Chapter 1 - EX-Rank Veterinarian

Meoow!

"Hey there, try to hold still for me. I promise it won't hurt."

"Please, doctor. Please save our Coco."

"Of course. Don't worry."

The little cream tabby, Coco, was in rough shape.

From what I'd heard, Coco had slipped out through a door the owner left slightly ajar and disappeared, only to be found later covered in blood.

It seemed she'd gotten into a fight with a stray cat in the neighborhood.

Her eyes had taken the worst of it; she couldn't see a thing.

She was thrashing around even in her owner's arms.

"My poor Coco, what am I going to do... Hic, hic..."

I calmly extended my arms.

"Hand her over."

"O-okay...!"

The moment I took Coco into my hands.

Mrrrow?!

Startled, Coco swiped her claws.

"Ow."

Her claws left a scratch on my arm.

Mrr...!

Coco flinched.

She hadn't meant to hurt me, apparently, because she suddenly went docile.

"That's a good girl."

I didn't miss the opening and activated my skill.

'Restoration.'

A soft shimmer.

A warm light enveloped Coco, and her breathing steadied.

And a moment later.

Coco looked as though she'd never been hurt at all, her fur clean and fluffy.

Her coat gleamed like she'd just had a bath.

Even her eyes, which had been the most badly injured, were perfectly clear again.

Coco stared up at me, blinking as if she couldn't believe what had just happened.

Purrrr. Seemingly in a very good mood, she settled onto my lap and started kneading.

Then she noticed the scratch she'd left on me and tried to lick it as if to apologize, so I quietly pulled my arm away.

Your tongue's just gonna make it sting more, you know...?

Coco's owner, Kim Hyun-suk-ssi, brightened up immediately when she saw Coco fully recovered.

"Thank you, doctor. Thank you so much!"

"Don't mention it. Oh, and Coco's stomach seems a little off, so I'd recommend cutting back on wet treats for a while."

"Oh... I have been giving her a lot lately. I feel bad, but I'll have to cut back for Coco's sake. Thank you! Where do I pay?"

"The technician over there will help you with that."

"Yes, thank you again, doctor! Oh, is your arm okay...? I feel so terrible about that..."

"It's fine. Don't worry about it and have a safe trip home."

Kim Hyun-suk-ssi paid at the front with the technician's help, bowed several times on her way out, and left.

A little later, Park Ji-yeon, the veterinary technician, came in.

"Ssaem, did you get scratched again? Come here." (TL: Ssaem is used for Teacher/Doctor in this case it means Doctor.)

"I can handle it myself."

"Come on, hurry up."

Ji-yeon pulled supplies from the first aid kit, disinfected the scratch, and stuck a bandage over it.

A bandage with a cat face printed on it.

I looked down at the bandage and let out a small sigh.

'A healer who can't even heal a cat scratch on himself. Pathetic.'

I'm a veterinarian.

I was a veterinarian even before I awakened.

The reason was nothing special.

Earn a decent living, save up to buy a house, get married, have kids...

I'd just been looking for a suitable career to make all that happen, and veterinary medicine was what I landed on.

Wasn't South Korea in the middle of a serious population decline?

It was an era where statistics about young people not just skipping having children, but skipping marriage and even dating entirely, made the news constantly.

But even as the birth rate kept dropping, there was one thing on the rise.

More and more people were raising animals, dogs and cats and the like.

I'd seen projections saying that trend would only keep growing, and that was what made me choose this career.

Well, I'd always had a soft spot for cute animals too, so there was that.

I think it was a pretty solid choice, all things considered.

After all, I'd set up my own animal hospital and was making a comfortable living.

Savings were growing steadily too.

You could say I was living a peaceful life without any major ups or downs.

'If there was one big incident, I guess it'd be the Gates appearing in my third year as a vet?'

By some stroke of luck, I was an early Awakener from the first wave of the Gate crisis.

Gates, portals to other dimensions that spewed out monsters if Awakeners didn't stop them in time.

Early Awakeners were the only means of dealing with them.

