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"Is grinding my job now?"
Han Jihan

The Gamer is a Naver LitRPG webcomic first released in September 2013 and is, as of this writing, still on-going. English translations can be read officially on Naver

What would happen if your world suddenly turned into an RPG? What if you could level up, raise your stats, and embark on a lifetime of adventure, loot and genre tropes galore?

Enter Han Jihan, an 18-year-old Ordinary High-School Student. He's recently broken through The Masquerade and discovered that the world is full of dangerous monsters and people with supernatural gifts hiding in plain sight.

He is no mage, martial arts master, or monster summoner. His own power is meager in comparison, but it is unique: A lifetime commitment to gaming meant his gift manifested in him becoming a living RPG character. Whenever he looks at people, he can see their titles, level, and stats. He can tangibly and immediately raise his skills and overall stats by performing tasks and gaining experience. Monsters that everyone else considers a dangerous nuisance inexplicably drop equipment he can use. His injuries recuperate by consuming ordinary food or resting overnight. He is able to learn skills way above his apparent Power Levels by allocating his stats correctly. And he is prepared to take on this brave new world through grit, Genre Savvy, copious amounts of Level Grinding and the fact that none of his opponents can figure out how video game logic works.

So far, the story has been split into four seasons: chapters 1 - 86, chapters 87 - 123, chapters 124 - 195, and chapters 196 onward.

Not to Be Confused with The Gamers.


This webcomic provides examples of:

  • The Aggressive Drug Dealer: The Church of Masks gives everyone the option to leave their Hive Mind... after they've been forced to join it, at which point they've grown dependent on the connection. This is explicitly compared to drugs, and while the Church insists they are all free, outsiders are less certain.
  • Artistic License – Geography: When Shin Sun-il mentions the "great powers" in the Abyss, he states that the real world is divided in regions, three of which are France, Germany... and Europe.
  • Attempted Rape: At first mentioned by Hwan Sung-Ah when she and Jihan were on the run from human traffickers, but explicitly shown in season 2's "Great Labyrinth" arc where Jihan stumbles on it occurring. Accidental or not, Jihan killing the would-be rapists to prevent it is not normally considered "murder" in most of modern society.
  • Awesomeness by Analysis: Part of the comic's appeal is Jihan figuring out not only how his powers work, but also how to min-max them to gain an edge. His 'A Gamer's Mind' ability allows him to be this, making him able to keep calm and think logically in dangerous and stressful situations (like combat) and making him immune to psychological status effects.
  • Badass in Distress: Several confirmed badass characters find themselves in difficult situations. Kwon Shi Yun is the first, against the black leather gang, then comes Lolikano against the Black rock golem faction, both she and Hwan Sung Gong are really in trouble in "The Company Arc" and now Han Jihan, officially a badass by the standards of all the above is in serious distress in chapter 115.
  • Balls of Steel: The ogre's panties are nearly indestructible and negate damage below a certain threshold. They have also been worn by an ogre already. Protection of his sensitives makes Jihan consider wearing them anyways, but he ultimately decides to sell them.
  • Battle Aura: Martial artist users in the abyss give off an aura when they use their powers.
  • Berserk Button: For your own safety, refrain from:
    • Hurting Jihan in front of Sun-Il.
    • Threatening Sun-Ah in front of either Sung-Gong or Jihan.
    • Being an Abyss-based human trafficker in front of Jihan. There have been two occasions thus far where Jihan has seriously considered murder (outside of the Grand Labyrinth, where being killed is traumatic, but not permanent), and they have both been against people who kidnapped people for magical purposes.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Just when Hwan Sung-Gon is about to be defeated by the President of the Company, Jihan suddenly appears below him to heal him, having done the same with the Witch of Slaughter and Aholting, while Gnome takes down one of the Eight Pillars of Sealing that were preventing Sung-Gon from using his full power.
  • Black Eyes of Evil: Hwan Sung-Gon has them.
  • Black Market: The Abyss Auction website is used to trade through one.
  • Cap: The monsters formed by an illusion barrier have a level limit of 120, which is only one more reason it gets more and more difficult to become stronger past a certain point.
  • Cessation of Existence: Hell constantly tries to devour the souls within it.
  • Character Level: A major aspect of Han Jihan's power is to rank everything according to levels.
