Chapter 30: Chapter 29
TL/ED: Hamsterminator
Jin quietly stared at the middle-aged man.
The heated atmosphere spread hot wind, blowing his hair.
And within that current of heat, what Jin felt was none other than the thick scent of mana.
As someone who also handled mana, Jin felt a certain resonance not with his eyes but with his body.
Something that couldn’t be explained simply by power alone.
The time accumulated within, the years, and thus something called history, descended hotly upon his skin.
But instead of being overwhelmed by the unfamiliar emotion, Jin did what needed to be done.
His gaze remained fixed on the middle-aged man, while he simply extended the arm holding the Gravis behind him.
Then he pulled the trigger.
Taang-!!
Taang-!!
Taang-!!
Three shots rang out.
He personally blew off the head of the monster that was burning pitch black and slowly breathing its last.
Like blowing your nose without using your hands.
Jin, having taken a giant scoop, not with a spoon but with a ladle, from the feast someone else had prepared, shivered as a dopamine firework burst in his head.
And just in time, the quest had been completed, making the stimulation twice as strong.
“Ha-oh. Fuck.”
Jin clenched his teeth and shut his eyes tight.
It felt good, but fuck this.
The forcibly injected sense of achievement and reward.
The primal pleasure that followed gifted him the will to live.
As if inserting ten upside-down yellow nutrient sticks into a withering potted plant.
So that he wouldn’t break halfway through.
“Even if you didn’t pull this bullshit. I’d have made it to the end anyway...!”
Jin tightly clenched his trembling fist.
How much time had passed?
If you measured it precisely, only a few ticks of the second hand, but to Jin, who endured the endlessly drawn-out time of ecstasy, it felt like an eternity. Slowly, he opened his eyelids.
And gave an awkward smile.
“Ah. Were you waiting?”
The middle-aged man gave a slight chuckle in response.
“What a strange fellow.”
“Says you...sir?”
Jin, intending to reply as usual, flinched slightly.
Only the end of his sentence rose in pitch, almost hesitantly.
To top it off, his gaze shifted uncertainly.
Come to think of it, that middle-aged man over there.
Setting aside the absurdly powerful magic spell he had cast, the man himself didn’t emit any aura or presence.
Even now, while locking eyes with him, he honestly just looked like an ordinary homeless man. The only proof to the contrary was the monster that had been burned to ashes.
Is this what martial arts novels call a Hidden Master?
Maybe the level gap was so wide he couldn’t perceive it. Either way, it was the same thing.
What mattered was that Jin was the relatively weaker one.
So what was needed in this moment was tact.
Did I say something wrong?
Just as he seriously tried to retrace his memory.
The middle-aged man opened his mouth.
“Just speak how you usually do. Don’t bother trying to be clever.”
“Is that okay?”
“Since when did you ever watch your words around me?”
“...Fair point.”
Jin had always half-mixed honorifics in his speech anyway.
So there was no need to suddenly change his tone.
In the momentary silence that followed, Jin glanced at the middle-aged man.
“......”
A mysterious powerhouse.
Since the man himself was a walking bag of variables, Jin was prepared to spam Blink and run at any moment, but judging by the man's relaxed expression, he didn’t seem like someone who would suddenly lash out.
Still, Jin couldn’t completely let his guard down, so he kept himself ready to draw on mana at any moment and opened his mouth.
“Did you get captured on purpose?”
“What?”
“Undercover operation. Thought maybe it was something like that.”
That guy who had just blown his own head off hadn't suspected Jin of being a city government agent until the very end.
So Jin had tossed out a fairly reasonable question after some rational deduction.
But the answer he got was ridiculous.
“No? Pretty sure I said this earlier. I woke up and found myself here.”
“...Then why the hell did you keep hanging around?”
The idea that this man couldn’t break the chains didn’t make any sense. Even Jin could’ve freed himself if he really wanted to, and he actually had.
“Because I was curious. Watching those idiots running around was pretty entertaining. I was planning to just play along for a bit, but I ended up seeing something amazing.”
The middle-aged man laughed, and Jin made a displeased face.
