The Wind That Never Was

Chapter 8

Lee Luin cast her line, testing the waters.

"The top intern usually gets a cash prize of around fifty million won. But that's nothing. What matters more than the prize money is which gift you receive. For instance, an intern who bloomed a physical-type ability gets an attack-enhancing weapon, and one who bloomed elemental magic gets a wand with high mana conductivity."

Lee Luin fed him those words one by one—prize money, physical type, attack weapon, elemental magic, wand—watching Haneul's face for the faintest change of expression.

Haneul showed no reaction to most of them.

'So the kid isn't in it for the money. But he doesn't seem to be a physical type either, or an elemental mage.'

Then again, if Haneul had belonged to either of those schools, he never would have taken down a Snow Wolf without leaving a single mark on its hide.

Lee Luin strolled over to the bedside and sat down right next to him. Haneul flinched and slid his hips sideways. An orphan, he had never been this physically close to another person—least of all a woman. When her blonde hair swayed softly at his shoulder, a crisp fragrance wormed its way into his nose and teased his senses, and he snapped rigid with tension.

'Heh. Cute.'

Pretending not to notice, Lee Luin leaned her upper body in and closed the distance even further. Her low, smoky voice tickled his ear.

"You'll have to give me a hint about what you want when you receive the Top Intern commendation. Otherwise you could end up with a gift that's of no use to you whatsoever. Say, a reinforced axe that weighs north of a hundred kilograms."

'Whoa.'

Haneul was dumbfounded.

'A heavy weapon over a hundred kilograms? I couldn't even lift the thing. If I got that as a prize, I wouldn't know what to do with it.'

Lee Luin met his eyes with a smiling face.

Haneul dipped his head slightly, deliberated in earnest, and then parted his lips.

"Something light that helps with defense, please. Or perhaps an escape scroll for emergencies, or potions for critical situations—things like that would also be useful."

Haneul laid out his wishes honestly because he had judged that doing so would serve him better in the long run.

Besides, having discovered that Lee ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Luin's soul was washed in faint pastel tones, he had opened up to her a little. Pastel colors signified goodwill.

Meanwhile, the instant Haneul's words were out, Lee Luin's brain cells went into overdrive.

'He wants something light?'

In other words, even after blooming his ability, Haneul's stamina and strength had not risen by much.

'He wants defense or vitality reinforcement?'

Put another way, that meant his ability packed outstanding offensive power but offered little help for defense and survival.

'Could this kid be... a special wind type?'

A single possibility flashed through Lee Luin's mind. If the guess was right, Haneul was bound to generate considerable shockwaves down the road. A bold exclamation point lit up in her head.

The 102nd floor of Shinseung Group Headquarters, on the bank of the Han River.

"You're telling me there's a chance the boy is a wind type?"

Lee Myungwoo, Head of Strategic Planning and a member of the Group's owner family, stood leaning against his desk of deep chestnut wood and murmured in a low baritone. The deep furrows carved between his brows gave him a heavy, monumental air.

Before him, HR Team Leader Lee Jaein stood at rigid attention, his eyes fixed on nothing but the Director's mouth.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Lee Myungwoo drummed the desk with his fingertips.

Lee Jaein pressed his lips shut and held his silence.

After a moment, Lee Myungwoo lifted his head and asked, "Is he certainly a wind type?"

Only then did Lee Jaein part his lips. "It is not yet confirmed, sir."

"Huh. You file a report to me without even verifying it properly?"

Lee Myungwoo let out a hollow laugh, and the hair on the back of Lee Jaein's neck stood on end.

"My apologies, Director. The young master completed his discharge procedures today, so we intend to measure the change in his stats around tomorrow."

Lee Jaein hurried the words out.

And he wasn't wrong. At Shinseung Group, interns had their stats measured once before being sent into Highland, then measured again after blooming, so the company could monitor exactly how much each figure had changed.

If Haneul truly had awakened a wind-type ability, there was a strong chance his speed/agility stat would leap dramatically. That was precisely the point Lee Jaein had kept in mind.

Lee Myungwoo concurred with the man's reasoning.

"Well, it's not wrong. Most wind-type mages see their speed and agility grow explosively the moment their ability blooms. But the phenomenon the Snow Wolf corpses displayed is rather far removed from an ordinary wind type, wouldn't you say?"

Lee Myungwoo had put his finger on the blind spot.