  • Chick Magnet: Deconstructed realistically:
    • A lot of different women express interest in the main character in fairly inappropriate ways after very little contact with him. Rather than reacting like a harem protagonist would, he mostly finds it weird and creepy, to the point of pointing out that Lolikiano's treatment of him probably qualifies as sexual harassment.
    • When multiple girls start gossiping about him and get upset over things they THINK he did, he's realistically upset over being treated like a bad guy for things he had no control over, and it carries over to his revulsion toward their advances.
    • After being teased for years by Poong Sae Young, and noticeably getting violence delivered upon himself if he so much as looks like he's interested, it's no surprise that he's Oblivious to Love.
  • Childhood Friends: Jihan and Sun-Il knew each other since kindergarten, which contributed to how close they are and why whenever one does something dangerous, the other is quick to get worried and angry. By extension, since Sae-Young is Sun-Il's cousin and they live together, she and Jihan also count.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The reason for All Myths Are True. Imagination energy can be used not only to produce gods, but to even make things that were previously fictional into reality, like the Necronomicon. Human imagination also causes mythical locations to be brought into being, such as the various Hells.
  • Conditioned to Accept Horror: Jihan encounters two full parties of "players" in the Great Labyrinth dungeon who have gotten so accustomed to the "rules of the game" that they actively enjoy being dragged into the maze every night. What's worse is that in chapter 136, he finds out that the "game" is insanely popular and is being played by millions of people worldwide, and sexual assault, if not outright rape, is so commonplace, the victims are far too calm about it.
  • Contrived Coincidence: When Shi-Yun and Sung-Ah transfer to Jihan's school, they just so happened to get assigned to his class.
  • Crapsack World: The Abyss is not a nice place. The vast majority of individuals involved in it see humans as little more than numbers and most of the ones who want to keep Gaia's restrictions in-place, are doing it out of self-interest. Only a few select groups in the entire world care for regular people.
  • Cut Lex Luthor a Check:
    • Played with: Abilities can be used to make money in the Muggle world, but only as long as it doesn't threaten the Masquerade. Using discrete abilities to -for example- make your wares more eye-catching, appealing, or just plain better is perfectly fine even if all of your clients are Muggles. Being too overt however (like making yourself win the lottery) will make the world itself kill you.
    • Jihan also gives the Random Drops to Shin Sun-Il to sell them (or extract the magic out of them), netting him large amounts of money.
  • Deflector Shield: The Mana Shield ability works like this. With a little grinding, Jihan might be able to make it permanent.
  • Dishing Out Dirt: Gnome, obviously; Jihan provides the MP, while she takes care of the actual casting. Gaining the ability to summon Gnome also gave Jihan the 'Earth Element Affinity' status, improving his own use of the element.
  • Drama-Preserving Handicap: The author's answer to make sure that Jihan doesn't become such an obvious Game-Breaker thanks to his Gamer ability is to make sure that his Wisdom stat remains relatively low so that Jihan doesn't make the necessary, or completely correct, decisions regarding how to power up his abilities. For example, his lack of Wisdom causes Jihan to rush into things without fully thinking the process through such as suddenly dumping all his extra stat-points into Intelligence despite knowing that it would help build his judgement, and thinking-process, if he put points into Wisdom. Somewhat justified though; since Jihan has already put a lot of points into Int, it's very difficult to get extra Int points by doing regular actions or training. Meanwhile, Strength and all his other stats can be increased relatively easily by grinding related actions. So, since he can't effectively grind Intelligence anyways, he dumps all his stat points into it to artificially raise it. The problem comes in with how difficult it is to grind Wisdom, since making intelligent decisions requires a good Wisdom to begin with. The problem is starting to be addressed with Jihan investing points in Wisdom as of chapter 66.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: The story begins with Jihan seeing everyone's name, levels (or ??) and occupation over their heads. This has disappeared entirely at some point, and now he, and we, only get that information when he uses "inspect" or "observe" on another character.
  • Emotion Eater: Hell has been known to harvest the pain of those within.
  • Empowered Badass Normal: It's possible for people to develop abnormal powers through training. Jihan realizes that one of his longtime best friends is like this based on his title and unusually high level.
  • Energy Economy: Hell's currency is derived from souls, which demons can eat to increase their strength.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: As Han Jihan starts conquering territories belonging to organizations he judges to be evil, a good chunk of the Abyss gets more and more ticked off at him. But when he confronts Yeonhwa, they decide to stay out of it and watch, because Yeonhwa's actions are bad enough to creep out a lot of even them.
