The Destructive Power of 1% Mana
A few days later, Docheol showed up in the civil complaints office again, this time with a bottle of Moka Gold in hand.
He wasn’t empty-handed this time; tucked under his arm was a thick stack of reports as well.
“Don’t act busy. All you do is make coffee anyway.”
“Making coffee is work too. Getting the water temperature right is delicate business. Too hot, and the aroma disappears; too lukewarm, and the sugar won’t dissolve.”
“……With that much care, you’d better be teaching your disciples instead.”
“That’s exactly why I teach them—and why they keep throwing pebbles at me.”
Docheol tossed the report onto my desk.
It was a tally of mutant sightings reported nationwide over the past month.
The graph was climbing steeply upward.
“It’s doubled in a month. And that’s with the ones the System can’t even identify making up most of it.”
“So what do you want me to do about it now?”
“Your disciples, that’s what. They’re definitely good fighters when it comes to taking down mutants. But there’s one habit that’s seriously getting on my nerves.”
Docheol poured coffee into a paper cup.
He acted like my desk was his own.
“Those kids go full power every single time. Weak opponent or strong one, it doesn’t matter. They dump everything into a paper tiger like it’s a finishing move. What are they going to do when they meet something truly big?”
“For someone who’s only the vice-guild leader of Baekho Guild, you sure monitor my disciples’ fights in excruciating detail.”
“With mutants increasing this much, you think I can afford not to watch?”
The teasing in Docheol’s voice faded for a moment.
“Baekho’s elite team is the same. They just keep dumping everything in at full power because the System tells them to, and in a long fight they all end up dry as bones. You 1st-generation guys weren’t like that.”
I took a sip of coffee.
The old man wasn’t exactly wrong.
That habit had been bothering me for a long time too.
Twenty years ago, when one drop of mana could mean one breath of life.
We used only exactly what was needed to kill the enemy.
Anything more was a luxury, and luxury was just another word for death.
Soon enough, the two disciples were scheduled to come down to the association basement to collect pebbles again.
That afternoon, in the closed training hall, I lined Yu Seoa and Jin Seojun up side by side and placed five shabby targets against one wall.
They were paper targets.
Folded from old documents I’d picked up on the way up from the recycling bin.
After pebbles, it was scrap paper. Even I had to admit I was a remarkably cheap teacher.
“You’re not throwing pebbles today. Instead, hit all five of those at once.”
Jin Seojun almost snorted.
Five paper targets were a joke to an A-grade hunter.
“Easy. One area skill and I could hit fifty, not just five……”
“There’s a condition.”
Jin Seojun was still relying on the sharpened senses he’d gained in recent days, while his output habits were stubbornly stuck in the old mold.
He’d learned how to turn the System off, but he’d never once learned how to conserve power.
I tapped his mana with a yohjaseon, the kind used to scratch an itch in the middle of your back.
“Use exactly one-tenth of the mana you’ve got. Any more than that, and you fail.”
Jin Seojun’s face stiffened.
“One-tenth to hit five targets? One area skill and it’s over……”
“Then don’t use an area skill. Use your head.”
Jin Seojun bit his lip.
Then, in what was clearly his attempt to reduce his output, he sent out a sword aura.
BOOM.
The first target burst into scraps and scattered in the wind.
The sword aura punched all the way through the wall behind it, too, leaving a long crack across the concrete.
He’d torn through a sheet of paper and split a wall in the process.
The problem was that half of his limited mana had vanished in that single strike.
With what was left, he could only manage two more targets at best.
The remaining two targets stood untouched, and Jin Seojun’s mana bottomed out.
“Failed.”
I announced it lazily.
“You used half your mana just to destroy one. That sword aura was like bringing a tank to rip a piece of paper.”
Jin Seojun panted and stared down at his own hand.
Losing half his mana to a single paper target must have been a shock.
The next-generation ace of Baekho Guild had been reduced to empty reserves in front of a stack of recycled paper folded into targets.
