Chapter 3

　　—"You’d better actually rest this time!"

　　"I got it."

　　—"No, really rest this time! Don’t go charging out to the field! And make sure you thank Hunter Baek Eunseong for saving…!"

　　I never asked him to save me. Of all people, getting saved by him pissed me off the most.

　　Cutting off the president’s yelling, I hung up and glared at the text that had been floating around me, refusing to disappear.

　　"Status Window."

　　[Access Condition Achieved!]

　　As the sky-blue status window popped up, it was pushed to the background, only to bob back up over the window as if protesting.

　　"Hm."

　　After a moment’s hesitation, I tapped the golden letters that flashed as if begging for attention. Bright light flooded the room, condensing into text.

　　[Reading Ticket Used]

　　[Skill Acquired!]

　　[Reader: Seong Dohyun]

　　…A skill?

　　I stared at the book floating in midair, half the size of my body. What the hell is this? The text was so densely packed I couldn’t make out a single word. Frowning, I flipped through page after page. Only on the very last page did I find something legible.

　　[Repair M’s Strip]

　　A quest… or something? When I tapped the words, they unfurled like a scroll.

　　"What is all this… Salamander’s Egg, Mosland’s Wing…"

　　So, to repair this thing called "M’s Strip," I needed these items? As I tilted my head, the letters flickered.

　　"Ugh, that’s distracting. If I’m right, blink once. If I’m wrong, blink twice."

　　The letters blinked slowly once, as if they understood.

　　[Repair Progress for M’s Strip: ? / ?]

　　"There are eight required parts, so why isn’t it 0/8? What’s with the question marks?"

　　At my question, the letters blinked once, then after a pause, twice. So is that a yes or a no?

　　"You mean you don’t know?"

　　They blinked again.

　　Arms folded, I glared at the text and dug through my memory.

　　Did Seong Dohyun have anything like this? Some kind of item restoration ability? I scowled and checked the book again. As if it had read my mind, the letters blinked twice.

　　So he didn’t.

　　"Then why did I get an ability like this?"

　　At that moment, letters big enough to fill the entire room appeared.

　　[Access Condition Achieved!]

　　…When did I see this text before?

　　Oh, right. Back then—when I’d thought that, if possible, I wanted to die in my original world with all my limbs intact. When I’d wished I could go home.

　　The book, which had vanished for a moment, reappeared and snapped open. The words "Repair M’s Strip" began to blink.

　　"…If I want to go back to my original world, I have to fix this?"

　　Blink.

　　I can… go home. I forced down the urge to jump around in excitement. As calmly as I could, I went over the list again, then let out a low groan.

　　Right now, in the world of To Prevent the Destruction of the World, the point I’d reached was several hundred years after the first awakened hunter had appeared.

　　The age of chaos was over. Hunters now either hunted monsters that crawled out of cracks in sealed dungeons or cleaned up dungeon breaks when seals burst.

　　It was more profitable to periodically cull the monsters that leaked out than to break weakened seals and reseal them from scratch.

　　Like in the old days, only the major guilds responsible for specific territories were allowed to actually enter dungeons and hunt monsters. There were five such large guilds in existence, and I was an S-Class hunter who’d been rejected by every single one of them.

　　"Marketplace."

　　I opened the hunter trading app. The items I needed did exist, but the listed prices were insane.

　　What the hell did you even do with your money, Seong Dohyun? An S-Class doesn’t get a yearly salary in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. They get that monthly. But because he’d been so obsessed with tormenting Baek Eunseong and doing nothing else, he didn’t have any savings, let alone a decent house.

　　Letting out a long sigh, I looked up at the empty air. There was a place where I could get all of that. But to go there, the novel had to start first.

* * *

　　To explain the plot of the novel, I have to start with the axis of evil: Baek Hamin.

　　Throughout the story, the protagonist Do Yudam met countless villains, but Baek Hamin was significant enough to have his own side stories told from a separate point of view.

　　Baek Hamin lost his parents and older brother in an accident when he was young. However, his uncles filled the role of his parents, and his cousin filled the role of his brother, allowing him to grow up as a beloved child. Showered with affection, Baek Hamin grew up sweet and bright—until his youngest uncle, Baek Eunseong, was gravely injured. To obtain an elixir, he opened P’s Box, which should never have been opened.

　　The moment he obtained the elixir, all the sealed dungeons burst open at once, plunging the world into chaos.

　　The novel began with the line, On graduation day, Do Yudam heard the sound of the world splitting apart, and ended with Do Yudam, so strong no one could even dream of challenging him, barely managing to reseal the dungeons.

　　Sure, Do Yudam was the same S-Class as me, but even within S-Class, the gap between hunters was huge. You couldn’t compare them by rank alone.

　　It’s like video games.

　　You don’t judge a character just by level—you look at their weapon, their armor, the whole kit. Hunters were the same. They were subdivided based on what type of weapon or ability was their main strength. Compared to the offensive-type Do Yudam, I was closer to a support-type hunter.

　　Following that line of thought, I suddenly realized something.

　　What the hell am I going to do from now on?

　　Staring at the ceiling, I slowly rolled around on the bed.

　　Thanks to the way Seong Dohyun had lived, even if a dungeon opened, there’d be no one willing to help me, and I’d have to beg Do Yudam to take me along…

　　Wait. Hold up. How old was Do Yudam right now?