  • Explaining Your Powers to the Enemy: Truth Wagon explains how his spatial magic works to Jihan and Sun-Il in such excrutiating detail that the boys actually wish he'd just shut up about it.
  • Gay Option: In the What If? extra where the main character's life becomes a dating sim, Shin Sung-Il is on the list of datable characters.
  • Genius Loci: It is theorized that the world itself is alive. The world's will is usually referred to as God or Gaia. It enforces a Masquerade on 99% of the population, and punishes those who cross it by causing them to die via freak chance. It blesses the occasional ability user with tremendous power.
  • God Needs Prayers Badly: The more followers a god has, the more powerful they become. The newly formed Arc Company in fact had so many followers via the Grand Labyrinth game that it was able to prevent a Kill the God attempt on himself by a group that casually considers killing gods achievable. As of Chapter 154, he had over 120 million followers, and the Dan Ui guild predicts it will only increase.
  • Guns Are Worthless: Guns are used in the Abyss, but only by the lower level people in it use them since magic and Supernatural Martial Arts tend to be far more effective.
  • Final Solution: Early on, Shin Sun-Il tells Jihan that ever since the Second World War, members of the Chunbumoon clan regularly visit Japan and murder every man, woman, and child with supernatural powers who they can find, in order to prevent Japan from ever gaining the power to pose a threat to Korea again. They only make an exception for Buddhist sects, which is why the vast majority of Japanese Abyss members are demons.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • As expected, a few chapters after Jihan is warned about the possibility of Mana Farms coming after him in order to exploit his powers, a pair of people from the Abyss who capture people and sell them to the farms appears and comes after him.
    • Chapter 26 has Jihan mentioning that the Class Representative have higher level than most students in his class excluding himself, Sung-il, Shi-yun, and Sung-ah. Specifically, her INT is the highest in the school before Jihan grinded his INT. Come chapter 102, she's trapped in a dungeon, decided to train herself just to survive in case she's trapped in a dungeon again, and Jihan realizes it's best to shape her up into a wizard because of her absurdly high INT. A Squishy Wizard, but at least she can survive the dungeons and the Abyss.
    • During the Church of Masks arc, Lolikiano explains to Jihan that while people being used as resources is the norm in the Abyss, it is wasteful when the person in question has rare, unique, and/or powerful abilities. For those guys, they may be Made a Slave via magic, be the victim of some other method of coercion to force cooperation, or even killed and soul stolen since the related powers can still be used but not as effective as when the person is alive. The Church of Masks tried to do to that Jihan but Jihan turned that around and used magic to force their leader to be his subordinate, effectively removing the threat to himself and gaining control of the Church of Masks on top of it.
  • Healing Hands: One of Jihan's most useful abilities, which he uses to heal anyone that needs it, such as Sun-Il or Sung-Ah.
  • The Heartless: Negative emotions fester up in illusionary spaces, forming monsters known as scraps. If left alone, they will build up power and form into demons, endangering even ordinary civilians.
  • Hell: Where the wicked dead go to be punished for their sins. Where good people go is unknown, but they know for sure that there is no heaven.
  • Hidden Depths: Jihan can't see his mom's level. This is indicative of very powerful characters; the only others he can't see are Shin Sun-Oh, and Sung Ma-Hyun, one of the big cheeses in the underworld's Black Market.
  • How Do I Shot Web?: The first few issues mostly deal with Jihan learning how his new abilities work.
  • Human Traffickers: Possibly the most common crime in Abyss. In the Abyss, Might Makes Right and a huge portion of those in it see other people as nothing but resources. They usually go after weaker magic using targets that aren't affiliated with a powerful group or personally strong enough to defend themselves. But it isn't unusual for them to go after Muggles too.
  • Hyperactive Metabolism: Justified and Lampshaded. Food heals HP, so the main character responds to a particularly damaging attack by immediately pulling some bread and milk out of his Hyperspace Arsenal and frantically stuffing them down his mouth as fast as possible... in the middle of a fight. The reverse is also true: later on he realizes that food is just a healing item to him, and he never actually feels hungry.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Jihan says that Poong Sae-Young is quite the violent girl. She objects by punching the daylights out of him.
  • I Owe You My Life: Several characters over the course of the story show this. Downplayed with Sun Il whose healing is accelerated by Jihan, but played straight by several others such as Hwan Sung-Ah, Kwon Shin Yun, and Hwan Sung Gong.
