How long has it been since I ate something until I was this stuffed?

The soybean paste stew had been completely polished off.

Joo Jihye remained seated, still savoring the lingering taste.

She had been blessed with a constitution that meant she never needed to diet as a hunter, but this was the first time in the modern era that she had ever eaten her fill like this.

It felt as though the very meaning of the word delicious had been rewritten in her mind.

But that wasn’t all.

Once the other two had finished eating as well, strawberries were brought out for dessert.

This is impossible... How can they taste this good?

They tasted better than any fruit she had ever eaten.

Even the naturally grown strawberries from Hangyeong Department Store that had recently taken the world by storm couldn’t begin to compare.

Unable to contain her excitement, she asked,

“Where did you get these? The stew earlier was one thing, but strawberries this delicious...”

“Country food always tastes good. It’s made with love and care.”

“What kind of ridiculous—”

“Don’t get too curious. You might never get to eat them again.”

Oh Hyunseong answered curtly. Joo Jihye immediately snapped her mouth shut.

Wild fantasies flooded her mind. Perhaps this was a secret variety supplied only to figures far more powerful than her, or maybe he was receiving prototype food from some corporation through the terrifying network of connections that had allowed him to know Choi Jeongil and Han Suyeon.

“Mm, these really are delicious.”

Seeing Han Suyeon simply savoring the strawberries as though she already knew everything only fueled Jihye’s imagination further.

Whatever the truth was, though, she couldn’t bring herself to ask.

She instinctively knew that if she tried digging into it, she might never be allowed to eat the strawberries—or anything else—again.

Meanwhile, the heaping plate of strawberries quickly vanished.

“Then let’s get up. We’re done eating.”

“Where are we going?”

Joo Jihye was dragged out of the house for what they called the next item on the schedule.

Their destination was the large greenhouse below the house—the strawberry farm.

“Don’t tell me the strawberries we just ate came from here.”

“No. Those were a different variety.”

“Th-Then why are we here?”

“Why would you even ask? You ate, so now you have to work for it.”

Thump.

Oh Hyunseong answered as though it were the most obvious thing in the world and thrust a pair of gloves into her hands.

Why... Why am I supposed to be doing this?

Joo Jihye crouched between the rows of strawberries with a miserable look on her face.

As recently as yesterday, she could never have imagined herself doing something like this.

But when she glanced aside, she saw Han Suyeon quietly working behind her.

The deputy director of the Administration Bureau, someone who regularly visits the presidential residence, is picking strawberries in this backwater village... How does that make any sense?

That was why Joo Jihye kept harvesting strawberries despite her misery.

Han Suyeon, meanwhile, was calmly filling an entire basket.

She had already taken a hand hoe and dug through bare earth before, so this was hardly enough to faze her.

However, when her eyes met Oh Hyunseong’s across the greenhouse, she glanced behind her before speaking.

“Senior, it’s nice to see everyone working together, but why did you bring Jihye into your home?”

“I told you earlier. She’s here to recuperate. I brought her here to cure her.”

“You don’t seriously think she’ll get better just by breathing clean air and recuperating here, do you?”

Han Suyeon let out a short sigh.

“It’s been a year since her warning symptoms appeared. It wouldn’t be strange if her psychosis manifested tonight. No matter how stable she looks, she’s a ticking time bomb that could explode at any moment. You know that as well as I do.”

“Choi Jeongil told me something. Apparently, she ate strawberries grown in my field. Surprisingly, her condition improved while she was eating them.”

“What...? Strawberries? You mean the ones we just ate?”

“No. Not those. The ones we’re picking now.”

Oh Hyunseong explained the circumstances to her.

The strawberries grown in this field were the downgraded version intended for distribution, and Joo Jihye’s physical condition had noticeably improved after eating them.

“He said there was a visible improvement after she ate nothing more than the strawberries intended for distribution for a few days. If the spirits’ crops truly have that kind of effect, then Joo Jihye must either be unusually receptive to it or have a constitution that’s especially sensitive to change. That’s why I brought her here to test it myself.”

“Her aftereffects improved from eating strawberries...”

Han Suyeon murmured with a grave expression.

She fell silent, deep in thought.

“What are you thinking about so hard?”

“Nothing.”

Contrary to Oh Hyunseong’s expectations, she didn’t dismiss it as utter nonsense. She merely shook her head.

After all, she had recently experienced something strange herself.

That did not mean she accepted his theory, however.

