"Wow… the Hunter Association has a lot of money."
Maybe because he'd been using Lightness Skill nonstop as he ran here, Sihyun managed to arrive earlier than the scheduled time. He moved at an unhurried pace, sweeping his eyes over the flashy buildings in front of him.
A white, ten-story building in the center, and—like it was wrapping around it—a gymnasium, several other buildings whose purposes he couldn't quite tell, and even warehouses.
It felt like he was looking at a small, shrunken-down university campus.
"Hey, hey! Jang Myunghoon is here! Run, hurry!"
"The test starts soon!! Why are you so slow?!"
At that moment, a few people behind Sihyun—some of them carrying cameras, who'd been walking along while murmuring—suddenly started running.
And even after that, groups of similarly dressed people surged past Sihyun several more times.
He was a little curious what the hell that was about, but his annoyance was bigger, so he kept walking at an easy pace. Then, right on the dot at the start time, Sihyun stopped in front of the building and frowned slightly.
No—more accurately, it wasn't that he stopped of his own will. He was blocked and couldn't get in.
"Please give us a word about your resolve for this test!"
"Mr. Jang Myunghoon! Do you think your father's influence affected your skills?!"
"What rank do you expect to get?!"
Sihyun let out a sigh as he looked at the people practically encircling the front of the building. A countless tangle of loud voices pounded his eardrums, making him miserable.
"What the hell. Seriously."
The timing was a little tight. With only five minutes left until the test started, Sihyun finally ended up using a Thousand Lightning movement technique—erasing even his presence—and using Lightness Skill to vault over that noisy wall of humans.
"Ugh… my ears are still ringing."
Muttering quietly, Sihyun rubbed at his itchy ear as he let out a small breath inside the quiet interior he'd finally made it into.
He didn't say it out loud, but even he thought it was ridiculous that he'd used inner power to protect his ears from civilians' voices… and honestly, he regretted it a little.
'Still, I made it on time.'
There were about three minutes left until the announced time of 12:30.
Sihyun glanced around the interior, which had gone quiet in an instant just from passing through a single door. Then he walked over to the reception desk sitting in the middle of a space decorated in a very simple, modern way.
"Hello. This is the Hunter Association. How can I help you?"
"Uh. I'm here for the test."
"I see. Please go through that door you see in front of you and start by filling out the paperwork. The practical test begins at 1:00, so please submit it quickly."
Hearing the smooth, practiced instructions, Sihyun picked up his pace a little and started moving.
The paperwork had questions like whether he'd awakened through a dream, what type he was, and so on—but he filled it in, mixing in a reasonable amount of lies.
They said the nail that sticks out gets hammered. Sihyun knew damn well that if you were too good or too bad, you drew attention either way, so he wanted to avoid all of that as much as possible.
Of course, it wasn't like he had any intention of getting his ability recognized in the first place, and the biggest reason was that it was a pain in the ass.
Naturally, he finished the paperwork in no time, and under the guidance of something like a weird machine, he moved to a small gymnasium inside the building.
"Whoa."
The space was huge, and an incredible number of people were already sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in the seats.
They said it only happened once a month—maybe that was why it was even more crowded.
For no reason, Sihyun pulled his hood down a bit farther and cut through the noisy, market-like interior.
Then, after finally grabbing the last remaining seat all the way at the far end, he shut his eyes and just… sat there. His plan was to stay as quiet as a corpse until the test started.
'Please, for the love of god, don't let anyone talk to me.'
"Um… excuse me…."
But the more you wanted it, the more life made the opposite happen.
Sihyun barely swallowed down the sigh that almost slipped out at the timid voice beside him, and turned his head slightly.
"Yeah?"
"Uh… y-your… foot…."
He'd thought the voice sounded young, and sure enough, it was a boy who looked so young you could've told him he was an elementary school kid and it would've been believable. The boy fidgeted and pointed at Sihyun's foot.
Sihyun automatically lowered his gaze to where the finger was pointing, and realized he was stepping on the boy's bright-white bag strap.
Ah, fuck.
"Ah. Sorry."
"Heh… n-no, it's fine…."
The boy, with bleached-white hair hanging down shaggy enough to cover his eyes completely, kept his head lowered.
He waved a hand weakly, lifted the strap, and rolled it up onto his knees—but the shoe print stamped plainly into that white strap kept stabbing at Sihyun's conscience over and over.
"No, really. I'm sorry. I can at least pay for cleaning—"
"It's really okay…."
While Sihyun and the boy were going back and forth insisting it was okay, a voice filled with echo boomed across the gymnasium.
- Ah, ah! Hello. We'll be starting the test soon, so please begin moving in order from the very back.