That would have been impossible inside the System.
“For your whole life, the System’s been showing you the recommended output. Whether the enemy was strong or weak, it sent out a fixed amount every time you used a skill. You probably never even questioned that amount.”
I sipped my Moka Gold.
“Pouring full power into a sheet of paper is the same as burning down a house to kill a mosquito.”
Jin Seojun couldn’t answer.
He looked like he was finally realizing that the System combat he’d always believed was efficient had, in fact, been an enormous waste at every turn.
Come to think of it, it made perfect sense.
The System had been designed to keep hunters safe, not to make them efficient.
Recommended output was just a safety margin that guaranteed victory by forcing you to throw out more than you actually needed.
When mana was everywhere, that waste wasn’t visible.
But once you entered a moment where a single drop of mana meant life or death, that waste became death itself.
“Again. This time, find the minimum mana needed to tear each target apart.”
Jin Seojun reset his stance.
This time, he didn’t go full power.
He wrapped his sword in a thread-thin layer of aura.
Just enough to cut paper.
But the first attempt was too weak.
The aura scattered before it even touched the target.
“Too little this time. Like trying to swat a mosquito with a flailing palm.”
Jin Seojun frowned and drew his mana up again.
Just a little more. Only a little.
On the third try, the sword aura split the paper cleanly in two.
Not a single scratch appeared on the wall.
His mana barely moved.
“……I did it.”
Jin Seojun’s eyes widened.
Exactly the amount needed to cut paper.
Nothing more, nothing less.
He sliced through the second, third, and fourth targets the same way.
The more his hand grew accustomed to the motion, the less it shook.
Even after cutting all five, he still had more than half his mana left.
The same mana he’d burned in one strike earlier had now carried him through five cuts with room to spare.
“This…… is the same mana?” Jin Seojun muttered blankly.
“It’s the same mana. You just learned a different way to use it.”
I scratched my shoulder with the yohjaseon.
A yawn tugged at me.
“Mutants are getting stronger and stronger. Nobody knows when a ten-minute fight will stretch into an hour. If you dump all your mana in the first ten minutes, you’ve got to survive the remaining fifty with nothing in your hands.”
Jin Seojun’s face turned serious.
He seemed to understand the meaning of the drill at last.
“A hunter with one powerful strike isn’t a strong hunter. The strong one is the hunter who can control that strike however he wants—weak or strong, at will. The one who can swing a hundred times without getting tired is the one who eventually beats the man who can only swing once before collapsing.”
This wasn’t a lecture. It was the simple arithmetic of people who had survived hell twenty years ago.
All the while, Yu Seoa had been standing quietly to one side, watching her own targets.
She hadn’t stepped in, just watched Jin Seojun work through the lesson in silence.
“Seoa, you’re up.”
When I called her, she turned her head.
“For you, one-tenth is already too much. Try hitting all five with one-hundredth.”
Jin Seojun gasped.
“O-one-hundredth? That’s way too…….”
“She’s already done something like it once. In the fire dungeon.”
Yu Seoa gave a faint smile.
That day, when she’d abandoned a massive blizzard of ice and finished off a mutant with an ice spike no bigger than a fingernail.
She’d already tasted the far edge of this sensation.
Back then, though, she’d done it instinctively on the brink of death.
Today, she had to reproduce it deliberately and with precision.
She closed her eyes.
After a moment to steady her breathing, she raised a hand.
The tips of her hair took on a faint silver-white sheen before settling again.
She didn’t even need to open her full power.
Five tiny icicles formed at her fingertips.
They were small enough to be mistaken for pebbles.
Almost at once, they shot forward and pierced the exact center of the five targets.
Five paper targets, five tiny holes, one in each.
The paper didn’t tear. It didn’t even flutter apart.
Just holes.
And she had used almost no mana at all.
“……That should be enough, right?”
Yu Seoa lowered her hand.
Jin Seojun stood there unable to close his mouth.
He had used one-tenth of his power just to cut five targets, while she had pierced all five dead center with one-hundredth.
