Chapter 119
Chapter 119
Chapter 119
We were at the Player talent testing room located on the 14th floor of the ‘Player Center’. Song Kiyeol personally brought me the results, a stark difference from the past, when the Head of Personnel, Kim Kangchul, delivered the results.
‘Can this also be taken as having succeeded in life?’
This time, it wasn’t Kim Kangchul, but the Guildmaster of Taeguk Shield and a third generation chaebol, Song Kiyeol. A lot had changed.
The Guildmaster stopped in front of me, holding the sheet. He hesitated.
“The results are a little…”
I silently took the paper from him. My eyes landed squarely on two words written clearly on the sheet.
[No Talent.]
Standing next to me, Yeonseo glanced over and laughed. “The Boss’ talent is 0?” She shook her head. Everyone just smiled, dumbfounded.
‘No Talent, again?’
How could this be explained?
I never learned how to wield a dagger, yet could use one with outstanding proficiency. I never learned martial arts, yet could fight hand-to-hand very adeptly. I never Played before as a Sovereign—or at all, for that matter—yet I took to the role like a fish to water, and no matter what situation I came across, the solution came naturally to me. The same went for enhancement, and come to think of it, I also successfully tamed a monster.
‘So how can it be No Talent?’
It was strange. I did hear that this kind of phenomenon happened with early blooming Players, but…
Song Kiyeol gave me an apologetic look. “The weird thing is…”
The current talent plate reader was about the size of a large backpack. It would later be miniaturized, but the current device was bulky. Song Kiyeol told someone to “Bring it out,” and two men came from deep within the testing room huffing and puffing as they lugged a device the size of a backpack.
‘Talent plate reader?’
It was my first time seeing one in person. The early model talent plate reader was crude, ugly, and even had poor performance.
‘There’s smoke coming out of it.’
Smoke was billowing out of it, and sparks flew out of it with a bzzt.
“Ahh!”
The two men flinched in alarm and dropped the talent plate reader, which fell to the ground with a resounding thud.
“I-I’m so sorry!”
“I’m sorry!”
Song Kiyeol gave a bitter smile. “It’s alright. It was broken anyway.”
His reaction validated my decision. What if the person standing here wasn’t the first-born grandson Song Kiyeol, but the second-born granddaughter Song Junghye? If it were the Blood and Iron Witch, she would have dumped the responsibility on these two employees, and they might have had to fully compensate for breaking the talent plate reader. The Guildmaster’s reaction made me think it wasn’t all that bad a decision to have ‘picked’ him instead of Song Junghye.
I examined the device on the ground.
[Observing with Observer’s Eye.]
I heard Song Kiyeol say, “After testing you, the talent plate reader broke.” My eyes flickered up to see him hurriedly waving his hand. “Of course, I’m not trying to say that this is your fault. Please don’t misunderstand.”
I nodded and turned my attention back to observing the device. My eye that discerned the ‘true nature’ of things captured a sort of warped flow that I could only recognize mentally but not put into words.
‘Ah…’
I understood now. I understood why this device broke and outputted a result of ‘No Talent’.
‘So that’s how it was.’
The reason behind this result was because this device was unable to handle the ‘class’ of my talent.
‘Right, it was said that there are grades and classes to talent as well.’
Even if two people had thirty talent plates, it didn’t mean they had the same talent. The mechanism behind this was never concretely elucidated. It was a definite established theory that the more talent plates a Player had, the more talent they had and the better it was for Playing. But there were also cases where someone who didn’t have many talent plates was far stronger than someone with a lot of them. We called those people ‘Irregulars’. Korea’s representative Irregular was the Red Demon Ahn Seohye.
‘The current device can measure the talent of the others.’
But it seemed unable to evaluate mine.
‘Class…’
Class, aka grade.
‘Was it like this in the past, too?’
I first had my talent tested at 25, an age at which one’s talent plates were mostly closed. Back then, I didn’t have the means to get tested earlier, and I was only able to do it when free government-sponsored tests were offered when I was 25.
At that time, I was tested with a talent plate reader five years ahead of this one, a more advanced model. Was it really unable to handle my talent’s class?
‘Who knows.’
Whatever the case, the result was the same. I got an assessment of ‘No Talent’. Despite that, I wasn’t unhappy.
‘The device lumped everyone’s talent at thirty. It was unable to assess my talent’s class.’
That meant I had a talent at least one level higher than theirs, right?
‘Nice.’
I accepted the test result. The ‘No Talent’ I was given in the past and the ‘No Talent’ I was given today were the same results, but the meaning behind them was completely different.
“I apologize for showing you such a result. It is likely an error on the part of the machine. We’ll carry out a re-test shortly.”
“No, it’s alright.”
I shrugged, giving him a lighthearted laugh to show I wasn’t unhappy. I wanted to tell him to relax, that he didn’t have to be so tense.
“Publicly, it’s better for me to be a Player who has no talent plates.”
That was the whole reason why I joined forces with Taeguk Shield to begin with—for them to take the glory and fame while I reaped the actual benefits in the back.
I took initiative to broach an issue that wasn’t easy for the other party to bring up. “You can put me on the lowest rank on the Ranking Board.”
In each server, the Players Associations of each nation put up a national ‘Ranking Board’. Currently, the rankings were probably set based on ‘talent plate count’ alone.
Song Kiyeol stared at me in bafflement. “The… lowest… rank?”
