Chapter 5
My name is Baek Jong-su.
I was fifty years old.
I wasn't married.
No—more accurately, I couldn't get married.
I was a B-rank Hunter, and my nickname was Hyena.
Wondering why I'm talking about everything in the past tense?
Because I'm dead.
People always said that when you died, you ascended to the afterlife.
So I had no idea why I couldn't remain in this world, yet couldn't cross over to the next either.
Instead, I'd been wandering around this dungeon for days.
I'd watched the sun rise and set about seven times, so I guessed it had already been seven days since I died.
Even my funeral was already over.
So what exactly was keeping me here?
Why couldn't I move on to the afterlife?
Is it because I was a Hunter?
During all my years as a Hunter, I had never gotten even a single drop of blood on my hands.
Wondering how that was possible?
The nickname Hyena came from my specialty.
I was a survival expert who studied how to stay alive inside dungeons.
Young Hunters, talented Hunters, and powerful Hunters can survive through sheer combat ability. But Hunters like me—old, weak, and without any special skills—win simply by enduring.
That had always been my philosophy.
I wasn't the kind of Hunter who fought.
I was more like an aging department manager desperately clinging to his position while retirement crept closer.
I simply survived.
To keep myself working as a Hunter, I made use of the one talent I had and became a survival specialist.
How to gather edible food inside a dungeon when a Hunter party's supplies had been cut off.
Survival strategies for lasting as long as possible when all your food was gone, you needed to leave the dungeon, but you were trapped inside.
How to distinguish between things that were safe to eat and things that absolutely shouldn't be touched.
Things like that.
Throughout my long career as a Hunter, I researched and studied those subjects, then made a living teaching what I'd learned to others.
Apparently, I gained a decent reputation.
Some Hunters who had learned from me or received my advice invited me directly into their parties.
Others introduced me to people they knew.
I followed those parties into dungeons, earned experience, and whenever some decent items dropped, I'd negotiate my share and take something useful for myself.
That was how I lived.
It was also how, even at fifty years old, without any remarkable specialty, ability, or weapon, I managed to maintain my position as a B-rank Hunter and make a steady living.
That was why people called me Hyena.
Just like a hyena, I stuck close to powerful people and carefully picked up whatever they left behind.
And I endured.
Again and again.
So why did someone like me die?
Why did a man who proudly called himself a survival expert fail to survive?
Arrogance.
That was the reason.
Arrogance.
I'd lived for around fifty years.
And even after becoming a Hunter and spending years surviving inside dungeons, I'd never once thought of myself as old.
Sure, I didn't have any special skills.
I wasn't rich either.
But I had never thought of myself as an old man.
Then came the day I died.
I had been gathering carnivorous plants inside a dungeon when a D-rank monster called a Juggler suddenly appeared.
While trying to avoid it, my foot slipped slightly.
Normally, I would've regained my balance immediately.
But strangely enough, my body felt heavy that day.
My reactions were slower.
The Juggler didn't miss that brief opening.
It lunged at me.
Its jaws closed around my neck in a single attack.
And I died from blood loss.
It was one of the lowest-ranked dungeons, a place where only low-rank and bottom-rank monsters appeared.
But I had simply grown too weak to face them alone, avoid them, and study them like I used to.
As I lay collapsed on the ground during my final moments, one thought came to mind.
Who's going to arrange my funeral...?
My parents had passed away long ago.
And I'd lived my whole life single.
There really wasn't anyone who should've been responsible for my funeral.
Strangely enough, that was what worried me.
Pretty ironic...
Some people had envied the freedom I had as a single man.
"Sir, it must be nice living alone. You don't have to worry about anyone."
"I want to live like you too, Hunter. Earn enough to get by, study whatever I want, and enjoy life on my own."
"You can't do dangerous work like this when you've got a family. You start worrying about staying alive, you know?"
"We can't go into that dungeon. We've got people waiting for us back home. Haha."
"There's no one waiting for you at home, right, sir?"
They were right.
No one was waiting for me.
Whenever I returned home, I entered a dark apartment with all the lights turned off.
The only calls I ever received were from insurance companies or advertisers.
Until my mid-to-late thirties, living alone had actually been pretty nice.
Marriage?
Dating?
"I'll meet someone good later."
"I'll think about that after I earn some money and get settled."
"There's plenty of time. I'll deal with it later. I've got more important things to worry about right now."
But after enough time passed...
There was no later anymore.
When that later finally became the present, all that remained was emptiness.
Eventually, I became so accustomed to being alone that it simply became my everyday life.
And only after dying did I finally find myself thinking about it.
"What would my life have been like if I'd had a family too?"
What if I'd lived a life where someone waited for me?
What if I'd returned home every evening to a warm meal waiting on the table?
What if there had been someone who held my hand and said—
"You worked hard today."
The truth was, even though I hid it... I was lonely.
On the day I died...
When I instinctively realized that the end was approaching, certain memories flashed through my mind.
When I was young...
Whenever my father came home from work, there would be a steaming bowl of soup waiting on the table.
When I was twenty and stumbled home drunk...
My mother would come out of her room, rubbing her sleepy eyes, and ask—
