Free Web NovelHad Ryu Taeyoung said he was twenty-seven? If I went incident by incident, I could probably nail down the exact date. I was about to open my mouth when a pain like someone was stirring my guts with a rod tore through me.
Warning.
Do not damage the pro■■ility.
'Fuck... this hurts like hell.'
Was this what it felt like to get hit in the stomach with a sledgehammer? The pain was so sharp I couldn’t even make a sound. I hadn’t expected they’d literally screw me over physically. I clenched my teeth and endured as Ryu Taeyoung asked again.
“What do you mean by that?”
“......”
No way I was saying anything else. I hadn’t even thought that counted as a major probability violation, but the penalty was brutal. Honestly—if someone you just met tells you you’re going to die soon, who the hell takes that as a prophecy and not a threat?
The status window still hadn’t gone away. Since I didn’t retract my words, it started flickering and multiplying, filling my vision like a glitch.
Warning.
Do not damage the pro■■ility.
Do not damage the pro■■ility.
Do not damage the pro■■ility.
Do not damage the pro■■ility.
Do not damage the pro■■ility.
Do not damage the pro■■ility.
Do not damage the pro■■ility.
Do not damage the pro■■ility.
Do not damage the pro■■ility.
Do not damage the pro■■ility.
'Is this thing going to spawn something physical at some point? I swear I want to punch it.'
Grinding my teeth, I forced the words out.
“...I’m joking.”
“......”
Only after I managed to say it was a joke did the pain fade. I wiped my forehead—cold sweat was soaking it.
Now I had the presence of mind to look beside me. As expected, Ryu Taeyoung was looking at me like I was insane. Which, fair enough—if someone joked about you dying, you’d think they were nuts too. Still, he’d never been warm toward me, so I didn’t bother explaining further.
“Not a fan of jokes?”
“I don’t joke about human lives.”
“Better as a joke. If it were serious, it’d be a lot more grim.”
I muttered it without any particular intent, but the faint grind of teeth and the tightening in his jawline said enough.
Yeah, no surprise—Ryu Taeyoung wasn’t the type to make light of life and death. Not that it mattered if he liked me or not. In the original, I barely interacted with him anyway.
If he ever found out that wasn’t malice but concern for his own survival, I wonder how his expression would change.
Either way, the bigger problem was that my condition could be flipped by a single sentence if the system decided it was a “penalty.”
'I’ll need to run a few experiments.'
I was running through ideas when the car stopped.
“...Mr. Seo Jehyun. Get out.”
We’d arrived at the Awakened Registration Center, where they checked whether someone had awakened and measured their awakening values.
Following him in from the parking lot, I saw the place was packed all the way to the entrance.
“We are getting tested today, right?”
I stuffed my hands in my pockets and gave him a sidelong look. He told me to wait a moment, then disappeared.
I could guess where.
If a Special Response officer decided a hunter’s rank might be high, they could get priority testing for unregistered or misranked hunters.
Simple reason: if a strong hunter under-registered or skipped registration entirely, and then decided to run around doing crazy shit, it could mean disaster. And unfortunately, the world wasn’t full of people as virtuous as me.
'He’s barking up the wrong tree.'
Even if I was going to destroy the world later, right now I’d still test as F-rank. Sure, I had Mimic and a few high-rank skills, but with my current body, I could barely pull off a “copy” like earlier.
If that tentacle had been still attached to the Kraken instead of severed, I’d be screwed.
According to Kwon Taehan’s narration, you were supposed to feel mana moving through your body. But when I’d used the skill earlier, the situation had been too frantic—I’d only felt the sense of “copying” Ryu Taeyoung, nothing more.
'Guess I’ll need some training.'
With the world changing this fast, my body had to be up to the task if I wanted to survive. Like it or not, as long as I had a status window and penalties, I was going to get tangled up with Kwon Taehan.
From F to at least B? I had no idea how much grinding that would take. Even if I trusted my strength in a fight, brute force alone couldn’t overpower hunters slinging skills around.
First, I’d have to beat information out of my status window.
But wrestling with that thing here would just make me look like a lunatic. I needed a private space.
