Chapter 14: The Seeds Sprout and the Network Grows (Extended)
The subtle guidance Kang Ji-hoon had initiated began to bear fruit. Ryu Jin-ho's subconscious attraction to the verdant anomaly solidified into a conscious curiosity. He started making deliberate trips to the park, drawn by the inexplicable sense of calm and the faint feeling of his teleportation becoming momentarily stable within its boundaries. He began to experiment, focusing his intent as he teleported, finding that the closer he was to the park's heart, the more control he seemed to possess, albeit still fleeting and unreliable. He started to perceive the faint green energy that permeated the area, an almost tangible warmth that soothed his usual spatial disorientation.
Im Narae's connection to the park deepened into a near-spiritual bond. She spent hours wandering among the unusually vibrant flora, her senses flooded with comforting echoes of life and growth. She started to have clearer, more sustained visions of the Verdant Monarch – a towering, benevolent figure woven from living plants, their presence radiating an aura of profound peace and nurturing energy. These visions no longer felt like distant memories but like a form of silent communication, a comforting presence in a world increasingly defined by fear and destruction. She even began to notice that her own latent mana sensitivity seemed to increase within the park, allowing her to perceive faint energy flows in the plants themselves.
Kang Ji-hoon, monitoring their progress with cautious optimism, recognized the unique potential of their connection to the Verdant Monarch. He continued his passive observation, deploying more advanced, bio-luminescent tracking drones that could blend seamlessly with the park's unusual flora, providing him with detailed, real-time sensory data without disturbing the delicate balance of the anomaly.
Meanwhile, his information network expanded steadily. Seo Yumi, delving deeper into the patterns of temporal distortions preceding Gate outbreaks, discovered a recurring sequence of energy fluctuations that seemed to act as a "trigger" for the spatial tears. This pattern, when cross-referenced with geological stress points and areas of high ambient mana concentration, allowed for even more accurate long-term Gate predictions. She also began to develop algorithms to identify individuals exhibiting nascent mana sensitivity based on subtle energy fluctuations in their bio-signatures, significantly streamlining Ji-hoon's potential recruitment pool.
His discreet recruitment efforts began to yield results. Several individuals with specialized skills, drawn by the anonymous online postings and impressed by the intellectual rigor of his initial screening process, joined his growing organization. A former linguist with expertise in ancient languages began to analyze the guttural vocalizations of monsters captured from early Gates, looking for patterns and potential communication structures. A disillusioned physicist with a background in theoretical dimensional mechanics joined his research team, eager to explore the scientific underpinnings of the Gate phenomenon.
Ji-hoon established secure, off-the-grid communication channels between these recruits, utilizing heavily encrypted networks and dead-drop locations for sensitive information exchange. He emphasized the importance of discretion and intellectual rigor, fostering a culture of objective analysis and long-term strategic thinking within his nascent network. He was building not just an intelligence agency, but a collective of minds dedicated to understanding and navigating the evolving world.
His research into temporal anomalies progressed slowly but steadily. His enhanced [Temporal Anomaly Detection] skill allowed him to perceive increasingly subtle fluctuations, and his physicist recruit began work on refining the prototype temporal distortion sensor. The data consistently showed a unique temporal signature associated with Sung Jinwoo's rapid growth, a localized warping of the time stream that seemed to intensify with his increasing power. This continued to fuel Ji-hoon's curiosity about the true nature of Jinwoo's System.
As the world grappled with the emergence of higher-rank Gates and the increasing power of hunters, the verdant anomaly in the park continued to flourish, an island of vibrant life amidst a world teetering on the brink of chaos. Ryu Jin-ho found himself spending more and more time there, his control over his teleportation slowly but surely increasing within its comforting embrace. Im Narae's connection deepened, her intuitive understanding of the park's energy becoming almost symbiotic.
Kang Ji-hoon, observing these developments from the shadows, recognized that the Verdant Monarch represented a wild card in his carefully constructed plans. Its presence challenged his initial assumptions about the monolithic nature of the Monarchs and offered a potential, albeit unpredictable, avenue for understanding the forces behind the Gates. The seeds of a unique connection were sprouting in the heart of the city, and the architect of information was ready to observe where they might lead. The network was growing, the data was flowing, and the cartographer's map of the future was becoming increasingly complex.