The Hero Has Returned

Chapter 1 - The Poor Hero

I hated poverty.

Then again, was I the only one who hated it?

Under the skies of capitalism, everyone probably wants to be rich.

Someone once said.

To live gratefully for what you've been given.

Bullshit. In my childhood, the only thing I was given was severe poverty.

I was 8 years old.

My father took me and my younger brother to the stationery store in front of the school.

“Kids! Pick whatever you want!”

It was unexpected.

Because my father was the type of man who trembled over a single 100-won coin.

In any case, it was clear that this wasn't an everyday opportunity.

After all, it was Children's Day.

With an exclamation of ‘Wa-!!’, my younger brother ran towards where the dinosaur toys were.

I stood quietly and scanned the stationery store.

My pounding heart was the same as my brother's.

A basketball? A toy gun? A mini-car?

No. It's that one.

What caught my eye was a figurine modeled after a cartoon protagonist.

A hero wearing a purple mask and a leather jacket.

I don't know why, but I was particularly drawn to that one.

“This one! Please buy me this one!”

My father took the pterodactyl my brother chose and the figurine I chose and headed to the counter.

“How much is it?”

My father exchanged some words with the stationery store owner.

As the conversation dragged on, a sense of anxiety welled up, but it was Children's Day.

I needlessly scanned the other toys, trying to distract myself.

Only after a long while did my father come back holding the figurine.

Then, he smiled benevolently and said,

“Yong-gi. This one won't do.”

Just as I thought.

I wasn't particularly disappointed either.

It wasn't the first or second time my father had broken a promise.

“Why? Is this expensive?”

“No, it’s made in China. The chances of it being a fake are high. If it were American-made or Japanese-made, I would've gladly bought it for you, but…”

He made a long-winded excuse, but I had a vague guess as to the real reason.

It was probably because he didn't have enough money.

“Then I'll take this one.”

I roughly picked up a random dinosaur doll from nearby and handed it to my father.

After paying, my father placed the doll firmly in my hand.

The smile hanging on the corners of his lips trembled pathetically.

At that moment, as I let out a deep sigh while leaving the stationery store, a Gate opened for the first time and a monster shot out.

People screamed, and the area in front of the school became a scene of utter chaos.

My father pulled my hand.

“Choi Yong-gi! This way! Run!”

It was an urgent situation, but my gaze was fixed on the figurine displayed beyond the glass.

I turned 10 years old.

On Earth, a select few humans Awakened.

Among them, some used the great strength and special abilities they were given to fight against the monsters.

People called them Hunters.

The Hunters belonging to the upper ranks swept up wealth and fame.

The prices of daily necessities skyrocketed, and life became even harder for the unchosen people.

I held on to a sliver of hope, thinking 'what if'.

If I became a Hunter?

Wouldn't I be able to escape this god-awful swamp of poverty?

However, as expected, there were no Awakeners in our family.

Saying he was going on an overseas business trip, my father left me and my younger brother with our paternal grandmother.

As soon as I followed the gloomy stairs down and entered the one-room semi-basement, I realized.

Ah, so poverty is passed down.

Moldy wallpaper, a flickering fluorescent light, the musty smell of poverty seeping into every nook and cranny.

Everything was so similar to the house I used to live in that it felt familiar.

“I'll make a lot of money and be back in a year! You trust your father, right? Mom! Please take care of the kids!”

My stooped grandmother, holding the broom she had been using to wipe the floor, stared intently at me.

“Son of a bitch. He looks exactly like his father.”

I didn't dislike my grandmother for her crude remarks mixed with parental insults.

Because contrary to her grumbling nature, she took frugal yet attentive care of my younger brother and me.

“Let's eat.”

On the dinner table, there was always a pale-white beef and radish soup with steamed rice.

It was called beef and radish soup, but there was no beef.

The only solid ingredients were a lump of fat from who-knows-where and completely mushy radish, but it was better than starving.

Actually, I didn't know until then.

I thought everyone was poor like me.

After I started school, and as the grades went up, minor differences started to catch my eye.

While my brother and I walked to school for over 40 minutes in worn-out clothes, someone else would get dropped off in front of the school in a foreign car driven by their parents.

When I went to play at a friend's house, my jaw dropped.

The entryway with the shoe rack was separate from the living room, and a huge TV occupied the living room wall.

The bathroom was bigger than my grandmother's entire house.

I felt strange the whole way back.

Seeing how heavy my footsteps were, I think I was a little depressed.

In the distance, I saw my grandmother collecting wastepaper.

“Grandma!”

I rolled up my sleeves and collected wastepaper with her.

My grandmother stared intently at me with her deep, wrinkled eyes.

“Yong-gi, aren't you ashamed of this granny of yours?”

“What's there to be ashamed of? Dad, who's a habitual liar that spouts bullshit whenever he opens his mouth, is more embarrassing.”

