Ability Assessment
No!
I... I never meant to...!
"...Who the hell is that dog barking at."
His footsteps move on.
He walks away. He doesn't even listen anymore.
He simply turns his back as if something perfectly ordinary has just taken place.
Please. I'm begging you.
Look at what became of me.
I never wanted it to turn out like this...
"Nari. Let's stop this already."
An irritated voice.
A voice that doesn't even carry a shred of disappointment.
Which is exactly why it hurts more.
Because it means even the grounds for disappointment had already vanished a long time ago.
And so Nari does what she has always done.
I'm sorry...
I'm sorry, Sunwoo...!
"..............."
....Ah!
A meaningless apology. A meaningless voice.
Not even an echo comes back anymore.
Of course it doesn't.
An echo only returns when two people are facing each other.
Scream all you want into empty air and nothing comes back.
But to be disappointed by that, to despair over it, to resent it—
....It's stupid.
A-yeong was right.
Sunwoo had already reached out his hand any number of times.
And I never noticed. Or I did notice and still—
I just used him however I liked. Covered my own eyes however I pleased.
"...Are you all right, Miss Nari?"
And what am I doing right now.
"Miss Nari. You're freezing. Let's go into a motel over there at least."
A man holding his hand out toward me.
Sunwoo holding his hand out toward me.
The same gesture.
But a completely different meaning.
Yeah. So that's it.
"...Miss Nari?"
I've been misunderstanding all this time.
"Just a mom—ent. Miss Nari. Na—ngh, aaaah!"
It wasn't that Sunwoo never cared about me.
If anything, he cared so much, valued me so much, that—
"Stop...! My shoulder, my shoulde—hiiik?!"
"....Ah."
I mistook it for indifference.
Because no matter how close I got, he never asked for anything in return.
Just pouring everything out, devoted without conditions—which, put the other way, simply meant he was kind to everyone.
"I see."
But that wasn't it.
Sunwoo knows how to get angry when he's angry.
He has things he likes. Times when he's sad.
He gets frustrated. He gets disappointed.
"So that was it."
It was only because we were precious to him.
Because the NTR Party was precious.
That he endured, and forgave, and let things slide like a sucker, and played dumb like an idiot.
And now—because I am no longer precious to him.
"——Kyaaaaaaaaaaah!!!"
"....Oops."
Her thoughts had grown too sharp.
Nari loosened the strength in her hand.
The man clutched his shoulder, body trembling violently.
His face had gone past white and into blue.
She tried to offer an apology, but the terror frozen on his features showed no sign of easing.
"...I'm sorry."
She bowed her head.
Disappearing as quickly as possible was the right move now.
Nari went straight to a nearby cheap motel that cost thirty thousand won and tried to sleep.
She didn't need a meal.
The drinks and snacks the man had bought her had already filled her stomach, and more than that, she had no appetite left.
Nari lay blankly on the bed, eyes closing, opening, the sun rising, setting.
"You're under arrest on charges of assault."
"Ah...."
They dragged her to the police station.
"Sunwoo...."
Sunwoo. Didn't come anymore.
"Whoa... that just snapped me wide awake."
One phone call injecting tension into a loose morning.
When they said the police station was calling out of nowhere, I briefly wondered if something had blown up over the porn I'd watched yesterday.
Thankfully it wasn't that they'd caught me looking at herb—it was a guardian request related to Nari or something.
I don't even have the energy left to be impressed anymore.
I just let it slide with a whatever-shrug.
The point is the herb didn't get flagged, right?
As expected of North VPN!
Taking responsibility for your steamy night culture!
Of course that means routing through countries for Netflix, not anything weird, everyone!
"...Ugh."
I'd brushed it off as a joke, but my heart was still thumping a little.
Can't have that. An awakener's mental state is directly tied to their output.
Especially the higher the rank, the more even tiny deviations can hit hard.
I let out a light breath and tried to reset my focus.
"Hm? It's not that bad, really...."
"Hhk——?! H-huuuh...??"
Darkness surged up, rippling through my whole body.
At the same time my entire frame was slowly overtaken, and the unpleasantness that had been rising moments before vanished as if something had simply buried it.
This is....
A sensation completely different from Hecate's.
If Hecate's light felt like extreme-medicine that burned the mind clean, then Nox's darkness was more like an anesthetic—dyeing part of the mind black and hiding it away.
"Definitely better than a second ago."
A floating, drifting feeling.
Not a bad one.
If anything, a little drowsy and warm.
"Got it, Hecate."
A power that looked convenient on the surface.
