1-2. The Beast Screaming Fuck at the Heart of the Dungeon (1)
How does a human without even a drop of mana go about tempering themselves? The answer is simple.
Even with no mana inside the body and no way to sense the mana in the air, the body adapts all the same — the longer it is exposed to mana-rich air. Nothing accumulates within; no dantian or magic circle ever takes form. But the muscles and skin soak up that mana and are tempered by it. This applies even to the unawakened, who have no mana or anything of the sort to their name — and in a world crawling with monsters, it holds true even beneath an ordinary Seoul sky.
So what is the most efficient way to get stronger by this method? Simple. The longer you are cooped up inside a gate. The more often your life hangs by a thread in a place like that. In other words — the more frequently you come within a hair's breadth of dying, the faster you are forged.
"Train like this, and you'll be able to hold your own to a fair degree without leaning on skills, mana, or aura."
"Hah... hah... is that... hah... haaaah..."
"Come on, I know it's rough — just a little more! Run, run!"
I ran with a bright, sunny expression on my face, hanging lightly just behind Seo Yoon as her pace drained away little by little. And at the sight of me, she clenched her teeth and ran harder.
KWAANG!
"Nngh—!"
The ogre's fist came crashing down on the spot Seo Yoon had vacated barely a second before.
Right now, the two of us were dragging no fewer than twenty-seven ogres around by the nose. Going by the size of a single tribe in the Seoul Dungeon, that was nearly three tribes' worth — and sure enough, we had cut through three tribal territories, hauling out every ogre in them.
My aggro-pulling method had been elegant in its simplicity: stroll past each tribe and give the ogres a smack, one by one. Three tribes, three passes.
But a pull of that scale is, in practice, all but impossible. Those twenty-seven ogres might share a species, but they belonged to separate packs. The first tribe is no trouble; from the second onward, it's a different story entirely. To the second and third, this isn't one piece of prey being a nuisance — it's a rival ogre pack invading their territory. And then the aggro lands on the invading pack, not on a lone human. Getting them all to fixate on you without tearing into one another is brutally delicate work.
That's why hunters who can pull off mob-pulls of this magnitude get special treatment. But that's a technique for full-scale raids. Dragging this many monsters around on a two-person party is, bluntly, suicide.
And that suicide, as it happened, made for superb training.
"How much... longer... hah, hah..."
"Your speed drops and this gets dangerous."
"Ghhk..."
Now where was that grinding-teeth sound coming from, I wondered. I paid it no mind, of course. I didn't slow down, either. Not that slowing down was the chased party's call to make in the first place — we ran until those ogres lost interest and gave up. But it seemed we were past the point where running any farther was possible. Any minute now, Seo Yoon's stamina would bottom out completely.
"Hmm... I thought ogres would be about right."
Ogres sat mid-tier for speed among the monsters you'd run into around here. Anything slower wouldn't train you properly. And if the thing chasing you was weaker than an ogre, you'd never get that lovely sense that getting caught meant you were well and truly fucked.
"Hah... haaah..."
Yep. She'd well and truly hit her limit. Seo Yoon could no longer manage so much as a word, pouring everything she had into simply running. The focus had drained out of her eyes; she looked ready to drop within minutes.
"Tsk... I suppose that's it for the ogres."
Fwoosh—
I pulled a single length of cloth from the Pocket. Plain to the eye, but this, too, was the Technology Bureau chief's handiwork — a camouflage cloak built on optical-camouflage tech. I wrapped it around Seo Yoon, then shoved her out of the path at a suitable spot. The ogres weren't so dim as to miss the fact that their target count had dropped by one, but they wouldn't be finding her, either — the cloak shut down her presence, every signal the five senses could register, even the mana leaking off her skin. Right now, Seo Yoon was safety itself.
So long as a passing ogre didn't step on her, anyway.
"Well, she'll be fine."
Every ogre in the vicinity had its aggro locked onto me. And that went double for that thing — hell, even if the salamander wandered over and trampled her, it wouldn't matter. Ogres? Child's play. What I needed to worry about now wasn't her safety. It was mine.
So what was I going to do with twenty-seven ogres?
"I could kill them, but..."
The problem was I had no idea how many hours that would take. If I worked solo, I probably wouldn't be finished before midnight — the respawn.
Which meant, in the end, that was the play, huh.
"Tsk. They should be in sight by now."
Right on cue, a party of hunters appeared in the distance. Ah. Found them.
"Hey~ over here! Look this way~"
"Huh...?"
My target: Park Heon-woo, Taesan's rising-star hunter. Twelve hunters flanked him — Taesan's next first-string party.
"Come on now, free EXP. Where else do you get an opportunity this good?"
Tak—
Whipping the camouflage cloak from my Pocket, I slipped briskly into their midst and, in the same beat, spun up the optical camouflage. To the ogres, it would look like one more hunter joining the pack.
'Thirteen Taesan rising stars. They'll clear them easy.'
And if it wasn't easy... well, they'd get it done inside four hours, give or take. Park Heon-woo wasn't merely a rising star — the kid was practically talent fallen straight from heaven. Besides, where else would they find someone kind enough to mob-pull this generously for them? At this point you could call it a win-win. Damn right.