As expected, my dad, who said he'd come get us after a year, didn't keep his promise.

“Yong-gi, what're ya gonna be when you grow up?”

“A rich man.”

I answered without hesitation.

“Grandma. Just wait a little. I'm gonna make a fucking ton of money and let you live in a house like a palace.”

“Hey, you son of a bitch. What's with the 'fucking' in front of an adult! You wanna get fucking beaten?!”

Getting smacked hard on the back by my grandmother snapped me to my senses, and my gloomy feelings disappeared.

My grandmother, who had been in the middle of hitting my back, stopped her hand.

“Yong-gi, you punk. Make just one promise with your grandma.”

“What promise?”

“Being rich is fine, and being poor is fine, too. But do what you believe is right. Got it?”

I wondered what she meant by that out of the blue, but seeing her serious expression, I nodded without a word of complaint.

I turned 17 years old.

In addition to the academic and vocational tracks, a specialized Hunter track was created for high schools.

Gate specialization teams, equipment development, Hunter training construction teams, etc.

It was a professional training center for jobs that supported Awakeners.

Because I wanted to make money as soon as possible, I chose that path without hesitation.

My younger brother, despite being just an elementary schooler, started to go astray, as if he'd caught chuunibyou.

When he was younger, he used to take it upon himself to help grandma with cleaning and washing the dishes, but he gradually stopped going to school.

After I smacked him a few times, he started leaving home altogether and wouldn't come back for days.

When night came, I closed my eyes in the small, single room where the cold wind still whistled in through the cracks.

My grandmother would let out pained groans all night, as if she were sick somewhere.

I turned 20 years old.

I could have gone to college, but I gave up on it early on.

I couldn't afford the tuition.

Tuition, my ass.

We didn't even have money for living expenses.

The days my grandmother spent lying down all day, unable to even support her own body, grew more frequent.

As the eldest son, I had to take responsibility for our livelihood.

Convenience stores, loading and unloading parcels, manual labor, wiping blood off monster corpses, even factory work.

I did all sorts of odd jobs, whatever I could get my hands on.

When I turned 23, I was dragged off to the military.

‘Dragged off’ is the right way to put it.

After the appearance of monsters, the conditions for military exemption became stricter.

The fact that I had maintained a steady monthly income by getting a factory job actually worked against me, and I failed to qualify for an exemption due to financial hardship.

I enlisted, leaving behind my 18-year-old delinquent brother and a frail old woman.

When I was a Private First Class, my younger brother came for a visit by himself.

The atmosphere in the visiting room was bustling with families who came to see their sons and couples in love.

“Where's Grandma?”

My younger brother just shed tears endlessly, drop by drop.

He said it was cancer.

The doctor showed me a picture of a cancerous tumor in my grandmother's abdomen that was larger than my fist.

He blamed me, asking why I had let it get to this point.

A week before my discharge.

My grandmother passed away.

Almost no one came to the funeral.

Not even our father.

In this world, my brother and I.

It felt like we were the only two left.

I didn't cry, not until after the funeral procession was over and I came home.

While I was organizing my grandmother's belongings, I found a letter in a drawer.

— To my dear Yong-gi.

The moment I saw the crooked handwriting, my vision blurred.

At the end, it was written like this.

— Survive and be strong. Together with your brother.

Along with the letter, there was ten million won in cash.

It was the money she had saved up, untouched, from the salary I had sent her from time to time during my military service.

That's when, for the first time, the dam in my heart broke.

I screamed and cried as if I were exploding.

The next day, I had a premonition that the time had come to give up something important in my life.

Something like a simple dream I'd secretly cherished.

When I could afford to later on, I really wanted to help kids who were struggling like me.

I knew better than anyone how hard it is to grow up in a broken home.

Was even that a luxury for me?

My younger brother, who was about to take the CSAT, made a shocking declaration.

“Hyung. I'm gonna quit school.”

After Grandma passed away, I made a vow.

To survive and be strong, just as she'd said in her will.

“Shut up and go to college.”

My brother was so smart that giving up on college would have been a waste.

I couldn't let him live a rough and crude life like mine.

Grandmother's death wasn't all bad.

Perhaps because the shock was so great, my brother got a grip, focused on his studies, and got into a prestigious medical school.

I was curious why he chose medical school of all things, but I didn't bother asking.

I figured it was probably related to Grandma.

He probably wanted to save people who were dying from incurable diseases or because they couldn't afford treatment.

I went back to the factory.

It was a third-tier supplier for a major corporation that made Hunter equipment—in other words, a subcontractor's subcontractor.

From age 25 after my discharge until I was 35.

For 10 years, I didn't rest a single time.

During that time, my life changed little by little.

While paying for my brother's tuition, I moved us into a two-room jeonse* apartment.

