“I just have to sell this secret manual itself for the highest price.”
In that case, who was the overwhelmingly powerful figure who could afford this incredible secret manual that would change the balance of the world, and at the same time protect me perfectly from the hyenas who would come rushing in after this secret?
‘Among the people I know, that is.’
The answer was already decided.
Without hesitation, I took out my smartphone and pressed the call button.
Before the dial tone had even rung a few times, a dry, indifferent voice came through.
[Yeah, Kang Ujin. What is it? You want to borrow the lab again?]
It was Yun Se-a, the third-generation chaebol heiress and my engineering partner, who had opened up Taesan Special Steel’s entire research lab to me.
I leaned back deeply against the bench and spoke in a voice tinged with the deep composure unique to a merchant.
“Se-a, what are you doing? Were you reading a novel?”
[Yeah, I was rolling around reading a territory-management novel. But why? Did you leave something in the lab?]
“No. This isn’t about the lab. I’m calling to make a very interesting business proposal.”
[Business? You?]
“Se-a.”
I stared at the round moon hanging in the sky and tossed a sweet, deadly bait into her ear like the devil.
“Your Taesan Group has a hunter team too, right?”
[Yeah, Taesan Guild. But why are you asking?]
“I just figured out a way for an ‘ordinary person’ to tear through a monster’s energy shield like paper, just like a hunter.”
[……What?]
From beyond the receiver, I heard the sound of a book dropping with a thud.
I could feel, even through the phone, Yun Se-a’s breath stop—she, who was always so indifferent.
I smiled like a beast and drove in the decisive wedge.
“If Taesan were to monopolize this method, how do you think the paradigm of the global hunter market would change? Why don’t you calculate the value of this ‘secret technique’ yourself?”
*
An underground special research lab under Taesan Guild.
Inside an isolation chamber surrounded by thick bulletproof glass and alloy, a captured ferocious goblin was bound in chains, breathing in a grotesque manner.
“The energy shield currently generated naturally over that goblin’s body surface measures approximately 400 hectors.”
The chief researcher of Taesan Research Institute, dressed in a white coat, briefed us while looking down at his tablet PC.
“This unit, named after the French supernatural ability scholar Jean Hector, who first identified the wave properties of mana, refers to the amount of mana that can nullify roughly the kinetic energy of one rifle round per hector. In other words, 400 hectors means you would have to continuously pour dozens of automatic rifle magazines into it just to make it crack.”
The researcher looked at the crude iron sword in my hand and asked, as if he found it absurd.
“It can only be pierced in one blow with the mana output of an average D-rank hunter. And yet…… you truly intend to go in there without a single piece of equipment?”
Yun Se-a, standing beside him, had taken off her usual cap and was watching me with her arms crossed, her gaze cold.
“Open it.”
At Se-a’s curt order, the researcher reluctantly opened the isolation chamber door.
Creeeeak—
The moment the door opened, the bloodshot-eyed goblin let out a bizarre shriek and charged at me.
Kieeeek!
‘Compared to the monsters of Felua, it’s nothing but a pathetically weak creature, but at my current level, I can’t afford to be careless.’
With a merchant’s meticulous calculation, I read its trajectory and speed.
Then I scraped together my aura down to the bottom and precariously channeled it toward the tip of my sword.
Sssss—
A faint blue haze gathered over the surface of the iron sword.
It was sword energy, wavering unstably as if it would scatter at any moment due to my insufficient training.
I slipped half a step aside from the claws of the goblin leaping like a beast, then thrust the blue-tinged blade tip toward its chest.
Bzzzt! Kaaang—!
A stiff resistance traveled up my wrist, as if I were trying to push a dull blade into a hard rubber tire.
The energy shield was struggling desperately to repel my feeble aura.
“Ggh……!”
I clenched my teeth and concentrated all of my remaining aura at the tip of the sword, putting my weight behind it.
Paaaat—!
At that moment, the shield’s bonds failed to hold, and with a soft puncturing sound, it tore open.
The iron sword pierced through the shield and sank shallowly, yet fatally, into the goblin’s heart.
“Ki, kiek…….”
The goblin vomited black blood and collapsed to the floor.
“Haa, haa…….”
I exhaled roughly and wiped the cold sweat from my forehead.
I hadn’t crushed it with overwhelming force, but I had definitely succeeded in piercing the shield and landing a fatal blow.
“……!”
From beyond the glass, the researcher let out a gasp of astonishment.
“Impossible! The energy wave’s power just momentarily recorded 450 hectors! It pierced the shield!”
The researcher frantically checked the data on his tablet, then clapped toward me beyond the bulletproof glass with an excited expression.
“Congratulations, Student Kang Ujin! You are unquestionably an awakened hunter! Though your numbers are still modest, around D-rank level, you are clearly a close-combat awakened with definite potential! At this level, even our Taesan Guild could immediately place you in the training division……!”
“Chief. Thank you for your work. You may leave now.”