“Haah. I think I understand now why you’re going this far. The person you’re really concerned about isn’t Joo Jihye—it’s Choi Jeongil, isn’t it?”

“I’m using the opportunity to run a test and do a good deed.”

“I’ll warn you now. Disposing of a high-ranking hunter isn’t under our jurisdiction. That’s the National Security Bureau’s responsibility.”

Han Suyeon’s expression turned quite serious.

“If it doesn’t look like she can be treated, don’t keep her here too long. You might get dragged into something troublesome as well. Even I’d have a hard time covering for you if that happened.”

“Don’t worry. It’s only for one week.”

Oh Hyunseong answered.

If there were no visible results within a week despite her continuously consuming produce from this place, then the supposed improvement she had experienced after eating a few externally distributed strawberries could only have been her imagination.

Still, there might be other variables involved.

Oh Hyunseong intended to give Joo Jihye a proper push so she could experience the effects within a short period.

And he wasn’t planning merely to feed her.

“In exchange, I’ll need you to help me.”

“We’re doing rehabilitation training. Come out front.”

“What? We only just finished harvesting the strawberries! And how are we supposed to do rehabilitation in a place like this...?”

Joo Jihye sprang up from where she had been lying in her room.

Oh Hyunseong casually dismissed her objections.

“I brought you here to cure your illness in the first place. You agreed to do as I said while you were staying here, didn’t you? Come outside.”

Oh Hyunseong shut the door and left.

Faced with his utterly uncompromising tone, Joo Jihye grumbled as she got up.

Even as she moved, however, her mind was full of doubts.

Rehabilitation training? There’s no way something like that could cure a condition even the director couldn’t fix.

Choi Jeongil was the head of a world-class hunter management company.

With the hunter industry as large as it was now, it would be no exaggeration to say that he was raking in money.

Yet he invested a substantial portion of the enormous income he earned from around the world into running a single nonprofit organization.

It was a research and treatment institution dedicated to reducing the burden hunters suffered from repeatedly entering Gates and finding a way to restore the resilience they had lost.

Its treatment facilities in particular were renowned for being comparable in scale to the hospitals operated by the Administration Bureau.

Despite pouring so much money into the endeavor, however, Choi Jeongil had failed to find even the slightest answer to the psychological damage suffered by hunters.

None of the many treatments Joo Jihye had tried had produced any effect.

There was no chance that some rehabilitation training in a rural village without even basic equipment would help her recover.

“Huh?”

But when she stepped outside, Han Suyeon was waiting for her instead of Oh Hyunseong.

She greeted Jihye as though she had been waiting for her in the middle of the empty lot.

“Don’t tell me you’re the one giving me rehabilitation training...”

“That’s right. Senior asked me to give you some advice on controlling mana.”

“Advice...”

Joo Jihye swallowed hard.

She was a hunter who primarily wielded mana rather than relying on physical ability.

If just anyone had approached her and claimed they could teach her how to control mana, she would have reacted with strong indignation.

After all, it was her area of expertise, one she had cultivated all the way to rank 10.

Of course she took great pride in it. She had to.

Unlike those amateurs who depended solely on their special constitutions and cobbled together crude techniques through experience alone, she possessed both talent and a solid grasp of the fundamentals.

She had even received several private lessons from Choi Jeongil himself.

But this time, she felt no resistance whatsoever.

Her heart was merely pounding with excitement.

“Before we begin in earnest, would you demonstrate your ability for me?”

“Yes...!”

After taking a deep breath, Joo Jihye used telekinesis.

There was nothing nearby to manipulate on the empty lot, yet the space around them was instantly saturated with mana.

Han Suyeon nodded at the overwhelming degree of control, which surpassed her expectations.

Her mana control is already at the highest level. She could never have reached this point without both talent and effort... But that much is only natural for hunters at this rank. Even among them, there are bound to be differences in skill!

Unlike ordinary hunters, whose abilities were generally comparable, the world of elite hunters at rank 10 and above was different.

Even among hunters of the same rank, there were often such stark differences that it was difficult to believe they belonged in the same category.

With such a large range of ability, the disparities were inevitably just as great.

“The units and overall volume of mana you control are unusually large. But compared to the amount of firepower you can produce, you lack precision.”

“The director advised me to accept that tradeoff to capitalize on my ability’s strengths.”

“That makes sense in terms of efficiency, but we might as well refine it further. Once you understand the trick, it’s simpler than you might think.”

Han Suyeon approached Joo Jihye and corrected the pathways of her mana.

