Chapter 89

Chapter 89. Let’s See Just How Much of a Monster He Is

The upcoming evaluation simulator held the potential to completely overturn the standard practices of the Hunter trade. Being granted early access to such an unprecedented piece of technology prior to its public unveiling filled me with immense anticipation.

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Aware of just how eager I had been for this appointment, Sia bombarded my phone with encouraging messages all the way to the Hunter Association.

Right as I stepped out of the cab, she capped it off with a charming photo of herself making an enthusiastic combat pose.

How could any person be so utterly endearing?

Once inside the headquarters, I cleared multiple security checkpoints and was escorted by a staff member toward the subterranean level housing the experimental testing pod.

Upon arrival, a pleasant-looking gentleman appearing to be in his late thirties came forward to greet me with genuine enthusiasm.

“A pleasure to meet you. I am Team Leader Jung Woohyun, heading this particular initiative. You must be Hunter Yoon Minjun?”

“That is correct.”

“I have high hopes for our session today.”

Following our quick exchange of pleasantries, Team Leader Jung launched straight into explaining how the apparatus operated.

“To state it plainly, consider it an immersive virtual reality experience taking place inside a simulated gate.”

The mechanism projected artificial gate zones compiled from data gathered across documented anomalies, meaning my objective was simply to resolve the dungeon precisely as I would out in the field.

My physical parameters, designated skills, and overall combat prowess would be mirrored with absolute precision, providing an operational landscape virtually indistinguishable from reality. The system would observe my engagements within these artificial encounters and produce an exhaustive performance analysis.

“Depending on how things proceed, you will run through between two and four scenarios prior to generating the definitive score. Are there any points you would like clarified?”

Having concluded his detailed briefing, Team Leader Jung watched me attentively.

“You mentioned that the pod reconstructs gate territories. Am I permitted to ask which types of monsters I will encounter?”

“Given that an essential metric is assessing your adaptability when facing unforeseen developments, we cannot disclose that beforehand.”

“Understood.”

The policy made perfect sense. It would naturally provide an authentic representation of my true combat adaptability.

From that description alone, it was evident the current setup was vastly superior to the traditional method of ranking hunters.

“What sort of timeframe should I expect for this trial?”

“Due to how the assessment functions, there is no rigid time limit… though it typically wraps up in about an hour and a half, stretching to roughly three hours at the very maximum.”

It certainly demanded far more time than standard rank appraisals.

“Shall we proceed?”

“Yes, let us begin.”

Complying with Team Leader Jung’s directions, I strapped on several unfamiliar monitoring attachments before stepping inside a colossal, pod-like apparatus shaped like a cocoon.

The interior housed a cushioned seat alongside various foreign mechanisms, accompanied by a pair of sensory goggles and specialized gloves hooked directly into the mainframe. It truly produced the sensation of settling in for an exceptionally high-end virtual game.

I slipped the gloves on, adjusted the visor over my eyes, and took my seat.

“Once the sequence initiates, our team will avoid interfering unless an absolute emergency arises. Should you ever need to halt the process immediately, raise both hands above your head and form an X with your arms.”

“Understood.”

“With that said, we are launching the trial.”

Receiving the final directive, I watched the heavy barrier of the chamber seal shut before me.

*

While the mainframe initialized and configured the trial parameters, Team Leader Jung Woohyun leafed through the dossier detailing Minjun’s personal background.

“Every time I review this profile, it strikes me as completely baffling.”

Minjun had rocketed from D-rank straight to A-rank in merely two months, and his diagnostic paperwork documented an unclassified ability that conventional diagnostic tools completely failed to categorize.

The young man was upending virtually every established baseline accepted by the Hunter industry.

A growth trajectory like his was unheard of globally, turning Minjun into a prominent subject of discussion across professional Hunter circles.

Team Leader Jung had tracked those rumors for quite some time and had personally pushed to have Minjun participate in this trial run.

He had initially sought out Minjun’s private contact details without success, nearly giving up on securing his involvement entirely.

“I really owe Assistant Manager Yejin a proper meal for this.”

Had Seo Yejin, the proctor who supervised Minjun’s rank adjustment, not reached out independently, this test might never have materialized.

Harboring just as much curiosity regarding the outcome as Minjun himself, Team Leader Jung directed his attention toward the massive monitor displaying the live broadcast.

“Miru, increase the display scale slightly.”

“Understood!”

After modifying the visual output, intern Kim Miru settled into the seat beside Team Leader Jung to observe Minjun’s performance.

The opening trial had been calibrated specifically around prompt adaptability to unexpected hazards.

Stepping into an uncharted gate always carried the risk of stumbling upon undocumented or entirely novel beasts. The current parameters had been created solely to measure how a Hunter managed under such sudden peril.

Because of that design, the creature Minjun had to confront was an artificial entity engineered exclusively for the testing apparatus.

The generated beast bore the designation Gale. Visually, it evoked a massive raptor draped in brilliant golden plumage, yet its mass and physical resilience matched that of a wyvern. Furthermore, it possessed the capacity to wield magical arts.

Starting the trial against an airborne beast was a deliberate tactical disadvantage: melee combatants like Minjun invariably struggled when forced to engage aerial adversaries.

The scenario was explicitly tailored to gauge his resilience under hostile circumstances.

“Now, let us discover what kind of terrifying monster this fellow truly is.”

*

When the simulation engaged, Minjun opened his eyes to discover an alien vista.

