Who Are You?
"Mmm... this is what living is all about."
Oh Hyeon-seong rolled around lazily on the heated floor, savoring the warmth.
Tangerines harvested just that morning sat piled high on the table beside him as he pored over a novel. Novels, of all things — a hobby he'd never once touched in his entire life — but he was finding them surprisingly entertaining.
Watching the protagonist, the world's one and only Grade 25 hunter, smash the skull of an America president who talked back to him filled him with a deep, vicarious satisfaction.
"Maybe I should've tried that once before retiring."
Hyeon-seong chuckled and turned the page. Maybe not skull-crushing, exactly, but there had been more than a few times he'd fantasized about smacking the smug faces of whining politicians, one slap each.
Of course, doing such a thing in reality would have created headaches in every direction, so he'd always just ignored them and moved on.
Given how much the standing of hunters had risen since his day, though, it might actually be possible now — at least for someone in Han Su-yeon's or Baek Ji-soo's position. Anything short of a major elected official would probably be fair game.
Why am I even fantasizing about this.
He let out a hollow laugh and shook his head. Had he stumbled onto yet another hobby that suited him better than expected?
But above all, nothing beat the sheer satisfaction of lying around like this. Right now, hunters everywhere were braving the cold to rush toward gates, while one man could hole up in a corner of a warm room and luxuriate in idleness — and that fact alone gave him a peculiar, quiet pleasure.
How on earth did I used to live?
In the past, half by choice and half by circumstance, his life had been swallowed whole by work. Aside from his school days, everything he remembered of his life had been devoted to being an agent and then a hunter. He'd never even thought to pick up a hobby.
He was a rather extreme case, granted, but his old teammates had been much the same. They were constantly being called from one crisis to another, and just training hard enough to survive the next deployment left no room for anything so frivolous. Choi Jeong-il, who scraped out time with almost pathological devotion to enjoy his fishing, had been the remarkable exception rather than the rule.
Things I never even thought about back then... finding hobbies one by one like this isn't so bad.
Hyeon-seong, who had been sprawled out bonelessly, snapped the book shut. When he stepped out of the room and glanced around, his eyes landed on an empty weapon case sitting forlornly atop a drawer in the corner.
There was space enough for a single sword inside, but it stood empty.
Come to think of it... I do need to get myself a new weapon.
He had taken down Batola in their last encounter — but in the process, the one sword he'd carried even after retirement had been shattered. Hunter equipment commanded staggering prices, and if he wanted a proper one, it would cost him a serious chunk of money.
If he were still affiliated with an organization, they'd have supplied whatever he needed without a fuss, but he was a retired hunter now. As an independent, the only option was to source and buy it himself.
The trouble was, anything that met Hyeon-seong's minimum standards started at several hundred million won. That was the headache.
Well, it's not like I have a fight scheduled. No rush.
The loss had been unexpected, to be sure, but all things considered, they'd come through well. The damage had been far lighter than the scale of the gate — one that had even erupted — warranted, and only a single hunter had died. Ju Ji-hye, who'd fought so brilliantly that day, had survived without any major injuries.
That said, she was in recovery for the time being. Part of it was simple exhaustion from pushing herself to the absolute limit, but the bigger cause was her prolonged exposure to the high-concentration takgi.
Under normal circumstances, mere exhaustion should have shaken off in a day or two. But takgi degraded the body's natural recovery, so her condition was dragging on. He'd packed her a mountain of food — strawberries included — to take home, so she'd be fine. A little rest, and everything would settle back to normal.
Then again, the strange one here is me.
Hyeon-seong lifted his shirt and looked down at his own body. The wound in his side was already completely healed.
He, too, had been exposed to dense takgi for the first time in ages when he went out to that site. Normally, after soaking in takgi that severe, recovery slowed and the body took a beating — that had been true even in his prime, when he'd never once suffered lingering aftereffects. After exposure to a particularly vicious takgi-soaked battlefield, he'd needed a rest period even without any serious injury.
But now, things were strangely different.
I forced out my sealed mana in the middle of all that takgi exposure. Honestly, I'd braced myself to be bedridden for weeks. Feeling this fine is almost embarrassing.
Aside from a faint creakiness in his body from having drawn on his mana, his condition was perfectly normal. As for the takgi, its influence on him was, for all practical purposes, nonexistent.
Could living here all this time have actually changed my constitution?
Hyeon-seong popped a tangerine into his mouth and mulled it over. He kept consuming crops grown by pure spirits, utterly free of takgi — perhaps some change had been quietly taking root inside his body all along.
And the reason he'd started thinking this way was that, in truth, one major change had already taken place in his body some time ago.
"So you're telling me... a sixth ring has appeared?"
Han Su-yeon said, seated across from him. A full week had passed since the close of the last incident before she'd finally managed to carve out time to visit, and her curiosity had been quietly piling up the whole while.
"You saw it yourself back then. After I absorbed Batola's soul, a new ring formed in my dantian."
"That's exactly why — seeing it with my own eyes made it harder to believe."