The hallmark of most wind mages was butchering their enemies with spells like Wind Cutter. If Haneul had been that kind of ability user, the Snow Wolf's hide should have been left hideously shredded.

"You are quite right, sir." Spreading his fingers wide, Lee Jaein hooked his thumb and middle finger under the frames to push up his glasses, chiming in with the Director's point.

"My own theory is that the young master did not bloom a common wind type, but rather an ability that controls the flow of air with exquisite delicacy."

Lee Jaein was invoking a domain only a vanishing sliver of wind mages ever reached. Across all the cities of the world, mages possessing this particular specialty could be counted on the fingers of two hands.

In exchange, that rare few operated as assassins so terrifying they made the people of Midland tremble with dread. Because they could seize the air inside a target's nose, mouth, and lungs and wring it into nothing in an instant, killing the victim on the spot from oxygen starvation.

No matter how vast a man's lung capacity, before a mage who commanded the finest eddies of air, he was a mouse before a cat. These killers stripped away every last wisp of air in a victim's lungs, so big lungs meant nothing at all.

That said, mages of this school surpassed ordinary wind mages only in their command of fine air currents; the raw power of their wind itself was nothing special. Consequently, they were comparatively poor at the trick of pushing wind against their own backs to raise running speed and agility.

Lee Jaein knew this as well as anyone.

"Even so, Director, according to the Group's external intelligence team, our research shows that fine airflow control alone can meaningfully increase one's movement speed."

"Hmm."

Lee Myungwoo crossed his arms without another word.

Chapter 9

"I say, Team Leader."

After letting the silence sit for a moment, Lee Myungwoo raised his head and met Lee Jaein's eyes.

"Yes, Director."

Lee Jaein dropped his gaze a touch.

Lee Myungwoo's ponderous voice bored into his ear. "Your conjecture certainly sounds the part. But you see... there has never once been a wind type in Shinseung's owner family."

No law said a bloomed ability had to follow bloodlines. If anything, blooming was closer to a random draw—a matter of luck over lineage.

But with a truly powerful bloodline, it was equally true that descendants were influenced to some degree. That was precisely the point Lee Myungwoo was raising.

Lee Jaein faltered.

'What? Surely the Director cannot be doubting the young master's bloodline?'

Lee Jaein was the very man who had brought Haneul to Midland in the first place. But if he had hauled in some complete stranger instead of the Director's own flesh and blood—

'Impossible.'

Lee Jaein swallowed hard.

At that, Lee Myungwoo snorted with laughter.

"Look at you, so easily startled."

"F-forgive me."

"There's no need to jump like that. I've heard your report, so off you go—see to your work."

"Understood. I will take my leave."

Lee Jaein bowed his head.

At the neatly parted crown of that bowed head, Lee Myungwoo tossed out one more line.

"When tomorrow's results come in, inform me at once."

Hearing that, Lee Jaein's heart finally settled. That Lee Myungwoo took an interest in Haneul's stats meant, in other words, that the boy was his blood. His tone eased noticeably as he answered.

"I will report the moment I have confirmed the results."

"Good. Not a scrap of information about that boy can be allowed to leak, so keep security absolutely airtight."

"I will bear it in mind."

Wiping the cold sweat running down his temple with his palm, Lee Jaein exited the director's office.

Once the team leader was gone, Lee Myungwoo walked to the window and looked down at the Han River. Today, as every day, the river glided tranquilly westward. And the water that threaded through the city—instead of draining to the East Sea—ran along the underside of Midland Seoul as it orbited the Earth at an altitude of thirty-six thousand kilometers, curved back east, and completed a full circuit around toward Gangdong-gu.

No one could explain how such an aberration was possible. Lee Myungwoo, naturally, could not fathom the mechanics of the Han's looping current either. Honestly, he had no interest in the matter at all.

"Hahahahaha. Bwahahahaha!"

Lee Myungwoo, who had been gazing at the river in silence, abruptly burst into thunderous laughter.

'A special wind type? No. It's the other thing, surely. Bwahahaha.'

The ability Lee Myungwoo suspected Haneul of harboring belonged to a field entirely unconnected to fine airflow control.

'Demon Spirit Backflow!'

The moment those words surfaced in his mind, Lee Myungwoo's heart began to thunder.

Why was pioneering Highland so devilishly hard? Because of the mighty magic beasts that bore Monster Soul Stones, of course.

