Chapter 56

Team Building (1)

After finishing up my transition with the original Bill Rusell and having watched his retirement declaration flip the entire world, I quietly returned to Korea. The first place I decided to head to was a private luxury villa in Hannam-dong, which had been rented under the company’s name.

‘Has it been a month now?’

Nate and Hibiki… It had been that long since I last saw them. It was because it took quite a while to Clear Sihueng 8 Dungeon, and I ended up staying in the U.S. way longer than I planned to.

“Hey, it’s Jin-Wook!”

They must have been waiting, seeing as I’d contacted them in advance; they were both waiting for me in the living room instead of training. Nate was beaming.

“Have you arrived?” Hibiki greeted, still with a composed expression.

“Huh? What’s that? What is it?”

Nate’s eyes were fixated on the big paper box that I was holding.

“Something to eat.”

He took the box from me and opened the lid. “Woah! It’s been a long time!”

Inside, ten burgers from his favorite fast-food chain were neatly organized.

Nate’s favorite food was among the things he had eaten in a few days since being rescued from the research center and coming to Korea.

The food remained as warm as if I had just ordered it. This was because I had the snake eat it up before vomiting it back out.

I looked at Nate as I spoke.

“I’m surprised you’ve grown so tall in a short time… Did you gain weight as well?”

Nate’s body, which had been small and skinny compared to his age at the time of the rescue, had now begun to find a shape suitable for his age. It had done so with the speed of several times that of normal people, just as a Hunter’s flesh should be.

Considering that, however, the meat on his cheeks was unusual. For a hunter whose body tended to find its efficient shape as the active Mana increased, it meant that he had eaten up ridiculous amounts of calories until now.

Hibiki confirmed this.

“People who came to help us began to doubt us. Even if they filled up five restaurant-class refrigerators with groceries and food, there weren’t any leftovers. They asked themselves if we were hosting a free feeding program in this house for all the people in the neighborhood.”

Even if he had gotten fat now, he would return to normal if he did a round in the dungeon.

Nate picked up a burger and offered it to us.

“Let’s eat!”

“I already ate before coming here.”

“Hibiki, how about you?”

“No, Nate. Thank you.”

Like in the past, when only three of us were together, we communicated in English. Of course, Nate had no problem with this, and Hibiki’s English proficiency wasn’t the same as in the previous life, but she also had no problem communicating. It was a big deal that a Japanese person who had only gone through primary education could practice this pronunciation and grammar level. She was sharp in her senses, but she naturally was brilliant.

In addition to this, Hibiki would absorb anything faster from the things she learned from now on than she did before. She had been born with the intellect, and now she even had a unique skill that could easily overpower others’.

“By the way, this is a franchise that does not have a store in Asia yet. Did you get this from the U.S.? Then… Did the snake eat it and vomited out?”

Hibiki already knew of the abilities of the black snake.

I nodded awkwardly, and a shadow was cast on her face.

“Then, was that stored in the same place as the things that they usually ate?”

Hibiki had not seen the snake eating a human yet, but she saw it eating another thing.

She must have recalled the scene of five giant-sized snakes, each eating a whole pig; and she looked as if she had lost her appetite. I knew she imagined that the burger box had been mixed in with those meat chunks.

The space inside the stomach of the snake was a type of sub-dimension, so I tried to explain that it was not of the structure she was worried about. Still, Nate, who was already hurriedly munching down the burgers with his inflated cheeks, spoke back in a tone to ask what the big deal was about it.

“Hmm? What’s wrong with that?”

*

Bringing Nate, who easily finished ten burgers in his seat, and Hibiki, who ended up not even taking a bite, we headed to the Sunken Garden, which was connected to the 1st basement floor.

Nearly four months had already passed since the day of reincarnation. The season now entered early autumn, and the wind was cool while the sun remained hot.

By going through the basement floor door, the garden we entered was open to the outside, but due to and no sound could leak out.

It was a training ground specially prepared for the two.

“Well, shall we check your assignments?”

Nate shouted cheerfully in reply. “Okay! I’ll go first.”

“Alright, show me.”

He quickly settled himself. He concentrated his mind and stared at the garden in front of him.

I could see the Mana slightly clouding in front of his eyes. This was not even a skill, but a way for any trained hunter to handle their own Mana.

