WeTried Translations
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Editor: BlueMangoAde
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 864: F-Rank Hunter Jeon Myeong-hoon (3)
──────
Hunter Psychiatric Hospital.
Killing a monster does not automatically make someone Awakened.
They need a certain degree of aptitude from the start. Those with great aptitude can awaken after killing just one weak monster, while those with poor aptitude often fail to awaken even after killing thousands.
Of course...
When a Gate opens, it spews out many monsters and raises the mana in the surrounding area, stimulating one's aptitude far more strongly. At the site of an opened Gate, killing one or two monsters gives a person a good chance of awakening.
But occasionally...
An Awakened person who hunts a monster far beyond their aptitude in one go can develop mental abnormalities.
The Hunter Management Bureau calls this phenomenon mana contamination.
Mana contamination gradually subsides over time, but in its early stages it can drive people mad, with no telling what they might do.
This Hunter Psychiatric Hospital had been established to manage such Awakened.
Jeon Myeong-hoon had ultimately been judged mentally ill at the homeless shelter and transferred to the psychiatric ward.
"So, Mr. Jeon Myeong-hoon. What was it you wanted to say?"
Park Su-in, a psychiatrist and D-Rank Hunter with the Mana Contamination Appraisal Skill, asks Jeon Myeong-hoon with the kindest expression he can manage.
F-Rank Hunter Jeon Myeong-hoon.
He is the Hunter said to have awakened after killing a Cyclops.
At first, he had not appeared to have any mental problems. But a few days later, reports came in that he had been standing in Han River Park holding a branch and repeating strange movements. When they checked, his mind had been severely contaminated.
Jeon Myeong-hoon speaks with a serious expression.
"I'm not mentally ill."
"R-right... But it is true that there are several things about you that concern me, Mr. Jeon Myeong-hoon. For instance..."
Stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke...
Park Su-in looks at the mannequin hand model Jeon Myeong-hoon is stroking.
After being dragged to the psychiatric hospital, Jeon Myeong-hoon's irritation and anxiety had worsened. They had searched for something that might calm him down, and Park Su-in's skill revealed that Jeon Myeong-hoon had a certain fixation on hands.
So they brought him a mannequin hand model, and Jeon Myeong-hoon had become much calmer.
Park Su-in wants to say various things as he watches him stroke the hand, but he keeps silent about that for now.
Instead, he decides to discuss Jeon Myeong-hoon's more serious symptom first.
"You say this lump of charcoal in a plastic bottle talks?"
"It does."
Park Su-in looks at the goro maple sap inside Jeon Myeong-hoon's plastic bottle, along with the lump of charcoal submerged within it.
"I just asked it, and it told me that this Hunter psychiatric ward is where Awakened whose minds have collapsed from mana contamination come. It said people like you have skills that can appraise my mind. If you inspect me with your skill, won't you see that my mind is perfectly sound?"
"Ha ha..."
Information about the Hunter Psychiatric Hospital is not classified and is publicly available online.
Yet Jeon Myeong-hoon claims that a lump of charcoal had told him that.
Not knowing what to say, Park Su-in records Jeon Myeong-hoon's symptoms for the moment.
"I see. This lump of charcoal talks. Then why did you think to converse with it, Mr. Jeon Myeong-hoon?"
"Because this lump of charcoal is my informant."
"A lump of charcoal is your informant?"
"Yes. It is an object an acquaintance prepared so I could easily obtain information about this world when I descended into it."
"Hmm... 'Descended into this world,' you say. You speak as though you came from another world."
"Yes. Honestly, that shouldn't be too difficult for you to understand, should it? Rifts have recently formed between dimensions and opened numerous Gates. Because of that, gods from other dimensions and Transcendents of this world grant you their protection, do they not? Then they reign under the name of Constellations. You can think of me as something like an otherworldly divinity among the Constellations."
"Hmmmmm..."
Park Su-in writes several things in his notebook.
Constellations as otherworldly divinities...
Much about Constellations remains veiled in mystery.
Yet he speaks with such confidence.
'He has grandiose delusions as well...'
"I see. Then which dimension did you come from, Mr. Jeon Myeong-hoon, and why did you descend into this world?"
"The place I came from is Mount Sumeru. A world of cultivators and True Immortals. I came to this world to obtain this world's causality."
