Fwoooosh—
The lids of the virtual reality pods hissed open as the candidates erged.
“Good work, everyone. The results will be sent via text in the next few days, so feel free to head ho.”
The evaluation was over.
Under normal circumstances, an assessnt of this scale would’ve taken far longer. But thanks to the virtual reality setup, the process had been drastically shortened.
Once all the candidates had exited, Su-ho called Director Kim Su-ae of the Academy to inform her the test was finished.
He also made sure to thank her once again.
With formalities out of the way, Su-ho called Jeong Cheol-min.
— “Hey, all done?”
“Yes, we just wrapped up the second evaluation.”
— “So just the interviews left, huh?”
“Yes, that’s right. I’ll compile the scores and send over the list.”
— “You’re joining for interviews, right?”
“I an, sure, if you want there... but if it’s just a formality, is there any real need for to—”
— “Just co. I’m lonely.”
“...Understood.”
— “So, what’s your schedule like now?”
“I’ve got a few things I’ve been preparing. I was going to look into those.”
— “You do rember the North Korea project is coming up, right? We’ve got a pre-briefing with the VIPs.”
“Of course. No need to worry.”
— “Alright. Good job.”
“Yes, sir. Take care.”
With that, Su-ho had officially wrapped up everything.
He was about to head to his car when he instead opened his subspace house.
The mont he stepped in, the sound of heavy machinery filled the air.
Drrrrrrrrrrr—
It sounded like a construction site.
And it was coming from Pi Seong-yeol.
He’d been grinding down cursed items nonstop under Su-ho’s orders for days now.
Well—he had to.
The ga Crusher’s drive to dismantle items could be resisted with enough willpower to live normally, but only if usage was paced out carefully.
Dumping this much in at once? That desire will explode.
Especially if the host lacked psychological stability—then the barrier would break even faster.
Su-ho looked down at Pi Seong-yeol, whose eyes were hollow as he ground items away.
“Urrgh...”
Dark circles clung under his eyes.
But other than that, he was fine.
He looked tired, sure—but that was the default state of a ga Crusher host.
So there was no real cause for concern.
Physically, he was in decent shape.
Su-ho reached out and activated a skill.
[Recovery is activated.]
Whoooosh!
A bright light flared.
And then—
— Drrrrk? Drrrrk?
The ga Crusher made an ominous rattling noise.
At the sa ti—
“GUHHH!”
Pi Seong-yeol let out a strangled scream.
But Su-ho paid him no mind and cast Recovery again.
[Recovery is activated.]
— DRRRRRRRRK!!
The ga Crusher thrashed violently in protest.
Of course it did.
Recovery was the natural enemy of anything causing a “parasitic” status condition.
And having gone through this before, it knew exactly how much it was going to hurt.
So it resisted with everything it had.
It was desperate not to lose its host.
Which ant Pi Seong-yeol was in hell.
But Su-ho didn’t care in the slightest.
With Kang Seul-gi, he had to proceed delicately.
With Pi Seong-yeol?
Not a chance.
This was punishnt. Pure and simple.
When Su-ho cast Recovery once more, the ga Crusher burst out of Pi Seong-yeol’s gut like a squid ejecting ink.
— Drrrrr... drrrrr...
It twitched weakly like a dying fish, clearly badly damaged from the Recovery blasts.
But Su-ho didn’t show an ounce of sympathy.
It was just an item. Pretending to be in pain wouldn’t earn any pity.
Su-ho picked it up and checked its status.
[ga Crusher]
Grade: B
Advanced technology from another world.
Can grind down any item.
Su-ho frowned.
Then glanced at the cursed items piled nearby.
He’d fed it a fair number of them, and it was still B-grade?
Gonna have to speed this up.
He tossed the ga Crusher back onto Pi Seong-yeol.
— DRRRK!
“Guhaack!”
Like a mimic springing to life, it latched onto Pi Seong-yeol again and re-established its parasitic connection.
Su-ho watched the process with dispassionate eyes, then dragged the limp man over to the cursed item pile.
“No ti to waste. Let’s get moving.”
There were mountains of work ahead.
He couldn’t just sit around waiting.
With ti on his hands, Su-ho began feeding cursed items directly into the ga Crusher himself.
— DRRRRRRRRRRR!!
As the grinding started, the loud construction-like noise returned.
Pi Seong-yeol spasd in agony at first... but before long, he began giggling.
A weird, euphoric laugh.
The ga Crusher was secreting pleasure chemicals.
His body slumped.
So this is why it takes so long...
Give a starving man food, and he gets elated. Give a smoker a cigarette after days of withdrawal, and their face lts with relief.
Sa logic.
Su-ho started feeding items into the ga Crusher like logs into a campfire.
Who knows how much ti passed?
Around halfway through the cursed item pile, the grinding suddenly stopped.
Hmm?
Did it break?
No way.
This wasn’t an actual machine.
It couldn’t malfunction.
