One Hundred Percent

After the dismissal was handed down, the reporters tore into Shin Haneul like animals. Nearly all of it was fabricated. They printed the disciplinary committee's opinions — opinions that barely deserved to be called opinions — as if they were fact.

He did not simply sit and take it. No newspaper would carry his side of the story, but in this day and age one hardly needed a broadcaster to put a word out into the world.

He delivered the facts with his head high. A few people did place their trust in the materials — and the comment brigades buried them almost at once.

Most of public opinion did not regard Shin Haneul as an irreplaceable talent. The military's failure to take any further action after the dismissal likely came from the same thinking.

It was a world in which mana stones were more precious than the Awakened themselves, and no country readily offered opportunity to an Awakened born abroad. They all believed they had plenty of substitutes at home.

So if Shin Haneul had not carried memories of the future, even leaving for another country would have been hard-pressed to change his life in any great way. He would have been reduced to hunting scraps of mana stone — no bigger than an ant's tear — through petty little dungeons.

Then the gap with Park Gyeongtae would only keep widening. It would be a matter of time before he became obsolete, his mana volume falling behind the rest of the squad as well. And if the truth came out later, the odds that we would be condemned would drop.

Even if we set the moral question aside, backing Park Gyeongtae was the right call. The objective view — that Shin Haneul would have grown, had we backed him too — could simply be ignored. The world has no what-ifs, after all.

It would not have been strange to think that way. Not with only the information they had been given. For Shin Haneul, it was a welcome miscalculation. Because they had thought so little of him, he had never even been slapped with anything so inconvenient as an exit ban.

Right now, I am not merely "a little" exceptional. His mana volume ran somewhat low, but its purity could not be compared with the hopelessly turbid mana of anyone else, and his skill in wielding it went without saying. He was confident ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that wherever he went, the treatment waiting for him would be more than sufficient.

After the Tower rose — and all the more once true Awakening began in earnest.

And Korea, by contrast?

The age of upheaval was about to break over the country. Did Park Gyeongtae have any ability at all to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠settle that chaos? No. None whatsoever. He could say it with certainty: the Republic of Korea that had stood strong and safe in his previous life would not exist. The nation would tremble, never knowing when a rift might split open, and sink into a backwater where evacuation became daily life every time word came of a monster.

And on the day they failed to clear the Tower? A great many things would happen. A very great many.

When he thought of that, he could not even muster ill will toward the people writing articles too wretched to be funny, or toward the ones leaving their malicious comments. Only pity. The false charge would come to light soon enough, and those who had gone along with it would pay a steep price.

But the reporters in front of him now inspired no such mercy.

Vermin.

Shin Haneul was in the middle of leaving the country with his son held against his chest, and they were tearing him down at the top of their lungs right in front of the boy. It was only a mercy that Minwoo had fallen asleep on the way. If he had heard the things they were shouting, how deep a wound would that have cut into a child's heart? He did not even want to imagine it.

"Mr. Shin Haneul! Why won't you say anything?!"

"So you do know how to feel shame, I see?"

"Has there ever been a dungeon where Awakened died on a scale like this? Don't tell me you were taking orders from China — or Japan!"

Even after they had noticed the child, it was the same. If anything, they raised their voices as though they hoped he would wake. They had crossed the line, and then crossed it again, far too many times.

"What's going on?"

"What happened?"

A murmur swelled. As the reporters made their scene, more and more eyes swung their way, and that was exactly what the reporters had wanted.

Plenty of witnesses, and he won't be able to lay a hand on us.

Even in an era when an Awakened, acting alone, still lacked the power to tear down the social order, they were beings whose strength far exceeded an ordinary person's. The reporters were afraid he might lose his reason and throw even a single punch. But that fear was a rope of their own tying. They had dug their own graves.

The people packing in around them now, and the phones filming every moment of it, were not a shield protecting the reporters. They were witnesses who would bring the false charge against Shin Haneul to light.

Crack—!

