Copying Runes to Become the World's Strongest - Chapter 47

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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 47
News that the top spot on the first floor of the Tower’s ranking had changed shook not only South Korea but the entire world.
Media outlets across several countries splashed the story across their front pages.
[The Top Spot Changes Hands—Is the Established Order Crumbling?]
[No One Stays on Top Forever… The ‘Derek Shock’ Sweeping the Globe]
[Derek, the Comet Who Came Out of Nowhere—Who Exactly Is He?]
The leading Hunter powers took the news just as heavily.
They were coming forward with statements, saying they were searching for a way to respond immediately.
For them, it was as if a crack had split open a fortress wall they had believed would never waver.
‘What exactly do they plan to do about it?’
Hyeonjun had just come home from the hospital.
He was watching the news while eating dinner with his younger sister.
“Is that really such a big deal? Everyone seems to have gone crazy over it all day.”
“It is. Every Awakened starts with five runes for free. Even by F-Rank standards, they’re worth at least a million won.”
“Wow~ So it’s really that good.”
The broadcast kept running statements from officials of each nation before soon moving on to the next story.
That next story was about the Awakening Management Bureau searching for Derek.
“Whoa, they’re offering ten billion.”
Hyeona sounded impressed.
Hyeonjun’s mouth fell open, and his spoon slipped from his fingers.
‘Te-ten billion?’
Not one hundred million, not one billion, but a full ten billion.
Hyeonjun’s brow furrowed deeply.
‘No matter how desperate they are, ten billion is ridiculous.’
Still, I could understand why they’d do it.
He had overtaken the number one who’d been sitting at S-Grade, so the expectation must be that the other floors would follow suit.
Even so, the sum remained enormous, no matter how you looked at it.
‘What should I do.’
If I make contact with the Bureau, I’ll have to account for my identity being exposed to the outside world.
The real problem was the danger that would come with that exposure.
It wasn’t rare for a talented Hunter to turn up dead out of nowhere.
‘That’s just a scheme to keep rivals from pushing past them in the Tower rankings.’
Some call it a war in the dark.
It mostly happens in places like Russia or China, but there are rumors that plenty of other casualties never make the news.
I had only one life, so staying wary to the very end was the wise course.
‘I don’t want to tell anyone until I’m strong enough to protect myself properly…’
A risk I would gladly avoid if I could.
But giving it up felt like too much to lose, given the sum.
Ten billion, no less.
This was a major gamble even for the Bureau.
‘How many runes would ten billion buy?’
It could take me close to C-Rank.
But right now, there was something I wanted even more than runes.
‘Ten billion could buy Moonlight Tree Sap, too.’
Even if I reached C-Rank, I couldn’t earn that kind of money quickly.
If I came into that money, I wouldn’t spend it on rank advancement. I’d want to free my mother from her suffering as soon as possible.
“Hmmm…”
Hyeonjun fell into a deep, troubled silence.
It was an evening of mounting worries.
***
Beijing, China.
Inside the Supernatural Public Security Bureau, the government agency that handles anomalous spaces and Awakened, a meeting was in full swing.
“If they manage to identify this man Derek, there’s a high chance Director Choi Jaeil will move in person.”
“Where is the Director right now?”
“Inside the Management Bureau. Our internal agents report there’s no outside movement yet. Nam Jaewoon, his confidant, is also staying at home.”
“What about communications?”
“Both phone and messenger are under real-time surveillance, but there’s no news of note.”
Chen Xuan, Director of the Supernatural Public Security Bureau, let out a breath of relief.
So even within South Korea, Derek’s whereabouts still seem to be a complete mystery.
“And the Guild still hasn’t made any moves either, right?”
“Yes. Not yet.”
“Keep watching. Check online too, continuously.”
“Understood.”
Knock, knock.
Just then, a staff member in a suit entered after a knock at the door.
“He’s arrived.”
“Tell him to come in.”
“Understood.”
Before long, the staff member returned with a young man whose hair had gone completely white.
The man kept his eyes closed, so gently, as if he were blind.
“You’ve come a long way. Thank you for your trouble.”
“Oh, no, it’s nothing. Thank you for calling me.”
“Your name?”
“It’s Hao Jie.”
“A big, brave man, is it? A fine name.”
“T-thank you.”
The man appeared quite nervous.
Chen Xuan seemed pleased by the attitude, and gave the man’s shoulder a gentle pat.
“I hear that you can’t see what others see, but in exchange, you see what others can’t. What exactly do you see?”
“Well… I can’t explain it precisely. What I see depends on what I’m trying to see.”
“Can you find someone using a specific keyword?”
Hao Jie hesitated before answering, clearly unsure of himself.
“If you can find even a small hint, your life will change.”
“…I’ll try.”
Chen Xuan nodded toward the staff member.
The staff member leaned in and whispered quietly into Hao Jie’s ear.
“One who climbed the first floor of the Tower.”
“The first floor of the Tower…”
Hao Jie muttered to himself and concentrated.
The senses that had been open so keenly to the world faded away, and the inner self, once filled with a bottomless darkness, slowly began to brighten.
An inner world spread out like a night sky full of stars.
On that black canvas, countless stars strung themselves into long lines, then scattered, over and over.
After many attempts, a single image took shape in his mind.
It was the scene of some event where a great many people had gathered.
“I-I see it! Give me a pen and paper, please!”
Hao Jie spoke urgently.
He had to capture it on paper before it vanished.
“Here you are.”
A pen was pressed into his hand.
Hao Jie quickly sketched the image from his mind onto the open sheet of paper.
And soon, a finished drawing.
It showed a stage with several people on it, and several more watching from below.
“It’s done.”
Hao Jie didn’t set down the pen until he had rendered even the words on the banner above the stage, as if drawing them like a picture.
