#sl au

It behaves a lot like how the stuff from the Upside-down that the Mind Flayer controls in Stranger Things does. The hysteria Virus spreads to anything it can to gain control and is a hive mind. It talks to Spark a lot, trying to convince him that everyone he knows is against him and wants to kill both him and the virus.

Once the virus has successfully infected someone by forming in their brain, it begins to slowly show signs of existing. It starts off with vivid red patches of skin, auditory hallucinations, and the Hysteria Virus talking to the infected to reassure them that they are safe with the virus and that no one has to know about it. It slowly starts forming eyes in laces that shouldn't be eyes on the infected's body- usually their hands, neck, ankles, and smaller eyes around their normal set of eyes. In later stages, it connects the infected to the hive mind, forming more eyes around the infected's body, more vivid red patches of skin, and forms eyes inside of the infected's body (inside of throat, mouth, and on organs)

Spark, being the Hysteria Virus's host, is the main entity that the Hysteria Virus responds to. He can't control if it will infect someone in particular, but he can influence it to spread and has the ability to create a crystalline substance with it. Spark can also see out of any eye that the Hysteria Virus has created, and can communicate with anyone else who is infected as long as that person had already gotten to the stage where they can hear the Hysteria Virus.

He kinda looks like some kind of Undertaker tbh-

I debated giving him a sword, dagger, or gun, but then I thought "nah, he gets the lantern. He doesn't need a weapon, he holds ✨the lantern✨"

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There's also a ton of women hunters in the RGRC as well tbh. Men tend to prefer raiding aspects of hunting but women tend to fall into resource work more to a degree.

So anyway, Jinwoo has been in red gates before, but most specifically, in resource collection teams when they're hiring and desperately need all hands on deck. They offer hefty bonuses just to sign up the first few times around and you get bonus pay based on what the team in total can scrounge outta the red gate so the urge to work hard and get as much as possible is actually REALLY appreciated amongst the RGRC teams, which Jinwoo really likes cause they appreciate him collecting as much as he can and moving stuff around to help out asap. Like, he gets injured fighting in raids regularly, but a red gate can often be a great way for him to make a ton of cash quickly as they take advantage of the time dilation effect to get as much work done as possible. Even an E rank hunter is still above the most fit unawakened person (and no risks of ES) so Jinwoo being an extra body working hard to bring in as much X resource as possible really helps the RGRC teams a lot. Jinwoo even has some gear he keeps for himself for when he gets a call from RGRC teams looking for extra hands on deck.

Is he still as broke as he is in canon? Not quite, but he's not doing too hot. Jinah does need a ton of money for when she heads off to college and he's investing the majority of his money into her education, so he can occasionally afford a better quality knife every once in a while, but he splurged on a small shield he uses as well and that is the real thing that keeps him from getting too hurt, but he's still had plenty of close calls in the past and will get some, even though it's not quite as bad as canon. It's super small but he uses it to tank a lot of attacks for him and he replaces it like once every month or so.

It (the cheap shield he bought) literally costs him like 12X the amount for a normal cheap knife he uses but it tanks a lot of damage for him so he considered it well worth the money. He bought some geared up shoes that give him faster speed to a degree as well. His shield will break on him in raids though and it breaking is when he's really in hot water tbh. He doesn't want to get a shield or replace it or shit like that as it's expensive to maintain it, so he'll often wear it out until it's in pieces and then get a new one.

He would rather just spend money on good shoes that give him swifter speed. He used them plenty of times on and off the battlefield. Taking that into account, he's spending it on gear, just not enough for defense though. He's building an assassin build, not a tank build. He made himself an assassin build in canon before he became a necromancer, I can see it plausible he would prefer gear that lets him not get hit and additional swiftness given his weak physical condition as a Hunter. He see it as momentum = greater force and greater force = stronger blows to hurt the monsters before they can hurt you to the point you fight for your life.

He can generally manage to avoid being hit plenty of times in an E rank dungeon but a D rank one is where he really fights for his life and he knows it. Plenty of E rank hunters only sign up for Hunter's Association work as freelancers akin to the RGRC teams where they have freelancers and mainstays.

Go Gunhee was well aware that there would be plenty of resources a dungeon offers that should be collected to lower the cost of gear for hunters as a whole, and E rank hunters being weak enough that they aren't good for most raids, but still strong enough they should be put to use somehow, and the red gates offer plenty of resources the raid team would be too tired to effectively collect … so having E rank hunters alongside D rank hunters in the RGRC at the very least puts these hunters to work in ways that allow them to support other hunters who are much stronger quickly.

Most E ranks tend to work as mainstays for the RGRC teams. Even amongst E ranks, Jinwoo is weak but he calculated the odds in his head about surviving the dungeons and he's got the opportunity to get good gear via the RGRC team calls and he's gonna make it work just well enough that he can use the jobs he has to his advantage. He just needs to last until Jinah already has her dream job of being a doctor, or maybe even before that if she has another job that pays well enough and he's got enough savings to cushion the blow of the medical bills while he gets more education to qualify for a high-paying RGRC job while working as a mainstay.

He's very much considering jobs that don't need more than a year of schooling mind you, and there's plenty of work to be found that doesn't need too much schooling to qualify for it. He's thinking about becoming an elevator mechanic cause everyone likes to use elevators to get around, but not a lot of people think about what happens when they break down and need repairing and those guys that work on them?