So basically, he had been staying there on purpose.
That kind of erratic behavior made it clear he wasn’t entirely sane.
So Jin began preparing to slowly back off now.
“So. You. What’s your name?”
That question came out of nowhere.
Of course, telling him wasn’t a big deal.
In fact, Jin welcomed it.
“Jin Evernight. Cool name, right?”
Jin, who had just blurted out his full name, raised his eyebrows with a slight twitch.
A surname he bought for 35 million credits.
He hoped it would settle comfortably in others' ears too.
But the middle-aged man's reaction was odd.
"...Evernight, huh. Is that an alias?"
At that, Jin’s expression grew uneasy.
Did he somehow figure out that it was a forged identity?
Honestly, even if he had, it didn’t really matter.
But the problem was if someone could deduce things just from hearing the surname.
So while Jin was seriously debating whether he’d have to give up the surname he had just started to grow fond of.
The middle-aged man continued, stroking his rough chin.
“If it’s not an alias, that’s unexpected. I figured you were some distant offshoot with a tragic backstory...”
Then he shrugged.
“Or maybe not. It’s probably better that you don’t have their blood in you.”
He made a lighthearted expression all by himself.
Sure, Jin had a habit of rambling off on tangents, but this middle-aged guy was just as eccentric in his own way.
The two stood facing each other, spouting completely different nonsense, and the mood only grew more and more disjointed.
And so they both mumbled on.
If someone had seen them, they’d have wondered, “What the hell is this?”
That awkward standoff continued for a while.
Eventually, it was Jin, who was younger after all, who snapped out of his thoughts first.
“......? Um, excuse me. Hey. Hey?”
With the snapping of his fingers calling him over, the middle-aged man finally blinked and looked Jin’s way.
“Hmm? Did you say something?”
“I was about to. So, sunbae, what’s your name?”
“I’m Lokan.”
The middle-aged man who introduced himself as Lokan quietly stared into Jin’s face.
It felt like he was trying to gauge his reaction.
Reading the mood, Jin scratched his cheek and spoke.
"...You must be famous."
That was the best response he could manage, but to be honest, it wasn’t a particularly flattering one.
If Jin had taken an interest beyond the small boundaries of his own life, if he’d cared at all about the vast world out there.
The next question would’ve been:
'Do you bear the Zahad name?'
If he had asked that, Lokan would’ve slowly shaken his head.
And added that he discarded that name long ago.
Zahad.
One of the Seven Great Families.
A name that reaches the sky of Lost City.
Even the tallest skyscrapers would have to tilt their heads back to glimpse it.
The man standing before him was a madman who had kicked that name away.
And that madman chuckled heartily.
Because he liked the blank look of someone who truly knew nothing.
“Stupid bastard.”
“What? Even if you’re my sunbae, if you insult me, I- no, this body- no! If you insult me, then...”
What could he do?
Hmmm-, run away?
With no good comeback, Jin swallowed his words.
Lokan pulled his lips into a faint smirk and asked,
“So, who’s your master?”
“I don’t have one.”
“......”
At the immediate reply, Lokan was momentarily speechless before slowly opening his mouth again.
“No master. And with that level of pure mana.”
He could see it clearly.
It wasn’t just pure, there wasn’t the slightest blockage in how Jin handled it either. A canvas capable of containing the world, wielded by someone with the skill of a master calligrapher.
And yet, no master?
“You’re saying you’re self-taught?”
“Well, something like that.”
Jin nodded.
He couldn’t exactly talk about the status window, so this was the best he could say.
And even if he hadn’t learned alone, he had learned the hard way.
Hadn't he endured the pain of having his head torn apart?
He wasn’t exaggerating, it genuinely hurt.
To the point that drool would spill from his mouth on its own.
The PTSD from that pain suddenly flared up, and Jin shivered his shoulders.
Then suddenly, a loud laugh burst out.
Lokan threw his head back, showing even his uvula as he laughed heartily, and then opened his trembling lips.
"To think a body blessed by mana actually exists. If the seven family heads knew, they'd be completely turned upside down. It’s almost a shame I can’t see their reactions.”
