ICWDS 11

Chapter 11

Cursed Relics)

There were three artifacts inside the box.

One was a ring set with obsidian.

One was an iron bracelet.

And lastly, a gold necklace.

My hand instinctively reached for the gold necklace before I jerked it back with a sharp gasp!

Damn it. The hip-hop warrior inside me was acting up again.

“What kind of relics are these?”

“The first one is the Ring of the Primordial Lightning,” [Park Dokyung] explained. “It allows electricity to flow wherever it touches. You can use it about three times a day.”

“It doesn’t shoot lightning, just makes it flow?”

“It might not look like much, but it’s surprisingly practical. It literally induces a current into anything with ‘conductivity’ for a set period.”

Oh? In that case?

[Whoa, it shouldn’t be my turn to be drawn yet. Suddenly—grrrrrrr!]

When I touched the ring to the edge of the Black Crow’s blade, it reacted immediately. Right away, a visible, crackling current began to course across the black surface of the sword.

“Oh……”

“This is pretty useful in close-quarters combat against people.”

It meant that anyone touched by this blade would be instantly electrocuted.

“Black Crow, are you okay?”

[Grrrrrrr! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!!]

“My bad.”

Who would have thought a sword could suffer from a little electricity?

We listened to the explanations for the remaining relics in turn.

• Hardens the bones while worn.

  Seems decently good. Harder bones mean better shock resistance.

• “Even high-ranking agents in the Bureau use something similar,” [Dokyung] said. “It’s a relic with the power to resist illusions and mental interference.”

Well, for Bureau agents who lived in close proximity to supernatural aberrations, such a relic was practically mandatory.

“I suppose I should go with this one, then.”

“Good choice. Your mental resistance seems a bit excessively low.”

Park Dokyung added that since I hadn’t succumbed to corruption yet, it shouldn’t be a huge problem, but having mental defense gear was certainly for the best.

“Then, shall we test it with a suitable aberration for practice?”

“A test?”

“That anti-demon gold necklace is a powerful relic that increases mental barriers tenfold. Ordinary aberrations won’t even be able to interfere with you, but we still need to inspect it.”

Oh, providing practical inspection services? Bureau civil servants really knew how to handle things thoroughly.

As expected, working for the government wasn’t just—

“—My! Precious!!“

Turns out, 1 multiplied by 10 is still just 10.

In the end, I received the Steel Bone Bracelet.

I couldn’t really feel my bones hardening from the inside, but I supposed the effect was there.

Afterward, I went to meet Kang Chunghwa.

She was waiting for me in the Bureau’s training room.

The training facility, where Bureau agents and police officers received tactical instruction, had a vibe reminiscent of a massive Taekwondo dojo. Mats covered the floor, and agents and officers in uniforms were busy with their respective drills.

“You’re here.”

“Hello. How are your ribs?”

Agent Kang Chunghwa rubbed the intercostal area beneath her training uniform and winced slightly.

“Still hurts a bit.”

“Wait, why are you pressing on it?”

“You asked. Thought I’d check while we were at it.”

Though she had medical supervision, it wasn’t like she’d heal instantly after I shoved a blade right through her torso.

She said she graduated from the Police Academy, yet she had this reckless streak to her… Ah, was that just normal for cops? Everyone was like that in cop movies, after all.

[Not bad. That woman’s blood and karma.]

The Black Crow seemed quite fond of the blood of both Park Dokyung and Kang Chunghwa.

Was it the blood of a warrior? For a Cursed Sword, it certainly had refined tastes.

“Oh, right, Agent Kang. Can I call you ‘Noona’?”

“……Out of nowhere?”

“We’ll be seeing each other often, and Team Leader Park… well, Park Dokyung told me to call him ‘hyung’ and ‘noona’ respectively. It feels more comfortable for me, too.”

“Then… go ahead. Bro… ther.”

“Yup. Noona.”

Kang Chunghwa wore an awkward expression. I quickly steered the conversation toward the training methods for Yokig (Cursed Energy/Essence).

“Yokig operates differently from other artifacts; you have to run it like you’re moving your actual body.”

“Even if you say it’s like a real body… I can’t really do it consciously.”

When I first used the ‘Heart’, it was under extreme circumstances, closer to a reckless rampage. Using it so slow that bullets looked sluggish was practically on par with the ‘Yeouido 6-Second Disaster’—a total overload.

In reality, I had to dial it way back and control it much more slowly.

“It’ll feel awkward at first. Even though it’s assimilated with your body, strictly speaking, it’s a foreign object.”

“The Black Crow told me to concentrate and circulate my mana to activate it, though.”

“Yeah. If you’re just turning it on, that’s fine. But the important part is controlling the output.”

If the output was excessively high like the first time, stamina retention dropped, and my mana would deplete rapidly.

More importantly, the feedback would be too severe.

“Feedback?”

“Gaseong, you said your heart took a shock, right? For me, the blood in my arm stopped flowing.”

Kang Chunghwa swung her right arm around as part of her warmup.

“When blood stops flowing to your arm, it feels numb at first, then starts to sting. The sensation from your fingertips to your elbow dulls, and you feel heat and cold at the same time.”

