Chapter 28
“This crazy bastard actually came.”
“Why is getting into your place so complicated? By the way, isn’t this place famous? I had no idea you lived here.”
River Skygate, a super-luxury apartment complex in Seongsu-dong with views of the Han River.
It was famous as an apartment complex where only Korea’s top-ranked Hunters and the wealthy lived. As expected, Zephyros’s company cl...
“It’s company property. Employee housing.”
...the caliber of Zephyros’s company.
“Anyway, I told you not to come. Why did you? I think another day or two of rest would’ve done the trick.”
“Take this first.”
When I handed him a box with a handle, Zephyros accepted it and furrowed his brow.
“...PowerQ 500? Is this from your company?”
“You heard I acquired it.”
“You brat, if you were bringing something, you should’ve brought that new product, PowerQ Elixir or whatever.”
“The stuff inside is elixir.”
“Huh? But it’s PowerQ 500.”
“Our company doesn’t have an official elixir product line, so I brought it in that.”
I asked Gyuseon to make it for me.
Since I was rich now, I figured I should take care of my health, too, so I’d been drinking the original elixir made from the leftovers.
Of course, it looked a little tacky since I’d decanted it into PowerQ 500 glass bottles, but it contained twice as much elixir as the commercial version.
“So this one bottle costs 100 million won?”
“Elixir goes for about 50 million won a bottle these days, so yeah.”
“Put it over there.”
“You’re not going to drink it?”
“If I drink that, it’ll nearly kill me.”
“What?”
It was strange.
How could someone as rich as Zephyros not afford elixir and be stuck with muscle pain?
Even a miracle drug that could cure most minor ailments just by drinking it could apparently be poison sometimes.
“Have you been to the hospital?”
“You think I haven’t? Inactive mana stays in the muscles and keeps causing pain, so it hurts until it all dissipates. If I take something like elixir, it burns off the inactive mana by force. But the backlash nearly kills me. If just enduring it is like paying in interest-free installments, that stuff is paying in full.”
If a Hunter like him endured that pain for three days...
Ugh, I didn’t even want to imagine it.
“That pain just makes my body ache even worse. I know my own body. Just enduring it is the best option.”
“Have you ever tried paralysis treatment?”
“Paralysis? Yeah.”
Oh, he had.
“How was it?”
“It eases the pain, but it doesn’t affect the right spot properly.”
So it did work, at least.
Then there was definitely a chance.
“I got a new ability, and it’s a paralysis ability. Could I test it on you?”
“...What, am I a guinea pig?”
“Something like that.”
In any case, I needed to get used to No. 5, too.
I had to learn what effects appeared depending on how many bacteria I introduced, where I introduced them, and for how long, if I wanted to use them properly.
It’d be a problem if I used it to restrain someone but overdid it and killed them, or used too little and failed to paralyze them.
Of course, Zephyros reacted to my words with obvious disbelief.
“Damn, how are you so brazen?”
“I’ll be gentle.”
No matter how potent botulinum was, it shouldn’t be too dangerous if I started with an extremely small number of bacteria and gradually increased them while watching for an effect.
To begin with, with fewer than 200 million bacteria—the amount of the strain I currently had, about one vial’s worth—it would take a long time to produce enough toxin to kill an adult man.
The Control effect would make it more potent, but the issue was that Zephyros was a top-tier Hunter.
Considering his poison resistance, there was practically no chance that a strain of just over 200 million could threaten Zephyros.
“Tch. Do what you want. But more than a few healers have tried their luck on me and failed, you know? If you just make it hurt more, I’ll really kill you.”
“Healers probably work similarly to elixir and use the same treatment methods.”
Elixir and healers both used mana for healing, so their mechanisms of action were probably similar. But mine was different.
First, I took the scepter from my inventory, then brought out No. 5.
“Tell me which part hurts the most.”
“Hmm, this side right now?”
As expected of the Cheongpung Sword Style, famous for its fast swordsmanship, it seemed to put a lot of strain on the right arm he used to swing his sword.
Zephyros furrowed his brow as he rubbed the muscles from his right shoulder down his arm.
I sent about a million No. 5 individuals into Zephyros’s body through his pores.
“Hey, what did you just do? A system message popped up.”
“What does it say?”
“It says a hazardous substance entered my body. It asks if I want to use my inner energy to drive out the poison.”
As expected, a top-tier Hunter noticed it immediately.
With my Control, the colony probably had some mana resistance, but it wouldn’t withstand Zephyros’s inner energy.
“Medicine and poison are the same thing. Most medicine becomes poison if used the wrong way, and even poison can be medicine if used properly.”
“Sounds suspicious.”
Even so, Zephyros immediately withdrew the mana he’d been building up.
After that, things went smoothly.
Macrophages—in other words, white blood cells—swarmed in to eliminate the foreign substance, but white blood cells were no match for my bacterial army, already strengthened by more than 200% Control.
They pushed through the mass of white blood cells and settled properly around the muscle fibers.
“I’ll begin.”
At my instruction, the controlled No. 5 began releasing botulinum toxin.
“How does it feel?”
“I don’t feel anything.”
“I’ll keep it going for about a minute, then try again.”
Was that not enough?
It was then.
“Huh?”
“Do you feel anything?”
“A bit tingly.”
“I’ll keep going.”
It was responding pretty well with just a million individuals?
