History's Strongest Manager Chapter 26

Translator’s Ramblings:

Welcome back folks!

First things first, yesterday night I received a donation! What a surprise! I just wanted to say thank you very much and don’t worry about the amount. Just you wanting to support us is more than enough.

Some people said the synopsis was a little vague and that it might be good to make a more complete one.

Although I can’t disagree that the synopsis is vague I kinda like it. But I decided to try to come up with a good one. No promises, but if I can think of something I will recheck with you guys.

Here is the original synopsis for those who are curios but are too lazy to open the NU page because of it:

"What kind of hunter works without management these days?"

20 years after the first appearance of monsters, hunters need managers these days.

Enjoy!

Comment on the Forums and help us get more readers!

Aran managed to subdue her excitement and initiated her training calmly after about a week had elapsed. Choi Gina was instructed to train in the room in order to concentrate in a quiet place. And Aran too needed that much extra concentration whenever initiating her training, carrying deep blue bruises in her entire body when the daily training was finished.

Although a Knight’s self-healing was on the fast side, it wasn’t to the level of quick-regeneration taking a full day if one was seriously injured.

In addition, because of a mistake with a hit directed at her face Seo Aran sported a puffy bluish eye. Knights were able to avoid fatal injuries because of their strengthened bodies without necessarily reinforcing it, an ordinary person in this situation would carry hidden injuries or would already have being sent to the hospital.

“This might be a little dangerous… Should we do a different training?”

Kang-Joon proposed not wanting Seo Aran to be seriously injured. However, Aran shook her head.

“No, I would like to continue.”

She was burning with fighting-spirit. Aran held Kang-Joon’s hand tightly and glared sharply at the pitching machine.

Jiwon,

that was the child’s name. The child had already forgotten its real name, and no one addressed it by such, the only impression remaining of it being the vague word ‘Jiwon’ (TL.: Support/Aid).

The child didn’t know if it had remembered something, and didn’t know if it had once know something. The present was always more important than worrying over the past. The child changed constantly, to the point it couldn’t even remember yesterday’s nutritional supplements bitter taste.

The child couldn’t even know whether it was a man or woman.

The body was constantly reconstructed, its original shape forgotten, now just having a person’s appearance — nothing but a cover — being something fundamentally very different. The child had undergone cruel experiments to the point of being unable to recall anything, with no knowledge regarding its past.

A small height of 140-something tall, long and light brown bleached hair, and a slim body, but without genital or nipples. The child body had evolved in the form best suited for survival. In that process organs — including the reproductive organs — disappeared.

Speaking simply, the child was now ‘genderless’[1].

Of course, as always, few people addressed it[2] as they did a person.

Mutant (Korean), monster, chimera, repulsive product of inhumane experiments,

and,

Mutant.

Jiwon was seating motionless inside an enclosed s.p.a.ce behind a reinforced gla.s.s, waiting for the next test.

Jiwon was now deep underground in a closed construction site in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, inside a Mutant Pot.

And, opposite to Jiwon was a different child. While opposite to them on both sides stood different children, the same pattern repeating. In this corridor, like monkeys in a laboratory, numerous children stood lined in a row.

Generally it is difficult to name one precise thing about what makes a Mutant. Becoming genderless in the middle of an experiment, becoming both, dying, adapting perfectly to the mutation factors, failing the reconstruction and disappear melting in a pulp were all possible outcomes.

However, the undeniable truth was all the children in the lab, whether they adapt to the modification factor or fail, would undoubtedly die in the end.

What this sort of illegal Mutant Pot needed wasn’t a ‘new Mutant species’ but ‘the method to make a new Mutant species’. As such those who failed were discarded, while those who were successful were discarded after having enough success data extracted. On contrary, failures were able to die sooner and could be considered lucky. That success data was sold to huge pharmaceutical companies or Mutant schools overseas secretly, by a very large sum. Of course, this Mutant Pot possessed very outstanding facilities and special details when compared with other places, but Jiwon didn’t have the knowledge to be able to recognize such things.

It was a time where the humans’ rights charter was thrown in the dumpster. People were killed by monsters, and the monster was killed thanks to numerous sacrifices, again and again as if mankind’s history was so.

People died.

The orphans of those disasters who failed to be a.s.signed to proper care facilities were sold to illegal Pots like this through connection with brokers . Although it wasn’t a time where orphans were overflowing, it was a period were they frequently appeared in bulks. Orphans were imported from places with poor public order like China and some nations in south-east Asia.

Growing children were very good materials for Mutant experiments.

