The 100 Billion Golem Fiasco
“Hmm.” Choi Jungwoo stared quietly at Kim Cheon-a. The girl with hot chocolate smeared around her mouth was blankly looking back and forth between the two of them. Seeing that mysterious expression, Choi Jungwoo opened his mouth.
“It’s definitely an error.”
“Of course. Did I input the commands too sloppily?” The alchemist old man scratched his head vigorously. “That time-devouring owl’s eyeball was an excellent material, I’ll give it that. But it’s a pain to handle.”
The time-devouring owl. An S-class gate that had appeared in Australia. The boss monster that emerged from it. To subdue it reliably, an S-class hunter was mandatory, along with support from multiple A-class hunters at minimum. The material’s value easily reached hundreds of billions for a reason.
Yet because it was so precious, controlling it was equally difficult.
‘A powerhouse strong enough to annihilate every hunter.’
The old man figured some error must have slipped into that command line.
“The measurement itself was probably accurate, right?”
It was a core ingredient from an S-class monster. The scanning performance had been solid. Which meant the error lay in the command system fed into the golem.
“Or maybe the fault is in another component. Yeah, that sounds more likely.”
At any rate, a major glitch had caused the golem to perceive the girl as something it could not handle. That was why it had gone berserk.
“Um, could it be because of this sword?” the girl interjected abruptly. “When I bought it, the seller told me it was made from the same material as one of the world’s famous blades.”
At Kim Cheon-a’s words, Choi Jungwoo’s eyes flashed. It had been wrapped in cloth until she drew it, so he hadn’t noticed before. Could this sword hold some incredible secret?
“Perhaps…”
It might be a legendary demonic blade or artifact. Choi Jungwoo and the alchemist old man exchanged glances and swallowed nervously. With tense expressions, they accepted the sword from Kim Cheon-a.
Choi Jungwoo examined the blade with care, even flicking it with a finger.
Ting. A dull metallic ring sounded.
“…It’s just scrap iron.”
“Yeah. The purity is ridiculously low.”
“Gasp.” Kim Cheon-a’s face filled with shock. “B-but the seller definitely said the material was top-tier! If you just sharpened the edge, it would become a world-famous sword…”
Choi Jungwoo asked with a flat look, “Exactly how much did you pay for it?”
“One hundred thousand won.”
“There’s no way you could buy a decent weapon with that kind of money.”
The old man chuckled. “Still, you didn’t get completely ripped off. The quality is exactly one hundred thousand won.”
There was no hidden secret to the sword. That left only one conclusion.
“Anyway, the golem rampaged because of a command error,” the old man began summarizing. “As a side effect, the defense system took serious damage. It had to release all its hidden combat power, so the limiter was removed. The armor’s defensive rating probably dropped at the same time.”
A command error. A berserk golem. All limiters disengaged, causing a flaw in the armor. That was why it had been sliced apart by such a sword.
“…So that’s how we’re settling it.”
There were plenty of holes in the logic, but the old man sighed. “If you think about it logically, there isn’t any other answer.”
“Kim Cheon-a, examinee. You’ve been through a lot. Go home and rest for today.” Choi Jungwoo looked at her. “Rest well, and return tomorrow for the final test.”
The last stage of the practical hunter exam would be held the very next day.
“R-right. I’ll be going then. There’s definitely no compensation fee for the golem, right…?”
With those words, Kim Cheon-a fled without looking back.
Once the girl was gone, the old man let out a deep sigh. “In the end, a fighter jet’s worth of money has vanished into thin air. And not some cheap model—a cutting-edge stealth fighter.”
Choi Jungwoo answered calmly, “Well, isn’t that how hunter work usually goes?”
Over a hundred billion won. An astronomical sum ordinary civilians could never imagine. Yet in this industry, it wasn’t strange at all for state-of-the-art combat weapons to carry that price tag. After all, even a single military missile cost billions these days.
“I’ll head out too. Need to fetch a spare golem from storage. Sigh, I can already hear the higher-ups throwing a fit.”
“Why not retire while you’re at it?”
“Hmph. Tell them to fire me if they’ve got the guts.”
The alchemist old man snorted and left. Despite that personality, he was A-class—one of the top alchemists in that rank. A precious talent who could have aimed for S-class if he were even a little younger. In every sense, he was an irreplaceable asset the nation could never afford to lose.
“Hmm.”
After the old man departed, Choi Jungwoo quietly walked back toward the test site. Two young alchemists from the association were carefully lifting the golem onto a stretcher.
“Think we can salvage the eyeballs?”
“No chance. They were sliced clean off too.”
“We’re screwed.”
“Yeah, we’re screwed.”
Listening to their conversation, Choi Jungwoo approached the severed fragments. He crouched down and stared hard at the cut surface, then reached out to slowly stroke the still-warm edge.
It was a perfect slice.
‘This doesn’t look like it was cut by a sword. It looks more like…’
A machine. As if a state-of-the-art laser cutter had gone over it with surgical precision.