The government poured massive support into us.

Every time we successfully held back a Gate, the compensation was astronomical.

People called Awakeners the children of god, the chosen ones.

And among them, healers were treated as something even more exalted.

They were the ones who drastically raised the survival rate of those precious Awakeners, after all.

But despite being an early Awakener, I couldn't participate in Gate raids.

Even though I was an EX-rank healer.

The reason was simple.

[Restoration][Rank: EX]

-Restores the target living creature.

*However, cannot be used on one's own kind.

My heal couldn't be used on humans.

Most skills that Awakeners obtained came with a Penalty.

The higher the rank and the more powerful the skill, the harsher the Penalty.

For example, America's "One-Armed Sword Saint" Chris Hedman gained the S-rank passive skill "Pinnacle of the Sword," but lost one of his arms as a Penalty.

"Super Sense" Isaac Kurman, who gained an S-rank detection skill, lost his sight.

But the One-Armed Sword Saint was famous for soloing an A-rank Gate by himself.

And Isaac, with his Super Sense, detected every danger before anyone else in his party and saved countless Awakener lives.

Lower-ranked skills usually came with Penalties that were nothing more than sneezing a bit more often, or having your strength stat drop by 1 for 10 seconds.

But my skill was EX-rank, so the Penalty was just as extreme.

And that Penalty was the inability to heal one's own kind.

A healer who can't heal people?

At first, there was a huge fuss about an EX-rank Awakener appearing in South Korea.

But soon enough, my story became nothing more than a joke on the internet.

└ lmaooo a healer who can't heal people, what even is that

└ absolutely do NOT bring this guy into a Gate. imagine he accidentally heals the Monsters mid-fight lmaooo

└ they said a healer of era was born...

└ well it IS one for the ages lol just in every wrong way lol

└ fr lol

└ EX-rank doesn't automatically mean good huh, because of the Penalty

└ watch, next we'll get "instant kill available, but if you use it you die too" or something lmao

└ lol honestly that sounds plausible

So instead of raiding Gates, I just kept doing what I'd been doing.

Meaning I continued working as a veterinarian.

My skill wasn't suited for being a hunter, but it was absolutely perfect for being a vet.

Cannot heal one's own kind.

In other words, I could heal any animal as long as it wasn't human.

And since it was EX-rank, the effect was the best there was.

Could there be a better skill for a veterinarian?

'Honestly, I might even be more satisfied this way?'

Let's be real, going into Gates paid well but was dangerous work.

Even with an EX-rank heal, if I took one big hit and died instantly, there'd be no coming back from that, would there?

And if a wide-area attack wiped me out along with the rest of the party, then money or whatever else would be completely meaningless.

'What's the point of earning a fortune if you die before you can spend it?'

Working at a small, quiet animal hospital on the outskirts of Seoul, fixing up the cute patients who came in with a single use of my skill.

Charging anywhere from a hundred thousand won on the low end to over a million on the high end, wasn't this the ultimate work-life balance job?

On top of that, because Restoration was EX-rank, unlike other healers' skills that could only fix external injuries, it could also treat internal injuries and diseases.

I didn't want the workload getting so heavy that my work-life balance fell apart, so I'd been asking my clients to please not post about this place online.

I'd casually mentioned that if too many people came, I might run out of energy and be unable to treat their pet next time, and they'd nodded at the speed of light.

'Mmgh. Everything's great, but it'd be perfect if I could at least heal my own scratches.'

I looked down at my forearm with the cat bandage on it.

I could heal animals no matter how badly they were hurt, but I couldn't fix even a tiny scratch on myself. It got a little depressing sometimes.

And as I got older, even a little scratch like this took forever to heal.

"Ji-yeon-ssi, it's Friday, so go ahead and head out early. I don't think we'll have any more clients today."

"Oh, thank you! Then I'll get going. See you next week, ssaem!"

Ji-yeon gave a cheerful bow, finished tidying up what was left, and clocked out.

I held down the fort until closing time just in case, then locked up and headed home myself.

