Returns Beyond Expectation
The returns were absurdly high.
“Whoa…”
“To pull this off like that…”
Awe and a strange, electric excitement hung thick in the central control room of the temporary command post. In that moment, every pair of eyes was fixed on the battle unfolding before them, and no one could hold back their admiration.
“Incredible… I never imagined a fight like this was even possible against Abysses.”
“Agreed. Watching it, it almost feels like a boss raid in a game…”
“You’re not wrong. But if someone told me to actually do what he’s doing out there, there’s no way I could.”
The adjutants weren’t speaking out of empty self-deprecation. They meant every word.
Plenty of them, of course, were the sort who enjoyed those games and regularly ran boss raids themselves—learning a boss’s patterns, dodging its attacks, countering with damage, and eventually claiming victory. Even so, if any of them had been ordered to take the seat currently occupied by the man pouring every ounce of his focus into command from a position where their conversation wouldn’t disturb him—if they’d been told to replace Adjutant Lee Jinhyun—they would have thrown up their hands and refused on the spot.
The biggest reason was the colossal gulf between a game and reality.
Suppose, for a moment, that the Abyss currently locked in a life-or-death struggle with the Guild Masters right in front of them was a newly released raid boss in a game. Then their options would split cleanly into two, depending on skill.
An average-to-good player wouldn’t even attempt the new raid boss for at least a few days. That hesitation had everything to do with the movements of the absolute top-tier players—the so-called “stale water” veterans who had already chewed through, torn apart, and thoroughly exhausted every scrap of existing content.
The moment those veterans heard a new boss had dropped, they would form a party and march straight into battle. And then they would die. Again and again. Consumable items would burn by the dozen, experience points would vanish, and their mental fortitude would erode right alongside them. When the free entry limit ran out, they would even drop real money on unlimited dungeon passes—and still that elite party would keep dying at the new boss’s hands.
And through all of it, they would research. What patterns did this boss have? How could its attacks be avoided? What methods of attack would kill it most efficiently?
After countless virtual lives had been spent and several days had passed, a post would finally appear before the player base: a video and a long write-up announcing that the boss’s head had been taken. A full strategy guide for the new boss, complete with footage. Only then would the casual players start moving, clearing the boss relatively smoothly by following the guide laid out for them.
That was what a boss raid truly was—a process conducted through a “manual” written in oceans of virtual blood. It was only possible because the risk of death in a game world was so vanishingly light.
But real war was not a game.
A human life ended once, and that was it. Gathering information by dying the way you did in a virtual game was almost impossible. Even if you substituted drones or unmanned craft, the risk was incomparably greater than anything in a game. Unlike a game, each time one of those “lives” called a drone exploded, eighty billion won went up with it.
By that measure, the number of fighters lost during the six days of prior reconnaissance totaled ten—eight hundred billion won evaporated into thin air.
Of course, this was wartime, and fighters going down by the dozen was hardly unusual. More decisively, Jinhyun had already taught them the method for dodging the Abysses’ anti-air fire, so losses of this scale were something they could shrug off with a wry smile. The fact that only ten aircraft had fallen despite such relentless sorties was, if anything, worthy of praise.
And with that “modest” cost as the price…
That man—Adjutant Lee Jinhyun—had actually done it.
He had expended ten fighters to analyze the majority of the behavioral patterns of a humanoid Abyss, a brand-new raid boss, and on that foundation he was hunting the creature with the absolute minimum of damage. Superhuman observational skill, a mind that could process what those eyes saw, the enormous passion required to digest it all—and above all, a vast store of knowledge about the Abysses’ common behavioral patterns locked inside his head. Without every one of those pieces, this style of command would have been nothing more than a fantasy.
Watching Adjutant Lee Jinhyun perform, right before their eyes, a feat none of them would have dared attempt, the adjutants of the various Hunter Guilds could only take it in with feelings of respect and awe.
“He’s truly extraordinary… The more I watch, the more I think the word ‘legend’ is the only one that fits.”
“Yeah… really…”
Adjutant Haeun spoke in a tone thick with wonder. At the same time, she firmly locked into place a thought she had already been entertaining: no matter what, she absolutely had to get that man’s autograph.
Beside her, watching the same scene, was another woman—Adjutant Dana. Unlike her junior, whose thoughts were relatively simple, Song Dana was wrestling with far more complicated feelings.
I invested in him because I believed in him… but how does someone exist who can crush my expectations this thoroughly?
Regarding this whole affair, the other adjutants and Guild Masters had been lavish with their praise for her boldness. Everything had been able to start thanks to her investment, they said. But the person most stunned by what was unfolding right now was Song Dana herself.
Honestly, she had considered the initial decision to invest in Adjutant Lee Jinhyun the obvious choice for anyone who could assess a situation coldly and accurately. He was a man who produced the best possible results even in situations everyone else called hopeless. Believing that such a person, given the chance, would accomplish something remarkable had seemed the most natural thing in the world—as simple as multiplication. Two times ten equals twenty. An utterly predictable outcome.
But from the moment she had placed that trust and made that investment, every result Song Dana had received had blown those calculations into dust.
She had lent him five fighters, and he had returned with the answer that would fully preserve the dozens—hundreds—of aerial assets still falling even now. Impressed, she had used every scrap of her authority to hand him command of the air forces, and he had delivered an overwhelming achievement: the annihilation of fifty thousand Abysses without a single fatality. And now, against a monster she had half-feared might be beyond even her power to handle, he was displaying near-perfect, absolute-best command.
To reuse the earlier analogy: she had done two times ten and gotten one thousand twenty-four.
Watching Jinhyun casually accomplish feats so far beyond anything she had expected, Adjutant Song Dana began to feel a faint flutter in her chest.
…I’ve never met anyone like this in my life… How… how can a man this extraordinary even exist…
A being whose ability inspired not just respect but outright awe in a fellow adjutant. Watching that flawless command—the same command that was making her heart race even now—Song Dana raised one hand and lightly covered her face, which had, at some point, begun to flush red.