With my house gone, well... fuck, maybe I’d just get a hotel.
I was frowning, scrolling my phone to book one, when one of the status windows I’d been idly skimming caught my eye.
Name: Do Yehyun
Age: 20
Rank: D
Titles: –
Main Skills: Blessing of the Moonlight (S), Surging Wave (B), Poison-Cures-Poison (A)
Growth Limit: A
What the hell.
'That shows up?'
I couldn’t help a laugh. Do Yehyun flinched, scanning around for the source, and our eyes met. Sharp kid—he knew the laugh was about him.
D-rank might look unimpressive on paper, but it wasn’t exactly common. Most people were unawakened; among hunters, the majority were F, some E, and then a few D’s lording it over them.
Which meant someone at D-rank had no reason to be skulking and on edge like that. Fearful personality? Or more likely—since we were at the Registration Center—he didn’t know his own numbers yet.
When I looked at him, he reflexively stepped back half a pace, eyes wary.
'I’m F-rank, though.'
A guy two full tiers above me, acting like I’m the threat.
And his skill set? Jackpot.
Blessing of the Moonlight (S), Surging Wave (B). Don’t be fooled by the vague, element-sounding names—moonlight as “light” or wave as “water” wasn’t the point.
Blessing of the Moonlight was a high-intensity single-target heal. Surging Wave was an AoE heal. Neither were offensive—they were the opposite.
There were plenty of healers, but most didn’t fight—they worked in wards, patching up injured hunters. That was after the fact. What actually made a difference in dungeons was a healer who could enter a Gate and keep hunters alive in real time.
But in dangerous dungeons, keeping a healer safe was almost impossible. Most guilds relied on potions instead, except for the rare few that had combat-capable healers.
Do Yehyun, though—Blessing of the Moonlight even healed the caster. No babysitting required. And instead of healing hunters one by one, Surging Wave covered them all at once. Practically broken. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
Poison-Cures-Poison (A) suggested he could even double as DPS in the right setup.
One thing didn’t add up, though—his name and face.
'Never seen this guy before.'
The skills were familiar, but the person wasn’t. Unlikely for skills this rare to pop up on some nobody. And if someone looked that striking—around 180 cm, noticeably pretty face, memorable name—they’d get at least a few descriptive mentions in the novel.
Hmm... digging through my memory, I recalled someone who had those skills—minus Poison-Cures-Poison.
Im Haekyung. S-rank hunter, leader of Korea’s #1 guild, Haeseong. Primary specialty: mental-type abilities, including mind control. But he could handle himself physically too. And most importantly—he had those two skills.
'Wait.'
In the novel, Haekyung’s Blessing of the Moonlight and Surging Wave were only A-rank and C-rank—lower than Do Yehyun’s. No way two people had both rare skills by coincidence.
'Ah... shit.'
The realization clicked. I let a slow smile spread as I stared at Do Yehyun.
'That bastard had his skills stolen.'
Im Haekyung was mental-type.
Skills often appeared in related categories—fire-types, healers, mentalists. A mentalist having such strong healing skills as side abilities was already suspicious. I’d thought the author just made him “suspicious” for the sake of the plot, but maybe there was a backstory.
Some were called “Plunderers.” Not a universal trait—only certain hunters had it. Kill another hunter, and you could take some of their skills. The number and quality depended on your own rank. Haekyung must have killed Do Yehyun and taken both, forced to accept the downgrade in rank as the cost.
If true, he was a psycho.
In the novel, Haekyung was thirty-three when introduced. Given he appeared mid-story, he’d have been at least twelve years older than Do Yehyun. Killing a kid for his skills?
Talk about rotten luck. I kept my pleasant smile fixed on Do Yehyun. He bit his lip and looked away. Definitely timid—probably with a story behind it.
A healer... If I were a Plunderer, this would be the perfect time to kill him. Before he learned to use his powers, while he was still fumbling.
“Mr. Seo Jehyun. I’ll take you in personally. Follow me.”
Ryu Taeyoung’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. I turned—he was right beside me, watching.
