My Auto Cloning System

Episode 60: Things That Shouldn't Be Picked Up

The wind outside the cleared dungeon was thin and dry, carrying the sour aftertaste of blood and burnt gunpowder. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the tree line, a crow gave a solitary caw and flew off, disturbed by the recent chaos. The Fishman's corpse lay sprawled on the ground, half-crushed, half-scorched, and still vaguely twitching as if reluctant to admit it had finally lost. Kim Do-hyun stood over the motionless body with his hands slightly outstretched, eyes locked on the strange, alien sword that had slipped from the monster's clawed hand just moments ago.

It was there on the dirt, gleaming faintly under the broken sunlight filtering through the trees jagged, irregular, with a faint purple mist leaking off its hilt like a smog no wind could clear. For some reason, the sword looked like it had been forged in pain. Not with skill. Not by a blacksmith. But by someone who hated the idea of weapons and made this one just to make a point.

Do-hyun took a half-step forward and paused. Something about it wasn't right. The sword seemed to stare back. He hesitated and not just because it looked like a rejected prop from a demonic opera.

"Wait," Han Jin-woo said suddenly, raising a hand from behind him. The older man's voice was calm, but his expression was far from casual. He looked like someone had just whispered an exorcism into his ear.

Do-hyun turned. "What?"

"Don't touch that yourself," Han said flatly. "Let your clone pick it up first."

"Why?" Do-hyun tilted his head. "It's just a sword."

Han sighed, scratching the side of his face with a rough finger. "Yeah, well… in the Hunter world, things that drop from dungeon bosses? Not always 'just' swords. Some of them are cursed. You know. Real bad stuff."

Do-hyun blinked. "Cursed? As in… cursed cursed?"

"As in 'you might wake up one morning thinking your own shadow is trying to kill you,' kind of cursed," Han muttered. "Or worse weapons that drain stats, corrupt your body, or fuse to your hand and start whispering tax advice in Latin. You never really know."

There was a brief silence as that information settled in like an unwanted roommate.

Do-hyun looked back down at the sword. "Then... why not just leave it?"

Han gave him a look that clearly said: You're new here, aren't you?

"Because cursed items sometimes come with serious upsides too," Han said. "Risk and reward. Some Hunters make entire careers out of using cursed gear. It's all about figuring out whether the trade-off is worth it. Could be it boosts strength, reflexes, maybe even gives passive skills. Or it could give you eczema and ruin your dating life. It's a gamble."

Do-hyun muttered under his breath, "Right, okay... So cursed loot isn't just evil. It's… complicated evil."

"Exactly," Han said, finally nodding. "Which is why we don't touch unknown loot directly. Use a clone. If it kills him, well" he shrugged with all the emotional delicacy of a dying catfish, "better him than you."

Do-hyun let out a slow exhale and nodded. "Alright then. Number Two."

With a flicker of mental will, a clone materialized beside him, still bruised and limping from earlier combat. Number Two didn't even wait for instructions. He just followed the gaze of his master, spotted the cursed item of doom lying on the dirt like an angsty Final Boss reject, and sighed dramatically like a man asked to clean a toilet without gloves.

"Bro, this again?" the clone muttered.

"Just grab it," Do-hyun said.

Number Two crouched slowly, reached toward the blade with two fingers like it was a suspicious eel, and finally wrapped his hand around the hilt. There was a long, tense pause.

Nothing happened.

No exploding clone. No curses. Not even a single Latin whisper.

"Seems fine?" Do-hyun asked.

The clone nodded. "Yeah. Unless it's a time-delay curse."

Do-hyun narrowed his eyes. "Shut up."

"Just saying. If my head explodes tomorrow, I'm suing."

"You're not even legally alive," Do-hyun replied.

"Still counts!"

Behind them, Han Jin-woo had stepped closer, now glancing around the body for anything else worth salvaging. "Check near the head. Monsters sometimes drop the most valuable stuff from their core zone. Especially intelligent monsters like this one."

Do-hyun looked down and spotted something else glittering faintly in the blood-soaked soil just a few centimeters away from the Fishman's shattered skull. It was a crystal irregular, faintly pulsing, and deep red like congealed wine. It looked important. It looked expensive.

More importantly, it looked cool.

"Oh. This thing?" Do-hyun said, crouching and picking it up between his fingers with curiosity. "Looks rare. Think it's worth anything?"

Han Jin-woo, who had just leaned down to examine a dislocated jawbone, paused.

His face twitched.

He didn't say anything right away.

Do-hyun noticed. "...Why're you quiet?"

Han scratched his neck slowly, looking like a man trying to explain to a child why Santa was actually a debt collector in disguise. "Look, I'm going to be honest with you. That right there? It's not just worthless. It's probably a death sentence if you use it."

Do-hyun blinked. "...What?"

"That's a stat-boosting crystal, yeah," Han admitted. "But it's one of the bad ones. The kind nobody uses anymore."

"Why?"

"Because the side effects include psychotic breakdowns, organ rot, insomnia, and hallucinations about your mother-in-law," Han said dryly. "Also, long-term exposure might literally transform you into a monster."

