Chapter 1: Hidden Class, Expert Homemaker.
A handsome man dug through his jacket.
Inside, in which he brought out a card.
Hena knew what it was. It was a card key.
Well, a house key to be exact.
“Will you take responsibility for my future?”
The man asked such a big question while handing her the card.
Hena’s two eyes became as wide as bulbs.
‘My goodness.’
When she was young, she had daydreamed about her handsome significant other proposing to her with a Cartier¹ ring.
She only thought of it as a delusion, but who knew that it would happen in real life?
A man who is not only handsome but financially stable asks her for a future together, handing her a key to a house valued hundreds of times higher than a Cartier ring!
This was a jackpot way beyond her younger dreams. If her parents were alive and watching, they would smack her back and do all it takes her to accept the offer.
However, when faced with such a great fortune, she had to be leery.
“…..umm…excuse me, hunter Jin Hyung Kang.”
“I will let you handle everything, myself included.”
One of the top hunters in the world was watching her with eyes that almost seemed not only stern, but a little desperate.
You would almost want to give him a hug.
‘Is this what they call a trick using beauty?’
He was not only powerful in his hunting skills, but also skilled in psychological affairs. Hena reprimanded herself for letting herself weaken even for a moment and started to speak with caution.
“Well…it’s that..I..”
“Yes, say whatever it is. I can do anything for you, Hena.”
These words made Hena reply with almost a cry.
“Why do you ask me to be your housekeeper in such a creepy fashion?”
“Then how else was I supposed to ask someone with such an important role of taking care of my food and living?”
From his serious response Hena got a massive headache.
‘I wanted to live a normal and simple life; how come I ended up with someone like him?’
The reasoning goes back up to 3 months ago…
There was a sudden flash in front of her eyes, and her head became dizzy.
In the air, letters were floating, but her mind was too saturated to be able to understand them.
‘Am I seeing things?’
After four straight days of working overnight, Hena thought that she had become delusional after seeing ‘those things’.
After staring at the computer monitor for so long, it was hard to tell whether she was the person or the document staring at the person.
<System: Congrats on your advancement. You have leveled up!>
It took a while for Hena to interpret the sentence that appeared in front of her as a pop-up screen.
“…..What? Advancement?”
As she spaced out with a puzzled expression, manager Kwon sitting next to her stood up.
Near Kwon’s lips was a light marking of her saliva, and her dark circles had reached below her chin. Hena would probably be in a similar state as her by now.
“What? What did you say? The client said what again?”
“No, no way! Something that horrifying couldn’t have happened!”
“Then, we should be good…What is it then, Hena?”
“Something popped up out of nowhere and told me that I have advanced…”
Hena struggled to explain what had just happened to her.
“What? Advancement? You advanced? So, you became an advancer?”
“Huh? Uh? Yes, I think so?”
Manager Kwon, as if she had just forgotten how tired she was just now, started to jump in excitement holding Hena’s shoulders.
“It’s my first time seeing someone advance! And on top, I cannot believe that I was here in the room while it happened! It’s so cool. How do you feel? Do you get stats and abilities such as in games?”
“Hmm, well, I’m not sure…”
As soon as Hena wondered how that would happen, the description screen appeared right in front of her.
<System: Using what we know about your abilities and luck, we are searching for the best job match. ….(loading)…This process will take quite a while.>
“They are searching for the right job for me now. They also said that it might take a while?”
It was an oddly realistic explanation. From this, she regained her mental clarity once again.
Manager Kwon also made a striking face at the unexpected message.
“Oh…I see. Does this mean that you will quit once you get a new job? For example, hunters make a lot of money.”
“I will see. If I get something of a low rank, it might just be better to stick with my regular job. I will most likely keep coming to work.”
Although something like advancement had happened before her eyes, Hena was a very realistic person.
Ten years back, the world had changed when a verse called the ‘dungeon’ appeared.
The monsters that came from the dungeon killed many people, and among them were Hena’s parents.
It was in that moment when all humanity had seemed to have lost its future.
People who were capable of fighting the monsters appeared one by one. We started to call them the ‘advancers.’
Advancers were strong. They seized the monsters from the dungeon quickly, and due to them, the world regained pieces.
And ten years later to today, advancers were an important part of society.