"Hmm..."
Park Su-in thinks to himself.
'I like xianxia stories too.'
After jotting down a few more notes, he continues.
"Then what sort of being were you in that xianxia... no, on Mount Sumeru, Mr. Jeon Myeong-hoon?"
"I was the Lord of Heavenly Punishment, who governed all heavenly lightning on Mount Sumeru. I never ascended to the seat of Emperor, but I did indeed reach the realm of Heavenly Lord."
"Hmmm... Then could you perhaps show this mortal before you the authority of that heavenly lightning?"
"I cannot do so now. It has been sealed."
"Ha ha ha, I see."
Jeon Myeong-hoon looks at Park Su-in.
"You're treating me like a mental patient."
"Ha ha ha, I merely had some things to consider."
"Do as you please."
He is a little irritated.
The doctor before him is quite literally treating him like a mental patient.
[Your Highness, I beg you to understand and not destroy the world in anger.]
"I know. Though I was once the Seat of Wrath, I have now left that behind. I will not casually destroy a world. Still, can you not connect to my mind and speak with me instead of speaking aloud? Look here. Speaking with you aloud only makes them treat me more like a mental patient."
[I apologize, Your Highness. However, this world appears to have its own dimensional laws... If Your Highness wishes to converse with me in secret, you must learn a suitable skill.]
"Hmm... Very well. It cannot be helped. I must learn these things called skills. Hey, Doctor. I'll cooperate with treatment, so could you let me practice spear techniques in the park during breaks?"
Jeon Myeong-hoon makes a proposal to Park Su-in.
"I'll train in a corner with a branch, where I won't threaten anyone."
For whatever reason, perhaps because he wants to observe Jeon Myeong-hoon further, Park Su-in allows him to practice spear techniques.
* * *
One corner of the psychiatric hospital park.
Having completed that day's treatment, Jeon Myeong-hoon grips a branch again and focuses his mind.
"Hoo."
In his mental world, the branch has already become a spear.
'I can already sense mana.'
An alien flow running through the entire world.
But Jeon Myeong-hoon looks at his Trait.
Mana-Insensitive Body.
A constitution extremely insensitive to magical power, to mana.
He had succeeded in sensing mana through his level of mental attainment.
Yet he fails to draw that mana into his body.
Jeon Myeong-hoon's body itself seems to reject mana.
"So this is what it feels like to lack a spiritual root."
Jeon Myeong-hoon, who had lived his entire life with the Heavenly Golden Lightning Body, clicks his tongue with a distant feeling.
But.
No matter how gifted he had been, he had repeatedly faced despair.
"Explain skills to me."
An answer comes from the lump of charcoal resting on a bench in front of the park.
[Yes, Your Highness. Skills are created when Constellations fix this world's flow of mana into a system and inscribe special mana flows into that system.]
"Yes. In short, they are flows of mana."
He draws in a breath.
"Status window."
Ding!
A status window visible only to Jeon Myeong-hoon floats before him.
Jeon Myeong-hoon once again enters Spear and Body Unity and extends his sensory domain deep into the world.
Within that sensory domain, the status window is part of an enormous flow of mana.
Jeon Myeong-hoon activates the skill registered in his status window, Crying Out to Heaven.
"Heavens above!"
'Fuck. This is pathetic.'
At Jeon Myeong-hoon's desperate cry, the other mentally ill Hunters nearby, as well as the psychiatric ward doctors, look at him and click their tongues pityingly.
Amid that humiliation, calming his embarrassment, Jeon Myeong-hoon senses the world's flow.
'So this is what a skill is.'
He understands the principle behind the creation of skills.
He also roughly understands how the doctor's Appraisal Skill had functioned when it sensed his mind earlier.
"In short, a skill is creating one's own special flow of mana within the flow of the world called the system... Is that it?"
In other words.
Making one's own scratch in the flow of the world called the system.
Leaving one's own trace in the system.
The system embraces that trace and turns it into a skill.
Then.
'If I can make a scratch in the system with my own flow, that too will become a skill.'
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Jeon Myeong-hoon grips the spear and spins.
His mind flows into the spear's tip.
His body, united with the spear, moves ever faster.
Jeon Myeong-hoon feels that the world's flow follows his movements, however faintly.
