The water from the public faucet was freezing cold, but it felt good against Lin's bruised skin. He stood in a dimly lit public restroom on the edge of the slum district, scrubbing the dried rat blood off his arms and face with a rough paper towel.
He looked in the cracked mirror. He still looked pale, but the sickly, grey undertone that had haunted him for eighteen years was gone. His eyes, usually clouded with exhaustion, were sharp and clear.
"Level 2," Lin whispered.
He locked the stall door. It wasn't the most dignified place to perform a metamorphosis, but it was private. In the slums, privacy was a luxury.
He summoned his interface. The +51 unassigned attribute points hovered there, pulsing with potential.
Most F-Rank Hunters would agonize over this. They would split points evenly to stay balanced. A Warrior might go 3 Strength, 2 Vitality. A Mage might dump everything into Intelligence.
Lin didn't hesitate. He knew his build. He knew the math.
"System," Lin subvocalized. "Allocate points."
He followed the strategy he had calculated during the walk here.
[ Allocating Attribute Points... ]
[ Agility: +20 ]
[ Wisdom: +1 ]
[ Constitution: +30 ]
He hit confirm.
The reaction was instantaneous.
It wasn't a warm flow like the HP increase. This was violent.
Lin gasped, gripping the porcelain sink until his knuckles cracked. It felt like invisible hands were tearing his muscles apart and knitting them back together with steel wire. His bones creaked as they increased in density. His heart slammed against his ribs, pumping blood that felt heavier, richer.
The pain lasted for ten seconds, intense enough to make him sweat, before vanishing abruptly.
Lin took a deep breath. The air tasted different. He could smell the rust on the pipes, the mildew in the grout, the faint scent of ozone from the neon sign outside. That was the Wisdom and Agility sharpening his senses.
He looked at his hands. He didn't look like a bodybuilder—he was still lean—but the definition in his forearms was corded and tight. He felt heavy, anchored to the earth.
He pulled up his new status screen.
[ STATUS SCREEN ]
Name: Lin
Level: 2
Class: Archer
HP: 778 / 778
MP: 110 / 110
Attributes:
Strength: 8 (Base)
Agility: 29 (Base 9 + 20)
Constitution: 40 (Base 10 + 30)
Intelligence: 12 (Base)
Wisdom: 11 (Base 10 + 1)
Hidden Trait: [Infinite Growth]
Public Trait: [Eternal Hunt (F-Rank)]
"778 Health," Lin stared at the number.
A standard Level 10 Tank usually had around 800 HP. Lin had reached that tankiness at Level 2.
And the best part? His damage.
[ Eternal Hunt Damage Calculation: ]
[ 1% of 778 = 7.78 True Damage ]
It didn't sound like much compared to a fireball spell, but this was True Damage. It ignored the 30% physical resistance most monsters had. It ignored armor plating. It was pure, unmitigated destruction.
"Now I just need a delivery system," Lin said.
He checked his pockets. He had the Rat's Fang dagger and a small, cloudy crystal he had dug out of the Broodmother's skull—an F-Rank Monster Core.
He unlocked the stall and walked out. He moved faster now. His Agility had tripled. The world seemed to move slightly in slow motion around him. He stepped over a drunk sleeping in the doorway and headed toward the neon sign flickering down the street: Old Jack's Scavenger Shop.
The shop was a hole-in-the-wall, smelling of stale tobacco and gun oil. Old Jack, a retired hunter with a cybernetic eye, sat behind a cage of reinforced glass.
"We're closing," Jack grunted, not looking up from the pistol he was cleaning.
"I'm buying," Lin said, placing the Rat's Fang and the Monster Core on the counter tray.
Jack's cybernetic eye whirred, zooming in on the core. "Sewer Broodmother? Low quality. But clean cut." He looked at Lin, assessing the torn uniform. "Stole it?"
"Killed it," Lin said.
Jack snorted. "Sure you did, kid. I'll give you 300 Credits for the lot."
"500," Lin countered. "The dagger is at full durability."
"400. And that's charity."
"Deal."
The credits were transferred to Lin's ID card. It wasn't much—enough for a week of bad food—but it was start-up capital.
"I need a bow," Lin said. "And arrows. Carbon fiber if you have them, wood if you don't."
