Absolute Sight
For a hunter to accumulate a large amount of mana, relentless effort was the most basic requirement.
But that was only the starting line.
Beyond it, one needed innate talent as well.
If the body's natural efficiency for storing mana was low from birth, the time and effort required to increase it multiplied several times over.
Jang Seo-jun was exactly that kind of case.
Compared to hunters of the same rank, his mana accumulated slowly, and as a sensory-type hunter—a class that demanded a fundamentally large mana pool—this was a glaring weakness.
Ordinarily, someone with poor accumulation efficiency would choose the path of a combat-type hunter rather than an ability-type one.
But when one was born with a Special Constitution tied to an ability like his, there was no choice in the matter.
To a hunter, a Special Constitution was synonymous with identity, and its advantages were simply irreplaceable.
It was certain... it was absolutely certain.
Jang Seo-jun looked down at his two hands.
Mana capacity—the weakness that had plagued him ever since his awakening.
And yet now he could feel a mana reservoir that put not just his ability-type peers to shame, but surpassed even the level of a respectable Rank 9 hunter.
A wall that some people spent their entire lives trying to climb—and he had cleared it in barely half a day of staggering, unprecedented growth.
Is something like this... even possible?
For Jang Seo-jun, it was a change he could hardly bring himself to believe.
And yet, even this fell short of Oh Hyeon-seong's expectations.
It's the same stat value as an Epic-grade potato, but compared to how much my own mana grew, his increase is far smaller. Is Jang Seo-jun's body failing to digest it properly?
Having observed the young man's transformation, Oh Hyeon-seong was able to arrive at one conclusion.
Even among crops carrying identical stat values on the Status Window, there was a limit to how much each individual hunter could actually absorb.
The mana value contained in an Epic-grade potato exceeded what Jang Seo-jun's body could take in, and so he was unable to accept all of it.
But that was fine.
The amount he had absorbed was already an unprecedented, frankly absurd degree of growth.
Epic-grade crops were precious even by Oh Hyeon-seong's standards, and he didn't have an endless supply of them—certainly not enough to have packed crates and crates of them away.
So Oh Hyeon-seong began feeding him potatoes in the Unique grade range instead.
Training included, of course.
THWACK!
Jang Seo-jun rolled across the ground.
The savage impact driving into his abdomen knocked his senses out and back in a single instant, and when his vision cleared, Baek Ji-soo was standing over him.
"It's admirable that you stride onto the battlefield so boldly, but with skills like that, you'll be rolling around as a corpse before long. You're not planning to just hang back and let yourself be protected because you're a sensory-type hunter, are you?"
"N-no, ma'am!"
"If you can't pull the weight of even one person, then the hunter covering your back loses two slots of fighting strength at once."
"I will never be the one to hold my comrades back!"
"Then never let go of your sword, even if it costs you your wrist."
At her words, Jang Seo-jun snatched up his sword and scrambled to his feet.
Then he steadied his trembling arms.
This is... no joke.
Strong hunters—he had seen plenty of them since joining the military.
But Baek Ji-soo felt different on a fundamentally different level.
It went beyond the simple axis of strong and weak; it was like standing before a distant, unscalable wall.
They were both awakened, both hunters, and yet she alone seemed like a person from another world entirely.
At the same time, the more extraordinary she felt, the deeper his curiosity grew.
Just how remarkable must this Oh Hyeon-seong be—the man they all called their senior?
A man whose face was unknown to the public, yet one whom even the legends of the past acknowledged.
"I see you have plenty of spare attention for daydreaming, even mid-fight."
"Hrk...!"
In an instant, Jang Seo-jun's overturned vision went briefly dark.
For all that they had starved him on the first day, the three of them feasted generously throughout the training period.
He was fed Unique-grade crops, potatoes chief among them, with meals centered especially on the varieties that produced permanent gains in one's specs.
Thanks to that, Jang Seo-jun's physical capabilities grew as steeply as his mana capacity had.
Even though the intensity of their sparring had been raised more than twofold from the start, he didn't merely endure it—he found he could handle it with surprising ease.
Baek Ji-soo continued drilling him on sensory refinement as well, and he discovered that the sharper his senses became, the more it helped not only with detection but with sword-to-sword sparring too.
"You're too impatient. Circulate it a little more calmly."
"L-like this, sir?"
"Yes. Just like that."
Meanwhile, Oh Hyeon-seong instructed him in the art of mana control.
Had Han Su-yeon been present as before, he would have left this to her—but Baek Ji-soo was, after all, a combat-type hunter.
She used abilities and mana strictly as supporting tools.
She handled mana better than most high-ranking ability-type hunters, to be sure, but this particular field was still a touch more his domain.
"It's good that you want to scan thoroughly, but if you just spread your detection out indiscriminately, you'll waste your mana pool with terrible efficiency. Do that, and your range shrinks, and your accuracy is bound to drop with it. Don't think of it as filling the entire space—think of it as weaving a net. You look capable of that much control by now."
"Ah... yes, sir!"
Jang Seo-jun nodded, visibly moved.
On top of his explosive growth in raw specs, he was receiving instruction that could not be found anywhere else in the world.
Granted, whenever he did基础 conditioning drills alongside Oh Hyeon-seong, all he could think about was dying.
But he knew full well that he was receiving a debt of gratitude so immense he hardly dared accept it—far beyond anything he deserved—and so he gritted his teeth and gave it everything he had.
Jang Seo-jun was a case whose Special Constitution had never managed to manifest.
And so they ran him into the ground, relentlessly, growing his hardware until the constitution could finally bloom in full.