But that very usefulness felt like it could turn into poison.
This part, too, was different from Hecate.
If Hecate was a wolf that looked fierce but was actually gentle underneath, then Nox was a sheep that looked kind on the outside but was dangerous in truth.
"So let's keep it moderate, yeah?"
I pushed mana into it and forced out the darkness staining part of the mana hole.
The anesthetic slowly lifting. At the same time, the anxiety that had blurred into fog like a dream a moment ago began rising again.
"Huu, haaaa."
A few light deep breaths.
Forcing my breathing steady, holding it, and the heart started slowing down with it.
And the human body really is a stupid thing—once the heart slows and the breath slows, it misreads that as a state of calm.
There's a reason they tell you to breathe deep and slow when you meditate.
"...There."
My heart had settled to a reasonable degree.
As for Nari's case too—I convinced myself that from now on, Nari had to handle it herself.
Gyaaaah! Gyaak! Gyaaaak!
Two spirits going at it cheerfully inside the mana hole.
Whether their relationship was good or bad—probably good, I figured.
"We're here."
Seoul Central Awakener Verification Center.
I parked in the lot and headed inside.
"I'm here for a re-evaluation of my awakening ability."
"Yes. Please wait a moment."
After that it was no different from anyone else.
Take a number. Wait. Follow the administrative process and wait for your turn.
"We'll start by measuring the total capacity of your mana hole."
Under the doctor's guidance, I went through a health check.
First up was the total mana hole capacity test.
Unlike those academy stories, you don't put your hand on some monolith.
Apparently they did that in the old generation, but these days you just wear an armband like a heart-rate monitor and it measures everything on its own.
Please align your heart and arm on a straight line.
Beginning measurement.
Please refrain from movement during measurement as much as possible.
"Mm...."
Pressure building in my arm.
It grew stronger until it started to hurt, then gradually released.
After several rounds of the arm tightening and loosening—
Total Capacity: S-
"Oh...!"
It went up.
The mana that had been stuck at A+ had, by a bare scrape, climbed into S-class.
I'd figured contracting with Nox would shrink the total volume, but it had actually increased a little instead.
Caught between surprise and joy, I was still blanking out when Hecate quietly whispered to me.
"You broke through a wall—eum. If it hadn't been for that Nox, it probably would've come out even higher—im."
"Well. Whatever."
Even if it was by a hair, it came out S.
Maybe this was the first foothold for me to start hearing "monster" instead of just "genius."
Not that no matter how much I thrash around, I'd still be nothing in front of the Hero.
"Next we'll begin the mana road responsiveness test."
Responsiveness test.
Put simply, it measures sensitivity.
I put bands on both wrists and gripped the switches.
Then mana wavelengths began flowing over the bands on both wrists.
"Mm."
One small pulse from the left hand.
I pressed the left switch once.
Right hand. Two short ones. Pressed.
Everything after that was the same as what I was doing now.
The pulses gradually weakened and the signals grew fainter, but...
Mana Sensitivity: S+
"This one's the same as before."
This side was someone who could track IPs with a lightning spirit.
It'd be stranger if I couldn't catch small signals at this point.
Only when I was concentrating, of course.
"Hmmmmm....? Hoooooh...."
The tests kept going.
Finding the exit of a maze with only mana sense while blindfolded.
Solving small puzzles step by step in order under a time limit.
"Overall nothing's changed that dramatically, though."
What had changed the most was still the total mana hole capacity I'd measured first, plus the sensitivity and responsiveness.
Everything else was roughly the same as last time, or only a little improved.
At my level even that small growth feels significant—but somehow there was a part that didn't sit right.
If the results are like this, an increase in output should be a given.
If the total capacity of the mana hole grows and you can handle it better, naturally the mana output should rise too.
But the degree of that output increase was too significant to pin on just that alone.
Absolutely. Definitely. Not because I was disappointed about barely missing a clean S-rank. This was rational suspicion.
So, as a matter of that rational suspicion—
"Nox. Are you still hiding something from me?"
"...Or not?"
Still, right now Nox was the only answer that made sense.
I thought it over for a moment, then put in a request for additional testing.
"This time it's you, Nox. We're going to check you."
"Leave it to me, Papa! For Papa, Nox can do anything!"
What kind of power and potential the existence called Nox held as a spirit.
And so, after looking into this and that about Nox...
"Why? How come? Nox worked so hard!"
A test orc lay collapsed with all seven orifices bleeding, and Nox was squealing, soaked in green blood.
...How much compensation am I going to have to pay for this.