Min Byung-Gyu

Slender in build, this young man kept his black hair spiky, his eyes dark, and his complexion strikingly pale. He first turned up in black slacks and a white shirt beneath a black coat. The fourth assault on Jeju saw him swap that out for teal-black armor worn under a gray hoodie, a mace of brownish gold in hand and a spellbook holstered at his right hip. Once raised into a shadow, his skin took on a vivid blue glow, blank white replaced his eyes, a frayed cloak with a black hood draped over him, and a teal book of spells sat in his right grip.

Gentle by nature and quick with compassion, he carried a loathing for violence so deep that he stepped away from hunting early, intending a calm civilian life as a teacher of Korean history right up until the government declared a fourth strike on Jeju. Duty tugged the other way, though, and he signed on for the raid even while hating the fighting and the hunter's life it demanded. Jinwoo would call his heart a good one, a judgment proven when, newly raised as a shadow, he healed Cha Hae-In through his own choice alone.

His body was sound, yet he quit the profession all the same, the decision tracing back to Jeju, where he had endured each of the three doomed search-and-destroy operations. That third attempt, made with Eunseok and his friend Baek Yoonho, collapsed and cost Eunseok his life, a blow that shattered him and sent him into retirement. Even so, he flew to Japan when the nation requested the experience of Jeju survivors, and the team learned there that the ants were sprouting wings and menacing their neighbors; he relayed this to Baek by phone. Roughly five days ahead of the fourth raid, drinking with Baek, he talked of teaching history and vowed never to return to that island.

One day later he reversed course and enlisted with the party. Across the island he buffed allies and patched their wounds at speed, but felling the Ant Queen summoned the Ant King, who maimed every one of them with a single strike apiece. Aware that no one would last without his magic, he triggered his Disguise skill and labored to mend them, only for the King to detect him, run him through the chest from behind, and swallow his head, absorbing his power as he died shouting at Baek to flee. Once Jinwoo had cut down the King, he raised the healer as a shadow to rescue the dying Cha Hae-In; with her saved, he respected Baek's plea and closed the extraction so the spirit might rest. Cha afterward dreamed of his ghost begging her to caution Jinwoo about handling his powers, a warning that turned Jinwoo toward hunting their origin instead of chasing raw strength.

The Cup of Reincarnation erased his demise. In the remade world he lectured on Korean history at a university, shifted into medicine, wed Oh Seonjoo, and lived free of his hunter past save for the odd nightmare of a giant ant killing him. Two years past the Great Cataclysm, by then in his sixties, he served as a doctor and Association evaluator, earning fame as the nation's lone physician researching stardust and even building a doping test for it. When Suho arrived for a rank reassessment and called forth Beru, the small ant nearly tipped him into panic; Beru, knowing him and owing a familial debt for his very existence, granted him protection. The blessing could not return his lost healing might, by then absorbed into Beru's essence, but it awakened him as a C-Rank Healer. He declined to join a guild, sure his stardust work served better.