South Korea's awakening laws were strict, especially when it came to awakening registration.

If you didn't go to the center and register as an Awakened within a month of your awakening, you were fined at least a billion units. So while there may have been some Awakened Beings who hid their rank and power when they registered, there were no Awakened Beings who didn't register at all. Korea was such a country.

Lost in thought, Jungbin rubbed his chin.

"Lee-ssi, are you sure that the Awakened is a B-rank or higher?"

"Yes."

"How can you be so sure?"

"He blocked my attack."

"Your attack?"

Sayoung nodded and Jungbin was quickly convinced. "If that's the case, then he's definitely a B or higher."

"He even hit a spike that suddenly protruded from the addict's body."

"That's not to be expected from someone who's just awakened, so he must be quite comfortable with his abilities."

Sayoung nodded again as he was inclined to agree. Then he added briefly, "With a scoop."

"What? With a ladle?"

It wasn't fashionable to wear an apron like CherX. Lee Sayoung expected his "hyung" to be a part-timer or the son of a shopkeeper somewhere. He said he was older than him, but he still looked like he was in his early 20s. He couldn't afford to pay the fine, so why should he risk all kinds of penalties and not even register?

The sequence of facts made no sense to him. He hadn't been this irritated when his 'Hyung's' captors had returned on a stretcher, business cards in hand. He was confident he'd find him soon enough, and his ability to take out four elite guild members in one fell swoop proved it.

-If you touch her, you'll lose.

For the tenth time in a day, Sayoung looked at the jagged handwriting on the crumpled business card. At this point, his patience was wearing thin. Finally, he turned on the microphone that connected him to the secretary's office.

"Tell Hunter Very Small Miracle to come to the guild leader's office. AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. No, just announce it on the air."

-Hunter Very Small Miracle, real name Hunter Seo Minki, please report to the guild leader's office immediately. I repeat, Hunter Very Small Miracle, real name Hunter Seo Minki, real name Hunter Seo Minki...

Forty minutes before he left for the day, Sayoung summoned Minki to the guild leader's office.

After a while, Very Small Miracle, real name Seo Minki, opened the door of the guild leader's office with a haggard face and dark circles hanging down to his chin. He bowed his head grimly.

"You called for me."

"Why does your face look like that?"

"Did you call me here to harass me?"

At his words, Lee Sayoung turned a naturally virtuous face.

"Harass you. Are you busy?"

"Even if I was busy, you would still call me."

"I know."

It was a matter of course. In fact, Seo Minki was also guilty of a crime, so whenever the guild members asked, "Why do you have to plant 240? With a sigh, he murmured, "I can do all that, except for getting into the government databases."

"Mmm, good." Lee Sayoung laughed, as relaxed as a recently fed cat.

"The girl I told you to find last time. What was her name?"

"You mean Park Haeun, second grade, second class, Saetbyul Elementary School?"

"Yes, her."

Sayoung looked at the business card on the table and clutched it with both hands.

"I think I told you to look into her family connections as well..."

Oh my God. Minkii's face went pale. He'd been so focused on cracking the Awakeners database that he'd forgotten. He hadn't even managed to crack it, so he hadn't done anything.

When Minki started to tremble, Sayoung continued coldly.

"Investigate now."

"Yes, I'll go right away."

After Minki stormed out, Sayoung grabbed the business card again. A moment later, the cell phone screen that had been lying behind his hand fiddling with the crumpled paper flickered to life, revealing an incoming call.

[Seowon Guild Nam Woojin]

After recognizing the caller, Sayoung pressed the call button.

"What."

-Jungbin called to say that they had collected the bodies of the addicts. He said that there was a report.

"..."

-First, I brought it here because it's pretty interesting... I thought you should come and see for yourself.

Sayoung looked at his watch. He threw the crumpled business card into his inventory and stood up.

"Wait for me, I'll be right there."

At 2:40 p.m. on the same day, the Haejang-guk house, with a sign saying that the ingredients were being prepared, was having the most relaxing time of the day. Haeun, who had been sitting at the green table for 20 minutes without being able to turn the first page of her study guide, rolled her eyes and looked up. She pointed her hand at my head.

"Uncle, your hair is lighter on the inside."

"Huh? Really?"

"Yes. I think you should dye it."

I looked at Haeun's workbook. In the space for the answer to question one, instead of the correct answer, there was a picture of two earthworms sitting side by side on a leaf. I set my jaw in a serious line.

"I'm really curious, but is the answer to question one earthworms?"

"Yes. And Uncle, you're not looking in the mirror, so I'm telling you on purpose. You should dye your hair."

"Okay. Thanks for reminding me. I'm going to look in the mirror and I want you to do question one again."

"Tsk, okay."

Haeun pouted and went back to scribbling in her notebook. I got up from my seat and stood in front of the mirror on the wall, lifting my hair to look into it. I wondered if the fluorescent light was making me look bad, but the ash-colored hair I'd covered with black showed through at the roots. Shaking, I tugged at the ends of my hair.

