward a massive transparent crystal sphere.
The latest model mana measuring device that the Association proudly boasted of.
Precision equipment that comprehensively scanned the density of mana and the body's physical density inside a hunter to assign an official rank.
I took one long, deep breath and firmly pressed my palm against the cold surface of the crystal sphere.
'Alright, now the endless suffering ends and happiness begins!'
I closed my eyes and deliberately extracted an extremely minute portion of the tightly condensed mana lump of the Dragon Heart near my heart, gently pushing it into the sphere.
But it was exactly in that moment.
Weee—!
Weee—!
Weee—!
[Warning: Mana analysis error. Please infuse human mana.]
Accompanied by a blinking red warning light, the mechanical voice erupted.
The staff member's eyes and mine met blankly in midair.
"……Huh?"