Copying Runes to Become the World's Strongest - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 1
“An Awakened?”
“Yes.”
“Why aren’t you a Hunter?”
“Because I don’t have the money.”
“Can’t you get a loan?”
Hyeonjun hesitated at the placement officer’s question before answering.
“My family’s drowning in debt.”
“Why? Did your business go under?”
A business, huh.
If only it had been that simple. Even a dozen failed businesses would have been better than this.
Hyeonjun smiled bitterly.
“It’s for my mother’s hospital bills.”
“…She must be quite sick.”
Looking awkward, the placement officer pulled a packet of instant coffee from the vending machine and handed it to Hyeonjun.
“Drink up. It’s cold out.”
“Thank you.”
“What’s your trait? It’s not written on your résumé.”
Hyeonjun glanced at the officer’s face, then spoke in a small voice.
“It’s… Bird Hunter…”
“What’s that? Are you good at catching chickens or something?”
“S-sort of.”
“I figured it’d be something strange, but…”
The officer’s reaction was lukewarm.
Hyeonjun quickly added,
“But I do have a Strength Rune and a Stamina Rune! Only one of each, though…”
“Well, that’s something.”
“Give me anything! I’m really willing to work hard!”
Hyeonjun was desperate.
His mother’s hospital bills, his younger sibling’s tuition, the interest on his loans.
Even setting aside his own living expenses, there were holes everywhere money was draining away.
He was living day to day on whatever his daily wages brought in.
Even a single day without work would be fatal.
“Hmm…”
The placement officer checked the schedule.
Holding his paper cup, Hyeonjun watched the officer with anxious eyes.
‘Please…’
This was already his fourth office.
Without him noticing, dawn had begun to break outside the window.
If he couldn’t find work here either, he’d lose the entire day.
‘I should have made more connections with day-labor agencies around here.’
The agency near his home had suddenly shut its doors, and that’s how he’d ended up in this mess.
He had been working there just yesterday, and now, all of a sudden, it was closed.
“Please, I’ll take any job at all. I really need one.”
“Alright. Hang on a bit.”
Every minute felt like an eternity to Hyeonjun.
The longer the wait stretched, the more his blood seemed to run cold.
How long had it been?
Having finished his call, the officer spoke up.
“There happens to be an opening for a porter. But since you only have one rune each, the Awakened allowance won’t apply.”
“That’s fine! I’ve never gotten the Awakened allowance to begin with!”
In game terms, he was a character with only one point each in Stamina and Strength.
He wore the shell of an Awakened and nothing more, so he didn’t even dare dream of being treated as one.
“Go on over.”
“Thank you!”
Hyeonjun gulped down the hot coffee in big swallows, then jumped to his feet.
***
The year 2000.
With the dawn of a new century, an anomaly swept across the world.
A tower rose up from the earth.
A labyrinth that burrowed deep beneath the ground.
Gates that appeared anywhere a human could set foot.
Bodies beyond ordinary human limits, and Awakened who wielded powers like magic.
The world was thrown into great chaos, but thirty years on, all of it has become routine.
-Returnee Hunter Michelle Hong reaches the summit of America’s top tower, claims America’s first-place Buff once more.
-No news yet on the new floor of the Daejeon Underground Labyrinth. Will the City of Bread collapse like this?
-Seongsam Aegis announces its first-half open recruitment.
-South Korea records the lowest number of Awakened among OECD nations for the thirtieth consecutive year.
-Kim, author of the 100-Day Awakening Method, booked on fraud charges.
In a world like that, many people longed to become Hunters.
Hunters were the ones steering the world, and at the same time they were the symbol of high earners.
But only a chosen few could ever become Hunters.
The world called that select few ‘Awakened.’
“Of course, not every Awakened becomes a Hunter. Take that guy over there, for example.”
Inside the dungeon.
Hunters gathered, taking a break.
A middle-aged Hunter jerked his chin toward the back.
There sat Hyeonjun, the porter who had come in today.
“Huh? Really? Why?”
“There are two main reasons, and the biggest one is, well, he has no talent.”
Not every trait specializes in combat, and some people awaken traits suited for non-combat roles.
Those can still be put to use, but it’s all the same when it comes to becoming a Hunter.
Send an accountant onto the battlefield, and all he does is add one more number to the casualty statistics.
