The Captain's Test

Items divide into two kinds: those that can be enhanced, and those that cannot.

Among the ones that can, there is ordinary enhancement, and there is staged enhancement. Ordinary enhancement happens once. A single use, and it is done. Staged enhancement, as the name suggests, is an item you can upgrade again and again—and that is the very best of all.

An item that can be enhanced is rare enough on its own.

This is a jackpot!

And these Shoes of Hermes were precisely the mobility item I had needed.

What would the enhancement do? If the travel time stretched longer, that would be a miracle. Even if it didn't…

I was already as fast as an S-rank. Even the ten seconds of aerial movement the shoes granted me now would be endlessly useful.

So this achievement was better than I ever imagined.

I was so overwhelmed it made my head ache. If luck was going to break this way, I could regress as many times as it took. If things kept going like this, I really might save the future.

Tss-tss-tsst. I summoned the Shoes of Hermes at once.

For a moment they were only a translucent neon afterimage of a pair of shoes. The instant I willed them onto my own, the shape overlapped the real pair. Srrk. A small wing motif, drawn in a thin gray line, appeared along the outer side of each white sneaker.

"Oh. Not bad. Doesn't even stand out."

My heart was pounding.

And this is only Silver-grade. What kind of rewards did the Crystal-grade people get? That sort of information never leaks easily, so I had no idea. This is insane!

I looked around. Somehow, I was alone.

"Should I give them a try?"

I drew in a breath, and in the very instant I meant to activate the Shoes of Hermes—

"Yes, he's over there!"

The voice of the surviving squad member, the one who had stepped away, returned with a rustle of murmuring.

Ah—cancel! Cancel the activation!

I had meant to keep the achievement and the item secret until I properly understood them. Thanks to that, my feet tangled, and I staggered and went down in a heap. Humiliating.

"Ha-jun!"

Han Gyeol, walking up beside the squad member, saw me on the ground and broke into a run. A great many reinforcements followed behind him. The highest-ranking among them strode straight up to me. As Gyeol helped me to my feet, the man spoke.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. Well—no. As you can see."

"Understandable. Private Kim Jin-seop has already reported the incident on site. You've been through a great deal. Truly remarkable. To think the two of you resolved the entire situation. Astonishing."

He gave me a short salute. I brushed off my knees.

"The Monster Special Forces failed to set an example for two people who are still civilians. That was entirely our mistake. I apologize for putting you in danger. And thank you, truly, for saving Private Kim Jin-seop."

"No, you don't have to go that far. Besides, nobody knew what might come out of that Crack, or when. Monsters from a Crack usually show up with at least a few weeks between them."

I could feel his eyes studying me from behind the helmet.

"Thank you again. From this hour forward, the Monster Special Forces will resume custody and management."

"That's a relief. Honestly, I was terrified of when that thing might blow again."

I made a deliberate show of shuddering.

"So now we can go home?"

"Mr. Eun Ha-jun and Mr. Han Gyeol, please follow the assigned personnel. Two higher-rank squad members will escort you, so there is no need to worry. Then again—if it is the two of you, worry was never necessary."

"Come on, I told you it isn't like that. I was really scared!"

Monster Special Forces personnel swarmed the portal and the heap of goblin corpses around us.

"Yes, understood. Please move out."

He let out a short laugh and indicated the entrance, where two squad members were already waiting.

And, to my surprise, after Gyeol and I followed our escorts for quite some time, the place we arrived was not home.

"Mr. Eun Ha-jun. Mr. Han Gyeol."

The low voice belonged to Captain Seong Hyeon-jun.

He was waiting for us in a dry, rigid office. Come to think of it, this was the first time I had seen Captain Seong without his helmet.

Not quite what I pictured.

His hair was long for a soldier, and a faint shadow lay beneath deep-set eyes, so that he looked a little gaunt.

Is that just his face, or did two days do this to him?

Less a soldier than an office worker ground down by overtime. Then again, everything happening now was the sort of thing that wore a person out. Thinking back, the squad members we had passed on the way in had worn every kind of hairstyle, too. A far freer atmosphere than a regular unit. Uniforms on, but otherwise not so different from civilians—except that dyeing, it seemed, was forbidden.

Once Gyeol and I had taken our seats, Captain Seong spoke.

"I have received the report."

"Oh, have you? That was fast."

Best to meet him with the mildest face I could manage. I had no idea what I was about to hear.

"But I would like to hear it once more from your own mouths. What exactly happened? How did two Awakeners who awakened only yesterday perfectly handle ten goblin units?"

As expected. Captain Seong's voice was anything but ordinary. Fair enough—the situation was absurd. Far too clean to dismiss as something we had stumbled through by accident. The building had not collapsed, and the Crack had been stabilized with brutal efficiency. If you could even call that stabilization.

"It wasn't perfect. Two members of the Monster Special Forces died."

"By rights, it was a crisis in which everyone should have died. And if those things had gotten outside Seoul Station, the situation would have been far more dangerous."

"…I don't know. I didn't want to die, so I looked for a way to stay alive. Luck was with us. If it hadn't been, we might really have died, just as you said, Captain."

A cold current seemed to drift across the table. Captain Seong suspected us.

"Are the two of you truly ordinary civilians?"

