The walk from my basement to the main street of Mullae-dong usually took five minutes. Today, I did it in two, my lungs screaming in protest.
This body was a disaster. It was the body of a man who had spent his twenties eating convenience store kimbap and drowning his failures in cheap, green-bottled soju. My legs felt like lead, and every breath tasted like the metallic tang of the nearby ironworks. But I didn't stop. In the old timeline, I had spent ten years being slow. I had spent a decade watching others take what was theirs while I waited for scraps.
Not today.
I checked my phone. [09:51 AM].
Nine minutes until the "Opening Bell."
Around me, the world was blissfully, ignorantly normal. An elderly woman was sweeping the front of her small grocery store, her face etched with the weary kindness of someone who believed tomorrow would be exactly like today. A group of salarymen stood near the subway entrance, checking their watches, worrying about being late for a Saturday shift.
They had no idea that in less than ten minutes, their bank accounts, their degrees, and their years of "hard work" would be worth exactly as much as the System decided they were.
I turned into a narrow alleyway, heading toward a dilapidated, five-story apartment complex that looked like it was being held together by rust and prayer. This was the "cradle of the King." This was where Kang Min-ho lived.
In the future, Kang Min-ho was known as the 'Sovereign of Interest.' He sat on a throne made of liquidated souls and controlled the flow of Credits across three continents. He was a man who believed that everything—love, loyalty, life—had a price tag.
But right now? Right now, he was just a nineteen-year-old high school dropout with a gaming addiction and a room that smelled like unwashed socks.
I reached the front door of the complex. It was a "security" door that could be bypassed with a stiff breeze and a screwdriver. I didn't even need that. I waited for a delivery driver to exit, slipped inside, and took the stairs two at a time.
My heart was hammering against my ribs—a frantic, rhythmic thud that felt like it was trying to break out of my chest.
301... 302... 303... 304.
I stopped in front of the door. I could hear the muffled sound of a frantic mouse-clicking and the tinny audio of a livestream coming from inside. Min-ho was home.
I reached into my pocket and felt the bundle of cash. 1.2 million won. My entire life's worth. I'd spent the last year working three part-time jobs to save this, intending to pay off my mother's hospital debts. In the original timeline, this money had been useless. The hospital had been "liquidated" by the System before I could pay, and the cash had become worthless paper overnight.
This time, I was going to use it to buy a God.
[09:58 AM].
I leaned against the wall, trying to steady my breathing. My vision flickered. For a second, I saw the white, boardroom sky of the future instead of the dim, yellow hallway. The trauma of the "Final Liquidation" was still etched into my nervous system. Every time I closed my eyes, I could still hear the sound of the world being erased.
Focus, Seo-jin. Don't let the ghost win.
I checked my status window.
[Value: 0.00]
[Status: Non-Asset / Error]
The gray box was steady. It was my greatest weapon. The System's "Opening Ceremony" involved a global freeze—a localized stasis where every soul was appraised. Because I was a Zero, the stasis wouldn't hold me. I was the "undefined" variable in a static equation.
[09:59 AM].
I put my hand on the doorknob. It was unlocked. Min-ho was too busy trying to climb the ranks of a video game to care about his own safety.
[09:59:50]
[09:59:55]
The world began to hum.
It wasn't a sound you heard with your ears; it was a vibration that started in your teeth and vibrated down to your toenails. The air grew heavy, like it was being pressurized by an invisible hand.
[10:00:00 AM].
Chime.
The sound was singular. Absolute. It was the sound of a trillion digital ledgers opening at once.
Outside the window, a car horn began to blare, but the sound stretched out into a low, infinite drone before fading into a strange, crystalline silence. I looked through the cracked fire-door window. A pigeon was frozen in mid-air, its wings caught in a downstroke, hovering like a taxidermy project suspended by invisible wires.
The Great Valuation had begun.
I pushed open the door to Unit 304.
The room was exactly as I remembered from the descriptions in Min-ho's autobiography. It was a fortress of filth. Glowing monitors cast a sickly blue light over piles of ramen cups and discarded energy drink cans.
In the center of the room sat Kang Min-ho. He was frozen in his chair, his hand still on his mouse, his eyes wide behind thick, grease-smeared glasses.
Floating directly in front of him was a sphere of pulsing, golden radiance. It was the "Initial Offering"—the first Unique-grade skill shard to ever manifest on Earth.
[Unique Skill: Market Intuition (Initial Public Offering)]
[Target: Asset #KR-0992 - Kang Min-ho]
[Current Status: Allocating...]
I walked into the room. To the System, I shouldn't have been able to move. I should have been a statue like Min-ho, waiting for my "Value" to be assigned. But I walked past the frozen gamer, my boots crunching on a discarded bag of chips.
I looked at the shard. It was beautiful. It looked like a diamond that had swallowed a star. This was the skill that would allow Min-ho to see the "hidden prices" of the world. It was the skill that would turn him into a monster.
"You don't deserve this," I whispered. My voice was the only sound in the frozen world. "In the future, you used this skill to decide who lived and who died based on their 'ROI.' You shorted the lives of ten million people just to see your personal numbers go up."
I reached out my hand toward the gold light.
