Level Up Just by Breathing
The recorded video showed Han Shin as if he were in the middle of an interview.
He sat in the office chair, stretched his legs out, and propped them up on the desk.
Then.
He picked up an elegant coffee cup that looked completely out of place against his muscular forearms.
“No, no… When it comes to her… there are still many things I don’t know. Even I have to admit that.”
His gaze drifted somewhere beyond the window.
“Still, there is at least one thing I can say with confidence that I knew for sure.”
Crack.
The coffee cup in Han Shin’s hand shattered.
“…At least until now, I held that arrogant belief.”
The cheap instant coffee, completely at odds with the shattered cup, slowly seeped down onto the suit he wore.
The strongest man in Korea.
Han Shin felt the cold sweat trickling down his forehead.
“…Huh? Why do I look so tense? Is it that obvious? Hmm. Right. To make it easy for you to understand, let’s use an analogy…”
Han Shin swung his fist at the speed of sound.
It wasn’t intentional. The punch that sliced through the air with a whoosh stopped right in front of the vase sitting on the office table.
He grabbed the translucent vase.
“The vase… is already full of water. In this state, it cannot hold any more. It would violate the laws of physics. Even if you brought in physicist John von Neumann himself, it would be impossible. But… what?”
Han Shin widened his eyes and, with exaggerated theatricality, cupped a hand to his ear.
“You’re asking if we could simply enlarge the vase to increase its capacity? Puhaha! Think about it. If you forcibly expand a container with a fixed size…”
Han Shin pressed his thumb firmly into the vase.
Unable to withstand the overwhelming force, the vase shattered into pieces.
“It ends up like this.”
Han Shin straightened his arrogant posture and continued with a serious expression, eyes shining with clarity.
“Have you realized it? An Sion… has accomplished exactly that. An achievement even Mr. von Neumann could not achieve—Sion has done it. So, shall I ask you once more?”
The camera shook slightly. Han Shin wore an indescribable expression—eyes narrowed, mouth stretched into a wide grin. Pure joy and excitement he could barely contain.
“Can you even begin to guess… how much larger the vessel An Sion possesses will grow?”
Only then did the voice of the person recording the video slip in.
“Something like that… it’s obviously impossible to measure, isn’t it?”
“Exactly.”
The video ended on the sight of Han Shin awkwardly scratching his head.
“……What the hell is this?”
An Sion’s body trembled faintly after suddenly receiving the video as a level-up congratulatory gift.
…Just give me the money instead.
“Looks like Mr. Han Shin has been pretty bored lately?”
Thanks to Luna analyzing the video scene by scene down to the minute, Sion already knew the full content.
…Why is he sending something like this?
Mr. Han Shin had an eccentric side to him. She decided not to think too hard about it.
Anyway.
On Saturday morning, the instant she touched Nureongi—who had now become part of the family—her body began glowing like some kind of bioluminescent creature, and then…
“?”
Surprisingly, nothing happened.
Other than Nureongi looking depressed, convinced it had done something wrong to her, there were no noticeable changes.
They took a helicopter all the way to the foundation hospital for every detailed test imaginable, but the doctors said there were no particular abnormalities.
Blood pressure, bone density, and a bunch of other complicated things she’d already forgotten were all normal.
The only oddity was that her intelligence quotient score came out a tiny bit lower than usual. Nothing else.
So she spent the weekend in a lazy haze, mostly scratching her belly.
However.
When Monday arrived—the day she truly did not want to go to work and had been wriggling under the blanket, refusing to take even one step outside—an anomaly occurred.
“Why do I have to go to school at all……”
After twelve years of elementary, middle, and high school, plus military service and university, they should at least let her rest on Mondays.
A six-hour workday was ridiculous to begin with. Treating people like that would kill them.
Simply calculating a month as four weeks, that was thirty hours a week—120 hours a month.
This must have been what life was like for those 19th-century British factory workers she often saw in photos.
Trapped in the prison called school… and so on and so forth.
It was right around the time she was thinking those thoughts.
“Woof, woof woof!”
The now-familiar sound of Nureongi’s barking reached her.
When she focused, it seemed the dog had woken up early to steam-iron the suit she wore to work.
…She had no idea how it managed that.
According to Luna, it simply handled everything on its own. When Sion wasn’t paying attention, it even walked around on two legs.
‘What the… that’s honestly terrifying.’
Still, it was incredibly helpful, so she didn’t interfere.
“Good job, Nureongi. Can’t you go to work for me instead? Honestly, it’s the kind of position even a dog could handle if it just sat there……”
“Woof.”
At that exact moment.
‘Stop bullshitting and get up already.’
……Huh?
Did she hear wrong?
She frowned hard and focused her mind.
Staring continuously in the direction she assumed Nureongi was standing…
‘Who is raising who, really…’
The voice came through clearer than ever.
“Whoa.”
