Chapter 6
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 6
Chapter Title: Mana Training (3)
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“Hmm...”
“...”
The woman stepped down from the rock and approached me.
She stood around 175 cm tall.
Her proportions were so perfect, she could have been a model.
Her long brown hair was tied back, and she wore iron armor that exposed her navel.
“The curse has been lifted...? No, that doesn't seem right.”
She circled around me, scrutinizing my body closely.
I kept my guard up, tracking her movements with my eyes.
Then, suddenly, she grabbed my forearm.
I flinched and yanked my arm away.
“What the hell?!!”
“...Your body looks like it's definitely male.”
I hadn't been able to dodge her hand.
My body had reverted to its previous state.
Yet her hand had moved so fast that my eyes couldn't follow.
“...Are you really from the Yoon Family?”
“What?”
Yoon Family.
One of the twenty great houses, a powerful mage family that had taken root in Korea after the First Gate.
Among them, the Yoon Family was renowned worldwide for producing legendary mages.
'Originally, only the Yoon Family uses this training ground.'
From her perspective, I was clearly an intruder.
But what scared me was her reaction to me being an intruder.
It was obvious how someone with mana as powerful as an S-Rank Hunter would deal with a trespasser.
Gulp.
I swallowed hard.
I kept my mouth shut, silently reading the atmosphere.
That's when I noticed a tattoo on her collarbone.
'...That's it!'
As the top graduate of the Hunter Officer Academy, I recognized the symbol instantly.
The family head's crest.
The crest of the founding head, no less.
Which meant she was the Yoon Family's first matriarch.
The great archmage, Yoon Ji-yeon.
“Huh...? Are you staring at my chest right now? You damn brat... already?!”
...No mistaking it.
Five years after the Level 10 Gate, the First Gate, opened.
When the world was in chaos and a third of humanity had fallen to monsters.
Twenty heroes had set out to conquer the First Gate.
History called them the Last Hero Party.
Their destination was the Level 10 Gate.
The source of all demonic beasts.
'...All twenty heroes went missing. But thanks to their battle, the Level 10 Gate closed.'
However, closing the Level 10 Gate didn't seal all the others.
Back then, dungeons had no 'level' system.
They rated all dungeons based on Level 10 difficulty, creating the modern dungeon system.
And after those twenty heroes, no one had cleared a Gate Level 9 or higher.
'In other words, this woman is... an incredible powerhouse... and a hero of humanity...!'
“Hey...! Ignoring me? Huh?”
Rumor had it they could kill without blinking.
Then Yoon Ji-yeon clapped her hands as if realizing something.
“Ah, got it...! Some crazy bitch gave you a Mana Manual!”
“...”
“Whoa. That would be huge. You have no idea how much hell I went through to build this training ground. Ha... Who the hell was it? Or maybe no one gave it to you and you're...”
Yoon Ji-yeon returned to the rock and leaned against it.
Her eyes sharpened.
“...an intruder?”
Her gaze carried killing intent.
I'd felt it when she grabbed my arm earlier.
I definitely couldn't beat this woman.
Should I come clean?
Or bolt and run?
As if there was anywhere to run.
“I...”
“Stop. I get it.”
She cut me off and burst out laughing.
She kept laughing.
It was a hearty laugh that shattered the tense atmosphere in an instant.
“Puhahaha! What? Scared? Of course you are. Don't worry. In this space, no one can actually kill anyone anyway.”
“...”
“But.”
The mood shifted again.
She ran her fingers through her brown hair as she spoke.
“Don't get too comfortable. I can still inflict pain worse than death.”
She wasn't exaggerating.
Even getting stabbed by a goblin had felt exactly like real pain.
Which meant eternal torment of dying and reviving over and over was possible too.
I couldn't afford to upset her.
“...So. Who are you?”
Time to tell the truth.
Tell her everything and beg forgiveness on my knees.
I knelt and bowed my head deeply.
It was also the proper respect for a hero of humanity.
“...Matriarch of the Yoon Family. I am Kang Tae-hyun, first-year student of Hunter Officer Class 32. Entering the Yoon Family's Mana Manual was purely by coincidence... or rather, I received help from one of your family members. If I've offended you, I humbly apologize.”