The result: dazzling achievements across ten days of training, and at last, the manifestation of his Special Constitution.
But then a problem arose.
Because what manifested exceeded even their expectations—and they had already assumed that something too large to appear until now would be anything but ordinary.
"Haa... haa..."
Collapsed on the ground, Jang Seo-jun couldn't keep his eyes open against the crushing headache that washed over him.
The backlash of the ability he had just used.
But a moment ago, they had seen it—clearly, unmistakably.
"Senior, you saw that just now, right?"
"...I did."
"Absolute Sight. I can't believe he's an Absolute Sight user."
A hollow laugh escaped Baek Ji-soo's lips.
There existed a grading chart for Special Constitutions, used when private agencies evaluated awakened talents.
By that standard, Jang Seo-jun had believed his Mana Extension to be worth roughly a C-rank assessment.
But Absolute Sight didn't even appear on such charts. It was an off-the-scale constitution, beyond classification.
Because the odds of a hunter born with that trait ever joining a private agency were zero.
He would become a person of national importance without ever passing through the private sector at all.
There were only two Absolute Sight users in the entire world.
And both of them were in the United States.
Core talents the current strongest hunter nation proudly paraded as living national treasures.
Oh Hyeon-seong himself had crossed paths with their abilities indirectly, back when business interests had tangled him with America in the past, and he remembered them being a colossal headache to deal with.
And now, a user of that very power had appeared in Korea.
"There's no reason for us to be standing around here. An Absolute Sight user needs to be pulled off the front line and sent to the rear. Immediately."
"I'm sorry—what? Pulled off the front line?"
"It means you'll be developed as a specialist instead of being thrown around in a place like this. You'll be treated well in the rear and get to live comfortably."
Baek Ji-soo answered the frantic question. From this point on, the matter would fall under the Disaster Management Bureau's jurisdiction, so there was nothing for the National Security Bureau to squeeze out of it—but that was hardly the issue at hand.
"I am a soldier! I chose to stand here of my own will, and no matter what treatment I'm offered, I have no intention of going to the rear."
"It's not that simple. You're no longer just one soldier—you're now under the state's direct management, prioritized even above most of the high-rank hunters already on the list."
Her tone was calm, but iron-firm.
Korea's first-ever Absolute Sight user could not be allowed to wander a battlefield where death could claim him at any moment.
"Don't push him so hard."
"Senior, this was never a matter that required asking for his opinion in the first place. If this were the old days, do you think I'd be standing here explaining anything?"
Not a chance.
The moment Absolute Sight came to light, they'd have dragged him off without a word and stuffed him into a training facility.
Then they'd have kindly explained the ability, framed it as service to the nation, and extracted his cooperation.
"But those times are gone now."
A single, brief remark from Oh Hyeon-seong.
And with that, Baek Ji-soo shut the mouth that had been about to argue.
"I've been told the enemy legion is right on our doorstep. My comrades are fighting—how could I turn my back on them and withdraw alone?"
"You think this is only about monsters? The moment your ability becomes known, agents from neighboring countries—the United States above all—will come for your head."
This was not a matter to be viewed naively.
The unilateral advantages America had reaped through its Absolute Sight users were hardly a one-time thing.
It was one of the key reasons they had crushed repeated border clashes with the South American Federation and maintained their unshakable status as the world's premier hunter power.
So what would happen if they learned that a user of the same ability had emerged in Korea?
Whether through seduction, abduction, or assassination, there was no telling what extreme measures they might employ.
"A-an assassination? They would actually try to kill me?"
"The kid's right, you know. Kang Seok can look out for you as much as the military allows, but there are limits."
Absolute Sight was not immune to assassination.
Until the ability reached full maturity, its user could be killed at any time—and on a battlefield, opportunities to strike were never in short supply.
Ever since the birth of the awakened and hunters, this had become a world where heads of state were assassinated at an almost routine clip.
The Third World went without saying, and even the leaders of major developed nations, while less frequent targets, were no exception.
Only recently, the French President had nearly been assassinated in the middle of Seoul.
"Understand that it may be far more dangerous than you're imagining. That said, I have no intention of forcing your hand. With an ability like yours, you'd be an enormous asset to an army preparing for war right now. The rest is entirely your choice."
Two paths, laid before him.
It was a decision on which the nation's future and countless lives might hinge—and yet Oh Hyeon-seong declined to judge it for him, leaving it wholly to the one who bore it.
Because in this changed era, that was precisely how it had to be.
"I... I..."
Ten days had already passed since Oh Hyeon-seong left.
The hunters of the Special Operations Command had assembled for the massive operation soon to come.
Every piece of required equipment stood ready as well, yet they remained on standby, not moving a single step.
Because the order had not come down from one man.
"I knew it... it really was too good to be true."
Park Seong-hwan, standing at his side, spoke quietly.
Kang Seok let out a short sigh.
"Nothing to be done about it."
The appointed hour had come and gone, and Oh Hyeon-seong had not returned.
Even for him, it must have been too much to expect—discovering a method to destroy the Root that easily.
It wasn't as if he'd been given an abundance of time, either. Ten days, no more.
"Then we proceed with the original plan."
This operation would draw a great deal of their blood.
But even so, the Root had to be destroyed.
Before the situation spiraled beyond anyone's control—this was an unavoidable choice for the commander holding the front line.
"Hmm...?"
Screeeech!
But in that very moment—
A single vehicle appeared before the assembled soldiers.
Two men stepped out of the halted car.
"You haven't started without me, have you?"
"He..."
At Oh Hyeon-seong's casual greeting, Kang Seok could only laugh in disbelief.