Especially the ‘hunters,’ who went to battle, and in exchange for putting their lives at risk, they received hundreds of thousands of dollars per day.
Because of this, people thought of advancers as a job title with extremely high earning potential.
‘But that only applies to the few.’
Hena had a D rank hunter brother, who would always return from the battle with a bunch of injuries. She knew the reality.
‘Once a low-ranked advancer goes into battle, they get hurt physically and mentally! What’s the use of getting a little more than others? It’s not worth it. You only make your family worried about getting hurt all the time.’
Hena’s brother, who is four years older than she is, took many difficult jobs in order to support Hena ever since he advanced ten years ago.
Due to this, there were so many scars on her brother’s body which made Hena cry.
If it weren’t for Hena to have gotten a job as soon as she turned 20, her brother would have been bedridden by now.
‘Dummy. You can rest a bit now that I am working.’
A few days back, her brother had left Hena a note saying that he would be back from a trip to earn more money, making Hena sigh.
‘My dream is to just live a long and normal life with you, not money.’
From losing her parents in a disaster, all Hena ever wanted was a normal life.
She did not want to worry about her brother getting hurt as now, but only about the general arguments and worries that people have around food and retirement.
At this moment, manager Kwon pulled out Hena from her mind going on a tangent.
“Remember to treat me when you become successful. You can’t ignore me, okay?”
Manager Kwon with a tap on Hena’s shoulder, smiling.
“Anyways, since I am awake, I have to stop by home. I want to know more about the advancement you had…but rather than dozing off at work, I’d rather get some proper sleep at home even if it’s just for an hour.”
Manager Kwon was a burnout salarywoman, after all.
The grand advancement process for Hena was not something that would complete her work for her or take away her tiredness.
Manager Kwon returned to her regular state (not so excited anymore) and waved her hand. It was a sign that she would get going.
“Get home safely.”
Hena told Kwon as she watched Kwon walking out.
“Yawn…I’m sleepy. I want to go home, too.”
Hena could not see what was to come ahead. However, her deadline was tomorrow, which meant that she couldn’t go home as Kwon had.
“I heard that with advancement you at least get better stamina. I hope that from this, I can at least become a bit stronger.”
Hena mumbled as she returned her focus to the computer screen.
There were so many more documents to review. Hena started to doubt whether or not she would be able to finish everything by tomorrow.
“Ah, I wish this company would just go down!”
Hena, being so tired, said out loud a statement that every salaryman has thought about at least a thousand times.
It was that moment.
Boom!
The entire building shook and the ground was vibrating. All the things on the table were shaking as if they were in freezing weather.
It was an earthquake.
Lost and confused, while left alone in an empty office, Hena went under the desk. She had remembered seeing somewhere that you hide under the table in an earthquake.
“Manager Kwon has left, too, and I am the only one here! This is so scary!”
Who was the one to say that Korea was safe from earthquakes?
Hena hid under the desk and shut her eyes tight. At the same time, a cold, blue light lit up the entire office.
Flash!
There was a bright glare. All of the sudden, the surroundings changed. The messy office with traces of overworking turned into a field of green.
It was a jungle. Soon enough, Hena realized what was going on.
‘I have been sucked into the dungeon gate!’
There were occasionally random occurrences where civilians would be taken by unexpected gate appearances. However, this would happen on a very rare occasion, equal to the probability of getting struck by lightning.
‘It’s such a low probability!’
Hena had become the winner of this unlucky game of roulette.
‘This can’t be! A hunter wouldn’t come to the rescue immediately at such a late hour!’
When Hena felt a tear coming out from the sense of defeat burdening her, a string of letters appeared in the empty space. It was a system guideline.
‘Advancement!’
Hena held her hands together with hope and read the sentence.
If she were to advance into a fighter’s rank, she had a chance of surviving in the jungle.
‘They say that 80% of all advancers become fighters!’
Hena prayed with desperation that she would become one of the fighters.
‘Please dear God, Buddha, Allah!’
And the system guideline appeared with her chosen class.
<System: Congratulations. You have advanced into the hidden class ‘Homemaker!’>
¹ Cartier is a French luxury goods that’s considered to be a top global luxury brand, ranging from $760.00USD to as high as $314,000.00USD at the time of writing this. The $314,000 price here is of the highest listed price on Cartier’s website, so they could be potentially be even more expensive then listed here.