Suddenly he remembered what the old man had said back in the office.
Where else would you find someone who could destroy it this cleanly besides you?
A bitter smile spread across Choi Jungwoo’s lips.
“It seems you’ve overestimated me.”
“Sorry?”
“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”
Choi Jungwoo shook his head and stood. The girl’s sword he had examined moments ago was nothing more than a crude toy forged from scrap iron, its edge not even properly sharpened.
“Ha.”
Cutting through a golem covered in high-grade armor with a plaything like that was something even he—an A-class hunter—could never do.
The anchor’s words had barely ended when the camera angle switched abruptly. A reporter dashed toward a white-haired old man walking down a hallway inside the building.
“Doctor! Please give us a statement about the golem destruction!”
“Get that camera out of my face! ———!”
A long beep drowned out the audio, but anyone Korean could read the old man’s lips. He was swearing up a storm.
‘That’s the guy I saw earlier today.’
I paused the smartphone screen for a second. The person on the news was the alchemist old man from the exam site office. The broadcast was making a huge fuss about equipment worth a hundred billion won being lost, yet there wasn’t a single word about disciplining or punishing the old man himself.
‘The fact that he still doesn’t get fired after something like this proves how valuable he is.’
Given the topic, the Hunter Gallery was naturally buzzing with the same bait.
[Author: Anonymous]
Everyone’s tax money is exploding right now!
Since the gallery was already on fire with the story, I’d dropped the comment like a half-hearted coming-out. Of course it got completely ignored.
A hundred billion, and I cut it….
“Do you want to reveal your identity?”
Heugryeon, sitting beside me, asked while looking my way.
“No. I was just bored…”
I hadn’t had any grand ideas. If anything, it would be incredibly inconvenient if people found out that the hundred-billion-won golem had been destroyed by my hand. Who knew how much tax money had gone into the thing?
‘They told me it was fine to break it, so I just swung with everything I had.’
I hadn’t expected it to be that expensive.
“Ahem. Still, it’s fortunate.”
From the news, it looked like they were treating it as a maintenance failure.
‘Not that they would have believed the truth anyway.’
Whether by luck or misfortune, no one suspected that I had actually sliced the golem apart. Earlier in the office, that hunter—Choi Jungwoo, was it?—had been holding my profile. When I secretly peeked at it, my internal energy had been evaluated as Lowest, the weakest possible rank.
“But lowest-grade internal energy doesn’t make any sense.”
Lowest grade? I hadn’t paid much attention since I passed the exam, but I never imagined it would be that low. I had trained the mind method so diligently. Swallowing those bitterly sweet red ginseng sticks every single day—the pain I had endured…!
“There is no need for concern. Cheonma-nim’s internal energy is compressed to the extreme deep within your dantian.”
Heugryeon spoke calmly.
“The qi that flows out of Cheonma-nim’s body—the wasted energy—has become extremely minimal.”
She sat neatly in front of me and continued.
“It is no different from naturally mastering Eungigong. External measurements can no longer gauge the depth of your internal energy.”
I had seen Eungigong before. It was a technique to conceal one’s internal energy. It reminded me of a manga I once read—the long-eared silver-haired elf hiding the magic power she had just obtained. Something like that.
According to the Hunter Gallery’s consensus, the Association’s magic power scanner worked by measuring mana or qi that flowed outside the body. That was why they attached the device to the skin. It had no function to pierce directly into the energy condensed in the dantian.
Since almost no energy leaked from my body, the machine had registered it as the lowest grade.
‘Ah, so that’s why.’
The internal energy displayed in my status window had always shown nothing but a single question mark. That was probably due to the unique nature of the Cheonma Simbeop as well.
‘Even the status window can’t detect it.’
Well, Cheonma Shingong itself was an EX-class skill. Since it was an unprecedented martial art, that made sense.
Heugryeon added in a serious tone, “By nature, the Heavenly Demon’s sword is renowned for being destructive and fierce. When it cuts something, the cross-section should normally look mangled, as if gnawed by a wild beast.”
I recalled the swordsmanship I had learned—the Cheonma Sword Method. Originally, my blade should have left exactly that kind of brutal mark.
“Yet Cheonma-nim was the complete opposite. You condensed the internal energy within the sword into a single perfect point.”
I remembered the moment. The golem split in a single stroke. Its cross-section had been impossibly clean and smooth.
“No matter how faint the energy, if you focus it to the extreme on even the tiniest area, the cutting power transcends imagination.”
“So that’s how the armor was pierced as well?”
“Correct.”
Heugryeon gave a light bow.
“It is thanks to Cheonma-nim’s swift attainment of enlightenment.”
At her praise I cleared my throat. Sometimes—okay, often—her embarrassing compliments made my chest feel strangely ticklish.
“A-anyway, I’m going to sleep early tonight. Tomorrow’s test is the most important one…”
I wriggled deeper into the blanket. The hunter practical exam still had one final test remaining.