The Abnormal Speed Freak

Flash!

It was a light bright enough to strike a man blind. For an instant I couldn't see a thing in front of me, but I pulled Oppressive Chains back and cast them again. I couldn't afford to miss this timing. The distance was already calculated.

Chrrrk! The long chain threw a wide noose, just as it had when I'd faced the nol, and I hauled it in, binding the mountain of goblin corpses—charred to a crisp—together with the portal.

"Well then. The tunnel's completely plugged now. What are you going to do about it?"

The eyes of an evolved Awakener recovered their sight in no time.

Ssszzz... Just as I'd calculated, the thoroughly charred goblin corpses sealed the portal shut. A portal doesn't move from its spot, no matter what you do to it. Clearing that wreckage and forcing their way back out would give the ones inside a miserable time of it.

"Is it over?"

Gyeol, who'd kept a little distance from the portal, came staggering toward me. Fair enough. He'd shouldered nearly this entire horde almost on his own; by now his mana had to be scraped clean.

If it hadn't been for this will-o'-the-wisp, mine would have run dry ages ago too. Its recovery was still slow, but in a fight you felt the lack of every last point of mana.

"You came through."

Poke. I tapped the will-o'-the-wisp with a fingertip, and it let out a soft whoomph, squirming its flames.

"Cute..."

Ding.

Before Gyeol could even get close, another System alert rang.

Oh. My plan had landed. The difficulty had been recalibrated, but hey—better than nothing. A sidelong glance showed Han Gyeol frozen where he stood, caught by the same System alert. With the sound of items arriving, the tension slipped off Gyeol's face.

We'd pulled it off again. The two of us, together. I shot him a wide grin. Yeah. This was it. This was our duo!

Then, once more—ding! Another System alert.

What? Don't tell me it's another quest. It's not over?

A scowl yanked across my face, and letters I'd never seen in my life floated up before my eyes.

"Huh?"

"What?"

Before I had a spare second to think about the alert, Gyeol was already talking to me.

"Ah, it's nothing... Hey, did you get something like an achievement?"

"Huh? An achievement? What are you talking about?"

He looked completely lost. So this achievement was mine alone?

The truth was, I knew what an achievement was. A reward given to the Awakener who was first to accomplish something others couldn't easily pull off. There was no hint at all of how to earn one, though, so even before the regression, Awakeners who'd claimed an achievement had been few and far between.

And I'll say it again: no matter how strong you were, an achievement only came from doing something singular. On top of that, first come, first served—one person only! Copying an achievement someone else had already taken did you no good. An achievement only a single person in the world could hold.

And I'd gotten one of those...

Abnormal Speed Freak... So it really is that. Dumping everything into Agility.

Nothing else fit. What I'd just done was abnormal in every sense, and it had everything to do with speed. There couldn't be another D-Rank Awakener whose Agility alone sat at S-Rank.

"Huh?"

"Hhk?!"

A bizarre yelp tore out of me before I could stop it. Hermes' Shoes?! The name alone sounded incredible! An achievement reward—it had to be outrageous. I wanted to see what it did this very second!

But I'd plunged headfirst into a boiling frenzy of excitement, and Han Gyeol started looking me over with a frown. To his eyes I must have seemed a little cracked. I really had gotten that worked up.

"Ha-jun. You... you're okay, right?"

"Ah, y-yeah... yeah. I think I just burned through a lot of mana all at once."

I fumbled the excuse while failing to get the twitching muscles of my face under control, and Han Gyeol's color drained to a sickly blue.

"...!! Then we need to get you to a hospital, now!"

"Um, excuse me. I have a potion."

The voice drawing nearer belonged to the surviving Monster Special Forces soldier who'd led us here. Right. Two dead, and only one left alive.

He held out a small bottle from the belt pouch at his hip.

"Drink this, and you should feel a bit better."

"It's military issue. Is it all right to use it so freely?"

"In an emergency like this, of course. Besides, I owe the two of you my life. If you hadn't been here, I'd already be..."

His face went white. A moment later, though, his eyes lit and he clenched a fist.

"Thank you. Truly. I heard the two of you only Awakened yesterday—how did you manage a fight this spectacular? Ten goblin units... Five Awakeners wouldn't have stood a chance. It was honestly unbelievable."

"Ah, well, we didn't completely wipe out all ten units in the end."

It hadn't been a proper clear. I'd only forced the quest to end. I'd tried it solely because I knew quests without a failure penalty got adjusted this way.

I laughed, a little sheepish.

"Be that as it may, a finished quest is a finished quest. Good heavens—I never knew a fight could be fought like this. To think the quest completes just from sealing the portal, without clearing them all."

He seemed profoundly moved. Then again, this was still around the time when that sort of information didn't exist.

In truth, a portal could only be briefly blocked this way with monsters that had come out of it. No material from outside, however strong, could hold back a portal's power. Later, people would process monsters into defensive walls for Cracks like this one, but that lay a very long time off. Darkest right beneath the lamp, as they say.

