Jackpot (1)
By the time I reached Dongtan, a bone-deep exhaustion had wrapped itself around my entire body.
Apparently, mana depletion didn't just affect my mana reserves — it drained everything else along with them.
Still, work was work.
I parked and stepped into the café, where I spotted Kyuson sipping an iced Americano through a straw.
“Hello there.”
“Oh, you made it?”
“Yes. Did you sleep well?”
“I did... though you, Mr. Segyun... seem like you didn't.”
“Do I really look that tired?”
“Yes...”
Before I could even respond, she started rummaging through her bag. After a long moment of digging, she held out a single pill.
“What's this?”
“A fatigue recovery supplement.”
“...Thank you.”
Did I really look that worn out?
Feeling a little embarrassed, I tossed the pill straight into my mouth. And then, how much time passed?
In less than ten seconds, my mind snapped into perfect clarity.
“...What is this?”
If it worked this well, I'd want to buy it and take it regularly.
“I made it myself.”
That answer caught me completely off guard.
“You made it?”
“Yes, well... I have a weak constitution, so...”
My jaw dropped.
Supplements were something you could just... whip up yourself whenever your body felt run down?
“Can individuals actually make things like this?”
“Ah, it was a prototype sample from the company, but the project got rejected...”
“This got rejected? The effects are insane.”
“The unit cost was too high. It contains Elixir, you see.”
...Was this woman insane?
“Wh-why are you looking at me like that...”
“Elixir, in a supplement? The unit cost alone...”
“Oh, of course it doesn't contain a huge amount of Elixir. I found a way to maximize just one aspect of Elixir's properties. This version is specialized for fatigue recovery. Even so, it's not exactly cheap — one pill would retail for around ten thousand won.”
“Ten thousand won?”
Expensive, of course. But...
With effects like these, the market potential looked more than sufficient.
Hunters especially. These were people who could laugh off ten thousand won a pill if it meant staying in top condition.
“I honestly don't understand why this got rejected.”
“They said if you're going to sell refined Elixir anyway, the per-gram margin is about the same... so why bother expanding the production line just to make fatigue supplements...”
Well, they weren't wrong, technically.
Elixir was now a daily necessity. Sure, you could ask how a medicine worth tens of millions of won per bottle could possibly be a necessity — but among its consumer base, that was exactly what it was.
For a drug that doubled your lifespan with regular use, the wealthy didn't blink at spending tens of billions of won a year.
A fatigue recovery supplement, by contrast, was closer to a luxury good — something you could take or skip. Nobody dies from being a little tired, after all.
Viewed that way, the Seongkwang Bio executives had made the right call.
And yet...
“I think the Seongkwang Bio executives made a stupid mistake.”
“I'm sorry? What do you...”
“If it were me, I'd pay twenty thousand won for it.”
“Excuse me...?”
“This has Elixir in it, doesn't it? The stuff that makes you live longer.”
“N-no, I minimized those properties and redirected everything toward fatigue recovery...”
“That's just the theory. The point is, it contains Elixir, right?”
“W-well, yes...”
“If I were an ordinary person — someone who'd never even dreamed of touching Elixir, a drug worth tens of millions of won per bottle — and I could get a taste of it for just twenty thousand won? I'd buy it at least once, no question.”
Yes. This was, quite literally, a luxury good.
The moment you start calculating cost-effectiveness, it's no longer luxury. Luxury is what shatters the very structure of what humans consider efficient spending.
Selling the extracted Elixir as raw material was one thing — but turning it into a high-value-added product like this would multiply the profits several times over.
At this point, I'd even landed on a business idea, hadn't I?
And at the same time, one thing became absolutely certain.
This woman. I could not let her slip away.
No — I wouldn't let her slip away.
With that fervor burning in me, I spoke to her with complete sincerity.
“Kyuson, come work for our company.”
“Ah... well, that is... yes...”
“Really?”
“But I have a condition...”
“I'll meet just about anything. Salary negotiations...”
She shook her head at the mention of money, then glanced around and lowered her voice to a whisper.
“The Elixir... I want to know how you extracted it...”
“Sorry?”
“Oh, of course... I know it's a secret... I'll sign an NDA if I have to. That's my one condition. I just... want to know how it was done...”
“Ah.”
Here I was, still misjudging people.
The way to win over someone obsessed with research wasn't a fat salary or incentives. It was satisfying her curiosity.
“I was planning to tell you anyway.”
For her to collaborate with me on bacteria-related work — discussing strains, developing new ones — she needed to know about my ability. So while I couldn't share it with just anyone, she at least had to be in the loop.
