Copying Runes to Become the World's Strongest - Chapter 43

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 43
“…He just walked out?”
The Deputy Guild Master’s office at KS Hunters.
Seo Kevin nodded, his expression bitter.
“He left without listening to anyone’s proposal.”
“Huh…”
Deputy Guild Master Choi Juhyeon was dumbfounded. He had specifically sent Kevin after watching that footage.
And the guy didn’t even hear the offer before storming out of the room.
He couldn’t begin to guess how arrogant the kid must be.
“Any chance he’s already signed with someone else?”
“No.”
Kevin cut him off flatly.
The reactions from the other big guild representatives were enough to tell him that much.
If someone had already recruited him, those reactions wouldn’t have been possible.
And he wouldn’t be going to some small or mid-sized guild instead of a major one.
“Then why on earth…?”
“Beats me. Nobody knows.”
Choi Juhyeon clicked his tongue and crumpled the document bearing Hyeonjun’s personal information.
“Forget it. No point dragging in someone who doesn’t want to come.”
A promising rookie ranked E.
Yes, his skill was impressive, as they had confirmed, but there was no need to stake everything on one person.
This was KS Hunters.
A guild riding on the back of KS Group, one of South Korea’s leading conglomerates.
Even if South Korea had fewer Awakened than other countries, that was hardly a worry for KS Hunters, where talent flocked on its own.
It was obvious who would be the one to regret it.
“There are plenty of promising rookies who’d jump at the chance to join us even without that guy.”
“So we just let it go?”
“If you’ve got time to spare, go chase after him some more.”
Kevin shrugged.
“Let’s drop it.”
“Sorry, I wasted your time for nothing. I should’ve sent someone else.”
“It’s fine. I just wanted a rough sense of what the Management Bureau’s new project is like.”
“Does he look promising to you?”
The reason KS Hunters was putting this much effort into it was that the Management Bureau had launched this new project.
Since they had personally bowed their heads and asked for support, they intended to align themselves with the Bureau’s policy as closely as possible.
That was precisely why they had decided to pour several hundred billion won into new investment in developing rookies.
“Honestly, I’m skeptical. You’ve seen the footage too.”
Aside from a few exceptions, he hadn’t been all that remarkable.
If that was the level of the very top E-Rank, then the ones below were plain to see.
Exactly what everyone pictured as Low-Rank Hunter-level skill.
Searching through that lot for a gem would hardly catch anyone’s eye.
“We shouldn’t start off like this. I’ll have to scale back the support.”
Aligning with their direction was, after all, a matter for when potential was visible.
In its current state, there was no point in investing a large sum.
“Good work. Go on in and get some rest.”
Kevin left his seat.
Choi Juhyeon’s lips twitched, and he tilted his head.
“Something feels off.”
***
“Woohoo~”
Hyeonjun, stepping out of the Exchange.
He had just finished unloading everything he’d gathered up until then.
On the receipt, in the fee column, was printed the figure 0%.
“It’s really free~”
Even after selling the items, until the settlement came through, he’d wondered whether this was a dream or reality.
Only now that he saw the number in black and white did it finally feel real.
“I’m probably the first person to get zero fees, right?”
The clerk handling the transaction had seemed genuinely amazed, too.
“Hehehe.”
A laugh slipped out on its own.
Passersby stared at him strangely, but Hyeonjun didn’t mind.
“Gotta keep that receipt safe.”
My first transaction with zero fee.
I planned to keep this receipt safe until the day I die, as a keepsake.
“I’d love to throw myself a party.”
I felt like celebrating the permanent zero fee with a party of one.
But I had already lost time to the orientation.
I couldn’t afford to waste any more of it.
‘Let’s absorb the runes right away.’
Hyeonjun opened his bag.
Runes were piled inside it to the brim.
After a week of grinding like a madman, I’d managed to buy as many as 34 Runes of Magic Power at once.
‘The settlement came out to more than I expected.’
Hyeonjun thought back on the past few days.
I’d never hunted that hard before.
The only thing I skipped was sleep. My actual hunting time was longer than ever.
‘Basically it was eating, pooping, sleeping, and hunting. That was it.’
And on top of that, zero fee.
If I’d had to pay the fee, they would’ve taken 20% of the sale price.
Even a rough estimate puts it at no less than ten million won.
That’s enough to buy more than five more Rune of Magic Power.
‘Zero fee, hallelujah!’
Silently praising the zero fee once more, Hyeonjun opened his Stat Window.
