Chapter 10

"Why did you get ready so early? You just need to take the elevator down."

"I woke up early," Han Tae-un replied.

"Is the dormitory livable? How's this room?"

"Yes. It's good."

"That's great. I asked them to give you the room next to mine. No one wants to use the room connected to mine. I'm treated like an outcast here."

"..."

"It's even better that you like the room."

Soram stretched while peeking into Tae-un's room.

To Tae-un, whose line of sight was higher than Soram's head, a single strand of hair sticking out like a leaf was very noticeable. Whether Tae-un, who had various feelings about the hero he saw on TV, rolled his eyes in discomfort or not, Soram continued to speak while standing in his disheveled attire.

"Today's your first day at work, right?"

"Yes."

"You'll probably spend the morning doing administrative tasks and attending training sessions. If it ends early, come back to the dormitory and rest. There are no other team members right now, and I have to attend a meeting in the morning. There won't be anything to do even if you go to the office alone."

"Is it okay to do that during work hours?"

"Rifts don't discriminate between day and night when they erupt, and we have to rush out whenever we're called. It's meaningless to set fixed work hours. Oh, starting today, you'll also be wearing this, Han Tae-un ssi."

Soram raised his left hand as he spoke. The pager strapped to his wrist was still worn despite him being in his pajamas.

"Then, see you later. Don't eat lunch. Let's eat together. I'll get going now."

Soram closed the door arbitrarily, just as he had when he came. Tae-un sat on the living room sofa after turning his head as if gauging the other side of the wall.

It was a little past noon when Soram called Tae-un again. This time, it wasn't a knock but a phone call.

"Han Tae-un ssi. Come down to the 13th floor."

Soram was standing right in front of the elevator on the 13th floor when it opened. Unlike earlier, he was wearing a neat suit, having mentioned a morning meeting.

Soram looked at his wrist and smiled. Tae-un's wrist was fitted with the same black band-shaped pager as his own.

"Let's go. It's your first day at work."

Soram pointed inside the corridor.

"The 13th floor here is used as the office floor for the Field Operations Bureau. From the front, it's Team 1, Team 2 in order... Oh, our team is Team 7. The very last team. I didn't mention this, did I?"

"I heard from the director. You are the team leader of Team 7, and I will be joining as a team member under you. Should I call you team leader?"

"I prefer being called by my name. The overall atmosphere in the Field Operations Bureau is like that. It's a place where age hierarchy doesn't hold much meaning, you know."

Hunters have varying awakening ages and grades. In actual combat, the grade expressed in numbers takes precedence, but as it is still a civil servant society, there are distinctions based on years of service, such as junior, senior, manager, and chief. And the new junior member Tae-un, who just joined today, followed behind Soram.

"This is Team 2, Team 3... Teams 4, 5, and 6 have more members, so they took slightly larger rooms."

Soram stopped in front of a door.

"This is the Team 7 office."

"..."

The Team 7 office was at the very end of the corridor. In a word, the impression was... small.

For example, the spacious room known as the Team 4 office had a distance of over twenty steps between the Team 4 nameplate and the next Team 5 nameplate. But for Team 7... it was barely ten steps. The size seemed more like a school classroom rather than an office for a single team.

The words "I'm treated like an outcast here" that Soram had casually mentioned in the morning echoed in Tae-un's mind.

"Let's go in."

Soram opened the door and entered, seemingly aware of Tae-un's gaze but remaining nonchalant.

The interior was divided into two spaces. On one side were partitioned desks for work, and on the other side was a round table with four chairs and a whiteboard. Behind it, a door with "Team Leader's Office" written on it was visible.

At first glance, the Team 7 office was almost identical to the scene of a small company with few employees. Except for the weapons casually placed on the desks and various spots.

Soram turned on the lights as he entered the office. In other words, no one had come to work until now. There were hardly any traces of people maintaining and using the office interior. When Soram turned on the heater on the wall, some warmth finally circulated.

"Sit down. The other team members will arrive soon if you wait a bit."

"Yes."

Soram, who sat in front of him, turned on his tablet and opened the email he received in the morning.

"Let's see. Although it hasn't been long since you awakened as a 1st grade, you have experience working as a 3rd grade, so your combat abilities are very stable. You also have some experience in eliminating rifts."

He quickly skipped over the parts written in the introduction. Anyway, this part was just the preface. And he immediately arrived at Tae-un's comprehensive ability assessment table.

