Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Lv. 25
Strength 10 Agility 25
Stamina 19 Mana 10
Stat Points 0
Virtue 9250
Sin @#%^@#TF
Traits
Cheonsalseong EX, Mark of Eternity, Ignition B, King of the Dead C
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The status window he checked before entering the Association.
Not only had his agility increased greatly,
his stamina had risen a lot as well.
And that wasn’t all.
His Virtue had already reached 9250.
It was the result of saving people yesterday on Bukhansan.
“I’m here to take the hunter exam.”
First floor hall of the Association building.
“What is your name?”
“Lee Jeonseok.”
The woman at the reception desk typed on the keyboard.
It seemed she was checking whether he had registered for the exam.
Soon the receptionist continued speaking with a professional smile.
“You’re confirmed. Please wait in the examination room on basement level two. The examiner will come shortly.”
“Understood.”
Lee Jeonseok followed her instructions and stepped into the elevator.
Beep.
B2.
He pressed the button for the second basement floor.
The elevator began descending.
“Looks like you’re here for the exam too?”
A man riding with him asked.
The man had a horn growing from the left side of his head.
Of course, he wasn’t a monster or anything like that.
Some traits occasionally altered one’s appearance.
It seemed the man also possessed a horn-related trait.
“Yes.”
Lee Jeonseok nodded briefly.
“I don’t know if we’ll end up on the same team, but let’s do our best.”
The man said that and extended his hand.
Lee Jeonseok shook it.
Ding.
The elevator stopped.
“See you.”
The man stepped out first.
A sly grin spread across his unpleasant face.
Left alone inside, Lee Jeonseok stared at the hand he had just shaken.
Whoosh.
Then he activated Ignition.
His right hand burned with dark crimson flames.
On the back of his hand, still wrapped in bandages, a strange symbol appeared.
A mark.
It burned away like ash in the fire.
“…”
Lee Jeonseok stepped out of the elevator and looked at the man walking ahead of him.
At first glance, the man had a kind-looking face.
But his eyes weren’t smiling at all.
A sense born from experience whispered to him.
Alarm.
Danger.
Threat.
That man was unsettling.
That was why he had used Ignition.
Ignition could erase curses or marks related to them.
At first he had wondered if it didn’t work on himself, since it couldn’t erase the burn on his hand.
But seeing the man’s mark disappear proved otherwise.
The burn on his right hand probably remained because it was a curse inflicted by Ignition itself.
“Doing something unpleasant, aren’t you.”
Lee Jeonseok shook his hand as if dusting it off.
The flames went out like a candle.
By the time he noticed, the man had already entered the examination room down the hallway.
Lee Jeonseok followed him inside.
The scene resembled a classroom.
Desks were lined up in rows.
However, everything was white and colorless.
The man sat in the very front seat.
There were already examinees sitting on both sides of him.
Whether he lacked a sense of distance or simply had thick skin,
choosing that seat meant only one thing.
“Let’s do our best.”
Just as expected.
The man offered handshakes to the examinees.
The examinees shook his hand without thinking much of it.
Nothing was visible to the naked eye.
But the curse must have been engraved on them as well.
From the very back seat, Lee Jeonseok watched them.
…
Was he trying to sabotage the exam, or trying to gain an advantage for himself?
Lee Jeonseok couldn’t know what the man was thinking.
But one thing was certain.
His intentions were not good.
It was clearly an act of malice.
If he stopped it and returned it back to him…
would that count as Virtue or Sin?
“Interesting.”
Lee Jeonseok stared at the man like a predator watching prey.
His pupils gleamed like a snake’s slit eyes.
“Looks like everyone has gathered.”
Just then,
someone entered the examination room.
A woman wearing a black suit with white hair.
A golden badge was pinned to the left side of her chest.
She seemed to be the examiner.
“My name is Anya Ivanov. I will be supervising this hunter exam.”
Judging from her white hair, she appeared to be a foreigner.
From the name, perhaps Russian.
“I’ve never heard that name before.”
Her face was beautiful like a sculpture.
And if she was a hunter at the level of an examiner,
Lee Jeonseok should have heard of her at least once.
Yet he knew nothing about Anya Ivanov.
Which meant only one thing.
“She either died before I became active, or retired for some reason and disappeared into the countryside.”
Either way, it wasn’t important.
“We will begin with the written test. The exam time is sixty minutes. As you all know, it evaluates your basic knowledge related to hunters.”
She slowly handed out the test papers as she continued speaking.
“Even if your score is high, you may still fail if your morality score is low. Please keep that in mind.”
That was only natural.
If someone lacking conscience possessed a hunter license and used their power recklessly,
it could cause a disaster.
“Now we will begin the written portion of the hunter qualification exam.”
Soon the distribution of papers ended and the test began.
Anya sat in her chair and looked around.
Her blue eyes were cold and merciless,
making the examinees naturally tense.
Of course, that didn’t apply to Lee Jeonseok.
He had already taken the hunter exam once in his previous life.
Naturally, he knew all the answers.
It was practically an open-book test.
He finished writing all the answers in less than twenty minutes.
Exactly forty minutes remained.
“How boring.”
Lee Jeonseok rested his chin on his hand and yawned repeatedly while staring blankly out the window.
Forty minutes passed.
The written exam ended, and Anya collected the papers.
Ten minutes after submitting the test,
the results were revealed much sooner than expected.
A large screen descended from the ceiling at the front of the examination room.
Anya operated a remote and the screen lit up.
The displayed results appeared.
