The air in the evaluation center was filled with a smell of opportunism and also of possible mediocre futures.
A smell Kim Dae-hyun knew all too well. He lined up behind the yellow line painted on the floor, along with hundreds of other candidates.
All of them with their smartphones in hand, checking for the umpteenth time the live feed of RankLive, the System's official application.
LIVE: MASS EVALUATION – GANGNAM DISTRICT, SECTOR 3
VIEWERS: 2.3M | TOP TREND: #NewHunters2025
On the giant screen mounted on the wall, the names and ranks of those evaluated in the previous turn scrolled by.
Most were D and E. An occasional C caused a murmur of astonishment in the room. A B would make social media explode.
—Number 847, Kim Dae-hyun —a robotic voice announced through the speakers.
Dae-hyun took a deep breath. His cheap sneakers creaked against the polished floor as he walked toward the evaluation platform.
He wasn't wearing any special equipment, just the discreet, worn clothes of someone used to going unnoticed.
He had no followers, no sponsors, not even friends in the room cheering him on. He was, in every sense, invisible.
The platform turned out to be a white circle beneath an arch of metallic scanners.
There was no magic here, only advanced and cold technology: sensors and spectral cameras, all aimed at him.
—Initiating subject diagnostic —the system's voice added.
A beam of blue light scanned him from his worn sneakers up to his messy hair. On the giant screen, next to his empty profile picture, lines of white text began to appear.
SUBJECT: KIM DAE-HYUN
POTENTIAL IMPACT ANALYSIS… PROCESSING.
ERROR ZONE ENVIRONMENT COMPATIBILITY… CALCULATING.
ANOMALY CORRECTION CAPACITY… EVALUATING.
Dae-hyun opened his hand and then began to close it. He knew what was coming. He had seen it in every preliminary evaluation, in every aptitude test. The same as always.
On the RankLive feed, the comments began to scroll by, indifferent.
"Another one from the pile."
"Bet he's an E."
"He doesn't even have a good physique, lol."
"Next please, this is boring."
Finally, the screen flickered.
RESULT: INCOMPATIBLE.
REASON: DATA MISSING.
ESTIMATED IMPACT IN ERROR ZONES: NULL.
PROVISIONAL CLASSIFICATION: TRASH.
ASSIGNED RANK: 0 (UNCLASSIFIABLE).
An uncomfortable silence settled over the room, followed by exaggerated laughter.
"Trash."
Not even the lowest rank, E, destined for logistics and support jobs. He was literally useless in this new order of Korea, although well, he could still be a normal person.
But… do you really want to be normal when everyone talks about hunters on social media…? No, of course not. Dae-hyun wanted to be a hunter and he wanted to be famous.
On the RankLive screen, his name appeared and disappeared in milliseconds, instantly buried under new results.
He didn't even deserve a place on the public ranking. A non-entity.
The human operator beside the platform looked at him; he had a mix of pity and even annoyance.
—You may leave, young Kim. The System does not recognize you as a viable hunter for the containment of Error Zones. Your identification card will retain civilian status, a normal person.
Dae-hyun stepped down from the platform, his cheeks burning. Gazes avoided him. He had ceased to exist, once again.
As he walked toward the back exit, he heard the voice of the next candidate, a girl who received a respectable D and a light round of applause.
He stopped in the bathroom, empty, and leaned against the sink, cold due to the air conditioning.
In the mirror, he saw the reflection of an ordinary, irrelevant young man. He pulled out his cheap smartphone and, by inertia, opened the application everyone had: "ErrorWatch."
The interface was minimalistic: a map of Seoul filled with blinking red dots indicating active Error Zones, and a side column with the National Ranking in Real Time.
The top spots, legendary names like "The White King" Park or "Firewall" Kang, shone with golden insignias and millions of followers.
He wasn't there, and the worst part was that he was aware he never would be.
He was about to put the phone away when the ErrorWatch screen flickered strangely.
Dae-hyun thought it was a normal glitch. But it turned out to be something more unusual: the interface began to change abruptly.
For a fraction of a second, Dae-hyun didn't just see the map of Seoul.
He saw much more. Singular codes.
Lines and lines of chaotic instructions, interspersed with overlapping error windows and hieroglyphs of corrupted data. And right in the center, a bright red message that was not part of the public interface:
[SYSTEM CORE ERROR: DIMENSIONAL ANCHOR #7 UNRESPONSIVE]
[ATTEMPTING DIAGNOSTIC… FAILED. FALLBACK PROTOCOL ACTIVE]
[USER PROXIMITY DETECTED. FORCED DIAGNOSTIC INITIATED]
[SYSTEM CORE ERROR: DIMENSIONAL ANCHOR NO. 7 UNRESPONSIVE]
[ATTEMPTING DIAGNOSTIC… FAILED. FALLBACK PROTOCOL ACTIVE]
[USER PROXIMITY DETECTED. FORCED DIAGNOSTIC INITIATED]
Dae-hyun's heart stopped. The screen returned to normal, showing the innocent map.
