Copying Runes to Become the World's Strongest - Chapter 46

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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 46
South Korea, a nation that had never once taken the top spot in the Tower.
There had been a fair number of competitive Hunters, but their ranks were thin, so the country had always made the safe choice of following behind other nations.
If someone went into the Tower and failed to clear it, leaving them unable to come back out, the loss wouldn’t be limited to a single guild. It would be a loss for the entire country.
That was why the shock of the sudden message hit so hard.
In that moment, it wouldn’t have been strange if the time of every Awakened in South Korea had stopped altogether.
[???????]
The free board on Hunternet.
It was a place where new posts appeared every few seconds, but the moment the message appeared, uploads came to a halt.
After that brief silence, the first post to appear had a title crowded with question marks.
From that post onward, the mood of the board changed completely.
[What the hell is this?]
[?????]
[What’s this Conqueror’s Blessing thing?]
[Is this a bug?]
[Someone bet the whole country on a game of Monopoly or something]
[Still half asleep or what]
[Can’t breathe]
[Is every country except Korea going to be wiped out?]
[jdrbrbjrbd]
[Oh, holy shit]
Posts with titles that openly showed confusion lined up one after another.
[Waiting to connect to the service.
The Hunternet web server is responding slowly due to a flood of concurrent users. Please try again shortly.]
The server had crashed for the first time in its existence, unable to withstand the traffic.
Restoring it took several dozen minutes, but even after it came back online, the Awakened’s excitement refused to settle down.
[hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha]
[R E P U B L I C O F K O R E A]
[Who’s Derek?]
[lol Reddit’s losing its mind]
[From now on let’s call it Dae-Hanminguk]
[My hands and feet are actually trembling right now]
[Breaking) OP has acrophobia now]
[Wait, are we really first?]
[How is this even possible?]
[Info) Let’s look into the Conqueror’s Buff]
[What am I even looking at??]
[I thought first place was impossible to take?]
It wasn’t just Hunternet that reacted this way.
-Wait, what?
The Awakened who were running live internet broadcasts felt the same way.
Faces frozen in an instant.
The chat windows, too, stalled for a moment before starting to scroll upward at a dizzying speed.
-First place in the Tower what??
-Is this for real?
-Holy crap
-Whoa
-Lived long enough to see Korea get the Tower buff
-Thought it was a troll but wait, it’s real???
Breaking news also began airing on the regular news broadcasts.
At first, it was just a short caption.
Then it was delivered directly through the anchor’s mouth.
-Breaking news. Just a short while ago, around 12:05 PM, Derek, a Hunter with South Korean nationality, reportedly achieved first place on the first floor of the Tower and acquired the Conqueror’s Buff.
News that spread fastest among the Awakened.
It didn’t take long for the wave to reach ordinary citizens.
“Apparently our country took first place in the Tower?”
“Huh? For real?”
“How is that even possible? Korea never even made it to the top floor.”
“Apparently it’s first place on an existing floor, not a new one.”
On the streets, everyone was talking about the same thing.
In that moment, it wouldn’t have been strange if every citizen of South Korea was talking about the same thing.
To have claimed the Tower’s #1 Buff, and to have knocked the existing rankings off the top, was news of staggering magnitude.
“Find a Hunter with the name Derek!”
Meanwhile, the Management Bureau was in an uproar of a different kind.
For most Awakened it was simply a cause for surprise and celebration, but for the Bureau it was a moment of life or death.
Derek might become a powerful weapon to cover the chronic shortage of Hunters that had been tormenting South Korea for so long.
By any means necessary, they had to secure this newcomer and draw him to their side.
This wasn’t about bringing him into the Management Bureau.
He had to be kept firmly rooted on South Korean soil.
“There’s no one named Derek!”
“Does anyone know someone with the nickname Derek?!”
“What if his name is Daeil? Then Derek could just be his nickname!”
“Search for Daeil, Daehee, Daehyuk, anything at all!”
The operations command room, used only in emergencies.
Less than thirty minutes after the incident broke, the emergency response teams scattered across various departments had all gathered here.
Watching staff shouting amid the wall of monitors, Director Choi Jaeil pressed a hand to his forehead.
“We have to catch him somehow.”
Failing to find him wasn’t the real worry.
The true problem would arise once he naturalized overseas.
South Korea had already lost one talent the heavens had gifted it.
