Chapter 1: What Is This Awakening Ability?

Chapter 1. What Is This Awakening Ability?

In a dim alleyway behind a high school,

a group of students were surrounding someone with a swagger, smoking cigarettes.

They were encircling a child with a small stature, who was shivering in fear.

It was a typical scene where the bullies seemed to be toying with a singled-out peer.

“Hey, Kim Jinsung.”

Yang Dong-ju. Among the bullies, the leader called out to the boy standing in the center.

Hearing the low voice calling him, Jinsung flinched and lifted his head with fearful eyes.

“You know the twerking sexy dance by the girl group Red Girls? Do that now.”

“Everybody knows the dance, right? Who in Korea doesn’t know it?”

Yang Dong-ju spat out the smoke threateningly, apparently used to this act of posturing.

He then announced to the friends around him.

“Guys, Jinsung’s going to dance.”

“Whoa, really?”

“Is our Jinsung making his TikTok debut?”

“Somebody start filming quick!”

Smartphones were drawn from pockets all around.

With his face flushed with embarrassment, Jinsung dropped his head, unsure what to do.

Seeing this, Yang Dong-ju glared at him.

“Do you want to get beaten to a pulp, or will you just dance?”

Jinsung whispered in a barely audible voice,

“I’ll… do it.”

“Hey, someone play a song.”

One of the boys immediately played a song on his smartphone.

Jinsung started moving awkwardly to the music.

“Hahaha!”

“Look at him creak!”

“Whistle! Shake that waist more, Jinsung oppa! Hahaha!”

The bullies showered him with laughter and jeers.

At that moment, Jinsung wanted to die from the humiliation.

But he couldn’t stop dancing, knowing all too well that stopping would mean getting beaten to within an inch of his life.

The humiliation continued for over a minute until,

“Hey, turn off the music.”

It stopped with Yang Dong-ju’s cold voice.

He approached Jinsung, looking down on him with intimidation.

“Do you want to die? Is that what you call dancing? Who told you to dance like that?”

“Ah, damn it, I’m really pissed off. It’s not working out. Bring the protection money again by tomorrow so I can calm down.”

“What? I already brought it the day before yesterday… Huh!”

Startled by the mention of protection money, Jinsung cowered just as Yang Dong-ju raised his fist.

A thin wisp of steam seemed to waver over his fist.

It was a sign of awakening as a hunter.

“Who do you think you’re talking back to? You’re worse than a pig who hasn’t awakened.”

In an era filled with monsters and challenges, where awakening before adulthood had become the norm,

Kim Jinsung had yet to awaken.

“You have until tomorrow. If you don’t bring it, you’ll see what it’s like to be beaten to death.”

“Why aren’t you answering, you bastard?”

“I got it….”

Jinsung had no choice but to answer.

Then Yang Dong-ju released the mana from his fist.

“What time is it?”

“59 minutes past.”

“Ah, it’s already time for class. Let’s go.”

Yang Dong-ju and his gang spat on the ground and headed back towards the school through the back gate.

Kim Jinsung stood in the same spot for a long time, shoulders slumped.

The next day, at the same time, in the same place.

Thump!

“Argh!”

Kim Jinsung screamed as he fell to the ground of the alley.

He writhed, unable to get up easily, evidently in a lot of pain.

For more than ten minutes, he had been getting beaten.

“Hey. Slave.”

Yang Dong-ju grabbed Jinsung’s hair roughly.

“Did I not tell you? If you don’t bring it today, know you’re really going to die.”

“But really, I don’t have any money……”

“Yeah? Then substitute it with something else.”

“What what with?”

“Take off your clothes.”

Yang Dong-ju smirked as he watched Jinsung’s eyes tremble violently.

“Didn’t you hear me? Substitute with the clothes you’re wearing, guys, strip him down to the panties and take a photo.”

“Okay!”

“Come here, bastard!”

The bullies rushed forward to strip Jinsung’s clothes off.

As they tried to forcibly remove his clothes, Jinsung cried out in protest, struggling violently.

“No, don’t do it!!”

Jinsung fought to free himself from their grasp,

Staggering a few steps forward, he tripped and accidentally struck Yang Dong-ju on the chin.