  • Instant Home Delivery: If you buy from the Abyss Auction website and pay for quick service, the products are instantly delivered to you via drone.
  • Ironic Hell: Hell traditionally gives living visitors a glimpse of what things will be like for them if they get sentenced there. Jihan's hell would, naturally, be to have an arcade where the games crash right in the middle of playing them.
  • It's A Small Net After All: It takes less than an hour of research for Jihan to find the website that the Abyss Auction works through. Justified in that a high-ranking agent of the Abyss gave him a business card.
  • Irony: Despite how Jihan's obsession with games is mocked, along with his gamer ability (before they realize how much potential it has), some of the characters who appear later do look like RPG characters.
  • I Want Them Alive!: In chapter 34, a pair of what are essentially human traffickers with superpowers appear with the intent of kidnapping Jihan and selling him to a Mana Farm.
  • Jack of All Trades: Jihan may be primarily a wizard, with his ungodly mp regeneration and fondness for spamming mana arrows, but add in a powerful healing ability, elemental summons and golems, solid close-combat skills, and a ton of passive and active defenses that work together to make him practically invulnerable, and you have a very well-rounded and competent character.
  • Kill the God: Discussed, attempted, but ultimately Averted. The Dan Ui Guild tried to kill Arc Company, but couldn't. They have killed gods before, but they only had about a million followers. Arc Company has over a hundred times that, making him much more powerful than the previous gods, and ultimately, the Dan Ui Guild were forced to let him go since while they could theoretically kill him even if he was that powerful, they themselves would lose too much of their fighting power in the process and despite how he came about, he's not dangerous enough for them to pull out all the stops.
  • Knowledge Broker: Along with goods and lives, the Abyss Auction deals with information.
    • They also deal in rare objects that can be found in the Abyss. Poong Sae-Young warns Jihan to be especially careful after hearing about him because if they discovered more about his ability, they might want to abduct him for it, or for a Mana Farm, where Ability users are held prisoner and have their mana siphoned to be bought and sold.
  • Lemony Narrator: Jihan's system notifications and item descriptions often have a snarky tone, which he finds odd. Who exactly is writing these is unclear, but judging from the way his powers work, it might be the world itself.
  • Level Grinding: Han Jihan does this constantly, both to increase his overall level and the levels of individual skills.
  • Limited Social Circle: Excluding family, at the beginning, Jihan and Sun-Il explicitly only had each other as friends. They were never close to other kids at their school. Jihan even tries to claim he has school friends besides Sun-Il but admits he hasn't hang out with any of them as of late. However, as time goes on and Jihan's involvement in the Abyss increases, that circle slowly expands as they make more acquaintances and even friends in the Abyss. Excluding their fellow friends in the Abyss though, they aren't close to anyone else in school.
  • Love Dodecahedron: Jihan's Unwanted Harem has some interesting inter-personal relationships. Lolikano is quite fond of Hwan Sung-Ah, and finds Kwon Shi-Yun "interesting" in the same way as she does Jihan, but was initially somewhat hostile to Kim Yoo Jin, until the latter started to gush over her, and still is rather "reserved." Kwon Shi-Yun goes into Clingy Jealous Girl territory, complete with Battle Aura and blood lust upon mention of either Hwan Sung-Ah or Lolikano, but strangely has no problems sharing with Kim Yoo Jin, even going so far as to actually invite her to the date with Jihan, and only playfully competing as to who is in the lead. Kim Yoo Jin is very fond of Kwon Shi-Yun, and gushes over Lolikano, but is unaware of Hwan Sung-Ah. Poong Sae Young loves to tease Jee Han for all it's worth, but it's yet to be shown if she even has feelings for him, or how she'll react to the harem situation, even though she's at least aware of Kim Yoo Jin, if not Hwan Sung-Ah, and actually approves, or at least tolerates it without complaint.
  • Mad God: The reason it is forbidden to create an artificial god. It is difficult to control what kind of god will result. While a good god would be fine, and an evil god could be managed, a mad god would be a disaster.
  • Mage Tower: Groups of sorcerers typically construct these to act as Amplifier Artifacts.
  • Magic Missile Storm/Rain of Arrows: Spinning Mana Arrow becomes cheaper and creates more projectiles the greater its level grows, and it's really fast, too. It's no surprise that it becomes Jihan's most used attack.
    • Exaggerated with Infinite Spinning Mana Arrows, which continuously creates and shoots arrows until he drops it or runs out of MP.
