Secret Manual Interpreter, Lee Se-ah
At the Seoul Headquarters Annex of the Hunter Management Bureau.
After quite some time, Lee Se-ah finally made her appearance.
“Ohhh, Agent Lee?”
“Long time no see. So you were still alive!”
“But your face looks glowing. Eating well, are you?”
The moment she stepped into the Special Operations Team area, the senior agents cheered and welcomed her with open arms.
“Haha, good to see you all, seniors.”
“So? How’s dealing with Black treating you?”
Lee Se-ah smiled.
“Manageable! Honestly, it’s such a sweet gig I wish the seniors would take turns with me once in a while.”
“Haha, I’ll pass.”
“It guarantees top evaluation scores and three hundred percent compensation, you know?”
“Yeah, no. Our newbie’s got quite the sense of humor.”
Trading jokes as she walked, her destination was the Director’s office.
Knock knock.
“Come in.”
She opened the door. Kim Hyung-seok, who had been reviewing documents, looked up.
“Agent Lee Se-ah! The interpretations?”
His usual stern composure was nowhere to be found; he looked thoroughly anxious.
“I brought them.”
Thud. Thud-thud.
Lee Se-ah set four thick volumes on the desk.
《Hidden Meridian Heart Art》
《Hidden Meridian Heart Art — Annotated Edition》
《Shadowless Steps — Annotated Edition》
《Soul-Chasing Dagger Arts — Annotated Edition》
“Hidden Meridian Heart Art?”
“He said it would replace the Shadowless Art. Once you master this, it won’t shave years off your lifespan, and it pairs perfectly with the footwork and dagger techniques.”
“……Hah.”
The Director let out a heavy sigh.
The moment he received Lee Se-ah’s earlier report, Kim Hyung-seok had secretly re-examined the records of every retired agent.
Black had been right.
Some had already died young. Most of the rest were living in and out of hospitals.
“Your report was correct.”
It left a bitter taste.
“All this time we’ve been forcing our agents to swallow poison. If it hadn’t been for Black, we would have spent our entire careers never knowing, driving them straight into early graves.”
Kim Hyung-seok carefully ran his hand over the manuals.
It had been a failure born of ignorance.
But he could not simply wallow in self-reproach with the excuse that he hadn’t known. Once you realize something is wrong, correcting it immediately is the duty of a leader.
“Agent Lee, you and Black just saved the entire Management Bureau. Please convey my sincere gratitude to him as well.”
“Black only asked that we handle the publicity properly.”
“Under your name?”
“Yes. He wants me to be the public face.”
“Understood for now.”
Publicity support was easy enough to arrange.
But no matter that the manuals had come from Black, verification was non-negotiable.
Not long after, the door to the Director’s office opened again.
“You called for us, Director.”
Two men entered, heavy presence rolling off their bodies.
Field Team Leader Kang Tae-woong, and Counter-Terrorism Team Leader Eom Min-gi.
Veterans who had crossed every kind of kill zone on the nation’s front lines, and two of the handful of A-rank hunters in the country.
Kim Hyung-seok pushed the two volumes on his desk toward them.
“Take these.”
“What are they?”
Kang Tae-woong checked them with a puzzled look.
The annotated editions of Shadowless Steps and Soul-Chasing Dagger Arts.
Both team leaders’ brows furrowed at the same time.
“New interpretations?”
“Hmm. Shadowless Steps and Soul-Chasing Dagger Arts… our agents could perform those in their sleep by now. Looking at yet another annotated edition at this point…”
They were A-rank hunters, after all.
Their pride in the martial arts they had drilled into their bones soared to the heavens.
“Just read them. And incorporate the contents into your personal training immediately. This is not a recommendation. It’s an order.”
“……”
The two team leaders exchanged a quick glance.
It was rare for the Director to come down this hard.
Their eyes naturally drifted to the interpreter’s name.
Lee Se-ah?
Never heard of this interpreter.
Special Operations agents were handled with extreme secrecy even inside the Bureau, so the team leaders had never known her name.
No choice, then.
When the boss says jump, you jump.
They were full of complaints, but following a superior’s order was simply a civil servant’s fate.
“Understood.”
“We will carry out the order.”