A red warning flashed in the air.
[Error: Property Rights Locked.]
[Asset #KR-0992 is the designated recipient.]
"Is that so?" I smirked. "Then let's look at the Fine Print."
I pulled out the 1.2 million won.
In the System's logic, "Property" was determined by "Value." If a higher-value entity contested a lower-value entity during the "Initial Offering" phase, the System was forced to conduct an immediate auction. It was a failsafe designed for the Sovereigns to steal from each other, but it worked just as well for a Zero.
I shoved the stack of cash directly into the golden sphere.
"I'm placing a bid," I growled. "Asset Dilution protocol. Injecting physical liquidity."
The golden shard flickered. The "Market Intuition" skill was worth millions of Credits in the future, but right now? Right now, the Market hadn't even set its first price. The "Starting Price" of a soul like Kang Min-ho's was abysmally low.
[Warning: External Liquidity Detected.]
[Re-evaluating Ownership...]
[Target Asset Value: 420 Credits (Base Level)]
[Offered Liquidity: 1,200 Credits (Physical Conversion)]
[Logic Loop: Current Bid exceeds Target Asset's Base Value.]
[Allocating 'Market Intuition' to the Highest Bidder.]
The gold light turned a violent, screaming red. It was the color of a market crash. The shard began to vibrate, emitting a high-pitched whine that threatened to shatter my eardrums.
"Give. It. To. Me."
I grabbed the shard.
Pain exploded in my arm. It wasn't like a burn; it was like my veins were being filled with liquid gold and then frozen. I fell to my knees, my teeth gritted so hard I felt one of them crack. My vision went white.
[Warning: Skill cannot be bound to a Non-Asset.]
[Logic Conflict: Investor 'Zero' possesses a Unique Shard.]
[Bypassing Binding Protocol...]
[Applying 'External Variable' Patch...]
The shard melted. It flowed over my skin like warm honey before sinking into my pores.
I gasped, my forehead hitting the dirty linoleum floor.
[Skill: 'Market Intuition' (Rank: Unique) has been acquired.]
[Current Market Status: Bullish.]
The world snapped back into motion.
The sound of the car horn outside returned to its normal pitch. The pigeon in the hallway flapped its wings and flew away. And in front of me, Kang Min-ho gasped, his body jerking as the stasis ended.
"What... what just happened?" he stammered, his voice high and thin. He looked around the room, his eyes finally landing on me. "Who the hell are you? Why are you in my—"
He stopped. He looked at the empty space where the golden light had been. He looked at his own hands, expecting to feel the power he'd been promised in his dreams.
I stood up slowly, wiping a smear of blood from my lip. I felt... different. The world looked the same, but when I glanced at the monitors on Min-ho's desk, I didn't see pixels anymore. I saw numbers.
[Samsung Odyssey Monitor: Current Value: $320 | Predicted Value (24h): $14]
[Discarded Pizza Box: Value: -$2 (Disposal Cost)]
And then, I looked at Min-ho.
[Name: Kang Min-ho]
[Value: $0.45]
[Status: Liquidation Candidate]
"You..." Min-ho pointed a shaking finger at me. "You took it. I saw it... it was for me... the voice in my head said it was mine!"
He lunged at me, his face twisted in a pathetic, adolescent rage. He was faster than me, but I didn't need to be fast. I had the Intuition.
As he moved, a red line appeared in the air—a 'Trajectory of Loss.' I stepped two inches to the left, and he stumbled past me, tripping over his own tangled computer cables and crashing into a pile of trash.
"It was never yours, Min-ho," I said, looking down at him. "In the Market, there is no such thing as 'intended' ownership. There is only the buyer and the seller. And you? You were just outbid."
I turned and walked out the door.
I didn't feel guilty. In the old timeline, Min-ho had used this skill to identify "Distressed Assets"—people who were about to lose their jobs or families—and buy their souls for pennies. He was a vulture. I had just clipped his wings before he could take flight.
I reached the street. The chaos was starting.
People were screaming. Some were kneeling on the sidewalk, staring at the status windows over their heads with expressions of pure horror. Others were laughing, drunk on the 'D-Rank' or 'C-Rank' values they'd been assigned.
I ignored it all. I had a clock in my head, and it was already ticking.
The 'Market Intuition' skill pulsed in my mind, sending a notification that made my blood run cold.
[Market Alert: 'The Rusty Key' (Artifact: Legendary) is currently priced at $50.00.]
[Location: Seoul Station, Sector 4.]
[Time Until Price Spike: 00:34:21]
The Rusty Key.
In the future, that item was the 'Key to the Vault of the First Sovereign.' It was what allowed the 'Heavens' Gate' guild to become the undisputed rulers of Korea. It was currently sitting in a bin of junk in a pawn shop near Seoul Station, being sold as a decorative paperweight.
I had thirty-four minutes to get across the city with no money and a body that was already failing.
"0.00," I whispered, looking up at the boardroom sky. "You wanted a perfect market? I'll give you one. I'll buy every soul, every sword, and every god until you're so bankrupt you have to beg me for a loan."
I started to run toward the subway.
The Great Valuation was over. The Great Depression was about to begin.
And I was the only one who knew the crash was coming.