They get paid a LOT for not too much schooling so he's def considering that as his next job after Jinah's future is stable enough. Then after that he could transition into inspector work. He made this plan specifically so that Jinah wouldn't be too worried about him getting killed in a dungeon in the long run but the more he looked into the pay of an elevator mechanic the more tempted he is to save up as much money as possible for this. Looking into scholarships isn't bound to be too much of a waste of time for his and Jinah's future plans, and if he finds something that can help Jinah, well… it's fine to consider having a backup plan for if he finds himself incapable of hunting.

But anyway, he's actually got a relatively good job set for him in resource work as a whole tbh. His manager Park Mina, a fellow E rank, has noted his incredible perception and smarts and clocked him as amazing for detail-based dungeon-resource inspection.

RGRC teams have two main types of workers, freelancers and mainstays.

Freelancers- This is mainly hunters in general, and Jinwoo technically counts as this even though he's so good at optimizing resource stuff that he's been offered a job as a mainstay. They don't have the perks that mainstays get in terms of covered healthcare and risks, but the bonus pay moves a lot of people to sign up as freelancers in hopes of getting some of that major cut.

Mainstays- They are either low ranked hunters (mostly E ranks but there's plenty of D ranks amongst their number) or even unawakened, the unawakened tend to be moved closest to the gate so they can evacuate more quickly, but they are the first people to be called as they hold the RGRC team job as their main job and thus, get paid more on the regular as they work way more hours. You can also qualify for some job advancement positions only if you are a mainstay as well, which had been a tempting part of why Jinwoo did consider switching when he got offered it but he realized that the healthcare is better with the Hunter's Association than with the RGRC teams so he works with them both to make the most of his situation (and a secret bet with Park Beom-Shik to cash out money with him). Still, he's well known enough that they call him just to check for any potential resources that might have been missed even if they think they got everything, and most times he can find something extra that hadn't been picked up yet.

Jinwoo is a freelancer who shows up to the red gates so much that he's considered almost a mainstay if not for the fact that he's committed to the Hunter's Association as a hunter for his main job cause they offer amazing discounted healthcare for his mom and a hunter's discount (like how military members can get discounts, hunters that raid a certain amount of dungeons qualify for a discount too). He figured he's got a relatively good job that he can afford to skip a call the moment a red gate shows up (it's 3 missed calls in a row without reason, they'll let it slide if you were in a coma for a while/had some other excuse to justify NOT being able to take a call, and you're out and they call on a biweekly basis, so he dips the moment a red gate shows up and he makes sure not to miss the next call afterwards/make up for the missed call, and they try not to call him up for too many dungeons cause they're well aware he's got a gig with the RGRC), the shield takes enough damage for him that he can actually not worry about fighting for his life too much, and he's also invested into a pair of shoes with speed boosts on them to boot for if he really needs to take it easy but also has to move around.

If he missed 3 calls in a row, he's just demoted to freelance raiding hunter until he reapplies for mainstay raiding hunter benefits for the Korean Hunters Association, not fired. The Korean Hunters Association has to share plenty of hunters with the RGRC so they try not to loose as many people as possible as they need the hands available given that low rank hunters do have a safer option that many prefer.

His shield, a buckler, isn't a very big one and takes the brunt of the damage for him everywhere in the dungeons he goes, red gates or otherwise. He invested in it the moment he got the chance to have some protection as he figured a shield could protect him in a lot more places than any piece of armor and a small shield was all he could afford so he went with that and he loves how it helped him out so much in blocking attacks that could have hurt him really badly. It can't protect him everywhere though.

Jinwoo knows that the larger the amount the collections teams bring in as a total for the teams = bigger bonus payout and that's why he's so good at it, and plenty of other freelancers love him for that. He also is pretty perceptive at noticing resources in general and that is why he tends to be a pretty valued resource collections worker. The average combat hunter doesn't know this but the RC teams LOVE him.

Jinwoo also likes them (RGRC people) a lot too, they're very kind to him and he gets paid well by them regularly, it's just that he's signed on with the Hunters' Association cause he's getting discounted healthcare for his mom there as ES is pretty expensive (the maintenance for the ES machines has a hefty price tag and the hospital usually put the costs onto the patient's family/whoever will pay for the hospital bills unless there's another organization that'll pay for the costs as well, the RGRC has a copay thing for ES patients related to the RGRC members while the Hunters Association covers it fully).

The pay from RC bonuses can vary (minimum is rather small, but the bonus pay varies depending on the amount that had been harvested from the gate, which can get VERY large), which isn't very good for supporting a lot of people but Jinwoo knows how to stretch a dollar out quite a bit, even doing mystery shopping to grab free stuff for Jinah and himself (oftentimes he's just getting stuff like gum and candy but it's a nice treat to surprise Jinah with and occasionally he can even treat his sister out while also reviewing a restaurant).

He knows how to stretch a dollar quite far, making a lot of stuff work for him in canon and stressing quite a lot about the bills, but the fact that he made it work in canon shows that he's incredibly resourceful and he devotes whatever extra resources he's got to being prepared for the worst.

There's also a bet he's been rigging in favor of Beom-Shik, the guy who got killed in canon after he came back for a D-rank raid that went badly... he is set to win a bet that will give him a ton of money cause Jinwoo makes sure to hold out on the offers from the RGRC until he wins and then they split the money. That's the main reason he had been holding out on the RGRC until that fateful double dungeon ...

But anyway if you like what you read here, go check out the fic I've been writing as well!