“Wow, so that’s how it works. I thought every Awakened specialized in combat like I do.”
“Becoming a Hunter is permitted only to the chosen among the chosen.”
“What’s the second reason?”
In response to the young rookie Hunter’s question, the man formed a circle with his fingers.
“Money. Lack of it.”
“Money?”
“With enough money, you can make up for a certain amount of missing talent.”
“How?”
“Wow, this kid really doesn’t know a thing. How did you pass the written part of the Hunter license exam?”
“I just guessed, honestly. As long as I fight well, that’s all that matters, right?”
“If you want to live long, study a little, kid.”
“Hehe, then please teach me, mister.”
The baby-faced young man grinned with easy charm, and the man, pretending to be reluctant, carried on with his explanation.
“Awakening isn’t just about traits. It’s a kind of ‘qualification’ you earn.”
“What kind of qualification?”
“The qualification to get stronger. You know that once you awaken, you can absorb items called ‘runes,’ right?”
“Of course I know that much.”
“If you have money, you buy runes and absorb them. There’s a limit set by the rank of your awakened trait, but even at F-Grade, you’re good enough to work as a Hunter.”
The young man’s brow twitched ever so slightly.
An expression like something was about to surface, but hadn’t quite yet.
“Oh! Isn’t the basic setup for working as a Hunter called the starter setup?”
“So you do know a little. Do you know how much it costs?”
“Was it ten million won?”
“Twice that.”
The young man let out a low whistle.
“That’s expensive.”
“That’s the price for a cheap setup. The more you invest, the more it climbs. And listen, kid. Twenty million won to change your whole life? That’s a bargain, you know?”
Twenty million won.
Judged by ordinary standards, it’s a sum that completely reshapes the direction of a life, yet it’s cheap if you think about it that way.
Considering the opportunity cost of becoming a Hunter, it’s even cheaper still.
But for Hyeonjun, twenty-four years old, it was not so.
‘For me, it’s money I couldn’t even dream of.’
The debt piled up to hundreds of millions.
Far from shrinking, it kept steadily swelling.
He cut into his sleep and worked himself to the bone every day without a single day off, but once he paid fixed costs like hospital bills, his bank account came up empty.
To him, twenty million won was as large a sum as two billion.
“If you’ve all rested, let’s get moving again!”
Break time was over.
The hunters began to move, and Hyeonjun hoisted his heavy backpack back onto his shoulders.
***
Porter’s pay: 250,000 won.
More than a typical day’s labor. Considering the risk level of an E-Rank Closed Dungeon, it was a fair amount.
“Thank you.”
Hyeonjun left the temp agency with five 50,000-won bills clutched in his hand.
“Glad it wrapped up before it got too late.”
Hyeonjun took a bus toward his next destination.
He didn’t have just one place to work.
“Hello.”
“Oh, Hyeonjun’s here?”
The Exchange, where all sorts of goods from Anomaly Spaces were traded.
A facility under the Awakening Management Bureau, a national agency, it had branches across the country like a franchise chain.
Hyeonjun had been working part-time at the Gwanak Branch of that Exchange for four years now.
The Exchange ran around the clock, and for someone with no evening commitments, it was the perfect job.
“You look tired. Are you all right?”
A middle-aged woman, speaking to him in a friendly tone.
She was the branch chief of the Gwanak Exchange.
“I went out as a porter for a dungeon today.”
“You’re working hard. I wonder when my kids will ever grow up and get some sense.”
The branch chief had children around Hyeonjun’s age.
That was also why she had always taken such a particular interest in him.
“Let’s push through the rest of the evening.”
“Yes, ma’am! Don’t you worry!”
Hyeonjun got to work.
Like office workers heading home at day’s end, hunters kept streaming in, and he dealt with them while going in and out of the warehouse again and again.
Before he knew it, with no time to catch his breath, it was already time to clock out.
The staff on the night shift came in one by one.
“Hyeonjun, you can head out now. I’ll wrap up the rest over here.”
“Thank you, Branch Chief.”
“Get some rest and see you tomorrow~”
Hyeonjun left the Exchange and headed home.
He walked home.
It saved on transit fare, and it also went toward the step-counting apps that paid out points.
By the time he’d walked about 10,000 steps, he reached home.