Was she now even able to read a dog’s mind?
Well, considering it was a half-monster, maybe she could read monster psychology too.
The implications were enormous; her legs shook.
“Hey, did you just swear at me?”
“Woof woof!”
‘How did she know?’
Exactly as she thought.
Nureongi was an ill-mannered mutt that assumed its owner couldn’t understand barks and freely hurled insults.
If only she could see, she would have smacked its nose… Tsk.
She concentrated once more.
‘You… were planning to tidy up the study once I left, weren’t you? Those psychology books I bought on impulse just for show—you weren’t even going to ask Luna to read them, just leave them lying around… or maybe you were going to read them yourself… and eventually even aim for a degree with them?’
“Woof?”
An Nureongi made an expression of pure horror.
She couldn’t see it, but reading its inner thoughts told her that was exactly the case.
‘…So this is it.’
She didn’t know the exact reason, but simply by coming into contact with the half-monster, she had achieved the next stage of growth.
It was the ability awakening she had desperately longed for back when she was rolling around battlefields, gritting her teeth just to survive.
Shouting “Status window!!!” every morning at base camp used to be the start of her daily routine…
‘Why now of all times?’
It felt like that pretty childhood friend from the class next door she had crushed on during school suddenly showed up in her mid-thirties with a kid, saying “Actually, I always liked you,” and shattering domestic peace. Her emotions were complicated.
If she asked any monster or gate scholars, they would probably give some boring, pedantic answer like “Well, after a long absence of monster contact, a sudden point of connection occurred, so……”
She wasn’t particularly interested.
She was already retired anyway. Unless she suddenly got sucked into a gate, this ability wasn’t all that useful.
“……Ugh?”
The moment that thought crossed her mind, strength suddenly drained from her lower body.
It felt like the floodgate holding back a dam had suddenly gone on total strike without warning or reason and collapsed onto the road.
She couldn’t control it.
N-no way.
Was this the recoil from using the ability……?
“Ah, no! Bathroom! Hurry!!!”
“Arf arf arf!”
She could sense Nureongi rushing toward her, but.
It was already too late.
Drip……
She quickly covered her flushed face with both hands.
“Whimper.”
“……No need to console me.”
Even though she was dying of embarrassment, she tried not to show it.
Calmly, she grabbed Nureongi’s leash and stepped into the dormitory elevator.
‘Wow. Having a dog really is convenient. So this is why visually impaired people always have guide dogs?’
When people asked if she was visually impaired, the truth was her eyes weren’t damaged.
Nor was she doing some insane concept act of walking around with her eyes deliberately closed.
They simply refused to open.
After rolling around inside gates, it had been like this ever since.
They had tried every cutting-edge device and technique to force them open, but nothing worked.
So she simply lived like this.
-The door is opening.
“Woof woof!”
Originally she would have had to fumble her way along even familiar paths.
And if she happened to grab something soft and squishy, she would spend the rest of the day too embarrassed to lift her head.
She tended to arrive at work right on the edge of being late (she never arrived on time), so why did people always crowd in exactly when she got on?
“Ah. Good morning, teacher.” “Hello!” “Yeah, yeah, hello.”
Today the elevator was packed again. It was an apartment-style dormitory, so it made sense.
‘Will they file complaints because Nureongi got on?’
She was nervous, but—
“Teacher, what is this dog?” “Wow, it’s huge!” “Is the horn just decoration?” “Teacher, you’re so cute today too.” “The shampoo smells nice.”
Words poured out like a machine gun, leaving her only able to respond with “Ah, uh, um……”
……It was tense, okay.
She decided to lightly activate her Absolute Sensitivity here.
It used to turn on and off randomly and make everything noisy, but now she could somewhat control it.
So cute she looks nervous right now hehe I really want to take her home and keep her as a pet forever how can a creature like this even exist it’s amazing I switched the camera to silent mode I should take pictures right now and upload them to the board later hehe what time should I visit today if I don’t make any sound she won’t notice I’m even recording her breathing from right in front of her nose but she definitely won’t know hehehehehe……
……Huh?
What had she just heard?
Were they thinking about Nureongi?
The tangled mess of inner thoughts hit her like discordant noise, giving her a headache.
She decided to turn the ability off.
‘Sigh.’
Wondering what she could even use this for, she walked slowly into the academy.
“Woof woof woof.”
Following Nureongi’s guidance, she headed up to the counseling room. Thanks to Chairman Han Shin’s consideration, it was located right beside the central staircase on the second floor.
She tossed her bag—which contained nothing but air—onto the desk, sat down, and began twirling a pen.
How exactly should she use this ability……?
The question didn’t last long.
“Hic, teacher……”
A female student sniffling with a stuffy nose violently threw open the counseling room door as if she meant to break it.
She rushed inside, collapsed right in front of Sion, and began sobbing loudly.
……A perfect place to use the ability had just appeared.