A Suspicious Rocket-Fast Delivery
A single vehicle pulled out from beyond the base perimeter.
It was a civilian car, unpainted in military colors, and riding inside were two hunters.
Seated in the passenger seat this time, Jang Seo-jun rolled his eyes this way and that. After all, he had been present in the room while Oh Hyeon-seong and Kang Seok held their conversation, so even if he hadn't wanted to listen, there was no way around it.
He had learned about the so-called Special Species, whose very existence he'd never known of until now, and about what had truly been happening at the frontlines. Stories he, the lowest-ranking man in the Special Operations Command, would never have been properly privy to otherwise.
But as shocking as all of that news was, the most astonishing thing of all lay elsewhere.
Who on earth... have I been with this whole time?
He was a senior to the legendary hunter Kang Seok. He'd heard that civilian hunters outside the military made a name for themselves quickly if they had the skill, and yet this man's face was completely unknown. Then again, it could hardly be dismissed as empty boasting — he had heard the two of them talk with his own ears. Setting everything else aside, did it even make sense that a single word from this man could push back a large-scale military operation that was already scheduled by a full ten days?
"Wh... what exactly did you do, sir?"
"That's a secret."
Oh Hyeon-seong answered simply, without so much as a glance. At that, Jang Seo-jun shrank back into his seat once more. A dry chuckle escaped Oh Hyeon-seong, but he had no intention of explaining everything piece by piece. The whole reason he'd brought the young man along to their conversation in the first place was that he didn't feel like laying out this and that circumstance; if the kid had any sense at all, he trusted he'd grasped the general shape of things.
"Do you have ambitions for achievement as a hunter?"
"Th-that goes without saying, sir. Otherwise I never would have made it this far."
Getting into the Special Operations Command required solid fundamentals. A hunter of middling ability could never fill a combat role in the Special Operations Command, nor would he ever be deployed to a front line like this one. Anyone with half-baked skills who stepped beyond the border would simply be slaughtered by the monsters. From a humanitarian standpoint — and even from the standpoint of running a country — all that would amount to was the added cost of body bags and compensation for the wounded.
And yet for someone who had only just turned twenty, being here at his age meant he had worked for it.
"You're a Rank 7 hunter now, correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'm not going to do anything extraordinary for you, but if you want to become stronger, I can offer you some advice. In exchange, you'll have to help me."
"Help you... what exactly do you mean, sir?"
Jang Seo-jun stared at him, bewildered. What help could he possibly be to a man who had moved the entire military's plans with a word? But this was precisely why Oh Hyeon-seong had brought him along.
"I don't know if it's possible, but your ability could prove a great help in assaulting the Root."
At those words, Jang Seo-jun's eyes went wide as saucers. But he quickly collected himself and answered at once.
"Then I will make sure I am of use to you, sir!"
"Good. Then I'll be counting on you for the next few days. You'll get to eat delicious food while sweating through a rewarding training regimen. Could it get any better than this?"
"..."
Being granted instruction by a mysterious figure of immense standing — it was the kind of once-in-a-lifetime fortune a hunter might dream of. And yet, why was it that some instinct, the deep-seated sense every hunter carried, detected something frightening here? Swallowing hard, Jang Seo-jun flinched and shuddered.
"Then as now, that monstrosity hasn't changed one bit."
Standing atop the ridge, Oh Hyeon-seong murmured. The towering Root arched over, bent at its apex, visible even from this great distance. But what showed above ground was only a fraction of it. Buried far deeper beneath the unseen earth, the Root's true body spewed out miasma without cease. One need only look at how the surrounding soil had already turned black with encroaching erosion to understand that much.
And the monsters are swarming all around it, too.
There had always been plenty of monsters near the Root. An environment saturated with miasma and thick with erosion — to monsters, it was nothing short of a five-star hotel, so of course they flocked to it. That, too, was one of the chief obstacles to any assault on the Root. Even if you swept the area clean in advance, the moment you pushed inside to take it on, an overwhelming horde of monsters would come pouring out from who knows where, from within and without.
