I Became the Gate Summoner Hunters Obsess Over - Chapter 5

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Ceaseless

◈ I Became the Gate Summoner Hunters Obsess Over ◈

Chapter 5: Registered as a Hunter. Picked Up Ore.

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Kang Yul had matured at a fairly young age.

In a world where supernatural phenomena occurred frequently and even taking care of oneself was a struggle, parents abandoning their children were common.

Growing up in an orphanage, always watching others' moods, you came to realize it whether you wanted to or not.

Just crying would not change the world.

And eventually, you naturally came to understand your situation.

You accepted reality as it was and learned to survive within it through sheer grit.

'One of the few valuable lessons I learned from getting beaten by orphanage teachers.'

Are you watching, orphanage teacher?

Thanks to your teachings, I grew into such an adaptable child.

Isn't that why I dreamed of becoming a hunter, one of those 3D jobs, from childhood?

Ah, but I don't feel grateful. Let's never see each other again. JOAT.

...Anyway.

That was a bit of a tangent, but that was the point Kang Yul wanted to make.

'Wouldn't this count as a fairly successful life?'

Kang Yul briefly listed the things that had happened recently.

1. Awakened as a hunter, something said to be a blessing.

2. Possessed a personal gate that could be opened and closed at any time.

3. Possessed a skill that allowed free browsing of the Gallery inside the gate.

4. A guaranteed daily income of at least 500,000 won just from digging up and selling dirt.

He could probably retire right now and spend the rest of his life eating and lazing around without much trouble.

It was a life where a few swings of a pickaxe reliably brought in 500,000 won every day.

If this had been Kang Yul from a week ago, he might have said this was a good enough life, thrown everything aside, and settled into the modest life of an ordinary citizen.

Yes, if it had been a week ago.

'I should keep looking for posts written by other supernatural beings.'

'It might be dangerous, so I need to approach this as carefully as possible... Ah, but since there are deposit records, I need to register as a hunter too?'

'And I need to replace my mining gear with proper equipment. If I'm going to prepare hunter-exclusive gear too... This isn't the time to celebrate making 500,000 won.'

Kang Yul now was fundamentally different from Kang Yul a week ago.

He had already returned from the brink of death once.

And after tasting dopamine so intense it felt like his brain was melting, he could no longer dream of living the modest life of an ordinary citizen.

Of course.

'First, should I register before I get caught as an unregistered hunter? The question is whether to join the Hunter Association or a company... If I don't want to stand out, the Association would be better.'

At this point, Kang Yul had not noticed that change in himself at all.

#####

The hunter verification process was over in no time.

"Yes, Kang Yul. Mana has been detected in your body, and your class has been registered as Mage."

It was only natural, since the process did not require anything particularly complicated.

Once someone Awakened as a hunter, they would inevitably possess mana. All they had to do was place a hand on the mana plate created by the Association to confirm it.

'The Association doesn't really pry into your class or skills.'

If they belonged to a company, they would be hired as salaried employees, so a detailed examination would expose everything, from their class to every skill they possessed.

But as a government agency, the Association guaranteed hunters a certain degree of autonomy unless they signed an exclusive contract.

And that was why I wanted to belong to the Association.

If my class and skills became known, there would definitely be an uproar. The Association was the perfect place to hide them.

"I will now explain the precautions that Association-affiliated hunters must be aware of."

The verification itself had not taken very long, but listening to the receptionist's explanation afterward took longer.

Even if it was all familiar information, hearing it explained verbally and signing the contract were part of the procedure, so Kang Yul had to listen until the end.

"First, Association-affiliated hunters are obligated to assist with gate work designated by the Association once a month. If you fail to fulfill this obligation, your status as an Association-affiliated hunter will automatically be revoked."

Help the Association once a month.

Considering that the Association had been founded to prioritize rescuing civilians caught up in supernatural phenomena, it was a natural condition.

The Association was constantly short on personnel and tried any way it could to recruit more. One Awakened hunter was worth far more than ten ordinary people.

'Well, a rookie hunter like me who just Awakened would probably be assigned support duties.'

Still, registering came with various benefits, including tax deductions.

They also said that building up a record would grant entry rights to gates managed by the Association, and apparently that could earn a decent amount of money.

Kang Yul had heard that quite a few hunters signed exclusive contracts with the Association because they could save people and make money at the same time.

'Though that has little to do with someone like me, who has a personal gate.'

Anyway, the next precaution was this.

"Also, all disadvantages resulting from the loss of your license are entirely Kang Yul's responsibility. Please take special care not to lose it."

That was a warning that if someone messed around with a hunter license, all responsibility would fall on the license holder.

"Furthermore, using skills in public places without a special reason, threatening civilians, and attacking other hunters are all prohibited. Should you engage in any of these actions, hunters under exclusive contract with the Association will be dispatched immediately. Please keep that in mind."

This was a warning for hunters like unruly colts, who could not control their tempers and ran wild however they pleased.

Quite a few people believed hunter Awakening was some blessing of a new humanity, so there were occasional cases of hunters harming civilians.

'Posts about Association contractors beating cultists until they were a bloody pulp stayed near the top of the Hunter Gallery for quite a while.'

They beat them so satisfyingly that even watching made Kang Yul feel relieved.

"Do you have any questions?"

"No, I don't."

Anyway, after hearing all the precautions, Kang Yul signed the contract, completed his hunter registration, and returned home.

