Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I Installed a Dating App and Girls from Another World Became Obsessed with Me.

Episode 1: Matching.

(Image Here)

Name: Kang Hyeon-u, Age: 21.

Just an ordinary college student you’d find anywhere.

But with one little difference—he was a 21-year-old virgin.

Of course, being a virgin at 21 wasn’t that rare, and there were even older virgins out there.

“Sigh, just rationalizing, aren’t I?”

Just because there were many virgins didn’t make my virginity something to be proud of.

In fact, spending over a year in a female-dominated department with an extreme gender imbalance and not even making a single female friend, let alone a girlfriend, definitely meant something was wrong with me.

“I think my face is decent enough…”

My face and body weren’t so bad that I’d give off a bad first impression.

‘I’ll have to go to the army soon, and when I get back, people will treat me even worse. So, a college student graduating as a virgin?’

At least in high school, there were many virgins besides me, so it was okay.

But now that I was an adult, remaining a virgin until graduation was something I couldn’t tolerate as a man.

“Haa, going to an adult entertainment establishment is a last resort…”

Losing my virginity there was something my pride wouldn’t allow.

I’d rather live as a virgin until 30 and become a wizard.

Gurgle-

“…Should I eat first and think about it?”

I opened a pack of ramen, as usual.

The soul friend of a poor self-boarding student.

Then it suddenly occurred to me that if I were dating, I would be eating pasta over 20,000 won a plate instead of ramen that costs less than a thousand won.

And that would mean spending 40,000 won for a single meal, including my girlfriend’s.

Just imagining it sent chills down my spine, no need for an air conditioner.

Yeah, dating was a luxury for my wallet.

“Looks like it’s cooked enough. Where did I put the mat?”

I used my textbook as a stand for the pot.

This damn thick textbook, I paid a fortune for it and even had it bound, but the professors only use PPT for their lectures.

Thanks to that, I just ended up with an expensive ramen stand.

Well, what can I do? If you don’t like it… what can you do?

There was nothing a mere student like me could do. I just had to eat my ramen.

Slurp- As I took a bite of ramen and scrolled through NewTube, my eyes caught a news item I would normally ignore.

The news title was unusual.

[New S-Class Hunter Emerges in Japan!]

“This is crazy.”

If my memory serves me right, Japan now has a whopping 11 S-Class hunters, making it an insanely powerful hunter nation.

In contrast, Korea only had 4, which was woefully inadequate considering we had to defend against monsters coming down from the North.

“Well, Korea is… reasonably safe.”

It wasn’t fair to complain about a bad spawn point even though we weren’t in South America or Southeast Asia.

Even though people occasionally died from monsters, we weren’t occupied by villains.

As I was lost in thought, a woman appeared on the podium in the video, the one who had just become an S-Class hunter.

She was stunningly beautiful.

The Japanese Prime Minister was on the podium, and he put a medal around her neck, then they laughed and shook hands, receiving a shower of camera flashes.

Watching that made me lose my appetite, so I pushed my phone aside.

I was jealous.

Even if I couldn’t become an S-Class hunter, if I could just awaken a cool ability, I could escape this life of eating ramen all the time and get a pretty girlfriend.

Of course, I knew such things wouldn’t happen, that such a life was impossible for me, so I just chuckled.

My mouth tasted bitter.

Still, it felt like a waste to leave the rest, so I shoved the ramen into my mouth and grabbed my phone to find something to cheer me up.

Ding-

[Other World Dating App has been installed]

Just in time, a notification popped up.

“…?”

It was a notification that an app I’d never seen before had been installed.

“What is this?”

Of course, I never installed anything like that.

I was watching NewTube, when would I have had time to install something like this?

“Did I accidentally click on an ad while putting my phone away?”

There was no other explanation.

No matter how advanced voice phishing technology is, it’s impossible for a strange app to be installed out of nowhere without me clicking on a link or receiving a text.

“But a dating app…”

I’d tried random chats a few times before.

But they were all full of people asking ‘pic?’ as soon as you entered the room, so I quickly gave up. But this was my first time with a dating app.

“Should I give it a try?”

It seemed like it could be fun for killing time.

From the sloppy icon design to the weird name ‘Other World Dating App,’ it felt like it was hastily made by a small company looking to make a quick buck and run, but I wasn’t planning on paying anyway.

Usually, these apps offer free first matches, though the problem is that the match is likely to be a company employee.

As soon as I launched the app, the truly uninspired design greeted my eyes.

[Other World Dating App]

[Shop][Matching][Profile]

“…Look at the design of the main screen.”

It was almost as if it was made in Paint, not PPT.

Well, the important thing wasn’t the UI design.

As long as it could kill time, whether it was a company employee or AI, it was enough.

After a moment’s thought, I went to the profile section first.

As expected, it was a place to enter my information, and strangely, there was also a place to write my race.

“Is that why it’s called Other World Dating App? The concept is kinda unique.”

I filled in my age and name for now.

Next, I went into the shop. Like I said, I wasn’t planning to pay, I was just curious what they were selling.