Not that I could exactly demonstrate it here...
“Is there somewhere quieter than this?”
“...I have a place. Right nearby.”
“Sorry? No, wait, that's a bit...”
“Why?”
Wait, wasn't this the same person who wouldn't even let me walk her to her front door?
“A woman's home, and all...”
“I live with my family...”
That's even more pressure!
But I didn't exactly have anywhere else to go, and it wasn't like the two of us could head off to some random place. Before I knew it, I was on my way to her house.
“Mom, we have a guest.”
“Hello. I'm Kim Segyun.”
“Oh my... hello there... A man? Is he your boyfriend?”
“No, Mom! It's not like that! L-let's go...”
Face bright red, Kyuson dragged me by the arm into her room. And the moment I stepped inside, my eyes went wide.
“You sleep here?”
Not a single bed in sight — the room was a full-blown laboratory, wall to wall.
“N-no, I sleep in the living room. The room's too small... hehe...”
“That's probably for the best.”
“S-so... the secret...”
“Ah, right. Do you have any garbage you were going to throw out? Food waste would be even better.”
“H-hold on... Mom!”
I heard a brief scuffle outside, then the door opened and she came in carrying a container of food waste.
“H-here you go.”
Casually, I released the Bacteria from my inventory and set them loose to decompose the food scraps. Being organic matter, the fission process accelerated, boosting their numbers a little — a nice bonus.
Kyuson's eyes went round as saucers.
“Th-that's... that's PE!”
“PE?”
“Perpetuus Exomodulus! The bacteria our company was researching!”
Ah, right, that was its name. Who could possibly remember such a ridiculous full name? In my head, it was just “Bacteria” — or “Unit 01,” at best.
“That's the one.”
“Wait a moment. But... why is it alive?”
At the sight of my bacterial legion feeding away furiously in open air, devouring the food waste in seconds, she froze, mouth agape.
“Alive... it's actually alive... in the open air...”
“Not just alive...”
Toward the direction my hand pointed, black dots — clusters of billions of bacteria fused together — began to move. And yet, they weren't decomposing anything in those spots.
“I can control them, too.”
“......”
“Hello? Uh... hello?”
She slid down into her seat and collapsed, out cold. I caught her and laid her gently on the floor.
Really? This was faint-worthy?
About five minutes later, Kyuson finally opened her eyes.
“You with me?”
“...I'm so sorry. I think I had a dream. About bacteria being controlled, just... exactly as someone willed it.”
“That wasn't a dream.”
I set my bacterial legion in motion once more. This time she didn't faint — instead, she trembled all over as she spoke.
“M-Mr. Segyun.”
“Yes?”
“I'm doing it. Absolutely. No — please, please hire me.”
Uh... so the recruitment was a success... right?
It felt almost too successful, which was a little disorienting, but a success nonetheless.
Now all that was left was to make a proper start.
First... a little rest.
Having successfully recruited Kyuson, I returned home and slept like the dead again.
Something about this felt like déjà vu.
Didn't I pass out like this yesterday too?
The mildly annoying part was that my eyes still snapped open at 7 a.m. sharp. I didn't have to commute anymore, but my body had apparently adapted to clock-in hours.
I opened my eyes and checked my phone...
What the — why were there so many messages?
Most of them were from Kyuson. They were packed with technical jargon I couldn't begin to parse, but I could tell they were something impressive.
I'll leave it in your capable hands.
I fired off a vague reply and moved on to the next message. It was from Mincheol.
Another soul still trapped in the 7 a.m. demon's grasp. Next up...
Zephyros. Zephyros suddenly had something to give me... why was I getting excited?
Can I come now?
Apparently he'd been clutching his phone, because the reply came almost instantly.
Nine o'clock? Rush hour meant getting to Gangnam would be hell, so I'd have to leave right that second to make it on time.
Then again — meeting someone first thing in the morning, out of nowhere. Who could it be?
Carrying that question with me, I washed up and threw myself onto the subway bound for Gangnam. Driving yourself to Gangnam during morning rush was idiocy.
But then.
“Did you see that? The Impossible Gate clear?”
“Because of that thing yesterday, it's been absolute chaos.”
“A top-tier rookie appearing for the first time in ages. I wonder which guild he's with?”
“Foreign-backed, probably? What domestic company could afford to raise a rookie like that?”
“There's a rumor he's a third-generation chaebol heir of Seongkwang Group. Word is the whole group's betting everything on backing him — feeding him expensive skill books and pumping potions into him for the clear.”