Is it all right for them to learn that this early?

Honestly, the sooner humanity figured it out, the better. A few experiments and the Awakeners would have it under control in no time. Yes—this could save the countless people who would otherwise die to monsters pouring out of Cracks.

Even so, it would look strange for someone who'd only Awakened yesterday to already know the method, so I meant to bluff.

"Honestly, I didn't really know either. It just... worked? Hahaha."

"You're truly remarkable, Mr. Eun Ha-jun! I'll make a proper report to my superiors. A support unit should be here soon. I put the call through the moment things went wrong."

"Good. Gyeol and I are both completely wiped. I'd like to rest now."

I laughed, deliberately playing up how exhausted I was, and Han Gyeol watched me with a strange look, head tilted. So I quietly released Soulmate. Keep this up and he'd catch on before long. From here on, I needed to drop it the moment I was done.

At some point the will-o'-the-wisp had vanished. It seemed to remember me telling it to go back in whenever people were around, if it reasonably could. Sharp little thing.

"Whew."

One worry set down, and a sigh came out on its own. Wanting a closer look at the achievement and its reward, I eased a little distance from the soldier, found somewhere to sit, and dropped down.

"Ha-jun."

No sooner had I thought I might get caught than Han Gyeol spoke in a serious voice.

"Yeah?"

"Is there something else I ought to know?"

It felt like the air caught in my throat. Now? Was this it? Had he realized I was lying? Words that seemed to hold far too much...

"Ah, huh? Why?"

"...No. I can see you've grown an incredible amount in a single day. But I haven't, have I."

Han Gyeol's face was dead serious. Gulp. My swallow sounded like thunder.

"What? What are you talking about. The way you handle your skills is no joke either. Even for an S-Rank, controlling it like that in just two days is seriously amazing! We saw it on that documentary."

"...That's true, but."

Yeah. This wasn't something I could skate past.

Han Gyeol was an S-Rank. He'd know for certain that I'd moved as fast as one.

What do I do. I quietly met his eyes.

Those black eyes were waiting for an answer.

"I leveled up yesterday, remember. Hahaha."

I smiled as brightly as I could.

I was dying to come clean to him, but it felt too soon. And with a Monster Special Forces soldier right beside us, I had no choice but to watch my words.

"I see."

Han Gyeol looked down at me for a moment, then nodded.

"Right. The level-up got me a pet skill, too. That pet must be a really useful one."

"Don't get jealous of the pet."

"What? That's not— It's not like that!"

His sunken voice climbed a notch.

"You're my number-one friend. No—we're family, aren't we."

Still seated, I stretched out a foot and gave his calf a light kick. I hadn't kicked hard, yet Han Gyeol staggered.

Had Agility put acceleration on that?

Staggering, he whipped his head away from me.

His ears were somehow bright red.

Huh? Oh, right... Back in our twenties we didn't really say embarrassing stuff like this, did we? A couple of grim-faced guys.

I dug through my memory, but I'd been like this since I was little, hadn't I? So he just didn't have an immunity to it yet. As a kid, he'd been hopeless at showing what he felt.

...This is kind of fun?

I got to my feet and vigorously ruffled the back of his head. That ought to clear the air.

"You cute little brat."

"Ah! Seriously, what's wrong with you! Out of nowhere...!"

The hand that swatted mine away wasn't all that rough.

See? Our Gyeol really is kind. Twenty-one-year-old Han Gyeol was far cuter than I'd thought.

A Han Gyeol more than ten years younger. It keeps hitting me all over again.

Did he feel like a son? A fierce sense of responsibility welled up in me.

Right. From now on, I'll support you properly. Gyeol. Let's become an even stronger pair than we were before the regression!

"This is annoying. Stop it. ...I'm going to go see if the support unit's coming."

Unable to endure the teasing any longer, Han Gyeol left. I watched that black head recede, then turned my gaze away. Now I could finally focus on the System.

Shhhk. I opened the System window and checked the achievement page first. This time it wasn't a notification passing by—a proper page unfolded.

"Hm? This is all?"

The page was pitiful. No detailed description, nothing about the achievement's effects. No subcategory of its own, either. Just the achievement sitting there as bare text.

Except the text was silver?

I heard achievements have grades. Silver—so that's Silver. Then it isn't a particularly high one.

Achievements rose through Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Grades existed above those as well, and of every achievement revealed before I regressed, the highest had been Crystal.

I wonder how good a reward from a Silver achievement is.

I flicked a finger and opened my inventory. Inside sat an item that would make it unmistakably clear none of this was a joke.

I nearly screamed. It was a mercy I'd managed to clamp both hands over my mouth in time.

This is exactly what I needed!

I didn't have a decent movement skill. I'd gained an incredible skill that let me summon a pet, but one look at the will-o'-the-wisp and you knew it wasn't something you could ride.

And yet I'd gotten an item on par with a proper movement skill!

This is insane. Ten seconds is more than enough.

And there was something even more astonishing.

Enhancement is at zero.

Before I knew it, I swallowed hard.