First place Lee Jeonseok 100 points Pass
Second place Kim Manjin 85 points Pass
Third place Min Seok 84 points Pass
Fourth place Bin Hyoseok 76 points Pass
Scores and rankings appeared in order.
The examinees immediately began murmuring.
It was because of the first place score.
“Crazy, he got a perfect score?”
“Even the morality questions aside, some of those were really difficult…”
“Didn’t he cheat or something?”
Suspicious voices rose from various places.
Then—
“There was no cheating, so you can rest assured.”
After Anya spoke, the examinees shut their mouths.
Those were the words of an Association examiner.
No one dared argue.
That authority stood like a towering mountain.
Moreover, it was impossible for an examiner to miss cheating from a mere examinee.
The complaints naturally subsided.
The room fell silent.
Anya continued speaking.
“As you can see, anyone scoring below fifty points fails.”
Fifty points.
A rather low passing mark.
However, a low passing score meant the exam itself had been difficult.
Seventeenth place Man Deokjin 47 points Fail
Eighteenth place Son Seoyun 42 points Fail
Nineteenth place Yoo Hanbin 40 points Fail
The failed examinees appeared on the screen.
About half of the examinees had failed.
Not even half had passed.
“That’s impossible!”
“I failed?”
“I studied so hard…”
Voices of disappointment echoed throughout the room.
Some people even showed irritation.
Lee Jeonseok stared at them.
“People like that always exist everywhere.”
He soon shifted his gaze toward Anya.
He was curious how she would handle them.
His eyes were like someone observing an experiment.
Cold and unsettling.
It was a bad habit of Lee Jeonseok.
A kind of instinct.
In the endless world of suffering known as Avici,
he had been forced to keep thinking constantly to lessen the pain and boredom.
Why did that person die.
What sin brought them to hell.
Did the torturers possess reason.
What kind of beings were the grim reapers.
He simply thought and thought endlessly.
And the habit born from that was observation.
Watching wandering souls, torturers, or the occasional grim reaper
to briefly forget the pain.
“Those who have failed may leave through the back door.”
Anya’s eyes suddenly flashed.
Presence.
Aura.
An invisible force filled the examination room.
The failed examinees immediately fell silent.
Their heads hung low.
Their anger had vanished.
So this was the presence of a high-ranking hunter.
She controlled the entire room with just her gaze.
“Damn it…”
The failed examinees left the room with frustrated expressions.
“Now we will begin the practical test.”
Anya spoke calmly, as if those people had never existed.
The practical exam was held on basement level four of the Association.
A wide open space like an empty field.
There was nothing except gates.
That’s right.
Gates.
Several types of dungeons existed on the fourth basement floor.
However, they were all lower-tier F rank dungeons.
Anya explained that these were artificial dungeons created by the Association specifically for testing.
“The examinee with the lowest written score will choose a dungeon first and enter. Even if you fail to clear it, you will not automatically fail. However, successfully clearing it will give you additional points.”
Anya explained the practical exam while standing in front of the row of gates.
It wasn’t particularly important information.
Just the basics.
The same things that had appeared in the written exam.
“Well then.”
She began the test.
As explained earlier,
the examinee with the lowest written score entered the dungeon first.
He stepped inside with a tense expression.
In his hand was a long iron sword.
A weapon loaned by the Association for the exam.
Lee Jeonseok also held a dagger slightly longer than a utility knife.
“You may now proceed with the dungeon.”
The examinee entered the dungeon.
A screen descending from the ceiling displayed him.
Perhaps he heard the instruction from outside.
“Yes!”
The examinee nodded.
He began walking forward slowly.
And one person was watching closely.
Someone with particularly unpleasant eyes.
Kim Manjin.
Second place in the written exam.
The man who had pretended to shake hands while engraving strange marks on everyone.
What exactly was he aiming for?
Lee Jeonseok also looked at the screen.
At that moment, the examinee encountered a monster.
Goblin Lv. 5
A very common green creature.
It seemed the examinee had chosen the basic type dungeon.
“The basic type is the easiest and safest.”
Goblins were weak.
Their bodies were small and thin.
Their weapons were nothing more than rusty daggers.
For an awakened person, they were quite easy monsters to deal with.
However—
“Argh?!”
In the very next moment,
the examinee was struck by that supposedly easy monster.
His movements were dull and slow.
Watching that, Lee Jeonseok smiled slightly.
“So you were planning something quite interesting.”
A smile like a child discovering something fun.
Yet it felt chilling because of his murky eyes.
Lee Jeonseok glanced at Anya.
She showed no reaction.
She simply watched the screen.
“So she knows something is wrong and is still leaving it alone?”
There was no way she didn’t know.
She was the examiner.
A hunter at her level could easily detect when a trait was being activated through the flow of mana and even identify its type.
Unless the opponent was much stronger and deliberately causing mana interference.
But Kim Manjin was only an examinee.
And yet she remained still.
“She’s intentionally letting it happen.”
In that case—
“I just thought of a good idea.”
Lee Jeonseok shifted his gaze to Kim Manjin.
Thought quickly turned into action.
Perhaps because of the habits engraved in him as Cheonsalseong,
Lee Jeonseok tended to solve situations with action rather than words.
Suddenly he walked toward Kim Manjin.
“W-what are you doing?”
Kim Manjin was startled by the sudden situation.
It happened in an instant.
Boom.
Lee Jeonseok hooked Kim Manjin’s leg, knocked him to the ground, and pressed the dagger in his hand against his throat.