[N: Jeonse is a housing rental system in Korea where instead of paying monthly installments to a landlord, a large lump-sum payment is deposited for the duration of the contract.]

My brother and I were each able to have our own room.

My brother graduated from medical school and obtained his national medical license.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly.

But why was that?

At some point, my brother stopped talking to me.

I was busy collapsing from exhaustion and sleeping after work, and my brother would also shut himself in his room when he came home.

After living like that for a few years, my brother got married.

As he left the house, my brother asked me to throw away all his belongings.

Contact with him naturally faded away.

One day, when I had turned 42.

I received the news of my brother's death from a woman who came to see me.

She said she was my brother's wife.

“He was murdered by a Villain.”

She continuously stroked her belly with a trembling hand, perhaps because she was pregnant.

There was a limit to what public authorities alone could do to subdue Villains.

My brother's wife had a miscarriage due to extreme stress.

I scraped together all the money I had and hired a private Hunter.

“Just trust me, client. I'll bring you their heads.”

The man who had boasted so confidently just took the money and disappeared.

An empty laugh escaped me.

Heheh. Grandma. I tried to survive and be strong, but life isn't so easy.

When my heart ached with pain, I emptied my mind and stopped thinking.

Like a lost soul trapped in the deepest hell, I worked, and worked again.

1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years...

Before I knew it, I was in my 50s.

My face was full of wrinkles, and the factory I used to work at went bankrupt and shut down.

The result of working for nearly 30 years without rest?

I had finally escaped poverty.

My bank account balance, with interest piling on interest, had accumulated to over one billion won.

“Cough.”

When I coughed, blood splattered onto the sink.

The doctor said,

“It's cancer.”

In my ignorance, I hadn't known.

That not only poverty, but illness too, is passed down.

I had enough money for treatment, but I refused admission and left the hospital.

Balls of fire fell from the sky.

A hole was torn through the clear clouds, and countless monsters poured out.

Was I hallucinating?

The corpses of Hunters piled up on the once-peaceful land.

Lifting my head, I saw a human-like figure with horns on its head amidst the black flames.

In the extraordinary atmosphere, everyone without exception tried to get away from the figure.

Countless people brushed past me.

An unknown voice rang out, so thunderous it felt like it would tear my eardrums.

<>

When he gestured, the ground collapsed.

A few who had been wailing to survive vanished beneath the ground in an instant, along with their screams.

The monsters rampaging nearby all had blood-red mouths.

A monster with wings and sharp teeth, one that looked like a pterodactyl, bit into my waist.

I tried to resist, but it was useless.

Spilling my guts, I became the monster's prey.

Ah, so this is how I die.

I had always been curious.

What does a person think of when they face death?

Fear? Regret? Repentance?

So, this is finally the end.

The emotion I felt was a sense of liberation.

The thing that flashed before my eyes like a revolving lantern as I was being crushed in the monster's jaws...

Was the figurine.

The hero wearing the purple mask.

Now I finally understand.

Why I was so enthusiastic about that one.

Unlike other heroes, he had no reliable comrades.

He had no money, no fame, no family.

He just silently fought against his enemies alone.

Even in the moment of his death, he did not compromise with the villains.

I envied him, who, though poor, was always noble.

Looking back, poverty was just an excuse.

I resented my father my whole life, and overworked my body as if to atone for the feeling that I couldn't protect my grandmother and brother.

As I fell endlessly into the darkness, I made a vow.

If I have a next life,

Like Grandma said.

I will live proudly, upholding my beliefs without being discouraged by something like poverty.

And it would be even better if I could step up myself and joyfully beat the crap out of the forces of evil, instead of relying on a con man.

Just like the protagonist of a childish but overly hopeful cartoon.

In my fading consciousness, I heard an unfamiliar voice.

[ Awakening ]

[ Talent: Purchase ]

: You can buy the abilities of a being you admire.

I also saw a hazy hallucination.

[[ Hero Skill Shop ]]

1. Super Kid Series.

-

: 1,000,000 won per use.

-

: 5,000,000 won per day.

…….

***

“Hey, you son of a bitch!”

Startled by the sensation of someone smacking my back, I opened my eyes.

“I called you so many times! How long are you gonna fucking sleep! Let's eat!”

When I turned my head, I saw a small dining table set before me.

It was the beef and radish soup with only fat, and steamed rice.

A complaint burst out from my younger brother who was next to me.

“This again? I'm sick of it!”

It's the one-room semi-basement with black mold on the walls.

I sat up and looked at my reflection in the small vanity mirror.

Not the middle-aged man in his late 50s.

It was the appearance of a sturdy young man.

Am I dreaming?

Or is this place, where I repeat an infinitely unhappy life, actually hell?

Before I could even understand what had happened to me.

As I blinked, a blue window was generated.

[ Awakener's Balance ]

: ₩1,078,565,998