And in an instant, everyone's eyes in the room focused on Sihyun. Because with his luck, the "very back" the person in charge had just said was exactly where Sihyun was sitting. That damn number '5' flashed through his mind again.
'Damn it.'
It wasn't like he'd never faced a crowd this big before. The problem was, back then it was always combat situations, so he'd been too busy cutting people down to care.
Clicking his tongue softly, Sihyun sprang to his feet.
"Let's talk later."
And even in the middle of all that, he didn't forget to leave the white-haired boy a quick word, before opening the door right beside him and stepping inside.
It was a smaller room than he'd expected.
With Sihyun's stride, he could reach the wall across the room in four or five steps. And in the center stood a lone cylindrical chamber with a transparent interior.
It looked like he obviously had to go inside, so Sihyun went in without hesitation and stared at the simple, round orb set on top of the machine.
'So what, exactly, am I supposed to do?'
There were no further instructions, and time kept bleeding away, so Sihyun stood there sulking with his hands shoved into his hoodie pocket. Then, as if it was telling him to hurry the hell up, a clear, crisp instruction voice started playing from somewhere.
- Place your hand on the orb, and do not remove it until you hear the instruction that it is finished.
As if he just found the instruction voice fascinating, Sihyun pretended to look around. Then he quickly swept the white wall on the left without making it obvious, and slowly turned his head.
Five people total.
It wasn't like he could see through walls, but he could feel that people with stable flows of qi were oriented this way.
He didn't know why they were watching him in secret like that, but just the thought that someone was paying attention to him made his movements more cautious.
Wooooong.
The moment his hand touched the surface, a low vibration sounded, and the black orb began turning transparent.
Then, starting from his palm, a single extremely faint current seeped in. It was a subtle, cautious current—so discreet that unless you were at the level of Ascension, you couldn't even notice it.
Sihyun narrowed his eyes slightly and began tracking the route the current took as it moved around.
'It looks like it's passing through the blood channels, but… it doesn't look like it's causing any negative effects….'
The system was unexpectedly simple—like it was traveling through his body to check his qi and then drawing a result from that. If that was really all it was, tricking it shouldn't be a problem.
But when that current had passed through his limbs and was approaching his dantian—
Only then did Sihyun hurriedly block his meridians, twisting the path of the current as it tried to rummage through his body.
For a moment, he'd been spaced out because it was a phenomenon he'd never felt before, and his vow to keep it "moderate" had blurred—he'd almost made a mistake.
'But if you think about it, it's still an external qi… how can it probe someone else's body this smoothly without any rejection?'
Qi looked simple, but it was extremely exclusive and sensitive. If someone else injected qi into you from outside, most of the time it would recoil, bounce back, or damage the body.
That was why using an elixir—or even just transmitting qi—was something you had to do incredibly carefully and slowly. So the idea that a mere machine could do this was suspicious as hell.
Now that suspicious current had passed through his heart and was turning toward his head. Nothing felt wrong in his body, but the more normal it felt, the weirder the whole thing seemed.
It had only been three years since Gates appeared.
He didn't know the details, but even with just the system stuff he knew so far, some parts were rigid and crappy, and other parts had way too little oversight. In other words, it still wasn't a fully finished framework yet.
'And in the middle of that, only this is somehow complete?'
As if it wanted his thoughts to stop right there, the machine suddenly let out a sharp beep, announcing the end of the test.
'Reaction?'
The instant he heard it, Sihyun turned his shoulder like nothing happened and stepped out of the chamber. Then he probed for the presence of the people behind the wall.
Thankfully, the result matched what Sihyun wanted—no one was showing any particularly strange reaction.
'Hm… it's even sloppier than I thought.'
A small smile tugged at his lips. Acting even more nonchalant, Sihyun moved his feet again, following the machine's guidance to yet another space.
The test itself took only about five minutes, but because there were so many people, the overall process was taking a long time.
If you'd already finished, why not just let people go first? He couldn't understand why they were using such an inefficient method. Sihyun started getting suspicious of the whole setup.
"No, but… wasn't I supposed to be right after that kid next? Why the hell hasn't he gone in yet?"
Even among the crowd that was now nearly filling the auditorium, Sihyun scratched his head, searching for that white hair he couldn't see anywhere. The kid had looked shy, so Sihyun had been planning to force some cleaning money into his hands anyway—but since he still wasn't showing up, it was getting pretty awkward.
Then the staff member who'd been guiding them in the gym appeared at the front again and started speaking.
"All tests have been completed! Now we'll assign temporary accommodations in order, so please take a watch each as you leave."
"No, but one person still hasn't come—… huh? Accommodations?"
What kind of bullshit is this….