It wasn't just the people chatting right in front of me — the conversation drifted at me from every direction.
Most of it was rumor and nonsense, which was the embarrassing part.
Wait. Third-generation chaebol heir?
Oof. If I were a chaebol heir...
Phew. At least my face wasn't out there. Small mercies.
Over the hour-long ride to Gangnam...
I was a third-generation chaebol heir about three times, a foreign-diaspora mercenary about twice, and about five times a divine prodigy who'd devoured every resource a mega-guild possessed.
So this was the kind of story that got ordinary people gossiping this hard?
What would happen if they found out my actual life had absolutely nothing going on?
Lost in these tangled thoughts, I arrived at the RHS headquarters building where Zephyros waited — and there he was, waving from the lobby entrance.
“Zephyros!”
“It's Ryu Hyun-soo, I told you. Good work getting here. Why don't you just find a place near Gangnam already?”
“I'm seriously considering it.”
Not that I planned to waste money, but this commute was genuinely soul-crushing. Most of the hunter industry's key agencies and companies were clustered in Gangnam, so living nearby would be far more convenient.
“Ah, first — take this.”
“What's this... a skill book?”
The first skill book I'd ever touched looked like a very old, worn volume. Of course, it wasn't meant to be read directly — it was closer to a usable item.
But it had gold leaf on it somewhere... it looked expensive.
Understanding of Harmony
[Grade]: Legendary universal skill book
[Description]: To the one who grasped the harmony of mana, its greatness shall be made known.
[Effect]: Increases natural mana regeneration and total mana capacity. The bonus scales with skill proficiency. Skill proficiency rises when utilizing mana. Restricted to magic-class jobs.
“......”
I rubbed my eyes and looked again. The name was still the same.
Understanding of Harmony... I couldn't speak for other skill books, but this name was burned vividly into my memory.
Just a month or two ago, I'd read a news article about this thing selling at auction for over ten billion won and cursed at my screen. Who pays ten billion won for a single skill book?
And it was in my hands right now?
“This is... mine?”
“Think of it as a little gift for signing your agent contract.”
“That's not little. Isn't this worth over ten billion won?”
“Oh, what's this, honesty?”
“Holy crap...”
Like all skill books, this one belonged to the category of short text, devastating effect. A simple passive book that raised mana regeneration and total capacity.
But for a mage, wasn't that the alpha and omega?
For me especially, it mattered all the more.
I could temporarily pump out a massive bacterial legion and sustain it, but anything beyond my natural regeneration rate couldn't be maintained long-term.
The same held true for every summoning-type job — necromancers, elementalists, summoners alike. Ignore your natural mana regeneration and inflate your undead legion temporarily, and in the end, mana exhaustion could cost you every single one of them.
The worst possible scenario for a necromancer.
That was why the two most important things for a necromancer were natural mana regeneration rate and total mana capacity.
And passive skills like that one — or items that boosted regeneration — scratched that itch perfectly.
“C-can I learn it right now?”
“That's why I gave it to you.”
“Thank you!”
Skills like this were worth taking even if it gave you indigestion. I declared my intent to use it immediately, and light spilled from the skill book, scattering into my body and being absorbed.
You have learned the Legendary universal skill, Understanding of Harmony!
Total mana capacity increased by 10%.
Natural mana regeneration increased by an additional 1%.
This was the F-rank proficiency effect?
In an instant, my natural mana regeneration hit 2%. Arithmetically speaking, I had just doubled in strength.
Wait — and if I equipped my item on top of that, my proficiency would climb to D-rank, wouldn't it?
As my brain briefly short-circuited, Zephyros chuckled and patted me on the back.
“Skill book's learned. Now let's go meet your guest.”
“Ah, the guest... right... who is it?”
“North Chungcheong Provincial Office. And their Resource Development Department.”
“...Sorry? Government officials?”
Why were government officials showing up out of nowhere?
They weren't about to audit me for suddenly striking it rich, were they?
Reading my unease, Zephyros laughed heartily.
“You cleared the Impossible Gate, didn't you? The reward money attached to it — you should collect that.”
“R-reward money?”
“Yep. It's not a fortune compared to the feat, but there's no reason to refuse free money, is there?”
“How much?”
“A measly 200 million from the local government, and 1 billion from the central government. Twelve hundred million total. Tax-free. Tsk. In America, you'd have gotten ten billion. No wonder these government goons still haven't produced a clearer after twenty years.”
On the heels of a ten-billion-won skill book... another billion-plus?
It wasn't quite sinking in.
Money was suddenly just... rolling into my wallet on its own.