Since that day, the world had abruptly changed on an astounding scale. Enormous black holes appeared, and from them emerged huge and small monsters that attacked humans without warning. Several cities were destroyed beyond recognition, and the whole world fell into despair.
Just when humankind had lost all hope, a new species of humans appeared. They swiftly subdued the threatening monsters and called themselves hunters. The hunters became the hope and saviours of all people. Everyone looked up to them and aspired to awaken as hunters to save humankind.
In this transformed world, a small child who looked no older than seven awakened in a run‑down orphanage.
"Huh? What is this screen?"
Small fingers hovered over the blue screen, tapping buttons at random.
"Strength? Speed? SSS‑Rank? Intelligence? Skills? What is all this?"
On the blue screen, the child's name, Lee Yerin, and her picture were displayed. Beneath it were numbers and several skills.
Yerin tilted her head.
"This is funny."
She was intrigued by the strange words that made no sense to her. She quickly went to the orphanage teacher.
"Teacher, look at this...," Yerin said.
But the gentle-looking woman was busy soothing two crying children.
"Waaahhh! Minjun hit me first!" a girl bawled.
"That's not true! Well... it is, but she took my toy first!" the boy sobbed.
The teacher looked exhausted.
Yerin is a well‑behaved child, so I mustn't disturb teacher now, Yerin thought.
She walked away quietly to her closest friend, Ahyoon.
"Ahyoon, do you know what an SSS‑Rank is? I have this blue thing, and it says SSS‑Rank."
Ahyoon was too sleepy to think clearly. "I know what strawberries are. They're very delicious, and they're red, not blue."
Yerin explained, "I don't mean strawberries! I'm talking about SSS‑Rank. Have you ever heard of SSS‑Rank?"
"No? SSS‑Rank... I think S‑Rank is the highest rank for hunters, but SSS‑Rank is new," Ahyoon mumbled while rubbing her eyes.
"Right? I thought so too. This must be a scam. When something seems wrong, it must be a scam—that's what the teacher said," Yerin stated confidently.
She scoffed at the stupid scam in her mind and ignored the screen.
But despite her conviction, the screen followed her everywhere—even to the restroom!
"Go away!" she said, swatting at it.
The screen didn't react.
A notification popped up.
[You have awakened as a hunter. Congratulations!] [You are now in the Top 50 Hunters Channel. There are 39 new messages.]
The screen changed, displaying Top 50 Hunters Channel.
[24: Huh?] [35: Crazy...] [24: Check the hunter ranking.] [5: I already checked. I think there's a bug in the system.] [9: Look up the ranking.] [14: What?] [23: There's a new entry in first place.] [23: With a default hunter name...] [23: The ranking updated, and now "Unfinished Unicorn" is in first place.] [35: Crazy...] [23: Definitely a default name. Who would choose something so weird?] [4: Fellow hunters, please calm down. The Hunter Association will investigate this newly appeared hunter. I'm already checking the situation at the office. For now, don't say anything to the media. Wait until this is resolved.] [45: It's impossible for a hunter to suddenly take first place. Why would we need to collect experience points if it were this easy?] [27: Calm down. The system will probably recover in a few hours.]
New notifications kept flowing in, and Yerin couldn't read them all.
She grew confused.
A channel for the top 50 hunters? Why can I read this? I'm not a hunter.
She felt conflicted. She didn't feel stronger or smarter, yet the system insisted she had become a hunter.
In her five years of life, she had heard about hunters all the time. Hunters were heroes ranked from S‑Rank down to A‑ through F‑Rank.