The active Mana stimulated the hunter’s strengthened body. Nate’s gaze was much sharper than usual, capturing everything that could not normally be seen.

“Wow, I’ve already got so many of them before, and they already gathered like this again?”

He was looking at mosquitoes hiding in the grass because the sun was still out.

“How many are there?”

“About 20 of them in my sight.”

He would be able to see more if he used [Penetration], but he hadn’t learned such skills yet.

He had used his ability purely with the control of Mana, and this was a big deal, considering the training period.

Sweat dripped down Nate’s forehead. He then asked, “Should I catch them?”

“Okay, get them.”

He concentrated Mana to the tip of his finger and scattered it forward.

Swoosh!

A pale blue membrane was now visible only to Nate and me.

It brushed against other objects as if they were simply passing through and disappeared by making small flashes of lightning throughout the bush as he intended.

Pat!

Papat!

In each of those places, tiny creatures fell off as pesticides hit them.

Meanwhile, I could see a much more detailed and clear picture than Nate was seeing.

Instead of crushing the mosquitoes completely, he gave the Mana waves by creating a finely coordinated shock that killed them. The weak body of a mosquito that burst just by pressing it with fingers had its tissues almost intact.

‘That’s way more than I imagined. Natural talent never goes away.’

I recalled Nate’s condition when I first met him.

It had been quite a while since he had Awakened, so the Mana was somewhat activated, but he was still behind on the aspect of Mana Control. It was bound to happen since he did not have a teacher.

Because of this, the first assignment I gave Nate was to practice how to handle it elaborately. All his training had now paid off.

“Then, how about you do the next one?”

Nate was reluctant to do the second homework at first. I remembered his reaction.

‘What did you say, Jin-Wook? Do I have to do that? I don’t like bugs. Do we have to make the bugs as friends?’

I wondered if the institute had ever dealt with measles because of bugs, but soon I felt that this was not the case. They would have thoroughly maintained sanitation for the control of the experiment environment.

Listening to him, Nate’s deep disgust and hatred toward bugs were due to the intense experience he had within his memory before he was kidnapped.

In other words, it was a kind of trauma.

‘There’s nothing good about bugs! When I try to sleep at night, they make noises nearby, make my skin itchy, my skin got irritated because of their bites··· They hide under the leftover pizza I ate the day before and they surprise you, lay eggs in the bathroom. If there are dead animals in the street, they eat it by digging in····.’

The streets close to the slums where he grew up were miserably unhygienic, and Nate seemed to be filled with memories of suffering from insects since he was very young.

‘Especially mosquitoes! Mosquitoes are the worst! Mosquitoes need to be gone from this world!’

For Nate to grow into a true necromancer in the future, he could not stick to the current principle of making only those he liked to be under his control. I felt the need to change his mind.

Otherwise, Nate wouldn’t be able to increase his controlled ones unless the people he liked would die.

In the end, he had to increase his troops in the same way as he had done in the previous life.

I needed to implant a principle that instead of making a being he liked as a friend, he should hunt those who would prove to be harmful if they were kept alive, and then use them as subordinates.

‘Nate, we’re going to explore the dungeons together from now on. Until you get sick of it, we have to hunt more monsters than you can ever imagine. If we don’t, we have to stop the monsters coming out of the collapsed dungeons from the Earth. Then the world outside the lab where you barely came back will collapse.’

‘I understand.’

‘You’re going to kill those who will only cause harm on Earth if they are alive and make them your subordinates. They’re not friends. Why don’t we think about these two as separate things?’

Nate agreed with me.

As a result, the scene unfolding in front of me now ···

Whooooooong!

Mana’s flow from Nate reached the mosquitoes that had fallen throughout the garden, and had now rekindled the tiny creatures with the flames of life.

No, to be exact, they had mutated into something else that wasn’t a living thing.

Weing!

What I wanted to see now was how many subordinates could be produced at a time.

‘Twenty of them, they all turned into zombies.’

The difficulties would differ according to the characteristics of the being, but this level was good enough at current standards.

From now on, in the dungeons, if the monsters were kinds that could be made as subordinates, he would be able to convert twenty of them at once.

Nate gazed at me with eyes that seemed to say, ‘What shall I do with them?’

