Hoarding In Hell [EN]: Chapter 19

19. Ability User Test (2)

Hyeon-woo quickly pulled his hand away. However, the public official didn’t even glance at Hyeon-woo. With a gesture, several other officials rushed over and peered at the monitor together.

Other applicants also craned their necks, wondering what was happening, and glanced over.

“Is it broken? I’ve never seen numbers like that before.”

“Hey, I saw Lee Ji-tae get measured too. It didn’t look like that then. It must be a malfunction.”

“Isn’t he here to get his registration today? That means he’s level 1.”

The officials whispered for a while, and Hyeon-woo peeked out with an awkward expression.

“Um, excuse me. I think I might have broken the machine.”

“Oh, oh? Ah, ah! No. It’s okay. It happens often. When dealing with ability users, breakdowns are common. It’s a consumable item anyway. Sorry, but could you try one more time?”

“Yes.”

Other officials opened the status check and replaced a few parts inside.

Once ready, Hyeon-woo put his hand in again and waited for the orb to come. Soon, he felt something moving inside.

Knowing what was about to happen and preparing for it, the movement of the orb seemed visible even in the unseen space.

‘What should I do with this?’

He worried he might accidentally crush it again.

“Grip it tightly.”

The official said from the side. Hyeon-woo grabbed the orb without hesitation.

Beep.

This time, there was no sound of breaking. It might be because he adjusted his strength appropriately. The sound indicating the measurement was complete rang out.

Hyeon-woo turned to the side, thinking it was done. But all the officials there were staring at the monitor, speechless.

“…Software issue? It must be that, right?”

“What do we do about this? Should we report it first?”

“Wasn’t the last one the highest?”

‘What’s wrong again?’

Hyeon-woo clicked his tongue and looked at the officials. It was hard to endure the piercing glares of the applicants waiting behind him.

“Is it over?”

The officials looked up at Hyeon-woo. They had faces as if they had seen a ghost.

“Um… well, I’m sorry, but I’d like you to test it one more time…”

***

After three tests, the result Hyeon-woo received was ‘Deliberation Pending.’

“No, I was careful not to break it, so why is it like this?”

Since breaking was surprisingly common, it didn’t seem to be a problem with strength control. Hyeon-woo folded the test result in half, grumbling.

He didn’t mind his abilities being revealed, but he wanted to avoid this kind of troublesome situation. Deliberation pending? It was as good as receiving nothing.

The place he was guided to for skill testing was a large gymnasium. It practically occupied most of the Ability Management Bureau’s space.

Inside the fairly large space, there was a track and a large wall with many scratches, burns, and broken marks. In the center, there was also a large target that seemed to have been repainted several times.

Hyeon-woo and a group of people stood in the middle of the gymnasium, waiting for instructions. Soon, a man stood before them.

Unlike the other officials, he had a colored employee ID around his neck. Hyeon-woo recognized him as an ability user at a glance. He was the strongest among the ability users gathered here, except for Hyeon-woo.

“From now on, we will divide into three lines. Those who think their skill is ‘Attack-type,’ stand here. Those who think their skill is ‘Defense-type,’ stand here. Or, those with buff, debuff, heal, or neither, stand over here!”

People hesitated and then awkwardly divided into their respective lines. Some seemed to have ambiguous abilities, but the attack-type was the most numerous, followed by the defense-type, and the neither-type was the least.
Hyeon-woo was the most difficult to choose from.

‘What am I supposed to do when I have more than one skill?’

Seeing others choosing without much difficulty, it seemed they had one skill or similar types. Those without skills couldn’t even enter.

Hyeon-woo’s skills were Poison Blood, Battle Helper, and Domination. With one rare skill and two legendary skills, any one of them would cause a stir.

Hyeon-woo hesitated and stood in the neither-type line.

Attack-type people went to the wall and unleashed their abilities, while defense-type people, on the other hand, showed off their abilities in front of the pitching machine.