She had been a promising prospect, the kind expected to grow strong enough to catch up with the other advanced nations and claim the top spot at the very peak of the Tower.
Yet she had been offered a tremendous deal by an overseas Guild and had vanished in an instant.
That had been the first of many; talent after talent slipped out of South Korea.
‘They’re really naturalizing, and every time they keep taking the top spot…’
Choi Jaeil thought back.
It had been ten years ago already.
People call that unprecedented crisis the Michelle Hong Exodus.
Even now, just thinking about it sent a chill crawling up his spine.
‘A second exodus must be prevented at all costs.’
Back then he had belonged to the Management Bureau, but he’d held no administrative authority.
He’d been forced to swallow his outrage, watching Hunters vanish right before his eyes.
Having to endure that experience twice was out of the question.
The public’s resentment didn’t frighten him.
What truly terrified him was the ruin of South Korea, which a second exodus would set off.
“Team Leader Park.”
Choi Jaeil called out to the team leader commanding the emergency operation on the ground.
Even amid the frantic shouting, the team leader turned his head at once to the low sound of Choi’s call.
“Yes, Director.”
“Run ads in every media outlet. Anyone named Derek who contacts the Management Bureau gets 10 billion won in cash.”
“T-ten billion won, sir?”
“Is it too little? But there’s no choice. That’s all the cash the Management Bureau can mobilize right now.”
The team leader fell silent.
He wasn’t thinking it was too little; he was thinking it was a lot.
“Oh, and of course, identity verification is required. The condition is that he clears the second floor right then and there.”
“…Understood.”
Choi Jaeil clicked his tongue quietly, arms folded.
‘I hope the response comes in time…’
To some, wagering a sum as enormous as ten billion won might look like foolishness.
He might be a Hunter who could only wield his strength on the lower floors, or he might lose the top spot again just as he had taken it.
Still, Choi Jaeil didn’t hesitate.
Competition for Hunter talent was a battle between nations.
To their rivals across the world, ten billion won wouldn’t be all that much money, after all.
‘All we have is speed in our response and the Nationality Bonus, that’s about it.’
He could only hope this would be settled by the end of the day.
***
The Conqueror’s Blessing, commonly known as the Tower’s Buff.
It’s a Buff obtained by claiming the #1 spot on each floor, and its benefits go to the nation the climber belongs to.
Its recipients are limited to the Awakened of that nation, and in this era the Buff is known as ‘national power.’
For reference, South Korea had never once obtained this Buff.
“To think I’d earn that Buff with my own hands.”
Hyeonjun stared at the Information Window before him, still unable to believe what he was seeing.

-A buff granted upon achieving first place in the floor-by-floor Ranking of the Tower. It applies to all Awakened of the nation that received the blessing, and it does not affect Soul Circuit promotion.
-Effect: Slightly raises the five major Stats while inside an Anomaly Space.
Hyeonjun opened his Status Window.
Just how much had his Stats gone up?
Plenty of numbers were floating around online, but none had ever been officially announced, so he needed to confirm them for himself.

-Strength: 2 (1+1)
-Agility: 2 (1+1)
-Stamina: 2 (1+1)
-Mana: 2 (1+1)
-Willpower: 2 (1+1)
One point per Stat.
Add them all up and you get five.
A single buff had raised five Stats.
‘Looked at like this, it’s not a particularly high number.’
For a first-place buff, one with such rarity, the figure was modest.
But the truly terrifying part was something else.
‘This buff stacks.’
Take the first stage, for example, which is granted from Floor 1 to Floor 20.
Suppose you took first place on every one of those floors.
The individual Stat bonuses alone would come to a staggering 20.
Add everything together and you get 100.
‘A hundred runes…’
And they weren’t ordinary runes, either. They were major Stat Runes.
Measured by F-Grade runes, their value wasn’t that impressive, but the key point was that Conqueror’s Buffs carried no grade restriction.
In other words, everyone from F-Grade all the way up to S-Grade could benefit.
‘The higher the grade, the more each one is worth. Hundreds of millions, billions, tens of billions… and beyond that.’
That was what made the buff so absurdly overpowered.
It lifted the floor for lower-tier Hunters while simultaneously pushing the limits of top-tier Hunters far beyond their ceiling.
‘And the even scarier thing is that this kind of buff doesn’t end at Stage 1.’
Stage 2, Stage 3, Stage 4…
The stages rose every twenty floors.