“Now, should we see the assignment of Hibiki? Nate, command all the zombie mosquitos to fly ‘moderately’ around Hibiki, please.”

Nate nodded and spoke by opening his mouth.

He could command them in his mind, but he told me that it was easier to say it with clear words.

“Fly freely around that area!”

Right then, it came true as he spoke.

‘When Nate manipulates the dead beings, he does not need to control the detailed movements of each object.’

One of the conclusions we had made about his future skills was that even the zombified individual had some judgment or fuzzy logic.

How it performed to commands once they were declared depended on the subject.

More precisely, it meant that something in the subject functioned instead of a damaged brain cell, rather than some of its cognition remaining.

Buzz! Buzz!

Mosquitoes began to fly around Hibiki in their own manner to replicate the movements before their death.

Unlike the living mosquitoes, which flew a little and had to rest again, Nate’s Mana was burned and used as an energy source. They could fly around without catching a break.

‘One needs a different skill to calculate each flight path of the twenty subjects in one’s head. Nate doesn’t have that ability.’

However, this was possible for Hibiki.

“Hibiki?”

She nodded and closed her eyes as if she was concentrating.

As for her training in [Multiple Cognition], I had no choice but to repeat what I heard from Hibiki herself in the future.

‘Think of it as dividing the room in your head into different sections. And fill each room with completely different ideas all at the same time, without interruption. But the flow of each room is not completely cut off from each other. Each room is complimentary. You’re the only source of the will to control that diversity of thought.’

It was an awkward experience to repeat what I myself didn’t fully understand.

However, having already encountered [Multiple Cognition]’s unique skill, Hibiki quickly seemed to understand what it meant.

As a result···

Woong!

Hibiki activated a skill.

[Light!]

This was a basic and straightforward skill for magic. However, the movement of the Mana was unusual.

‘Twelve simultaneously?’

Twelve luminous objects that were smaller than a crystal appeared around her simultaneously.

It wasn’t exactly like the original that the skill card guided. She injected her will and modified it. The luminous object was much smaller than the standard light magic. This was the magic that she had drawn simply by controlling her own Mana.

And those twelve were activated at once.

It was of the same process, but she formed 12 Mana patterns simultaneously.

‘But it is closer to having the same thoughts twelve times. It’s like dividing the calculator into 12 and giving the same for it to perform.’

From now on was the important part.

Weing!

Boong!

According to my command, Hibiki leaked out her Mana. Then, each of the 12 luminous objects drew a light trajectory, following each of the zombie mosquitos. It didn’t attach itself too near or too far, marking a fixed distance between.

To make a magical sphere did not equal a nerve interaction like a simple finger movement.

Each trajectory properly passed through the brain, establishing proper judgment.

Therefore, the scene in front of my eyes was proof that Hibiki’s cognitions, divided into twelve, were each performing a different process.

“Alright, that’s enough.”

The results of the two were satisfactory.

The light disappeared, and the mosquitos lost their movements, falling into the bushes at my signal.

“If it’s about this much, the basic training is over. Then….”

Nate stole my words as if he knew what I was going to say. “Then, finally?!”

“Yes.”

Both of them had completed their Hunter registration ever since they came to Korea. I ordered Nate to come out with a moderate E-Rank, and Hibiki, who was newly Awakened, to naturally come out with an E-Rank without manipulating it.

It had only been a month since then.

Nate developed a lot in that short time, but Hibiki also grew faster than Nate in terms of Mana’s activation and control.

‘It’s going to be a lot different from the results of then.’

“Shall we go into the dungeon soon? But before that, let’s get a promotion test first.”

And this time…

“With me.”

I was going to apply for my promotion test, as well.

*

“Oh, Team Leader!”

Secretary Kim was again on holiday, which was why he did not go to the guild.

He kept it as a secret from the Celestial Dragon Guild that he would meet me.

“Oh, thank God. You’re alright!”

“I’ve been well.”

His smile was full of color. There were eyes that could not be expressed in words. However, there was an underlying emotion as well.

“How are things going on?”

I had already heard the broad story, but I couldn’t help asking again.

And then, the Celestial Dragon’s current situation, which came out through Secretary Kim’s mouth, was much more severe than what was known outside.