'Make it unable to follow. Make the world's flow itself panic.'
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...
The spear tip's trajectory changes in countless ways.
If someone powerful enough to rival an A-Rank Hunter specializing in close combat had been present, they would have cried out in admiration at the sight of Jeon Myeong-hoon's spear.
But no one there recognizes the profound principles within it.
At some point.
As Jeon Myeong-hoon's spear tip transforms in countless ways, the changes become so abrupt that the world's flow loses track of the spear tip for a moment.
At that instant.
Jeon Myeong-hoon brings down his spear with all his strength.
Shkraak!
The world's flow is severed for an instant.
Crackle, crackle...
Jeon Myeong-hoon half-opens his eyes.
His status window is scratched.
Crackle, crackle...
Immediately afterward.
Ding!
[The system has detected an incomprehensible movement.]
[The system is reverse-calculating the movement.]
"......"
[Reverse calculation impossible!]
[The system is judging the result.]
[The system is drawing the result into itself.]
[Skill recognized!]
[Jeon Myeong-hoon has acquired the skill, [Mana Cutting LV.1]!]
Jeon Myeong-hoon looks at the scratch in his status window as it mends, and at the skill that appears in its place.
[Basic Skill: Mana Cutting LV.1 (Severs the flow of mana. Effective against all powers activated with mana.)]
"Hmph. I finally have something useful."
Jeon Myeong-hoon activates Mana Cutting.
When the tip of his branch brushes through the air before him, the flow of mana is naturally severed.
He cannot draw mana into his body, but he has acquired a skill capable of cutting mana apart.
Afterward, Jeon Myeong-hoon received psychiatric treatment in the ward while staying and eating for free at the state-funded Hunter psychiatric ward. He trained his body and practiced his skill.
* * *
Park Su-in looks at Jeon Myeong-hoon and speaks.
"Congratulations, Mr. Jeon Myeong-hoon. The mana contamination in your mind has dispersed considerably."
"I see. Then when can I leave?"
"Well, that is..."
Park Su-in hesitates before speaking.
The plastic bottle Jeon Myeong-hoon always carries.
The lump of charcoal inside the goro maple sap.
The mana contamination has greatly diminished, but Jeon Myeong-hoon still speaks to that lump of charcoal.
In fact, it seems to have grown worse lately.
This phenomenon is also common.
A temporary mental illness caused by mana contamination sometimes becomes permanently lodged in the mind.
It mostly happens to Awakened with exceptional potential, but rare cases also occur in people like the young man before him, whose growth potential is F-Rank.
"There are a few more things we need to examine. So, please give it a little more time."
"Understood."
Jeon Myeong-hoon outwardly accepts this as he thinks,
'They have no intention of letting me leave.'
After that day's treatment ends.
Jeon Myeong-hoon speaks to the lump of charcoal.
"Charcoal lump."
[Yes, Your Highness.]
"Have you mapped out this hospital's layout?"
[Yes, Your Highness. I have identified all of it, including the persistent skills placed throughout the facility, their mana flows, and the anti-Awakened Suppression Skills installed to prevent Hunters from escaping.]
"Good."
Park Su-in might think he is a mental patient who talks to charcoal.
But he is not mentally ill.
"It is time to escape this psychiatric hospital."
Remembering where there is a steel pipe suitable for use as a spear, Jeon Myeong-hoon mutters to himself.
The Mana Cutting he has created has already reached level 10 and become MAX level.
It can do nothing more than sever mana flows at or above a certain threshold, but that is precisely why Jeon Myeong-hoon sees hope in it.
Jeon Myeong-hoon can see a path forward, yet the system says this is the maximum level.
That means,
he can acquire a new skill.
'A steel pipe sturdy enough to withstand force, rather than a branch, should be enough to gain a new skill.'
From the psychiatric ward's inner park, he looks at the wall leading outside the hospital.
He clenches his fist as he looks at it.
'I will escape, psychiatric hospital.'
The psychiatric hospital is not all he is looking at.
This world.
And those interdimensional merchants who had purchased him for ten thousand years.
'Ten thousand years? Don't make me laugh.'
He clenches his hand.
'One hundred years. Within that time, I'll accumulate immense power from this world, settle the price of the causality Sword Spear received, and return!'
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
