Chapter 3

Tyrant at the Bottom of the Tank

Revealing Heavenly Secrets.

According to the transcendents in the gallery, that was what I had done.

However, I saw things a little differently.

At most, it was stuff like which guy would win if this guy and that woman fought.

Who was the strongest in some galaxy, who was second strongest in some faction... That was about all there was to it.

The scale was just a little bigger. It was no different from playing at figuring out who would win between Kim Somebody, the Steamed-Bun Fist of Gangbuk, and Park Somebody, the Jokbal Palm of Songpa.

Of course, when transcendents did that, they got beaten down by something called causality.

But I was an utterly insignificant ordinary person, so I had simply been posting things like that for fun.

[ Grimoire of the Vanished Glass Star ]

[ Points Required to View: 20,000P ]

[ Would you like to view this material? ]

[ Yes / No ]

"...Yes."

Therefore.

From my perspective, if anything deserved to be called revealing heavenly secrets, this was far closer.

When I pressed the first option with a trembling hand, what appeared was exactly what I had expected.

"Ah."

I became a mage.

____________

If a blind man who had never once seen anything in his life opened his eyes.

If the ears of a deaf man who had never heard a single sound suddenly opened.

Perhaps it would feel something like this.

"...Ha."

Naturally, I had made countless attempts to become what people called an ability user.

They had all simply come to nothing, and at the same time, I had realized that I could never become an ability user through my own power.

It was as natural as a blind man being unable to see and a deaf man being unable to hear.

And so.

I gave up on becoming an ability user.

But with this single choice, I became a mage.

I could feel mana.

I had no idea how I was supposed to explain that sensation.

If you asked a blind man seeing the world for the first time to explain the sensation of 'seeing,' what could he possibly say?

Whoooosh-!

Boom!

I launched a burst of compressed air at the wall.

Even though I had controlled the force, the impact still rang out, and cracks spread across the wall.

"Haha, hahahaha..."

A somewhat hollow laugh leaked from my lips.

If the landlord saw this, he'd scream at me to pay for the repairs, but I could just pay him several times the amount.

I had already permanently parted ways with concerns that trivial.

By ordinary magical-system standards, this was roughly two-star level.

I had gained enough power to clearly qualify as an ability user.

The reason I had awakened so easily that all my previous efforts now felt meaningless was.

Because that was simply how the laws of this world were set up.

"...It was this easy."

Snap─!

Scarlet flames bloomed and heated the surrounding air, and the moment I snapped my fingers once more, the flames vanished without a trace and transformed into blue lightning.

Snap─!

Crackle!

Lightning raged between my fingers.

Snap─!

This time, it was cold.

The air, which had been blazing hot just moments before, froze white as frost settled over it.

Attribute conversion.

Ironically, I already knew how to do this.

Naturally, that was because the original novel explained how.

I simply hadn't been able to perform it because I didn't know how to use mana itself.

Knowledge alone is worthless like this.

Only actual power capable of defying the laws of the world has meaning.

And I had acquired that power merely by reading a single post.

What had been transmitted to me through that post was not knowledge.

It was the power to defy the heavens itself.

"This world really is disgustingly unfair."

This very same method was being used by the families of ability users.

Either they were born with talent from the start, or even if they weren't, they were forcibly awakened in this manner.

But now, I too would become a beneficiary of that unfair world.

There were still several materials on the board that I could view.

However, most of them, including the 'Grimoire of the Vanished Glass Star' I had just viewed, did not deal with particularly high-level knowledge.

But considering that the standard for 'high-level' here was 'transcendence,' they were incredible.

If I mastered any one of them completely, I would gain enough power to casually destroy an entire planet.

"...For now, later."

Still, I had no intention of learning whatever happened to catch my eye.

It would be enough to selectively learn only what I needed from each school.

Anything beyond that would instead become poison.

[ Marketplace ]

What I was curious about now was the Marketplace function.

I entered the board immediately.

[ One Thousand-Year Flower Root ]

[ Ancient Dragon Heart (Well Preserved) ]

[ Three Clumps of Heavenly Thunder ]

[ Executioner's Red Scythe (Sacred Relic) ]

[ Thunder Giant's Hammer (Quasi-Sacred Relic) ]

[ 50ml World Tree Sap from the Former Second Dimension ]

[ Ownership Rights to an Unexplored Blood Jade Dungeon (Secret-Treasure Grade) ]

"...Whoa."

As expected, one absurd item after another appeared.

Of course, most of their prices were equally impossible to reach.

"The cheapest one is five hundred thousand."

I had just under eighty thousand points left now, so it was more than six times what I had.

Of course, I had earned almost a hundred thousand points from a single post, but-

"...Wait."

Come to think of it, wasn't that actually not very much?

A few clicks and a few lines on the gallery, and I could get a Thousand-Year Flower?

A single herb that would give even an ordinary mortal a thousand years of lifespan?

It felt like the entire value system in my head was breaking down.

I glanced through the items below it, then soon shook my head.

"...This too, later."

I couldn't buy any of them right now anyway.

