This World is too Cruel to Men – Chapter 550

Who said that, again?

It’s said that if you sincerely long for something, you will eventually reach it.

Following that advice, Yoonseo didn’t hesitate to forfeit the little vacation time left and poured all her effort into training, successfully reducing the activation time of her attack option from about a minute to roughly thirty seconds.

And that’s not all!

Somehow, she also managed to amplify the power beyond what she achieved at her initial success… It was enough for Chae-rim to exclaim, “Wow… if we don’t want to be called useless, we really have to work hard!”

While that might be a wholly reasonable statement, the reactions of the two Special-Class candidates who ended up participating in the demonstration alongside Chae-rim, after visiting just to see her face, were nothing short of intense, perhaps even more so than Chae-rim’s.

Especially the response from the ‘Sprinter,’ someone I had grown more familiar with due to seeing her often alongside Chae-rim, was quite intense… it was surprising to see someone who had reached the highest position as a hero look so dejected.

Chae-rim, when it was just the two of them, explained that the moment she witnessed the spectacle Yoonseo had conjured from her fingertips, it felt as if she were standing at a turning point of a generation, amplifying the frustration and sense of deprivation built up from her lifelong chase of someone.

“So, you also trust in the talent generation theory, huh?”

“Well… it’s an undeniable fact that heroes’ abilities have been on the rise over time.”

“Certainly… that trend is noticeable.”

Cases of individuals from the so-called 0th generation Awakened, who had become figures of history long before people even called them heroes, struggling to just contend with the lower entities of Another Ones have been recorded, indicating their very tough position.

Moreover, if we examine the types of talents that predominantly manifested during that time, statistically, there were overwhelmingly more instances of abilities refined for protecting or healing something rather than attacking.

“Of course…”

Due to the tumultuous circumstances of that era, the reliability of records and statistics compiled at that time was generally considered lower than those created more recently, leading a significant number of researchers and writers to argue that materials from that period should be excluded from studies and papers.

To back up their claims, errors in some of the data from that time have also been discovered.

Nonetheless, the documents generated during that era have continued to receive significant attention from those specializing in the phenomena of talent emergence and awakening, and the reason is quite simple.

Among those who believe in the talent generation theory, if you lay out the materials regarding what is referred to as the 0th generation alongside the recent records, you can discover a consistent pattern.

This theory initiated from such rules is known as the Talent Environmental Determinism.

In simple terms, Talent Environmental Determinism posits that the types of talents predominantly emerging in a generation are determined by the historical environment that generation has traversed.

According to such logic, the generation of Yoonseo and her seniors, who survived both the unprecedented occurrence of a massive untraceable rift and the phenomenon of monsterization, definitely possessed the conditions of what one might call a ‘golden generation.’

Perhaps it was because I had witnessed the wildest spectacle with my own eyes after such a long time.

If someone from the rap community had overheard my musings with Chae-rim, they would probably have rushed in, foam at the mouth, insisting that it held no such meaning.

“Well… I think it’s less about that and more about Dogun’s presence being significant.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

Was she planning to wet her throat before starting to speak?

Despite my curious gaze, Chae-rim, with a relaxed expression and gesture, sipped her tea before finally uttering words.

“To be honest, it’s undeniable that the level of maturity in theories and techniques related to Awakened training has risen to a point where we can no longer expect radical advancements as they once did, Dogun, you acknowledge that, right?”

“That’s…”

“Is my statement wrong?”

“Well, that’s true.”

From a time when the very concept of talent was as unclear as the concept of an Awakened, humanity has fought against Another Ones, their natural enemies, investing most of their available resources in honing the weapon known as ‘talent’ to survive.

In the course of that process, fields that have achieved unprecedented, radical, and rapid development in history have been related to ‘methods’ that allow for a more skillful and efficient handling of talents.

From learning how to polish talents to devices that assist in this, a wide-ranging and total investment has occurred, with budgets exceeding those of an individual enterprise and nearing the scale of government-level allocations, along with nearly half a century of time dedicated to flourishing those technologies.

The gradual rise in the limits of heroes’ abilities as generations have passed has also been significantly influenced by this.

Why wouldn’t it be?

Having crossed an era where every time you closed and opened your eyes, new training methods and devices were emerging.

Hence, one of the facts mostly agreed upon by those within the industry is that unless a genius with game-changing capabilities emerges, there would be no further radical advancement or change.

And I shared some degree of agreement on that matter, not least because examining the machines designed to assist heroes’ training revealed many technologies not yet publicly known in civilian realms.

So, imagining those technologies evolving beyond their current capabilities seemed almost impossible.

Just looking at devices used in training, ones that employed holographic technology, you’d naturally think that showing performances better than those currently visible would likely require not just a generation but possibly a century.

‘While theoretical aspects seem to have room for further progress…’

That reflected the reality regarding ‘technology’, hence I believed Yoonseo being able to reach such a level at a relatively early stage was largely due to her timing.

But the moment Chae-rim dropped my name, it appeared her thoughts were somewhat different.

“Dogun, as you know, even if heroes train, there are limits, right?”

“That’s true.”

This was an unavoidable aspect as long as the talent organ posed a limit.

In practical situations, having the talent organ depleted would be ideal, but since it is merely a bodily organ, it wouldn’t just cater to personal circumstances.

Therefore, even when heroes train, they rarely use their talents.

To state it more starkly, training related to talents is typically carried out to the fullest during candidate years, and once they become heroes, they merely nibble away at what they accumulated during their candidacy.

“Some believe that it’s sufficient to do talent-related training during that candidate stage since improvement occurs rapidly then…”

“Yet there’s a considerable perspective arguing that the fastest growth period isn’t during that time but when one has just become a hero and begins experiencing actual battle.”

“Exactly.”

That’s why the association doesn’t shy away from investing huge budgets into setting up monthly mock battles for those aspiring to be heroes.

After all, experiencing the real deal is the most crucial aspect, but one can’t have mere minors facing off against monsters that eat humans or notoriously vicious villains—so it’s more like a stopgap measure.

But mock battles remain just that—battles in name only—and the fact that true combat provides the best means for improvement remains an unwavering truth.

Evidence of that can be seen when reflecting on when the skills of Chae-rim and Yoonseo increased the fastest—when they first debuted as heroes, their skills saw the most significant spikes.

‘And those two…’

Thanks to my presence, they didn’t have to worry about the training organ sustaining damage and could pour themselves into training…

“Dogun, you might think this isn’t much difference, but… that difference has ultimately created the situation we have now.”