My stunned voice rang out.
The mouth of the information desk employee, who had been subtly looking down on me for being an F-rank asking for a reassessment just moments ago, was hanging wide open as well.
Her gaze darted nonstop between the crystal ball blinking red and my face.
“E-excuse me. Mr. Gwon Daeseong.”
“Y-yes?”
“What on earth is this……”
The employee swallowed dryly and asked in a cautious voice.
“Um, by any chance… you’re not human, or anything like that, are you?”
It was absurd. Me, not human?
“No, of course not! I’m a pure-bred Korean born and raised in the Republic of Korea! Should I show you my resident registration card too?!”
When I jumped in place and shouted, the employee hurriedly waved her hands and backed away.
“R-right? The machine must have gone crazy. One moment, please. This is a latest model worth tens of billions that the Association headquarters brought in last month, so why is it doing this…”
Muttering to herself, the employee operated the measuring device’s panel with trembling hands.
“J-just a moment, I’ll reboot it, okay?”
“Yes, yes, take your time.”
Listening to the machine sounds as it began rebooting, I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead.
‘No way…?’
There was no way I wouldn’t know.
What I had just infused into the crystal ball was that foreign, enormous energy settled near my heart.
In other words, it was the mana flowing from the Dragon Heart.
‘Because it was the Dragon Heart’s mana, the machine recognized me as a dragon? Fucking hell….’
A chill ran down my spine.
What if I was judged to be a monster or an unidentified life-form here?
The Association’s S-rank combat hunters might be dispatched immediately to capture me alive or drag me off to a dissection room.
And of all things, the reboot was ridiculously fast.
“Th-the reboot is complete. Mr. Gwon Daeseong, could you place your hand on it one more time? If an error occurs again, we’ll process it as an immeasurable result.”
She called it an immeasurable result.
But if that judgment was made, I had no idea what would happen to me.
“Ah, yes. Just a moment.”
I took a deep breath and exhaled.
There was only one way.
I had to draw up the ordinary mana that had originally flowed through my body, not the mana of the Dragon Heart.
‘Stay still, you damn lizard!! I’ll die!!’
With sheer force of will, I pressed down the enormous mana thumping near my heart.
Then I gathered only the mana excluding that and infused it into the crystal ball.
Whiiiiir—
“……”
‘Please….’
I’d come here just to pick up one license, and now I was about to become a test subject.
Fortunately, however, this time the machine didn’t make a noise like it was about to explode.
Instead, a very faint blue light began to swirl inside the crystal ball.
Complicated numbers rapidly rose on the monitor.
Ding—
[Measurement complete. Outputting analysis results.]
The employee checked the results displayed on the monitor, then relaxed her tense expression and let out a strange sigh of relief.
“Haa, what a relief. It really was a machine error. That scared me. Seriously, what kind of error was that?”
“R-right!? How are the results?”
The employee then spoke with a somewhat more relaxed face.
“Hmm, your mana capacity itself has increased very slightly… but honestly, it’s nowhere near enough for you to switch to a combat class. You did just barely cross the cutoff, so you can be judged as an F-rank combatant.”
It might not seem like much, but F-rank production and F-rank combat were completely different.
At those words, I clenched my fist.
“Still, congratulations. Just changing your class from production to combat is a miracle in itself. The license renewal fee is 100,000 won.”
“Ah… thank you!”
I forced myself to look disappointed as I handed over my card.
To be honest, I wanted to pin on a flashy badge of C-rank or higher and enjoy the benefits of tax reductions.
But thinking about it calmly, this might actually be better.
‘Yeah. An F-rank combatant.’
The most perfect rank, one that wouldn’t draw attention anywhere and would let me avoid the Hunter Association’s annoying conscription orders or the guilds’ checks.
Besides, the tax reduction honestly wasn’t that different from C-rank.
‘A hunter hiding his power. Hehehe, actually, this is cooler.’
A short while later, I shoved the freshly issued, still-warm F-rank “Combatant” hunter license into my pocket and left the Association with light steps.