I then checked the other functions as well.

But none of them were things I could use immediately.

The Request Board was exactly what its name implied: a board for requests.

Sponsorship was likewise simply a place for sponsorships.

I had no reason to use either of them.

Maybe I would later...

"Haa."

The moment I finished exploring everything, all the strength left my body.

I couldn't tell whether everything happening right now was a dream or reality.

Maybe if I woke up after a short sleep, all traces of this would be gone.

That thought actually crossed my mind.

However, I no longer needed some primitive procedure like slapping myself in the face to prove that this was reality.

Hot.

Cold.

The mana in my hand rapidly alternated between opposite attributes.

Yet there was no pain whatsoever in the sensations I felt.

I was simply delighted.

________________

Jeongmyeong City, Haedong Nation.

If I applied the geography of my original world, it corresponded exactly to the Suwon-Ansang area of Gyeonggi Province.

Since the region had a relatively large number of citizens ranked Grade 3 or lower, jobs were accordingly difficult to find.

Competition was fierce even for something as minor as working as a delivery rider.

Unregistered independent delivery riders were ordinarily caught by the city police and beaten severely.

Because of that, Lee Yeonghyeon, Leader of Team 1 at Jeongmyeong City's delivery company 'Delivery Nation,' possessed a certain degree of authority.

He was responsible for posting recruitment offers for new riders and evaluating the performance of existing ones.

"...Isn't this going too far?"

"What?"

Lee Yeonghyeon tilted his head at the dissatisfaction reflected in the eyes of the man standing before him.

Red blood vessels ran across the whites of his bulging eyes.

"Five hundred thousand hwan just to register? That's more money than I could earn working three full months!"

The complaint was entirely reasonable.

No matter how hard a delivery rider worked, he could only earn around one hundred fifty thousand hwan a month.

Even that was barely enough to keep himself alive.

And yet, they demanded five hundred thousand hwan before they would register him as a rider.

Even if he gathered every loan he could immediately obtain, it wouldn't be enough.

The only places willing to lend that much money to a penniless Grade 4 citizen were private lenders, and borrowing from them would mean experiencing a hell even worse than this.

"Ha, now even beggar bastards like this are showing up..."

However, Lee Yeonghyeon merely gave a hollow laugh as he walked toward him.

The man who had been expressing his anger flinched once at Lee Yeonghyeon's movement and stepped backward.

Lee Yeonghyeon had low-grade cyberware implanted in his body.

To an ordinary person, he was practically a monster.

"Hey, buddy. Do you have any fucking idea how much money I have to pay to keep this team leader position?"

Tap-tap-

Lee Yeonghyeon cursed as he tapped the man's cheek several times.

"I pay our branch manager one million hwan every month. One million hwan. Even if I shove two more drifters like you into the roster, not a single hwan goes into my pocket. You fucking bastard."

"..."

"Too much or whatever the fuck, if you don't like it, go look somewhere else. How much do you think they'll ask for there? Seven hundred thousand hwan? One million hwan?"

"Uuugh... Aaaaargh!!!"

Crrrk-

Crushing pain surged through the man's right shoulder where Lee Yeonghyeon was gripping him.

The man screamed and dropped to his knees on the spot.

"Fuck off while I'm still asking nicely, you fucking bastard. There are plenty of people besides you."

"Uuugh... A-All right. I understand..."

The man fled straight out of the alley.

Watching him stagger away as though afraid Lee Yeonghyeon might chase after him, Lee Yeonghyeon clicked his tongue.

"What an idiot. Tsk, tsk."

In truth, Lee Yeonghyeon's words were half right and half wrong.

It was true that he paid one million hwan in kickbacks to the branch manager, but he was also taking in a comparable amount himself.

That was because he skimmed off an appropriate portion of all the wages meant to go to the riders.

Even so, it was also true that he wasn't some uniquely evil man.

Not only in Jeongmyeong City, but in any city, the only difference was the degree.

Anyone who held even a little power used it to exploit those beneath them.

A world where you devoured others or were devoured yourself.

That was simply how society worked.

Creak-creak-

"Is it going to rain?"

His wrist throbbed with a dull ache.

A low-grade prosthetic arm he had been fitted with during his military service.

But thanks to it, Lee Yeonghyeon had at least been able to become a tyrant at the bottom of the tank.

His strength was nothing compared to true ability users, but because he possessed even that meager power, he had managed to avoid living at the absolute bottom until now.

However, his life probably wouldn't end peacefully either.

It wasn't something likely to happen easily, but among the vermin at the bottom of the tank he had trampled on.

If even one of them encountered some miracle and gained power.

'I'll probably get stabbed.'

Of course, it was something unlikely to happen.

Truly...

"Team Leader Lee."

"...?"

While lost in those thoughts, Lee Yeonghyeon suddenly heard a voice and raised his head toward it.

And directly in front of him, he saw someone floating in midair.

"...Jin Sehun?"

"You look strangely familiar today. I'm really glad to see you."

Apparently, that very thing had finally happened.