Hyeon-woo felt a bit drained watching the ability users struggling to hit the slowly flying baseballs.

‘I feel like you could block that much even if you weren’t an ability user.’

At that moment, the official from before approached.

“What kind of skill do you have? If it’s a non-lethal debuff, you can try it on me.”

The ability user official had a small build but seemed quite experienced in dealing with ability users. Hyeon-woo noticed a faded scar on him and realized he was a retired hunter. Hyeon-woo wondered which skill to reveal.

“Poison Blood.”

It was the first skill Hyeon-woo obtained and the only one he could use for attack. The official widened his eyes in surprise.

“A rare skill?”

Hyeon-woo nodded. The official looked at him as if he were lucky.

‘If you’re so jealous, go roll around in hell and get it.’

Hyeon-woo met the official’s gaze without backing down. It was a skill he barely obtained after dying nearly thirty times.

He thought about talking about Battle Helper or Domination, but it was hard to prove whether Battle Helper just meant he was good at fighting or not, and he didn’t even know what kind of skill Domination was. He thought Poison Blood, which was visually clear, would be better.

Anyway, Hyeon-woo didn’t come here to show off but to obtain hunter qualifications through legitimate means.

‘Besides, Battle Helper and Domination are more useful when their identities are not revealed.’

“It’s a bit ambiguous… but it’s quite a powerful skill if used with weapons. It must be inconvenient with many difficulties in life. You must get hurt a lot too.”

“I’m used to it.”

The official, being a former hunter, smirked. It was a sneer as if a regular person who didn’t even have a scar knew anything about injuries. Hyeon-woo smiled back at the smile.

“Well, some hunter famous for Poison Blood periodically draws blood packs and uses them whenever needed… With Poison Blood, biological experiments will be necessary.”

When the official gestured somewhere, a man who seemed to be a subordinate ran over with a small plastic tank. Inside was a small slime.

As soon as Hyeon-woo saw the slime, he unconsciously pulled his face back. The official laughed at the sight.

“Don’t worry. This level of slime is harmless, and some people even keep them as pets in aquariums. It’s a problem when they fall on your head and suffocate you, but if they’re below your head like this, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Ah, yes.”

Hyeon-woo forced a smile with a stiff expression.

‘Stay calm. This isn’t hell.’

Hyeon-woo had seen slimes in hell too. From a distance, though. The one Hyeon-woo saw was like inflating the slime in this tank to the size of a three-story shopping mall.

The monster swallowed entire buildings where monsters were hiding and melted everything inside into a gooey mess. In Hyeon-woo’s eyes, the two people next to the tank already looked like they were dead.

Having only seen the terrible monsters of hell, he seemed to be more nervous than necessary in reality. Seeing Hyeon-woo tense up, the official even put his hand inside the tank.

The slime slithered onto the official’s hand, but it fell off with a light shake.

“Cute, right? We captured it for skill testing. It’s easy to raise because it splits when you feed it. Why don’t you activate your Poison Blood skill?”

Hyeon-woo took a breath and slowly approached the tank. The official tried to hand him a knife to make a wound, but Hyeon-woo put his hand over the tank and clenched his fist tightly instead. A few drops of dark red blood fell onto the tank as if squeezing out juice.

“Will that be enough? The slime is weak, but it’s a monster with a lot of bodily fluids…”

At that moment, the former hunter official shut his mouth. As soon as Hyeon-woo’s bodily fluids touched the slime, its color instantly turned black, and it began to collapse and melt in all directions.

The mutated slime’s corpse twisted and dried up, and the liquid that spewed out simultaneously bubbled. An enormous stench filled the area, and everyone looked over.

The former hunter supervisor pinched his nose and quickly waved his hand. The subordinate official hurriedly covered the tank, picked it up, and ran out of the gymnasium.

“No, what on earth is this…”

“Is it a pass?”

The former hunter official looked at Hyeon-woo with a dazed expression.

