When the countdown reached 28 seconds, I knew Han Do-gyeong was smiling.
I could only hear his voice through the speaker. I couldn't see his face. But I knew. We had spent seven years in the same building. That was more than enough time to recognize a smile hidden in someone's breathing.
"Good work, Jae-ha. Thanks to you, we've achieved quite a lot."
A vibration rose through the concrete. I felt it through the soles of my feet first. Basement Level 4. The emergency exit had been welded shut last week. I should have realized what that meant when the welders arrived.
23 seconds.
I looked to my side.
Three people were pressed against the wall. Kang Tae-oh. Nineteen years old. His wrists were so thick that the restraints dug into his flesh. Jeong Ha-yoon. Twenty-four. Her eyes were closed. I couldn't tell whether she had fainted or simply given up.
And Seo Min-a.
Min-a opened her eyes. Our gazes met.
She wasn't crying. That made it worse. She looked as though she expected me to come up with something. After all, I had managed to find a way out of trouble more than once over the past five years. When our rations were cut off, and when Ha-yoon's lungs were damaged.
Sorry. Not this time.
"The parliamentary investigation has become rather troublesome. We need to clean things up."
The speaker briefly went silent.
"You understand, don't you?"
I understood. Perfectly.
It had taken me seven years to realize something I should have known from the beginning. The nameplate reading 'Research Associate' had merely been a label pasted over 'Test Subject No. 004.'
I wasn't a researcher.
I was raw material.
18 seconds.
I strained against the restraints around my wrists. They didn't budge.
Of course they didn't. These weren't ropes.
They were restraint engravings extending from the wall. They worked by channeling mana to lock a target's joints in place. Skill-based equipment.
And I could read skill-based equipment.
I closed my eyes.
[Structure Inspection].
My vision inverted. Lines emerged from the darkness, revealing the internal structure of the restraint engravings wrapped around my wrists.
There were three layers.
The outer layer received mana, the middle layer converted it into pressure, and the inner layer fixed that pressure to the angles of the joints.
A tiny knot sat near the lower-left corner of the middle layer. Mana lingered there for 0.02 seconds before flowing onward.
A bottleneck.
If I interfered with that point, the restraints would come undone. Right there, precisely. A spot no larger than a fingernail.
I could see it.
That was all I could do.
That was [Structure Inspection]. An ability that allowed me to peer inside every skill in the world.
I could read everything: where a circuit became obstructed, what would change if a particular value were adjusted, and even what the designer had been thinking when drawing a particular line.
I could read it all.
But reading was all I could do.
Mana formed inside the bodies of Awakened individuals. Nobody knew why. It simply appeared.
And mana itself had no inherent form. It was like water before being poured into a container.
Skills were the pipes through which that water flowed. Even with the same water, the shape of the pipes determined whether fire emerged from one person's hands or ice from another's.
I was the only human being who could see those blueprints.
Yet I couldn't reach inside the pipes.
Reading and writing were different things. I was a reader. For seven years, I had drawn hundreds of blueprints. Those blueprints had made Han Do-gyeong rich, while I remained bound here, unable to free even one wrist.
12 seconds.
Min-a said something. I couldn't hear her. I could only read her lips.
I think she said, 'It's okay.'
I didn't know whether she was saying it to me or to herself.
9 seconds.
Habits were frightening things.
Even as the restraints dug into my flesh, I closed my eyes again and focused my consciousness.
[Structure Inspection].
I hadn't gone a single day without using it in seven years. Just as naturally as washing my hands after waking up in the morning, I would read something.
Since this is the end, I might as well read anything.
I chose a target.
The system engraving on the wall.
It was a standard engraving that surrounded the entirety of Basement Level 4 and could be found throughout the experimental wing. I had seen it hundreds of times. I had never even considered inspecting it.
It was like a pattern on the wallpaper.
A system window appeared.
And I stopped breathing.
This wasn't a skill structure.
Something continued beyond the engraving. Into the wall, beyond the building, and even farther below.
It reached a depth I had never encountered before.
For seven years, I had opened up skills.
What I had opened now wasn't a skill.
It was the thing that created skills.
Layer upon layer of structures extended downward, deeper and deeper.
At their very center was an engraving.
I recognized it.
Of course I did.
It was the same mark stamped at the very foundation of every one of the hundreds of skills I had dismantled.
A signature.
A seal someone had left on every skill in this world.
Something whose very existence was unknown to anyone but me.
But now...
The signature was pulsing.
At regular intervals, it expanded and contracted.
Expanded and contracted.
Like a heart.
5 seconds.
Is this thing alive?