Right after, the image in his mind disappeared.
“Is that all?”
“Yes. That’s everything I saw.”
Chen Xuan flipped through the paper with a disappointed look.
From this alone, there was no way to tell what connected it to Derek.
“I think you need to give him a more direct keyword.”
At Chen Xuan’s words, the staff member whispered again.
“The current first-place holder on the first floor of the Tower, the one recorded in the ranking as Derek.”
Using that keyword as a basis, Hao Jie set about forming the image once more.
Again, the stars moved in the same way.
Just as a face shape was taking form and features were about to be carved into it…
‘…!’
As if a power outage had struck, the stars vanished in an instant.
‘What, what is it?’
The world, now dark with the stars gone.
That world began to sink into an even deeper darkness.
‘That’s strange. This has never happened before.’
No matter how many more times he tried, the result was the same.
But Hao Jie didn’t give up.
This was his chance to personally expose the “Tower Thief” who had thrown the nation into an uproar.
It was an opportunity to catapult his fame, which currently amounted to nothing more than a neighborhood fortune-teller’s, straight into the realm of the century’s great Prophet.
A grand slam that could turn his entire life around—he couldn’t just let it slip away.
‘Just a little longer…’
Perhaps his desperate prayers had worked.
Something took shape above the pitch-black darkness.
It was an eye, shut tight.
It was so enormous that it filled the entire darkness.
‘An eye? Why would—?’
At that moment, the eyelid flew open.
Hao Jie came face to face with the colossal eye.
Unknown characters were etched along the edge of the pupil.
He had barely been lost in its mystery for a moment when the pupil flashed crimson.
“Aaaah!”
Hao Jie clutched both eyes and rolled across the floor.
A searing, stabbing pain surged over him.
A burning heat spread from his eyes through his entire head.
“Aaagh! Aaaah!”
Hao Jie thrashed about.
Blood sprayed in every direction.
“W-what’s happening to him?”
Chen Xuan, flustered.
The sudden bizarre behavior froze everyone else in the conference room where they stood.
“Gyaaaaah!”
“What are you all doing, just standing there?! Get him out of here!”
Chen Xuan shouted in a panic.
Only then did the agents snap back to their senses and quickly haul Hao Jie away.
“Hah… This is exactly why we shouldn’t bring in someone who hasn’t been vetted.”
“I-I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s all because that woman vanished all of a sudden.”
Chen Xuan ground his teeth.
Bringing in Hao Jie, a man who was barely known beyond some small town, had been nothing more than a fallback option.
There was someone truly trustworthy he had been counting on, but that person had suddenly gone silent, and his attempts to reach her had failed.
‘That woman doesn’t even know which matters more, national business or her own affairs… she’ll bleed for this someday.’
The air in the conference room settled, heavy and still.
Chen Xuan ordered the blood on the floor wiped up, then examined the sketch Hao Jie had left behind.
“What’s this… characters? It looks like Hangul…”
He hadn’t noticed at a glance, but now he could make out what appeared to be writing on the stage.
Because it had been drawn like a picture, it was hard to recognize at first glance.
“I don’t want to trust him, since he seems like a strange one…”
Still, there was nothing to lose.
He ordered one of his agents to interpret the characters.
The result came back quickly.
“It’s written as ‘E-Rank Orientation Closing Ceremony.'”
“E-Rank Orientation?”
“There’s a project of the same name recently launched by the Korean Management Bureau. It’s presumed that this depicts the scene from that event.”
“What exactly is this project?”
“It’s a sort of educational curriculum offered to E-Rank Hunters. The first round recently ended, and they say that in the first round, they selected those who had performed well on the E-Rank Hunter Exam and ran the program with them.”
Chen Xuan’s eyes sharpened at once. He couldn’t dismiss it outright, since the pieces fit together in a way that was hard to ignore.
“Don’t tell me a man named Derek took part in this?”
“I’ll look into the records.”
“I don’t need general details. I need material that shows his actual abilities. Footage, for instance.”
An agent who had contacts with an insider at the Management Bureau.
After a while, a reply arrived.
“They say all related video material has been destroyed.”
The deletion of the footage.
It was bad news, yet Chen Xuan only curled up the corners of his mouth.
Data that didn’t need to be erased.
The fact that it had been deleted was read as an attempt to hide something.
“And the rest?”
“The participant hunter list and the final ranking list were small in size, so I made copies in advance.”
“Good. Assign people only to the hunters in the top rankings. Even if he took the buff by sheer luck, he’s probably got some real ability.”
“Shall we send him back to our homeland?”
“Hmm……”
An abduction dressed up as a repatriation.
Chen Xuan weighed it carefully.
‘If I move recklessly and catch the eyes of other nations, that’s its own problem.’
The United States or Japan, for instance.
To check their rival, the People’s Republic of China, they would try somehow to shield South Korea, a third country.
If it came out, a diplomatic dispute would be unavoidable.
‘As long as no one finds out, it’s fine, isn’t it?’
Besides, those imperialist bastards and their lapdogs wouldn’t even imagine that we had narrowed it down to this point.
‘Let alone those dim-witted Bangzi.’
The incompetence of South Korea’s officials was well known.
Right now, Supernatural Public Security Bureau agents infiltrating the Awakening Management Bureau without being detected were proof enough of their inefficiency.
‘Even if they’re discovered, I can just cut off the tail.’
Chen Xuan issued his orders.
“Dispatched agents must be C-Rank or above. Take South Korean nationality and keep the numbers to a minimum.”
“Understood.”
Chen Xuan crumpled the sheet of paper with the sketch on it and smiled with a faint, sour curl of the lips.
“Let me show you, clearly, what happens to those who covet the seat of the great nation……”

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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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