Chapter 4
For now, I took the afternoon off and headed to Gangnam.
I got an earful for taking a half-day off at the last minute, but what could I do?
It was fine for them to make me work overtime until dawn on short notice, but I wasn’t allowed to take a half-day off without warning?
“Ah, damn...”
But I just couldn’t work up the nerve to go inside.
My embarrassing past was bad enough as it was.
After pacing back and forth for a while, I finally steeled myself and walked in.
I wasn’t the same Kim Segyun as back then anymore.
Maybe I was Kim Segyun, The New Neo Mark II.
“I’m here to take the assessment.”
“Yes, your ID... Huh?”
Of all people, the person handling applications was the same one as last time.
“Aren’t you the guy who caused a scene here a month ago?”
“Ah, well...”
“Let me see your ID.”
The receptionist snatched the ID I’d been awkwardly holding out of my hand and frowned deeply.
“Yep, Kim Segyun. It’s you.”
“I’m sorry about last time. I came without properly understanding my skill.”
“This isn’t a place for fooling around. Leave.”
“...Leave?”
“You’re here to mess around again. Go before I call the police.”
“No, I’m telling you, it’s for real this time.”
“Seriously. I said leave.”
As I argued with the receptionist, someone behind me grabbed my shoulder and pulled me away.
“You know better, so why are you doing this? This isn’t a place to mess around.”
I was dragged out, almost literally, by a force I had no hope of resisting.
This guy was a Hunter.
I couldn’t get a proper look at his face as he dragged me away, but I could see the sword at his waist.
“W-Wait! Let go! Let go of me!”
“If I let go, will you leave quietly?”
“Just let go for a second!”
“Come on, you still haven’t come to your senses.”
“No, I’ll show you here. I can show you my ability! Just believe me this once!”
I shouted with all the frustration welling up from deep in my chest, and perhaps it got through to him, because at last he stopped in his tracks.
“You’ll show me? What?”
“My ability. If I show you here, will you let me take the assessment?”
“......”
The man gripping my shoulder was silent for a while, as though considering it.
Then he shrugged and let me go.
“Fine, go ahead. But if it doesn’t work, give up and leave. Deal?”
“Your scabbard.”
“Huh?”
“Look at your scabbard.”
The man glanced at the scabbard at his waist, and his eyes widened.
The scabbard that should have encased his sword had crumbled apart and was falling away in pieces. All that remained was the sword itself.
“When did this...?”
The bacteria I’d released at will had decomposed the scabbard in an instant.
“I could’ve decomposed the sword too, but I didn’t want to pay for it.”
A scabbard wasn’t all that expensive, but the swords used by proper Hunters cost an unimaginable amount.
I couldn’t decompose one just to show off my ability.
“Haha...”
The Hunter, who’d nearly lost his prized weapon in an instant, stared at it for a while before giving me an awkward smile and holding out his hand.
“Sorry about that. I thought you were just another troublemaker, but I didn’t expect you to be a real Awakened. I’m Ryu Hyeonsu.”
Ryu Hyeonsu? I’d heard that name somewhere before.
Rummaging through my memories, I took his offered hand and asked,
“You’ll keep your promise, right?”
“Of course. He’s an Awakened, all right. Send him to the test room.”
At his words, the receptionist’s attitude changed completely.
“I-I’m sorry...”
If word got out that the receptionist had mistreated and thrown out a real Awakened, they’d have to write an incident report.
And since they were a government employee, my filing a complaint would make things even worse.
The fact that I was the same guy they’d thrown out as a troublemaker a month ago didn’t help matters.
Either way, the result was the same: they’d thrown out an Awakened.
Still, there was no need to pick a fight with a government employee.
“No, it was my fault for acting like an idiot last time when I wasn’t feeling well.”
“N-No, it’s fine. Give me your application, and I’ll process it right away.”
I handed over the application I’d filled out in advance.
For my class, I’d written Mage instead of Necromancer.
If I wrote Necromancer, they’d send me to Assessment Room 5 again, where I wouldn’t be able to use Undead Rise and would fail all over again.
And I couldn’t exactly show them how I revived bacteria there.
“Mage. You’re a combat type, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Go to Assessment Room 1.”
As I started toward the assessment room, a question suddenly occurred to me, so I turned around.
“Ah, can I ask you something?”
“W-What is it?”
“That Ryu Hyeonsu guy. He’s a Hunter, right?”
“...You don’t know Mr. Ryu Hyeonsu?”
“Is he famous? My memory’s been a little fuzzy lately.”
“You don’t know Zephyros Ryu Hyeonsu?”
Zephyros Ryu Hyeonsu?
No way...
“You mean Zephyros, the first-generation Awakened?”
“Who else would it be?”
“Wow, I was a huge fan of his when I was a kid. No wonder he seemed familiar.”
Zephyros Ryu Hyeonsu was a swordsman who used the Clear Wind Sword Technique, one of the people who vied for the title of Korea’s top-ranked Hunter in the early days of the Age of Awakening, ten years ago.
“I didn’t know because he disappeared after retiring two years ago. What’s someone like him doing here?”
“He’s a scout. Now that he’s retired, he scouts for a dungeon development company in which he owns a stake. He comes here often, too.”
Where was the best place to find newly Awakened rookies?
Obviously, an assessment center.
That was why there were almost as many scouts at the assessment center as there were newly Awakened people.
“So he was a scout...”
We were living in the age of Gates and dungeons, after all.
Companies, associations, guilds.
