The Grand Mage's Talent
Lim Dojun still couldn’t believe it. He looked down at his own body.
He was standing firmly on his own two feet, and his arms moved without the slightest hitch.
It had been a permanent disability. Not even a simple injury, but one intertwined with a powerful curse so severe that no artifact or relic could possibly heal it.
Yet here it was—completely cured, as if it had been washed clean.
There had been times when Lim Dojun told himself he had gotten off cheap, having become a member of the Fire tribe in exchange for three of his four limbs. But now, standing before the miracle of his restored body, he found it difficult to steady his emotions.
I need to figure out the cause first.
He considered contacting Center Director Kim Eunju, who had sent him the capsule, but shook his head. Even he was confused; he didn’t want to complicate the situation further by telling her. This was something he could explain after he had assessed the situation and calmed himself down.
The capsule triggered some kind of change in me.
The government, the hospital, the Returnee Union, and the Awakener Association had all tried countless methods without any progress. Yet simply lying in that machine for a short while had fixed him?
Lim Dojun stared blankly at the pouring rain outside before his gaze suddenly shifted to the outlet on the blackened section of wall.
“!”
He quickly checked the circuit breaker inside the shoe cabinet. Its interior had burned completely black as well.
“Huh… So that’s what happened.”
Only then did the pieces fall into place. The lightning rod must have failed to do its job, allowing the lightning’s energy to flow directly into the capsule. That was how this had occurred.
Still, he didn’t know the exact details of what had taken place.
After a moment of thought, Lim Dojun lay back down inside the capsule once more.
I need to check again.
It might be dangerous to enter if the capsule was damaged, but Lim Dojun had never been one to fear danger. He wasn’t reckless, but he never backed down from a challenge that needed to be faced. That was precisely why he had achieved legendary feats as a natural awakener and, for a time, surpassed even the fame of the returnees.
There was no way he would fear a capsule he had already experienced once.
He quietly logged in, then logged out. He repeated the process several times.
Woooong.
The sensation of his consciousness being pulled somewhere else. The first time he had connected, he thought he was having a heart attack. In hindsight, that feeling clearly hadn’t been normal.
During the process, he kept trying to awaken his dormant senses, and finally, he succeeded in feeling them.
…I get the general idea now.
Lim Dojun rose from the capsule and stared at it with a strange look in his eyes.
“The connection to the other world was caused by the lightning.”
After confirming it with his sharply heightened senses, he realized it wasn’t merely a virtual world. He had traveled to another world, just like the returnees. However, the lightning seemed to have caused some kind of error that applied the capsule’s system to reality.
That was why recovering from his injury using achievement points had affected even his real body.
And the reason this phenomenon had occurred was…
The Crystal Dragon’s Intent.
The odds were high that it was because of the skill sitting prominently in his skill window. He didn’t know what kind of reaction it had caused with the lightning, but if it was the Crystal Dragon’s Intent, it could certainly create a miracle like this.
Afterward, Lim Dojun repeatedly connected to the capsule several more times to grasp the specifics—how much his body had recovered, how far his senses had fallen compared to his prime, and so on.
After several hours of assessing his physical condition, Lim Dojun discovered a surprising fact.
“······.”
His body was slowly beginning to stiffen again.
Even though Lim Dojun had recovered from his injuries through the system, he could feel his body stiffening once more after only a few hours.
It wasn’t serious. It was simply the faint sensation that his body had grown slightly stiffer and his senses a little duller than before.
For now.
If I leave it alone, it will get worse.
Current Status: All injuries caused by the Crystal Dragon's curse have been completely healed. However, the Intent left behind by the Crystal Dragon still remains.
He could tell from the message in the status window. Because he possessed the Crystal Dragon’s Intent as a skill, it continued to affect him. Thanks to that Intent and the luck of the lightning strike, he had been able to recover—but it was also what kept dragging him down.
Even so, Lim Dojun did not fall into despair. He had never been the type to give up, and the situation itself was far better than before.
I recovered once by using achievement points. If it worked once, it can work twice.
He had spent ten points to recover from his injuries. If he gathered twenty or thirty points, perhaps he could completely erase the Crystal Dragon’s Intent.
It wasn’t certain, but it was worth hoping for.
Center Director Kim Eunju seemed happy, apparently feeling that it had been a great help for Lim Dojun’s mental state.