Su-ho narrowed his eyes and asked:
“Senior.”
“......”
“Senior?”
“......”
“Hey.”
“...Yes, yes?”
“Hah... you little—”
Was this bastard doing it on purpose?
Su-ho frowned.
“When I speak, you answer. The machine stopped—what’s going on? Did the item info change?”
“...Well...”
Pi Seong-yeol hesitated.
One look at his face, and Su-ho knew.
“Knew it.”
He kicked him.
A reward for deliberately holding his tongue.
As Pi Seong-yeol clutched his face in pain, Su-ho ignored him and cast Recovery again.
[Recovery is activated.]
Fwoooosh!
— DRRRRK!
The mont Recovery hit, it was like jolting a machine back to life with electricity.
The ga Crusher went wild.
— DRRRRRRRRRRRR!!
Its grinding teeth roared to life.
The resistance was fierce.
And powerful.
That confird it.
Yeah. Sothing has changed.
Su-ho grinned and unleashed a full barrage of skills.
[Blessing is activated.]
[Weaken is activated.]
[Recovery is activated.]
[Recovery is activated.]
[Recovery is activated.]
[Recovery is activated.]
...
An all-out skill assault.
Blessing to inflate his stats. Weaken to debuff. Recovery to slam it down.
Could anything survive that?
Of course not.
Even a boss monster would throw in the towel.
Sure enough, after a few more Recovery blasts, the ga Crusher burst free again—like it was fleeing a burning building.
Fsshhhhh—
It was so overheated, smoke poured from it.
Pi Seong-yeol had already passed out.
After all, that chaos had happened inside his abdon. Who wouldn’t faint?
Su-ho used Heal to stabilize him, then checked the ga Crusher’s info again.
[ga Crusher]
Grade: A
Advanced technology from another world.
Can grind any item and extract crystals from the remains.
Currently only produces crystals related to stats.
Su-ho’s eyes lit up.
Yes. This is it!
He grinned.
At last, the ga Crusher had begun producing crystals.
And not just any crystals—stat-related ones.
And Su-ho knew exactly what that ant.
In my past life, Kang Seul-gi said ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) A-rank ga Crushers could produce stat fragnts.
Stat fragnts were just that—fragnts.
For example:
That sort of thing.
Which ant there were small ones with decimal values, and large ones with full-point bonuses or more.
Put simply:
If you were lucky, you got a big fragnt.
If you weren’t... well, you got crumbs.
Of course, not all results were positive.
The effect was related to stats—but that didn’t guarantee positive stats.
Still, even negative stat fragnts can be used in the right way.
That’s what made the ga Crusher so outrageous.
No other item or skill could generate stats—even increntally—like this.
But the ga Crusher can!
This was the kind of high-tech sorcery only another world could produce.
There were downsides, of course.
Huge ones.
It might be an OP item option-wise, but the ga Crusher required a living host to operate.
And the longer the host carried it, the more they succumbed to madness.
Even the mild-mannered Kang Seul-gi eventually lost it—that’s how he earned the nickna Mad Grinder Scholar.
But now, none of that mattered.
Su-ho had the perfect host.
Even if he went insane a hundred more tis, it didn’t matter.
He hurled the ga Crusher onto the unconscious Pi Seong-yeol again.
— DRRRRRK!
“GUHHHH!”
Screaming and flailing, Pi Seong-yeol regained consciousness from the pain.
As soon as the ga Crusher latched on, Su-ho shoved another cursed item into it.
— VRRRRRRRRRR!!
The sound changed.
From the coarse drrrrk to a sharp, tallic vrrrrrr—like slicing steel.
Once the cursed item was fully ground down—
Thunk—
Several small fragnts popped out from the ga Crusher’s mouth.
Stat fragnts.
Su-ho quickly gathered them and checked their details.
[Stat Fragnt – ga Crusher]
Grade: B
A crystallized remnant extracted by the ga Crusher.
Contains a stat attribute.
Consuming this increases Strength by 1.
Simple description.
But the effect? Outstanding.
He had four fragnts:
Strength 1
Magic 1
Strength 0.5
Perception 2
Even with only one decimal-value piece, it was an excellent result.
But this wasn’t what Su-ho truly wanted.
The magic piece is useful now, but ultimately, I’m aiming for different fragnts.
Ones that raised specific stats.
Or even all stats.
He had other targets in mind as well—and he knew how to get them.
Thanks to everything he’d learned from Kang Seul-gi.
And to get those, he needed to level up the ga Crusher even further.
Su-ho turned to the now-conscious Pi Seong-yeol.
“Alright. Watch closely. From now on, your job is to gather these.”
Then he added, his voice low and firm:
“As you know, these can boost stats if consud. But if you try to sneak even one...”
“Y-Yes...! I swear I won’t!”
“Good. But I still don’t trust you, so I’m logging your stat window.”
After recording Pi Seong-yeol’s status panel, Su-ho finally stepped out of the subspace house.
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