Written and published by the company Black Seed Entertainment, the manhwa covers the story of Oh Yunsung, who lives in a world where interdimensional fissures, known as [Fractures] occur, spitting out monsters, and it's been going on for decades.
As he's drowning his sorrows, getting dumped by his girlfriend of 10 years that very day, with his brother at the latter's restaurant, which is also his job, one such [Fracture] occurs right outside and a monster known as the Shark Ape smashes through the brick wall.
Desperate to protect his injured brother, Oh Yunsung tries to fight the beast, to no avail. As the beast is getting ready to literally eat his head, Oh Yunsung notices the "Auto Hunting" button. With no other viable options, he taps it, and a power he doesn't understand takes control of his body, pushing him to his limits to defeat the creature. Naturally, he wakes up in extreme muscle pain the next morning.
Over the next four months, he trains himself to become a Hunter, one of many people specifically tasked with dealing with this phenomenon, and thus he sets his feet on the path to greatness.
Associated Tropes:
- Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: All the Hunters of China (in-universe) take extreme pride in their ancestral martial arts and are constantly trash-talking each other's clans.
- Bounty Hunter: When the story starts, the vast majority of the Hunters have come to believe that their job is just to hunt safely and turn in the monsters they kill or capture for cash, forgetting that their job is to protect the public from said monsters, so are quick to retreat and call it quits when they find themselves in over their heads. By the time chapter 92 rolls around, things are so dire that this is no longer feasible nor acceptable.
- Crapsack World: Dimensional fissures occur all across the globe, spewing out monsters, mostly on a schedule, but Hunters have to expect the unexpected because not all fissures are predictable, and even the intel provided before a hunt can be... inaccurate, as showcased on Oh Yunsung's first official hunt where a much stronger monster than advertised was present and tore through the team he was shadowing as a "total newbie."
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: When scouters tried to recruit Oh Yunsung, they swarmed on the Hunter Examinee resting area like Paparazzi.
- Empowered Badass Normal: True for all Hunters, save Oh Yunsung. The academies who teach Hunters choose the very cream of the crop, and then Hunters have to go get CE cores and training, either inheriting their core from another Hunter in a master/apprentice relationship or buying their upgrade by collecting the materials and buying it. Novice hunters usually can't afford that kind of up-front investment, so tend to have to pay back a loan by working with a firm or guild for a few years.
- Oh Yunsung is a Badass Abnormal since that all applies, but his heroic career was launched by a secret ability that boosts his training and abilities in the most efficient manner then tunes his efficiency in absorbing cores to unprecedented levels.
- Genre Shift: When Oh Yunsung visits China as part of his Hunter duties, the story goes from a Sudden Game Interface genre to a Wuxia "cultivation" genre.
- Interservice Rivalry: While the primary job of Hunters is to fight off monsters coming through the fractures, Hunters are not a monolithic group. Firms, guilds, clans, etc. are all fiercely competitive and territorial, as monster materials are a Hunter's primary source of income, and the monetary amounts are staggering.
- Morality Kitchen Sink: All flavors of morality are thrown into the mix and set on frappe for about half a minute.
- Real Politik: To protect their hunting grounds, China has tightly sealed their borders, and it's almost impossible to get a Visa without an engraved invitation.
- Translation Convention: All text in the manhwa is written in the same language, for the benefit of the readers, regardless of which language the characters are speaking. There have even been several chapters where several characters are speaking different languages, and the Language Barrier is obvious, yet the reader knows what everyone is saying because it's all in the same language.
- Underestimating Badassery: Everyone underestimates Oh Yunsung.
