Jung Minhyun.
The man Kim Muhyuk remembered had been an anomaly hunter, and a drunkard who spent most of his time soaked in alcohol.
But the Jung Minhyun standing before Kim Muhyuk now was an eighteen-year-old boy who got wildly excited just from holding a single branch that had fallen off an anomaly.
“My place is kind of dirty, so just sit anywhere.”
Kim Muhyuk watched Jung Minhyun roughly shove away the books and snack bags scattered around the room with his feet to make a place to sit, and thought,
The way he lives looks about the same then and now.
Thick horn-rimmed glasses. A checkered shirt and wrinkled jeans that had clearly been worn after only the most halfhearted washing.
The forearms showing beyond his sleeves were so thin they looked like they would snap if someone flicked them.
No matter how anyone looked at him, he did not suit the image of an anomaly hunter. He had what people commonly called a nerdy appearance.
It’s a miracle someone like that became an anomaly hunter.
His stamina was weaker than an ordinary person’s, and his combat ability was not something anyone should expect much from.
Even so, there was one reason Jung Minhyun had been able to work as an anomaly hunter.
When it came to knowledge of anomalies and ways to handle them, he was better than hunters called first-rate.
He had the ability to quickly identify an anomaly’s patterns, weaknesses, and countermeasures no matter what kind he encountered.
He was a third-rate who couldn’t do anything alone, but with the right team, he could do more than a first-rate hunter’s share.
But in this life, Kim Muhyuk had no intention of making Jung Minhyun become an anomaly hunter.
Kim Muhyuk sat down casually on the floor and looked around.
“Looks like you live alone in a studio?”
“My parents live in Daejeon. I came up here by myself because of university.”
Five years from now.
A Great Anomaly would appear in Daejeon without any warning, harm hundreds of people, and then be suppressed.
Jung Minhyun’s family had been included on the list of the dead. After that, Jung Minhyun, who had been a promising university student, became an anomaly hunter.
Kim Muhyuk knew all of it, but he pretended not to and asked,
“A university student? You don’t look it.”
Because he could see Jung Minhyun’s mouth twitching with the urge to brag.
Soon, he was able to hear a story he had heard dozens of times from the boy while drunk.
“High school was kind of boring, so I dropped out, studied on my own, and got into university. It wasn’t that hard...... Have you heard of XX University?”
The university Jung Minhyun attended was one of the most prestigious in Korea.
It was also one of the few schools with a special department.
Jung Minhyun placed the branch on top of his specialized microscope and said,
“I’m a student in the Department of Anomaly Studies.”
“Seemed like it.”
The walls of Jung Minhyun’s studio were plastered with photographs of Great Anomalies like posters.
His bookshelf was packed with university textbooks, foreign magazines, and all kinds of papers. Every single one of them was about anomalies.
“But where did you get this? Something this fresh is hard to find even on the black market......”
As if the sight of him trembling in fear of Kim Muhyuk until only a few minutes ago had never happened, Jung Minhyun started chattering familiarly the moment he saw an anomaly-related object.
Seeing in that image the talkative drinking buddy of his previous life, Kim Muhyuk gave a faint laugh and asked,
“What does MyriapodLover mean? You like the ones with a lot of legs even among anomalies?”
At that, Jung Minhyun pushed up his horn-rimmed glasses with his middle finger. It was a timid expression of displeasure.
“Excuse me, but please refrain from mentioning usernames outside the board.”
Jung Minhyun was active on a community board called Anomaly Mania under the username “MyriapodLover♥.”
He was a fixture of the anomaly community, a named user who boasted knowledge that could put experts to shame.
Kim Muhyuk remembered how he used to tell stories like heroic legends about winning keyboard battles against master’s and doctoral students who majored in anomaly studies.
He does have a temper in his own way, but......
Kim Muhyuk had no intention of giving up control of this conversation.
He did not have time to listen to the endless flood of chatter that would pour out once the floodgates opened.
Kim Muhyuk took back the branch placed on the microscope and smiled coldly.
“Seems you’re already comfortable with me after exchanging a few words.”
“......No, that’s not......”
“Then what is it? You put someone else’s property on a microscope and tried to examine it without permission. How am I supposed to take that?”
Kim Muhyuk had briefly returned to the tone he had used during his wandering-martial-artist days, tossing out each word flatly. To Jung Minhyun, it felt no different from a threat.
He’s scary as hell!
For an ordinary boy of high-school age, enduring the gaze of a trained martial artist was difficult enough. On top of that, Kim Muhyuk’s eyes were fierce enough for Shin Kangheon to acknowledge them.
“I-I was wrong. Please spare me......”
Jung Minhyun, who had briefly gotten excited over seeing an unknown anomaly fragment, quickly became polite again. His hunched shoulders trembled thinly.
“Good. I’ll let it go just this once.”
“Thank you......”
Having succeeded in establishing discipline at once, Kim Muhyuk nodded.
“Then let’s get to the point. The truth is, I came here because I want to consult you about a certain anomaly.”
“Consult...... me?”
Kim Muhyuk spoke honestly without hiding it.
“I’m preparing for an anomaly hunt. The target is a Great Anomaly. The branch you were examining until just now is a fragment of it.”
“A Great Anomaly......!”
Jung Minhyun was so shocked by the words Great Anomaly that he could not even breathe properly.
“No one would believe you even if you told them, but it’s better not to go around talking about this anywhere.”
Kim Muhyuk leaned toward him and lowered his voice to a whisper.
“Because from that day on, you’ll never be able to log into that board you like again.”
“......Y-yes, yes, yessir! I absolutely won’t say anything, so please don’t worry!”
Jung Minhyun flinched and trembled as he answered under the hand patting his shoulder.
