An Eye for Promising Talent
Oh Hyeon-seong pushed open the door and stepped down from the vehicle, which had come to a halt deep in the forest.
Crunching dry leaves beneath his boots, he swept his gaze across the surroundings.
"This area's still peaceful, at least."
The situation across the Northern Front was chaos in every direction, yet there wasn't a monster corpse or a trace of artillery fire to be found anywhere near where he stood. This was no thoroughfare for travelers, no place for people to settle and build a village—and no spot a monster would favor for nesting, either.
In other words, the perfect place to hide something.
"Merz."
Kuguguung!
A massive golem of stone rose from the earth before him. At a glance from Oh Hyeon-seong, the creature gave a solemn nod and drove both its arms deep into the ground.
The earth beneath his feet began to tremble, faint but unmistakable. The ground heaved once, and between the fissures a long staircase spiraled down into darkness. It was terrain Merz had shaped just for him, and Oh Hyeon-seong rode the golem's back down into the depths.
Only when the earthen passage and stairs gave way did he reach the interior of a facility that bore unmistakable marks of human hands.
It's been quite a while since I was last here.
This was North Korea's Secret Seed Vault, known to him alone. A vast, uncountable quantity of Original Seeds was preserved here, their value nothing short of astronomical—and naturally, the facility itself was correspondingly enormous.
Oh Hyeon-seong took his time combing through every corner of the interior, and fortunately found no signs of intrusion or damage to the outer walls.
Still, no matter how sturdily a safehouse might be built in a secure location, nothing could be called truly safe while fierce fighting raged across all of North Korea. At any moment, shelling could damage part of the facility, or monsters and human forces could breach it.
But before this incident had even begun, Oh Hyeon-seong had used Merz's power to bury the entire facility deep underground, locking its security down tight. Thanks to that, it would take quite the extraordinary battle to drag the vault into the fray, and outside intrusion was for all practical purposes impossible.
The only remaining danger was the very problem unfolding now—the proliferation of the Roots, and the miasma they carried.
Thud.
"...No damage to the seeds, either. I was worried the miasma might have affected them even indirectly, but there's no sign of it yet."
Oh Hyeon-seong entered each storage chamber in turn and completed his inspection. The facility and its equipment were flawless. True to its nature as a secret vault, it even had its own power generators—a self-sustaining system designed to run alone for decades. Impossible in the old days, perhaps, but with the power of artifacts backing it up, there was nothing it couldn't do.
So the only immediate threat is one thing.
The single variable capable of endangering this facility was the Root. From what he'd confirmed outside, the nearest one still sat at a fair distance from this place. The vault had yet to fall within the miasma's contamination radius.
But the gap that looked so wide to the naked eye wouldn't hold for long. The Root had only just come into existence. Its zone of erosion would keep spreading, and reaching this place was only a matter of time. Once miasma contamination began, it spread in the blink of an eye.
So... before it's too late, I should do what I can.
Clang!
Oh Hyeon-seong left the facility and climbed back to the surface, then summoned Merz once more and had him seal everything away. The passage that had once connected to the depths vanished without a trace.
"Let's go."
Woof!
Somewhere along the way, the colossal golem of the earth had turned back into a puppy, and Merz hopped up into the passenger seat. Now as ever, he loved sticking his head out the car window while they drove. Oh Hyeon-seong chuckled, took hold of the wheel, and murmured as he watched the road.
"By the way, I wonder how the training's going."
Oh Hyeon-seong could see a Status Window. It had been a stroke of fortune gained by chance in Noya's warehouse, and thanks to it, he was putting this new ability to practical use. Through the status window, he could pull up information on artifacts and crops—which meant that in his farming, he could now identify the existence and grade of Special Crops.
What's more, he could read information about people, too. The concentration of miasma in their bodies, their cellular activation rates—data that even expensive measurement equipment couldn't detect, all laid bare at a glance.
Among the detailed entries was one labeled 'Growth Potential.'