They’d both crossed the same first level, and yet the gulf between them was obvious.
“Jealous?”
When I asked, Jin Seojun nodded honestly.
“Honestly? Yes. It feels like we started training around the same time, but the difference is……”
“You’ve been at it for a week. She’s been grinding longer than that. And she also came back after nearly dying once.”
Yu Seoa looked at me briefly at that.
It was the look of someone remembering the moment in the fire dungeon.
“I don’t recommend dying and coming back to life. So just keep shaving off a little mana every day. Getting there without dying is the fastest way.”
Jin Seojun gave a small snort of laughter.
I looked back at Yu Seoa.
She was not the sort to be satisfied with just punching holes through the center of a target.
“Seoa. Yours is a different assignment.”
I raised the yohjaseon.
Then I pointed at the old exercise equipment hanging from the training hall ceiling.
Five sandbags suspended by chains swayed at different speeds.
“Those five are moving. Tear the first one lightly, like paper, and cut the last one off with the chain still attached. Split your power however you need between them.”
Jin Seojun’s eyes went wide.
That was an order to divide her output into five different levels within the same motion.
It was hard enough to use power lightly even once, and now she had to move freely between weakness and strength in a single breath.
Yu Seoa bit her lip for a moment.
Then she slowly steadied her breathing.
Her hand sliced through the air.
Five silver lines of ice shot out almost at once.
But each one was a different thickness.
The first was as thin as thread, while the last was thick as a forearm.
The first sandbag got a tiny hole.
The second was lightly torn, the third split halfway, and the fourth was severed cleanly in two.
And the fifth—
The thick line of ice froze and snapped the chain holding the sandbag in place.
The bag hit the floor with a heavy thud.
Five targets, five levels of force.
In a single motion, she had split and distributed her output at will.
“……So this is something a human can actually do.”
Jin Seojun murmured, dazed.
Yu Seoa exhaled hard and lowered her hand.
Sweat had gathered in tiny beads across her forehead.
It didn’t seem to have been easy for her either.
“Still a long way to go. I used a bit too much force on the last one.”
When I pointed it out flatly, Yu Seoa puffed out her lips in obvious annoyance.
“……You could at least give me one compliment.”
“Compliments are for graduation. You haven’t even earned a hundred pebbles yet.”
Still, a pass was a pass.
I rolled the empty paper cup in my hand.
“Jin Seojun, start at one-tenth and shave it down little by little every day. Once you get to one-hundredth, you’re graduated too.”
“……One-hundredth? Is that even possible for a human?”
“It is. People just don’t do it because they’re lazy. Everyone has so much power to spare that they never bother learning to save it.”
The stronger the hunter, the harder this training became.
The weak would have long since learned to save every drop, but the strong could spend freely and still always have more, so they never learned restraint.
That was why A-grade and S-grade hunters got more lost in front of this wall.
Talent became poison.
If you had plenty, there was no reason to learn how to conserve.
But the age of mutants would not be so kind as to let that abundance remain untouched.
In a battle where the answer sheet had vanished, the genius who couldn’t reduce his excess power at the right moment would be the first to dry up—and the first to die.
Jin Seojun clenched his teeth and reset his stance.
This time, he started refining his sword aura even thinner.
It was a good posture.
By the time class was nearly over, my phone rang.
It was the association’s public relations office.
Seo Jingyeong’s follow-up article was set to go out tomorrow.
The title was: Is Baekjeong Still Alive?
The sealed old name was about to be stamped into print and sent back out into the world.
Last time, the article had only referred to some unidentified civil complaints office employee.
But this time, she’d gone and put the name Baekjeong in plain black type.
That woman had dug one level deeper.
The upper management at the association—and the guilds above them—would start moving soon enough.
Once the name of someone they had sealed away as dead appeared in print, the people who’d been making a living off the hero narrative they’d built in the empty space left by that name would start to shake first.
“Bokhui is probably going to be a little nervous about this.”