“First-year? ...So, 18 years old?”
“Yes, Matriarch.”
“Don't lie.”
“Pardon?”
I looked up at her in surprise.
Yoon Ji-yeon stared right at me and said,
“An 18-year-old with 150,000 mana clears Level 5 and meets me? Not even my Yoon daughters could do that with 150,000 mana? And you're an outsider?”
“Ah... well.”
“One of two things. Either you're lying about your age to me, or... you're a being revived by some immortal power.”
As expected of the Yoon Family's founding matriarch.
It wasn't a lie, but she suspected my regression.
What good would lying do?
I bowed my head deeply again.
“...I regressed. From 22 years in the future.”
“Oh? Figures. So? How'd you die?”
“A black-masked figure whose name I don't know... He was strong enough to kill S-Rank Hunters back then.”
The agony of that snowy mountain terrified me anew.
A being so fearsome I was afraid to even stand beside it.
“Killed an S-Rank Hunter... Okay, that checks out so far. But why did you regress? Shouldn't it have been that S-Rank Hunter?”
“I don't know. After that one death, when I came back to life, it was orientation day.”
I'd spilled everything...
Anyone else would call it crazy and tell me to see a psychiatrist.
But Yoon Ji-yeon, the mage god herself, would believe me.
I had to believe that.
“A regressor... Even I, versed in all magic, have never heard of a regression spell... Hmm.”
Yoon Ji-yeon rested her chin on her hand, lost in thought.
For a while, all I heard was breathing and the wind.
She broke the silence.
“Then, regressor.”
“Yes, Matriarch.”
“What do you want to do now that you've regressed?”
“...”
A primal question.
An answer buried deep in my heart.
There was only one.
“...Massacre.”
“Massacre what?”
I looked at her.
Yoon Ji-yeon watched me with interest.
...And with the wind, memories of my youth resurfaced.
Thirty years after the First Gate.
Humanity faced crisis again.
The Second Gate.
Having lost the twenty heroes, humanity despaired.
Our armies couldn't even scratch the monsters.
Monsters poured into cities indiscriminately.
And that day, when I could do nothing but watch.
From the damp, musty wardrobe crack came my little sister's screams.
Begging to be saved. To be helped.
Calling my name pitifully.
But I could only watch as the monster killed her.
I was a coward and weak back then.
...Monster massacre.
Kill every being that shouldn't exist on Earth.
That's why I'm growing stronger.
That's my reason for living.
“Massacre every monster in sight.”
I bit my lip to suppress my emotions as I spoke.
“...”
No trace of amusement on Yoon Ji-yeon's face.
I heard later.
When I uttered 'massacre' in front of her.
A dark knight she'd summoned behind me had its blade at my throat.
Thankfully, it vanished once she realized I meant monsters.
“Good.”
“...”
How many minutes passed with tears in my eyes?
Yoon Ji-yeon approached and lifted my chin with her finger.
Through my teary eyes, I saw her face.
“Enough with the bowed head. You're a man, aren't you?”
“...Yes.”
I raised my head.
And stood up.
Yoon Ji-yeon was grinning ear to ear.
Smack!
She placed her hand on my shoulder and patted it a couple times.
“I like you.”
“Pardon?”
“You're mana-deficient.”
“Mana... defi... Yes?”
Thud.
This time she lightly tapped my solar plexus and laughed again.
“I'll train you. Even in life, there was no magic I didn't know.”
“...”
“Specially. Really specially. I'll teach you every skill possible, even though you're not Yoon Family. Deal?”
“...”
Honestly, I was so thrilled I couldn't speak.
Learning magic from a legendary mage. One-on-one?
“A special training only my 'sisters' who cleared Level 5 could receive.”
Chapter 6: Special Course
Checking user's mana level.
Current available mana: 20
“Th-thank you! Matriarch!”
I bowed deeply in gratitude.
It felt like someone had paved asphalt over a bumpy mountain road.
Yoon Ji-yeon was still beaming.
“Good, good. Just prepare to die.”
“Pardon?”
I soon learned what she meant.
I escaped the Mana Manual.
Sunlight was already streaming through the window.
I'd have to head back to school without sleep.