[The shop function is currently locked]

“What?”

What is this? Weren’t they trying to make a quick buck and run?

It didn’t make sense that the most important shop was locked.

“Now that I think about it, I don’t see any ad banners either?”

Did they even have a revenue model?

If money wasn’t the goal, did they make this app just to steal personal information?

But if that was the case, there were much easier ways, and besides, personal information wasn’t worth much, was it?

“Well… it’s their loss if they don’t want to make money, not my problem.”

Anyway, all that mattered in a dating app was that it matched you well.

Hoping that they at least made the AI decently, I pressed the matching button.

Ding-

[First match confirmed]

[Thank you for using this app. Please complete the survey before proceeding with the match.]

“Survey?”

[Preferred race]

[Preferred gender]

[Preferred age range]

[Preferred hobbies]

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“Wow…”

Now that I saw it, this wasn’t an app made to make a quick buck, it was just an app made for fun, wasn’t it?

Otherwise, there’s no way they would have put in things like race in the survey and blatantly included things like corpse dissection in preferred hobbies.

“They nailed the concept.”

It was starting to get interesting.

I didn’t know who made the survey, but it was clear they put in a lot of effort, with a wide variety of items. About 50 of them?

While admiring it, I filled in the items, half seriously and half jokingly.

I put elf for preferred race, obviously female for gender, and around 500 years old for age range. Time flew by quickly as I filled in the other items.

[Thank you for your cooperation with the survey]

[Matching will begin soon]

[Matching may take some time, please bear with us]

I started to get a little excited, thinking the developer might reply in the concept of a 500-year-old elf.

“…It’s taking a while.”

Contrary to my expectations, matching wasn’t happening as quickly as I thought.

‘Did they all go home since it’s evening? Can’t they at least match me with an AI?’

In the end, I finished eating my ramen and still hadn’t been matched.

I didn’t like waiting too long, so I tossed my phone aside and cleaned up the table.

As time passed, I even forgot that I had started the matching.

Ding-

A strangely annoying notification sound rang.

I picked up my phone.

[Match complete]

“Oh, finally.”

The developer is finally working.

With a strangely expectant heart, I quickly touched my phone.

Flash-

“Huh?”

[Moving to Planet EB-17]

An enormous light emitted from the screen engulfed me.

Deep underground, beneath the World Tree, the last known divinity on Earth, lay a vast cavity unknown to most.

Even the citizens of Pelledia, the elven nation built around the World Tree, didn’t know of its existence.

In such a place, there was a prisoner who had been confined for 200 years.

“…Resilia.”

Even in the pitch-black darkness, her golden hair, subtle green eyes, and long ears, different from humans, shone.

She was an elf.

She was so beautiful that it was hard to imagine she had committed a heinous crime worthy of being imprisoned in this bottomless hell.

“How long will I be here…”

Her lament, echoing emptily in the cavity, scattered without anyone to hear it.

Although elves are known to live tens or hundreds of times longer than humans, 200 years of imprisonment was by no means easy.

The hellish loneliness without anyone visiting, and the fact that she was imprisoned because of the betrayal of her most trusted subordinate and beloved friend, were all factors that gnawed at her mind.

Now, all that remained for her was the love-hate relationship with her friend and the unresolved questions.

Why did she betray her?

What was so important?

In this place where no one would answer, even those questions only echoed emptily and then scattered.

“…I’m lonely.”

Iris, the only prisoner in the underground cavity, was exhausted by the growing loneliness.

Could you even imagine?

She had spent 200 years without contact with anyone.

No conversation, no one visiting.

No guards, no other prisoners.

Only Iris was here.

This unfillable emptiness and loneliness was not something anyone could bear.

Even she, a high elf who had lived for hundreds of years, valued interaction with others so much.

“Maybe…”

Her eyes darkened as she stared at the sharp stone fragment lying on the floor.

‘Could I find peace if I ended this wretched life…’

Even elves, known to be free from desire unlike humans, could frame someone they followed for power and imprison them in an underground prison for 200 years, and commit the great sin of ending the life given by the gods for peace.

The moment her slender, pale hand grasped the stone fragment.

Flash!

“Eek?!”

In the dark void where not a single ray of light penetrated, an enormous beam of light flashed as if exploding.

As she squinted at the long-lost brightness, she glimpsed a blurry figure in the light.

“Ugh, ugh, ugh!!! Damn it!!!”

“…A person?”

A person was falling from the sky.

Without time to think about what was happening, Iris instinctively drew up her mana.

She used magic with the little mana she had left.

Levitation.

With the successfully activated magic, Kang Hyeon-u, who was falling in real time, was descending slowly towards the ground, as if he had deployed a parachute.

Thanks to that, Kang Hyeon-u was able to safely touch the ground. If it hadn’t been for Iris’s quick action, Kang Hyeon-u would have been ‘a former human’ by now.

Kang Hyeon-u, who barely stood up on his trembling legs, stared blankly at Iris standing in front of him.

“…An elf?”