Those beasts were a different order of existence from common monsters. By wielding the colossal energy their soul stones spewed out—the demon spirit energy itself—they could unleash destructive power to rival the upper-tier ability users of Midland. No—far from merely rivaling them, the beasts were vastly stronger than the upper tier, and their numbers defied all comparison.

Because of those very beasts, humanity's conquest of Highland had been one long chronicle of hardship and retreat.

Then, decades ago, an anomaly occurred. An ability user of miraculous stripe appeared in the world—one who reversed the flow of the demon spirit energy that was the very wellspring of the beasts' power, killing the monsters outright in a single stroke.

Her name was Lee Hyun.

She was the younger sister of Lee Cheol, the founding patriarch of Shinseung Group, and the blood aunt of Lee Kanghyun, the man who currently gripped the Group's chairmanship. And since Lee Myungwoo was Lee Kanghyun's second son, Lee Hyun was his grand-aunt.

Though she had since left Shinseung Group and been scrubbed from people's memories, there was once a time when she was an absolute being who single-handedly shouldered two-thirds of the Group's total combat power.

In the era when Lee Hyun was at her most active, the magic beasts of Highland would flee shrieking at the mere sight of her shadow. And small wonder: the instant a beast ran afoul of her, it either died on the spot from the backflow of its demon spirit energy, or its soul stone shattered and it sank to the level of a common animal.

Once Lee Hyun had cleared away the powerful beasts, Shinseung Group committed its follow-up forces and nailed the territory down. As a result, the Group swept up magic crystal mines, harvesting grounds for every variety of rare material, and the wild habitats of spirit herbs, all in an unstoppable advance.

On top of that, Lee Hyun gathered an astronomical quantity of Monster Soul Stones for the Group. That Midland Seoul today could stand shoulder to shoulder with world-class metropolises like New York, Shanghai, and Osaka owed an immense debt to her exploits.

Chapter 10

In those days, Shinseung Group concealed Lee Hyun's existence with the utmost rigor, and they kept absolute silence about her ability as well. They dreaded that the ability users of rival cities watching to check Midland Seoul might someday move to assassinate her.

And in truth, while Lee Hyun occupied a position of absolute supremacy over the beasts that depended on demon spirit energy, she was, rather surprisingly, vulnerable ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to human ability users whose power had nothing to do with it.

All the more for that, Lee Cheol hid his younger sister away, treasuring her like a jewel kept against his chest, like a scion of gold and jade.

But at some point, that same Lee Hyun came to feel nothing but disillusionment at the conduct of the owner family. Afterward she walked into Highland and severed every last tie to her kin.

After her disappearance, the Group's growth curve visibly slackened, and even now it had never managed to reclaim its bygone glory. These inner circumstances, however, were a secret known to only a vanishing few even among the owner family. Even Lee Jaein, Lee Myungwoo's right hand, had no inkling whatsoever of Lee Hyun or her singular ability.

'And yet that boy, Haneul, has bloomed the very same ability as my grand-aunt. This is... this is enormous. Ahahaha.'

Unable to contain his soaring heart, Lee Myungwoo balled his fist.

Then, of a sudden, a sliver of unease crept over him.

'What if the boy's ability becomes known outside?'

The mere act of imagining it was dreadful.

'That must never happen.'

Lee Myungwoo shook his head hard.

Long ago, the patriarch Lee Cheol had paced and fretted, desperate to protect his sister. Now Lee Myungwoo found himself wrestling with much the same worry.

At first he had hidden Haneul's existence for political reasons; now the situation had turned on its head. The original plan had been to spirit the boy into an indoor staff post the moment he bloomed, and keep him under his umbrella until the proper moment arrived.

'But that has become difficult now. To let the boy's gift flower in full glory, I cannot keep him at a desk—I must send him into Highland.'

And if Haneul truly possessed Demon Spirit Backflow, as Lee Hyun once had? Then Highland, a world of magic beasts, might be safer for the boy than Midland Seoul, thick as it was with ability users.

One more thing.

'My own position is precarious. With half the family frantic to find some way to rein me in, parking the boy under my umbrella may actually do him more harm than good. Which means he must go to the Expedition Corps—and I must find a way to stretch a shield over him there. Hmmmm.'

Lee Myungwoo bit his lip in vexation. No clever answer presented itself just yet. But search long enough and a way would surface. With his ponderous fist, he rapped a light tattoo on the solid-wood desk.

The morning of May 13th broke. From six in the morning, Haneul was hauled to the testing grounds of the Complex Center and put through his stat assessment.

