Chapter 91 - Possibility

BZZZZT!

The world began to twist. The monsters’ forms warped from moment to moment, and everything turned grotesque. As the scene descended into chaos, Minjun’s eyes darted wildly.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Team Leader Jeong had said he was confident in both the system’s safety and its stability. Then what was happening now?

‘Is something seriously wrong?’ A chill ran down Minjun’s spine. Forget the test—safety came first.

He was about to signal for the test to stop, but before he could, a notification announced that the simulation had ended and the capsule door opened.

“Phew.” Minjun let out a ragged breath as soon as the capsule opened, then quickly took stock of his surroundings.

Looking down, he saw that his clothes were soaked with sweat. When he raised his head, he found Team Leader Jeong looking flustered—and intern Kim Miru looking downright horrified.

“Are you all right, Hunter Yoon?” Jeong hurried over the moment the capsule opened and checked on him. Seeing Minjun drenched in sweat, Miru brought him a towel.

“What on earth happened?” Minjun asked Jeong as he wiped away his cold sweat.

“The system suddenly encountered... an unexpected error.” Jeong looked grimly at the error message on the monitor.

“We’ll have to investigate the cause later, but for now, I suspect it may be connected to the skill you used at the end.”

The moment Minjun used Dragon Fear, the system had displayed a message saying it had detected an unidentified power. When he used dragon speech, the simulator had begun behaving strangely. Everything pointed to something Minjun had used as the cause.

“I don’t know what skill you used, but it seems to have caused a critical error in the program’s calculations.”

“...”

Jeong’s words left Minjun feeling awkward. Had the power he’d used thrown the entire system into disarray?

He also felt disappointed. He’d hoped the test would give him at least some clue about his power and a detailed measure of exactly how strong he was. Now those hopes had come to nothing.

He nearly sighed, but Jeong looked so troubled that Minjun felt sorry instead. The moment Jeong saw it on his face, he waved his hands hurriedly. “This isn’t your fault. It’s entirely a technical problem on our end.”

Despite Jeong’s reassurance, Minjun’s expression didn’t brighten much. “So what happens now?”

Jeong, who had been hanging his head, briefly rubbed his face before answering. “I’m afraid we can’t run any more tests today. There are safety concerns, and we need to investigate exactly what caused the error... We have no choice.”

The test had exposed a new problem, so the researchers had little choice but to stop the simulation. “I... see.” Minjun nodded, looking uneasy.

“I’m sorry about this.”

“Please don’t be.”

Minjun hadn’t done anything wrong, but he couldn’t help feeling sorry, and it showed on his face.

“We’ll still pay your travel expenses and compensation as planned. And I’m not sure how useful it’ll be, but... I’ll print out the data recorded before the test was stopped.”

“Yes, please do.”

What he’d really wanted was to learn how his dragon power worked in combat, and he doubted the data would tell him that. Still, leaving empty-handed didn’t seem appealing, so he agreed to take the results Jeong offered.

He held out some hope that he might find something useful, but the results were just as he’d expected. With the test cut short, there was little to gain. The report told him only things he already knew: he was slightly stronger than an ordinary A-rank hunter, his abilities were undervalued relative to his stats, he differed from other hunters in various ways, and he might benefit from specializing in certain areas.

After reading the report, Minjun began getting ready to leave, unable to hide his disappointment. “Well, I should get going.”

“Of course. But before you go, may I ask you one thing?” Jeong pulled a small notebook from inside his jacket. “That skill you used at the end—could you tell me what it was?”

Knowing what Minjun had used to affect the simulator would make it easier to find the cause of the error. But Minjun couldn’t tell him what it really was. After searching for a plausible excuse, he settled on an evasive answer.

“... I’m not sure myself. I didn’t use any particular skill. I just did what I normally do.” He knew Jeong wouldn’t simply take his word for it, but this was the best he could do for now. And sure enough, Jeong seemed to sense something was off.

Still, he appeared reluctant to press Minjun. Such things did sometimes happen, and even if he kept questioning him, there was no guarantee Minjun would give him an answer. “... I see. Then it can’t be helped.”

If Minjun was unwilling to reveal the skill and was keeping it carefully hidden, there had to be a reason. Neither of them had solved every mystery, but they both decided it was best to leave things there for the day.

“Have a safe trip home.” Minjun left with a rueful expression, while Jeong turned back to data riddled with errors, looking equally rueful.

There was one exception. Intern Kim Miru, who had watched it all unfold, wore a subtly different expression.

* * *

Kim Miru. She might have looked like any other young professional in her mid-twenties, but she was actually a dragon from another dimension.

Curious about the fusion of magic and science the humans were creating, she had slipped naturally into their society by playing the part of an ordinary newcomer to the workforce. She was enjoying her game without incident when, one day, she encountered Minjun while working as an intern.

‘So that’s the human who wants to enter the Pact of Eternity with a dragon.’ She recognized Minjun the moment he entered the testing room. He was, after all, famous among dragons.

Once the simulation began in earnest, she read through his personal details and the notes on his unusual traits while watching his performance closely. ‘Not bad.’

