PFFFT!

Watching Minjun’s rank-assessment simulation live, Team Leader Jeong Woohyun was so startled by his unexpected move that he sprayed the coffee he was drinking.

“Are you all right, Team Leader?”

Miru, who was beside him, quickly pulled out some tissues and handed them to Jeong.

“Uh, yeah. I’m fine, Miru.”

Wiping up the coffee he had spat out, Jeong stared blankly at the monitor. 'How did he even come up with that?'

Minjun’s approach was hardly the standard way to clear the encounter, but it wasn’t bad. Trying it without any information about the monsters showed remarkable quick thinking.

But that wasn’t the main point. Minjun had tested at A-rank, yet he had no experience clearing an A-rank or higher gate as an officially ranked A-rank hunter. His career as a hunter was short, too, so Jeong had assumed he would have some rough edges. And yet, despite winds so strong he could barely keep his balance, Minjun was knocking aside the mana the monsters fired at him with his sword and turning it against them.

'He should barely be able to move right now.' And there was more. Wind was inevitably a major factor in a fight against flying monsters. Yet Minjun was swinging his sword as though raking the air with enormous claws, gradually changing the direction of the fierce wind. It made no sense, but it was happening before Jeong’s eyes.

“Miru, check the simulation system.”

“Yes, sir!”

As Miru went to check the simulator, Jeong muttered, “Even if he is A-rank... can a swordsman-type hunter normally use a technique like that?”

It wasn’t as though Minjun had a unique skill that controlled the wind. Jeong had never heard of an A-rank swordsman fighting this way. As far as he could tell, a hunter would need to be at least S-rank to employ tactics like those. Unless... 'Could a system error be making it malfunction?' It wasn’t entirely implausible. Perhaps a fault had caused the system to process the data incorrectly and produce this unintended result.

“No. Miru, I’d better check it myself.” If the error was that serious, he should inspect it personally rather than leave it to an intern. Jeong hurried to his feet, headed straight for the simulator’s main unit, and sent Miru back to her station.

“If anything happens while I’m gone, tell me immediately. Got it?”

“Understood!”

Miru sat down again and watched Minjun’s performance while checking the data being recorded in real time. Her eyes shone with a strangely intense light as she watched him, almost as if she knew the truth.

* * *

'Why did that work?' Minjun had thought it was worth a try, but he hadn’t expected to succeed on his first attempt.

If he had to come up with a theory... Dragons were a species that could manipulate mana freely. Minjun had grown enough to reach, perhaps, the tip of a dragon’s toe. Maybe he could now use a fraction of their abilities, however weakly. He could even use Dragon Fear now, though its power was limited. Discovering an unexpected new ability wasn’t so strange.

But the clumps of mana Minjun had knocked away flew nowhere near his intended targets. Perhaps that was only natural. He had never done this before, and fierce winds kept shifting direction from moment to moment. Still, simply deflecting the mana his enemies had released was significant. Even if it was difficult to use now, he could hone this technique until it proved useful in a real fight.

Despite missing by a wide margin, Minjun kept deflecting the clumps of mana raining down on him, trying to get a feel for it. His first few attempts went nowhere near the Gales. But as he gradually found the knack, some of the clumps he deflected began heading toward them. Just as it seemed his efforts might finally pay off—

SKREEEE!

The Gales casually changed course, dodging every clump of mana Minjun sent their way. They began flying faster and faster, throwing off his concentration.

'Are A-rank gates normally this hard?' Minjun had never entered one, so he couldn’t help wondering. Contrary to what he thought, even A-rank gates were not usually this tricky. The administrators had deliberately raised the difficulty to assess his abilities from multiple angles.

Unaware of that, Minjun stared down the flock of Gales while enduring winds nearly as strong as a typhoon. To make matters worse, the rain intensified until the whole world looked hazy. If he showed the slightest opening, that swarm of monsters would surely cut through the wind and come straight for him. Everything was going against him.

He needed something to change the situation. Wondering if he should use an artifact again, he reached toward his pocket dimension, only to find— 'Damn.' The pocket dimension that had opened without trouble moments ago was suddenly sealed off.

Jeong, who had been watching Minjun fight, had changed the settings mid-test to prevent him from opening it and create a more extreme situation. With “quick thinking” as the theme of the first simulation, he apparently intended to introduce as many unexpected complications as possible.

But did Jeong know? Minjun had already experienced a sealed pocket dimension twice, something most hunters would be unlikely to encounter even once. So he remained calm in a situation that would have badly shaken other hunters.

And there was something else. Judging by Minjun’s past experiences, when he found himself in an extreme situation like this... 'I have a feeling I might be able to use dragon speech.' He still couldn’t use it at will, as he could Dragon Fear, but there were moments when he could manage it. One was when he faced a desperate, life-threatening crisis. He didn’t know if it was coincidence or something else.