He stood atop the peak of a jagged precipice of dizzying, unfathomable proportions. Casting his gaze downward exposed an endless sea of jagged emerald crags plunging into an abyss so distant it triggered an immediate wave of vertigo.

Lifting his eyes back to the horizon, monumental stone peaks of equally staggering heights dominated every corner of his vision.

‘This is treacherous.’

Compared to all the subterranean gates Minjun had cleared, this environment easily ranked within the ten most hostile zones based purely on the topography.

Compounding the problem, howling gale-force winds made maintaining his footing an ordeal, while drifting rain and a shroud of fog severely obscured his sight.

Even as he squinted against the elements, Minjun could not help admiring the staggering realism of the apparatus.

“This genuinely mirrors entering an authentic gate.”

Reaching toward his dimensional subspace, he started pulling out his personal equipment.

He had wondered whether an extraspacial inventory would function properly inside the simulation, yet its flawless manifestation impressed him once more.

The erratic, shifting winds made simply staying upright difficult, turning the act of donning his gear into a battle of its own, though he ultimately succeeded.

The second he secured his armaments, a swarm of simulated Gales tore through the heavy mist and manifested directly overhead.

“What in the world are those…?”

At first glance, Minjun assumed they were some variant of winged beasts like wyverns, but a closer examination proved he had never crossed paths with such a species.

He blinked hard and rubbed his eyelids, suspecting he might have simply forgotten the monster’s classification, yet scrutinize as he might, the predators remained utterly alien to him.

Naturally, that made sense because they were bespoke creations designed solely for the program. Being unaware of that fact, Minjun’s bewilderment was inevitable.

He needed to decipher the true nature of his opponents before he could determine an effective battle tactic.

His initial shock faded swiftly, however, as he reined in his emotions and evaluated the situation with cool logic.

Given that this was a synthetic simulation rather than the physical world, the developers could easily have synthesized bespoke creatures solely for the exam.

‘In that case, I will have to uncover their habits by trading blows.’

Right as that realization set in, several Gales broke formation from the flock and plummeted straight toward Minjun, diving with the ferocity of hunting falcons stooping on prey.

Their velocity was so staggering that a conventional combatant might have failed to mount any defense in time.

The ferocious squall and wild drafts made charting their dive angles nearly impossible as well.

Acting purely on instinct, Minjun dragged his blade across the air in a sweeping, devastating crescent. A faint, galaxy-hued luminescence exploded from the steel, carving straight into the descending Gales.

Dark blood sprayed across the sky where the razor edge of his aura bit flesh.

Considering the extreme disadvantages, that initial clash yielded acceptable results, yet Minjun recognized that an exchange like that was far from decisive.

Worse still, the punishing wind abruptly escalated into a violent howl.

‘…Hold on.’

As the tempest intensified, an odd detail caught Minjun’s attention. Why was the rushing air saturated with such concentrated, dense mana?

It felt distinct from the atmospheric fluctuations that typically preluded a Gate Break.

A sudden realization struck him, prompting Minjun to dip back into his subspace to retrieve a protective ward.

The precise second the protective relic activated, beads of compressed mana coalesced within the open sky, cascading downward toward him like a barrage of lethal frozen hail.

‘They wield magical spells as well?’

Winged beasts armed with spellcraft created an excruciatingly disadvantageous matchup for a grounded warrior like Minjun.

Should he take to the sky and engage them in aerial dogfights, just as he had handled the wyverns within Elysium?

‘No, that is out of the question.’

During that prior battle, even though it was his introductory flight, the surrounding air had been completely devoid of this level of turbulence, making stable flight relatively simple to maintain.

Presently, however, the squalls raged with the ferocity of a hurricane. A single misstep could see him swept into the abyss by the storm.

Attempting to fight midair carried far too much risk.

For the time being, he needed to anchor his feet to the stone, relying on his Sword Aura and defensive relics. The circumstances were dreadful, yet he still had to carve out a path to victory.

At that moment, another notion struck him.

‘Or perhaps… I can draw upon draconic power.’

Up to this point, Minjun had leaned heavily on the Dragon Bone Sword to act as his conduit.

It was understandable. His foundation was that of a swordsman, and he had yet to master complete authority over a dragon’s supreme essence entirely on his own.

Consequently, he had naturally relied on the Dragon Bone Sword as an intermediary to channel, stabilize, and magnify that dormant might.

Yet if his ultimate ambition was to command that primordial force independently, he needed to wean himself off his reliance on the blade.

‘Stop leaning on the weapon as a crutch.’

This encounter was merely a simulation, not a fatal reality.

If he refused to take a radical gamble in a sandbox like this, when would another opportunity ever present itself?

Rather than viewing the action as brandishing a blade or borrowing energy through steel, he visualized an actual dragon manifesting in its primeval majesty, tearing through the firmament with a colossal, razor-sharp talon.

He consciously abandoned the very concept of merely “channeling a dragon’s strength.”

‘I simply need to accept that I am the dragon, not a mortal man.’

Embracing that state of mind, Minjun prepared to execute an unprecedented maneuver.

He resolved to seize the ambient magic the Gales had unleashed into the sky and whip it right back at the flock.

He had never attempted such a feat before and could not say whether the theory would hold, but he deemed it worth the gamble.

Much like a slugger driving his bat through a hurtling fastball, Minjun cleaved his blade across the empty air.

The moment the steel sheared through the atmospheric currents, the surrounding vortex underwent an instantaneous reversal.

The spheres of concentrated mana pivoted sharply in mid-flight, rocketing straight back toward the cluster of avian beasts.