Build Up by Eating Beads!
Episode 1
In front of an E-rank dungeon where goblins appeared. A young man was carried out by porters to the dungeon entrance.
A limp body.
He wore comfortable clothes and crude work attire covered in dust and green blood.
“Who lays a guy with dehydration symptoms right there! Take him to the shade!”
At the shout of a middle-aged man with a bushy beard and a long scar on his cheek, the porters lifted the young man again and ran to the shade of a tree.
The middle-aged man also moved his feet toward the shade of the tree, following them.
As the middle-aged man approached, the porters examined the collapsed young man.
“Bring water.”
At the middle-aged man’s words, one of the porters watching the young man brought a small water bottle.
The middle-aged man opened the water bottle and poured the water all over the young man’s face.
“Hurk!”
The young man, who had been collapsed and unable to regain consciousness, felt the cold of the water, let out a startled cry, and opened his eyes.
At the young man’s reaction, the middle-aged man clicked his tongue and spoke to the porters.
There was no need for four people to be outside when the situation inside the dungeon had not yet been cleared.
“Go back in and finish what you were doing.”
“Yes, Captain.”
The middle-aged man clicked his tongue at the sight of two porters sauntering toward the dungeon entrance and sat down beside the young man who had come to his senses.
A new recruit on his second day since starting as a porter yesterday. On his first day, the young man had only watched the other porters, but he had suddenly started working.
Groaning as he tried to lift a heavy monster’s corpse.
In the end, the feared situation had come to pass.
The young man had struggled with a single goblin corpse for nearly an hour in the humid, hot dungeon, shown symptoms of dehydration, and collapsed.
“I told you not to overdo it, didn’t I?”
“……”
With an expression that said he couldn’t understand this situation, the young man blankly stared at the face of the middle-aged man, Gim Inseok.
The young man blinked his eyes with the face of someone who had received a great shock, then looked toward the dungeon entrance and trembled his pupils with a gaze full of confusion.
At the young man’s reaction, Gim Inseok nodded with an expression of understanding.
He had been quite fond of this child, having seen him practicing lifting corpses in a corner so as not to cause harm to the other porters.
A personality that hated causing harm to others.
And because he had shown the perseverance to somehow complete the task given to him.
“It’s a day’s wage. Wash up clean and just sleep. That’s the only way your muscle pain will get a little better. Got it?”
Despite Gim Inseok’s question, the young man did not answer.
The young man simply stared blankly at Gim Inseok’s face with a gaze that said he couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
Knowing that this was a phenomenon that often happened to people who collapsed from dehydration, Gim Inseok didn’t think much of it and forcibly placed the envelope he was holding into the young man’s hand.
Even though he was leaving early, the wage had to be paid in full.
“See you tomorrow.”
Gim Inseok, having given a simple farewell, walked back toward the dungeon.
The young man who remained under the shade of the tree looked up at the sky with an expression that said he couldn’t understand the current situation.
‘What is going on? Why is the Captain in front of me……’
Everything was confusing.
He had clearly had his stomach pierced by a being in the form of a demon and lost his life.
The red meteor showers that had been covering Seoul were nowhere to be seen either.
The sky he looked up at now was clear and endlessly blue.
It wasn’t a situation filled with dark clouds, right on the brink of death.
The young man, who had been sitting under the shade for a while, grabbed his head.
He was dizzy and nauseous.
‘I just want to collapse and sleep like this……’
Soon, the young man shook his head fiercely and rose from his spot with difficulty.
And then he opened the envelope Gim Inseok had left in his hand.
Inside the envelope were twenty ten-thousand-won bills and a daily wage statement. The young man picked up the statement and unfolded it first.
There, his name, resident registration number, and the date were written.
‘…2023?!’
The young man opened his eyes wide.
To survive, to support the family that looked only to him—the job he chose was porter.
The job that became his first, that allowed him to survive as an F-rank, was precisely porter.
The young man who had returned to the age of twenty in the year 2023, I Hyeonseong, rubbed his eyes as he checked the daily wage statement countless times.
‘To think it’s fifteen years ago……’
When he had faced a demon and met his death, he had been thirty-five years old.
He had entered the dungeon as a Hunter, not a porter, at age thirty.
He had spent five years there.
Entering a place called the Demon’s Altar, he had fortunately gained the ability to absorb Soul Beads.
They were beings that seemed impossible for an F-rank Hunter to handle, but he had survived and escaped the Demon’s Altar.
He had endured and overcome countless crises.
But the hope that he could return to his family with his head held high was rendered meaningless—the demon he encountered outside the Demon’s Altar was a calamity itself.
If he, who had died at the hands of such a demon, had returned to the age of twenty.
‘I miss them.’
I Hyeonseong thought of the people who had come to mind right before dying to the demon.
—Don’t give up. If you just don’t give up, another chance will come.
There had been a time when he had fallen into deep despair and wanted to do nothing.
And without fail, his mother, Choe Yeonsu, approached the struggling I Hyeonseong.
He had hated and been angry at them for easily saying the same things without truly knowing.