  • The Maker: While Gaia is the Genius Loci of Earth, there is a deity of an even higher order of being responsible for creating Earth and probably other worlds in the first place.
  • Masquerade: Enforced. If you break it, the world itself will kill you. Long ago, magic could be used freely and publically, but 2000 years ago, the will of the world and several of the strongest gods put in place the Masquerade and banned all sapient species besides humans from living outside of illusion barriers, feeling it necessary to keep the world safe. Subtle magic is still fine, and abusing Muggles in an illusion barrier is also acceptable so long as you don't overdo it, but if you perform magic to the extent that it breaks past the Weirdness Censor and Muggles in the normal world notice that something is wrong, Gaia will wreak vengeance by inflicting bad luck until you die. Gaia also forbids more than 1% of the population of a country from joining the Abyss. If the Abyss's population exceeds that number, Gaia will inflict the same fate upon the extras.
  • Mana Shield: Shin Sun-Il suggests that Jihan learn this ability, saying that it's common among western ability users. Thanks to Jihan's Int-based build, focus on defense, percentage-based MP regeneration, massive MP reserves, Summon Magic, and low-cost Deflector Shield, it would help to make him even harder to kill.
  • Mental World: They feel almost the same as the real world, but have different rules. They can be used for sharing memories or psychic combat.
  • Might Makes Right: Between the Masquerade and the Superpower Lottery, this is the mindset of a majority of the Abyss by far. One guy even finds it hilarious when Han Jihan tries to protest against being enslaved on the basis of human rights, saying he hasn't heard that word in the Abyss for ages.
  • Min-Maxing: The bulk of his abilities are possible because he's pumped his Intelligence to a ridiculously high number at the cost of everything else.
  • Mission from God: One of the strongest gods, Woo Sa, charges Han Jihan with reaching the "source of the world" before less scrupulous people do so and cause The Unmasqued World at best, if not The End of the World as We Know It.
  • Mood Whiplash: Jihan's first meeting with Mahyeon Sung starts serious as the latter explains that information on Jihan is spreading in the world of the Abyss. Sung then asks Jihan to start using his company's Abyss Auction website, with all the unnecessary flair of a sales pitch, before going right back to serious as Sung passes Jihan a warning that because information on him is spreading, he's in danger.
  • Monstrous Cannibalism: When negative emotions fester, they form weak monsters variously called minions or scraps in instant dungeons. On their own, they pose relatively little threat, but they become stronger monsters more universally called demons by eating each other. Jihan still feels queasy seeing that happen in front of him despite how strong he's gotten and how long he's spent in the Abyss.
  • Moral Myopia: The antagonists are all quite fond of yelling "you bastard" at Jihan, after they've attacked him or someone he cares about and he retaliates.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: Anything is an acquirable and grindable skill that will get its own dramatic description. Including dishwashing.
  • Mundane Utility: Han Jihan uses his inventory to hold his backpack, and takes advantage of his increased intelligence to study more efficiently.
  • Mutually Exclusive Magic: Trying to learn multiple Supernatural Martial Arts with different energy patterns will generally result in the conflicting energies killing the practitioner. However, Han Jihan's "Gamer" power allows different martial arts to be naturally fused into a more powerful martial art. The process of fusing them is still lethal, but even that has work arounds, such as Healing Hands, using an Immortality Inducer, or the power to come Back from the Dead.
  • Mr. Exposition: Truth Wagon just loves explaining the intricacies of his powers. He just goes on and on and on. The reason he indulges in this is because he's a researcher who's often cooped up in a lab and loves the opportunity to show off his intellect since those are rare to come by.
  • New Skill as Reward: Hwan Sung-Gon offers to acquire some rare skill books for Jihan as thanks for helping him rescue his daughter and take down The Company. Lolikiano Mistream, who also participated in the fight, decides to take Jihan in as her student for similar reasons. He also acknowledges this trope and tends to ask for pricey skill books as rewards for his actions.
  • New Transfer Student: Kwon Shi-Yun suddenly transfers to Han's class not long after he encounters her, along with Hwan Sung-Ah. For extra comedy, Hwan Sung-Gon transfers as a teacher.
  • Nobody Poops: While in most situations, like in Jihan's high school, it could practically be handwaved that visits to the bathroom occur off-screen, but as of the introduction of Kim Yoo Jin to the abyss, all characters are spending extended amounts of time, on screen, inside ID barriers (10+ hours in chapter 112-113), where there are no such facilities, and nobody ever complains about it, although people still get hungry and still need to stop for a break to eat.