He drew his mana up and drove it into the reporters' faces — into the lower jaw, to be precise. Once one's command of mana reached the extreme, there was no longer any need to pass it through a weapon. Ranged attack became possible. In this era, naturally, Shin Haneul was the only one who could do it, and everyone around them looked on at his innocence(?).

"Guh— aaah—."

"Guhhh… ah…"

The reporters who had taken the blow could not even manage a proper scream. Broken teeth came pouring from their mouths, and seeing it, he thought he finally understood why people likened human teeth to corn. The screaming, in their place, came from the crowd.

"Kyaaaa—!"

"Blood! I think that person's hurt!!"

He had only tapped them once, lightly. The fuss around him was excessive. A small flinch — Minwoo stirred in his arms. At this rate the boy would wake.

I can't let him see a filthy sight like this.

Shin Haneul decided it was time to stop. This much punishment was already enough for them. Before long these people would find it difficult to so much as hold their heads up and go on living in Korea. The public would dig up everything they had done today, and he would see to it that they paid the price for swinging their pens so carelessly.

So only a few more. Just one or two — thock, thock — and he took his leave.

The United States. The Awakened Ability Research Center — the AARC — in Seattle. Shin Haneul arrived at the place that would be his new workplace(?).

"Good to meet you, Mr. Shin!"

"Good to meet you."

Before the door had even finished opening, a man in a white coat came running out.

"Jonathan Reed. I'm the director of this center."

He already knew. Scion of a prominent American house, money and power spilling over on every side — and with all of that money and power, the man had not raised a pleasure garden. He had raised a tower of scholarship. Which was to say, he was mad in no ordinary way. And yet it seemed to be people like this who moved the world. In the future, he would become an even larger figure than he was now.

"I am sincerely grateful that you accepted our invitation."

The words were full of formality and ease. The body was not. He could not keep still, fidgeting like a dog desperate to relieve itself. He must have been dying to confirm whether the things shown in the footage were actually possible.

"You seem eager to run the tests quickly."

"Ahaha. Is it that obvious?"

"A little."

"Please understand. The footage you sent us was that shocking. But you can't have finished adjusting to the time difference yet…"

He answered the man who could not hide his disappointment.

"It's all right."

"What?"

"We can go straight into testing. I don't care to waste time either."

"But if something were to happen to your body, that wouldn't do… it wouldn't do…"

His actions failed to match the words.

"It's really fine. Let's start with a light test."

"W-would that be all right?"

"Why wouldn't it?"

Dragging the hours out was something Shin Haneul wished to decline as well.

"A-all right, then!"

Had he decided there was nothing left to refuse? At a frantic speed he stuck the measuring equipment — the electrodes — all over Shin Haneul's body, then had the research staff bring in a sandbag of enormous size.

He was already set on experimenting, starting today.

No wonder the room sat too far inside to be called an interview room, and no wonder the interior was bare. Once again he found himself impressed by the man's academic fervor — his academic appetite, more truly.

"This sandbag, though. Is it all right if it breaks?"

"Ahaha. This is the MA. Equipment for measuring mana-collision output. An ambitious work, built by a top-tier team even within our center. I know Mr. Shin possesses remarkable skill, but destroying this would be difficult, realistically speaking."

"For something you describe that way, you seem rather hopeful that I will."

"Oh dear. Was I found out?"

Well, if that was how it was, he had nothing to decline either. He decided not to keep the man in suspense any longer. He poured mana into the wooden sword they had prepared, swung — and that was all.

"H-huh?"

The MA, which eminent scholars had put their heads together to build. With a bright, clean sound, the MA became an M/A. Which is to say, it had been cut in half. From somewhere far off came the screams of several researchers.

"M-my ambitious work—!"

"You mean our ambitious work!"

Other researchers, meanwhile, reacted differently. Especially the ones facing the monitors. They cried out as they looked at the data coming off Shin Haneul's body.

"A— a hundred?"

"Impossible! A number like this can't come out!"

"It's an error! An error!"

"With the MA smashed to pieces?"

"Those idiots must have built a defective unit!"