In any case, Lim Dojun logged back into the capsule. He moved together with the mage who had offered to take him as a disciple.
“I am called Delcrein. I serve as the branch leader of the Blue Magic Tower’s Bellangs branch.”
“I am Lim Dojun.”
“Im Do… The pronunciation is rather difficult.”
“If it’s easier for you, please feel free to call me Jun.”
In special military organizations—especially special teams dedicated to handling supernatural abilities—joint operations with foreigners were common. In those situations, introducing his name was always troublesome, so he would simply tell them to call him by his family name or just “Jun.”
“Understood. I shall call you Jun. The moment I saw you, the image of a dragon came to mind, which is why I recruited you. However, do not underestimate our Blue Magic Tower. This is one of the ten greatest magic towers on the continent.”
Delcrein went on at length about how magnificent the Blue Magic Tower was and how exceptional Lim Dojun, having been chosen by it, must be.
One of the continent’s ten great magic towers.
Upon hearing that, Lim Dojun immediately thought of achievement points.
If I became the master of this tower, I would probably receive quite a lot of achievement points.
Becoming the owner of one of the ten great magic towers would undoubtedly count as an incredible achievement. Even without going that far, simply reaching a high position would be an achievement, and exerting any significant influence on the continent from there would count as well.
“This is the Blue Magic Tower branch.”
Delcrein led him to a tall building not far from the plaza.
“Did you know? For mages, talent is everything. There is a gap that can never be bridged through effort alone.”
“Many fields are like that.”
Lim Dojun nodded as if it were nothing special. He had seen and experienced it plenty of times throughout his life—overwhelming geniuses trampling ordinary people using nothing but their innate talent, without even needing to exert much effort. Such things were everywhere in the hunter industry, and even ordinary people encountered them.
“Heh heh. I am extremely curious just how exceptional the talent must be of someone who carried the scent of a dragon. Take a look at this.”
Delcrein handed him a book.
“It is the mana control technique that all disciples who enter the tower learn as a foundation. Talent is judged by how quickly one masters it. An ordinary person takes a month. A gifted individual takes a week. A genius masters it in two or three days.”
“May I read it?”
“Of course.”
Lim Dojun accepted the book and began to read. It explained the mana control technique that served as the foundation for casting magic.
In truth, he didn’t understand it well. No matter how accomplished a hunter he had been, this was completely foreign knowledge. Still, he forced himself to read it all the way through just to get a general sense of it.
You have learned the skill 'Blue Magic Tower Basic Mana Control'
The moment the message appeared, Lim Dojun immediately sensed the change. The contents of the book he had read only once were now understood in his mind as if he had studied them for a long time. Derived knowledge even rose up naturally.
And there was one truly crucial point.
The Crystal Dragon’s Intent is… being controlled!?
From the moment he noticed his body stiffening, he had felt the Crystal Dragon’s Intent slowly seizing control of his body. It had been encroaching at a very slow pace, but the instant the basic mana control knowledge entered his mind, he realized he could control it.
Using the mana control technique, he slowly gathered the mana in the air and guided it into his body. Both the mana and the Intent within him were controlled at the same time.
Controlling it perfectly is still impossible.
The Crystal Dragon’s Intent was vast and powerful. The Blue Magic Tower’s basic mana control could not restrain it completely. However, it was enough to slow the rate at which his body was stiffening.
He had thought achievement points were the only solution, yet another method had appeared.
Besides, this is only the ‘basic’ version. I wonder what will happen once I learn something better!
Joy surged through Lim Dojun. He felt like shouting.
“That can’t be!!”
The one who actually shouted, however, was Delcrein standing across from him.
“No matter how basic it is, you read the mana control technique once and mastered it?”
Analyzing the behavior of a mage beneath his own level wasn’t particularly difficult. Precisely because of that, Delcrein began to wonder if he himself was becoming obsolete. Had he really misread even a novice’s mana control?
He checked several times more, but his eyes had not been mistaken. Lim Dojun was clearly executing the Blue Magic Tower’s mana control technique. If it had been a different technique, he might have assumed the boy had learned it elsewhere beforehand. But this was unmistakably the Blue Magic Tower’s knowledge. Unless it had been leaked, he must have learned it just now.
Delcrein was stunned.
This is the talent of a Grand Mage!
He had taken the boy as a disciple out of mere curiosity, but it turned out he had picked up a treasure.