  • Obstructive Code of Conduct: The Interference Law prevents those with powers from affecting the real world with the penalty of death. The extent of the law is rather vague but it basically boils down to 'don't do anything too obviously supernatural'.
  • The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The story occasionally cuts to a group of villains that have vague plans and objectives. That being said, they are hardly seen doing much besides planning, working with and through allies, and sending messages on their private chat group. It's not known what they had to gain from everything they did, but despite unexpected setbacks, they have been making progress to whatever their goals are. When they do take direct action, though, it is incredible, since one of them (Fan Rui) was capable of causing a Korea-wide crisis on his own.
  • One-Man Army: Most people in the Abyss are affiliated with a group for their own protection. The ones who aren't tend to be individuals who can hold their own against such groups like Sung-Gong. The One-Man Army of the setting is the Harem King, who needs three of the nine most powerful organizations in the world to team up for him to even have a chance of losing.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Demons are born from the emotions of mankind. In particular, they tend to be born from negative emotions. Hell acts as a sort of garbage facility, trapping many of them, but new demons can be born in the normal world as well. They usually start out looking like monsters, but after building up enough power, they tend to go through a Bishōnen Line, due to the fact that they were born from human thoughts in the first place. According to Yeonhwa, their relationship with humans is of both love and hate due to the nature of their creation.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different:
    • It is implied that some lost souls wander through illusion barriers.
    • Wicked souls are damned to Hell as ghosts. Many degenerate into monsters and ultimately suffer Cessation of Existence as Hell or the demons within eat them.
  • Our Gods Are Different: There are effectively three different orders of god.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: They come off as the typical slow zombie. They're actually spirits of the dead given shape inside an Illusion Barrier. Meaning that they don't have physical bodies and simply dissolve after being destroyed leaving nothing behind. Except when they're destroyed by Han, they drop items due to his ability.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: Standard practice for organizations like Chunbumoon and later, Han Jihan himself, when dealing with Human Traffickers and killers in the Abyss. As opposed to killing them, they basically take them into slavery themselves and force them into People Farms, using them as a Living Battery to build up and save Mana.
  • People Farms: There are slavers who kidnap individuals with magic power and use them on magic-farms as mana-batteries for energy, in addition to exploiting any particular talents they may have. The main character, being a developing but exceedingly promising magic user themed on video-game mechanics is in severe danger of being a target of these slavers while he is still leveling up and developing the skills needed to defend himself.
  • Phantom Zone: All ability users have the ability to create 'Illusion Barriers' where they can fight without affecting the real world (or breaking the Masquerade). They usually reflect the real world, but some ability users are able to create custom illusion barriers for specialized purposes, and there are a few special illusion barriers that contain mythical locations. A few of said mythical locations even travel around, distorting what would otherwise be a reflection of the real world.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Discussed in Chapter 111. Lolikano constantly berates Jihan for failing to call her regarding Yoo-Jin's plight. What she refuses to let him mention, is that for several chapters, she's been ignoring his calls and text messages.
  • Post-Modern Magik: The Abyss Auction use the internet and cellphone apps to sell spell books, ingredients, weapons/armor, accessories, info, and people. It also does express delivery straight to the customers' homes with drones.
  • Power Glows: When using their powers, members of the Cheon Bu Guild show off their Battle Aura.
  • Pragmatic Villainy:
    • Most Abyss residents avoid targeting Muggles too much, not because they give a damn about harming innocent lives, but simply because if they cause too much damage to The Masquerade, they will tick off Gaia, which will most likely react by further tightening its restrictions to reinforce it.
    • There is an ongoing conflict between those who wish To Unmasque the World and those who want to maintain the status quo. For obvious reasons, ending The Masquerade would produce a massive amount of chaos and probably get a lot of people killed, but neither faction actually gives a damn about that. The faction that wants to release the masquerade wants to be able to exercise their power freely, while the status quo faction has adapted and simply finds it a convenient way to protect their power.
  • Rank Inflation: Chapter 29 introduces two ranking systems - there's an A-E system used by Hwan Sun-Gon, his summons and the Abyss people, and also a high-mid-low system used by Chunbumoon.
  • Rainbow Pimp Gear: One piece of powerful equipment Jihan finds is a pair of ogre's panties. The description even helpfully notes that it's been worn by an ogre before. He declines to wear it.