Eventually, pain that felt like your arm was being severed would set in, she explained.

“Eep, sounds painful.”

“Might still be better than getting a shock to your heart.”

A shock to the heart was painful beyond imagination. It was an experience I never wanted to repeat.

“However, getting feedback to that degree happens because you’re pumping in too much mana.”

“Pumping in too much?”

“Yeah. You said you circulated mana around your heart, right?”

Following the Black Crow’s instructions, I had simply poured mana in blindly. Was that wrong?

“Yokig is like a high-output engine in its own right, so it needs high-octane fuel.”

“High-octane?”

What was that?

“……Expensive fuel?”

“Ah.”

Expensive meant good.

In short, the purity of the mana needed to be high.

Instead of blindly dumping mana in, it was about feeding it high-purity mana.

“I get what you mean, but how do I put in high-purity mana?”

“Just get stronger. The higher-level an Awakened is, the higher their mana purity becomes.”

“Won’t just increasing my mana capacity work?”

“Quantity and quality are two different things.”

I had wanted to take the easy route, but it wasn’t going to be that simple.

“What level are you and the Team Leader?”

“Level 5. The Team Leader is Level 6.”

“Is that high?”

To my innocent question, Kang Chunghwa’s reply came a beat late.

“It’s ambiguous.”

“Ambiguous?”

“You’re in the upper tier of all hunters, but every time you go up a level, the dimension of your strength changes completely.”

“Is that like saying an annual salary of 100 million won puts you in the top 10%, but you still get looked down on?”

“That’s not entirely wrong.”

I heard on the internet that 90% of people make over 100 million won a year, anyway. Levels 5 and 6 must be around that kind of position.

“By the way, what’s the criterion for leveling? I heard Level 1 is just mana awakening.”

“The condition for a high-level hunter is how well they can draw out the abilities of their relic. The relic is the hunter’s power.”

“A relic’s ability? Do skills or things like that pop up?”

“Skills?”

“Like a status window or shouting ‘Arise’?”

“None of that.”

“Aww.”

Even though it was connected to another world, with awakened mana and fantasy-like items called relics, there were apparently no magic spells, skills, or status windows. I had half-thought the world government was hiding them.

“So, how do you draw out a relic’s ability?”

“Just use it a lot. For instance…”

Kang Chunghwa’s right arm suddenly began to transform.

With tactical movements like clack! clack! straight out of a Hollywood robot movie, her arm morphed into a Gatling gun. Then into a long sniper rifle mode, and after that, into a charged particle cannon mode.

“So damn cool……”

“You think it’s cool?”

“Obviously. Do you want to trade this for that?”

I slid the Black Crow forward, and the Black Crow reacted instantly, bursting with indignation!

[Listen to this punk?! You dare compare me to junk like that!]

“You don’t have eyes. How do you even know?”

[The aura! The aura is different!]

What is a loser who can’t even block a pistol whining about?

“You’re probably the only person in the world, Gaseong, who would casually offer to hand over an aberration like that.”

“Is Noona not allowed to?”

“Forget trading it, I can’t even take this arm off.”

Kang Chunghwa grabbed her Gatling-gun arm, hesitating for a long moment as if trying to do something.

“Even though my Karma Index dropped, it still won’t come off.”

“Struggling with a parasitic aberration is the same for everyone, huh.”

I had suffered plenty because I couldn’t get rid of this bastard either.

“Anyway, relics require a process of unlocking their functions through use. It’s like ‘taming’ them.”

However, most relics had a limit to their capacity, meaning their ceiling was low. Aberrations, on the other hand, were high-risk, high-return.

“For now, your … you said it uses bloodlust, right? Can you use that freely?”

“Yeah, but it stops working if the accumulated blood runs out. I recharged some recently though.”

“Recharged?”

“By taking a bit of blood from Park-hyung and Noona?”

“Ah~ No wonder I felt a bit anemic.”

The Black Crow had tried to drink too much after tasting human blood, so I stopped it. I had performed ‘treatment,’ not ‘vampirism,’ for crying out loud.

“First, let’s learn how to use . Since you can’t increase your mana purity right away, you should practice the sensation of using only a tiny amount.”

[Learn swordsmanship too! You aren’t planning to neglect me for whatever second-rate thing came along next, are you?!]

Swordsmanship—what good would that do against a pistol anyway?

You… couldn’t even stop a pistol, you know.

[Gaaah…!]

The Quarantine Section Chief had muttered that the Black Crow might be a higher-tier aberration than I thought, but… wouldn’t a speed multiplier be way better?

I spent a while staying at the Bureau, receiving training and care.

I commuted back and forth, but Park Dokyung or Kang Chunghwa escorted me every time, telling me to just call the cops if they weren’t around.

They gave me the local police box number, and the officers actually showed up.

“Are you… perhaps the son of some high-ranking VIP?”

“Huh? No. Why do you ask?”

“Well, the only time I’ve ever been ordered to personally escort a civilian was during the CSAT for students.”

“It’s my first time too.”

After seeing me wander in and out of the Bureau, the police officer must have figured I was some kind of big-shot hunter and let it go.