When the villains had nearly killed him inside a gate, when he had nearly been trapped forever in the Garden of the Dragon Sword, and when Sia’s rampage had nearly cost him his life, dragon speech had miraculously seen him through.

'So this time, too.' It would be possible. He would recreate that miracle once more.

But there was one difference. Unlike those times, he wouldn’t die if dragon speech failed now. Even if he failed to defeat the monsters and suffered a fatal wound, this was only a simulation; the real Minjun would come to no significant harm. To use dragon speech at this moment, he would have to convince himself completely that he was in mortal danger.

'And on top of that...' An idea flashed through his mind. He had never really tried it before, but what if he used Dragon Fear first, as a kind of warm-up for dragon speech? Athletes warmed up before a match. What if he treated Dragon Fear as a preparatory exercise?

As soon as the thought occurred to him, Minjun unleashed Dragon Fear. It overwhelmed lesser creatures, filling them with the terror that death was near. That powerful energy began spreading across the rocky mountain, cutting through the fierce wind.

* * *

Meanwhile, Jeong returned after confirming that the rank-assessment simulation system had no errors and sat down in front of the screen again.

“Miru, Hunter Minjun doesn’t seem like the type to fight by conventional methods, does he?”

“Huh? I’m... not really sure.”

As a non-hunter, she could hardly be expected to know. Jeong, however, had watched countless hunters run simulations and had seen a wide range of combat patterns. Something about Minjun felt subtly different. Jeong had seen recordings of several A-rank swordsman-type hunters in the simulation, but not one of them had fought like Minjun.

What was more, even an A-rank hunter should have started to lose ground by now, yet Minjun was holding out remarkably well. And when access to his pocket dimension was cut off without warning, he showed no sign of panic, as if he were a machine. 'What on earth is he?' More focused than ever, Jeong stared at the monitor showing Minjun so hard he might have burned a hole through it.

Then, a moment later—

BEEP. BEEP.

“Team Leader!”

An unfamiliar alert sounded from the machine. Jeong had never heard it during any of the simulations. The alert meant—

“It says... an unidentified power has been detected?”

“What?”

That couldn’t be right. The simulator was the pinnacle of data-analysis technology, developed by leading experts around the world who had spent years gathering, analyzing, and integrating vast amounts of data from hunters. It held data on individual hunter stats, rare skills, and even all kinds of artifacts. The chances of encountering “unidentified data” anywhere in the world were close to zero. In theory, it should have recognized even the rarest skill a hunter could use. It should have. So why was it detecting an unidentified power? Jeong grabbed at his hair without realizing it.

In a way, it was only natural. Of all the hunters on Earth, who besides Minjun could wield dragon power?

Miru asked Jeong, who was staring anxiously at the monitor, “Team Leader, what should we do?”

“Give me a moment, Miru. I need to think.”

He couldn’t decide this immediately. 'Should I stop the test now?' Once an unidentified power had been detected, the reliability of the results from that point onward could be called into question. There was no reason to continue the test.

But... 'No.' Jeong changed his mind. Seen another way, this was a good opportunity. They needed to collect data on what happened when an unidentified skill activated, didn’t they?

“Let’s watch for now.” For that reason, he decided to let the simulation continue.

But it wasn’t long before— “What? What is it this time?” The unfamiliar alert sounded loudly again, and at the same time, static began crackling across the monitor. As the screen flickered, Minjun was using dragon speech inside the simulator. Along with Dragon Fear.

* * *

A little earlier, Minjun had begun releasing Dragon Fear toward the flock of Gales. He managed to invoke it, but his mastery was still too limited for it to have any meaningful effect on them. He hadn’t expected Dragon Fear alone to turn the tide.

While continuing to release Dragon Fear, Minjun attempted dragon speech.

「Fall.」

But it had no effect.

Meanwhile, the flock of Gales flew low, waiting for him to show a clear opening. If his dragon speech kept failing, it was only a matter of time before they got him. Keeping his eyes on the Gales as they fixed their fierce gazes on him, Minjun tried again and again. 'Why isn’t it working?'

After repeated failures, he hastily scattered aura from his sword to buy time. 'Come on. Just once. Let it work once.' He gritted his teeth and tried dragon speech several more times. And finally—

「Fall!」

He forced out that final command with every ounce of strength in his body. The moment he spoke, he instinctively knew it had worked. And at that same moment, the Gales that had been so aggressive seconds before lost their balance in midair and began to fall.

They were crashing, not landing. The impact would probably leave them unable to fight. Now that his dragon speech had taken effect, the tide had turned completely. 'This will finish it.'

Minjun adjusted his grip on his sword, ready to finish off the fallen monsters. At that instant, the world twisted as the boundary between reality and illusion broke apart, and strange patterns began to flash.