He sprinted flat-out down a rutted course with a ponderous tire lashed around his waist. They cut open his wrist on purpose and clocked how quickly the wound knit itself closed. He fought one-on-one duels against holographic monsters.

By the time Haneul had finished these three tests it was seven o'clock. He went down to the company cafeteria for breakfast, then rested until eight, and the next battery of tests resumed at nine.

Haneul endured a chaos of tennis balls flying at him from all sides with nothing but his bare body. Then he tore through a stretch of blazing flame. He was buried in a pit of ice and left shivering. When an instructor injected him with a neural toxin, he then had to cross a narrow beam back and forth in that condition. He threaded a maze swirling thick with poison gas. And when they seated him in an electric chair and ran current through him whether he liked it or not, profanity slipped through Haneul's clenched teeth.

Before long, the following test results blinked onto the monitor:

Haneul's stamina/endurance stat, for one, had doubled from before he entered Highland—a growth rate of one hundred percent. Of course, even so, the figure sat at just 6, a single point above the average of 5 for an ordinary adult male.

His speed/agility, meanwhile, stood at 8, likewise up one hundred percent. Haneul now possessed agility in the upper ranks of adult men—but that still amounted to no more than being quick for a civilian. Measured against physical-type ability users, an agility of 8 marked him as a child.

His attack power stat was worse still.

'A paltry 3? Haah.'

Chafing at it, Haneul dragged a dry hand down his face.

The rest of his resistance figures also fell short of his hopes. Most had climbed by roughly one hundred percent, which only just lifted him to the top rank among ordinary people. Cold resistance alone had swollen by 150 percent.

'Was that thanks to fighting the Snow Wolf Tribe? Is that why my cold resistance alone shot up so high?'

The possibility was more than plausible. The Snow Wolf Tribe did not merely exhale killing frost; their fangs carried venom as well. Perhaps for that reason, Haneul's poison resistance had also jumped 117 percent, landing at 13.

'Defense and vitality are decent, at least.'

Haneul's defense had risen 150 percent from before his ability bloomed, reaching 15. It couldn't stand comparison with an ability user blessed with a powerful physique, but he still counted himself fortunate.

'Vitality came out better than that.'

Before blooming, his vitality had been 8. Now it hit 24—a full two-hundred-percent increase. In vitality, at least, Haneul belonged to the very top tier of his hiring cohort.

But by any accounting, the stat most worth trumpeting was his mental fortitude. Even before blooming, Haneul's score of 10 had placed him among the highest of all humankind; after blooming, that figure swelled to a staggering 40.

'Does my ability have something to do with souls? Is that why my mental stat alone is so high? Well... can't complain.'

Haneul was quietly satisfied.

The Second Highland Expedition

Chapter 1

'What is this?'

A question mark surfaced in Lee Jaein's mind. Having taken receipt of Haneul's test results and found the situation incomprehensible, he could only fiddle with his horn-rimmed glasses, again and again.

'Did the young master not bloom a special wind-type ability? If he had, his speed/agility figure ought to be far higher than this. Why did the numbers come out like this?'

Lee Jaein was a man who pursued perfection in all things. Nothing stressed him quite so severely as results that diverged from his own predictive model. What stressed him more still was having to report this fact to Director Lee Myungwoo in person.

Passing through the secretarial office, just before knocking on the director's door, Lee Jaein braced himself for the dressing-down his failed prediction would earn him.

But against all expectation, Lee Myungwoo looked to be in high spirits.

'Hoh-hoh. Just as I thought—the boy was never a wind mage at all. A sovereign of demon spirits who sends their power flowing backward! The same lineage as my grand-aunt. Hoh-hoh-hoh.'

Lee Myungwoo's lips kept moving of their own accord, his mood aloft.

'What is this? Why is the Director acting like that?'

Confronted with a reaction he had never anticipated, Lee Jaein could only blink.

At that very moment, Haneul finally shed the intern label and was formally hired as a full-time employee of Shinseung Group. Now that his awakening of an ability was beyond dispute, there was no reason left for him to remain an intern. The HR team closed out his hiring procedure before his stat test results had even come off the press.

Accordingly, the employee number entered at the top of his test results sheet was changed. That same afternoon, Haneul was issued an official employee ID, and his newly minted number was stamped into it as well.