"...It's staggering, sir."
Beside him, Jang Seo-jun murmured in a daze. This was his first time seeing a Root in person rather than through a screen or a training manual. Nor was this his burden alone — hunters who encountered a Root in the field for the first time were often easily overwhelmed by its sheer oppressive presence. Granted, he was observing it from afar for now, but if he were to face it up close, chest tightening under the suffocating miasma, his impressions would be all the more vivid.
"Take a good, careful look. What do you see?"
Oh Hyeon-seong gestured toward the Root. He wasn't telling him to use his detection ability. At this distance, it would be beyond the reach of anyone short of a top-class sensor anyway.
"The amount of miasma it's emitting is enormous. And going by what I learned in the manuals — it's... it feels like a living, breathing organism, sir. To my eyes, at least."
He had been staring intently at the Root as he spoke. He could feel mana circulating through the entire structure in a way no ordinary structure ever could, pumped through it as if by a heartbeat. It was a difference that could only be perceived by someone extraordinarily sensitive to mana.
He definitely has talent.
Worth cultivating, at the very least. With that thought, Oh Hyeon-seong walked back to the car, rummaged through the trunk, and began the training.
"Alright then, let's take it easy on the first day."
THUD!
When Oh Hyeon-seong set down the weighted sacks, the ground caved in. Training equipment he'd collected from the military base in advance. Jang Seo-jun's jaw dropped at the sinkhole left by that absurd, common-sense-defying weight.
"Y-you... surely you don't mean for me to wear this?"
"Too light, isn't it? Think of it as a warm-up, since it's your first day."
"Er... um... no, that's not what I—"
"Right, let's begin."
Perched on a boulder, Oh Hyeon-seong was watching a video on his phone. A single clip handed over by the military.
KUGUGUGUNG!
Artillery fire rained down upon the Root. Powerful mana shells struck dead-on — yet when the billowing smoke cleared, the thing below was untouched. Despite that magnitude of physical force, the Root didn't so much as budge. Its surface was merely scorched black, and even that would revert to normal before long.
As I thought — the old methods leave no option but to assault it directly from inside.
With a Root buried that deep underground, simply bombing it into submission was a fool's errand. If the problem were that simple, China would never have gone through all that agony in the past. Even now, Root clusters remained one of the main reasons humanity had formally abandoned the reclamation of Chinese territory.
"UUUURGH!"
At the strangled howl from up ahead, Oh Hyeon-seong glanced up. There was Jang Seo-jun, hammering out push-ups — weighed down head to toe with a murderous amount of weight, of course.
His pace is holding up well, that he's still going.
Jang Seo-jun looked like he was dying, but in truth he had nothing to fear. Oh Hyeon-seong knew exactly where the line between grueling and lethal lay. Far from injuring him or loading him with excessive strain, his method pushed the young man right up to the precise threshold where a hunter's body would grow the most. A hunter's body only showed dramatic growth after it collided with its own limits — the closer you rode that razor's edge, the more the efficiency of training skyrocketed. And Oh Hyeon-seong could calibrate that line with near-perfect precision.
"Hahh... hahh..."
Sweat poured off him so heavily it might as well have been tears streaming down his face. The pressure of the weighted sacks piled high across his back must have been crushing. And yet Jang Seo-jun had endured far better than Oh Hyeon-seong had expected. Given the raw physical gifts he possessed, making it this far was a testament to extraordinary mental fortitude.
This isn't just above-average. Not even close.
Plenty of people had passed through Oh Hyeon-seong's hands, but he'd seen nothing like this in anyone. Unless someone was born a rare, stubborn breed of beast, this kind of grit usually only appeared in those driven by a powerful motive.
CRASH!
At last Jang Seo-jun collapsed, sprawled flat on his back. He lay there limp, face pressed into the dirt, seemingly without the strength to lift a single finger.
"I... I'm sorry, sir."