Unofficial reports held that the Stat increase grew by one at each stage.
‘Stage 2 gives 2, Stage 3 gives 3…’
Of course, collecting several of these buffs was no easy task.
Still, a few nations had managed it.
The United States, China, India, Russia, Japan, France, and others.
‘Among them, the United States and China stand far ahead.’
One pushed with money, the other with sheer population, so the results followed naturally.
Twenty-plus buffs apiece, and that was only what they owned.
They still stood at the very front of the buff race.
‘The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.’
Strong Hunters took first place, grew stronger for it, and with that added strength claimed even more first places.
Now and then, a floor whose conditions favored certain abilities came along and snatched the lead from them, but that had never dented their dominance in the slightest.
‘And I just took one of those bastards’ buffs.’
Hyeonjun grinned.
He couldn’t help but feel good about it.
After all, the first-place holder on Floor 1 had originally been China.
‘I hate both China and the United States, but China is the one I hate more.’
Two nations obsessed with poaching talent from other countries.
The United States sneaks people out.
China takes them right out in the open.
And on top of that, China even goads everyone.
He still remembered it clearly.
An official from the Supernatural Public Security Bureau, China’s agency dedicated to Awakened, had left behind an interview after naturalizing a Korean Hunter.
-Korea doesn’t even have as many Hunters as China, but the quality is good. We’ll keep taking them, so please keep that pathetic system of yours just the way it is.
The remark came from an official of the Supernatural Public Security Bureau, China’s agency dedicated to Awakened, after they had naturalized a Korean Hunter.
“South Korea doesn’t have nearly as many Hunters as China, yet the quality is good. We’ll be bringing them over often, so please keep your system just as shoddy as it is now.”
Back when I was a kid, I remember how unfair and infuriated I felt watching that interview on TV.
I couldn’t sleep properly for days, and Mom ended up taking me to the hospital.
‘Even now, it makes my blood boil.’
It wasn’t as bad as back then, but the anger still simmered just the same.
‘Come to think of it, I once set myself a goal back then.’
Now that things have come to this, I remember it.
A goal I’d given up on long ago and forgotten.
‘I told myself that once I became a Hunter, I’d land a punch on them.’
I remembered ranting in front of Mom, all fired up.
Mom had smiled and told me to go for it, for sure.
If anything, it was just a childhood memory.
“And now I’ve finally pulled it off.”
Was that all, though?
Until now, common sense had held that if you reached first place among S-Grade players, you couldn’t have your Buff taken away.
That was how the United States and China had built their Empire, and it had looked like an iron fortress that would never crumble.
But today, cracks had split that towering wall.
From now on, China would—
No, every nation that held a Buff would.
“They can’t feel safe anymore, can they?”
Hyeonjun curled the corners of his mouth upward.
China wasn’t the only one. How many other countries had done things that threatened South Korea’s Hunter security?
They hadn’t bragged about it openly, but every one of them had pursued an aggressive recruiting campaign, all aimed at pulling Hunters into naturalization.
And many Hunters had, in fact, taken that road to citizenship.
‘If you think about it, they’ve had a hand in the rise of Villain crimes, too.’
So this was, in a way, a campaign of revenge.
If not for them.
If they hadn’t taken Korean Hunters away.
Mom wouldn’t have ended up like this.
“Well, the government’s incompetence is a big part of it, but…”
He had cursed the government thousands of times already.
Now was the time to let that anger out into the open.
“Just wait. I’ll take everything that’s left, too.”
Now, the first floor.
There was still a long way to climb.
In the Primordial Tower, he could take first place on every one of those floors.
“That’s only if I get an S-Grade, of course.”
S-Grade was the highest rank.
It wasn’t a result that would fall into your lap for free.
“I can’t let my guard down. I’ll prepare thoroughly, too.”
Hyeonjun hardened his resolve and left the Tower.
His condition was good, and he would have loved to climb one more floor, but the Tower had a limit of once a day.
“Phew.”
Back at the hospital.
As much time as he had spent inside had passed outside as well.
Hyeonjun looked at his mother, still sound asleep, and spoke with pride.
“Mom, remember what I said before? After I saw that bald guy’s interview, I said I’d land a punch on China. Well, I finally did it.”
Of course, no answer came back.
Still, Hyeonjun felt, for some reason, that his mother was smiling.

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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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