Chapter 11
Chapter 11
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 11
Chapter Title: With Kick, Unleashing Poison on the Hunter Industry
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Three days had passed.
Before testing the effects of the ultra-high-grade mana stone, there were a few things to check first.
"Two of them are no-shows. What a pity for those guys."
The honorable ten secondary test subjects.
But they had only sent me eight files in total.
I double- and triple-checked the count, but it was still eight.
Meaning two of them hadn't bothered to submit their reports.
After I'd swung my pen like my arm was about to fall off, writing up the instructions with clear deadlines and penalties for missing them!
I half-expected it, but that didn't stop me from getting pissed off.
Before blacklisting those two for good, I decided to review the submissions first.
Not petty at all.
If you're gonna blame someone, blame the Hunter community rules—every report gets posted publicly anyway.
That's why they have the review feature. It's there to be used.
"Hmm."
After about an hour of dissecting them.
I had my results.
'One was just your average hunter, and the other one...'
[Finally broke through to New Moon][Author: TruckReincarnationWantsToDie]
I could tell he was a C-rank hunter from New Moon Guild. There was a post from about three years ago bragging about getting accepted.
Of course, that didn't make me resent New Moon Guild or anything.
I'm not the type to blame a whole group for one idiot's screw-up.
Even if my body's a bit lacking, my magnanimity is that of a true man. You bet.
But then I saw another post of his, and my mind changed.
[lololol Bonus payout!][Author: TruckReincarnationWantsToDie]
Guild threw us some nice bonus cash this month. Rice money jackpot!
- Fuck, so jealous
- Why doesn't our guild do that?
- What'd you do to get a bonus?
└(Author): Outstanding achievement award
└There's such a thing?
└(Author): First time I heard too lol
└What for?
└(Author): It's a secret lol
Exactly six days ago—the same day I shipped out Molrangtory Ver.2.
And on that very day, this C-rank hunter scores a bonus from New Moon.
Wow. What an amazing coincidence, huh?
Naturally, only one possibility came to mind.
[New Moon Guild announces rewards for testers selected by lottery → Author wins → Hands Molrangtory over to New Moon and gets bonus]
'No matter how I look at it, that's the only explanation.'
Of course, if it were just New Moon.
A major corporation like them would've probably sent a normal report...
He probably didn't even read the instructions.
Just got lazy, sent the Molrangtory to New Moon, and called it a day.
Otherwise, New Moon wouldn't pull something this stupid.
Either way, this told me one thing.
'The guilds are already researching the Molrangtory samples...'
Reverse engineering, right? That shady practice of tearing apart an existing product to copy the tech.
I hadn't filed any patents, and I had no plans to, so legally, I couldn't touch them.
Still, those sneaky bastards.
I figured they might, but jumping straight into full-scale research already left a bad taste.
Guess that just proves how amazing my Molrangtory is.
"Molrang. Looks like we've gone and poisoned the Hunter industry."
Molrang?
Sorry guilds, but I've got confidence.
Confidence that it'll be one-of-a-kind now and forever.
The Molrangtory miracle was only possible because it's tied inseparably to me and Molrang.
That's right.
Unless they had godlike powers!
Unless they could summon a dragon right in the middle of Seoul!
They couldn't even dream of imitating it.
"Fools. Go ahead, try to copy it if you dare."
Fueled by boiling competitive spirit, I fired off a declaration post.
[Making a Declaration][Author: WannaRaiseADragon]
Looks like a ton of guilds are already scrambling to copy the Molrangtory.
So I'm gonna boldly declare:
You guys have talent...
Nah, you don't.
No talent, so just don't bother. You won't make it anyway.
-lololololololololol
-Fr, getting scooped and monopolized the second something drops is infuriating
-Honestly if the author wasn't so badass it'd be cringe lol
└Total legend lolol I'd have patented already
└Idiot, not patenting means way higher upside
└Sure~ prolly gonna get ripped off hard~
└If that worked guilds would've made it first lol
**
"Wow... Team Leader, take a look at th..."
Researcher Reese from New Moon Guild's Research Team A started to show his smartphone screen to the team leader.
"...What is it?"
"N-Never mind!"
One look at the team leader's face, and he changed his mind.
Three straight days of all-nighters. The team leader's expression was a toxic mix of exhaustion, anger, irritation, and more.
Was that really a human face? Looked more like a ghoul.
