Chapter 1

Housekeeper—the Hidden Class

A handsome-looking man rummaged about in his jacket.

He soon produced a card, and Huina knew what it was—a key card. Specifically, the key to a house.

“Won’t you take charge of my future?” he asked.

She could hardly believe her ears.

Her eyes widened to saucers.

My god.

In her younger years, she’d once fantasized about some good-looking man proposing to her with a designer ring.

That had been a fantasy, nothing more. But who knew she’d end up in a very similar situation in real life?

Not only was this man handsome, but he had few equals in the world in terms of ability. He was handing her a key card to a house many hundreds of times more expensive than any designer ring and asking her to stay with him for the rest of his life!

This was the motherlode and the fulfillment of her childhood dreams. If her dead parents could see her now, they’d be slapping her on the back and telling her to jump at the opportunity while she could.

However.

Huina had no choice but to be cautious despite her apparently unmatched luck.

“Uh... Jinhyeon Kang...”

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

This was Jinhyeon Kang, considered one of the strongest hunters in the world. And he was giving her a look that was not only decisive, but desperate.

He looked so pitiful that she felt the urge to hug him.

Is this what it feels like to be approached by a good-looking man?

Apparently he wasn’t powerful on only a physical level. Huina rebuked herself for nearly losing her grip and offered tentatively,

“W-well, you see...”

“Please tell me everything that’s on your mind. I will offer you everything. Absolutely everything.”

In the end, Huina all but shouted in her discomfiture. “Excuse me, but why are you phrasing it like that? You’re just asking me to be your housekeeper!”

“You will be in charge of providing me with food, clothing, and shelter. How else can I ask you to take on such an important job?” he asked, extremely grave.

Huina tore at her hair.

I wanted an ordinary life. How did I get involved with someone like him?

It had all started on a day three months ago...

* * *

Her vision flashed, hitting her with a dizzy spell.

Some businesslike words appeared in the air in front of her. Her brain had trouble processing what it was seeing.

Am I seeing things?

Huina had been working overtime for three days now, so it wasn’t that strange to think she was hallucinating.

Staring into a computer monitor for long enough made it hard to distinguish if the word processor was her, or if she was the word processor.

<System: Congratulations. You have awakened! You have access to new abilities!>

It took Huina quite some time before she could decipher the meaning of the words that floated in the air, like some pop-up window.

“What? Awakened?”

Kwon, the section chief, shuddered and rose from her desk as Huina stared in shock.

The section chief had drool marks running down her chin, and her dark circles made her look like a panda. Huina probably didn’t look so different.

“What? What’s that? The client said something?”

“N-no! Nothing that terrible!” Huina cried.

“That’s a relief. Then what’s going on, Huina?”

“Well, some message popped up in front of me saying I’d awakened or something…,” she stammered. Kwon shot to her feet.

“What? Awakened? You awakened? Huina, does that mean you’re a metahuman now?”

“Huh? Uh... Yeah, I guess.”

She grabbed Huina’s shoulders and jumped up and down, her fatigue apparently forgotten.

“I’ve never met one in person before! To think I was with you at the moment of awakening, too! Gosh, that is so cool. How does it feel? Do you get stat windows and the like, like in a video game?”

“Uh, I can’t really be sure...”

Huina was wondering how that worked when another window popped up in front of her.

<System: Searching for the most suitable class based on your talents and luck... (Searching)... This may take some time.>

“The System is searching for a class for me. It says it might take a while?” she said.

The explanation seemed quite down-to-earth, and this helped her recover somewhat from her confusion.

Kwon also looked taken aback. “Uh... I see. So will you also be quitting your job once your class is decided, Huina? They say you can make a lot of money as a hunter.”

“I don’t know about that. From what I hear, a low-ranked hunter makes less than an ordinary office worker. I’ll have to see. I think I’m likely to stay on, though.”

The awakening was an unexpected turn of events, but Huina was a pragmatist to the extreme.

Something called “dungeons” had shown up in the world around ten years ago, and huge changes had come about in the world ever since.

The monsters that came from these dungeons hurt every human they saw, and Huina had also lost her parents to them.

Humanity had despaired, fearing it was on the brink of being wiped out, when people with superhuman abilities began to appear. They were able to combat the monsters, and people called them metahumans.