The way Lokan murmured, his face even looked a little relieved, and Jin, who had no idea what was going on, could only blink.
“Come on, laugh with me.”
This guy really isn’t all sane.
Jin rapidly wrote up a profile about Lokan in his head.
A Hidden Master-level homeless man.
But slightly unhinged.
Maybe because this city is a total dump.
Somehow, not a single person has managed to grow old with dignity here.
As Jin silently grumbled to himself.
In the meantime, having laughed all he wanted and talked himself hoarse, Lokan added with satisfaction,
“I can’t even remember the last time I laughed like this. Thanks to you, I saw something worthwhile. Staying tied up was the right choice.”
“Well, if you had fun, then that’s all good with me.”
Jin gave a soulless reply, and just as he was about to think of a farewell so he could go on his way.
“I don’t know what kind of picture you’ll paint from here on, but it wouldn’t hurt to draw a single line into it.”
As Lokan said that and took one step forward, the next moment, he was standing right in front of Jin.
Jin didn’t even have time to react.
A single streak of purple lightning traced through the air and then faded faintly into the void.
As the sudden witness to this, Jin heard Lokan’s voice slowly pierce through his ears.
“It’s nothing special. Just something basic..."
The rest he didn’t catch.
All he could see was a finger moving at normal speed beyond a world that felt like it had stopped, slowly approaching him.
The moment that fingertip touched his chest and a small spark erupted.
KWA-RANG!
A bolt of lightning struck Jin’s mind.
It was the moment when the most violent cutting edge in the world carved a message with lawless penmanship.
I’m fucked...
His eyes flipped back completely.
***
It was a very long time later that Jin finally managed to grab hold of his senses again.
And his condition was a disaster.
His eyes were hollow and unfocused, his limbs sprawled out like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
Tears streamed down from the corners of his eyes as he stared up at the factory ceiling.
“Son of... a... fuck...”
Perhaps because he had been steeped in pain too overwhelming for words.
Jin was completely and utterly drained, body and soul.
He didn’t even bother to look at the status window blinking like crazy in the corner of his vision, screaming for attention. He didn’t even get mad. What more could be said?
And so time passed.
Until the dim moonlight filtering through the factory window shifted from the blue of dawn’s first light to the break of day.
Jin, who had lain still like a corpse all night, finally sat up.
He pushed back his messy bangs with a dry wash of his face and looked around. The surroundings had changed a lot.
First of all, the peeled corpses had all turned to ash.
And the various equipment, whose use he never could determine, was all shattered to the point it was impossible to recall their original form.
It seemed to be Lokan’s doing.
Jin could only be dumbfounded.
“...Seriously, why the hell would you just leave someone here like this? Because of you, I...”
His raspy muttering didn’t last long.
Eventually, his gaze drifted to the corner of his vision.
There was a sparkle that refused to give up.
“Why. Why. What the hell do you want, huh?”
Had it just been waiting for attention?
The next moment, the status window covered his vision.
「???」━━━━━━━━━━━
NEO ?? ??? Zahad
??? ?? ???? ?????
?? ??? ?? ?? ????
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
You again?
Jin shook his head at the unwelcome screen that always popped up just when he thought he’d forgotten about it, then suddenly flinched.
“Huh?”
He rubbed his eyes and looked again, confirming a strange sentence in the status window.
Then he reflexively shut his eyes tight.
In an instant, his inner world lit up like the night sky.
There Jin turned his head left and right.
His gaze, traversing through constellations and nebulae, suddenly stopped as if frozen in place.
Found it.
A new constellation that hadn’t existed before.
This wasn’t something Lokan had orchestrated.
Even he wouldn’t have imagined something like this in his wildest dreams.
Who could have known?
That the mana casually poured in just to give a small teaching to a blessed body would act as a 'catalyst' for someone living unreasonably alone in this world.
And now.
Above that tiny budding light, a magnificent lightning bolt loomed, gazing down at Jin.
[Zahad]
The arcane magic of one of the Seven Great Families roared with a silent thunder.
~~~
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