Not that he'd ever had occasion to use it. His circle had always been crawling with monsters who had long since finished growing, after all. Nor was there any way to verify whether the figures in that entry were accurate, or what each rank actually signified.
And yet.
"Hmm."
Oh Hyeon-seong rested his chin on his hand, staring intently at the status window of one Jang Seo-jun—the one he'd glimpsed, purely by chance, a few hours earlier.
It's quiet.
Jang Seo-jun stood in the heart of the forest, wrapped in silence. Not a breath of wind stirred, and even the insects had fallen mute. It felt as though his own breathing was the only sound left in the world—a profoundly alien experience. All the small and great noises, the sensations that should have reached him as a matter of course, were simply absent, and the disconnect rattled his cognition.
But perversely, it was precisely this that seemed to bring every sense in his body to a razor's edge, straining to adapt to this unfamiliar environment.
Chime!
A strange bell sounded at regular intervals, its source a mystery.
Still, Jang Seo-jun had been searching for something else entirely this whole time.
Identify!
Something translucent flickered past between the trees. Jang Seo-jun reacted instantly, hurling the dagger in his grip—
But his blade buried itself in empty wood, missing the target entirely.
"Too slow. At your current speed, you have to map out its path before it closes in if you want to land a hit—not react after it's already on top of you."
"Yes, ma'am. I'll try again."
Jang Seo-jun nodded at Baek Ji-soo's words and scattered his mana anew, scanning his surroundings in search of the target he'd just let slip away.
Focus.
The basic principle applied by most detection-type hunters was simple: scatter mana into the surroundings and read the information it returned from living things and objects. It wasn't so different from modern radar, which transmitted radio waves and gathered data from the echoes that bounced back.
The difference, though, was that radar only gleaned information from an object's surface, whereas the mana a detection hunter dispersed swept through the target's entire body—even down to its mana organs. That was why detection abilities generally yielded far more precise and detailed results than what hunters could piece together from gi-gam alone.
And Jang Seo-jun's Special Constitution was 'Mana Extension.'
When scattering mana for detection, it amplified the wavelength of his mana so that even a far smaller investment returned the same information. Detection-type hunters were locked into a method that inevitably drained mana continuously, and this trait covered that weakness.
Conversely, detection was a field with such a high barrier to entry that without a constitution like this, one couldn't function meaningfully as a detection-type hunter at all.
Damn it, it's definitely within range... but I can't pin it down.
Sweat beaded along Jang Seo-jun's forehead. Detection was not coming easily, not the way he'd hoped. Baek Ji-soo's mysterious translucent target moved like a living creature, and its position remained maddeningly elusive. Even his innate senses—which had once located an ambush of Thorn Ears, even the spirits beneath the soil—couldn't track it.
Experiencing this for the first time, he felt thoroughly unsettled. It was as if that wriggling something were twisting his very perception.
This isn't going to work. Focus harder.
Shaking his head, Jang Seo-jun squeezed his eyes shut—the better to concentrate on the mana he'd extended into his surroundings.
But Baek Ji-soo, watching him, spoke up.
"Don't close your eyes."
"...Pardon?"
"I said don't close your eyes. It's the worst habit an ability-type hunter can have."
She spoke firmly, leaning against a tree.
"You're not a blind hunter, so why are you shutting your eyes?"
"Th-that's..."
"You're so busy scrambling to control your mana that you unconsciously give up your vision. Keep both eyes wide open and use every sense you can work with—see, hear, feel. And if that's still not enough, then smell, for God's sake."
Closing one's eyes was acceptable only for those who had already mastered their senses and mana completely and were adding weight to train further. Rookies did no such thing—they simply shut their eyes first, blindly. Clumsy with mana, they abandoned everything else to pour their entire mind into wielding it.
Back in the Special Task Force days, this had been treated as an inexcusable flaw to be drilled out completely before anyone even left the training phase—yet some high-ranking hunters with badly ingrained habits still made this exact mistake, then and now.
"There are monsters out there who draw on the mana of nature itself with both eyes wide open, and you think it's right to close your eyes because you can't even handle your own mana properly? Mana control is a fundamental you should be able to do in your sleep."
