Song Chi-Yul

Deep wrinkles and a lean build betray Chi-Yul's middle age, with blonde hair atop it all. His left arm is gone, taken from him amid the terror of the Double Dungeon. At his first showing he kept things plain, dressed in a simple blue tracksuit.

Lively and sharp-tongued, Chi-Yul holds a fierce sense of duty, refusing to quit hunting even after the loss of his arm. He watches over his comrades, evident in his bond with Jinwoo and Joohee, and has stood ready to die for them more than once. He likes a plan but will take a risk when called for, listens readily to what others think, and pushes no one toward anything against their will. The Double Dungeon disaster left him remorseful over failing as a leader, and he kept his missing arm as a lasting reminder of that mistake.

A kumdo man before awakening, Chi-Yul found bitter irony in drawing the mage class as a Hunter, his years of honed swordwork rendered useless against dungeon beasts. He believed the strange fate held some purpose, and across the years he earned a respected name as an independent C-Rank professional, the sort who would have joined a major guild had age not already caught up with him.

When a D-Rank Gate broke open at a construction site, Chi-Yul, being the highest-ranked Hunter on hand, put himself forward as raid leader with no one objecting. His fire magic cleared the magic beasts inside, after which the group turned up a second entrance he suspected was a rumored Double Dungeon. Instead of alerting the Korean Hunters Association, he proposed the assembled Hunters claim the boss and its rewards on their own, leaving the choice to a vote among the seventeen. Leading them past ominous doors, he found a hall of giant stone statues and the Commandments of Kandiaru carved within the Cartenon Temple. Once the doors sealed and a statue beheaded a fleeing Hunter, he understood the deadly rules in play, and he lost his left arm to the Statue of God's heat vision as the killing began.

Through the ordeal Chi-Yul leaned on the young Jinwoo, who decoded the temple's commandments one by one: kneel before the statue, take shelter beside the instrument-bearing effigies, and survive the altar's countdown. As Hunters fled or died, the group dwindled from seventeen to six. When an altar demanded a sacrifice, Chi-Yul, blamed by Kim Sangshik, resigned himself to die, but Jinwoo's plan revealed the doors would open in proportion to those who stayed. With Joohee drained of mana and unable to walk, Chi-Yul chose to remain so the others could escape, only for Jinwoo to insist he carry Joohee out instead. He knocked her unconscious to bear her away, thanking Jinwoo with a heavy heart.

Reports afterward suggested Chi-Yul might struggle to keep hunting with one arm, perhaps even retire. Months later, after besting one of his kumdo pupils, the pupil in truth the S-Rank Cha Hae-In, he answered an Association summons for a raid. On the way he reunited with Jinwoo, marveling at how the once-frail E-Rank had changed and learning his junior had no memory of leaving the Cartenon Temple yet had somehow regrown his lost leg. The raid reassembled most of the Double Dungeon survivors, and despite tension with Sangshik, Chi-Yul harbored no grudge, knowing he too had abandoned Jinwoo that day. When probationary prisoners were forced into the party, he reluctantly accepted it and volunteered to lead, moved that Jinwoo would vouch for him again.

Deep in that dungeon, the Association agent Kang Taeshik turned killer, slaughtering prisoners and the survivors Sangshik and Jeongho to bury his crimes. Chi-Yul stood between Taeshik and his friends, borrowing the fallen Sangshik's sword and a buff from Joohee to fight as the swordsman he had always been. Though outmatched in speed, he stunned the assassin by countering his strikes, eventually setting the ground ablaze with fire magic. Jinwoo intervened before the killing blow, revealing a power that exposed his second awakening, and ultimately slew Taeshik. To shield his junior, Chi-Yul claimed the kill himself before the Association, lying out of gratitude and a sense that Jinwoo had his reasons for hiding his strength.

When the Jeju Island operation arrived, Chi-Yul stepped back out of retirement, joining fellow reservists to defend the southern peninsula while the country's finest battled the Ants on the island. When the broadcast cut out and surviving Ants later flew toward Haeundae Beach, he and the reservists braced at the shore, only for a blindingly fast entity, Beru, to cut the swarm down before landfall. Afterward he was seen training Cha Hae-In at his kumdo school. Within the fresh timeline the Cup of Reincarnation brought about, Chi-Yul shed his Hunter memories, got his missing arm back, and went back to instructing students at his school.