The two men left with the books in hand.
A few days later.
The same two men came rushing back to the Director.
“Director!”
“Are you in?”
Their entire bodies were soaked in sweat, yet their eyes burned bright.
“What in the world happened to you two?”
Kim Hyung-seok half-rose from his seat in alarm just as Kang Tae-woong slammed a thick hand onto the desk and shouted.
“Director! Just who the hell is this interpreter Lee Se-ah?”
“What?”
“She’s insane! This is completely insane!”
“Calm down and explain properly.”
“Everything we’ve been practicing as Shadowless Steps until now wasn’t even footwork.”
The instant those words landed, a full-body shiver raced through Kim Hyung-seok.
Eom Min-gi, face flushed, piled on.
“Team Leader Kang is right. If the old annotated editions were just dictionaries that spelled out the meaning of each word, this one is on an entirely different level! Movement lines, breathing, the angle of the toes, even the direction of the eyes at the moment of landing—every single detail is locked down. Soul-Chasing Dagger Arts is the same. The agents are calling it revolutionary.”
“That dramatic?”
“You won’t understand until you experience it yourself. I still can’t believe it.”
The annotated editions the Bureau had been using were finished products that had been cross-verified by the two most famous interpreters in the country.
And now those top-tier editions were being treated like garbage.
“Honestly, after ten years and tens of thousands of repetitions of Shadowless Steps, I’d finally figured out a few tricks of my own. I thought they were my personal secret techniques.”
Kang Tae-woong flipped through the annotated edition and pointed to a section.
“But they’re written right here. And not just written—explained so thoroughly and kindly it’s like a star instructor is hammering them straight into your skull.”
“All right… I understand. Sit down, both of you.”
Kim Hyung-seok drew a deep breath.
He had already rated Black’s ability highly, but now he had no choice but to trust him completely.
Once the two team leaders took their seats, the Director slowly bowed his head.
“I’m sorry.”
“Director?”
“What’s this about?”
Seeing their confusion, he explained carefully.
“While Interpreter Lee Se-ah was working on Shadowless Steps, she also uncovered the truth about the Shadowless Art.”
That the Shadowless Art was a heart method that drew power at the cost of one’s lifespan.
“I was making loyal servants of the nation swallow poison. The retired agents who suffered from illness after leaving the service… it was all because of this. I will reflect deeply and take full responsibility.”
“Ah.”
“That… was the case?”
Both team leaders’ faces hardened.
They knew the Director had never intended it.
But the Shadowless Art… was a heart method they themselves had practiced.
“Effective immediately, abolish all training in the Shadowless Art. And—”
The Director opened a desk drawer and pushed a heavy manual toward them.
《Hidden Meridian Heart Art — Annotated Edition》
“He recommended this heart method. It can perfectly replace the Shadowless Art. Copy it at once and distribute it to every field agent. Deliver it to the retired agents in the hospitals as well. This is top secret—make sure nothing leaks.”
“……!”
“Ah, and he said that practicing this should restore a portion of the life force that was eaten away.”
The two team leaders were stunned.
If this, too, had been written by Interpreter Lee Se-ah…
“We’ll implement it immediately.”
Watching the two team leaders leave the office, Kim Hyung-seok thought,
The Management Bureau… no, the entire nation has received an enormous grace.
Without him, countless agents would have died namelessly in the shadows, never even knowing why.
This debt had to be repaid.
Just then—
Knock knock.
“Director, I’m here.”
Lee Se-ah peeked through the door.
The Director shot up from his seat, face brightening.
“Oh! Our hero! Agent Lee Se-ah!”
“Aigoo, Director. It was Black who did everything, not me.”
Lee Se-ah gave an embarrassed smile and pulled a new book from her document bag, sliding it onto the desk.
“And this is?”
“Black said he wants to start properly promoting my name in the secret-manual market, and he gave me this.”
《Gale Steps — Annotated Edition》
The Director’s eyes widened.
“Gale Steps? This is…”
“Yes, exactly. The national footwork that nine out of ten Korean hunters learn.”
Kim Hyung-seok understood Black’s intention at once.
Ordinary interpreters tried to raise their own fame by tackling rare, high-level secret manuals.
