# Chapter 85
Where could such a smell have come from? Perhaps it was from that valley water earlier? Or maybe that exploded fish, though grotesque in appearance, had such a sweet smell. They say sweetfish smells like watermelon, after all.
With these thoughts, Lee Hwan sniffed the inside of his jacket and hurriedly suppressed his gag reflex as the fishy smell surged up among the sweet scents.
“Ah, shit…”
Yes, the disgusting smell was definitely from the dungeon. Then where did this sweet scent like crushed wild berries come from? For a moment, he recalled something he’d once read in a martial arts novel about a “Ten Thousand Li Fragrance” that could be planted on someone to track them from great distances, but he dismissed the thought as too ridiculous.
Even in an era where people could break through walls and fly, no one practiced internal energy cultivation or used sword qi. There were a few eccentric hunters who carried impressive-looking swords pretending to be martial arts masters, but even they used anti-monster firearms when no one was looking. Life was more important than keeping up appearances.
While lost in thought, the number of vulture mimics had increased. Somehow, five or six more had joined the group. They hadn’t attacked yet, but their flying posture seemed ominous.
Lee Hwan stopped his wandering thoughts and focused on his ability. Smells aside, he needed to deal with them first. At the same time, he could check his ability’s growth and see if there were any changes he should be aware of compared to before.
The space he designated around himself slowly expanded. The size, which had been growing by spans, hesitated after reaching a radius of about 8 meters.
Perhaps he could make it larger without straining himself. Focusing on his amplification skill while releasing his ability, the size of the designated space gradually increased without putting undue strain on his body.
Before obtaining the amplification skill, and certainly before the regression, he would have felt dizzy trying to control such a large space. But now, both his vision and mind couldn’t be clearer. A satisfying sense of achievement pleasantly filled his chest.
That’s when it happened.
‘This smell…’
Lee Hwan caught the subtle fruit scent wafting around him again. Surprised, he flapped his jacket, and the smell became even stronger than before.
‘Could it be coming from me?’
For a moment, he stupidly wondered if he had eaten too many sweet things. He briefly considered whether he should use a civilian glucose test kit. But soon he recalled that the smell spread when he used his amplification skill, and his expression turned serious.
Just to be sure, he released more of his ability, and the smell intensified. When he drew out his power to what felt like a borderline strain, even the fishy smell that had permeated his suit seemed somewhat masked.
Only then did he realize. This smell was… ominously flowing out along with his amplification skill.
An apple smell accompanying an A-rank skill. Suddenly, he remembered a ridiculous skill stone discovered in Korea that briefly flashed through his mind.
Despite being A-rank, its only ability was to emit an apple scent from the body—that useless skill stone, apple smell. It seemed so much like a joke that no one believed it at first, and for a while afterward, it became the butt of jokes in the hunter community, the new grape…
‘No way… could this be that?’
It couldn’t be. With that thought, he tried to calm himself by taking a deep breath, but when the sweet scent tickled his nose, his heart raced even more.
In the past, that skill stone was owned by the son of a congressman with a low hunter rank. Everyone snickered about how he’d obtained some strange skill stone from who knows where, but in reality, he had swallowed something extraordinary.
‘His hunter rank must have increased by at least one level.’
Pearls before swine, wasn’t that the saying? Searching his memories, the man never became a renowned hunter despite this. He made a few appearances here and there riding on his father’s fame, but without the skills to back it up, even that minimal attention didn’t last more than a few months.
In the end, despite consuming the skill stone, he faded very dimly and lightly from everyone’s memory. Last he heard, the man had joined a mid-sized company and was living comfortably—but had he survived the monster wave well?
‘Normally, skills like amplification couldn’t be obtained even with money… Naru must have diverted skill stones for lobbying.’
Damn it. The government and Hunter Association’s unusual favoritism toward Naru wasn’t just for trivial reasons like the “trickle-down effect.” Secret experiments catering to those in power, excellent tongue-wagging to lick their backs…
If he had to guess, those attribute minerals were also probably sold off somewhere as bribes. That would have further solidified their position as the top company.
How could such trash exist? Considering their personalities, it was fortunate they had only sold off skill stones and minerals rather than the country itself.
‘Well, since the monster wave was probably their doing too, they effectively sold out humanity in the end.’
After his regression, every sewer he investigated had Naru’s footprints. They were truly remarkable collectors of sewage.
Screech- Kak-!
Ah, shit-!
Ah, shit-!