‘Mana is at 32 right now.’
I’d used up all of today’s Copy allotment to absorb runes.
If I absorb the additional runes I just bought, that brings me to 66.
‘Going by the Copy Skill alone, that’s four days.’
If I hunt as hard as I did over the past week, I can shorten the period even further.
‘I was thinking of taking it easy, but I guess I need to push hard for a few more days.’
Hyeonjun headed straight for the hunting ground.
Two days later.
With dark circles deepening under his eyes, Hyeonjun was faced with the message he had been waiting for.
[Sufficient power has accumulated in the Primordial Soul Circuit.]
[The rank of the Primordial Soul Circuit will change. -> ]
A message announcing the rise of his Soul Circuit rank.
The moment the message appeared, Hyeonjun felt the change within his body, just as he had during the last rank increase.
The heaviness he had felt when shifting from F to E-Rank.
The density of that heaviness grew even greater.
‘So this is D-Grade……’
As Hyeonjun clenched his fist, savoring the surge of power.
Another message appeared before his eyes.
[The entry conditions for the have been met.]
[As of now, you may enter the anytime, anywhere.]
The Tower, one of the Anomaly Spaces.
It was a place he could enter once his Soul Circuit reached D-Grade.
“I never thought I’d live to see this message.”
He had known for a long time that reaching D-Grade would bring a message granting entry to the Tower.
But he had never imagined the day he would actually see it.
Those days, just surviving from one day to the next had kept him busy.
Even daring to imagine D-Grade had been a luxury.
“……Gets me a little choked up, somehow.”
Over what, really.
Hyeonjun wrinkled his nose and wiped at his eyes.
“Doesn’t seem like I got any new skills, though.”
Not that it really mattered.
I’d already figured out that the Primordial Eye trait works on a slightly different principle from other traits.
‘Discernment and Analysis. Every other skill I’ve gotten so far has been unconventional too.’
So there was no reason to be disappointed that my rank went up but no skill appeared.
It was a trait that could grant new skills at any time, in any place, in any way.
“Whew… Well, I’ve been promoted, so let’s go see.”
Hyeonjun stepped out of the emergency stairwell.
He was at the hospital.
Passing patients in their gowns and nurses on their rounds, he finally reached his mother’s room.
It had originally been a six-person ward, but once Delayed Treatment began, she was moved to a private room.
“Mother. Your son’s back.”
The Special Treatment Pod, prepared for Delayed Treatment.
His mother lay peacefully inside it.
Hyeonjun studied her slowly through the transparent capsule.
Just as the hospital had informed him a few days ago, some of her fingers had turned a grayish color.
Even at a glance, the texture looked hard.
It was Petrification, a Complication.
“It must be so hard for you.”
She had reportedly suffered several seizures as well.
Even with Delayed Treatment underway, it had been this bad. He didn’t want to imagine what might have happened if the timing had slipped even a little.
“I’m sorry. I should have noticed sooner.”
Hyeonjun raised his hand and gently stroked the capsule.
Regret and longing mingled in his eyes.
It wasn’t his fault, yet he felt unbearably guilty all the same.
“I’ll cure you soon.”
Hyeonjun’s eyes now burned with a fierce resolve.
With his mind made up, he activated the skill.
[Activating .]
[Information]
-Name: Yoon Sujeong
-Age: 48
-Trait: Unawakened
-Status: Multiple illnesses [, ]
The information window appeared.
It was no different from before.
Hyeonjun checked .

-A mutation of existence occasionally caused by Dimensional Contamination. If left untreated for a long time, there is a high likelihood of Petrification symptoms appearing.
-Treatment: Discerning…
Hyeonjun’s eyes widened.
Unlike last time, when he’d been told the skill’s rank was too low to discern anything, this was different.
‘It works.’
He had worried he might need to raise the rank even further, but thankfully that wasn’t the case.
‘It’s taking a while, so I guess D-Grade is borderline.’
Hyeonjun waited for the result, his heart trembling.
He had faced many tremors in his life, but none had carried tension like this moment.
‘Please.’
Setting aside how difficult the cure would be, he only hoped the message reporting a failed discernment wouldn’t appear.
“……”
As Hyeonjun’s heart thudded violently.
Time flowed on, indifferent.
Every second began to feel like hours.
How long had he waited like that?
Just as he began to feel something was off.
[Discernment complete.]
The message appeared before Hyeonjun.
The information window for Void Sediment had been refreshed.
-Treatment: Consume .