Soram's mouth gaped open inwardly.

'Hah...'

What kind of person is this?

No matter how much he had ignored Tae-un in his previous life, he knew that Tae-un was a considerably strong hunter. But confirming it with the values organized by the research lab made him chuckle in disbelief.

The report displayed the ability values in a hexagonal shape across six categories. The farther from the center of the hexagon, the stronger the ability, and the more even the shape drawn within the regular hexagon guideline, the more balanced the abilities were developed. If the shape was distorted, it meant that a particular ability was specialized.

And Tae-un's was a perfect regular hexagon that filled the guideline tightly. The speed score was slightly lower, but when averaged, it easily surpassed the standard for a 1st-grade hunter.

There are moments when an ability that is extremely specialized to the point of exceeding the guideline is needed, but for now, Tae-un's ability values were in the most ideal form. The moment they saw this result, the headquarters must have vowed never to send Tae-un back.

And there was one more surprising point.

"Special Ability - Unclassifiable"

Special abilities referred to the unique abilities given to awakeners in addition to the universally developed strength, speed, and senses. Examples included the ability to fly like Soram.

Special abilities are usually derived from the earnest wish made just before awakening. It's not for nothing that books like "How to Dream of an Awakening Wish" became popular, as people's earnest desires influenced their awakening. Well-known touching true stories include a mother who awakened the ability to heal wounds after discovering her critically injured child.

The abilities granted differently according to each individual's circumstances become the core skills of the awakeners or are used in a way that adds synergy to their attacks. The fact that this was marked as unclassifiable meant that Han Tae-un completed the hexagon-filling score without a special ability. In other words, his basic ability values that increased upon awakening were excellent in themselves.

If he had been taught well from the beginning, he would have grown much faster.

In his previous life, even after being on the same team as Tae-un, Soram continued to avoid him, run away, and push him away. But in this life, he had no particular intention of doing so. Honestly, looking at that face of a twenty-six-year-old who knew nothing, a bit of irritation did arise... but at the same time, there was also a sense of resignation. Unlike himself, Tae-un alone was facing a new beginning, and Soram put down the tablet in front of him.

"You would have learned all the theories during the training, so I'll briefly hand over the work done in the team."

"Yes."

He opened a white notepad. The pen that swiftly moved wrote "Field Operations Bureau" and drew a circle around it. A line extended downward from the circle, and "Team 7" was written.

"Within the Rift Management Headquarters, all awakeners belong to the field departments. Our team is under the Operations Bureau, one of the two field departments. The basic job of hunters in the Field Operations Bureau is to resolve incidents related to rifts. In addition, we sometimes respond to requests from the department in charge when natural disasters occur."

"Yes."

"The Operations Bureau consists of 1st grade, 2nd grade, or 3rd grade hunters specialized in combat abilities. Other teams are called Team 1, Team 2, and so on, but our Team 7 has a separate nickname. Everyone else calls us that too, so you've probably heard it already. We're the Flight Team."

Both the director and the training instructor had referred to Team 7 as the Flight Team once. Soram wrote "Teams 1-6" to the left of "Team 7" and drew a line between them. Below "Teams 1-6" was added "Ground Teams," and below "Team 7" was added "Flight Team."

"The criterion for this division is whether the hunter is capable of self-flight."

Soram raised his head to look at Tae-un.

"You can fly, right? Like me."

"Yes, although not quite like you, Jin Soram ssi."

"The detailed conditions of the ability will vary depending on the awakening wish. Anyway, Team 7 is the Flight Team, consisting of rare members who can fly on their own and possess a certain level of combat power."

"Aren't there many hunters capable of aerial combat?"

"It's different from leaping. There are scary ground team hunters who can jump up to the height of a 5-story building with a single leap, but only those who can float in the air against gravity using their own power are considered flight. Simply put, people who can remain in place even if the floor collapses right now. This narrows down the range significantly."

Two stick figure drawings with circles and straight lines were added to the notepad. Under the figure drawn below the ground teams, a curved line was drawn, indicating jumping up from below, and the figure under the flight team had wings drawn on its back. The drawings were so poorly done that anyone else might have burst into laughter, but Tae-un looked at them with a serious face.

"We may not be stronger than the ground teams, but in a city where high-rise buildings are densely packed like this, there are tasks that only we can do. Those tasks will come to this team."