TCHF 03

Chapter 03

This is usually how a crafting-type hunter makes money.

Use skills to create items.
Sell them.

Since Gru was a crafting-type hunter, making items was easy enough.

The problem was selling them.

The Hunter Market used by hunters could only be accessed by those who held a hunter’s license!

[Naturally, only hunters with licenses are allowed to trade.]

Dun-dun—!

After reading the Q&A answer on Knowledge In, Gru’s mouth drooped in disappointment.
But even for Gru, a stroke of incredible luck descended.

It was none other than a headline article on the portal’s main page.

[The breeding ground of illegality, “Onion Market.” Is this really okay?]
[To shut down Onion Market, the Anonymous Store Act must be revised…]
[Onion Market, now a route for hunters’ illegal tax evasion. Can the platform continue to evade responsibility?]

The article explained that Onion Market was a place where transactions were conducted anonymously, and even included detailed instructions on how to use it.

The comments were full of people swearing that articles like this encouraged illegal activity, but to Gru, it was nothing short of divine luck.

Gru immediately downloaded Onion Market onto his kids’ phone and familiarized himself with how it worked.

There were various ways to trade on Onion Market, but most transactions were done face-to-face.

There was just one problem—

“I can’t go in person!”

Meeting scary, powerful hunters to trade with them was far too dangerous.

“I need to hide my identity.”

Hiding one’s identity was easy with a skill.
The hard part was deciding what kind of appearance to use.

Gru wanted to look extremely scary and strong to hunters.

“Scary. Shiver-inducing.”

Thinking hard about things that were strong and frightening, he sketched a simple diagram in his head.

Strong and scary thing = Saw.

At the orphanage, the older kids used to secretly watch horror movies at night. Unfortunately, Gru happened to run into Saw unexpectedly when he was on his way to the bathroom.

He remembered trembling for two whole days, unable to sleep.

“So creepy…”

Shivering, Gru made his decision about his stand-in.

He then spent all the allowance he had saved to buy a “poorly made bear plush (extra-large),” an old remote-controlled car, and a pet cam.

[You have acquired ‘Inanimate Remote Control (D).’]
[You have acquired ‘Real-Time Recording (E).’]

Using “Pluck It Out”, he extracted each function and fused them with the poorly made bear plush.

[Item: Poorly Made Automatic Bear Plush (D)]

Next came the most terrifying and dangerous extraction of all.

From that day on, for a full week, Gru watched Saw every night.

[Skill ‘Pluck It Out’ has failed.]
[Skill ‘Pluck It Out’ has failed.]

Every day he trembled in fear, repeating countless failures, but then—

[Activating skill ‘Pluck It Out.’]
[You have acquired ‘Jigsaw’s Distorted Voice (C).’]

“I did it!”

At last, he had extracted the “Distorted Voice (C)” from Saw.

“A C-rank, no less!”

Once he fused the distorted voice into the poorly made bear plush, it was finally complete.

[Poorly Made Automatic Bear Plush with a Distorted Mechanical Voice (C)]
Speech patterns are automatically converted.

Gru moved the bear plush with the remote control.

The connection was unstable and creaked a bit, but it moved as he wanted.
On the old TV, the screen displayed exactly what the bear was seeing.

After confirming that the bear moved properly, Gru tried speaking.

“Ah— Gru is making money.”

—Gru, it is time to make money.

The speech automatically converted to Jigsaw-like phrasing, and he liked it.
In Gru’s mind, this was what the way of speaking of a top-tier hunter should feel like.

With all preparations complete, Gru researched which items sold well on Onion Market, posted his first sales listing, and the result was a success.

After receiving his first customer, he also figured out payment know-how and accepted payments only through Onion Pay.
It was less risky than cash.

At the time, it seemed like happy days would continue—but that didn’t last long.

As Gru started gaining fame on Onion Market, requests to buy items from him poured in.

“So many messages…”

Still low-level, Gru couldn’t handle that volume, nor could he accommodate everyone’s different transaction requests.

He needed another method.

After several trials and errors to stabilize his sales, months passed.

Now, Gru had become a professional peddler, directly roaming dungeons and selling necessary goods.

Gru logged into Onion Market.

My Onion Pay: 19,100,000 OP

Seeing the number filled with zeros, a hum slipped from his lips.

With this much, maybe he could find Mom and Dad?

But he soon had no choice but to realize—

The world wasn’t that easy.

Q: Hello. My Onion Market ID is IAMGROOT123. I have a question.
Recently, I tried to buy Earth Candy at a supermarket using Onion Pay, but the owner said I couldn’t use it. Other stores said the same thing.
It says Onion Pay can be used just like cash, so why can’t I use it?

A: Hello, customer IAMGROOT123. We are responding to your inquiry regarding Onion Pay.
Onion Pay can be used in the same way as cash on Onion Market or coin exchanges, but it cannot be used at general wholesale or retail stores.
To use Onion Pay at general wholesale or retail stores, you must exchange it for cash. Onion Market deposits the exchanged amount into your registered bank account after deducting fees.
Please register your account number at [My Account (link)], and we will process the exchange. Thank you.

Gru rolled his eyes as he reread the response several times.

“General retail stores? Exchange? Account?”

What was all that?!

To a financially illiterate four-year-old kindergartener, it was nothing but unfamiliar words.

When he asked the teacher to decode the message and learned what “exchange” and “account” meant, he couldn’t help but feel despair.

“Well, Gru, an account is like an internet wallet where you can put in and take out money. You’re still too young to make one.”

KABOOM—!

It felt like lightning was striking endlessly above his head.

Not knowing Gru’s feelings, the teacher handed him a Sprout Bank wallet used for playing bank games.

He studied desperately to find another way, but everything he learned was no different from what the teacher had told him.

Without exchanging it, Onion Pay was nothing more than a piece of paper from Sprout Bank.

And that wasn’t all.

At present, was there any way for a kindergartener without a guardian to open a bank account?

No matter how much he clung to the kindergarten teacher’s or orphanage director’s pant legs, such a method simply did not exist.

Because of the crime of being a kindergartener, nearly twenty million won sat uselessly in Onion Market—an utterly hopeless situation.

“I’m a failed product…”

Curled up in despair, Gru glanced at the TV.

For a kindergartener with nothing to rely on, there was nothing better than TV for learning how the world worked.

An interview with the hunter On Jurim was playing on the screen.

The caregivers fixed their eyes on the TV the moment On Jurim appeared.

“He even does interviews now?”
“Seriously.”
“He’s still ranked number one, right?”
“As expected, it’s proper power awakening in a proper face. Just look at that righteous face.”
“Exactly. He’s just handsome.”

As they said, On Jurim was a handsome man with a tear mole beneath his left eye.

If the caption “Hunter Special” hadn’t been on the screen, one might have mistaken the long-legged man lounging on a soft chair for a model or an actor.