Perhaps a question like that was only natural. From the start, we had shown something brand-new Awakeners had no business showing—and we had done it twice. But ordinary civilians? What, were we spies from another country? If you wanted to split hairs, we were already Awakeners, so we weren't civilians at all!

"What else would we be? Haha. I thought we were going to be praised. This is kind of sad."

I scratched my nose, aiming for harmless. I had no intention of crossing Captain Seong. Looking decent here and then backing off was the profitable move all around. Haa… Just as I resigned myself to another killer smile, a sharp voice cut in at my ear.

"…You sent us on a dangerous, unreasonable mission alongside low-grade squad members. That's your fault. So why does this feel like an interrogation?"

"Huh? H-Han Gyeol."

"I'm right, aren't I? You take complete beginners who just awakened yesterday and stick them beside a Crack that could do anything at any time. That's beyond common sense."

"That is… Cracks are normally…"

"I don't know. From where I sit, it looks like you dragged us into an unreasonable situation to test us."

Han Gyeol rose slowly and leaned toward Captain Seong as he spoke. Thud. He even set a hand on the table. Anyone could see it was a threat. Good god. Those—those insolent eyes! Gyeol! Please just sit still. I'll handle all of this—

"A test? That is a dangerous thing to say."

Captain Seong's tired face went cold as a sheet of ice.

"Of course it's dangerous. There was a tabloid rag going around for a while claiming the state was running secret experiments on Awakeners. Were you sounding us out so you could drag us into a lab? Because we're special cases."

"A tabloid rag. You dare say that in this room."

Sparks seemed to jump between Han Gyeol and Captain Seong. In an instant the air grew heavy, and breathing became a labor. This was a contest of Combat Pressure between high-rankers.

Combat Pressure is what Awakeners do when they push the aura of their power outside the body and flaunt their strength at an opponent. Awakeners of roughly B-rank and below can only threaten ordinary people a little. It takes an S-rank, or a high-level A-rank, before it reaches other Awakeners…

"Hk—hah—"

Damn it. There wasn't enough oxygen, and the dizziness was starting. But I was only D-rank. I couldn't so much as twitch a finger. A baby rabbit frozen between fighting tigers.

"Stop…"

"…!"

Gyeol's head snapped around, as if he had caught the voice I barely forced out. In the same moment, Captain Seong's Combat Pressure shoved both of us back. If it had only been a shove, that would have been fine. I went all the way over and rolled with the chair.

Crash!

"Kh."

"Cough—cough!"

The pain of the fall barely registered. Only when Captain Seong withdrew his Combat Pressure could I breathe. My lungs felt shriveled; a violent cough tore out of me.

"Ha-jun, you okay?"

Gyeol found me and came in close, worry plain on his face, but I had no room yet to answer. My head was ringing. My throat and chest hurt too much. And—you're telling me he awakened yesterday? Since when could he unfold Combat Pressure without even knowing it?

"Hm. Combat Pressure this childish. Unless this is an extraordinary act, you really are civilians who awakened yesterday."

"…What."

"You used Combat Pressure without even knowing you were using it. And thanks to that, your friend is in that state."

Captain Seong smiled, thin and cold, like a different man from a moment ago. I was at the point of wanting to cling to him and beg. Stop, stop! Please don't provoke our Gyeol!

"…That…"

Fortunately, instead of exploding at the mockery, Gyeol seemed struck by the fact that I had been unable to breathe because of him. The large hand that had been supporting me faltered and fell away. Wait—he used Combat Pressure without knowing he was using it? Is our Gyeol actually a genius?

"Cough… I-I'm fine. Snff. Cough."

I staggered up, soothed the flustered Gyeol, and sat him back down beside me.

"The same goes for you, Mr. Eun Ha-jun. To be unable to move under the clumsy Combat Pressure of an S-rank who awakened only yesterday… The D-rank you wrote on the paperwork does not appear to be a lie."

Captain Seong's expression had returned to the one from our first meeting. Tired, worn, and with not a trace of aggressive pressure. A chill prickled over my skin.

Investing Soul Points in agility had been the right call. If I had put them into another stat, he might have caught me in a lie right here. And then what?

"That's what I've been saying."

My voice was shaking, ugly and obvious. Honestly, Captain Seong could kill both of us with Combat Pressure alone. He seemed a much higher level than I had thought. S-rank? A high-level A-rank? I couldn't begin to guess. He didn't seem to have released all of his pressure.

Captain Seong… Seong Hyeon-jun. Had there been an S-rank by that name? I ransacked my memory and came up empty. Gyeol, crestfallen, kept his mouth shut and only glared at the table.

"I apologize."

"What?"

I had not expected an apology at all, and for a moment I went blank. But it was not an apology born of real regret.

"It has nothing to do with the wild rumor Mr. Han Gyeol mentioned. The truth is, I did intend to test you. Ah—of course, the Crack incident at Seoul Station was not something we intended. The test we planned never took place. Let me be clear on that point."

"Uh…"

"Naturally, along with the end of the Seoul Station mission. Whether the two of you could become members of the Monster Special Forces. I meant to test that without it showing."

"What did you say?"

My brow crumpled hard.

Don't tell me—right now—he's telling us to enlist?