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Translator: penny
Chapter: 005
Chapter Title: In Reality, There Lives a Sorcerer Who Eats People.
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It was hot.
Beyond hot—it was scorching.
An Young-hee opened his eyes.
Flames raged all around him.
His bedroom had a large window connected to the balcony.
He tried to open it, but it wouldn't budge.
Death Qi?
Death Qi. The life force of the afterlife that the MacArthur Shrine Maiden had mentioned.
A quick search in his mind recalled it was the energy of death.
That Death Qi, the energy of death, clung thickly to the window frame.
There hadn't been any until he'd fallen asleep.
He would have noticed Death Qi inside his own home.
Escape first.
An Young-hee raised his fist. Then lowered it.
Punching the window might shatter it, but he'd cut himself on the glass.
He grabbed the tablet beside him with both hands and slammed its corner down on the glass.
Ting!
The Death Qi enveloped the entire window, shattering only the tablet.
Clutching his aching hand, An Young-hee stepped out of bed.
Flames burned beneath the bed. His foot sizzled.
He rushed to the door and grabbed the handle, but it wouldn't turn.
Yeah, he figured as much.
Death Qi already seeped through the door crack.
There was no way out of the bedroom.
The pain in his foot became unbearable.
The sharp ache threatened to make his mind blank.
An Young-hee looked down.
The floor—and the Purgatory Surface beyond it—was peaceful.
If there was one escape route, it was down there.
He closed his eyes and leaped backward onto the bed as if diving.
Heat. A slight floating sensation.
And then.
A reversal.
An Young-hee opened his eyes.
It was the Purgatory Surface, which he'd crossed into and out of several times today alone.
The heat was gone. And it wasn't just the heat.
"Healed up?"
The burns were gone. The pain too.
Was this another trait of this body?
What are the healing conditions?
If wounds healed every time he crossed between reality and the Purgatory Surface...
It's the Death Qi.
Had the MacArthur Shrine Maiden foreseen this and tried to steal his body?
He didn't know.
More pressing matters came first.
An Young-hee peered into reality through the floor.
He saw souls.
A burning soul, and souls wrapped around chains and ropes in both hands.
He spotted souls wandering the streets by the hundreds. None had that form.
Those souls were someone's attack.
A flicker of unease hit him.
What if they locked eyes?
Paranoia.
The two souls scanned the room, then left the bedroom.
They didn't spare the floor a glance.
"Even souls can't see reality and the Purgatory Surface like a mirror?"
New information gained.
An Young-hee chased after the souls.
He left the bedroom, opened the front door, leaned on the railing, and looked down.
In reality, dozens of people gathered, staring up at the officetel.
From their upward gaze, he couldn't make out faces clearly.
The two ghosts slipped through the onlookers and returned to a man in the back.
The man who communed with the ghosts hid in a nearby building, pulling Death Qi-infused items from a heavy sports bag.
Seeing the camera and truck model inside the bag, An Young-hee knew instinctively.
The culprit.
The one who'd cursed the crosswalk had tracked him all the way here.
Not satisfied with one curse, he'd followed him home and set the place ablaze.
If he let him escape now, the next attack would be even deadlier.
What to do?
"...Kill him."
How?
The opponent was a proper sorcerer.
An Young-hee was just an ordinary guy with a slightly special body.
"The method... my body."
The body that healed every time he crossed between reality and the Purgatory Surface.
True healing had happened only once.
There might be a limit, or it could be a one-time miracle.
But it was the only thing An Young-hee could rely on.
An Young-hee entered the house, grabbed a kitchen knife and hammer in each hand, and came back out.
Fire trucks arrived.
The sorcerer, in the building's shadow, pulled out various tools and worked on something.
An Young-hee dashed down the stairs.
Running at full speed, he reached the sorcerer's position in one go.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Hiding in the building's shadow, Kim Cheol-su cast a tracking spell.
It tracked nearby people.
The spell failed to activate. Only the materials were consumed.
"Gone?"
He'd vanished after getting hit by a car at the crosswalk too.
Spatial jump? Coordinate reset?
Born with the ability to leap through space-time?
"Can you even be born with that?"
In over ten years immersed in the world's shadows, traveling countries, he'd seen space-traveling sorcery exactly once.
From the grand sorcerer called the Clock Tower Elder.
Istanbul.
The Purgatory Surface battlefield fighting hundreds of thousands of ghouls pouring in from the Middle East.
Hundreds of sorcerers and wizards in a desperate squad crumbling, ghouls about to spill into Europe—then the grand sorcerer leaped through space and annihilated hundreds of thousands with a few spells.
Space was a realm permitted only to such monsters.
Born with it innately?
"Denying reality won't help."
The target had vanished right before the ghosts' eyes.
Good enough. A sacrifice with that kind of power could shake off the possession spell from the grimoire.
Or he could auction it off and buy plenty of regular sacrifices.
Happy thoughts as he unfurled the second tracking spell.
Scaled to detect across all of South Korea.
Result: failure. Materials wasted.
Not in the country?
A chill ran through him.
Kim Cheol-su wondered if he'd picked a fight with someone he shouldn't even look in the eye.
No way.
The curse didn't activate on those with Death Qi.