Should I just take a taxi from now on?

“Gaseong-ssi. Take this.”

When I arrived, Park Dokyung handed me a stack of papers.

“What is this?”

“A contract regarding the outsourced work between the Bureau and you.”

Nominally speaking, it seemed I was an outsourced contractor hired by the Bureau.

“Trash can #7… No, it’s a warehouse outsourcing contract.”

“Strictly speaking, it’s a special hazardous material storage and management service agreement. With this, Yoon Gaseong-ssi has officially signed a contract with a government agency.”

“Ooh……”

The storage fees were detailed as well.

Hazardous Class 5 paid 8 million won annually. As the grades went up, it scaled geometrically, reaching into the billions for Special Class.

“That’s an enormous sum. Is it okay for me to siphon off government money like this?”

“Actually, this is a massive bargain for us. The annual storage fee for Special Class aberrations runs over ten billion.”

“Is it okay to just say that out loud?”

“That’s why it’s a one-year contract. Think of this year as a test run. Once the data is verified, they’ll probably 편성 (organize) a special budget just for you.”

Park Dokyung pulled out another document.

“And this is another contract.”

“This is?”

The title on the contract read: ‘Special Treatment and Recovery Management Specialist’.

Government terminology was always so hard to understand.

“I’m not a doctor, though?”

“Hehehe, you treat things doctors can’t, don’t you?”

“Ah……”

It seemed they slapped the label “Special Treatment” on my ability to absorb Karma.

“Did the higher-ups accept it favorably? The reply came back fast.”

“Me and Agent Kang volunteering for ‘treatment’ played a big part. Our Karma Indexes plummeted from the 20,000s down below 100.”

For Awakened individuals, recovering their Karma Index was a matter of life and death.

Even if your Karma Index rose, resting could recover it, and that recovery process even increased your mana capacity, but the risk of corruption was huge.

Above all, the more active you were in Dark Zones, and the more you used aberrations, the more your Karma Index skyrocketed and the slower your recovery became.

In that sense, my existence—which could artificially lower the Karma Index—was extraordinarily precious.

“Gaseong-ssi gets to absorb Karma, and the government gets to care for agents who might snap at any moment. It’s a great contract, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, and it comes with extra pay?”

“You do the work, you get paid. I know you’re not greedy, but always take your fair pay.”

That wasn’t wrong. Honestly, no matter how much money I had, the most I’d ever do was order two Hamdaeria Hanwoo Bulgogi Large Sets at once.

“My food expenses have gone up a bit since I ate that Yokig, though. Having more money is definitely good.”

It would also increase the donations I could send to the orphanage.

Come to think of it, the director had called me again the other day, asking why I was sending more money when I’d already donated my entire fortune once, telling me we had plenty of cash so I shouldn’t worry.

She said she was in Italy, so I told her to hang up because long-distance communication fees were expensive.

“Well then, our special therapist? Your first job is coming up.”

“A job?”

“116 members of the Capital Defense Command Special Reconnaissance Unit. They need a ‘knife-stab’ from you too.”

A knife-stab.

It’s a ‘treatment’, though?

Dark Zone operations inherently raised the Karma Index.

Because of that, they were targeted across two or three phases to minimize the time spent inside the Dark Zone.

“Usually, the reconnaissance unit goes in first. Better than just shoving anyone in.”

They were armed with high firepower, well-trained, and equipped with solid gear.

Certainly much better than sending ordinary hunters in.

“Does the reconnaissance team pass on the intelligence they gather for the subsequent assault?”

“Not necessarily.”

Kang Chunghwa said there was another step between reconnaissance and assault.

“If they determine there’s anything useful around the gate, they give you time to forage and harvest. You’ve done hunter missions before, so you know, right?”

“Ah~”

Flora identification and gathering.

In the Dark World—a completely different alternate dimension—all sorts of items undiscoverable on Earth were abundant.

Relics were the prime example, but certain plants could also be cultivated on Earth, and mineral resources were an absolute jackpot whenever discovered.

“If a mithril mine is discovered, they might even deliberately leave the gate open. The mine is more valuable than the cost of stopping monsters or pollution.”

“Mithril actually exists? Isn’t that just from fantasy novels?”

Wouldn’t there be copyright issues? I’d heard it was a famous fantasy novel metal.

“They said they named it after borrowing the term. I heard the first person to discover it was from the Tolkienist Foundation.”

Ah, well, if it was them, I could accept that.

Anyway, the mission of the advance reconnaissance unit was critically important—both to identify hostile groups and set entry restrictions for the gate, and to spot valuable resources.

“Where we’re heading now is the Capital Defense Command Special Reconnaissance Battalion, which scouts gates appearing in Seoul. These guys have had severe contamination issues for a long time.”

“Well, when your job is reconnaissance missions all the time, contamination is inevitable.”

My role was to ‘specially treat’ them.

The reconnaissance troops lowered their Karma Index, and I got to absorb it for free—a win-win no matter how I looked at it.

“Treat the kids? I refuse.”

My path as the nation’s first special therapist was blocked right from the start.