A Lamb's Stats, a Lion's Blood

Chapter 9

While Haneul was still celebrating, HR Team Leader Lee Jaein sat in a control room with a commanding view of the testing grounds, scanning the venue through the CCTV feeds.

The reason Jaein was standing watch today was, at least officially, to supervise the evaluation and make sure it ran without a hitch. That was the story that had been put out, anyway. It was not his true purpose. His attention had narrowed to a single point of interest: Haneul.

Indeed, behind his horn-rimmed glasses, Jaein's eyes stayed locked on one of the several tables displayed across his monitor — Haneul's — and would not leave it.

Haneul's evaluation results read as follows.

Something's off.

A faint but stubborn sense of wrongness had settled over Jaein. Haneul was, beyond any doubt, the blood of Lee Myungwoo — Head of Strategic Planning and a son of the Shinseung Group's owner family.

The year before, Jaein had verified Haneul's date of birth at an orphanage in Yuseong-gu, Daejeon. He had examined the R-shaped pendant with his own eyes as well. And shortly before spiriting the boy up to Midland Seoul, he had plucked a single strand of Haneul's hair and quietly run a paternity test through back channels on Old Earth. The result confirmed that Haneul's DNA matched the Shinseung Group owner family's at 98.9 percent.

It's certain the young master carries Director Myungwoo's blood. So why does he look nothing like him?

Haneul's round face and slight frame were a world apart from Myungwoo's tall, powerfully built figure. Where the Director brought to mind a lion that stole the breath just to look at, Haneul was all harmless herbivore.

Don't tell me the young master was sired by another man?

Jaein had weighed that possibility too. But no. Haneul's birth mother — once Director Myungwoo's lover, now the former fiancée whose engagement had been called off — had been a formidable swordswoman, and the face Jaein conjured from memory was worlds away from Haneul's.

And in the middle of all this, today, Haneul's aptitude test results had come through. Turning the figures on the table over and over in his mind, Jaein only grew more troubled.

Attack power, dead last. Agility is a disaster. Defense and poison resistance barely scrape past average. There's no way to look at this and call him the Director's blood.

Only Haneul's mental fortitude and vitality were worth a second glance.

If he were just an ordinary employee, none of this would matter. An intern with vitality that high has a real chance of Blooming as a healer — he could become a medic and live out his days in comfort behind the lines, and that would be that.

But the owner family was a different animal. Its members were fated to claw at one another, tooth and nail, amid a throng of competitors. Blooming as a healer would be worth precisely nothing there — all the more so for one in as awkward a position as Haneul.

If things go on like this, the young master will be eaten alive by the other young masters and young ladies before he ever gets to use his strength. Once his bloodline comes to light, the moves against him will be truly vicious. Haaah.

Jaein scrubbed a hand roughly down his face. Frankly, the rival claimants weren't even the real problem. If Haneul failed to Bloom a powerful ability, something far more lethal lay coiled beyond that failure — and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that problem would not be Haneul's alone. It would land squarely on Myungwoo as well.

Jaein's chest felt tight. Having attached himself to Myungwoo's line, he could not afford for Haneul to become Myungwoo's fatal weakness. If Myungwoo failed to take the succession and went under, it would not only be Jaein whose life hung in the balance — his younger sister, Lee Luin, would be dragged down with him.

If it comes to that, better the young master dies before his identity ever comes to light. I'll need to watch his growth very carefully from here on.

For an instant, Jaein's eyes flashed a cold, dispassionate light behind his glasses. The light guttered out even faster than it had come.

The next morning, the early ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hours of April 29th. On the 58th floor of Shinseung Group Headquarters in Gongdeok-dong, Mapo-gu, Awakened in distinctive combat suits had gathered in the Hyu Lounge, trading small talk.

With the rich aroma of morning coffee drifting through the lounge, the conversation drifted to the interns' debut.

"The debuts start today, right?" one of the Awakened offered.

The responses came quick.

"Puhuh. So it's already time for the milk-scented little chicks to make their debut, is it?"

"I do wonder what percentage makes it out alive this time."

"Going by past years, of the three thousand–odd interns only about a thousand ever Bloomed and came back. This year will look about the same, I'd wager."

"And out of that thousand, the rookies who Bloom an ability worth a damn will barely top three hundred."

"And of those three hundred rookies, the ones who survive three whole years and join us up here — you're lucky to count twenty to thirty."

"Twenty or thirty? That's nothing. The 1st Attack Unit alone lost four men off its roster in the past few months. If the group doesn't supply us with fresh personnel as fast as it can, we can't promise we'll keep securing resources in Highland. Which means reinforcements go to us first. Non-negotiable."

So argued a powerfully built man whose combat suit bore the Shinseung Group crest beside the numeral 1.

A woman with a long scar along her cheek gave a scornful sniff. "Heh. What a riot. Does he think the 2nd Attack Unit has people falling out of the sky? We need reinforcements a hell of a lot more urgently."