If the places where those cruel illegal acts took place were caught by the regulation it would be difficult to evade the death sentence. However, despite all of that, if it was not for these illegal proceedings and human experiments which were no different from murder, it isn’t an exaggeration to say there would be no mutants now.

After all,

Knights, the most versatile and remarkable Mutant, was one of the Mutant procedures created by a mad scientist.

People created different conspiracy theories everyday, saying big shots, politicians, large companies, and international pharmaceutical enterprises were hiding illegal Pots in their bas.e.m.e.nt. However, nothing was ever revealed. Experiments were still carried, innocent children continued being experimented on forced to swallow drugs, having their free wills ignored.

There were a total of 56 specimens including Jiwon on Hwaseong’s Pot, and although most of the children were Korean there were many imported from overseas. All of them started the experiment on the same day. A total of 11 died in the middle of the mutagenesis process which raised the regenerative power to the extreme, 5 couldn’t endure the drugs and died from shock, another 3 skin became blue and melted like mush dying, and the remaining 3 didn’t have their flesh but bones melted living for about 30 minutes like a mollusk until dying.

Although the rest didn’t die, many children thought it would be good if they had, therefore, all of their mouths were physically gagged.

The first sense Jiwon forgot was that of weirdness. It is was so from the moment he saw a person changing in something like an octopus. He though THAT was strange, it would be difficult to find other words for it.

Jiwon didn’t blink an eye as the doctors injected it with drugs to the point of torture just thinking ‘this must be how dying feels like.’ It reviewed it as such.

However, its sense of pain wasn’t dead. However, although Jiwon could still feel pain, pain wasn’t a hindrance anymore.

Even though it felt pain, it wasn’t able to recall anything with it.

The Mutant procedures they were going through was already a verified procedure. As such even though practicing it was illegal, the procedure process itself was already a method used in many official Mutant Pots. It was just they were thrusting the syringe needles at anyone not knowing their apt.i.tudes and the children could do nothing but bear the brunt of it.

The procedure they were being subjected to was the base of the basic procedure ‘regenerative power maximization and immunity strengthening’, in other words, the procedure initiated before the Knights’s basic procedure.

However, in this case wounds recovered in less than 3 seconds surpa.s.sing the super regenerative procedure slightly. The personnel of this illegal Pot possessed a lot of technical data.

Jiwon was once more injected with many immunity enhancers, as well as mixtures of Aether and Cubes without stop, and now, when they approached the main stage of their experiment, the survivors among the specimens didn’t even amount to 20 people.

Except for violence, all the researchers as well doctors and scientist here were veterans.

Translation’s Notes:

s.e.xuality Terms:

Okay, first let me say I want by no reason generate a discussion about s.e.xuality itself. Those topics are waaaay too controversial. This is only me explaining why I choose ‘Genderless’, since the choice wasn’t that straightforward.

The raws used what could be translated as ‘No-s.e.x’. My first choice was ‘As.e.xual’, biologically that is exactly what that word was used for.

However, As.e.xual became today a word used to refers to people who don’t feel the need for s.e.x. Completely ruining the original word meaning. Like, it reaaally took over the original meaning.

Well, there must be a word for humans who are neither XX or XY, right? Nope, there isn’t. Because that isn’t possible. The more genderless we can be born as defaults .

Inters.e.x was a good candidate but it sounded to me more a mix of the two than neither.

Genderless sounds to me a good fit. However, the Gender word itself has also kinda changed its meaning. Gender used to mean the same as s.e.x. Nowadays… well… isn’t that simple anymore.

But, I gave up. Genderless is it.

Back

Gender-neutral p.r.o.noun:

So,  now that it’s revealed Jiwon is genderless we gotta talk about this.

I know ‘they’ has kinda of become a singular-plural p.r.o.noun (like ‘you’). HOWEVER, while it sounds okay in some cases it for me sounds completely weird when referring to a single person who is completely defined.

What I mean is using ‘they’ when referring for a person you are unclear about and have no knowledge of (including s.e.x) is completely fine:

“If anyone call me tell them to leave a message.”

^Completely natural.

“See that person over there? Yeah, the one wearing the green hood. They said you…”

^That sounds wrong to me. Because you are already fully defining the person. It is THAT person, one, singular, known, I can even see said person. Using ‘They’ sounds way too weird for me.

And don’t get me started on how weird using the possessive version sounds.

So, in this case I will be using ‘It’. Is it dehumanizing? I don’t think so. It makes more sense to me to get rid of that bad connotation than trying to change how ‘they’ is used…

Worst case I can use the It-is-mutant-after-all card.

But feedback on this is very much welcome. I am fully aware my way of seeing things isn’t the more… hmmm… common.

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