"No, you did well."
But Oh Hyeon-seong nodded with a thoroughly satisfied expression.
Either way — passed the mental fortitude section, which was the baseline. At the very least, this won't be a waste of time.
Joo Ji-hye, his most recent trainee, had been a hunter whose promise was obvious from the start. She'd had rock-solid fundamentals thanks to Choi Jeong-il's training, and her innate mana capacity and Special Constitution — telekinesis, rated S-class, the highest tier — were top of the line. Above all, reaching the level of a Grade 10 or higher elite hunter was a plateau only attainable by those born with talent measured in decimal-point rarity. There had been no need to verify anything.
But he had known almost nothing about Jang Seo-jun when they started. One of his senses was clearly exceptional enough to be called irregular, but that was the extent of it. His innate mana capacity was low, and his Special Constitution was Mana Extension — a perfectly ordinary detection-type trait. Rank 7 was comfortably within the upper ranks of all hunters, but by Oh Hyeon-seong's standards it was not merely average — it fell short. Rank 7, Rank 5, Rank 9 — to him, they were all the same.
But the conclusion he had just drawn was that the boy was worth raising. There was no need for one person to excel at everything, after all. In fact, a single advantage outside the ordinary bounds could outweigh everything else. If he could be properly polished the way Oh Hyeon-seong envisioned, Jang Seo-jun would accomplish what no other hunter in the country could — including Oh Hyeon-seong himself, and the other juniors still serving on the front lines.
"I can... I can do more, sir!"
"No, if you push on you won't manage the rest of today's training. Rest for an hour."
And so came the brief allotted break. Even as his stomach growled audibly, no food was brought to him. One might call it a broken promise — but not this time. The meal would come later, and he would need to eat plenty of it.
"Having observed your ability in action, your detection range is far too narrow. That isn't a matter of innate sense or technique — it happens because your mana reserves are too small. Our biggest task is to increase your mana capacity as quickly as possible in the time we have."
"But I was told there's no way to raise mana capacity in a short period, sir. Mana capacity in particular is known to depend heavily on talent."
"That's true enough. But don't worry. There's something that can solve that problem."
"Something, sir?"
"Yes. I left it at home, but I've put in a request, so an acquaintance will be bringing it along soon."
Oh Hyeon-seong said this with a glance at his watch. It was just about time for the appointment. Jang Seo-jun, listening, was deeply perplexed.
Someone's bringing something he left at home? In the middle of a war zone like this?
The booming of artillery could still be heard crackling in the distance even now. The full-scale assault on the Root hadn't begun yet, but battles against pack-hunting monsters were being fought all over the area. And yet someone would come and go from this dangerous place just to deliver an item left at home? Besides, border passage by unauthorized outsiders had been blocked at the source from the very beginning.
VVVMMM!
"Huh?"
But before long, Jang Seo-jun found himself staring up at a black helicopter hovering overhead. A heavy-frame machine that looked ominous at a glance, emblazoned with an unfamiliar crest.
"The... the National Security Bureau...?"
His soul seemingly departed, Jang Seo-jun gaped upward. The helicopter touched down in front of him, hair whipping in the rotor wash, and the door slid open with a grinding screech to reveal a woman. A strikingly tall figure radiating cold air from every pore.
"Senior, here's what you asked for."
"Appreciate it. Thanks for the trouble."
Oh Hyeon-seong received the cargo from Baek Ji-soo — several ponderous sacks that had been loaded aboard the helicopter. As the bags were lowered down, Jang Seo-jun reflexively moved to help, taking one in hand. In the middle of wondering what on earth all this could be, he happened to glance into the slightly gaping mouth of a sack.
Food ingredients — potatoes piled high to the brim. He'd half expected some artifact to be airlifted in; instead, an utterly unexpected mountain of groceries made its appearance.
Baek Ji-soo... of the National Security Bureau... crossed the border... to deliver... potatoes...?
His mind reeling, Jang Seo-jun squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment.