Chapter 1 – Hidden Class, Homemaker

A man of handsome appearance searched his breast pocket. A card came out of his inner pocket.

Hee-na knew what that was. It was a card key. In other words, a house key.

“Won’t you take responsibility for my future?”

He handed the card key to Hee-na and brought up a shocking topic.

Hee-na’s eyes grew as wide as saucers.

‘Oh my goodness.’

In her childhood, she had fantasized about a handsome lover proposing with a Cartier ring.

She had thought that fantasies were just fantasies, but who would have known she would end up in a situation similar to that?

A man who was not only handsome but also renowned as one of the best in the world was promising his future while handing over a house key that was hundreds of times more expensive than a Cartier ring!

This was a jackpot beyond the dreams of her childhood. It was an opportunity that her deceased parents, had they seen it, would have slapped her back to force her to grab immediately.

Yet, in the face of this once-in-a-lifetime fortune, Hee-na could not help but walk on eggshells cautiously.

“…Um, Hunter Kang Jin-hyun.”

“I will entrust everything, including myself, to you.”

Kang Jin-hyun, who was regarded as one of the top powerhouses among hunters worldwide, looked at Hee-na with a gaze that was not just firm, but desperate.

He looked so pitiful that she wanted to hug him right away.

‘Is this what they call a honey trap?’

She had thought he was only amazing in terms of physical force, but his schemings were also formidable. Hee-na chided herself for almost losing her mind for a moment and spoke very carefully.

“Th-that is…”

“Please say whatever you want. There is nothing I cannot bring before you, Miss Hee-na.”

In the end, Hee-na had no choice but to shout, almost on the verge of tears.

“No, why do you make an invitation to be your live-in housekeeper sound so strange?”

“Then how on earth should I speak to the person who is more important than anyone else, who will take charge of my food, clothing, and shelter?”

Hee-na had no choice but to clutch her head at the exceedingly serious reply.

‘I wanted to live quietly and normally, but how did I end up getting involved with a person like this?’

This matter goes back to a certain day, three months ago…

* * *

Her vision flashed, and dizziness washed over her.

Then, formal text floated in the air. Her overloaded brain could not immediately digest the meaning of the written sentences.

‘Am I seeing things?’

It was not very strange that Hee-na, who had been suffering from overtime for three days and nights, dismissed it as a hallucination when she first saw ‘it’.

Since she kept staring at the computer monitor without rest, it was hard to tell whether she was the document window or the document window was her.

It took quite a long time for Hee-na to decode the content of the sentence that popped up like a window in front of her eyes.

“…What? Awakening?”

When she looked into the empty air with a dazed expression, Section Chief Kwon next to her flapped awake.

A faint trace of saliva was dried up around the corner of her mouth, and her dark circles had descended all the way to her chin. Hee-na’s own state was probably no different from Section Chief Kwon’s right now.

“What? What? What did the client say again?”

“Ah, no! Nothing that terrible happened!”

“Then that’s a relief… So what’s the matter, Miss Hee-na?”

“Something suddenly popped up in front of my eyes and told me I awakened…”

She was stammeringly explaining what had just happened to her when Section Chief Kwon jumped out of her seat.

“What? Awakening? You awakened? Miss Hee-na, did you become an awakener just now?”

“Uh… huh? Yes, it seems so?”

As if she had completely forgotten her fatigue from just a moment ago, she grabbed Hee-na’s shoulders and jumped up and down.

“I’ve never seen an awakener before! No, and to think I was with you at the moment of awakening! I’m dying of curiosity. How is it? Do abilities or stats pop up like a game window?”

“Uh, I don’t really know that…”

The moment she thought, ‘How do I do that?’ after hearing Section Chief Kwon’s words, an explanation window popped up before her eyes.

“It says it is currently searching for my class. It says it’s a task that may take a considerable amount of time.”

It was an oddly realistic explanation. Thanks to that, her mind, which had briefly drifted away, returned.

Section Chief Kwon also wore a dazed expression at the unexpected reply.

“Oh… I see. Then will you quit the company once your class is decided, Miss Hee-na? They say you earn a lot of money if you do things like being a hunter.”

“Well. I heard that if you get a low rank, it’s not even as good as working at a regular company, so we’ll have to see. Well, but in most cases, I think I’ll keep working here.”

Although the unexpected commotion called awakening had arrived, Hee-na was a severe realist.

About ten years ago, ‘dungeons’ suddenly opened in the world, bringing about a major change.

Monsters that poured out of the dungeons harmed people at random, and in the midst of that, Hee-na also lost her parents.

It was a time when she fell into grief, thinking that humanity might perish like this.

Ability users who could fight against the monsters appeared one by one. People decided to call them ‘awakeners.’