Just then, a text message came in from his younger sister.
-Be sure to open the fridge when you get home!
Hyeonjun chuckled.
“Why does she keep stashing things there instead of studying? And it’s not like it’s close by.”
His younger sister lived in a dormitory.
Every now and then, she would come all the way to his place and leave something behind.
“Is she Santa or something?”
As he walked down the stairs to the semi-basement, Hyeonjun logged the points he’d built up from his steps.
“Whew, it’s cold.”
The semi-basement room he entered after unlocking the door.
It was even colder than outside.
He slipped on the fuzzy slippers he’d gotten from a free giveaway and switched on the light.
Click.
Beneath the dim light, the cramped room came into view.
Hyeonjun gave his hands a quick rinse and opened the small fridge in the corner.
Among a few side dishes his sister had brought over before sat a single slice of cake from a franchise café, all by itself.
“Where’d this cake come from?”
There was a note on the plastic case. Hyeonjun checked it.
-Oppa! Happy 25th birthday!
“My birthday?”
Thinking about it, tomorrow was his birthday.
He’d been living so frantically that he’d completely forgotten.
“Hyeona got me something last year, too.”
Hyeonjun smiled warmly and took out the cake.
Only one slice, but my heart felt completely full.
“Perfect timing. I haven’t eaten dinner yet.”
Hyeonjun stuck the numbered candle into the chocolate cake.
25.
Before he knew it, he was twenty-five.
“Twenty-five already…”
The past came rushing back all at once.
Apart from the fact that his father was gone, it had been an ordinary life.
That ordinariness vanished on the day of his high school graduation ceremony.
His mother got caught up in an attack by one of the people who occasionally emerged with abilities and abused them, the ones commonly called villains.
She underwent several major surgeries and barely clung to life, but she never regained consciousness.
It wasn’t simply a coma. The special substance from the Anomaly Space used in that attack was said to have affected her body in some way, mutating into an illness that had never been reported to the world.
They had tried every treatment imaginable and emptied their savings, yet there was no improvement.
“Five years have passed since then…”
Five years had slipped by in the blink of an eye.
He could hardly remember what he had been doing.
The only things that stood out were the birthdays his younger sister had made sure to celebrate and the day he had Awakened.
“Was it my second year when I Awakened?”
Right after Awakening, he had felt as though he held the whole world in his hands.
In the end, it had been a bust.
“Those were truly desperate times.”
The rope that had seemed to descend from heaven turned out to be a rotten one.
The disappointment was as deep as the hopes had been high.
He’d wanted to throw everything away, to the point where it had almost come to that.
But he hadn’t given up.
Just as his mother had never given up on him and his sister, he could never give up on her or on his sister.
“I really have gone through a lot.”
College was out of the question, and he had even put off the military, working hard day after day.
He had no idea how long these bitter days would last.
Still, he believed that, as the saying goes, sweetness would eventually come after the bitterness.
“Surely a day will come when we can all laugh together.”
Hyeonjun lit the candles and clapped by himself.
He even sang along, keeping time.
“Happy birthday to you, dear Go Hyeonjun.”
The moment he blew out the candles, the time displayed on his smartphone screen changed.
It had turned midnight.
At that instant.
[The Covenant engraved upon your soul has been activated.]
[Your possessed Traits and Soul Circuit are changing according to the Covenant.]
“…?”
Hyeonjun froze where he was, his eyes wide open.
[Trait has been changed to .]
[ has been changed to .]
Messages appeared one after another.
Blinking blankly, Hyeonjun parted his lips as if in a trance.
“S-status window.”
[Name: Go Hyeonjun]
[Level: 1]
[Trait: Primordial Eye]
[Primordial Soul Circuit ]
Stat▷
Skill▷
Hyeonjun slowly studied the status window.
The Bird Hunter trait, nearly useless in the modern age, was gone, and the Primordial Eye had taken its place.
“What is this?”
The trait’s name alone gave no hint of what it could do.
Hyeonjun expanded the skill tab that had been folded away.
Skill▽

-Copy
“Copy?”
[Copy]
-Can copy a designated object. The copied item is automatically removed after 24 hours, though it can be removed earlier as needed.
-Copy eligibility: F-Rank and below
-Daily copy uses: 10/10

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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