“Huh?”

“Huh.”

In an instant, everyone froze and stopped in their tracks, looking at Yang Dong-ju with tense expressions.

Yang Dong-ju, with his head turned, snickered as if he found it ridiculous.

At that, Kim Jinsung spoke in a trembling voice,

“Do, Dong-ju… I’m, I’m sorry, it was an accident”

Thud!

“Urgh!”

In an instant, Kim Jinsung was punched in the stomach, flew up, and then collapsed.

“How dare this bastard bite his master? You’re really dead. Today.”

Yang Dong-ju rolled up his sleeves and started to brutally stomp on the lying Kim Jinsung.

Jinsung, unable to properly defend himself, was getting beaten.

Tears had already formed in his reddened eyes.

“Why is it only me?”

Born an orphan and growing up poor without anyone’s protection. And merely catching their eye by chance.

That was the crime for which Kim Jinsung had been tormented for two years.

‘Why only me? Why! Why!’

Two years of pent-up frustration gradually turned into anger in Jinsung’s heart.

And in an instant, that anger turned into hatred.

I want to kill.

I want to kill Yang Dong-ju.

I want to tear apart the face of that worthless bastard.

Kill!

I will kill him!

Please die!

“Aaaaah!!”

With that, Kim Jinsung shouted out as if he was exploding.

For the first time in two years, he attempted to fight back against Yang Dong-ju.

Jinsung, with eyes rolled back, swung his arm towards Yang Dong-ju in an instant.

And then…

“…Huh?”

After a moment, a puzzled voice escaped Jinsung’s mouth.

A shard of glass in his right hand was deeply embedded in Yang Dong-ju’s neck.

He had unwittingly picked up and swung the glass shard lying nearby.

And, blood was profusely dripping from the area where the shard was embedded.

In an instant, Yang Dong-ju, not grasping the situation, staggered and then collapsed weakly onto the ground.

“Huh?”

“Do, Dong-ju?”

The bullies were panicked and didn’t know what to do. Meanwhile, the ground around Yang Dong-ju was quickly stained with blood.

Beep.

That’s when it happened.

An alert appeared before Kim Jinsung, who was completely shocked and stiff, along with a sound.

You have eliminated a villain.

▶▶You have gained 5 Beast Karma points.

You have acquired the opponent’s trait, Robust Bone.

▷ Robust Bone: Permanently increases strength and stamina by 5.

▶Your strength and stamina have been increased by 5 due to the ‘Robust Bone’ trait.

A notification window that only those awakened could see.

But Kim Jinsung wasn’t in a mood to be happy.

His gaze was fixed on the first line of the notification window, ‘You have eliminated a villain.’

“He’s dead?”

16-year-old Kim Jinsung.

Became a murderer the moment he awakened.

Yang Dong-ju died on the spot due to excessive bleeding. The autopsy revealed that the carotid artery was severed by the piece of glass that Kim Jinsung had swung.

Despite being an awakened capable of avoiding it, Yang Dong-ju, who had just awakened, lacked enough experience to react immediately to such an unexpected situation.

The school was turned upside down by the death of Yang Dong-ju.

Not just because it was a simple murder case.

Recently uprising in Korea, the hunter clan ‘Dream Gold.’

Yang Dong-ju was the youngest son of Yang Joong-geun, the master of this clan.

“Which bastard?!”

Yang Joong-geun screamed in rage as soon as he entered the police station after returning from the morgue.

“Who is this Kim Jinsung bastard?! You?! You bastard!”

“Calm down, brother! This is not the person!”

“Where is that bastard?! Bring him in front of me now! Now!”

“Brother! This is a police station! Let’s go outside…!”

“Not letting go?! Not letting go, you bastards?!”

Even as he was forcefully dragged out by his subordinates, Yang Joong-geun did not stop screaming.

“Tell Kim Jinsung! I swear on everything I have, I’ll definitely kill him!”

Time passed, and three months had passed since Yang Dong-ju’s funeral.

“What?!”

Inside the master’s room of the Dream Gold clan, the roar of Yang Joong-geun erupted once again.

“Is it over with just 3 years confinement in a juvenile detention center?!”