Se-a cut off the researcher in a cold, sunken voice.
“Yes? Ah, yes, miss. Then I’ll be going…….”
The researcher read the room and hurriedly left the lab. As the heavy iron door closed, only Yun Se-a and I remained inside.
After shaking the goblin’s blood off and setting down the sword, I rolled my stiff wrist and turned toward Se-a.
“That man seems to think I’m some run-of-the-mill D-rank awakened who got incredibly lucky.”
“…….”
“As I told you over the phone, Se-a, I’ve never awakened or anything like that.”
I once again caused a faint blue aura to rise over my palm and declared,
“This isn’t a naturally occurring awakening that depends on talent or luck. It’s a thoroughly artificial and systematic ‘training method’ that forcibly draws out power through breath control. In other words, if you know the method, in this world overflowing with ordinary people, you can mass-produce hunters like a factory.”
At my words, Se-a’s deep, cold black eyes trembled faintly.
“That’s why I came to sell this secret technique to you first. Though I only showed D-rank power, what if anyone could tear through an energy shield? The value of this product. You confirmed it clearly, didn’t you?”
It was a meticulously calculated proposal.
But Se-a’s reaction was a little different from what I had expected.
Instead of being shocked or trying to bargain, she slowly walked toward me and began to exude not her usual indifferent classmate’s air, but the dignity of an unapproachable ruler from a chaebol family.
“Kang Ujin. You know the rumor about me going around our department, don’t you? That I’m the daughter of the president of Taesan Special Steel.”
“Yeah, Sanghun mentioned it.”
“That’s wrong.”
Se-a looked straight into my eyes and said,
“The president of Taesan Special Steel is my uncle. I am…… the direct granddaughter of the chairman who heads Taesan Group.”
“……What?”
“Just think of it as me not wanting rumors to spread at school. It’s more convenient to reveal a little than to hide everything completely.”
Not the daughter of a mere affiliate’s president, but the biological granddaughter of the chairman of Taesan Group, who held the economy of the Republic of Korea in his hands?
When I looked surprised, Se-a clenched her fists tightly and continued, as if grinding out the words in pain.
“A few years ago, when the Gate Incident first broke out. The daughter my grandfather cherished most in the world…… my mother, was caught up in a gate that opened in downtown Seoul.”
Her voice was steeped in deep hatred and sorrow.
“Taesan’s vast capital and power, even our bodyguards, were useless. No matter how many bundles of cash we threw, they were nothing but scraps of paper before those dreadful monsters wrapped in energy shields. The world says the situation stabilized quickly, in less than a year, but…… during that short time, so many people, including members of my family, died miserable deaths.”
Only then did I understand why Se-a had always pulled her cap down low and lived like an outsider, why she had been so cold and desiccated.
“Do you know why I entered this rough mechanical engineering department instead of business administration or economics?”
Her eyes blazed with burning vengeance.
“To invent with my own hands weapons and technologies that would tear those horrible monster bastards apart and kill them. Not to entrust humanity’s lives to a small number of awakened people called hunters, but to find a way to slaughter those bastards with technology and machines made by ordinary humans!”
So that was it.
That was why she had shown such unusual interest in the novel setting I had used as an excuse when borrowing the lab—“destroying another world with the hammer of an ignorant and barbaric steam engine”—and had so readily lent me the equipment.
At her core, she had been fiercely craving a tremendous “power” capable of massacring monsters.
“But Ujin, you just proved it in front of my eyes.”
Se-a stepped so close it looked as if she might grab me by the collar.
In her dark eyes, terrible greed and desperation were swirling.
“That even without being a special awakened one, an ordinary person can gain the power to tear apart and kill a monster’s shield through training alone.”
Her voice rang coldly through the underground laboratory.
“If what you say is true…… if that ‘secret technique’ you possess really is an artificial training method capable of raising ordinary people into hunters.”
Se-a glared straight through me and declared,
“No matter what price you name, I’ll buy it, even if we have to mobilize all the capital of Taesan Group. I’ll lay all the hundreds of billions, the trillions of won you want, at your feet.”
But soon, her gaze turned as cold as a blade.
“But Kang Ujin. If this is some shallow sales trick, or if you awakened naturally as a D-rank and are trying to scam me……”
She tapped my chest with her finger and whispered chillingly,
“Then in the name of Taesan, I will make sure to kill you.”
Immense wealth, or death.
A blood-soaked, absolute contract condition offered by the granddaughter of a chaebol head.
But even before that murderous threat, I did not so much as blink.
On the contrary, my heart was pounding madly with the joy of a merchant who had secured the greatest VIP customer.
“You’ll kill me? How frightening.”
I gently brushed away her finger and showed her the most arrogant and confident smile of the Great Merchant of Felua, who had once controlled the markets of the continent.
“Don’t worry, Yun Se-a. I don’t deal in counterfeits or fraudulent goods.”
I drove the bloodstained iron sword into the floor and declared,
Because that was the proper principle a merchant ought to uphold.