“Ah, tonight’s dinner is beef. I should stop by the butcher for the first time in a while.”
***
Humming happily as I returned to Daeseong Resources Junkyard, I stopped in my tracks when I saw a sleek black foreign car parked at the entrance.
‘What the hell is this?’
Among the people I knew, there wasn’t a single person who drove around in a luxury sedan like that.
“Who is it? Did they maybe take a wrong turn?”
There was no reason for a car like this to come to a junkyard.
As I entered the junkyard yard, I spotted a woman standing in front of my old workbench, looking around with interest.
‘What? Who is she?’
A ponytail tied so neatly not a single strand of hair had escaped, a charcoal-colored suit that fit her perfectly.
More than anything, her coolly intelligent and sophisticated beauty didn’t match this oil-smelling junkyard at all.
“Excuse me. Who are you?”
At my voice, the woman slowly turned her head.
When her gaze landed on my face, her red lips formed a smooth curve.
“Ah, are you the owner?”
“Yes, but?”
“Nice to meet you. Hello. I’m Jeong Yuna, chief appraiser of the official Seoul Hunter Association Exchange Office.”
Chief appraiser of the exchange office?
The moment I heard those words, my heart dropped.
‘No way…….’
The three B-rank mana stones I had sold at the exchange office a little while ago.
Had the source of those items, which I had casually brushed off as my grandfather’s keepsakes, been exposed?
She must have noticed that the purity of the mana stones was abnormal and come to investigate on behalf of the Association.
Cold sweat ran down my back as I opened my mouth, trying to act as calm as possible.
“Ah, yes. But what brings an appraiser to a shabby junkyard like this…? Was there perhaps a problem with the items I sold?”
“A problem? No. They were perfect.”
Jeong Yuna approached me.
Click—
The sound of her shoe heels stirred up a strange tension.
“Perfect mana stones with 99 percent purity. In the entire history of Korean hunters, not once has such a flawless jewel ever appeared on the market. Other than your absurd lie about them being keepsakes, Mr. Gwon Daeseong, everything about the transaction was perfect.”
She had hit the nail on the head.
I racked my brain for an excuse, but my mouth wouldn’t open easily.
“It’s true, though? My grandfather really did leave them to me.”
But instead of interrogating me, Jeong Yuna took a business card from her white bag and held it out.
“Don’t be nervous. I didn’t come here to pry into every little thing.”
“Pardon?”
“Whether you stole those mana stones somewhere, or secretly mined them from some illegal dungeon, I won’t ask anything. My only concern is whether you can continue to bring those items.”
Her eyes were filled with certainty.
The truth was, this woman wasn’t the police, nor was she an Association investigator.
That meant I had no reason to be scared.
Then Jeong Yuna made an unexpected proposal.
“Please supply them exclusively to me.”
“Pardon?”
“If you hand the items over only to me, without snooping around other exchange offices or private black markets, I’ll deposit exactly 1.5 times the price you were quoted today.”
“One point five times?”
I doubted my ears.
One top-quality B-rank mana stone was 45 million won.
At 1.5 times that, it would be 67.5 million won.
If I sold three, that would be over 200 million won!
On top of that, she wouldn’t ask about their source.
It meant I had secured the best possible channel to safely turn the mana stones I scraped together from the Multidimensional Used Goods Market into cash, without having to worry about the laundering process.
But that wasn’t how negotiations worked.
“Double.”
Jeong Yuna asked back.
“Pardon?”
“Double.”
“Pardon?”
“If you pay me double the price, I’ll supply only to you.”
“Hah?”
“I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. I can’t explain it to you, but these mana stones weren’t obtained illegally, you know? What do you think? Will you make the deal?”
When I answered while desperately holding back the corners of my mouth from rising, Jeong Yuna lightly clapped her hands.
“…You’re not an ordinary person, are you? Fine. We have a deal. I look forward to working with you.”
Ah, if she was going to agree that easily, I should’ve started with triple….
No. Too much greed only invites disaster.
