[Seoul Hunter Association Hospital – Ward 4] [2 Hours After Extraction]
"Mr. Ash? Are you still... seeing the pony men?"
The nurse asked this with the kind of gentle, condescending tone usually reserved for kindergarteners who glued their hands to their hair.
I sat up in the hospital bed, holding a cup of lukewarm orange juice. I decided it was time to dial back the insanity from 'raving lunatic' to 'mildly traumatized victim'.
"No," I sighed, rubbing my temples. " The pony men are gone, Nurse Kim. I think... I think I'm okay now. Just a headache."
"That's good," she smiled, patting my hand. "You're very lucky, you know. The Association investigators are waiting outside. Do you feel up to talking?"
"Sure. Send them in."
As she left, I quickly checked under my pillow. The C-Rank Core was still there, wrapped in a dirty sock I'd salvaged from my bag. My retirement fund. My mother's life support.
[System: You look ridiculous. You're hiding a national treasure in a sock that has a hole in the toe.]
Shut up, I thought. It's camouflage.
The door opened, and two men in black suits walked in. They didn't look like Hunters. They looked like tax auditors who enjoyed their job a little too much.
"Mr. Ash," the taller one said, adjusting his glasses. "I'm Investigator Park. This is Investigator Choi. We're here to process the incident report for the Weeping Caverns."
They pulled up chairs and sat down, opening a holographic recorder.
"Let's cut to the chase," Park said, his voice dry. "You entered an F-Rank dungeon. It experienced a Break, spawning a C-Rank Doom Knight. Your party leader, Kang, was decapitated. The Mage was crushed. The Thief was impaled. And you..."
He looked me up and down.
"...you survived without a scratch."
"I have a scratch!" I pointed to a small papercut on my thumb.
Park stared at me. "Right. The question is: How? The Doom Knight Centaurion is a speed-type boss. It moves faster than the human eye. How did an F-Rank Porter with zero mana capacity survive when a D-Rank Warrior died instantly?"
This was the dangerous part. If I claimed I fought back, they'd test my mana again. If they saw my Control stat had jumped, I'd be back in the lab.
I put on my best pathetic face. I slumped my shoulders. I let my lip quiver.
"I... I tripped," I whispered.
"You tripped?"
"Yeah. The moment the boss came out, I got scared. I turned to run, but I tripped over my own shoelaces and fell behind the supply crates in the corner."
I acted out the motion with my hands.
"I just curled up in a ball and closed my eyes. I heard... I heard screaming. And crunching. And then... a loud crash. Like metal hitting stone. And then silence."
Park exchanged a look with Choi. "The structural failure theory."
"The forensics team confirmed it," Choi muttered. "The Centaurion's armor straps were old. Rusted. It looks like the chest plate detached mid-combat, fell on its hooves, and caused it to trip. The velocity of its own halberd swing must have..."
He trailed off. It sounded stupid even saying it out loud. A C-Rank boss tripping and cutting its own head off?
"It's a one-in-a-million freak accident," Park sighed, closing his notebook. "But it's the only explanation that fits the physical evidence. Especially since..."
He looked at me with pity.
"...especially since he certainly didn't do it."
I nodded vigorously. "I can barely open a jar of pickles, sir."
"Alright," Park stood up. "We're marking this as 'Accidental Dungeon Collapse/Boss Self-Termination.' Since you are the sole survivor and the beneficiary of the party contract..."
He tapped his tablet. A ping sounded on my phone.
[Bank Alert: Deposit +4,500,000 Won (insurance Settlement)]
"That's your cut of the party's insurance payout, plus the trauma compensation," Park said. "Try not to spend it all on therapy."
They walked out.
As soon as the door clicked shut, I slumped back against the pillows and grinned.
Four point five million won. Plus the Core (worth 15 million). I was rich. Well, not rich-rich, but "I can afford rent and pizza" rich.
[System: You are a terrible liar. 'I tripped'? really?]