"Home really is the best..."

Kang Yul collapsed onto the bed and looked at the money in his bank account.

He was exhausted after going out for the first time in a while, but from now on, even if 500,000 won was deposited into his account, it would not draw much suspicion.

Once he left a record of entering a gate sometime soon, even that small suspicion would disappear.

So he needed to find a suitable gate, but...

'...For now, I want to focus on exploring my gate.'

It was not urgent, so Kang Yul decided to think about that later.

Right now, all he could think about was discovering rare resources he had not yet found as soon as possible.

And for that...

'Now then... Should I do some shopping?'

He could get money somehow, so he could take his time shopping for mining equipment.

######

It had already been two weeks since Kang Yul had shut himself inside the gate.

Over those two weeks, Kang Yul's daily life had been so monotonous that it would not be an exaggeration to say it consisted of only three things: mining, eating, and sleeping.

But thanks to those bloody... no, sweat-drenched efforts, his progress exploring the gate had risen to a level incomparable to before.

Drrrrrrrk!

Rumble...!

Every time Kang Yul pressed the button on the portable rock drill in his hands, the wall of the cavern crumbled and he advanced forward.

Compared to the time he had desperately banged away for three hours just to dig a crude earthen hole, it was the difference between heaven and earth.

Drrrrrrrk!

"Ahh... The feel of it is no joke!"

The equipment was heavy, he still had to shovel out the dirt piling up on the floor himself, and he still had to install supports to keep the tunnel from collapsing.

But a single click of the portable mana-powered rock drill's button handled work that would have taken Kang Yul a whole month of banging away. He could endure that much inconvenience.

"Whew... It's definitely earning its 3 million won price tag."

More precisely, including the drill bit set mounted on the front, it had cost well over 4 million won.

But that was an amount he could recover in a week, so he did not mind.

Ah, and the reason it would take a week was because of the box's limit on uses.

He found out later that trades through the box could only be made once a day.

If he asked for something worth more than what he had paid, he lost the opportunity to trade altogether.

And if he asked it to match the value, he only received a piece of some unknown object, causing a whole mess.

'Thanks to that, I learned it's better to receive money and buy what I need myself rather than wish for an object whose nature I don't even know.'

So Kang Yul had to make do without a rock drill for around ten days. Perhaps because of that hardship, this drill felt even more precious.

'Should I say it naturally makes you respectful?'

After going through that kind of hardship once, Kang Yul could not even imagine mining without this rock drill.

Shoveling out dirt and installing supports barely even felt like work anymore.

He had wanted to give the rock drill a name, but did not, thinking of it as merely temporary equipment.

'If it could break apart that unknown bone, I would name it right away.'

Unfortunately, even this expensive rock drill could not break that enormous bone.

Kang Yul had tested it on the very first day he bought it, but it had not left even a scratch, much less a crack.

Since then, he had half abandoned it, thinking of it like an endgame farming material near a starting base in a game.

"I need to steadily work my way up the tech tree."

Drrrrrrrk!

So, please.

With the thought that it was about time to find an ore, an ore vein, or at least a stratum other than weathered soil, Kang Yul continued mining for a while.

Clang!

"?!"

Then, a sound unlike any he had heard before rang out.

It sounded as though metal had struck metal.

"Did I hit something?!"

After digging around the area more with the rock drill, Kang Yul practically threw it aside and began digging where the sound had come from with his bare hands.

His fingers split and bled in the process, but he did not care.

What mattered to Kang Yul right now was not the wounds on his hands, but whether there was something buried there that could make money.

'Copper? Iron? Gold? Or maybe even a gemstone?'

As he carefully brushed away the dirt, wondering what on earth was buried there, something the size of a watermelon, tinged orange, soon revealed itself.

'A gemstone...?'

Kang Yul stroked the mineral's surface and examined it closely.

At a glance, it looked more like fragile quartz than solid metal.

But considering the metallic sound it had made when it struck the rock drill, it did not seem like a mineral with low hardness.

Maybe it was a unique mineral found only in this gate.

'I'll dig it out first.'

Kang Yul brought over the geological hammer he had bought for this very moment and began carefully extracting the mineral.

He delicately worked away at the surrounding dirt, tap, tap, taking care not to scratch the mineral.

After about ten minutes.

Crack!

'Hmm... It's not very heavy.'

Kang Yul lifted the extracted mineral. It was far too light for metal, so he turned it over in his hands, thinking, 'Is it really a gemstone?'

Then he noticed a faint shape in its center.

'What is this...?'

The mineral's surface was rough, so he could not see it clearly, but it almost looked as though something was curled up inside.

Kang Yul rubbed the surface as if polishing it to get a closer look, but that had its limits.

Then he wondered whether shining his headlamp on it would make the shape clearer.

The moment he shone the light on it.

Ding!

[You have discovered 'Mountain-Eating Worm - Bakkai'.]

[When conditions are met, it will awaken from its sleep and follow you.]

"Mountain-Eating Worm Bakkai...?"

What was that...?

No, more importantly, if it was a bug embedded in an orange-tinged lump...

'...Could this possibly be amber rather than a mineral?'

Footnotes:

“3D jobs” is Korean shorthand for work considered dirty, dangerous, and difficult. “JOAT” is an internet anti-GOAT insult, used for someone considered the worst.

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