But a truly skilled interpreter?
They touched the common arts.
Because that was where real competitive power lay.
He wanted to show exactly how this dirt-common footwork would transform once it met a proper interpretation.
“We will mobilize every resource the nation can bring to bear for the publicity.”
There were plenty of methods.
They could coordinate with the Association, or distribute through famous hunter communities and major bookstores.
Black probably had no intention of making money off this anyway.
Once it was released this way, illegal copies would inevitably start circulating.
“Ah, and one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Tell him the payment for the manuals will be deposited into Black’s account under the name of a reward. However… there is a limit, so we can’t give a large amount.”
Executing a budget left a trail.
No matter how classified it was, if large sums kept flowing, rumors would start circulating along the approval line.
They had to prevent Black’s identity from being exposed at all costs.
“How much?”
“Two billion.”
“That’s literally the exact limit.”
“We’ll go with this for now.”
“Yes, sir!”
In truth, Black had said publicity alone would be enough.
This latest manual was something Lee Se-ah had essentially snagged while helping on the side, after all.
But she didn’t mention that fact.
You take what you’re owed.
Obviously.
The peaks of Bukhansan stretched cleanly into the sky.
“Huff, huff!”
“Hwaaak, hwaak!”
Using the suffering of five cadets desperately clawing their way up the sheer rock face as his side dish—
“The liquor tastes excellent.”
Glug, glug!
Kang Hyun was tipping back whiskey.
As expected, once a proper reward was on the table, their stamina improved noticeably.
In the first few days some of them had failed to reach the top and dropped out midway, but now they clung on with pure grit and spite, and all five somehow managed to hear at least the opening section of the formula.
Kang Hyun recited the appropriate formula for each cadet in the order they arrived at the summit and guided the flow of their qi.
When exactly three hours had passed—
“That’s enough.”
Kang Hyun capped the whiskey bottle and declared.
“P-Professor! Please, just one more verse!”
“Haa, haa! If you stop here, the meridians will—”
The cadets clung to him desperately, but Kang Hyun rose from the rock without the slightest hesitation.
There was not a shred of lingering attachment in his movements.
“If you regretted missing that one verse,”
Only his voice remained in their ears as he flung himself off the cliff.
“you should have climbed faster.”
With the lesson finished, Kang Hyun headed to the faculty office.
When he opened the door, Lee Se-ah was already at work grinding ink, and Baek Yu-yeon was threading millet-sized beads one by one onto a slender thread.
“Baek Yu-yeon.”
“Yes!”
“You’re putting force into your fingertips. Faster, more precise, and keep a steady rhythm.”
“Yes!”
People commonly mistook medicine for a field where you simply crammed vast knowledge into your head.
But medical arts—especially acupuncture—were a technical craft more demanding than almost any other discipline.
“Once bead-threading becomes reasonably familiar, next is the human model.”
Kang Hyun pointed to the model standing in one corner of the desk and continued.
“Practice as if it were a real person. No matter how perfect your theory is, acupuncture is ultimately about real application.”
“I will keep that in mind!”
And around lunchtime?
Lee Se-ah would go out and buy lunch boxes.
“Everyone eat first! Today’s special from the cafeteria!”
Work on the secret manuals began after lunch.
At that point Baek Yu-yeon also stopped training and carefully read through the Heavenly Physician’s Ghost Needles.
Swish, swish!
How many times had Kang Hyun’s brush swept across the paper?
Ding!
The screen of the smartphone tossed to one side of the desk lit up.
Amount: ₩2,000,000,000
From: National Treasury — Hunter Management Bureau Reward
“What’s this now? Two billion?”
“Oh, it came through?”
Lee Se-ah, still grinding ink, gave a bashful smile.
“A reward?”
“The Director said he simply couldn’t let the Shadowless Art matter slide. He even said he was sorry the regulations only allowed this much.”
“Is that so?”
Kang Hyun rubbed his chin and nodded.
Hmm. Perfect timing.
Thud.
He set down the brush he had been holding and stood up.
“Huh? Where are you going?”
“Everyone up.”
“……What?”
Kang Hyun grinned.
“If we’ve got money, we ought to go spend it.”