He touched the screen, slid his finger, but there was no trace left.
Had he imagined it?
With trembling hands, he left the evaluation building and headed to a back alley, away from crowds and cameras.
He opened the application again. Nothing. He pressed the refresh button. Nothing.
Frustrated, he lightly struck the back of his phone, an old habit when electronics failed.
Tap. Tap.
The screen went completely black. Then, blue, monochromatic letters, like those of an old terminal, appeared one by one.
USER INPUT RECEIVED.
FORCED DIAGNOSTIC MODE ACTIVATED.
SCANNING LOCAL USER PARAMETERS…
WARNING: CONTRADICTION DETECTED.
PUBLIC CLASSIFICATION: TRASH (RANK 0).
HIDDEN PARAMETER FOUND: [ENTITY SIGNATURE – DIVINE LEVEL].
IRRECONCILABLE CONTRADICTION WITH STANDARD PROTOCOLS.
ERROR. ERROR.
CREATING ISOLATED USER INSTANCE…
WELCOME, ADMINISTRATOR (PROVISIONAL).
Dae-hyun let out a gasp; the air in the alley seemed to cool suddenly.
In his hand, the smartphone no longer showed the ErrorWatch application. It showed something completely different.
A raw interface, full of command lines, system process listings plagued with cryptic names and, in the lower corner, an indicator:
ACCESS LEVEL: [CORRUPTED/UNLISTED]
PRIVILEGES: [DIAGNOSTIC OVERRIDE]
WARNING: THIS SESSION IS UNTRACEABLE AND HAS NO SUPPORT.
His pulse thudded in his ears. Provisional administrator. Divine-level entity signature. The words made no sense, but an instinctive understanding began to take root inside him.
The System, that omnipotent entity that governed the new world, had a flaw. And apparently, a critical one.
Dae-hyun was incredulous. He couldn't believe that, because of an absurd hit to his phone at just the right moment, he had stumbled upon the system's back door.
Dae-hyun certainly wasn't strong; he didn't stand out in agility points and much less did he have a rank. However, since childhood he had always been a cautious kid and, in a way, that always played in his favor.
Now, in that moment, he was observing something peculiar on his smartphone.
With fingers that barely obeyed him, he navigated through the raw menus. He found a process titled "Live_Ranking_Feed_Sector3.stream." It was the live feed of his own evaluation center. There was a submenu:
"Edit_Classification_Parameters (Unstable)."
An ironic smile, the first in a long time, surfaced on his lips.
Obviously he couldn't change himself. The main system would probably reject it. But… what if he tried something small? Something the main system wouldn't even verify?
He selected a random name from the list of recently evaluated. A guy called Nam Min-jun, who had received a D and left boasting.
In his data file, there was a field: "Social Impact Score: 15/1000." A minor metric, almost decorative, that slightly influenced the visibility of his public profile.
Dae-hyun took a breath. Then, he tapped and edited the value.
From 15 to -150.
He saved. The process returned a message: [CHANGE LOGGED TO CORRUPTED BUFFER. NOT PROPAGATED TO MAIN DATABASE].
It seemed it wouldn't update on the main server… though it would on the local copy that fed the streams with minimal delay.
He closed the administrative session. The screen returned to normal. He opened RankLive, obviously nervous, searching for Nam Min-jun's profile.
There it was. The rank was still D. However, underneath, in the "Social Impact" section, there was a new icon: a downward arrow in blood red. And a label that normally never appeared:
"TRENDING: NEGATIVE REPUTATION SPIKED. USER FLAGGED FOR POTENTIAL FEEDBACK MANIPULATION."
In the live comments, people were already reacting.
"Huh? What did this guy, Nam, do?"
"Manipulation? Disgusting!"
"From D to moral trash in seconds, wow."
He hadn't changed his rank; it had just been a small and insignificant tweak to a hidden metric. Still, it was a fact that it apparently had worked.
The System, unusually, had accepted the corrupted instruction.
Dae-hyun turned off the screen and leaned back against the cold alley wall. The city's smog mixed with the dusk.
In the palm of his hand, the phone —which now seemed like the key to the system of errors— weighed the same as an iron block.
The insignificant young man, classified as Trash, had found his first tool. And the people, obsessed with national rankings, hadn't even noticed. For now.