As Lee Hwan released a bit more of his ability, the vulture mimic flock started spinning in place. They looked quite bizarre, like drones with one part smashed. Lee Hwan first set up a shield a little ahead of him and again inhaled the fragrance spreading from his body.
Rather than an apple smell… it was more precisely the fresh, green scent of wild fruit. Like the smell when cutting open unripe cornelian cherry fruit.
That tree had been planted in the flower bed of the apartment where his family lived when they were all still alive. Fascinated by the strangely-shaped fruit, young Lee Hwan would occasionally pick and split open the hard, bluish-green flesh.
It was a bit sweeter and tangier than the smell he remembered from back then, but it was closer to that than to apples. Suddenly feeling as if memories were coming back to life, Lee Hwan buried his nose against his wrist and took a deep breath.
This must be considered closer to a penalty than a skill effect, since it’s hard to see it as beneficial.
‘The penalty is relatively light. No, should this even be called a penalty?’
What harm could come from his body odor changing every time he used his skill? He would just smell more fragrant during battles. It might even be lucky, being better than sweat.
Thinking that way, it was like a windfall, but Lee Hwan still felt uneasy.
‘That can’t be right.’
There was once a religious group that claimed Awakened people’s abilities were borrowed from divine power. That various side effects appeared because they couldn’t handle that power.
Of course, the scientific community laughed it off as nonsense, and Lee Hwan himself maintained that there was no God in this world, but he somewhat agreed with the idea that disadvantages from ability backlash could be considered penalties.
The fruit scent seemed too friendly and sweet to be considered a disadvantage. He couldn’t help worrying about what kind of trick might be hiding behind it.
Kak!
Kak-!
The loud noise pulled Lee Hwan out of his thoughts again. The shield rippled as several vulture mimics bounced off it softly—he hadn’t even noticed when they’d charged.
They stubbornly rushed at him again even after hitting the wall. In that short time, their round eyes had turned alarmingly red.
‘What’s with them now?’
Keeaak-!
A flock of vulture mimics, easily more than twenty, swooped down. The red-eyed birds struck down with such force that the shield wavered.
“Ugh!”
What was happening? He had never heard anything about these monsters going berserk. As Lee Hwan released more power to maintain his shield while thinking this—
Ah, shit- shit- eeek-!
The birds began to thrash violently. The increasingly distorted sound of their own voices turning grotesque was quite chilling.
‘This… could it be…’
The vulture mimics were responding to the amplification. No, they were going berserk because of this unidentified smell.
Watching the monsters charge as if intoxicated by the fragrance, Lee Hwan once again recalled the numerous musk monsters he had encountered in gates.
“Huh.”
Lee Hwan gaped in astonishment. An unfortunate hypothesis crossed his mind. The scent currently spreading didn’t seem to be just a simple fruit smell.
As evidence, long-horned crickets were also approaching, making rustling sounds through the grass as if about to take flight. What business did monsters from another zone have here? Their already reddish cricket eyes had now turned almost horrifyingly crimson.
‘Fragrant battle? Some kind of windfall? Damn it all…’
As Lee Hwan suspected, the apple smell wasn’t entirely a good symptom. It was just speculation, but… this seemed to be, in an incredibly unlucky way, a pheromone that attracted monsters.
“Huhhh…”
To think that he would end up stimulating monsters, not humans. While he didn’t particularly want to drive humans into a frenzy with pheromones either, at least they could communicate through language.
In contrast, these crazed creatures were foaming at the mouth and rushing in desperately. Despite Lee Hwan rapidly firing his Dolpeung, they charged forward with a determination to take even one bite, their bodies breaking apart as they came.
Eventually, during a momentary lapse in concentration, one cricket broke through the shield and flew at him with a rustling sound, its rough wing surface touching his fingertips. Lee Hwan felt goosebumps rising all over his back.
“Waah! Get away, get away!”
As he struck it with his fist, slimy green fluid flowed over his hand with a disgusting sound. Lee Hwan, losing his composure, drew up his ability and expanded his control range with all his might.
A flash of light seemed to enter his eyes, and the cricket was crushed while the flying birds simultaneously crashed to the ground, lying lifelessly.
Where his ability had swept through, only Lee Hwan and the sweet fruit fragrance remained among the corpses of monsters with burst heads. The mixture of blood and fruit scent created a truly strange scene.
“Uwek…”
Lee Hwan vomited blood once and wiped his nose and mouth with his arm as he surveyed the satisfying carnage he had created. Even amidst the stinging pain, he felt somewhat satisfied.
Never in his life had he destroyed such a wide space in one go. The limit he had secretly set in his mind was being definitively broken.