He was nowhere near as strong as she was, but she couldn’t deny that he was strong for a human. Still, this much would never be enough to fulfill his dream of changing species to win his love. He would have to master dragon speech, at the very least, before he could even think about changing species.

Despite that, she was one of the few dragons who supported Sia’s choice. A love that transcended life, dimensions, and species, yet had no blessing from her own kind—how could anyone fail to find it poignant and romantic?

Because she was rooting for Sia and Minjun, she had secretly hoped he would show her something beyond her expectations. And her wish came true: an alert sounded to announce that an unidentified skill had been detected.

For the researchers, it might have been disastrous news. Not for her. The combat simulation made it hard to be certain, but judging from everything she’d seen, the mysterious skill Minjun had used had to be Dragon Fear.

‘A human used Dragon Fear?’ It had been weaker than the Dragon Fear of a tiny hatchling barely out of the egg, but the fact that he’d used it at all mattered. In the dimension she came from, she could count on one hand the humans in the entire continent’s history who had used Dragon Fear.

And there was more. Not long after using Dragon Fear, Minjun had gone on to succeed at dragon speech right before her eyes. It had taken him several failed attempts, and by her standards his dragon speech was crude, but it was enough to show her his potential.

That wasn’t all. ‘There’s something a little... different about it from ordinary dragon speech, isn’t there?’ The simulator hadn’t recorded any data on dragon speech, so she couldn’t say for certain. But as a dragon, she could instinctively sense that something was off. The dragon speech Minjun used was subtly different from a dragon’s, though she couldn’t say exactly how.

A dragon’s instincts, however, were not to be dismissed. Minjun had already been someone dragons kept a close eye on, but after today, she at least would be watching him with even greater interest.

And then there was one more thought. ‘I guess he didn’t say he’d become a dragon without any reason to believe he could.’ In Minjun, she saw a possibility.

* * *

That night, after a critical error was discovered in the rank-assessment simulator, the researchers who had helped develop it gathered in a large conference room at the Association building. Among them was Team Leader Jeong Woohyun, who had watched Minjun’s simulation live earlier that day.

“... To give you the conclusion first, I think we need to suspend the simulator’s beta test for a while and identify the problem.” With a microphone in hand, Jeong briefed the core researchers seated around the enormous round table on what had happened.

When Woohyun finished, sighs rose around the room. “We expected something to go wrong, of course, but a flaw this serious...”

“Hadn’t we all confirmed that there were no problems with either the data or the programming?”

World-class experts had gathered in one place and checked everything thoroughly, time and again.

“We did. We did, but... that’s the nature of this work, isn’t it? We’ll have to be grateful we found it before the official rollout.” It was disappointing, but what was done was done. The researchers immediately began discussing how to fix the simulator’s error.

After several uninterrupted hours of discussion, their minds began to tire. One researcher suggested taking a mental break and changed the subject.

“By the way, wasn’t the hunter involved in this Yoon Minjun?”

“Yes. The very hunter you’re thinking of.”

Minjun’s name was known beyond Korea’s hunters. Foreign hunters knew him too, as did people like these researchers who worked in the hunter industry.

“I heard he was involved in what happened on Jeju Island recently. The encounter with an intelligent being from another dimension rather than a monster?”

“Jake, how do you know about that? It’s under embargo. There shouldn’t be a single article out yet.”

Jeong couldn’t hide his surprise when the Jeju Island gate incident came up. Surely no one knew about it apart from a few people at the Korean Hunter Association and the hunters who had been there.

The man called Jake smiled. “I happened to hear about it by chance. Don’t worry—I have no intention of spreading it around.”

“Speaking of which, I’ve been hearing a rumor lately.” Vladimir, a researcher from Russia, suddenly cut in. Woohyun’s gaze sharpened as he wondered what was coming next. “What rumor?”

“I hear the Americans are trying to get Hunter Yoon to become a citizen.” Wearing a faint smile that contrasted with the sharpness in his eyes, Vladimir turned toward Jake beside him. A Russian SS-rank hunter had recently become an American citizen, worsening the already strained relations between the two countries. At a time when every hunter could affect a nation’s defense capabilities, citizenship changes were an issue every country watched closely.

And Vladimir had brought up that sensitive subject here. Rather than raise his voice in anger, Jake answered calmly. “I haven’t heard anything of the sort. What I have heard is that the Russians are offering terms that would bring over not just Hunter Yoon, but his girlfriend as well.” He spoke loudly and distinctly, as though making sure Jeong would hear.

Not to be outdone, Vladimir made a pointed counterattack. “I also heard the American Aura Guild had its sights on Hunter Minjun recently. Perhaps that was groundwork for getting him to change citizenship?”

“Please refrain from making wild assumptions, Vladimir. I heard the Aura Guild contacted him too, but that’s quite a leap.” Sparks seemed to fly as they glared at each other.

It had started as a casual remark to give everyone a mental break. How had the mood turned so hostile? Woohyun sighed inwardly and found himself wondering what expression Minjun would wear if he could see this.