3 seconds.
Han Do-gyeong. Do you know about this?
1 second.
Light swallowed my vision.
＊
I opened my eyes.
A breeze brushed the tip of my nose.
I could feel wood against my back. Hard, lukewarm, and slightly damp.
A bench.
I shot upright.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I couldn't breathe.
There was no sound of an explosion. No heat. None of the moldy stench of Basement Level 4.
Sunlight stabbed into my eyes.
People were standing in line. Around twenty of them. Most looked to be in their early twenties.
Some appeared nervous, others excited. A few had people who looked like their parents standing beside them.
There was a sign at the end of the line.
Hunter Association. Awakening Ability Assessment Center.
I looked down at my hands.
There were no needle marks.
The inside of my left arm, five centimeters below the elbow.
For five years, needles had pierced that spot twice a day. The skin had repeatedly scabbed over and healed until it had eventually hardened into a brown patch.
Now it was perfectly clean.
I checked my wrists, too.
No scars from the restraints.
Air rushed into my lungs all at once.
A piece of paper was clutched in my left hand. It was crumpled.
I unfolded it.
0041.
A numbered ticket.
Twenty-one years old.
The day of my Awakening.
Seven years ago.
＊
My memories returned in sequence.
At the end of this line, I had placed my hand on a crystal, received a skill called [Structure Inspection], and been informed that my Combat Aptitude Index was 0.00.
The most useless Awakened individual in the world.
That was what they had called me.
Then, as I left the assessment center, a man approached me.
He wore a neatly pressed shirt and a pleasant smile.
'Excuse me, are you Yoon Jae-ha?'
'You have quite an extraordinary ability.'
'Would you consider working with us at our research institute?'
I had trusted that smile and spent the next seven years underground.
My hands trembled.
I couldn't tell whether it was anger or relief. Perhaps both.
But my mind was strangely clear.
There was one thing I needed to confirm.
I closed my eyes.
I thought of [Structure Inspection].
I wasn't activating it. I was simply searching through my memories.
Seven years' worth of blueprints.
[Flame Projection]. Ignition point coordinates, projectile trajectory calculations, and mana consumption coefficients.
[Ice Spear]. The conversion unit's dual filters.
[Gravity Field]. The third variable in its radius calculations.
[Sensory Sharing]. Min-a's skill. The maximum number of connected targets and the method for increasing that limit.
Everything was there.
Not a single line was missing.
My body had returned to the age of twenty-one, but my mind was still twenty-eight.
I almost laughed.
Han Do-gyeong.
Do you know what you made me do for seven years?
You made me dismantle hundreds of skills.
Thanks to you, I know more about skills than anyone else in this world.
＊
I raised my gaze.
Across from the line, a woman sat on a bench in the shade.
A university textbook rested on her lap. Judging by its thick cover, it wasn't for a general education course.
Her hair was tied up carelessly, and her left shoelace was untied.
She wasn't standing in the line for Awakened individuals. She didn't seem to be waiting for anyone, either.
She was simply sitting there, reading a book.
My breath caught.
Seo Min-a.
Twenty-one years old.
Right now, she was an ordinary university student.
She hadn't Awakened yet. She had never heard the name Han Do-gyeong, and she had no idea what Basement Level 4 of the research institute looked like.
This wasn't the face I had seen for the last time.
She wasn't emaciated. Her eyes weren't sunken.
There was no scar above her left eyebrow.
She had gotten that scar during an experiment in our third year.
She was alive.
Her face still belonged to someone whose suffering had yet to begin.
My throat tightened.
I closed my mouth before a sound could escape.
I couldn't fall apart here.
Even if I approached her now and said something, she wouldn't know who I was.
Min-a turned a page.
That was all.
Yet that one insignificant movement nearly made my legs give way.
"Number 0041. Mr. Yoon Jae-ha. Please enter the assessment room."
An announcement sounded.
I steadied my breathing.
Once.
Twice.
On the third breath, I rose from my seat.
Seven years ago, I had walked through this door and lost all hope.
I had received my assessment, endured the pitying gaze of the official in charge, and walked outside with the most useless ability in the world.
This time would be different.
It didn't matter what the assessment said.
My Combat Aptitude Index would be 0.00.
I already knew that.
There was no reason for it to change.
What would change was everything that came afterward.
I walked toward the assessment room.
Just before I reached for the doorknob, a voice came from behind me.
"Excuse me."
I turned around.
Min-a was standing there.
She held her book against her chest, looking a little uncomfortable.
"You've been looking over here for a while now."
"……."
"Do you know me?"
[Contact with observation target detected. Recording initiated.]