They went by all sorts of names, but there were countless organizations formed to develop dungeons.
Even at this very moment, scouts from those organizations were watching the assessment results, their eyes gleaming as they waited for an opportunity.
The place where the most of them gathered was Assessment Room 1.
When I got there, the area in front of Room 1 was packed with scouts I hadn’t seen at the reception desk.
“I don’t remember seeing this many scouts at Assessment Room 5.”
As I muttered to myself while waiting in line for the assessment,
“That’s because Necromancers tend to be poor at teamwork.”
A familiar voice came from behind me.
It was Zephyros Ryu Hyeonsu, the man I’d just had a brief altercation with. Somehow, he was already there.
“Zephyros!”
“Haha, you shouldn’t call a retired Hunter by his Hunter name.”
“In my heart, you’ll always be Zephyros.”
“You say that, but you didn’t recognize me.”
“I-I’m sorry. I was a huge fan as a kid, but I’ve been busy with real life. I hadn’t kept up with what you were doing.”
After getting a job, I didn’t even have time to watch dungeon videos.
I worked all day and collapsed as soon as I got home.
On weekends, I slept like the dead.
“Oh, and I’m sorry about the scabbard. I’ll reimburse you as much as I can...”
“Not at all. If we’re splitting hairs, I’m the one who grabbed the wrong guy. Let’s just call it even, shall we?”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“Haha. Anyway, to pick up where I left off, Necromancers are already being trained at the national level, and their class leans more toward solo play than party play. Companies don’t actively target newly Awakened Necromancers. They go after Necromancers who’ve built up some experience and levels instead. One well-developed Necromancer can be as powerful as an entire party.”
“I see.”
“Come to think of it, I only gave you my name, didn’t I?”
“Oh, I’m Kim Segyun.”
Zephyros Ryu Hyeonsu took a business card from his pocket and handed it to me.
RHS Dungeon Development Co., Ltd.
Chief Scout
Ryu Hyeonsu
Seeing the phone number on the back gave me a strange feeling.
I’d gotten the cellphone number of Zephyros, my childhood idol.
I hadn’t even properly entered the Hunter industry yet, but somehow it felt as if I really had.
“All right, Mr. Segyun. Do well on your assessment, and if there’s ever anything I can help you with, don’t hesitate to call.”
“Thank you.”
By the time I finished talking with Zephyros, my turn was almost up.
As soon as I entered Assessment Room 1, I could tell the atmosphere was completely different from Room 5.
A soldier carrying a rifle handed me a document and said,
“Please fill out this consent form.”
A quick read showed it was the usual boilerplate about them not being responsible for death or injury.
I’d already looked it up online, so I quickly signed and handed it back.
“Before you enter, I’ll give you a brief explanation. This is a Stage 1 Gate. It consists of relatively safe, non-aggressive monsters. An examiner will accompany you, but remember that it’s still a Gate, so unexpected threats can appear at any time.”
The assessment in Room 1 was to clear a Stage 1 Gate.
A Gate in the middle of Gangnam was a little surprising, but I supposed the assessment center had been built where a Gate already existed.
It was the lowest-difficulty Gate, a nearly harmless dungeon often called a tutorial Gate.
Even so, bad luck could strike when you least expected it.
Countless Hunters had died after letting their guard down in Stage 1 Gates.
“When you’re ready, form a party with the examiner in front of you and enter the Gate.”
“Yes. Sending a party invite.”
“Accepted.”
The examiner accepted my party invitation with a tired look, even yawning as he did so.
He entered the Gate first, and I followed him inside.
[You have entered the Stage 1 Gate, ‘Three-Eyed Rabbit Meadow.’]
“Phew.”
To my surprise, the inside of the first Gate I’d ever entered was a green meadow where rabbits were hopping around.
It was a peaceful sight, completely unlike what you’d expect from a dungeon.
Maybe it was because I’d seen so many reviews of the Gangnam Assessment Center’s tutorial dungeon, but I wasn’t particularly surprised.
“Your assessment is to kill ten Three-Eyed Rabbits as quickly as possible. You have ten minutes. If you exceed that time, you fail.”
They looked like ordinary rabbits, but they were monsters all the same.
I remembered hearing that if you failed to kill them in one blow and they started to fight back, things could get troublesome.
“When does the timer start?”
“Whenever you’re ready. Yaaawn...”
So that was how it worked?
Without anyone noticing, the bacterial swarm began oozing out of the PET bottle inside my clothes.
Then the swarm scattered in every direction.
When hundreds of millions of them were gathered together, they were just barely visible to the naked eye, but I was, after all, a Necromancer Who Rules the Microscopic World.
Once they dispersed into smaller groups, the bacteria weren’t even visible.
Carried on the gentle breeze, the bacteria scattered and settled on the heads of the Three-Eyed Rabbits.
Since they couldn’t see them, the rabbits had no way of knowing that an assassin of death had landed on their heads.
The rabbits hopped around, calmly nibbling on grass.
After a little while, I confirmed that the bacteria had spread sufficiently to all ten rabbits and spoke up.
“I’ll begin.”
Before the examiner could even start the timer after my signal,
“Pssshhh!”
The heads of all ten rabbits were already decomposing and vanishing right before my eyes.
“I’m done.”
Barely a second passed between my starting and declaring the test over.
The dumbfounded examiner rubbed his eyes and looked out across the meadow again.
“Just now...”
“Yes.”
As I recalled the hundred million assassins of the microscopic realm back into my clothes,
“It’s over.”
I declared firmly to the examiner.