Genius Scientist Choi Na-yul (2)
KWAANG—!!
Whew, perfect. Just right. A few little regrets here and there, but a tank like Eternox isn’t going to show up every other day.
In a room lined with every conceivable piece of cutting-edge equipment, set against pure white walls, I stood before a punching-machine-style robot that was still spewing thick white smoke as if overheating. Yet it hadn’t broken; it only rattled and kept working just fine. I gave the fist I’d thrown like a toothpick a few more light swings.
KWAANG, KWANG! KWAANG—!!
Hmm. Even if I keep throwing them in succession, I don’t think I’ll make any real mistakes. For the time being, I can be satisfied with this.
Yeah. From my experience, this level of power was more than enough to handle anything short of a truly monstrous villain. A few well-placed hits would settle most problems.
…Of course, if it were something as sturdy as Eternox, I could pound away until I got bored and the bastard would just keep regenerating. But that guy had been the final boss of this game. Even if “Hard Mode” had started, there was no way another one like him was going to pop up in a month or two.
If anything, rushing to get used to this insane strength and overdoing it would mean I wouldn’t even make it to retirement. I’d smash the very city I lived in with these hands.
…And after that, the damn status window would probably squeeze my heart until I wanted to die, and I’d face a dark future so horrible I didn’t even want to imagine it.
…I’d almost be lucky if my heart just burst and I died. There was a chance my “Invincible” trait would even apply to the status window’s heart massage, leaving me to suffer eternally in some nightmare end.
…So for now, we’ll stop here. Practicing harder punches can wait until I’ve perfectly adapted to the power I have right now.
Honestly, even this level only worked because the talent for delicate force control my body possessed was freakishly good. Swinging arms that could shatter a planet if I wanted to, yet still poking with the force of a toothpick, required artistry on the level of taking a giant demolition hammer to a huge cream cake, crushing only the frosting while leaving the sponge completely untouched.
…So what was I thinking, trusting a wall that could only take a few missiles and swinging harder with power I still wasn’t fully used to?
Even if Eternox-level freaks started swarming out like mosquitoes tomorrow… as long as that future was better than me destroying the entire planet with my own hands, there was zero need to get impatient and try anything stupid here.
KWAANG—!!
…Strange. Visually it doesn’t look that different, but compared to last year’s data it’s clearly weaker. Power and speed were always maxed out, and his control score has been a perfect three hundred for years…?
Choi Na-yul stood outside the room where Smile was throwing punches, watching the instruments collect his movements in real time and display the numbers. A strange unease made her quietly touch the corner of her mouth.
Ever since Smile had established the “Stabilizer,” every professional hero in Korea had to visit the Ability Management Department once a year and put their physical abilities and powers through every high-tech device if they wanted to keep their licenses. The numbers on the screen right now were far too different from every previous record of Smile’s power.
…First, power and speed hadn’t dropped by a huge margin on paper. But knowing Smile always held back a little so he wouldn’t wreck the measuring equipment, even that was a serious problem.
More importantly, the most complex and expensive instruments mounted on the walls and ceiling—the ones that measured how finely and “well” someone could control their ability—showed that his Ability Control score had plummeted.
…Of course, unlike raw maximum output, this was an extremely delicate test that could swing quite a bit depending on a person’s condition that day or the surrounding situation. Even so, for a top-tier hero like Smile—not some rookie who’d just passed the pro exam—to drop this far only ever happened in one specific case.
…When someone had overused their power so hard that irreversible damage from the “restrictions” piled up on their abused body, until they could no longer fully command their own strength.
…No way. Could those rumors floating around the last few days actually be true? I was sure they were just ridiculous lies spread by villains who hold a grudge against Smile…
A single, horrifying possibility she didn’t even want to imagine rose in Choi Na-yul’s mind.
The absurd rumor cooked up by villains after Eternox’s death—claiming Smile had grown weaker—so they could multiply the number of enemies targeting him, wear him down further, and throw Korea into chaos even after the Eternox revelation. A malicious lie that had begun quietly circulating among a tiny handful of citizens these past few days (most people dismissed it as nonsense and ignored it).
…The unnerving possibility that it might actually be true.
No… that’s impossible. We’re talking about Smile of all people… there’s no way a rumor like that could be real… Right? The machines must be broken. Or maybe his condition is just really off today.
But no matter how hard she shook her head and tried to deny the unbelievable truth… the overall numbers in front of her eyes were far too different from the data of the past several years to write off as a simple bad day.
