My Genre Is Different From Everyone Else’s - Chapter 0
The wooden lantern, carved in an unusual fashion, pierced through the heart. Its sharpness made it hard to believe it was made of wood. Red stains marred its black surface, though they instantly vanished with a flick of the wrist. The previous owner of the lantern would have mourned such a sight.
But why was it that the previous owner was the previous owner? Because they couldn’t say a thing, even if their precious weapon was being misused.
The veil attached to the black dokkaebi mask, with horns protruding from the top, fluttered with the rough movements of its wearer. The motions were unbecoming of the neat, black dopo that accompanied it.
But that was also of little concern.
‘Just because someone wears the clothes of a scholar doesn’t mean they’re a scholar.’
—thought I, a (muscle) mage[1] who had great potential to become a warrior but ended up in the wrong class.
* * *
About two years ago. The sky collapsed. Literally.
White lines streaked across the bright blue sky, like shattered panes of blue glass. The fragments of the broken sky fell to the earth, bringing down buildings and crushing people beneath its immense shards of sky.
What remained was a single ball of fire, which we once thought was the sun. A strange black mass, whether it was the universe or something else, occupied the space that had once been the sky. People stared, stunned, at what had only moments before been their sky, and then, not long after, began to scream.
Unknown beings, like things you would see in a video game or movie CGI, trampled over the remnants of the sky that still lingered in the air and crossed into our world. They were monsters. There was no other way to describe them.
Half a year of hell.
That was what the survivors called that era. To survive, you had to run and hide. Monsters weren’t just monsters for no reason. A single puff of their poisonous breath was enough to kill, and a light swipe of their hands meant death. No funerals could be held as the bodies of those who had perished during that time could not be recovered.
People hid underground, surviving between the crevices of ruined buildings. If you wanted to eat, you had to steal from those who had food. If you wanted to live in a safer place, you had to kill those who already occupied it. It was an age overrun by monsters—a time when even ordinary people turned into fiends.
Half a year after the sky collapsed, we stumbled upon a chance to fight back—an opportunity discovered purely by chance.
It was a coincidence and a miracle, born out of the longing of a young man who had set out in search of his parents’ dojo.
Monsters weren’t the only things to emerge from the black mass of space, or whatever it might be, after the sky collapsed.
Class officials[2]. We called them class officials.
They looked similar to humans. However, they were far from ordinary people. They possessed strength beyond human limits and abilities as well. The young man who discovered the class official in the dojo obtained the power to fight against the monsters.
With his sword, he could cut down monsters that even bullets couldn’t pierce. He brought others to the dojo, where they, too, became class changers through the class officials. This marked the beginning of our struggle for survival.
Class officials were found in various locations—dojos, libraries, and even ruined hospitals. The classes they offered were often aligned with their locations.
Some who encountered a class official wielded swords, while others fought with their fists. There were even those who gained the ability to use magic, which had previously seemed impossible. Sometimes, people even acquired the ability to heal others.
As soon as humans were able to somewhat stand up to the monsters, their visits from beyond the sky came to a halt.
Instead, monsters began to emerge from the sky shards that had fallen to earth. These creatures were much stronger and far crueller than those that had come from beyond the sky—incomparably so.
These sky shards would later come to be known as gates.
Humanity, which had barely survived after being pushed to the brink, collapsed once more once it hit a wall. The basic weapons provided by the class officials all broke in the face of the new monsters. Despite being obviously stronger than the humans of Earth, who had become helpless victims of the monsters, the class officials refused to intervene, only providing people with classes.
Their struggle lasted less than half a year.
Just as humanity was on the brink of giving up, evolved class officials, just like evolved monsters, began to appear.
Hidden class changers, as well as those who changed to higher compatibility versions of classes.
The first hidden class changer came from Korea. A young soldier, only 23 years old, named Lee Hoyeon. Following him, hidden class changers and high-compatibility class changers began to appear in various countries around the world.
* * *
“That’s not true.”
I chewed on the tip of my straw.
It had been a long time since I had watched the special broadcast, “The Day the Sky Fell.” Two years had passed since the day the soft voice spoke of. The half-year of hell, as well as the half-year struggle to survive. A year of efforts to recover.
No matter then or now, no matter how many times the TV station’s producers or narrators changed, the name of that cursed first hidden class changer never did. Of course, it didn’t really matter, but every time I heard it, I felt unnecessarily bothered.
“It was me, not Lee Hoyeon.”
The first hidden class changer. The pioneer who paved the way for people stuck in limbo to change classes anew. The person who sent the largest sky shard in Korea back to the sky a year ago. The hero of hell.
That was none other than me.
Translator Notes ˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥
[1] 힘법사 is a mage who prefers to use physical attacks instead of magic
[2] 전직관. 전직 means to change jobs, but when used in a game context, it often refers to “classes” like mage-class, assassin-class, tanker-class, etc. I don’t think this is a perfect translation of the term, but it’ll do for now </3
Storyteller Clementine's Words
I use the volume version of the raws, which means the chapters are longer than usual. The way I personally split chapters may differ from the webnovel version since I split purely based on vibes, pls keep this in mind when reading >.<
pe551
Nice