Was it because, instead of injecting botulinum that had been diluted externally, the bacteria had penetrated the muscle fibers themselves and were releasing the toxin directly?
Let’s add another million or so and watch his reaction.
At some point,
Swish! Zephyros’s right arm rose.
“Holy shit, that’s crazy.”
“W-What is it?”
Was raising his arm that surprising?
“Hey, I can raise my arm this high. I couldn’t lift it even halfway for three whole days. Hahaha! This is amazing. It really does hurt less.”
“Ooh.”
It worked.
“Then I’ll increase the strength a little more.”
“Ooh, yeah, yeah. That’s it. That’s the stuff. Good, good, good.”
Zephyros kept going, “Yeah, that’s good,” in the sort of tone you’d expect from a middle-aged man soaking in a hot bath.
“I can barely feel any pain now.”
“Okay. Could you check whether it interferes with swinging your sword?”
I’d only paralyzed the muscles locally, so it was possible I’d stopped the pain but impaired his swordsmanship.
That would be a problem.
At my request, Zephyros immediately summoned his sword from his inventory and held it.
After swinging it several times, he tilted his head.
“Why? Is something wrong? Does it feel off?”
“Hmm, it’s not that...”
He swung it a few more times, then put the sword back in his inventory and said,
“Try the other places, too.”
What was that? This was making me nervous.
Still, since he was asking me to do it, it probably wasn’t bad.
Now that I had the hang of it, the other areas were a little easier.
Over the next hour, I paralyzed the muscles throughout his body in localized sections, to the degree he wanted.
In the end, I used almost 100 million bacteria.
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
Zephyros stood up, brushed himself off, and went into a room in the corner.
When I followed him, I found a room that was practically a gymnasium rather than a room.
There wasn’t a single piece of furniture, and the walls were all covered in soundproofing tiles, so it seemed like a training room.
How huge did a house have to be to have something like that inside?
This training room alone seemed about the size of the Gangnam apartment I was renting.
The sword Zephyros drew from his inventory again shimmered with a flow of energy.
Sword qi...
But that wasn’t all.
The hazy energy gathered and condensed until it took on a form even I could see.
A mass of inner energy glowing blue.
Sword force was there.
Zephyros showed off his swordsmanship with sword force fully manifested.
It was exactly the same Zephyros I’d seen in old media.
The limited space kept him from performing it perfectly, but his movements were graceful enough to be beautiful.
Zephyros swung his sword like that for a long while, then sheathed it and continued tilting his head.
“Don’t just stand there looking perplexed. Say something.”
“You brat. If I were sure, I’d have said something already.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your body, right?”
“It’s good. That’s the problem.”
“Why is that a problem?”
Instead of answering me, Zephyros put on his coat and headed for the entrance.
“I’ve got somewhere to go. I’ll see you later. You can rest here.”
“Wait...”
Before I could say anything, he left the apartment in a flash with those characteristic quick steps.
No, what just happened?
**
“Hmm...”
The doctor in a white coat stared intently at the monitor, then slowly raised a hand.
“W-What are you doing?”
The doctor chuckled at Zephyros, who tried to recoil in alarm.
“Hold still.”
“No, what are you...”
“Greater Healing.”
A soft green light shimmered around Zephyros’s arm.
“You son of a bitch, what are you—”
Zephyros squeezed his eyes shut and trembled in fear, waiting for the excruciating pain that was about to come.
But the pain never came.
“What? Why am I fine?”
“I don’t know who did it or how, but the parts where you feel pain are paralyzed very precisely and locally.”
“Oh, uh.”
“So you probably won’t feel much of the pain that comes from burning off the inactive mana, either. Simply put, as long as that state is maintained, healing shouldn’t make you feel unbearable pain or anything.”
Zephyros met his longtime friend’s eyes and let out a hollow laugh.
“And the results of this test...”
It was a test that checked the maximum speed of his sword swings and the time it took to reach that top speed.
Zephyros was the best in Korea in this field.
His prime record had never been beaten.
But...
That record had just been broken.
“Hey, isn’t this wrong?”
“No. You’re faster.”
By 20%, no less.
And since the figure had originally been 20% lower than in his prime, it was an increase of nearly 50%.
“That makes no sense. How old am I?”
“You’re in your late forties, but you made it big young and kept taking elixir regularly. You did skip it a lot after dungeon raids, but your body’s still much younger than your actual age.”
“Even so...”
At a loss for words, he kept staring at the results sheet.
“You came in for testing first because something felt off, didn’t you?”
“I did, but how is this possible?”
“When you swing your sword, you explosively coil your muscle fibers like springs and then release them, right? During that process, your body’s defense mechanisms kick in. Your body knows the pain gets worse the closer you get to your limit.”
“...So?”
“Right. The more you swing, the sooner your body stops you from pushing any farther. But now the pain is controlled enough that those defense mechanisms don’t activate, so your muscle fibers can perform all the way up to their actual limit.”
At first, 99%, then 98%.
After decades, that gradually fell until it was 80%.
He’d thought that if he kept swinging like this, it would only keep dropping.
He’d thought he was practically washed up.
“Hahaha...”
He’d never even come close to his limit in the first place.
Not even in his prime.
“Kim Segyun... that bastard...”
“What? Who?”
“There’s this guy. He says weird things like Michael Jordan.”
As Zephyros said that, the corners of his mouth lifted in the warmest smile he’d ever worn.