“Try channeling your mana through the pathways I’ve marked out.”

“Y-You can construct a formula like this? But it’s so complicated that I’m not sure I could use it in combat...”

“This is a practice formula meant to help you learn the sensation. You’ll have to compress it into something much simpler for actual combat, but that’s beyond you for now, so let’s begin with a taste of it.”

“I’ll try.”

Joo Jihye swallowed hard and circulated her mana.

She closed her eyes—a habit she had abandoned after her first year as an awakened hunter because it was useless in real combat—and focused completely. Even so, it didn’t work nearly as well as she had expected.

An ability-type hunter’s true skill lay in compressing formulas.

Yet even this practice formula was so difficult that the thought of eventually compressing it made her head spin.

“Don’t rush to deploy it quickly just because you’re concerned about speed. Focus on constructing it with greater stability and precision. Highly concentrated mana produces far more power even at the same output. Then you won’t have control of your mana stolen so easily and be left helpless like yesterday, no matter how great the difference in raw power.”

Hunters approaching psychosis all shared one trait.

Their expression of mana grew aggressive and unstable.

The mind and body inevitably influenced each other, and mana could not escape that influence.

Conversely, if she could suppress that instability, she would gain greater control over herself and potentially slow her deterioration, even if only slightly.

Rrrrrumble!

“D-Did I do it?”

“Well done. That was enough to give you a taste of it, at least.”

She finally succeeded after more than a dozen attempts.

Sweat soaked her forehead, but Joo Jihye wore an enormous smile.

Without Han Suyeon’s guidance, she would never have even conceived of deploying mana this way, much less succeeded or failed at it.

She still had a very long way to go, but if she could master it, she would make tremendous progress.

“We’ll discuss the theory in earnest tomorrow. For now, let’s finish by having you experience what happens when that formula is deployed properly.”

Hummmmm!

Han Suyeon brought her hands together and released her mana.

She was using the same formula Joo Jihye had just attempted.

But the surrounding air began to tremble faintly, and a brilliant blue light spread outward, swallowing everything around them.

Fwoooosh!

My... My God...

Joo Jihye stood frozen in place.

It was as vast and deep as the sea, with no end in sight.

Serene, yet containing immense destructive power—it sent a thrill through her, as though demonstrating firsthand what true mana was.

Han Suyeon had not even used her special constitution. She had merely deployed pure mana, yet it was enough to fill Joo Jihye with awe.

Flash!

It ended as Han Suyeon withdrew her mana.

Joo Jihye remained dazed for a while before bowing deeply.

“Th-Thank you so much. I learned a great deal.”

“Don’t rush. Take it slowly. A week isn’t long, but it should be enough to stabilize you considerably.”

“What? An entire week?”

“Is that too long?”

“No! That sounds wonderful!”

The lesson had been on an entirely different level.

Even Choi Jeongil, who had personally instructed her several times, only ever used mana as a supplementary tool and had never reached such heights.

No, there was no comparison at all.

She had never imagined she would witness something like this in a rural village.

Her gratitude toward Oh Hyunseong for dragging her all the way here suddenly began to swell.

“My part is over, but Senior will be coming for your next training session.”

“Training? But... what could he possibly teach me? He retired as a hunter years ago, and I can’t even sense any mana from him.”

“You’re joking, right? You’ll have far more to learn from him than from someone like me.”

Han Suyeon chuckled.

Those were not empty words.

To her, the very fact that she was being used as a point of comparison was absurd.

He had been the strongest hunter of his time, but he had also been its greatest instructor.

The only problem was that his infamy had been equally impressive.

Step.

Oh Hyunseong appeared at just the right moment.

The sight of him made Joo Jihye’s jaw drop.

“Wh-What is that? Why are you wearing those ridiculous sunglasses?”

“A strong mind resides in a strong body. Trainee Joo Jihye, you will undergo a rehabilitation and training program for the remainder of your stay. I expect your full cooperation.”

“No! I’m asking what those are!”

“You need not worry about your insomnia keeping you awake. The instant your head touches the pillow, I’ll have you dead asleep within one second.”

Oh Hyunseong spoke in an impossibly rigid tone.

With sunglasses over his eyes and a cap pulled low over his head, he had clearly gone to great lengths to prepare for the role.

“Urgh.”

Watching from beside them, Han Suyeon shuddered involuntarily.

She shook her head and hurried back into the house.

If I keep watching that... I’ll end up dreaming about boot camp tonight.

Chapter 19

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