These metahumans were strong. They subdued the monsters with ease, and as a result, the chaos in the world quickly died down.

Now that a decade had passed, they were an important pillar of society.

The hunters who engaged in battles with the monsters, in particular, made hundreds of millions of won per day in return for putting their lives at risk.

This was the reason people believed metahumans made incredible sums of money.

But that’s only true for the really gifted.

Huina had an older brother, a D-rank hunter who never seemed to be able to hold his own in a dungeon, always getting hurt instead. She knew the tough reality of the metahuman sphere.

Low-ranked metahumans get nothing out of a battle but a hurt body and mind! What does it matter if you make a little more than other people do? You get nothing out of it. The only thing it’ll accomplish is making your family worried about your safety.

Her brother, four years older than she was, had awakened ten years ago, and had done all sorts of difficult tasks trying to care for his young sister.

His body had always been covered with fresh wounds, and Huina had always cried with worry. If she hadn’t gotten a job at a small company as soon as she turned 20 and started earning her own keep, her brother would likely have passed out from overexertion.

Idiot. He can rest a bit now, since I have a job.

Huina’s thoughts drifted to her brother, who’d left her a while ago with a note that said he was going off to make some money. She sighed.

All I want is to live an ordinary, happy life with my brother, not riches.

Having lost her parents to the monsters, all she wanted was a normal life.

She didn’t want to have to be worried that her brother would come home hurt every day, like she was now. Instead, she wanted to have nothing on her mind but putting food on the table and planning for a comfortable retirement, just her and her brother.

It was Kwon who pulled her out of her thoughts.

“Don’t forget me if you become someone massively successful later, you know? Be sure to say hello.”

She grinned and patted Huina on the shoulder.

“In any case, now that I’m awake, I think I’ll go home. I’m curious what your class is... but I’d rather have a full hour of sleep at home than nod off on the desk like this.”

She was an overworked office worker, after all. The shocking incident that had visited Huina didn’t lessen her workload or reduce her fatigue.

Kwon waved at Huina, the excitement fading quickly from her face. She was indicating that she was leaving.

“Take care,” Huina said, nodding to Kwon as she walked off like a zombie.

“Gosh, I feel so sleepy. I wish I could go home, too...”

Her eyes were bleary. Huina had a task due tomorrow, however, and she couldn’t go home like her section chief.

“They say awakening makes your stamina better than an ordinary person’s. I hope it brings back some of my energy when I get my class decided for me,” she muttered, watching the computer screen again.

She still had a whole slew of documents to go through. She was starting to doubt she could finish these by tomorrow morning.

“God, I wish this company would just go out of business!” she shouted. The wish had probably been made since time immemorial by many an office worker, and indicated just how exhausted she was.

Suddenly.

The entire building shook. The objects on the desk shuddered as though afflicted by some wintry breeze.

It was an earthquake.

Left alone in the lit office, Huina hesitated for a moment before crawling under the desk. She’d suddenly recalled being taught to hide under a desk in case of such an event.

Oh no. I’m all alone here! This is horrifying!

Who had claimed the Korean peninsula was safe from seismic activity, anyway?

Huina clamped her eyes shut under the desk. At the same time, a cold, blue light filled the office, the flash of it blinding her for a moment.

And then, she was elsewhere.

The office, decorated with traces of too much work, was gone, replaced by lush leaves.

It was a jungle. It took Huina no time at all to figure it out.

I was sucked into a dungeon gate!

Random dungeon gates could open out of the blue, sucking in hapless civilians who happened to be nearby.

The chances of that were extremely low, and just about the same as the likelihood of being hit by a lightning bolt.

The chances are that low!

And yet Huina had apparently won this terribly unlucky roulette.

No! Hunters won’t be getting here anytime soon because it’s so late!

She almost teared up, the despair gripping her. A System message appeared in the air in front of her.

<System: Suitable class found!>

That means I’m awakening soon!

Huina clasped her hands together and read the message with hopeful eyes.

There was a chance she might be able to survive until the hunters got there if she could become a combat hunter.

More than eighty percent of metahumans are supposed to be combat-oriented!

Huina prayed that she would be within that majority, calling out the name of every deity she knew.

The System then informed her of her class:

<System: Congratulations. You’ve awakened as the hidden class “Housekeeper!”>