Jack pointed to a barrel in the corner. "Trash bin is over there. Used training bows. 200 credits each. Quivers are 50."
Lin walked over. The barrel was full of discarded academy gear—weapons that rich students had used once and thrown away when they upgraded.
He rummaged through them. A cracked crossbow... a longbow with a frayed string...
Then he found it.
A Recurve Bow. The paint was chipped, revealing the grey composite material underneath, but the limbs were straight, and the string was waxed.
[ Item: Standard Academy Training Bow ]
[ Rank: Common (Grey) ]
[ Damage: 8-12 Physical ]
[ Draw Weight: 40 lbs ]
It was perfect.
He grabbed a quiver of basic practice arrows.
"Keep the change," Lin said, transferring 250 credits.
He walked out of the shop, the quiver slung over his shoulder, the bow gripped in his left hand.
The night air of Sector 7 was cooling down. The streets were emptying as the curfew for non-Hunters approached.
Lin turned a corner, heading back towards his apartment block. He needed to rest. Tomorrow, he would try to enter the lowest level Dungeon: The Slime Caverns.
"Hey. Wallet."
The voice came from the shadows of a construction scaffolding.
Two men stepped out. They wore leather jackets with the emblem of the Red Vipers—a notorious street gang that preyed on the weak in the slums. They weren't Hunters, just thugs with illegal kinetic knives.
"Nice bow," the taller one sneered, flicking his knife open. The blade hummed with a low-voltage charge. "Academy trash? Did you steal that from school?"
Lin stopped.
He looked at the two men.
[ Human (Civilian) ]
[ Level: 1 ]
[ Threat: Low ]
Normally, Lin would hand over his credits and run. That was the survival rule of the slums.
But tonight, the math was different.
"Go away," Lin said calmly.
"Wrong answer," the thug laughed. He lunged forward, swinging the knife. He expected the kid to flinch, to cower.
Lin didn't move his feet.
With his new Agility of 29, the thug's movement looked pathetic. It was like watching a video at 0.5x speed.
Lin raised the bow.
He didn't nock an arrow. He didn't need to kill them—not here, not in the open where the drones might record it.
He just swung the bow like a melee weapon.
The composite limb of the bow smacked into the thug's wrist.
CRACK.
"Argh!" The thug dropped the knife, clutching his broken wrist. "You little sh—"
The second thug charged.
Lin side-stepped. He drew an arrow from the quiver in one fluid motion—a blur of speed that the thug couldn't even track.
He nocked the arrow and drew the string back.
HUMMM.
A strange sound filled the alley. It wasn't the creak of the bowstring. It was a low, resonant thrumming, like a heartbeat amplified through a speaker.
[ Talent Activated: Eternal Hunt ]
The air around Lin distorted. A crimson aura, thick and viscous like blood, began to leak from his body. It swirled down his arm and infused into the arrow.
The cheap plastic fletching of the practice arrow turned a deep, glowing red. The arrowhead seemed to vibrate, heavy with the weight of Lin's life force.
7.78 True Damage.
He aimed at the concrete wall right next to the thug's head.
LOOSE.
BOOM.
It didn't sound like an arrow hitting a wall. It sounded like a grenade.
The arrow slammed into the concrete, burying itself up to the feathers. A spiderweb of cracks exploded outward from the impact point, stone chips flying like shrapnel. A shockwave of red energy rippled out, knocking the thug onto his butt.
The two men stared at the hole in the wall. That shot would have blown a human skull apart like a watermelon.
They looked at Lin. The crimson aura was fading, but his eyes were cold.
"I said," Lin knocked another arrow, the red light flaring up again. "Go away."
The thugs didn't need to be told twice. They scrambled over each other, leaving the knife behind, running into the darkness.
Lin lowered the bow. He felt a slight drain on his stamina—using his HP as ammo had a cost, but with his high regeneration, he recovered the "spent" health in seconds.
He looked at the hole in the concrete.
"It works," he whispered.
He touched the rough surface of the wall. That was just 1% of his power.
If he grinded... if he turned the Slime Caverns into a graveyard...
Lin looked toward the city center, where the massive Dungeons towers pierced the sky.
"Time to go hunting."