Ten years of blood, sweat, and regret.
Ten years of watching others soar while I crawled in the dirt.
They called me "Jin the Fragile"—an F-Class Hunter barely worth the paperwork. No guild wanted me. No team trusted me. I was the guy who carried potions, not the guy who used them.
But I endured. I fought through E-rank dungeons with shaking hands and dull blades. I scraped coins together to buy cheap gear, hoping one day, something would change.
It never did.
Not until the dungeon break in Gangnam.
It wasn't supposed to be anything serious—just a minor E-Class portal that popped open near a shopping district. A routine cleanup, they said.
They were wrong.
What crawled out of that rift wasn't E-Class. It wasn't even A-Class. It was a mutation—a grotesque fusion of multiple beasts, dripping shadow and reeking of death. It tore through seasoned hunters like they were paper dolls.
I tried to run. Tried to be useful—just once.
And it noticed me.
It grabbed me like I was nothing and tore through my body with claws that melted steel. Pain flared through me like fire and ice at once. I remember choking on my own blood, watching the sky turn crimson, thinking—
"So this is how I die?"
But death wasn't the end.
It was the beginning.
The moment my heart stopped, the world around me warped. Time fractured. I was falling—no, flying—through a tunnel of stars and echoes.
And then…
I opened my eyes.
The ceiling above me wasn't a hospital. It was my old room.
The calendar on the wall read:
May 25, 2025.
Ten years ago.
"What the hell…?"
I scrambled to my feet, chest heaving. My phone buzzed on the desk—an old model I hadn't seen in a decade.
It was real.
I was back.
And then a notification popped up in front of my eyes. Not from the phone—but from the System.
[You have awakened the SSS-Class Skill: The Maker]
Description: You can craft weapons, armor, and accessories of increasing rarity. Current Tier: Common.
A second later, blueprints flooded my mind—basic daggers, leather boots, copper rings. Schematics, materials, forging methods.
I dropped to my knees, overwhelmed.
"An SSS-class skill… me?"
The weakest hunter in Seoul… now had a power no one had ever heard of.
A grin crept across my face.
This time… I won't be weak.
This time… I'll make everything.
And I'll make them pay for forgetting me.
Let me know if you want to title the novel or want help building characters, monsters, guilds, or the crafting system next.