In the past, Oh Hyeon-seong had built a total of five rings. Each one hoarded a colossal reserve of mana, giving him an effect much like carrying five cores at once. Other hunters had to pile every last drop of their mana into a single core and depend entirely on it for output, which meant he'd held an overwhelming advantage in mana operation.
Even so, the Hyeon-seong of those days had hit a wall at five. He could enlarge the rings themselves by accumulating more mana, but the number of cores had reached its limit — or so everyone believed.
And yet, at a moment no one could have predicted, a new core had built itself of its own accord. One that was, in fact, running at this very instant.
Wuuuuuung!
Hyeon-seong closed his eyes for a moment and felt the mana in his dantian. Two rings, active. Setting aside the four sealed cores, one original core and one new core now sat side by side within him.
"It's much smaller than my original five rings... but the mana it holds is foreign, like it was built by someone else entirely."
"It does. How should I put it — it feels uniquely pure."
Han Su-yeon, resting her hand on his arm, nodded. Peering into his interior, she too could sense the alien mana settled in his dantian. No matter how many cores a hunter possessed, as long as the same person had accumulated the mana, it always carried the same character. But the mana in his new core was so unlike his own that it defied belief.
"Over the past week, as the core settled into place, the mana inside it's grown purer and purer. And there's one more strange thing."
"...Hold on. The attribute is different."
Han Su-yeon flinched. She had sensed it — the new sixth ring was radiating an attribute she had never felt from him before. Dumbfounded, she stared at Oh Hyeon-seong.
"...It wasn't intentional."
He was the sole possessor of four-attribute affinity in the entire world. Even dual-attribute ability users were so rare they barely registered as a decimal percentage. Han Su-yeon was a top-class energy-type hunter herself, yet she'd been born with only a single attribute. Wielding four attributes simultaneously was already an overwhelming talent, born through odds so absurd they shouldn't have existed.
And now he was saying he'd grown to handle a fifth?
At this point, the basic training manuals every hunter studied would need a full-scale revision.
"That's ridiculous. More importantly — do you know which attribute it is?"
"No. It hasn't fully settled yet, so I can't get a proper read on it."
"Hmm... more questions than answers, then."
What attribute did it carry? What could have caused it to form? The two of them traded theories back and forth about the sixth core that had appeared out of nowhere — but speculation was all it ever amounted to. No real answer emerged. It was simply unprecedented, an exception without precedent.
"Well, once this thing finishes settling in, we'll learn something. Anyway — at least stay for a meal before you go."
"I'd love to, believe me... but I have to leave right away. This visit was me strong-arming my schedule just to hear this from you in person."
Han Su-yeon rose from her seat. Seeing her off with a pang of regret, Hyeon-seong returned inside and picked his book back up.
Two weeks had now passed since the last incident, and Oh Hyeon-seong's days remained as leisurely as ever.
The first snow had come noticeably later than in years past, and the spirits were romping delightedly around the yard. Even Alvern, who normally spent his days swimming laps in the reservoir, was soaking up the falling snow on dry land, just for today.
"Aren't you guys going out to play?"
"Eeeeng!"
"Haha... sorry."
Only the fire spirits remained cooped up inside the house, sulking with pursed lips. Well — the faint warmth of their little flames spreading through the room was cozy in its own way, so he didn't mind.
Whipping up steaming hot soups and stews, book in hand, he passed his days holed up indoors. As time went on, the ever-purer sixth ring was gradually revealing its contours — though as a core, it still hadn't fully settled. It seemed he'd need to wait a while longer, but that was a problem time would solve on its own.
Slurp!
A month had passed. He was eating a piping-hot bowl of udon with a comic book in one hand. Having finished the novels he'd been reading, he'd turned to comics this time, and they proved surprisingly worthwhile too. Pictures and prose, it turned out, each had their own charm.
"Whew. I'm about to burst."
Having eaten his fill, he flopped down onto the floor. Somehow, the more accustomed he grew to this lifestyle, the more he felt himself turning into a lazy ox. And the biggest problem was that his happiness kept rising in direct proportion. At this rate, he'd never pry himself free again.
Yet for some reason, the lazier he became, the better his body seemed to get.
Ever since the last incident, Hyeon-seong had deliberately avoided strenuous rehab training, giving the newly formed core time to settle properly. And against all logic, his condition was improving faster than it ever had during training.
Getting stronger by doing absolutely nothing... is this really okay?
The effect was the compounding result of his continued consumption of high-quality crops — crops now influenced by Alvern, a high-tier spirit. But no matter how he sliced it, it flew so hard in the face of everything he knew that he couldn't help wondering whether this was allowed.
And at that very moment, deep within his dantian, the sixth ring completed its settlement as a true core.
FWAAAASH!
A blinding white flash burst out of nowhere in the middle of the room. Startled, Hyeon-seong shot upright — and then he saw it. Peeking out from behind the door with a petulant tilt of its head, a spirit in the shape of a little girl was staring right at him.
"Wh... what the—?"
A spirit he had never once seen before. Not in his entire life.