  • Reincarnation: One of the possible fates for a dead soul if they don't end up in Hell.
  • Retcon: The President started being called Chairman in chapter 152. This was likely to reflect how company hierarchies actually work, since the Chairman of the Board of Directors is the one who has ultimate legal authority while President is technically one rank below CEO.
  • RPG Mechanics 'Verse: The Gamer ability turns Jihan's life into this. It's a weird example, since the setting as a whole apparently isn't one; it's more that his superpower is to interact with the world as if it were a game.
  • Rule 63: In-universe for a What If? extra.
  • Seeking Ultimate Strength: Han Jee-han awakens to Sudden Game Interface, and being a natural gamer, sees to make his stats go up, actively seeking artifacts or villains to increase his numbers. This puts him on a radar of the Ancient Conspiracy who sees him as an Outside-Context Problem, while he in turn finds them interesting opponents to rise against.
  • Seers: An extremely rare ability in the Abyss. There are as few as 10 in Korea. Scry vs. Scry is known to result from their attempts to war over which of the possible futures will come true.
  • Shout-Out: Half-Life, Tower of God and - of course - Dungeons & Dragons are referred to by name. There's a parody of Mabinogi too, it being a Korean MMORPG.
    • In chapter 151, there's one to Ace Attorney, of all things.
  • Ship Tease: Of varying degrees:
    • There's been some slight teasing with Shi-Yun, even though she's been mostly Out of Focus. Her strait-laced manner actually broke when she unintentionally said something potentially suggestive to Jihan. note 
      • Said teasing increased exponentially in later chapters where we quickly find out that Shi-Yun is potentially a Clingy Jealous Girl thanks to Jihan's Gamer ability. From the start of a major battle where the two have paired together (thanks to a newly discovered Party System, ala Sword Art Online) he quickly discovers how to use it to get in contact with the Witch of Carnage. Due to the Witch acting predictably toward him, he immediately gets a notice that he detects a "Strong Bloodlust" in the vicinity. As Shi-Yun is the only one around, no points for guessing who's letting said aura off. Her getting angry at Jihan for this type of thing becomes a Running Gag for the rest of the battle.
    • There's been comparatively more with Sae-Young. Since she and Jihan are more or less Childhood Friends, Jihan can't help but notice Sae-Young's growth into quite an attractive young woman. Her skimpy choice of attire certainly doesn't help, and neither does her provocative manners or habit to tease Jihan for all its worth.
    • The Witch of Carnage, aka Lolikiano Mistream took an instant liking to Jihan, openly flirting with him in the way an older woman would with a younger man and even giving him her number. After the battle with the Black Rock clan, she "marked" him by stealing his first kiss. Talk about coming on strongly.
    • By far though, Jihan has had the most Ship Tease with Sung-Ah. Jihan immediately sympathizes with her plight, and realizing that his ability can help her and even potentially save her, he wonders if he was born just for the purpose of helping people like her. Sung-Ah's normally sullen personality and her condition serve to make scenes featuring her very poignant, and Jihan always, without exception, does his utmost to be nice to her and help ease the burden of her curse every time they meet. He strives to allow her to experience things normal girls get to do all the time that she can't because of her extremely frail body and because of her father keeping her close to protect her. Most blatantly, when she offered to repay a favor and he thoughtlessly asked for a date, she accepted.note  Later, Jihan vows that one day he will save her, and Sung-Ah is moved to tears.
    • And now, we can add Class President Kim Yoo-Jin to the list, after Jihan saves her when she accidentally falls into the Age of the Great Labyrinth dungeon. He gives her a staff to protect herself, trains her as a wizard so that she can use her intelligence to great effect, allows her to stay in his room after she tells him she is afraid of falling asleep, and she ends up sleeping on top of him after she has a nightmare. She even asks him out on a date once or twice. If that's not a Ship Tease what is?
  • Something Only They Would Say:
    • Jihan convinces his best friend, Shin Sun-Il, of who he is... by making a ridiculously bad Star Wars joke while Shin Sun-Il is choking him and demanding to know his real identity.
    • The same happens a bit later with Sae-Young, under basically the same circumstances. He convinces her that he is the real Jihan by...revealing he knows she wears black lace silk panties since several years ago note  which again, is something only he would know since he went into her room once without her permission.