Yet I wasn't tired at all.
Sorrow and joy coexisted.
I got out of bed and opened the drawer.
Inside was an old photo.
One with my little sister.
Hyun-ji in the photo was smiling brightly.
I smiled and put it back.
This was the school's mock dungeon.
Not a real one, but an eerie, chilling aura lingered.
Class C sat in three neat rows.
They went up to the instructor one by one.
Today's lesson: dungeon survival skills.
Techniques for hunters to survive emergencies.
“Basically, there is no food fit for humans inside dungeons.”
Ha Dong-hwan stabbed a knife into the thawed goblin corpse's thigh.
“But monsters are edible. Not very nutritious, but their flesh becomes food, and their blood, water.”
He handed a slab of thigh meat to the cadet up front.
The female cadet took the goblin thigh with trembling hands.
She immediately started dry-heaving.
Ha Dong-hwan didn't let it slide and scolded her.
“This is for survival. Survival! Once you're in a dungeon, you can't leave until it's cleared. You wanna end up as a skeleton in the background?”
“Sorry, sir!!!”
“Your mentality's rotten. Fall out and do 100 push-ups.”
“Yes, sir!!!”
Already, over half the class were cadets getting reamed.
Survival training, they called it.
Just pushing human limits.
“Cadet 2341, Kang Tae-hyun.”
I took the thigh meat from him and chewed without hesitation.
Goblin blood burst in my mouth, trickling between my lips.
“Good. Never disappoints.”
“Cadet 2341, Kang Tae-hyun. Thank you, sir.”
“You can spit and rest after chewing.”
“Sir!”
He said I could spit, but I chewed it all and swallowed.
In my past life, to survive dungeons, I'd eaten lizardman eyeballs.
Orc testicles too.
Giant mealworms.
Ogre cheek meat.
Goblin thigh was like raw beef to me.
And it even got sweet after chewing.
“Cadet 878, Yoon Ah-young!”
Ah-young barely took the thigh meat with shaking hands.
She trembled in fear at first, then squeezed her eyes shut and popped it in her mouth.
Chew chew.
After two or three chews, Ha Dong-hwan said she could spit.
“Urk—! Blech!”
Sure enough, she spat it out immediately upon permission.
I handed her some water.
“Th-thanks... You okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
I smacked my lips as I replied.
She gulped it down and smacked her own lips.
“Wow... You're really something...”
Ah-young sat beside me and sighed deeply.
It hit me anew that Yoon Ah-young was from the Yoon Family.
She looked strikingly like Yoon Ji-yeon.
Hair color, eyes—identical.
She turned to me.
“You haven't opened the Mana Manual yet, right?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah... not yet.”
I wondered if she'd believe I'd cleared up to Level 5 already.
“The Mana Manual's pretty tough. You need to train your mana plenty before opening it.”
“R-really?”
I'd brute-forced the whole thing with physical prowess.
From Level 3 on, goblin blades hadn't even grazed me.
“Um... by any chance...”
Ah-young's eyes sparkled as she looked at me.
Definitely about to ask a favor.
“You free tonight?”
I read her intent perfectly.
Not a date invite.
Physical training.
Thanks to her last night, I'd gained an amazing mentor and mana.
Of course I'd help with her training.
And I could train my own stamina too. Best of both worlds.
“Come to my place tonight. Around... 7. Oh, don't eat dinner. You might puke.”
“Ah, sure!!!”
Ah-young replied enthusiastically and flashed a bright smile.
“Eighty... two...!”
“Hips not up? Start over from the beginning.”
The dropouts who hadn't eaten the goblin thigh.
Among them, Mitsuda's eyes were fixed on one spot.
Tae-hyun and Ah-young sitting side by side, chatting away.
'Kang Tae-hyun...'
While others did 100 push-ups, he'd done 400 and finished first.
'The plan is perfect.'
Mitsuda's lips curled into a sly grin.
A wicked, cunning smile.
The instructor noticed and approached.
“Hey. Mitsuda. Feeling cocky?”
“N-no, sir!!!”
“500 more. Now.”
“Y-yes, sir!!!”
Mitsuda dropped immediately and started push-ups.
(To be continued next time)