Awakener Reese could handle it okay, but for a non-awakener like the team leader, it was brutal.
No way he could show him the inventory maker's battle cry on the community boards.
Would be straight-up suicide.
Good thing Reese had some tact.
"Haa..."
The team leader let out a sigh that could sink the earth, then poked at the gooey blob on the glass plate with a transparent rod. Poke, poke.
Exactly three hours ago, the inventory prototype had collapsed into that mess.
No manual or anything, but it mentioned a usage limit of about five days.
Holding out a day longer meant more research time—a silver lining...
"...No progress at all."
Just like the team leader said, zero breakthroughs.
Poke, poke.
The transparent rod started changing color bit by bit.
It looked ordinary, but it was a special tool for detecting individual mana signatures in objects.
The color that appeared on the rod revealed the mana owner's identity.
"This... thing...!"
Bang!
"What the hell!"
Bang!
The team leader slammed the rod down in frustration. By now, three colors were all jumbled up on it.
Mana colors didn't usually mix...
It had taken two days to separate them perfectly.
Red, blue, and white.
Another two days for precise analysis to ID the owners.
Red and blue belonged to pudding slimes.
But the last one—white—they still hadn't identified.
"Yeah... who the hell does it belong to."
They'd scoured countless monster samples, but nothing matched.
The 'maybe human?' hypothesis didn't hold—the assimilation rate with monster mana was way too high.
'100% assimilation? Is that even possible?!'
Even beast tamer Awakeners who could communicate with monsters couldn't hit that.
The world's two S-rank tamers topped out at 77%.
Only one conclusion left.
"It means they used Kick..."
Kick. Kick.
To fix the pudding slime's sloppy gooiness, they used a Kick monster.
An unknown one, unreported in academia.
And with it, achieved perfect fusion of the two slimes.
"Aaaargh! What the fuck is this Kick?!"
My head's gonna explode.
I wanna track the guy down and demand answers right now.
Hell, screw it all—maybe I should just quit.
For the first time, Reese regretted quitting as a Hunter to become a researcher.
**
"Alright, let's do this."
The moment I'd been waiting for.
Could an ultra-high-grade mana stone serve as the Kick for Molrangtory?
It had to.
I'd sunk the equivalent of 1.5 million won into it, after all.
Even if I hadn't spent a dime out of pocket.
Anyway.
"Molrang, Molcang. Let's go."
!!!
At my command, the two pudding slimes squeezed their eyes shut and trembled.
Small fragments formed above their heads.
The fragments grew and grew until, finally—
Plop!
They detached from the main body, gaining their freedom.
"Now, let's see. How much better are they?"
Appearance-wise, not a huge diff... wait, there is?
Sparkle, sparkle.
The stardust that floated up when the slimes felt happy.
Molrang's fragment had them embedded beautifully.
And it didn't stop there.
"Ooh...!"
Surface test: perfect pass.
No mana stone powder applied, yet zero stickiness.
Molcang's fragment was still super tacky by comparison.
"Nice. Good momentum."
Of course, this was bonus territory.
Nice to have, but not make-or-break.
The real game starts now.
Whirrrrr!
I pulled out the weapon I'd prepped for this day.
Whirrrrr!
The massive drill whose roar alone gave it away. Drill.
A regular power drill has a thin tip, but I'd beefed mine up with a carrot sleeve.
Planning to shove it inside the Molrangtory fragment and spin to test the internals.
Sounds random, but it's not.
It was my go-to method for testing Molrangtory durability before.
'If internal stickiness builds up, the drill stops spinning.'
Molrang...!
Thud thud thud!
At the sight of the destructive tool, Molrang and Molcang bolted far away.
Guess they were projecting themselves onto the fragments, watching protectively.
Whirrrrr!
Imagine this drill inside your body...
"Hmph!"
I stopped that train of thought.
No good would come from going further.
Click.
I fired up a second drill.
Dual-wield to slash testing time.
Whirrr...
Slide them into the fragment's core, and the noise vanished like magic.
LEDs flashing red on both meant they were spinning fine so far.
Now, just wait.
I'd check results every few hours, make more fragments for extras.
Satisfying outcome? Straight to Phase 1.
Mass-production plan for Molrangtory, Phase 1.
Wait—no.
Plenty of downtime while waiting anyway. Might as well kick it off now.
Rustle.
I started gearing up to head out.
For a stable Phase 1 rollout, one thing needed doing first.