  • Spell My Name With An S: The main characters' names, basically without exception, all change drastically between translation teams, and sometimes between chapters translated by the same translators. Han Jihan is the most frequent victim, but it's getting to be quite noticeable with the ladies of his Unwanted Harem like Kwon Shi Yun, "Sheyon" and Kim Yoo-Jin, "Jugin" (who still keeps getting called "President" or "Prez" even after she explicitly asked not to be called that).
  • Spirit Cultivation Genre: It's hardly the world's core, but cultivating energy via Supernatural Martial Arts is one of the major sources of power in the Abyss.
  • Sudden Game Interface: The Trope Codifier.
  • Summon Magic:
    • Black Summoner is Hwan Sung-Gon's ability.
    • Later, Jihan gets into it by summoning Gnome.
  • Supernatural Martial Arts: One source of power in the Abyss. Different martial arts styles have their own energy patterns. These energy patterns are Mutually Exclusive Magic, which will cause any martial artist that tries to learn incompatible martial arts to die when the energies conflict. Martial artists grow stronger by gathering and refining their energy. It is possible for martial artists to gain Enlightenment Superpowers, which gives them an edge even over unenlightened martial artists with more energy.
  • The Bus Came Back: After several chapters without being seen, Hwan Sung-Gon, Hwan Sung-Ah, Lolikiano and Horutipia Aholting make their return as Jihan calls them for help to rescue Kim Yoo Jin.
  • Time Stands Still: Illusion barriers can have this effect, though they don't last long.
  • Took a Level in Badass:
    • Han Jihan when he encounters the Black Leather Gang for the second time.
    • Kim Yoo-Jin takes quite a few thanks to Jihan's support.
  • To Unmasque the World: Some members of Ninth Gate are tired of Gaia's restrictions and are willing to risk The End of the World as We Know It if it releases them.
  • Tranquil Fury: Thanks to Gamer's Mind, on the few occasions we've seen Jihan really angry (see above), he's been creepily calm. It's always been in response to people from the Abyss thinking they could hurt either the helpless or someone he personally cares about (or, on one occasion, both at once) with impunity. Still, seeing as he was actively considering cold-blooded murder on two separate occasions when faced with Abyss-based human traffickers, the fact that this comes so easily for him is starting to become a serious worry for both him and his friends.
  • Truce Zone: In Chapter 130, Kwon Shi-Yun notes that the amusement park introduced in chapter 128, where she, Kim Yoo Jin, and Jihan had their group date, is one between numerous mutually hostile clans from The Abyss, and even then, only because many of their members are victims of "The Great Labyrinth" dungeon and the clans are all more focused on finding the perpetrator than fighting each other.
  • Unskilled, but Strong: Shin Sun-Oh wants to make sure that Jihan averts this. He wants Han to come train with him even though Han insists that he's already figured out how to become exponentially stronger by exploiting his ability. Shin then rebukes him by stating that raw power is useless without skills and experience.
  • Unsound Effect: Several actions, such as "grab", "grin" or "smirk" have sound effects of their own.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Both Hwan Sung-Gon (summoner guy) and Kwon Shi-Yun (red haired girl) transfer into Jihan's school as a teacher and a student respectively, but no one besides Jihan feels that anything is amiss. Especially egregious is how no one seems to care about Hwan's MIB style attire.
  • Weak, but Skilled: While Jihan's level of firepower is nothing special, as far as the story goes, he has continuously beaten foes far stronger than himself because his skill levels and gaming knowledge make him far more skilled than them, and nobody in the Abyss has ever gone up against a "gamer" type ability before.
  • Weirdness Censor: Noted by Jihan on several occasions. There's the introduction of the very physically attractive Kwon Shin Yon to his predominantly male classroom, as well as Hwan Sung Gong's MIB attire, and in chapter 115, nobody noticed the magic staff he was carrying. (There's also the fact that few people have noticed when he uses "inventory" in public.)
  • What If?: Chapter 21 has a few B-Side Comics depicting these. The first is for if Han Jihan's power was a Dating Sim instead of an RPG. The second is for if everyone was subject to Rule 63.
  • Winds of Destiny, Change!: What the "Luck" stat really means. Those in the Abyss with a high luck stat aren't just Born Lucky, they also have the ability to distort destiny itself around them.
  • World Tree: All Myths Are True and there is more than one world tree, though all of them are connected.
  • Year Inside, Hour Outside: Illusion barriers. The Chunbumoon's training area has a time flow ratio of 10:1.

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