## Chapter 1 – 01. Matching
#01. Matching
Name: Kang Hyun-woo, Age: 21.
Just your average, run-of-the-mill college student.
Except for one minor detail: he’s a V-card virgin.
Of course, being a virgin at 21 isn’t exactly rare. There are even older guys who haven’t popped their cherry yet.
“Ugh, just rationalizing, aren’t I?”
Just because there are plenty of virgins out there doesn’t make me being one something to be proud of.
In fact, spending over a year in a major that’s overwhelmingly female, and still not managing to snag a girlfriend, or even a close female friend, definitely screams “problem.”
“I don’t think my face is too bad…”
My face and body are decent enough that I shouldn’t be giving off a bad impression from the get-go.
‘I’ll have to enlist soon, and when I get back, people will treat me even worse than they do now. Does that mean I’ll graduate college still a virgin?’
At least when I was in high school, there were plenty of other virgins besides me, so it wasn’t a big deal.
But now that I’m an adult, graduating from college as a virgin is something I just can’t accept as a man.
“Ugh, but going to a brothel to lose it is a last resort…”
My pride won’t let me lose my virginity in a place like that.
I’d rather stay a virgin until I’m 30 and become a wizard.
*Growl-*
“…Guess I’ll grab a bite and think about it.”
I tore open a pack of ramen, like always.
The poor college student’s soulmate.
Then it suddenly hit me: if I were in a relationship, I’d be eating pasta that costs over 20,000 won a plate instead of ramen that’s less than a thousand won a pack.
And that would be 40,000 won for just one meal, including my girlfriend’s.
Just imagining it sent a chill down my spine, no AC needed.
Yeah, dating is a luxury my wallet can’t afford.
“Looks like it’s about cooked. Where can I put this?”
I used my textbook as a makeshift trivet and placed the pot on top.
This damn thick textbook cost me a fortune to buy and bind, but the professors just teach with PPT slides.
Now I just have an unnecessarily expensive ramen coaster.
But what can you do? If you don’t like it… what can you do?
There’s nothing a student like me can do. I’ll just eat my ramen.
*Slurp-* As I took a bite of ramen and scrolled through NewTube, a news article that I’d normally ignore caught my eye.
The headline was ominous.
[New S-Class Hunter Emerges in Japan!]
“Here we go.”
If my memory serves me right, this makes Japan a hunter superpower with a whopping 11 S-Class hunters.
In comparison, Korea only has 4. Considering we also have to defend against monsters coming from the North, that’s nowhere near enough.
“Well, Korea’s… relatively safe, I guess.”
It’s hard to complain that my spawn point sucks when I’m not in South America or Southeast Asia.
People die from monsters sometimes, but it’s not like the country’s been taken over by villains.
As I was lost in thought, a woman who had just become an S-Class hunter walked onto the stage in the video.
She was drop-dead gorgeous.
The Japanese Prime Minister was on the stage, and he put a medal around her neck, then they laughed and shook hands while being showered with camera flashes.
Watching that made me lose my appetite, so I swiped the phone aside.
I’m jealous.
I don’t have to become an S-Class hunter, but if I could just awaken some awesome ability, I could ditch this life of eating ramen all the time and get a pretty girlfriend.
Of course, I knew that would never happen, that such a life was impossible for me, so I just let out a hollow laugh.
It felt like there was a bitter taste in my mouth.
Still, I didn’t want to waste the ramen, so I shoved it down and grabbed my phone to find something to cheer me up.
*Ding-*
[Otherworld Dating App has been installed]
Just then, a notification popped up.
“…?”
It was a notification that an app I’d never seen before had been installed.
“What’s this?”
Obviously, I didn’t install it.
How would I have time to install something like that while watching NewTube?
“Did I accidentally click on an ad when I put my phone down earlier?”
That was the only explanation.
No matter how advanced voice phishing technology is, there’s no way a random app would install itself without me clicking on a link or receiving a text.
“Anyway, a dating app…”
I’ve tried random chatting a few times before.
I quickly gave up because everyone just went into the room and asked, “Pics?” to find out your gender, but this was my first time with a dating app.
“Should I give it a shot?”
It might be fun to try as a time-killer.
From the shoddy icon design to the weird name “Otherworld Dating App,” it felt like it was hastily made by some small company looking to make a quick buck and run, but I wasn’t planning on paying anything anyway.
Usually, these apps give you the first match for free, but the problem is that the match is probably a company employee.
When I launched the app, a really half-assed design greeted me.
[Otherworld Dating App]
[Shop][Matching][Profile]
“…Look at this main screen design.”
It was practically made with MS Paint instead of PPT.
Well, the important thing isn’t the UI design.
As long as it’s enough to kill time, whether it’s a company employee or AI, it’s fine.
After thinking for a moment, I went to the profile first.
Sure enough, it was a place where I could enter my information, and uniquely, there was also a place to write my race.
“So that’s why it’s called Otherworld Dating App? The concept is kind of interesting.”
I just wrote down my age and name for now.
Next, I went to the shop. Like I said before, I wasn’t planning on paying, I was just curious about what they were selling.
