Chapter 12 (1/2)
The waiting room was filled with various emotions.
“…Uh… uh…”
“Whew, I got it!”
The heightened tension stemming from the Association President’s announcement erupted at once.
“Huh?”
“…Uh…”
One by one, the candidates began to notice the incredible figures at the top of the chart.
Candidate No. 0942 – Oh Yoo-seong: 781 points.Candidate No. 0211 – Lee Un-seol: 247 points.
“Is that even real?!”
A candidate’s score was composed of two parts. First was a capture score, which added 1 point per person captured, and included a +5 / -3
The second part was a loot score, where you obtained the score of a person you captured.
Other successful candidates’ scores average between 20 to 30.
Their captures were usually the weakest people.
In fact, a lot of them avoided battle and just tried to survive.
If they encountered someone whom they thought was equal to them in terms of strength and skill, they decide to escape or call a truce, even without speaking.
It was because of this that Yoo-seong’s score was a difficult thing to understand.
First, he captured 46 people. Even if he received 5 points out of each capture, the total would only be 230 points.
Getting 5 points on all captures is already a monstrous feat.
If his total is 781, then it meant…
Lee Un-seol was speechless.
‘Score difference… 534…’
She understood what it meant.
Just getting perfect captures wouldn’t bring him to 781.
It meant that the 46 people caught by Yoo-seong were powerful, high-scoring candidates.
She was defeated by the quality of Yoo-seong’s prey.
She turned around. Oh Yoo-seong had disappeared from his seat.
Without thinking about it, she walked to his seat and sat down, burying her face in her hands.
The genius who was believed to be the best of her generation had just faced her first defeat.
The 29th Korea Hunter Licensure Test was over.
The record was set.
Oh Yoo-seong, No. 0942, was the top-notcher.
***
Yoo-seong was in the bathroom.
He was in really bad shape. As soon as he checked the results, he left the waiting room to return home.
However, as he walked down the hallway, he felt that he wouldn’t make it.
Instead, he went inside the bathroom, entered a cubicle, and sat on the toilet.
He leaned back and quickly fell asleep.
“…”
His soft snores rang inside the bathroom.
The hunters who watched him were right.
The reason Yoo-seong endured was from pure willpower.
Lee Un-seol, who thought that he looked worse than her, was also right.
The 72-hour march was harder than anything else. Even at the end of their duel, Lee Un-seol was the one who had more stamina left.
She was a genius.
A genius didn’t have to push herself to the limit of his physical strength.
However, Yoo-seong was different.
Of course, auto-hunting controlled his body, but it was his concentration that sustained it.
For eight months, he had endured hard training and tried to break his limit. In time, not only his body, but his mind became well-trained.
“…”
Sleeping proved to be a sweet endeavor.
Even if he was sleeping in the bathroom, in a ridiculous posture, it was a deep and refreshing reprieve.
His body was recovering at a fast rate.
The human body was indeed amazing. If it was not destroyed, it would keep on recovering and growing.
If the effort had gone beyond the body’s limits, then the recovery and growth would also be equally incredible.
It would go stronger, longer, and farther next time.
Perhaps Yoo-seong gained a lot more than a hunter’s license today.
***
It was 3 am when he woke up. It was cold and dark outside the test site.
“It’s crazy,” Yoo-seong murmured as he looked at the empty parking lot.
He had slept for hours in the bathroom.
“If I knew that would happen, I should have stayed in the waiting room and slept there instead.”
No matter how tired he was, how could he have slept on the toilet?
Still, he was glad. His body felt refreshed.