* * *

　　"Yudam, in a situation like that, you don’t use a hack. You disable the target first, then use your ability."

　　"Yes, sir. I understand."

　　"Ha ha ha…"

　　I looked down at the silver-haired brat who barely reached my hip and scrubbed my face with both hands. He was ten. Do Yudam graduated at twenty, so I had to wait another ten years before the novel even started.

　　How was I supposed to wait that long? Leaning against the wall, I watched Do Yudam.

　　While I scowled like a creditor who’d been stiffed, the teacher, who’d been smiling fondly, spoke to me.

　　"Yudam is very mature for his age, isn’t he?"

　　I just nodded without answering.

　　According to Seong Dohyun’s memories, the academy ran small classes of about ten kids, and among them, Do Yudam stood out.

　　Not only was his focus in class exceptional, but he also couldn’t leave a disruptive kid alone. He’d drag them over and make them sit in on the lesson. Whenever the teacher demonstrated something, he’d copy it impressively well.

　　I’d been worried that, since it was a school full of young hunters, outsiders might not be able to come and go freely. Thankfully, it seemed Seong Dohyun hadn’t caused any trouble here. In fact, far from making a scene, he’d been secretly sponsoring Do Yudam.

　　My guess was that Seong Dohyun saw himself in Do Yudam. They had that many similarities.

　　Both had lost their parents in a sudden accident. Both had awakened as S-Class hunters because of that accident. Both had a rival they’d be compared to forever.

　　Just as Baek Eunseong existed for Seong Dohyun, Baek Hamin existed for Do Yudam. The two didn’t resemble each other at all in looks or personality, but Seong Dohyun was projecting himself onto Do Yudam.

　　He probably wanted to give Do Yudam what he himself had never received.

　　Just as Baek Eunseong had soared with the full support of the White Domain Guild, he must have wanted the same for Do Yudam. That was why he’d sponsored him…

　　But the difference between guild backing and individual backing was enormous, and once that gap opened, it wasn’t easily closed.

　　There was a limit to what Seong Dohyun could put into Do Yudam’s hands. In the end, unable to bear watching Baek Hamin’s meteoric rise, he had kidnapped him. As if that would somehow raise Do Yudam’s value.

　　The result was that Seong Dohyun went to trial, had his abilities sealed, and lived a miserable life.

　　If he hadn’t kidnapped Baek Hamin and had just waited a little longer, he could’ve watched Do Yudam become a national hero.

　　Well, whatever the reason, Seong Dohyun was still just trash who’d let jealousy blind him into kidnapping a child.

　　"How long until Hunter Do Yudam graduates?"

　　"Pardon…?"

　　The teacher’s eyes went round, then his brows drew together as he looked me up and down. Considering there were scumbag hunters who used freshly graduated kids as meat shields, I could understand the suspicion in his gaze, but I was honestly just curious.

　　Seriously, Seong Dohyun, how the hell did you live your life to get this look after sponsoring the kid for two whole years?

　　Sighing, I stepped outside and thought about what to do next.

　　Should I just adapt to this world as it was? Or wait until after Do Yudam graduated, when the original story began, then repair M’s Strip and go back to my original world?

　　"Emergency! Emergency!"

　　While I was agonizing over the decision, sirens blared, and I saw monsters rising out of a rift.

　　Haa. What was I even hesitating for? Of course I was going back.

　　Given how things were, I’d completely overhaul Seong Dohyun’s wrecked reputation, pretend I’d turned over a new leaf, and get myself onto Do Yudam’s dungeon raid team. As I made that resolution, Ariadne’s Thread suddenly appeared in midair.

　　"Why?"

　　When I asked why it had shown up, the golden thread swayed as if to say, Follow me.

　　Like a dog tugging at its leash for a walk, the thread pulled at my wrist. As I followed it, I suddenly realized there were flowers blooming on the ground. They formed a neat line like a red carpet. I squeezed my eyes shut.

　　Great. I was about to get dragged into something seriously annoying.

　　Letting out heavy sighs, I followed the thread to find people sprawled all over the place. White uniforms, a house-shaped emblem. White Domain Guild.

　　Don’t tell me… was Baek Eunseong the one who’d called me? He was the last person I wanted to get involved with.

　　I shook my head and started to back away, but the flowers on the ground suddenly grabbed my shoes.

　　"What the—hey, what are you doing?"

　　I closed my eyes and read the energy ripples around me. I could feel a tangle of people not far off.

　　"…Ah."

　　Sighing, I ran toward them without hesitation.

　　Not out of any sense of justice, but because of Hunter Law.

　　Before proper hunter protection laws were established, there had been selfish people who valued their own lives more than hunters’, kidnapping young hunters to use as human shields.

　　That was when the clause was created: adult hunters were required to protect minor hunters. If an adult hunter saw a minor hunter being kidnapped and pretended not to, they would receive the same punishment as the kidnapper.

　　Even with that law in place, Seong Dohyun had been insane enough to kidnap Baek Hamin in the original story. And the bastards in front of me, currently in the middle of kidnapping a young hunter, were just as insane.

　　"Excuse me."

　　I beckoned to the suspicious men. The moment my eyes met the kid they were kidnapping, my brows furrowed.

　　Why are they doing my job?

　　The one in their grip was Baek Hamin.

* * *