“Yes….”

“Why not ‘forced labor’ right away?! He blatantly killed an innocent person in broad daylight!”

“Well, it was a spontaneous crime, and above all, there’s plenty of evidence that he was severely bullied…”

“What did you just say?!”

“Ah, no! I’m sorry, Master.”

Lee Dong-shik, the second-in-command of Dream Gold, quickly bowed his head.

After glaring with fiery eyes for a while, Yang Joong-geun spoke in a low voice dripping with murderous intent.

“I’m warning you for the last time. My child is not one to bully. I never raised him that way!”

“The Hunter Association brats are a problem too! They immediately conclude that he was bullied just based on the words of some kids?! They’re such incompetent fools…”

After cursing for a while, Yang Joong-geun looked back at Lee Dong-shik.

“I can’t stand to see the bastard who killed my son walk out of the detention center fine after 3 years. You know what I mean?”

“You mean take care of it inside the detention center, right?”

“You’re sharp. So naturally, you’ve brought a solution with you?”

Lee Dong-shik put forward his opinion right away.

“How about this?”

—————————————

Sigh.

Kim Jinsung let out a sigh.

Through the window, he saw the juvenile detention center’s main gate that the transport bus, carrying him, had just passed.

Having only suffered from bullying all his life without ever causing harm to others, he had now ended up a criminal.

“Maybe it’ll be better than being bullied…”

He couldn’t decide if the detention center might be better than the two years he had spent living every single day like hell due to bullying.

And after all, he wasn’t classified as a ‘forced laborer,’ which supposedly led to death in nine out of ten cases.

“Just hang in there for 3 years. Just 3 years and then…”

Kim Jinsung glanced at the status window that floated on the left side of his sight.

Name: Kim Jinsung

HP: 100/100

MP: 50/50

Strength: 11

Intelligence: 5

Stamina: 10

Agility: 6

Skin Defense: 0

Skills: None

Beast Karma Points: 5

The only hope in the bleak situation for Kim Jinsung was his awakening ability that he realized when he had killed Yang Dong-ju.

But what is Beast Karma ? He had never seen such a word on the internet…

“Everybody off the bus!”

Soon the bus stopped, and all the boys, including Kim Jinsung, gathered in the yard.

The director of the detention center shouted from the stage with a loud voice.

“I will only warn you once so listen carefully! This is the infamous juvenile detention center. This is where only people like you, who cause harm to others even after awakening, unlike prison, come.”

The director continued to shout as he looked over everyone.

“I have no intention of sparing or correcting you bad ones! The moment you defy my words or cause trouble here, I will demote you all to ‘forced laborer’ status by my legal discretion without exception. Do you understand?”

“Yes!!”

All the boys shouted with tense expressions.

There had been several new things since monsters came into the world. One of them was replacing juvenile halls with juvenile detention centers.

Especially ‘forced laborers,’ known to be the worst.

All present knew through the media that more than 99% of them would meet a terrible end.

After the physical examination, the boys moved to the showers.

Kim Jinsung was also standing in the long line.

“Who is Kim Jinsung?”

Then, one of the instructors shouted loudly, and Jinsung raised his hand.

The instructor pulled him out and placed him at the very end of the line.

“Take your shower last.”

Though puzzled by the sudden command, the atmosphere was not conducive to asking questions, so Jinsung just stood as told.

After waiting for a long time, it was finally Jinsung’s turn.

As he was undressing in the shower room, he sensed something was off.

“Why am I showering alone?”

He was left all alone in the spacious shower room.

He wanted to ask, but the instructor had already closed the door and left.

Kim Jinsung, lacking courage, quietly started to shower alone.

After about 5 minutes,

“…Huh?”

At the sound of the door opening, Jinsung, who was about to apply soap, turned his head.

A tattoo-covered muscular inmate, probably around 19, had entered.

And he was staring straight at Jinsung, approaching him.

“Wh, who are you? …Ahh!”

Kim Jinsung screamed, clutching his right cheek.

A trickle of blood dripped down from a slight cut on his cheek.

Towards him, the other man holding a jackknife responded.

“What does a soon-to-be-dead guy need to know?”