How long has it been since I colored it and it's already losing color.

My hair had been ashen since the moment I'd escaped from the rift. I periodically dyed it black to make it less noticeable, but whether due to my hair's resilience or some other unknown reason, it would return to its ashen color as soon as I dyed it.

The cost of hair color is no joke.

My hair didn't hold color very well, I had to use two or three tubes of dye per color, and my coloring cycles were short. I wondered if I dyed my hair more often than celebrities who tried to change their image by changing their hair color.

Today, I planned to have a relatively relaxing afternoon, as I had a lot of materials ready to go. Speaking of which, let's re-dye the roots. I untied the straps of my apron.

"Haeun, I'm going to dye my hair. I've put up a sign, so don't open the door if anyone comes."

"Even if it's on the door?"

Occasionally, hunters would hang around the door asking for a bowl of haejang-guk, even though I'd put up a sign while I was preparing the ingredients. Most of them had just finished a dungeon run and their eyes were glazed over.

I nodded firmly. "Yes. Even if they hold out, we can't open it. If you think it's too much, call Uncle right away. Do your best to answer the questions. Promise."

"Yes. Promise."

Haeun replied as if she was listening, but she didn't look at me. Judging from the movement of the pencil, it looked like she was drawing, not writing. It looked like she was creating problems instead of solving them... I laughed and hung my apron on the wall.

I got two squid ink hair dyes from the side room attached to Haejang-guk and went to the restroom attached to the shop.

<Unique Trait, Dexterous Hands (S+) is activated>.

My plastic-gloved hands moved nimbly as I applied the dye to every inch of my hair. My innate trait, "Skilled Hands," was a trait that allowed me to perform tasks skillfully and meticulously, even if they were new to me.

In addition to being able to use a weapon skillfully for the first time, this trait allowed me to boil a pot of haejang-guk for the first time like a craftsman who had been making haejang-guk for 30 years. Skilled Hands also enabled me to run a haejang-guk house by myself without the help of my grandmother.

These were the best qualities that everyone coveted, but I only used them to dye my hair faster and cleaner. It was a sight that would make others cry.

I put the comb down and looked at myself in the mirror. I smiled with pride as I saw my hair color evenly applied. Perfect.

If I can't work at Haejang-guk House... I'll work as a hairdresser.

A pleasant snort escaped my lips as I realized my new career path after hunting countless monsters. Whatever it was, there were plenty of ways to make a living without being a hunter, thanks to my great features. I took off my hair dye-stained gloves and checked the time on my phone; I had to stay in the dye for the next 30 minutes.

As I put the dye away and grabbed the bathroom doorknob, my phone vibrated twice.

Haeun: Uncle
Haeun: There's a strange person at the door.

A strange person?

Haeun was the granddaughter of Haejang-guk House, a hunter-certified restaurant. She grew up seeing all kinds of hunters, so her threshold for weirdness was high, and she didn't call people weird unless they were really weird.

In other words, if Haeun said it was a strange person... it meant he wasn't a person with common sense. I stiffened. A strange aura hovered nearby.

<Silent footsteps!>

After using the skill to dispel the aura, I carefully opened the door and poked my head out to see the entrance to Haejang-guk House.

A ragged man stood at the door with his head bowed low. His shoulders were slumped and his body was visibly shaking, mumbling unintelligible words and biting his nails. From time to time, the man banged his head against the glass.

The man's appearance was... strangely familiar. I frowned and searched my memory. Where had I seen him before? That ragged breathing, that inhuman aura.

"Sorry. This asshole doesn't know anything. His brain is drugged."

Ah.

That strange gas mask, the same one that attacked me with spikes the day I met Lee Sayoung! The moment I realized it, I rushed out of the bathroom and shouted, "Park Haeun, lock the door as soon as Uncle leaves!"

Without hesitating, I rushed out the door and gave him a flying kick in the face.

The kick landed right in the man's face, knocking him to the ground and burying him in a pile of garbage. I grabbed the broom from the doorway and stalked toward the man. The man was struggling to get up, but he was still giggling. The man's laughter showed no signs of stopping, even as blood trickled from his crushed face. Blood soaked the pay-as-you-go bag.

"Ugh... Heh, heh, heh... Hic!"

"Shut up, shit. She can hear you."

I looked back at the Haejang-guk house. Fortunately, I was out of sight unless I opened the door. Haeun was a fragile child, so she'll hide well inside, but she might hear us, so we have to be as quiet as possible... No.

It would be faster to just break his neck.

I reached out and grabbed the man's neck. The man's body jerked violently, but all I could see was a bloody face and neck. The laughing man immediately stopped moving.

And then...

Swaaak!

Black thorns, piercing through the man's body, rained down on the prosthetic.