[The shop function is currently locked]
“What?”
What’s this? Weren’t these guys trying to make a quick buck and run?
I couldn’t understand why the most important shop was locked.
“Come to think of it, I don’t see any ad banners either?”
Do they even have a revenue structure?
If money isn’t the goal, did they make this app just to steal personal information?
But if that’s the case, there are probably easier ways to do that, and besides, personal information isn’t worth that much anyway.
“Well… it’s not my problem if they don’t want to make money.”
All that matters is that the dating app matches me well.
Hoping that they at least made the AI a little interesting, I pressed the matching button.
*Ding-*
[First match has been confirmed]
[Thank you for using this app. Please complete the survey before proceeding with the match]
“A survey?”
[Preferred Race]
[Preferred Gender]
[Preferred Age Range]
[Preferred Hobbies]
·
·
·
·
·
“Wow…”
Now that I see this, it’s not an app made to make a quick buck, but just an app made for fun?
Otherwise, there’s no way they would have put races in the survey items, or openly put things like corpse dissection in the preferred hobbies.
“They nailed the concept.”
At this point, it started to get pretty fun.
I don’t know who made the survey, but there were so many different items that it was clear they put a lot of effort into it. About 50 or so?
While admiring it, I filled out the items with a mix of seriousness and fun.
I set my preferred race to elf, gender to female, and age range to around 500 years old. As I continued to fill out the items, time flew by.
[Thank you for your cooperation]
[Matching will begin soon]
[Please note that matching may take some time]
I started to get a little excited at the thought that the app developer might reply with a 500-year-old elf concept.
“…It’s taking a while.”
Contrary to my expectations, matching wasn’t as easy as I thought.
‘Did everyone go home because it’s evening? Then can’t they at least match me with an AI?’
In the end, I didn’t get a match even after I finished eating my ramen.
I didn’t like waiting too long, so I just threw my phone down and cleared the table.
As time passed, I even forgot that I had started the matching.
*Ding-*
A strangely grating notification sound rang out.
I picked up my phone at the sound.
[Matching Complete]
“Oh, finally.”
The developer is finally working.
With a strangely expectant heart, I quickly touched my phone.
*Flash-*
“Huh?”
[Moving to Planet EB-17]
An enormous light that burst from the screen swallowed me whole.
***
Deep beneath the World Tree, the last known god on Earth, lies a vast cavern unknown to most.
Even the people of Pelledia, the nation of elves built around the World Tree, are unaware of its existence.
In such a place, there was a prisoner who had been imprisoned for 200 years.
“…Resilia.”
Even in the pitch-black darkness, her blonde hair, shimmering emerald eyes, and long, unhuman ears sparkled.
She was an elf.
She was so beautiful that it was impossible to imagine that she had committed a crime so great that she had been imprisoned in this inescapable hell.
“How much longer must I stay here…”
Her soul, echoing emptily in the cavern, scattered without anyone to hear it.
Although elves are said to live dozens or even hundreds of times longer than humans, 200 years of imprisonment was by no means easy.
The hellish loneliness of not having anyone visit, and the fact that the reason she was imprisoned here was the betrayal of her most trusted subordinate and beloved friend, were all factors that gnawed at her mind.
Now, all that remained for her was love and hate for her friend, and unanswered questions.
Why did you betray me?
What was so important?
In this place where there was no one to answer, even that question echoed emptily and then scattered.
“…I’m lonely.”
Iris, the only prisoner in the underground cavern, was exhausted by the growing loneliness.
Can you even imagine?
She had spent 200 years without contact with anyone.
There was no conversation, no one came to visit.
There were no guards or other prisoners.
Iris was the only one here.
This unfillable emptiness and loneliness was not something that could be endured.
Even for her, a high elf who had lived for hundreds of years, interaction with others was so precious.
“Maybe…”
Her eyes darkened as she looked at a sharp piece of rock lying on the floor.
‘If I end this miserable life, will I be at peace?’
Unlike humans, elves, who are known to be without desire, can frame those who follow them for power and imprison them in an underground prison for 200 years, and can even commit the great sin of ending the life given to them by God for the sake of peace.
The moment her frail, white hand grasped the piece of rock.
*Flash!*
“Eek?!”
A tremendous ray of light burst forth from the dark void where not a single ray of light had ever shone.
She squinted at the long-awaited brightness, and glimpsed a faint figure in the light.
“Ugh, ughhh!!! Shiiiiit!!!”
“…A person?”
A person was falling from the sky.
Without even thinking about what was going on, Iris instinctively drew up her magic power.
She used magic with the little magic power she had left.
Levitation.
Kang Hyun-woo, who was falling in real time, was descending slowly towards the ground as if he had deployed a parachute.
Thanks to this, Kang Hyun-woo was able to safely set foot on the ground. If it hadn’t been for Iris’s quick action, Kang Hyun-woo would have been ‘something that used to be a human’ by now.
Kang Hyun-woo, who barely stood up with trembling legs, stared blankly at Iris standing in front of him.
“…An elf?”