Do-hyun stared at it for another second. "...So it's trash."

"Worse than trash," Han muttered. "It's a cursed lottery ticket. If you want, I can burn it right now and save you the trouble."

Do-hyun looked at the crystal again. "Nah. I'll keep it."

Han tilted his head. "Seriously?"

"Well, I'm broke," Do-hyun shrugged. "And if it's got some value to collectors or shady weirdos online, I can probably sell it."

"...Or accidentally become the villain of your own life story."

"Minor detail."

Han pinched the bridge of his nose. "This kid's gonna die one day. And I'm gonna be blamed for letting it happen."

Meanwhile, Number Two stood there, still holding the jagged sword like it was a dead snake.

"Are we going home or what?" the clone asked.

Do-hyun nodded. "Yeah. Let's get out of here. I need to take inventory."

The sun had started to dip below the line of smog-faded buildings as Kim Do-hyun finally trudged home from a nearby convenience store, the metallic stink of Fishman blood still clinging faintly to his jacket. The distant hum of city life was returning as emergency lockdown protocols began to lift. Sirens had quieted, traffic had resumed, and the Hunters' Association had already started cleaning up the mess or, more accurately, writing complicated reports to pretend they understood how the hell an F-rank had just taken down a dungeon boss.

Do-hyun's legs were heavy. Not physically he was used to exhaustion by now but mentally. The last few hours had been non-stop: ambush, fight, survive, loot, and somehow not die from a sword that looked like it had been designed by a demon blacksmith with severe emotional issues. It was only now, standing in the doorway of his run-down apartment, that he finally let out a breath and said, to no one in particular, "I'm gonna sleep for a week."

The moment he stepped in, he was greeted by the miserable sight of his clones Numbers One and Two sprawled on the couch like casualties from a war documentary. Bandages were wrapped clumsily around limbs, one of them had a bruised eye, and both were moaning like background characters in a hospital scene.

"Master…," groaned Number One, dramatically holding his ribs. "I think I broke something important."

"That's your spleen," Number Two corrected, lying upside-down on the floor. "Or a lung. I read somewhere you only need one."

"You're not helping."

"You're not dying either."

Do-hyun didn't even take his shoes off. He stepped over a clone arm and walked to the center of the room, tossing his jacket onto the nearest chair. "Number Three," he muttered.

With a soft flicker, another clone materialized into the cramped apartment this one new and untouched, like a fresh recruit reporting for duty.

Number Three looked around, then blinked at his wrecked brothers. "Whoa. What the hell happened to you two? Did the gym have a boss raid while I was gone?"

"Fishman," Do-hyun said flatly. "The one that killed you, remember?."

Number Three whistled and looked down at himself. "Am I even gonna last the day at this rate?"

"You're going to the gym," Do-hyun said.

"What?! I just got summoned!"

"You need to train. And I need to figure this crap out." He motioned toward the table, where the cursed sword and the suspicious crystal sat side by side like weird souvenirs from a haunted tourist trap.

Number Three groaned, grabbed the folded combat hoodie that had been laid aside earlier, and started getting dressed like a disgruntled employee at a fast-food shift. "This is clone abuse. I'm reporting you to the Clone Labor Board."

"There is no such board."

"Yet."

Do-hyun ignored him and sat down cross-legged on the floor, reaching toward the table with slow, measured movements. He picked up the crystal first the one Han Jin-woo had warned him about. It pulsed faintly in his hand like a living thing, as though it still carried a heartbeat from the monster it came from.

He turned it over. No markings. No engravings. Just that soft, ominous red glow, like danger politely asking to be acknowledged.

"Worthless, huh?" he murmured.

Maybe so. But it had come from a D-rank boss, which meant something. Even if its stats were risky or unstable, it still held potential the kind of potential desperate Hunters gambled their lives for. And right now, Kim Do-hyun was very much a desperate Hunter.

He placed it gently back on the table and turned his attention to the sword. It looked no less menacing than it had an hour ago. If anything, now that he was home and away from the adrenaline of combat, it looked even more dangerous. Up close, the blade had irregular edges, like it had been chipped away by teeth, and the hilt was wrapped in some kind of blackened material that didn't look like leather or metal. It looked… organic.

Number One, still groaning from the couch, called out, "You really keeping that cursed thing?"

Do-hyun didn't look up. "I haven't decided yet."

"You know we're not horror movie protagonists, right? You don't have to bring the scary object home just because you found it in a boss hands."

Do-hyun didn't respond. Instead, he just leaned back, crossed his arms, and stared at the two items in silence.

There was something about them that felt connected. Both had come from the Fishman. Both radiated danger in different ways. But both had survived a fight that should have turned everything around them to ash.

They were the proof not just that he had survived, but that he had won.

A low chuckle escaped him.

He was still breathing. Somehow. Despite the odds. Despite the stats.

He looked down at the crystal.

Then at the sword.

"So," he murmured aloud, his voice quieter now, more thoughtful. "These are the items I picked up."