SS-Rank Hunter, You Say?
"An SS-rank hunter?"
"Yeah. To be precise… I'm not even sure SS-rank is the right way to put it."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"The first reading came out as SS++."
"…Come again?"
Only then did the woman's voice on the other end of the line tremble, just slightly.
Huiyeon was on the phone with Ayeon, vice president of the Hunter Association.
"Then why didn't you just register them as SS++?"
"Well… if I explained it properly, it would get complicated."
"Keep it short."
This time, a long silence filled the line.
Even an SS++ ranking meant a mountain of protocol before the hunter could be deployed on a first assignment—reports to the commander-in-chief, and a dozen other headaches besides. In a world where a hunter was national power made flesh, an SS++ was that important.
And that SS++ hunter had, ten minutes later, simply become SSS-rank?
"Anyway, that's why I'm not sure whether to put them in the field or not. It's an ability nobody's ever seen. Stats that just… change."
"You're sure it isn't a machine error?"
"Yeah, it's not. We ran it every which way. The machines are fine. A hunter whose stats shift. If that's real…"
"Understood. So that's why you went out of your way to call. Anything else you want me to pass on to the President?"
The instant Ayeon's voice cut off, Huiyeon answered as if she'd been waiting for the opening.
"Well, if I had to add something… could you tell her maybe it's time to drop the dangerous hunter work and take a break?"
"I'll take that as a no. That's all, then."
Click.
"Hey. I was being a hundred percent serious."
Huiyeon set down the receiver and tipped her chair all the way back.
I issued the license as SS-rank for now, but by the end it was definitely SSS… I have no idea what kind of ability it is, but at least I know the stats move.
She let out a long breath and sank back into thought.
Which means they could drop just as easily… I'd love it if they'd just spill the whole thing, but it's not like I can detain them and beat it out of them…
Huiyeon had been in the hunter world far longer than her age would suggest, and she had already seen the obvious: if stats could rise, they could fall. What she didn't know was the principle that made it work.
If we can just put this to use, it would be an enormous help. Forget SS-rank. Honestly, even S+ would be enough to talk down to those insufferable hunter superpowers. And it would go a long way toward stitching Korea's hunter society back together—it's split clean down the middle as it is.
In East Asia, the country producing the highest-quality hunters was Japan. China came next. Korea held a somewhat distant third, keeping its balance by riding the coattails of the world's number one, the United States.
Maybe I should use that to try and figure out the ability.
She sat with the thought for a long while. Then, as if something to do had finally occurred to her, she turned to the computer screen.
I'm bored. Might as well check the public inquiries.
Someone in her position—director of a hunter testing center—had no business reviewing petty paperwork like this. That was work for the lowest of the low-level staff. She was doing it for no particular reason. She was simply bored. Ever since she'd taken the director's chair, her days had been filling up with exactly this sort of thing.
Let's see. Please increase the number of exam slots… The testing fee is too expensive… Please expand certification eligibility… Hm?
One line snagged her eye and would not let go.
Huiyeon heaved a deep sigh.
This was not the first time she had seen posts like this. Her face expressionless, she clattered away at the keys, filling the empty office with a hollow rattle of typing.
Hello. This is the Hunter Association, always listening to the voices of our citizens. Amid the current cryptocurrency craze, a great many rumors have been circulating. We would like to inform you that the Hunter Association is not officially affiliated with a single cryptocurrency. This includes General Centrea Status (GSC), which you inquired about, as well as Hunter Coin (HTC), Huntress Coin (HTR), Hunted Coin (HTD), Absolute Hunter Coin (AHC), Hunter Network (HNT), and E-Special Stat Token (EST)—none of which have any connection whatsoever to the Hunter Association. Thank you.
Great. Now I have to add another one to the list. General Centrea… whatever it was? Honestly, they ought to just round up every last cryptocurrency and make the whole thing illegal. What is the world coming to.
News of cryptocurrency reached Huiyeon too, of course. Stories of people who struck it rich overnight, and stories of people who watched a lifetime of savings vanish in an instant.
As a high-rank hunter, she had never had much trouble making money. Even so, she had lived a fairly upright life, and she simply could not understand people who poured their money into something like coins.