"Alright. Now this is work-life balance!"

All I had to do now was grab a can of beer on the way home, kick back, and watch a movie. Wasn't that happiness?

Oh, should I order chicken too?

I mulled over these blissful dilemmas as I headed to the convenience store near my place.

It was Seoul, but being on the outskirts, the alleyways were pretty winding.

But I'd been living here for years now, so I knew the shortcuts like the back of my hand.

Without a moment's hesitation, I ducked into an alley, and that's when I spotted something trembling in a corner.

Mew...

"A cat?"

Looking closer, I saw a young cat huddled against a utility pole, injured and shaking.

"Oh no, what happened to you?"

Seemed like the neighborhood cats had been getting into fights a lot lately.

Poor thing.

"Come here. I'll fix you up."

Being EX-rank, using the skill didn't cost me anything, so something like this was well within the range of what I could cover.

I approached carefully.

"First treatment's on the house, so don't be scared. Come on over."

And just as I reached out to the cat, who had been sitting still.

Meoow...!

The cat dodged my hand and bolted.

"Hey, where are you going!"

I chased after the cat.

Its injured leg slowed it down enough that I figured I could catch up.

"Stop right there! If you keep being difficult, I'm charging you one minute of kneading as a treatment fee!"

But a cat was still a cat, I supposed.

It wove through the maze of alleys, dodging me left and right with impressive agility.

If it had just flat-out run away, I might have let it go, but the way it stayed just barely out of reach sparked something stubborn in me.

"Gotcha!"

I used Restoration before the chance slipped away.

Mew...

The moment the skill activated, the cat went docile amid a halo of light.

I checked over her body.

"Mm. Perfect."

I nodded in satisfaction, then set the cat down.

"There, all done. Go on home now. Live a long, healthy life."

But something was off.

I'd clearly let the cat go, but she wasn't leaving.

It wasn't like she was rubbing against my leg or trying to claim me as her chosen human or anything like that.

It was more like she was bewildered, like she had no idea where to go.

"Can't find your way back? If you go that way..."

Huh?

Soon I was wearing the exact same expression as the cat.

Because instead of the alleyways on the outskirts of Seoul, there was a forest stretching out before my eyes.

Only then did I look around and realize I was somewhere completely unfamiliar.

"What the... where is this?"

That was when a sensation I'd felt while darting through the alleys came back to me.

'That sort of rippling feeling.'

No way...

Did I... walk into a Gate?

But I hadn't heard anything about a Gate being in this area?

Did I seriously walk into a Gate that hadn't even been discovered yet?

"I'm screwed."

The Gate I'd come through was nowhere to be seen, either.

It seemed I'd had the misfortune of entering a Gate with separate entry and exit points.

"I need to find the exit first."

I scooped up the frozen cat into my arms.

"Great, I try to do one good deed and this is what I get."

This was exactly why people said being too nice never paid off.

Meoow...

The cat seemed to know it was her fault; she drooped her ears and wore a guilty, deflated expression.

"Forget it, let's just focus on finding the way out."

Fortunately, there was no immediate monster ambush the moment I'd entered.

If anything, it was so quiet it was almost unsettling.

I held the cat close and set off down the path leading into the forest.

How long had I been walking?

Deep in the forest, I spotted a large black boulder.

Not just large. Truly enormous.

'Wait, is something running down the surface?'

I moved closer and realized it wasn't water.

"Blood...?"

Hold on. Why would a boulder be bleeding...

[Who goes there.]

"Gah, you scared me!"

The boulder had spoken.

No, on second look, it wasn't a boulder at all.

Rummmble.

What I'd mistaken for a boulder was something's hindquarters.

A moment later, it turned its head.

'Wait a second.'

I stepped back a bit, and only then could I make out its full shape.

Black scales covering its body.

A long tail and thick limbs. Enormous wings.

And a long head with eyes of gold.

"...A dragon?"

Five years as an EX-rank Awakener.

In the very first Gate I'd ever entered.

[Who dares disturb my final rest.]

It seemed I had found a dragon.