Judging that he had made himself understood well enough, Kim Muhyuk grew serious again.
“I’ll tell you the details if you accept this offer. We don’t have time, so I want you to decide right now.”
“U-um, sorry, but this is too sudden......”
No matter how much he liked anomalies, the martial artist who had barged in out of nowhere was frightening, so Jung Minhyun was about to refuse.
But Kim Muhyuk’s next words made him stop.
“Obviously, I’m not asking you to do it for free. I plan to pay you a proper consulting fee.”
At the mention of money, Jung Minhyun’s eyes wavered.
“......How much are you paying?”
Just by looking around the semi-basement studio where he lived, it was obvious Jung Minhyun was not financially comfortable.
He said his family wasn’t exactly well-off either.
Still, offering too large a sum might have the opposite effect, so Kim Muhyuk thought for a moment before answering.
“One small one.”
When Kim Muhyuk raised one finger, Jung Minhyun looked startled.
“Y-you’re giving me one million won? By small, you don’t mean one hundred thousand, right?”
Kim Muhyuk briefly recalled the money sense of an eighteen-year-old, then scratched his cheek. The moment he nodded, Jung Minhyun shouted,
“I’ll do it!”
“Tell me your account number.”
For an eighteen-year-old who had lived his whole life liking nothing but anomalies and knew nothing about the world, one million won was already a sufficiently large amount of money.
Jung Minhyun gave him the account number with a trembling heart.
A moment later, Jung Minhyun’s eyes went wide when he checked the number of digits in the money that had arrived.
“T-t-t-ten million won? You sent it wrong.”
“I sent it right.”
Jung Minhyun’s hands trembled at the huge amount of money appearing in his account for the first time in his life.
“You’re really giving this to me? You’re not going to harvest my organs later, right?”
“That’s half the advance. If your consultation helps the hunt succeed, I’ll give you another ten million won, so work hard.”
“This is insane......!”
For Kim Muhyuk, it was a cost he could invoice to the Transcendent Extremity Gate later anyway.
If he could get proper consultation, it was nothing.
Jung Minhyun, who had gone blank for a moment and then returned to his senses, asked with a grave expression.
“......We need to write a nondisclosure agreement, right?”
“I know your address and your name. Why would I need that?”
Jung Minhyun’s face went pale at the joke that did not feel like a joke at all, but Kim Muhyuk continued without caring.
“The target is called the Giant Tree Ghost.”
Kim Muhyuk explained as much as he could in detail, combining the information about the Giant Tree Ghost he had seen at the Transcendent Extremity Gate with what he had discovered himself.
After listening intently for a long while, Jung Minhyun’s eyes shone as he said,
“So it’s like a walking banyan tree. There have been a few cases of similar anomalies appearing in India, Southeast Asia, and Hawaii, right? As far as I know, none of them reached Great Anomaly class, but there’s exactly one case worth referencing......”
“The banyan tree colony that appeared in Hawaii. Each one wasn’t much by itself, but as a colony, it was evaluated as Great Anomaly class.”
When Kim Muhyuk smoothly brought up a foreign anomaly case ordinary people would have trouble knowing, Jung Minhyun’s eyes began sparkling.
“Oh! You know your stuff too, bro?”
The eyes of a fanatic who had discovered someone he could actually talk to began to shine.
Most of it is stuff I picked up from you, though.
When Kim Muhyuk gave him a few appropriate responses, Jung Minhyun quickly grew excited again.
After rattling off everything from the origin of the banyan tree colony anomaly that occurred in Hawaii to the problems with how it had been handled, he suddenly turned on his laptop.
“Wait a second!”
When he launched [Anomaly Hunt Simulator ver3] from one corner of the laptop screen, a simple pixel game opened.
“I made this for fun a while back.”
When he selected the anomaly type in the search bar at the top and typed “tree,” a list appeared in a long scroll.
After he clicked <Banyan Tree> among them, a pixel-form anomaly appeared on the left side, and several items appeared on the right.
[Physical Attack] [Spellcraft Attack] [Attribute Attack]
[Pattern Strategy] [Weakness Strategy] [Trap Installation]
“Want to give it a try?”
When Kim Muhyuk selected [Physical Attack] from the six options, another range of choices unfolded.
[First-rate experts: 0] +- [Select Weapon]
[Pinnacle experts: 0] +- [Select Weapon]
[Supreme masters: 0] +- [Select Weapon]
It was a game with crude design and so much text it overflowed. The method of having to input every single thing one by one was cumbersome too.
But Kim Muhyuk felt as if he had seen an entirely new world.
“I made it little by little with the guys I used to hang out with on the board, but they’ve all quit now, so I’m the only one updating versions.”
Inside this simulator was information on anomalies more extensive than any encyclopedia, entered by anomaly maniacs who had dug up cases from all over the world.
Of course, some parts were forced. For example, martial artists’ abilities were simplistically turned into numbers according to their level, and so on.
But Kim Muhyuk had the experience and ability to distinguish what was possible in reality from what was impossible.
“......So that was the skill you polished through games.”
“What was?”
“Just something.”
The Giant Tree Ghost hunt, which he had thought he would have to rely on only data and imagination for, was starting to take shape little by little.
“Can we input data for the Giant Tree Ghost too?”
“If you click here, you can enter a new anomaly. The more information we have, the better, but let’s use estimates for anything missing for now.”
Once they input the information into the simulator and ran it, they were able to assume several specific situations.
As Kim Muhyuk revised the data bit by bit in the middle, it became much more refined.
“Ah! How about this method? We would need a few hard-to-get chemicals and spellcraft tools, though......”
“We can get all of them. Wait. This pattern strategy here is forced, isn’t it?”
The two of them stared into the laptop and ran the simulator, losing all track of time.
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