“Yes. Since I have no talent.”
“But…”
After staring at me for a long moment, he nodded.
State: Baffled / Disbelief / Doubt
His state was pretty terrible, but he seemed to have accepted my words, at least for now.
“Until next time.”
We would meet often in the future. The U-Plex Dungeon was cleared, and talent plate readers had made their entrance. From this point onwards, ‘new culture’ would accelerate, taking over faster and faster.
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Sunhwa and I headed back home. Going from the Player Center to our house only took ten or so minutes by taxi. Sunhwa and I decided to walk back to get some exercise. She looked very indignant.
“So annoying. I’ll beat them to a pulp.”
Where did she learn such a bad phrase? I lightly flicked her nose.
“Who said you could say such a foul thing?”
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this girl was a genius tank. In terms of tanking ability alone, she was one step, no, two steps above me. It wouldn’t hurt her even if I struck her solar plexus instead of her nose.
But she still pretended that it hurt.
“Owie!” She rubbed her nose. “But Oppa! I’m just so irritated by the way those people whispered when we left the testing room.”
The test results were shared live on an electronic display outside the testing room. Moreover, the name Kim Hyukjin was likely put on the Ranking Board.
“Grr! So annoying!”
Sunhwa stomped in place. I was okay, so why was this girl so worked up? Of course I had felt the gazes on me as we left the room. The gazes of pity and sympathy, as well as the gazes of ridicule and contempt.
‘Well, our party has Yoohyun and Yeonseo in it, after all.’
The most famous person in our party right now was Yoohyun, with Yeonseo in second place. Yoohyun was the Tutorial Ender, and Yeonseo PVP’d at every given opportunity and was steadily racking up fame.
When we left the room, I also heard people gossiping.
–The party of So Yoohyun and Shin Yeonseo… has someone assessed as talentless? How can that be?
The words seemed mostly harmless, but my Eye of Perception saw the feelings hidden behind them.
State: Scorn / Excitement / Enjoyment
It was possible the fact that one of us got a ‘No Talent’ evaluation was a source of enjoyment or happiness for that person.
“Nngh. Annoying. Annoying. Annoying.”
Fearing another scolding, Sunhwa refrained from violent(?) language like ‘beat them up to a pulp’ and just stomped. Maybe she was just at an age when she was sensitive to things like this.
“Sunhwa. You’ve got a tofu mentality, so you need to pay special attention to your mental state.”
“But still…”
“I can’t use you if you keep letting yourself be shaken by such trifling things.”
I could no longer bear to use violent language like ‘I’ll throw you away’. With the passage of time, I had become fiercely fond of her. Sunhwa became my real little sister, and just like how Noona cherished me, I cherished my little sister.
Sunhwa’s shoulders slumped, and she mumbled a defeated, “Got it.”
One day passed. A ‘bicycle-shaped monster’ appeared in a certain factory in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province. It was a monster that was mentioned in my summary notes.
–October 4, 2018. Ansan, Gyeonggi Province. First machine-type monster appears.
The machine monster had the name ‘Trike’. It actually did have three wheels, and was the size of a regular minicar. There were hundreds of blade-like mouths on its wheels.
–A monster that preys on children. Has a special ability to call and lure children under the age of 7.
After luring young children with that ability, it liked to crush them under its wheels.
‘A monster that devours children killed by the blade-like teeth on each of its three wheels.’
It being a machine monster wasn’t that important. Other than its inclination to hunt and eat children with a gruesome method, not much set it apart.
‘The important thing is that its appearance marks the point at which the government recognizes the strength of Players.’
It was the same as the past.
[A new monster, ‘Trike’, has appeared.]
Within just a few hours of the incident’s outbreak, the government and military acknowledged it officially—the monster could not be hunted with modern technology. They officially requested the support of the Players Association. Naturally, the influence of Players would grow more and more in the future.
‘I’ll stay out of this expedition.’
The Trike could be subdued easily enough even without me. I couldn’t go and kill every monster out there. The speed at which new culture took over would steadily increase, and it was folly to think I could block every gate and dungeon, every monster. The Korean server had to develop self-sufficiency.
‘And we only have eleven days left for the Find Charles’ Owner quest.’
I could delay the Predator Tree Colony scenario as much as I wanted, but the Charles quest had a time limit.
‘I’m sleepy.’
The time was 12:05 AM. Maybe because the U-Plex Dungeon consumed a lot of my mental power, I was sleepy again. Maybe my stamina hadn’t fully recovered. I went and laid on my bed. Playing was important, but so was restoring one’s stamina.
I fell asleep.
‘Oh.’
Inside my dream, I could clearly feel it.
‘This is definitely…’
A dream I could feel. A dream I could dream while being aware I was in a dream.
‘A lucid dream.’
Right now, I was lucid dreaming. But it wasn’t a simple lucid dream. I saw a sign for a road called ‘Ansan, Gyeonggi Province’. I touched my body. It felt entirely like my own.
[Observing with Observer’s Eye.]
I could even use Observer’s Eye and Eye of Perception. It just felt… strange somehow. Was it because this was a dream? It felt different from reality in a way I couldn’t quite place.
‘It’s a lucid dream, but…’
That much was certain. My body was lying on the bed. I knew that.
‘No way.’
This was no simple lucid dream, and my sudden wave of sleepiness was not just accumulated fatigue.
In a flash of enlightenment, I realized what I was dreaming.