The awakeners were powerful. They quickly suppressed the monsters that poured out of the dungeons, and thanks to them, the chaotic world rapidly stabilized.

And now, after about ten years had passed, awakeners were functioning as an important pillar of society.

In particular, the ‘hunters’ who went to the battlefields easily earned hundreds of millions of won a day at the cost of their lives.

Therefore, when people heard ‘awakener,’ they thought of it as a highly lucrative job group.

‘But that is all story for those outstanding people.’

Because Hee-na had an older brother who was a D-rank hunter who came back injured after struggling in the dungeons every time, she knew the harsh reality of the awakener world very well.

‘Once they go into battle, low-rank awakeners get hurt in body and mind! What’s the point of receiving a little more money than others? There’s nothing left. It just ruins their family’s peace with worries about their lives.’

Her brother, who was four years older, had awakened ten years ago, and took on all sorts of rough work, saying he would take responsibility for the young Hee-na.

Thanks to that, there was no day when the wounds on her brother’s body healed, and no day when Hee-na’s worried tears dried.

If Hee-na had not started looking after herself by getting a job at a small company as soon as she turned twenty, her brother might have collapsed from overworking his body.

‘Fool. Since I’m working now, he could rest a bit.’

Hee-na sighed as she thought of her brother, who had suddenly left not long ago, leaving a note saying he would go earn some money.

‘My dream is to live normally and happily with my brother rather than earning money.’

Hee-na, who had lost her parents in the midst of the chaos, desired a very ordinary life.

Not worrying about whether her brother would get hurt somewhere like now, but squabbling with each other while worrying about making a decent living and their old age.

It was Section Chief Kwon who dragged Hee-na, who was lost in thought, back to reality.

“Don’t even think about washing your mouth and pretending you don’t know me if things go well later. You have to pretend to know me, okay?”

She smiled and tapped Hee-na’s shoulder.

“Anyway, since I’m awake, I should head out. I’m curious about your awakening class, Miss Hee-na… but rather than dozing off like this at the company, I’d rather go home and sleep properly for even an hour.”

After all, she was also a fatigue-stricken office worker.

The cataclysmic event of awakening that happened to Hee-na did not do her backlogged work instead, nor did it eliminate her existing fatigue.

Section Chief Kwon quickly lost her energy and waved her hand at Hee-na. It was a sign that she would leave first.

“Go safely.”

Hee-na bowed her head to Section Chief Kwon’s retreating figure, who was walking like a zombie.

“Ah, so sleepy. I want to go home too…”

Her vision was dim. However, since Hee-na’s work deadline was right up to tomorrow, she could not leave her seat like Section Chief Kwon.

“They say once you awaken, your physical strength becomes better than an ordinary person’s at least. I wish my stamina would recover when my class is decided.”

Hee-na muttered and stared at the computer monitor again.

There was still a long way to go with the documents she had to review. A sense of skepticism arose as to whether she could finish all of this by tomorrow morning.

“Ah, I wish the company would go bankrupt!”

Hee-na was so tired that she even let out in a voice what every office worker would have thought about a thousand times.

It was then.

Rumble!

The entire building shook and the ground rumbled. The objects on the desk trembled as if they were cold.

It was an earthquake.

Left alone in the lit office, Hee-na, not knowing what to do, crawled under the desk.

It was because the safety guidelines stating that one should take shelter under a desk during an earthquake suddenly flashed in her mind.

‘Oh my. Section Chief Kwon is gone and there’s no one but me! I’m scared to death!’

Who was it that said the Korean peninsula was an earthquake-safe zone?

Hee-na squeezed her eyes shut while hiding under the desk. At the same time, a cold, bright blue light fully illuminated the office.

Flash!

A flash of light gleamed in front of her eyes. And in an instant, the surrounding landscape changed. The office, which bore clear traces of overtime work, disappeared, and green leaves filled her vision.

It was a jungle. Hee-na quickly grasped the situation.

‘I’ve been sucked into a dungeon gate!’

Occasionally, dungeon gates opened randomly like this, snatching passing civilians.

However, that was an extremely slim probability, about the chance of being struck by lightning out of the blue.

‘With such a probability!’

Hee-na had won this unlucky roulette game.

‘No way! It’s early morning, so the hunters’ deployment will be delayed too. What do I do?’

It was the moment when tears were about to well up from a surge of frustration. Letters floated in the empty air. It was a system guide message.

‘It’s an awakening!’

Hee-na clasped her hands and read the system guide message with hopeful eyes.

If she awakened as a combat type, she might be able to survive and hold out here until the hunters arrived.

‘They said over eighty percent of awakeners are combat types!’

Hee-na prayed earnestly for a combat class to appear.

‘Please, God, Buddha, Allah!’

And the system window announced Hee-na’s suitable class.

The Homemaker of the Dungeon