There was a reason, of sorts, for denying reality this way. Mana efficiency — the measured value tied to one's ability to operate mana — had come out at one hundred percent. It was a figure they had not once imagined in all their research.

"Wasn't the highest value until now 71.12 percent?"

"And that was an outlier. The next one was only 64.30!"

The average Awakened mana-operation ability, their efficiency, sat at 52.4 percent. Even the top tier of American Awakened mostly recorded the low sixties. That much, granted, was still enough to be designated a Tier-1 ability user later on. The ability to operate mana remained an important concept even after the Tower came into being. But Shin Haneul could not be set on the same line and compared with them.

"Haha…"

Jonathan pushed his glasses up and spoke.

"I'm sorry. Just in case — could we measure the mana efficiency figure just one more time?"

"I doubt it's an error."

"What?"

"It's nothing. Let's run it again."

A reality their common sense could not accept, in any case. Say it a hundred times and he would only wear out his mouth. He had no choice but to keep showing them.

"See? It is broken, isn't it?"

"Don't say ominous things! Do you have any idea what it took to build this!"

"Get Oliver! No — while you're getting Oliver, drag that Julio in too!"

Administrators came and went. Technicians came and went. At the last they summoned every Awakened currently at the center and had them lay hands on the machine. Through all of it, Shin Haneul simply watched, sipping warm coffee.

An americano really is the only coffee.

Somehow, confirming whether the measurement had been done properly seemed to be taking longer than the measurement itself. Well. What of it.

It had already been three days since he came to the AARC. Lately they had been measuring the flow of his mana operation without pause. It was comfortable, which he liked. It was also rather dull.

"Let's stop here for today."

"Very well."

The moment the session was called done, the electrode pads came off. Jonathan, who had been peering into the monitor across from him, pushed his glasses up and opened his mouth.

"I still can't believe it, no matter how many times I look. You are going to become the most extraordinary being in this world."

What their time together had made plain was that the man truly loved research for its own sake. It was the same now. Reciting every sort of data, he kept comparing the figures Shin Haneul had recorded against his own hypotheses. How long did he go on? Only after the excitement finally ebbed did he circle the conversation back.

"…And yet, Mr. Shin. Here I am telling you that you appear to be the strongest Awakened in the world, and you are remarkably unruffled."

"It isn't particularly surprising."

"Haha."

Of course it wasn't. Even after a stretch of insane power inflation, he had been the strongest. First place, in a time when they were all still lining acorns up to see whose was taller? Inevitable, and it stirred nothing in him.

"I had a prejudice that East Asians were modest. An attitude like that is one a researcher ought to avoid, I suppose."

Jonathan stopped laughing and, all at once, put on a serious face.

"But are you truly all right?"

"With what?"

"With ability like this, and with merely belonging to our center. It isn't easy to secure mana stones and keep growing from a place like this, is it?"

He was worrying about even that. Seeing things like this, the man was genuinely kind on top of everything else. The choice to place himself in their care for the time being had not been wrong after all.

"It's fine."

"…What?"

"There isn't much of this peaceful stretch left."

"…?"

Jonathan drew his brows together. He was not preparing a rebuttal. His face said, quite genuinely, that he did not understand what those words meant.

And a few days later, Jonathan — who had been staying up through the nights analyzing Shin Haneul's data — stepped into the break room for a moment to clear his head. A television was audible in there. Researchers, through and through. Get fixated on a single thing, and the rest of the world vanished.

"You leave this on and just walk away?"

Grumbling, he walked toward the set on the wall. And that was when it happened.

The anchor's diction was crisp, but urgency soaked the voice. It could hardly be otherwise. A dungeon near a major city was, large or small, ordinarily dealt with at once. To fail not only at that, but to lose two teams in succession — and in a medium dungeon, not even a large one? In an age when the dungeon clear rate stood above ninety-five percent, it was an incident without precedent.

For an instant, Shin Haneul's last words played again inside Jonathan's head.

At first he had wondered what on earth the man was saying. But he had been right.

From every corner of the world, reports announcing a state of emergency came pouring in.