“Uh, um. I, it’s certain you have a skill, but it’s a bit different from existing cases… I, I’ll have to discuss it with my superiors and let you know.”

***

“Your ability evaluation is pending? Well, that machine is a bit troublesome, so please understand. Come back later, and the grade evaluation will be notified to your phone. And the skill is… ‘Poison Blood has been confirmed, but more detailed confirmation is needed’? What is this, a cow or a horse?” [This is a Korean idiom implying the evaluation is nonsensical or vague.]

After all the procedures were completed, the official in charge of finishing up was a woman who looked to be about forty years old. She seemed to be of a higher rank than the other officials, and it seemed the final review had been passed on to her because Hyeon-woo had received many pending decisions.

“It’s enough to confirm that you have a skill, do they think they’re employees of the Sejong Institute? That’s it. Mr. Hyeon-woo. The basic evaluation is a pass. And… you’re going to take the hunter ability test too, right?”

“Yes.”

At Hyeon-woo’s answer, the official glanced at Hyeon-woo.

“Then the test will start a little later, so don’t leave and take the guidebook. This time, it’s being conducted in collaboration with the Taesung Clan, so it will be very different from the existing tests. Even experienced people will participate, though not at a high level. The government seems to want to push the Baekdu Dungeon攻略 [Baekdu Dungeon Conquest] quite a bit.”

The official said that and sighed deeply.

“Don’t hate me even if it sounds like a *kkondae* [a condescending older person]. I’m telling you because you still look young, but being a hunter may seem glamorous and cool, but they’re all working with their lives on the line. It’s no different from being a mercenary. Quite a few people die. I don’t know if you’re just going to collect *sujeong itggi* [crystal moss] in a 1-star dungeon and sell *gobeullin seullaim* [goblin slime] byproducts to make a living, but there’s no point in being greedy after seeing people like Lee Ji-tae, Park Do-ryeong, or Oh Dae-seong.”

It was a *kkondae*-like tone, but there was regret in her tired voice.

“When hunters who came to renew their abilities suddenly disappear, there are usually four endings. They died. They became disabled. They went to a mental hospital. They went to prison. There are very few cases where they come to their senses and retire, but even in those cases, they don’t leave completely.”

“I see.”

“There was someone, what was his name? Someone who received a 4-star rating but didn’t become a hunter and became a scholar instead. Was it Maria Keller? Anyway, people laughed at that girl, but I thought she was smart for not doing something like being a hunter. After all, only a few hunters make good money, so why are they so desperate to be hunters?”

“It might not just be about money.”

Hyeon-woo shrugged and replied. She raised her tired eyes and looked at Hyeon-woo.

“Then what is it? Honor? Power?”

“A sense of duty to protect humanity?”

Hyeon-woo’s words were half a joke. After all, Hyeon-woo was determined to seize all the money, honor, and power.

But it was half serious. Hyeon-woo had already seen the ruined future. And Hyeon-woo had no intention of living in such a future. He was planning to greedily enjoy wealth and honor in a peaceful and sunny future until he died.

“You never know. Someday, the dungeon difficulty might rise to a level that humanity can’t handle.”

For example, fine dust instantly kills people, or swarms of mosquitoes fly around that you mistake for clouds, or humanity is destroyed and monsters replace the population.

He didn’t give such specific examples, but it was enough to make the official think. After thinking for a moment, she nodded.

“That could be true. When that time comes, I, who thought hunters were fools, will be the fool.”

She took the stamp and stamped Hyeon-woo’s ability user registration card. And along with the registration card, she handed over a thick file.

“It’s the hunter registration test guide and the published by the *Jeon-neung-ryeon* [All-Abilities Federation]. It contains things to watch out for in dungeons, hunting tips, etiquette among hunters, emergency contact information, and *sajeonjeogin* [encyclopedic] information about monsters, so be sure to read it. It will help you survive. The hunter ability test is also themed around dungeons.”

Hyeon-woo smiled.

“I’m really curious. What a dungeon will look like.”