I woke up.
Dark room.
With a hazy mind, I groped around for my phone.
The brightly lit screen made me grimace involuntarily.
8:42 AM.
I thought it was early, considering I'd stayed up late playing games last night.
"Should I go or not?"
I pondered.
My condition wasn't bad.
The timing was decent.
But I couldn't shake the feeling of laziness.
"Let's go."
I made up my mind and dragged my heavy body out of bed.
Still groggy, I headed to the bathroom and splashed some water on my face.
The familiar face stared back from the mirror.
Cloudy eyes and sharp features.
Stubbly chin.
Expressionless face.
And below, the once-toned, sculpted abs were gone, replaced by a slightly protruding flat belly and some side flab—an uncle's body.
My unmanaged physique had ballooned.
"Tch."
I knew I needed to take better care of it, but the passion from before was gone.
I left the bathroom and grabbed a glass of water from the fridge.
The cool water cleared my head a bit.
Time to get ready to head out.
Every time I looked at the Combat Suit enshrined on its rack in the corner of my gear room, mixed feelings washed over me.
It was inevitable, considering the money I'd sunk into it.
I took the Combat Suit off the rack and put it on.
Despite my bloated body, it fit like a glove.
It wasn't top-of-the-line, but it had a size-adjustment function, and I'd paid a premium for a solid value reinforced model.
If I'd bought cheap crap, it wouldn't have fit my expanded frame.
I donned the helmet, lowered the visor, and checked the suit's energy reserves.
The display showed 65%.
Plenty for a full day.
I'd recharge when I got back. I gathered my gear and left the house.
...
Ten years ago, in my fourth year as a Supporter, I felt my senses expand.
I thought it was Awakening.
I rushed to get an expensive Mana Test, but the results were the same as always—no Awakener status.
If it had been flashy flames or lightning from an Elemental Awakener, that'd be one thing,
but saying "My senses have sharpened" would just sound like bullshit to the testing staff.
Mana Tests were full of people blaming the machine with all sorts of nonsense excuses.
It was obvious I'd get lumped in with them.
Still, I believed I'd Awakened.
Otherwise, how could I explain the superhuman senses transcending ordinary humans that I felt?
I'd seen a D-Rank Body Enhancement Awakener on Nutube dodging bullets with insane reaction speed.
The difference between me and an Awakener was physical ability.
I could see a bullet coming, but I couldn't dodge it.
Even if I registered it visually, I lacked the body to evade.
Awakeners gained enhanced physical abilities by default upon Awakening.
Body Enhancers went without saying, but even F-Rank Elemental Awakeners, deemed physically weak, showed pro-athlete levels of fitness.
My physical abilities had reached F-Rank Elemental Awakener levels, but that was from training, not Awakening.
If I'd truly Awakened, I'd have even higher physical prowess, so with mine unchanged, the Mana Test wouldn't detect Awakener-level mana.
Of course, I could run around proving my abilities to get recognized as an Awakener.
But the thought of explaining it all in detail annoyed me.
It was a half-baked Awakening.
Even if recognized, it'd be F-Rank at best.
I couldn't imagine properly hunting among full Awakeners with a half-assed one.
It might even lead to troublesome special cases.
I knew being recognized as an Awakener was good, but the effort and risks didn't seem worth the benefits.
I figured it'd fully develop soon enough.
I held onto hope.
Ten years passed like that.
I was still a half-baked Awakener.
This middling Awakening had kept me wandering Gates for a decade.
Even if I Awakened fully now, it'd be F-Rank, and at my age, how many more years to reach D-Rank?
Maybe I'd be stuck at F-Rank forever.
A few more years, and I'd be forty.
Facing reality late brought complicated emotions.
Over ten years chasing Awakening.
Fatigue and emptiness led to post-nut clarity.
Days off at home increased.
Lounging around aimlessly got boring after a while.
I remembered liking games before Gates exploded.
With the world on the brink and my Awakening obsession, I'd naturally stopped.
Bored and nostalgic, I started gaming again.
And the games were more fun than expected after so long.
Delivery food let me eat whatever when hungry.
I'd pull all-nighters for endings, then crash with my smartphone, drifting through Nutube's algorithm.
The unemployed lifestyle I'd started mindlessly turned out pretty enjoyable.
I cut back on Gate hunting and dove into games.
While I'd been rolling in Gates for over a decade, the world had churned out tons of fun games, returning to its convenient pre-apocalypse state.
Modern convenience was addictive.
I fell late into self-quarantined gamer NEET life.
Lately, I often thought this wasn't so bad.
...
Incheon Songdo Gate.
The shimmering space over 50 meters wide was always a spectacle.
One of Korea's two remaining unconquered Gates.
Unlike the long-abandoned Jeju Island Gate, its proximity to Seoul put it high on the priority list from the start.
An endless jungle far beyond expectations.
They still hadn't mapped its end.
Over ten years into the assault—now more "pioneering" than "conquest"—speculation ran wild that it led to another dimension or distant planet.
Inside, a massive fortress walled around the Gate served as a hub, with government and Hunter Guilds running satellite camps for dual pioneering and assaults.
The once-ruined Songdo around the Gate brimmed with buildings inside and out, forming a city bustling with vehicles and people constantly flowing in and out.
I grabbed a burger combo from a hamburger joint in the fortress and headed outside.
Southward.
No special reason.
The passion for intel-gathering and such had vanished long ago; now it felt like a casual stroll.
Direction didn't matter much for earnings.
Today, I just felt like south.
I left the fortress and followed the road to the satellite camps.
The 2km radius around the fortress was clear-cut for monster attack visibility.
Satellite camps were over 10km down this road.
For a Supporter, maybe, but as a Non-Awakened Hunter, I'd just be people-watching there.
I had no reason to go.
After 20 minutes' walk, before entering the jungle, I sat on a massive tree stump and ate my burger for breakfast-lunch while pulling out my tablet to check the map.
Time to plan today's farming route.
The map was dense with markers.
This map was my lifeline and a record of my Hunter life.
Spots for farmable fruits and herbs I'd discovered over years of hunting, marked meticulously.
Some overlapped with other Non-Awakened Hunters' knowledge, some were mine alone.
For Non-Awakened Hunters, earnings depended on exclusive spots.
I was a Non-Awakened Hunter.
We focused on gathering in cleared Gates or stabilized zones like this.
Why people called us Herbalist Hunters.
Non-Awakened Hunter pay wasn't bad.
Diligent ones out-earned office workers.
Inefficient for Awakeners, but for us, it balanced hope of Awakening with stability—a solid choice.
Awakening odds rose inside Gates.
Government and Hunter Association guaranteed it.
TV aired stories of civilians Awakening in Gates nonstop, luring aspiring Awakeners to their deaths.
Even "stabilized" zones leaked frontline monsters, and sudden Dimensional Rifts were disasters for Non-Awakened Hunters.
I transferred the farming route data from the tablet to my Combat Suit.
Then slurped the last of my cola and stood up.