"It worked, didn't it?" I replied, grabbing the remote to turn on the TV. "People believe what they want to believe. And nobody wants to believe the 'Wasted Potential' is actually a badass."
I flipped the channel to the news, feeling pretty good about myself.
I had no idea that across the city, someone wasn't buying it.
[The Obsidian Tower – Top Floor Penthouse] [Private Office of the Chairman]
The room was dark, lit only by the panoramic view of the Seoul skyline and the blue glow of several holographic screens. Classical music—Bach, Cello Suite No. 1—played softly in the background.
A man sat behind a desk made of black marble. He was young, perhaps in his late twenties, with hair as pale as ash and eyes that were a disturbing shade of violet. He wore a suit that cost more than Ash's entire neighborhood.
He didn't have a single drop of mana in his body. In a world of superpowered Hunters, he was biologically normal.
And yet, he was the most dangerous man in the city.
Chairman Lee. The Shadow Broker. The man who owned the debt of half the Guilds in Korea.
"Sir," a voice came from the intercom. "The report on the Weeping Caverns anomaly."
"I'm reading it," Lee said. His voice was soft, melodic, and utterly devoid of warmth.
He swiped through the photos of the crime scene. He zoomed in on the Centaurion's corpse.
He studied the severed neck.
"Investigator Park filed it as an accident," Lee murmured to himself. "The armor failed. The monster tripped. The halberd decapitated it."
He zoomed in further. He overlaid a physics simulation on the screen.
"Impossible," he whispered.
He tapped a few keys.
"If the monster tripped forward, the momentum would carry the halberd away from the neck, not toward it. For the blade to strike this angle, gravity would have to be amplified by a factor of ten, or the blade's trajectory was altered mid-swing."
He swiped to the next photo. The survivor.
[Name: Ash] [Rank: F (Wasted Potential)] [Mana Capacity: 5 (Abysmal)]
Lee stared at Ash's face. The face of a failure. A joke.
"A man with F-Rank mana cannot amplify gravity," Lee reasoned. "Physics does not bend for the weak."
He tapped his finger on the desk, a rhythmic tap-tap-tap.
"However... luck is just a mathematical variable I haven't identified yet."
He picked up his phone. It wasn't a smartphone; it was an old-fashioned rotary dial, encrypted heavily.
"Get me the Specters," Lee said.
"Yes, Chairman?" a distorted voice answered.
"The survivor of the Weeping Caverns. Ash. Do not engage him. Do not kill him."
Lee smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of a scientist who just found a new species of bacteria in a petri dish.
"Just watch him. He lied to the Association. I want to know why."
"What are we looking for, sir? A hidden artifact? A high-level backer?"
"No," Lee said, looking at the picture of the Centaurion's severed head again. "We are looking for the discrepancy. 0.00001% survival rate. He shouldn't be breathing. And yet, he is."
He hung up.
Lee turned his chair to look out at the city lights.
"The Wasted God," he mused. "Did you finally find a battery for your engine? Or did you just sell your soul to something else?"
He picked up a white chess piece—a Pawn—and placed it on the center of his desk.
"Your move, Mr. Ash."
[Back at the Hospital]
I sneezed.
"Ugh," I wiped my nose. "Someone is talking trash about me. Probably Kang's ghost."
[System: Or maybe it's the fact that you're currently wearing a hospital gown that opens in the back and you're flashing the hallway.]
"Wait, what?"
I scrambled to tie the strings of the gown, my face burning.
"Okay, priority one: Get dressed. Priority two: Go to the Black Market and sell this Core. Priority three: Buy a steak."
I looked at the blue window.
"Hey, System. Is there a shop? Can I buy skills with points?"
[System: The Shop unlocks at Level 10. Currently, you are Level 4. You're broke in every sense of the word. Go grind, newbie.]
"Fine," I grumbled. "But first, I'm visiting Mom."
I grabbed my clothes—the blood had mostly dried—and headed out. The real game was just starting.
[End of chapter 3]