She was speaking, of course, of Han Su-yeon, bearer of the Special Constitution known as 'Mana Resonance.' Setting aside their personal feelings toward each other, Han Su-yeon's mana control as a hunter had no equal anywhere in the world. To ability-type hunters, she was a living textbook.
"I'll try again."
Jang Seo-jun swallowed hard and nodded, then etched each of her lessons back into his mind one by one.
Don't rely on detection ability alone—bring the senses of his whole body into play. Don't trust only the information his mana brought back directly—feel the minute shifts in wavelength that his scattered mana produced as it brushed the world around him.
The training resumed, and failures piled up one after another. Despite his resolve, his dagger missed its mark again and again.
But it wasn't without收获—
"Your reaction speed is getting better, though."
"D-do you think there's hope for me?"
"The fact that you can react at all says you've got plenty of talent. But at this rate, it'll take far too long."
Gazing at Jang Seo-jun as he panted for breath, Baek Ji-soo fell into thought for a moment. She had her own duties to attend to and couldn't babysit him indefinitely—and there was a fixed deadline of ten days, too.
After a short while, she made her decision.
"Honestly, no one's ever endured this training method... but you're someone the senior personally picked out, so it's worth a try."
Baek Ji-soo strode toward him with measured steps. Jang Seo-jun watched her approach with a puzzled frown—
And before she'd even fully closed the distance, his vision suddenly warped.
Whaaaaam!
Black darkness crashed over him. He looked around frantically, but on every side there was only pitch-black void.
And it wasn't just what his eyes saw. No sound of any kind. No smell. Not even the texture of the ground beneath his feet, nor the feeling of his own breath. Falling into a world utterly severed from reality, stripped of every sensation, he plunged straight into panic.
Wh-what is this...?
Cold sweat ran down him in streams—though he himself was far too consumed to even notice.
This was nothing like a simple hallucination. He had seen hunters use illusion-type abilities within the military before, but this bore no resemblance to the cheap parlor tricks they'd wielded. It wasn't a matter of depth or sophistication—this was something different in kind altogether.
"No need to panic. This is just a simple ability, built on my Special Constitution."
The voice came from beside him. Baek Ji-soo's.
Jang Seo-jun tried to answer, but his mouth only flapped uselessly; no sound would come.
"Just listen, for now."
Her voice drew one step closer, and then came a whisper at his ear.
"This next training is the method I used to hone my own senses back in the day, when I tempered myself. We're proceeding exactly as I did—so the sooner you get used to it, the better. Or give up quickly. If you half-heartedly try to tough it out... it breaks you."
Time passed after Jang Seo-jun began the real 'training.'
He had no idea how much had actually elapsed—only that it was far less than it felt like. It was as if ten minutes stretched into an entire day.
But even the longest moment must come to an end.
Whaaaaam!
The frozen wind began to blow again, swaying the branches. Insect song returned to his ears, and behind him he felt the solid touch of the earth.
"Hahk... hahk...!"
Jang Seo-jun gasped as he surfaced from the darkness, drenched head to toe in sweat. Never had he been so grateful simply to stand on solid ground and draw breath.
But there was no savoring his return to reality—he was so utterly spent that he couldn't so much as wiggle a finger.
"..."
Baek Ji-soo, meanwhile, stared at him in silence.
Standing there dumbstruck, her gaze carried a trace of genuine astonishment.
Senior, what on earth did you dig up?
Oh Hyeon-seong's eye for talent was extraordinary. She knew this better than anyone, having run the National Security Bureau herself—scouting and managing personnel had become part of her job.
And yet this time, she had judged that his pick had clear limitations. Setting aside his abnormally sharp senses for a detection-type hunter, every other spec—his Special Constitution included—was thoroughly mediocre. A detection ability that offered only high precision had any number of substitutes.
It was the kind of pick that left a question mark hanging over whether this was really someone worth stepping in to raise personally.
But now, she would have to revise that assessment.
His Special Constitution... it was never something as ordinary as Mana Extension, was it.