I leapt from level 1 to level 100 in a week, a feat that would have been ludicrous to anyone else.

My documents said I awakened with a single trait. But in reality, I began with two. Of course, given my recent popularity, numerous people assumed I was hiding something.

What those people had wrong was that this second trait was not combat-oriented.

It was called luck—that was the difference between me, the best Korean hunter, and them.

It was this very luck that allowed me to hunt 1st class monsters alone back when I was a classless hunter. After all, who in their right minds with a double digit level would challenge a creature over level 100?

I knew immediately of my abnormality when I first awakened. Unlike the typical grading system most knew, this trait of mine was neither a legendary or mythical grade, but something else entirely.

**********

Trait: Luck

Grade: Absolute (Further evolution is impossible).

Effect: You are very lucky.

**********

At first, I didn’t know what it was. But after my first dungeon experience, when I was the only one to return alive, I realized its true worth.

When I threw a knife at a goblin’s chest and missed, it’d somehow curve around to chop off their heads.

Sometimes, the effect was obvious. And other times, this trait would pull my feet just hairs away from the maws of death. In every instance, a miracle would occur. Therefore, I could only admit I was a very lucky individual, as cocky of a statement it was.

Unfortunately, my luck was another’s misfortune.

Life was a zero-sum game.

Where I survived, my parents died.

In a lottery, only one could win.

That defined luck.

When I was interviewed about why I hunted alone, I could still remember the gaze of the reporters. The looks in their eyes showed their thoughts.

I could hear them all thinking, “How arrogant.” My image as a cold-blooded princess fabricated itself through that first impression. It worked with my image of a distant genius, far beyond the grasp of mere mortals.

Of course, that was far from the truth.

I was a psycho, like most of the other rankers. But compared to them, as the youngest and most recent ranker, I was the most humane and sane as well.

Rankers were the kind of humans who took joy in massacring monsters. But monsters, at the end of the day, were no different to humans in their right to survival. You had to be really messed up in the head to enjoy killing for a job, but smart enough to evade the scrutiny of society to be a successful hunter. And to become a ranker—a title given to the ten best hunters in the world, required more than just power. You needed to be a psychopath that felt nothing when passing a knife through flesh. When death turned into a trivial matter, that was the birth of a ranker.

When I arrived at the scene of the monster outbreak to witness an unclothed man mutilating several corpses with his nails while laughing to himself like a mental patient, I had a feeling that this person would become the next ranker of Korea. He even had the looks. With a complete do-over, his charisma would skyrocket. Just like a psychopath.

I’d be crazy to leave him as is.

In fact, it was in my best interest to kill him.

But killing another human was a line I had not, and did not plan to cross. Ever.

~~~~~

Fair skin. Hair tied up. And a deathly glare that tried to pierce through my existence. If I were to describe her with one word, it would be charismatic.

Right off the bat, without asking me who I was or a greeting that typical strangers would make, she launched a question at me.

“Why are you doing that?”

Her eyes pointed towards my bloodied hands. Some had splattered onto my bare chest and pants. I had yet to start my shift, so my working uniform was safe and sound in my locker. Nevertheless, I could tell without a mirror that I must have looked like the serial killer of a horror film.

“Do you mean why I’m doing this?”

I pulled out the heart of the goblin from earlier, who now had its skin charred black.

“It’s because of this.”

I separated the magic stone from the heart right in front of her.

“All that mess for a magic stone? Why not just leave it to the clean-up crew?”

“Clean-up crew?”

“Why are you speaking as if you don’t know about it? It’s a waste of time to individually dismantle every monster you kill even if it’ll save you a small sum from the processing fee.”

She gave me a look as if she figured me out, then lost interest at my normality.

Yes. I liked money. But who didn’t?

“In that time you took to dig into their body, you dirtied yourself when you could have killed more and thus made more money by selling everything as is.”

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Nevermind. She was indeed “the” genius hunter. As someone more experienced than me, it was obvious that she optimized the profiting method already. This feeble junior still had much to learn…

Or rather, I couldn’t use the method she mentioned because I had no hunter license. Only an idiot would have missed that crucial detail.

“You’re right, Hunter Soo-Mi-nim. I was being dumb. Thank you for the advice.”

“Well, since the monsters have been taken care of in this district, I have nothing to do here.”

With that, she left. It was more apt to say she disappeared. Her silhouette escaped me before I could blink. But her voice remained echoing in my ears.

“You are a very lucky person. So may luck stay with you, stranger.”

“...”

It returned to dead silence after.

I stood up, and the weight in my pockets reminded me of how filled they were in comparison to my convenience store clerk days.

Now was a good time to resign.

~~~~~

Due to the near destruction of the store, I was granted instant leave that disregarded my contractual obligations of a two-weeks-in-advance notice. A single call was all it took.

The way home was chilly without a shirt on. My bones were practically freezing from the early morning winds. It wasn’t snowing, so all was good.

“Aigoo! Cheong-Sin, aren’t you supposed to be at work? And what are you doing out so early in the morning without clothes on? Even though you’re young, your bones will feel it when you get older.”

“Yes, noona. Some things came up today. Haha! Let’s talk over some tea!”

“Noona my ass. You may as well call me a walking skeleton. Quickly, go inside and get dressed or you’ll catch a cold.”

She acted like she preferred me calling her ajumma instead as she ushered me into my apartment. I liked to joke about how she lived through both world wars and met Admiral Yi himself in the 1500s, which was where I got the idea to call her noona instead of something more appropriate for her age.