The price rockets up and crashes down this violently, and it doesn't even have a physical form—and they're screaming that it's going to replace currency? It's so absurd I don't know what to do with it. In the end, someone is obviously going to be left holding the bomb when it all comes down.
She hoped the bubble would burst and the boom would end already, so she would stop having to field these pointless inquiries.
"Hah!"
The park in front of his house. It was the place Jisu came to think whenever something tangled up his mind and he needed to sort his head out. Foot traffic was sparse, and almost no one passed through, which made it as good a spot as any for putting his thoughts in order.
Today, however, Jisu had not come here to think.
He drove a shout from the bottom of his lungs and struck a tree with his bare hands.
"Ow!"
He brought his fist down. Nothing happened. Instead, a dull, throbbing ache climbed up his arm. It felt no different from the force he put out during an ordinary workout.
I don't feel stronger at all.
He attacked the tree a few more times after that, and even kicked it as hard as he could, but the tree did not fall. The more he hit it, the worse the pain got. He gave up and dropped onto a bench.
There was a reason he had suddenly started doing this. He didn't watch much TV, but a clip he'd caught in passing had floated back to him.
A man knotted with muscle. As a hunter, he boasted a Strength stat of 500—a fairly high number—and to prove it, he had given a demonstration on television of tearing a tree apart. Jisu remembered watching the man throw a full-power punch, the tree splitting, then going down.
Even when Jisu's own status had first been calculated, Strength had been his highest stat, which made it look like the numbers really did reflect what a person could do in the real world. His Strength was over a thousand now. If the hypothesis held, he ought to have been able to blow a tree apart without thinking about it.
The test results said otherwise.
That hurts! So the whole thing was a load of crap?!
High stats or not, they did nothing to explain the pain. He felt none of that sudden surge of power he'd felt at the testing center. He kept experimenting, turning it over, and at last arrived at a single conclusion.
My hunter stats don't apply to the real world at all?
The stats he'd inflated with coins, it seemed, only took effect inside a raid field—the field map that unfolded on its own whenever a gate opened. If that weren't the case, a few trees should have been kindling by now. Whether the penalty applied only to him was something he would have to look into further, but for the moment it was the reasonable read.
Even if my abilities get stronger, I guess I still can't live any differently than before.
Then again, considering just how overwhelming that power was, maybe it was for the best that it didn't carry over into daily life. He turned for home with nothing to show for the trip. Stats applied only inside a raid field. Going forward, he told himself, he would not do anything reckless.
After that, Jisu sat in his room buying all sorts of coins, putting a single point at a time into other stats like Agility.
It just keeps dropping. I need to dump this, fast.
Sold all holdings of Old Philosophy Movement (OPM) at 201 won per OPM.
If I'd actually gone in heavy, I would've taken a real beating.
It wasn't a huge loss, but it was thirty percent below what he'd paid. After Justice Coin had paid off, Jisu fell into a pattern of buying all kinds of coins and waiting a few hours. The same stroke of luck never came again.
He skimmed the Coinler boards and chat, and according to what people were writing, the reason everything was falling was something called the kimchi premium.
In cryptocurrency, the Korean market was supposedly second only to the United States, the largest in the world. So many people wanted in that prices on Korean exchanges ran higher than the global average—and that gap was what they called the kimp, the kimchi premium. In other words, the reason every coin was doing nothing but falling right now was that the kimchi premium was bleeding out and the market was putting in a bottom. A "healthy" phase, apparently.
All sorts of takes were floating through the chat, but with prices doing nothing but falling, it wasn't as if the board was exploding with posts.
So the first time really was just luck. I can't keep doing it like this. There's got to be a method…
And then, unbidden, those words rose in his mind.
Of course. If you walk into this game knowing nothing, you will lose. You will lose everything. You'll go broke, period.
That was what the owner of the signal group had told him last time.
About time I checked on that bait I left out.
Jisu pulled up the price of GCS, the coin he'd bought for fifty points of Strength after seeing it in the signal group. It was a minor coin tucked well off the beaten path, so he had to dig deep into the menus to find it.
Huh? It went up a little.