‘So… I drove a nail into Mom’s heart and left.’
An F-rank Hunter couldn’t proudly say he was a Hunter.
Neither a Hunter nor an ordinary person, he was merely a contradictory existence.
He could use the mana that Hunters used, if only a little, but it was a speck of dust worth of power.
‘The moment you register as a Hunter, you can never go back to being an ordinary person.’
Hunters had to undergo society’s strict sanctions in exchange for power.
They couldn’t have various jobs like ordinary people; the only things they could do were jobs related to Hunters.
It was sad enough to be born without talent, but I Hyeonseong found it unfair to live a life receiving contempt and scorn.
I Hyeonseong’s poor household.
When his father passed away, a pension replaced the living expenses.
Still, what was fortunate was that there was a house his father had left behind when he died.
But even this precious house had been lost because of I Hyeonseong’s mistake.
I Hyeonseong looked at the house before him. The house he had no choice but to leave because of his mistake.
I Hyeonseong forcibly moved his reluctant steps and entered through the front door.
And a middle-aged woman anxiously shaking her leg in the living room caught his eyes.
“Mom……”
The young I Hyeonseong, who had insisted on becoming a porter, had truly worried his mother sick.
Choe Yeonsu, who had been too worried about her son wanting to do dangerous work to go to work herself, wandering restlessly at home, discovered I Hyeonseong entering weakly and ran to him.
Whoosh—
As I Hyeonseong was embraced in Choe Yeonsu’s arms, he felt tears flowing out unconsciously and let his arms hang limply.
The family he had constantly worried sick, who couldn’t settle down and had only suffered their whole lives.
His mother was someone who would blame herself for failing to be a strength to her son who couldn’t settle down.
“Urk……”
At twenty, he had a family to protect.
Suppressed groans came from I Hyeonseong’s mouth as he held back his tears.
Then Choe Yeonsu, pulling him away from her embrace, smiled and spoke.
“Stomach hurt? Hurry up and go to the bathroom.”
She spoke like that, but there was no way she didn’t know.
She must have done it to comfort him with a joke.
I Hyeonseong also realized her intention and smiled as he answered.
“Ah, what bathroom.”
* * *
After showering and entering his room, I Hyeonseong looked around his room with an expression of renewed wonder.
Although he possessed the lowest-grade mana ability, I Hyeonseong had a different talent.
His superior memory compared to others was his advantage, and with this advantage he had survived fifteen years of F-rank Hunter life.
He opened the drawer and smiled.
Because the twenty-year-old I Hyeonseong had diligently saved his wages from working as a porter in the drawer.
No matter how much of an F-rank Hunter he was, he had to get armor and a sword to preserve his life.
Even to afford expensive Hunter equipment, he had to save money desperately.
‘What’s the point of saving like a fool? You didn’t even get the equipment and got scammed, losing it all.’
The thought was to save exactly 30 million won and buy basic weapons and armor.
For one year, I Hyeonseong saved diligently and eventually succeeded in making a huge sum of 60 million won.
It was an amount he had saved desperately without using a single penny even for his family, but he was scammed by a fellow porter and lost all that money.
‘If it’s going to be used for someone else’s benefit anyway, I should spend it on my family without regrets.’
A porter’s daily wage was high.
For nearly ten years, I Hyeonseong had received a huge sum of 6 million won as a monthly salary.
But it was also I Hyeonseong who couldn’t properly use that large sum and had let opportunities slip away.
It was no one’s fault.
I Hyeonseong, having made up his mind, took the envelope he had kept safely in the drawer and went out.
Seeing Choe Yeonsu preparing lunch, I Hyeonseong approached the kitchen, turned off the gas, and led her to the living room.
“Why? Not hungry?”
His wise mother who didn’t show it despite their tight living expenses.
He wanted to relieve his mother of her burden even if only a little, even now.
At that time, he had held the vain thought that if he became famous, his family’s future could change.
“Here, it’s yesterday’s wage and today’s wage.”
I Hyeonseong held out two days’ wages, excluding ten thousand won for his allowance.
Choe Yeonsu looked at the envelope and soon shook her head.
“It’s money you earned through hardship. Spend it on what you need.”
He felt like tears would come for no reason just from those words.
He recalled his family from before the regression once more.
‘Stopping the demon is protecting the family.’
The demon was impossibly strong, but he had to fight it.
Even if he was afraid, even if it was a power that made his whole body tremble, it was something that would happen fifteen years later.
Fifteen years remaining.
Depending on how he used that time, he could stop the demon, or lose his life as he had before the regression.
He had to choose.
Whether to find the ability as quickly as possible as he had done before the regression, or finish the one-year mandatory period and make his way to the Demon’s Altar.
‘Anyway, from my current position, there’s only one answer. First, I’ll complete the mandatory period.’
Even if it meant living as a porter for a year, he intended to adapt to the situation of being twenty for now.
He didn’t want to cause his family any more worry.
If the opportunity came, he would go to the Demon’s Altar; if not, he would bide his time.
‘I won’t die in vain like I did then.’
Build Up by Eating Beads!