“Void Liberation Elixir?”
[Would you like to check the recipe for ?]
“Thank goodness.”
Hyeonjun let out a breath of relief.
I was starting to worry it would just give me a name and leave it at that.
Thankfully, the System wasn’t so unreasonable as that.
“Show me.”
With Hyeonjun’s reply, a new information window appeared.
The recipe listed the detailed ingredients needed to brew the Void Liberation Elixir.
<Void Liberation Elixir Recipe>
-Ingredient 1: Colossus Heart (1)
-Ingredient 2: Moonlight Tree Sap (1)
-Ingredient 3: Dawn Grass (5)
-Ingredient 4: Primordial Tower Fragment (10)
“Hmm…”
Hyeonjun rubbed his chin as he studied the ingredients.
Every single one of them was hard to come by.
The Colossus Heart first.
It was an item dropped by the Giant Rock Golem, a monster that appeared in D-Rank and higher Closed Gates.
It was in high demand, since it was needed to craft mid-grade and higher armor, but obtaining it was a real pain.
‘Its durability is weak, so if you just hunt it recklessly, it’s easy to break.’
Defeating the monster wasn’t the end of it.
Harvesting it also required delicate work.
Anyone could take one down, but not just anyone could get their hands on it.
For those reasons, it was fairly expensive.
‘As far as I know, there aren’t many of these on the market to begin with.’
Since there was steady demand for this kind of item among certain circles, it rarely made it onto the public Exchange.
There were two ways to get it.
Hunt it yourself, or grovel before whoever bought these items.
There was no option to simply buy it on the Exchange.
‘If you wanted to buy this on the Exchange, you’d have to keep your eyes glued to it all day long. Who has that kind of time to waste?’
A pretty high wall right from the start.
The second one was no different.
‘Moonlight Tree Sap…’
It was an item obtained from the Giant Ancient Tree, which only appeared in A-Rank and higher Dungeons.
It was one of the core ingredients for top-grade recovery potions, and on the Exchange it traded for upwards of ten billion won.
And even at that price, it sold out quickly.
‘That’s several times harder to get than the Colossus Heart.’
How on earth was he supposed to get this one?
He was still a long way from A-Rank.
And saving up ten billion would take quite a while, too.
‘Even if I save it up, it’s not like I can definitely buy it.’
Hyeonjun could already feel a headache creeping in.
‘Thank goodness the third one is easy.’
Dawn Grass appeared in the middle floors of the Tower.
It was grass infused with the light of dawn, and its special property was that when ingested, it could deal extra damage to certain targets for a set period of time.
It was mainly used when facing monsters of the dark attribute.
‘It’s not like I couldn’t get it on the Exchange, either.’
There was plenty of supply, but the price was a bit steep.
Compared to the previous two, it was easier, but that didn’t mean it was something you could get for free.
‘I could buy it if I had to, but it’s a waste of money when I can just get it in the Tower.’
The Tower.
Like the Closed Gates, once you went in, you couldn’t come out until you cleared that floor.
Because of that danger, Hyeonjun hadn’t even considered entering the Tower, not even after reaching D-Rank.
‘But if things have come to this, the story changes.’
I have to get Dawn Grass.
And I need to raise a huge sum of money to get the other ingredients.
Anomaly Spaces are lucrative precisely because they’re dangerous, and the Tower was no exception.
At this point, hesitating over the Tower was a luxury only a well-fed person could afford.
“The last item seems connected to the Tower too.”
Primordial Tower Fragment.
He had never heard the name before, but since it contained the word “Tower,” it was presumably something that came out of the Tower.
“Looks like I’ll have to go in.”
Making the decision didn’t require a moment’s hesitation or any grim resolve.
He had already made up his mind to do anything at all to wake his mother.
“Should I go in once, right now?”
He had already packed all his gear into his backpack, planning to check the treatment method at the hospital and then head out to hunt.
He had watched countless Tower clears since long ago, so he had every detail of them memorized.
[Would you like to enter the ?]
The moment he thought about entering the Tower, a message appeared before his eyes.
Hyeonjun nodded vigorously.
[Entering the .]
[ An error has occurred.]
[The has refused the user’s entry.]
[The user in question cannot enter the .]
[Searching for a new that meets the conditions.]
“⋯⋯?”
Hyeonjun stared at the message with a puzzled look.
‘What’s going on?’
Before he could even feel confused, a new message appeared.
[A new has been discovered.]
[Would you like to enter the ?]

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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