And the measuring devices that were checked twice a day and therefore couldn’t possibly be broken were displaying Smile’s Ability Control score on the monitor: 272 points.
Even that was high enough to easily surpass most upper-tier pro heroes. But considering that for years Smile’s control score had always been a perfect 300… it was so ridiculously low that there was no room left for doubt.
No… I’m the director of this institute. I won’t turn away from the clear information right in front of me. Smile’s power has definitely weakened. But why, of all times, would he announce it now…?
Yes. Even though the records measured here were treated as classified documents and would never leak outside… the world was still in an uproar over Eternox’s revelations. Smile had always controlled his power with a perfection that earned him the word “perfect.” In license renewal tests he had always recorded the next-best control numbers after himself, surpassing even Frost—the S-class Rank 2 who controlled his ability with near-godlike precision. A hero so overwhelmingly strong that villains didn’t even dare think of surpassing him, whose very existence served as a deterrent to crime… the Smile who always showed the public only a perfect, overwhelming image had come here outside of the license renewal period and revealed such an absurd weakness. Why?
…And only then did Choi Na-yul remember what Smile had said to her before using the training room.
—Well, I’ve got a few things I need to check. I’m not planning to use it for long, so a few minutes should be enough.
…Could his body have been deteriorating for quite a while already, until it got so bad he could no longer hide it…? Did he come to tell only me in secret so he could get help somehow…?
Clank—.
Alright, time to head out.
I stopped throwing the little pokes I’d been using on the various machines and robots in the training room—like punching holes to drain cup-ramen water—and pressed the button inside the room to open the large door. Then I turned to Na-yul, whose expression somehow looked darker than before I’d gone in, and greeted her.
“Hm? Why the face? I’ve confirmed everything I wanted to check, so I’ll be on my way—”
“…Haa. Honestly speaking, there’s no proper way I can help you. A body ruined by the ‘restrictions’ of an ability can’t be treated normally with modern medicine.”
I tilted my head.
Huh…? What’s she talking about…? Somehow this feels weirdly like that time with Rabi…?
But before I could even fully process the baffling words that had suddenly come out of Na-yul’s mouth, she grabbed a nearby remote, opened the door of a small vault-like room, and revealed a black heavy-type reinforcement suit that even I, who knew nothing about these things, could tell was ridiculously expensive and cool-looking. She continued speaking while showing it off.
“…This is the heavy model of the new reinforcement suit I’ve been developing in collaboration with Star Lab. It’s nightmarishly hard to handle properly, but you’ll adapt without any problem. Aside from that, its performance is better than any existing reinforcement suit.”
Ooooh…! Damn, that looks seriously cool! But why is Na-yul saying stuff like that? It’s not like I’m ever going to wear something this expensive in my life…
While I tilted my head at that question and took another moment to admire the magnificent suit in front of me, she went on.
“…Haa. I won’t say anything unnecessary. No matter how much I try to stop you, you have zero intention of quitting hero work. So instead, the moment this suit is finished, I’ll give it to you. That’s the only help I can offer.”
…Completely out of the blue, she was just going to hand me this suit that had to cost a fortune.
A hero does not accept expensive compensation for their activities.
GWAAGH!
Ghhk! M-my heart…!
She flinched.
“…So it’s already bad enough that even enduring the pain is hard? Just how much have you been pushing yourself all this time…?”
…Still stuck on that strange misunderstanding, she watched me clutch my chest and suffer with anxious eyes, then continued.
“I’ll finish the suit as fast as I can, so at least until then, take care of your body. Once you wear this, the burden on your body when you use your ability will drop dramatically.”
GWAAGH!
“Ghhk…! N-no, I don’t need anything like—!”
“…Well, since it’s a test model packed with every technology we have, it converts to hundreds of billions of won. Normally you’d refuse on the spot, but this time you won’t, right? You came all the way here today because you wanted my help in the first place.”
She kept saying completely incomprehensible things—
“Besides, just having you wear it will accumulate data for my research and be a huge help to other heroes too. That should be enough for people to reasonably accept it even if you suddenly start walking around in a reinforcement suit you never used before, don’t you think?”
However, if it is not personal greed but something that will greatly benefit others as well, it may be permitted on a very limited basis.
Huh…? What? Why did my heart suddenly stop hurting…?
…It finished by revealing the truly astonishing fact that this crazy status window could occasionally show some flexibility even with expensive gifts.