The rain in Seoul didn't wash away the grime; it just turned the soot of the slums into a slick, grey sludge.
Han Joo-won sat in a cramped, windowless room that smelled of damp wallpaper and cheap ramen. He was nineteen, but his eyes had the hollowed-out look of a man who had already spent a lifetime counting pennies. On the low wooden desk before him sat a stack of hospital bills—remnants of a life he hadn't asked for and a debt he hadn't incurred.
"The orphanage payout stops next month," he whispered, his voice raspy from the cold.
He didn't cry. Tears were a luxury of the hydrated and the hopeful. Instead, he pulled out a small, tattered notebook. It was filled with meticulous rows of numbers.
Balance: 14,200 Won.
Daily Food Budget: 1,500 Won (2 triangle kimbaps).
Bus Fare: 2,400 Won.
Target: 10,000,000 Won for the first tier of "Awakening Insurance."
He closed the book. It was an impossible sum for a delivery boy in the slums. In this world, since the Gates opened twenty years ago, the only way to escape the mud was to Awaken. The government offered free "Favor Tests" to orphans once they turned twenty—a PR stunt to show they cared about the "lost generation."
In reality, it was a lottery where the prize was usually a D-Rank class that led to a short life as cannon fodder in a government-owned dungeon.
The Shelter
Joo-won stood up and walked to the communal kitchen of the "Green Ivy Shelter." It was anything but green. A group of younger kids sat huddled around a flickering television, watching a broadcast of the S-Rank Hunter, Kang Min-ho.
"He just cleared a 50-floor Abyss!" one kid cheered, his eyes sparkling. "When I awaken, I'm going to join his guild and buy a house for all of us!"
Joo-won reached for a glass of tap water, his expression stone-cold. Idiot, he thought. If you awaken, you'll be lucky to be the guy who carries Kang Min-ho's spare boots. And if you buy a house for 'all of us,' you'll be broke in a year.
"Joo-won hyung!" the kid called out. "Tomorrow is your twentieth birthday! You're going to the Association for the test, right? What if you get a Golden Class?"
"I don't care about the color," Joo-won said, not looking back. "I only care about the profit."
The younger boy flinched at the coldness in Joo-won's voice. Among the orphans, Joo-won was an anomaly. He didn't share his food, he didn't play games, and he didn't offer words of comfort. He was a ghost who lived among them, obsessed only with his own survival.
The Eve of Change
That night, Joo-won lay on his thin mattress. His stomach cramped from hunger, but he ignored it. He was busy visualizing the dungeon maps he had memorized from public forums.
He knew the statistics.
80% of favor-recipients awakened as E or F Rank.
15% reached D-Rank.
Less than 1% ever saw the inside of a C-Rank dungeon and lived.
I don't need a high rank, Joo-won thought, staring at the mold on the ceiling. I just need a lever. Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.
He didn't want to save anyone. He didn't want to be a hero. He wanted to be the person who held the ledger. He wanted to be the one who decided who lived because they were profitable and who died because they were a liability.
As the clock struck midnight, marking his twentieth birthday, a faint, rhythmic humming began to echo in his ears. It wasn't the sound of the city. It was the sound of a System syncing with a soul that was already as cold as the void.
[System Initialization...] [Synchronizing with Host: Han Joo-won] [Compatibility Check: 99.9% - "Void of Empathy" detected.]
Joo-won's eyes snapped open in the dark. A smirk, thin and dangerous, sliced across his face.
"Finally," he whispered. "The game begins."