In his intern days, Haneul's number had been IN550895. The leading IN stood for intern. Numbers beginning with 5, moreover, were assigned only to Shinseung's non-regular workers—cleaning contractors, facilities and landscaping services, the cafeteria staff, office support.

Now both the IN and the 5 had fallen away from Haneul's number, and a 3—the marker of the full-time ability-user track—had claimed the first digit.

'Hehehe.'

Haneul grinned sheepishly. He stroked the badge—a blue field stamped with the white logo, his photograph cleanly set into it—then hung it around his neck with pride. Merely wearing the thing put a stiffness in his neck; his chest felt as if it were pushing itself out all on its own.

'Ahhh, this is nice.'

Unable to help himself, Haneul crinkled the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠corners of his eyes.

Not much time passed before the buoyancy of receiving a full-time badge came tumbling back down—because before Haneul's watching eyes, the lamps marking dormitory rooms as VACANT came on one after another.

The Shinseung Complex Center was a colossal building laid out in a hollow square. From the first basement level to the ninth floor above ground it held training grounds and analysis labs, the tenth floor was given over to the company cafeteria, and floors eleven through forty served as dormitories housing the host of interns.

Shinseung had taken on some three thousand interns last year, spread across thirty floors of dormitory. That meant wedging close to a hundred people into every floor, and the whole building had thronged accordingly.

Now the place stood so empty the air had gone bleak. A large share of the cohort who had lived here had failed to bloom and turned into beasts, or else been devoured by monsters. Barely two or three weeks earlier there had been over three thousand of Haneul's fellow hires; now they numbered 998.

It would have felt less desolate had all 998 remained in the dorm—but even that was not to be. Of the 998, only 311 were ability users with high combat suitability. Shinseung kept those 311, the ones slated for future Highland pioneering, at the Complex Center, and dispersed the remaining 687 to outfits like the weapons development team ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and the new energy team.

'Weapons development? New energy? What do they even do in places like that? I can't say I know, but it looks a sight better than staying at the Complex Center.'

With his anxiety-conditioned obsession with safety, Haneul envied those 687 colleagues. He would soon learn that envy was not always deserved.

Chapter 2

The next day, instruction for the 311 new employees began at the Complex Center in the early morning. The instructor presiding over the first session held up two kinds of stone before the trainees gathered in the grand auditorium.

"So what's the difference between a magic crystal and a mana stone? Let's find out right now."

The stone in the instructor's right hand looked like transparent crystal. The one in his left was blue, giving off a strange aura that shimmered in the air around it.

The instructor took the right-hand stone first.

"This is the magic crystal that some of you collected in Highland just recently. Put simply, think of this magic crystal as an empty battery—one that can hold energy."

Then he lifted the left-hand stone high.

"And this, brimming over with blue energy, is the mana stone. To stretch the metaphor, this is a battery charged to full."

The new employees diligently committed the lecture to memory. Then, to the concentrating trainees, the instructor laid bare the dark underside of Shinseung Group.

"Now—why is a mana stone full of energy in the first place? The secret lies with your own cohort. Your colleagues—people who, like every one of you gathered here, failed to bloom a combat-type ability, but who also lacked the talent for weapons development and so were assigned to the new energy team—what do you suppose they are doing at this very moment?"

"..."

No one could answer the question.

The instructor bared his canines in a wide white grin.

"Right about now, those colleagues are busy pouring their own energy into magic crystals, turning them into mana stones. In other words, a mana stone is nothing more than a magic crystal stuffed to capacity with ground-up human energy. Ahahaha."

"Ugh."

The new employees reeled.

'Damn it. What happens when the colleagues assigned to the new energy team run themselves dry pouring energy into empty magic crystals? They're not going to be written off like defective parts... are they?'

Every last one of them was thinking some version of the same thought. A chill prickled through Haneul's gut as well.

'Why do I feel like I just heard something I wasn't supposed to...'

With the instructor saying such things so brazenly, the mood in the hall sank like a stone. All 311 of the new employees, Haneul included, went silent—and at the same time, they counted themselves lucky not to have been dragged off to the new energy team.

And yet, perhaps the 311 left behind in the combat track here were the more pitiable ones, compared to the colleagues who had gone to the new energy team.

Three years from now, how many of those 311 new employees would still be drawing breath? The statistics said that of the 311, some ninety percent would die. In three years' time, only about 31 would remain alive.

Though to be fair, those 31 would live in splendor, drawing salaries and enjoying support their other colleagues could not even begin to compare to.