"Wh-what the—! Ogres!"
"How many are there?!"
"Twenty-seven in total!"
"Damn it, formation — move!"
The proud junior hunters snapped into a battle line and began stemming the ogre tide.
Mm. Good. Top-shelf rising stars really were a different breed. Wouldn't it be lovely if kids like that went on to serve as national hunters?
'Haaah...'
Just thinking about the Association made something in my chest go tight. How to put it... like a child you'd put up for adoption. I'd raised the thing with my own two hands, only to end up unable to stay with it to the end — that had to be it. But what could I do? Had I stayed, my footing there would've dissolved out from under me soon enough.
I had to become the linchpin of this cycle's clear. Because I knew the future. I remembered everything, right up to the point where my last-cycle self had failed. Of course, a few things had already drifted off-script... but there wouldn't be all that many. And even if there were — even if everything ahead changed — in the end, me, with a good ten more years of experience than anyone else, would still come out on top.
The people who were going to die. The things that were going to be lost. Not all of them, but I could save some.
'The next ten years. At the very least, I need a voice at the table until then.'
After that, it didn't matter. That lay beyond anything I knew. So until then... I would hold on to this influence, whatever it took.
This cycle, I would not end up shelved as a has-been in some back room. Without fail.
Only after I'd confirmed the ogres were getting properly carved up did I finally turn back. I'd been the one to pull them, after all — it would sit poorly with me if somebody caught a stray hit. So I watched until the fourth ogre hit the ground, then made my way to Seo Yoon. She was leaning against a boulder near the spot where I'd first stashed her.
"Resting up nicely?"
"……."
"Oh, come on, don't look at me like that. Like it or not, this is the surest way to get strong fast."
"...Is this what your training always looked like?"
"Hm... to an extent?"
It hadn't exactly been for training, but the results were similar. Three years ago, that was what surviving took. Back then, I'd truly had nothing.
"I don't believe you mentioned any of this in that interview..."
"Ah, that thing?"
Right — there had been an interview once, at the request of a hunting magazine, back when the Association was first standing itself up. It had gone out as Association PR, but still...
"Who goes on record and spills their entire training regimen?"
Granted, there had been exactly one lunatic who laid his whole hand bare before the entire world... but he was an idiot, so we'll let that slide. It was a famous magazine, the kind that landed interviews with most major guild masters — but believing the people inside its pages told you everything was a colossal mistake.
"The Seolwon crowd never gave a proper interview either, for that matter. Everyone's like that — take it as read."
Simple material anyone could work out, and things that had leaked into common knowledge through endless media exposure. Exactly that much, and not a shred more.
"That's why everyone scrambles to get in somewhere, anywhere. Otherwise they can't keep up."
In that respect, Seo Yoon was a lucky one. You could fairly call me a human-shaped encyclopedia distilled from every trick and exploit in existence — my head stuffed, besides, with all manner of knowledge this era hadn't yet discovered. Not that I could announce any of that out loud.
"By the way — those ogres. You went to the trouble of herding all of them, and you're not going to kill them?"
"Well... I could, if I wanted to..."
Twenty-seven ogres? Doable. It would be a grind, but given enough time, wiping out every last one wasn't all that difficult.
Given. Enough. Time.
As I'd thought earlier... it would almost certainly blow past the respawn.
"Honestly, there's little point in me killing them. This training isn't for me to grow — it's for you to get stronger, Seo Yoon."
"……."
What difference would it make if I soloed twenty-seven ogres right here? The me of today wasn't at a level where culling a few common ogres would change anything dramatically. Once you factored in the time it cost, killing them was straight-up a loss. And then there was the biggest problem of all.
I couldn't see a status window. Which meant... I couldn't use the party function...!
'...Fuck.'
If that had worked, I'd have been running power-leveling parties back to back, pumping her full of EXP till she burst. But that route was closed. So this — all of this — was as much as I could offer, helping with everything within my power.
And hey, it was a good deal, wasn't it? Not handing over the catch, but teaching how to hunt. I'd stake my pride on this beating the way other guilds just funnel raw EXP at people. Granted... while others raised ten or a hundred, I could only manage one or two.
"Anyway. Another ten minutes of rest here, then we move to the next point."
"...Will it proceed the same way this time?"
"Something like it."
For the next two weeks or so, we'd repeat nothing but this body-tempering work. Techniques only pay off when the foundation is laid. Even mages benefit from stamina training — an assassin had all the more reason to grind.
I drew out a map and held it up for Seo Yoon.
"Then next up is here. Let's head for the kobold nesting grounds."
"You can't be serious..."
"The pressure won't be as bad as with the ogres. Their arrows are faster, sure, but the spread's narrower, no? Plenty dodgeable."
"……."
Fatigue, and the faintest flicker of protest, showed on Seo Yoon's face. By now I could read that blank expression, at least a little.
"All right, break's over. Let's move out."
"...Understood."
And with that, the two of us set off once more.