I knew she saw the bloodstains on my pants, but she didn’t question them. Our relationship was strange. The age gap was too wide for us to be considered friends. If anything, she was like a mother, but one with few parental obligations.

The building we lived in was old, and apart from me, no one lived here. Back when I was barely scraping by with the money I had, she invited me in. She was the landlord of this decrepit place runover by mice and roaches.

While rent was expensive, compared to all the remodeled apartment complexes in Seoul which had evolved with the era of hunters, the price was the cheapest in the area.

After washing up and adorning a new fit of clothes, I invited over noona who sat sight-seeing at the balcony.

“What’s the matter, Cheong-Sin? Are you going to tell me something crazy again?”

“Yeah. I just quit my job.”

“Is that so?”

Even though she was my landlady, she couldn’t care less about money. We knew each other for four years, and these four years had taught me more than the other eighteen years of my life. It was completely different from the forced relationships I had at the orphanage that came about from living together everyday. Noona felt human—like an actual person who had lived through several lives with an uncountable number of tales from the first sun to the advent of monsters—like a retired hero that could recount all her adventures from start to end.

“So what are you planning?”

“I’m going to hunt monsters.”

“Is that right?”

She knew God chose me to be traitless. And I hadn’t told her yet.

“I have a trait now. So I will become a hunter.”

“...”

She didn’t say anything, clearly thinking about what I said under the wrinkles of her brows.

“Is that really what you want? To become a hunter? Just because it's trendy nowadays doesn’t mean you have to chase it like everyone else.”

“But I need to make money.”

“Hmph.” She chuckled. “Do you need money, or do you want it? Because I can tell you one thing. If you find yourself living another day, then that need has been fulfilled.”

Needing and wanting… Was there a difference? I suppose there was. But the difference shouldn’t be big, after all, having more money in the pocket was better than having none. In the first place, why live if you can’t live well?

“Even if we survive day-to-day with little money, it’s still better to make do with more on hand than less, isn’t it, noona?”

Hearing that, noona laughed.

“Hah! Cheong-Sin. Let me tell you a story about this little lady I met a few years ago.”

“Whether it changes my mind or not depends on the quality of this story though, noona.”

“Hardly. I’m not telling you it with the intention to convince you against your motive, but just so your eyes don’t grow narrow like mine are now.”

She took a moment to moisten her lips with the tea. Then began the retelling.

“I met her at the train station. She was lost for directions.

“The young lady spoke passable but crooked Korean from studying abroad. She had a streak of gray hairs trailing down her right side which was what first caught my attention. It may have been natural silver hair now that I recall it. Yes. Silver against black it was. Any passerby could tell you she was a foreigner, though no one stopped to help.

“She came here because she wanted to become the number one hunter in the world by studying at the best academy—or at least that’s what she said. If I were to compare her to you, I suppose she’d be slightly older than you, but not far off.

“When I asked her why she wanted to be a hunter, she said her parents would be happier if she was one. Then I asked why she wanted to be the best hunter. Was becoming a normal hunter not enough? Why aim for the top spot? I asked her that, to which she answered, ‘Is there a point if I’m not the best at it?’

“In my opinion, she was a lost girl for a very long time. Many children don’t have aspirations. And many certainly don’t know what to make of their lives—their oh-so-precious little lives. That’s fine. But to delude herself into this grand dream that wasn’t hers—to accept nothing short of perfection would only set her up for failure when her goal was not met. Of course, I didn’t say it to her face. Maybe I should have, since I never saw her again after that. She was clearly from a prestigious and well-off family. Her bodyguards escorted her away shortly after our talk.

“But I do wonder, what has she become now? Did she succeed in becoming the best hunter in the world? Or did she fall on the way there? Maybe she stumbled but succeeded in the end. Assuming she has accomplished her purported life’s mission, is she still the same lost child as those years ago? Or has she found something to fill her heart? And—well, I suppose it's best to leave that story there. What do you think, Cheong-Sin?”

Being lost… Was I lost? Was I that lost little girl?

No. I wasn’t. I had my values.

We sat there in silence for a few minutes while I contemplated, which may have been an understatement. The clock ticked to a digit past, and noona, for the entirety of the hour, sat with her tea and watched me in amusement.

Finally, I collected myself.

“If this story is supposed to be an allegory for my situation, I can see it. But pointing out the problem is separate from finding the solution. In my opinion, if one can grasp for straws, that’s better than doing nothing at all. Having something to search for is not necessarily equivalent to being lost. Perhaps all it takes to find the right path is grasping the right straw that so happened to appear at the right place at the right time.”

If I never had the luck to encounter noona, who extended her straw for me to grab onto, I may have stayed, drowning in that lost sea of meaninglessness.

Had I turned her away as a scammer that time, I couldn’t imagine what I would have become. Homeless? Perhaps. But it was equally likely that I’d strike it rich from the lottery.

“That’s quite optimistic to pin everything down to fate,” she replied with a grin like I found the answer to her question, but didn’t stop me from continuing.

“Sure. It's throwing everything to luck. But without an attempt to grab anything in the first place guarantees you’ll be directionless forever.”

She nodded at my response, which settled it. I didn’t need money. I wanted money.

When President Cho Min-Ho set out to unify hunters across the world, he did not begin with the intention to create ASH, a nationally recognized organization, but to bring peace to the world in a time of turmoil.

While I didn’t know what would come of this venture, I could see some of the forms it could take, and how it would develop.

For starters, I’d renovate this crappy building with the wealth I now had, as a thank-you gift for noona.