“I look forward to working with you as well.”
“Mm… Would it be all right if I looked around here a bit?”
Hooh….
This woman was suspicious.
She was wondering whether I was producing these or not.
I leisurely answered her words.
“Ah, yes. There isn’t much to see, but feel free to look around.”
Jeong Yuna began examining the old parts, rusted fans, and oil-stained tools one by one with curious eyes.
Watching her back, I scratched the back of my head.
‘Hm… she’s pretty, isn’t she?’
I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen a woman.
Well, even so, she was better than some gloomy middle-aged man.
“I’ll be going, Boss Gwon. When you make your next delivery, could you contact me separately?”
“Yes, well, I’ll do that.”
“Hehe, I’m glad you’re easier to talk to than I expected. See you next time, Boss Gwon.”
***
After Jeong Yuna left, silence returned to the junkyard.
I firmly lowered the shutter and sank into my work chair.
Things were going well.
Ever since I’d gained this ability, it felt like everything was flowing without a hitch.
‘Then I guess I should try selling something else now?’
I opened the Multidimensional Used Goods Market window in midair.
Ah, before that, there was something I needed to settle.
Before looking through the items, I opened my message inbox and sent a whisper to the man who had sold me the potion earlier.
Thinking about the trembling anxiety I had experienced in the measurement room during the day still made anger surge up inside me.
[Pensive Repairman: Old man. About that Mana Road Activator you sold me.]
After I sent the message and waited for a bit, a reply came in right away.
Was this old man some kind of secondhand trading site addict?
[Royal Alchemist: Ooh, Mr. Repairman! Good to see you! Do you perhaps have more of those flasks? One was far too little, you see.]
[Pensive Repairman: No, why is the mana not human mana?]
At my accusatory tone, the alchemist sent a reply that sounded proud instead.
[Royal Alchemist: Huh? Don’t tell me you consumed it yourself?]
[Pensive Repairman: Yes, I was too curious.]
[Royal Alchemist: Puhahaha! Of course! You opened your mana roads with a Dragon Heart, so how could the mana be the same as a human’s? Did you perhaps gain a Dragon Heart too?]
[Pensive Repairman: Yes.]
[Royal Alchemist: Ooh!! What a relief!!]
[Pensive Repairman: A relief?]
Just as I was about to type in disbelief, the next message froze my fingers.
[Royal Alchemist: Of course it is! To tell you the truth, I wasn’t one hundred percent certain whether the consumer would be able to withstand it…… I’m truly relieved that you didn’t die and are alive and well! You are a very lucky man!]
“……What?”
I glared at the screen with wide eyes.
He wasn’t sure whether I could withstand it?
So this crazy old man had sold me a drug that hadn’t even finished clinical testing?
[Pensive Repairman: Has this bastard actually lost his mind?]
Profanity appeared in the chat window before I even realized it.
[Royal Alchemist: Puhuhu, refrain from such harsh words. In the end, aren’t you the one who benefited? You said you gained a Dragon Heart, did you not? That is something no human would dare covet.]
[Pensive Repairman: You sold something while gambling with a person’s life, and you call that a relief?]
[Royal Alchemist: Kuhuhu, from the look of it, you clearly haven’t been in this community for long. The responsibility for selling and purchasing lies with the individual. Was there not a disclosure of information?]
I was so dumbfounded that I snorted.
I wanted to curse him out and block him right away, but I hesitated for a moment.
This old man treating me like a lab rat was infuriating, but what he was saying wasn’t exactly wrong.
“Hooh… Is that so? As long as a transaction is made, nothing else matters?”
I calmed my anger and lightly kicked the box of discarded elementary school science lab waste piled in one corner of the workbench.
Inside, dozens of glass beakers and flasks that I still hadn’t sold were rolling around.
[Pensive Repairman: You said you needed more flasks, right?]
[Royal Alchemist: Keke, that I did. Do you have more in stock?]
[Pensive Repairman: Yes, I have more. But this time, I don’t feel like selling them to you.]
Points.
Right now, I needed points.