"And why's everyone skipping the 3rd Attack Unit? Ours is the one in a serious manpower crisis, or didn't you know?"

The combat-suited Awakened vied to shout one another down. As the group's core personnel, they felt no hesitation whatsoever about pressing their claims. The office side — General Affairs, HR, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and the like — by contrast, sat in cowed silence.

Not that the office staff's own need for reinforcements was any less desperate than the combat units'. They too were being crushed under punishing workloads, day after day. It was simply difficult to air a list of complaints in front of combat-unit Awakened whose ranks lost members to death on the regular.

Chapter 10

Shinseung Group's HR team had divided the three thousand–odd interns into ten battalions. Each battalion's debut fell on a different date, and the 1st Battalion — Haneul's — would fight its debut today, April 29th.

Lee Luin, the 1st Battalion's escort commander, led the shorn-headed interns toward Highland. When she marched the three hundred–odd interns down into Gongdeok Station in Mapo-gu, a Shinseung Group private subway train stood waiting on the platform.

"Everyone on."

Luin jerked a finger in instruction.

"Yes, ma'am! Boarding!"

Parroting the order back as one, the interns split off and filed aboard the train's various cars. Haneul scurried in after them, seized a handrail pole, and stood. The bulky pack on his back was loaded with everything he would need to stay alive in Highland.

So it's finally starting.

Haneul swallowed hard. His heart had grown as heavy as the pack on his shoulders. His fellow recruits looked every bit as taut. It was fair enough — step into Highland today, and you had a 67 percent chance of dying or degenerating into a beast. The survival rate was all of 33 percent.

No wonder every mouth in the car had gone bone dry.

The train clattered into motion while the interns stood wound tight as wire. It had left Gongdeok Station, passed one stop, and was running beneath the Han River when, with a heavy clang, it braked to an abrupt halt.

The interns, nerves already raw, flinched and readied themselves to bolt for the doors. Before they could, Luin's orders came down over the radio.

"Everybody off the train. Disembark in good order and be quick about it. Got that?"

"Yes, ma'am! Understood!"

The shorn-headed interns barked their reply with a slight backward snap of their torsos, then stepped off the train in crisp, faultless unison.

By all rights there should have been no subway station at the bottom of the Han River — and yet, strange to say, there the platform stood. No sooner had the interns all stepped clear than the train pulled away in the direction of Yeouido.

The interns' faces stiffened.

"Heh. Don't look so spooked. Just follow me."

Luin gave a dry snort at the rookies' clumsy bravado, then took up the lead in earnest. She guided them down and further down — beneath the riverside platform, along a subterranean staircase that seemed to go on for ages. At the bottom, a mist the color of deep blue lay pooled across the ground. So dense was it that it hardly seemed a gas at all; it moved like a liquid.

Luin spared the glassy-eyed rookie interns the bare minimum of explanation.

"As of right now, you lot are entering that blue mist."

"Ah—!"

No sooner had the words left her than the interns turned anxious eyes on the rippling mist.

Luin kept talking into their ears all the same.

"No need to look so scared. Just hold your breath a moment, like you're diving under water, and once you slip into the mist, a new dimension completely sealed off from Midland Seoul here will open up before your eyes — Highland itself."

"Ooh. So this is how you get into Highland?"

"Whoa. Wild."

At the heart-thumping word Highland, the interns broke into a buzz of murmurs. Watching them, Luin continued her explanation with the smug air of an older sister humoring the young ones.

"You've all sat through the classes, so you should know this already — but I'll walk you through it one more time, so open those ears and listen up."

"Yes, ma'am. Please go ahead."

"Your arrival point in Highland will be different for each of you. But the watches you were issued will narrow down the range you arrive in, so there's no need to worry yourselves sick over it."

That point mattered more than anything else she said. Highland was so vast it defied imagination — humanity still couldn't so much as guess where its edges lay. And in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a Highland that vast, if even the arrival point — the transfer site — changed at random every single time, that would have been a disaster beyond reckoning.

Say, for instance, that senior Awakened of Shinseung Group discovered a rich magic crystal mine in some corner of Highland. And suppose the follow-up team then failed to find that mine and was transferred to some spot in the middle of nowhere instead. How, then, would the group ever sustain its mining operations?

To solve that problem, humanity had devised several methods. The most widely used of them was the technology called Guided Transfer, and Shinseung Group had adopted it as well.

Guided Transfer meant a transfer method that harnessed a pair of objects with a powerful mutual attraction — a matched set, like the north and south poles of a magnet. In practice no magnets were involved; the method drew on a novel material found only in Highland that carried an inherent attractive force (a pull that drew the two objects together). The principle, laid out simply, went like this.

An Awakened who discovers a valuable resource in Highland buries a north-pole object at that site. Later, a junior Awakened wearing the matching south-pole object on their person will, with high probability, be transferred to the vicinity where the north-pole object lies buried. The margin of error on the arrival zone was known to be roughly one hundred kilometers.

The cities of Midland came to call this Guided Transfer technology.