There wasn't a speck of Death Qi-imbued items in the guy's house.
Not even a newbie's place freshly entering the Purgatory Surface was that clean.
Kim Cheol-su prepared the third spell.
Weaker tracking, but it showed a general direction no matter where the target was.
He sprinkled powder of dinosaur bone, sand from near the pyramids, and flour on a talisman, lit it, and smeared it with smoke from spirit grass that grew only in China's Purgatory Surface, fertilized by souls.
"O colossal ancient sense of smell that chews, claws, and tramples its prey, O eye of the sun god that illuminates all directions. Hunt the prey, find the insolent one."
⟨ Tracking Incantation ⟩
The spirit grass moved slowly, but surely.
The blackened grass bowed toward the ground.
Kim Cheol-su's gaze followed.
Ordinary asphalt.
"Below?"
Not underground. The tracking worked even tens of kilometers down.
Then, on the opposite side of the planet?
As Kim Cheol-su stared at the asphalt in bewilderment.
An Young-hee, on the opposite side of the world in a different sense, reached from the afterlife to the living world, from the Purgatory Surface to reality.
Suddenly.
A hand burst from the asphalt. It grabbed Kim Cheol-su's ankle.
Kim Cheol-su wasn't a physical fighter.
By the time he decided to shake it off, his ankle was already locked in the asphalt.
"...W-what?!"
Kim Cheol-su pulled every cursed tool from his bag.
A curse doll sealing another sorcerer's soul, free of backlash worries.
A curse doll made from compressing the testicles of a hundred elephants.
A pseudo-relic from a dead Islamic sorcerer who controlled ghouls.
All useless.
His body kept sinking into the asphalt.
Kim Cheol-su still couldn't guess the nature of the spell dragging him.
Tracking points below. The main body is down there. A special space barrier? No. Barriers carry Death Qi or vital energy.
Many things baffled him, but what puzzled Kim Cheol-su most was the lack of traces.
Vital energy of the living.
Death Qi of the dead.
To defy the world's laws, one needed one or the other.
An unchanging truth with no exceptions.
Even leaders of great religions couldn't work miracles without vital energy or Death Qi.
The force sucking him in had neither Death Qi nor vital energy.
Inexplicable.
An anomaly defying analysis.
He let out a hollow laugh.
A phenomenon even a sorcerer living in the world's underbelly couldn't comprehend.
His waist, chest, and neck sank.
The spirit grass above his head still pointed down.
A common knowledge hit Kim Cheol-su.
Beneath the living world lies the afterlife.
The afterworld was below the world, underground.
A claim from countless legends, myths, folktales—and accepted as canon even today.
A tracking spell that pointed even to space.
And the target below.
"Purgatory Surface...!"
Realizing where he was being dragged, Kim Cheol-su tried to scream, but his mouth was already sunk.
One man vanished beneath the asphalt, leaving only his dropped cursed tools and bag on the ground.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
An Young-hee gasped for breath.
Pulling a person from reality into here wasn't easy.
No time to catch his breath, he gripped the kitchen knife in reverse grip and stabbed the neck of the prone Kim Cheol-su.
Stab.
Blood spurted from Kim Cheol-su's neck.
Blood?
Wasn't it black smoke in the Purgatory Surface?
Kim Cheol-su's body convulsed. Like a freshly caught fish flopping, forcing An Young-hee to step back a few paces.
Blood sprayed for a while, then black smoke billowed from the wound toward the sky.
Not just the wound—black smoke poured from his entire body.
He bolted upright.
An Young-hee readied to hurl the hammer.
Kim Cheol-su extended a hand forward and spoke.
"Stop! The match is decided. My complete defeat. Let's talk."
"Why should you decide that?"
"My name is Kim Cheol-su. My true name is Kim Cheol-su too. Without me, your soul would have shattered the moment you fell naked into the Purgatory Surface. Even I can only barely hold your soul and memories together."
"You that great?"
"A true name differs from the given name—it's the soul's name. Matching true and given names is a blessing, treated as top-tier talent. And I am Kim Cheol-su."
"So?"
Kim Cheol-su stood.
He pulled a talisman from his bag and stuck it to his neck; the smoke from there stopped.
But black smoke still poured from his whole body.
"What comes to mind with Kim Cheol-su?"
"Textbook?"
"Right. Countless conceptual Cheol-sus and Young-hees. Lab rat synonyms. Japan's Takeshi. China's Xiao Ming. English world's John. I borrow that conceptual power to disperse and ignore all sorcery backlash and risks. Do Cheol-su and Young-hee die in textbook passages?"
"...Not particularly."
Even flung before a meteor approaching at light speed, Cheol-su and Young-hee don't die.
The problems seek not their deaths, but answers to the values given to them.
"I'm sustaining my soul with that concept now. Won't last long, though. But what are you? Is that body real flesh from reality?"
"...."
"Yeah. No need to answer. Nice final sight at least."
Black smoke from Kim Cheol-su's body surged dozens of times thicker.
As Death Qi drained, his body crumbled too.
"You don't know who you are either, huh? Learn his true name. It might reveal the mystery of that body."
Kim Cheol-su's collapse halted.
He grimaced briefly, then muttered to himself.
"The old monster must be pretty desperate. Jumped out the instant the sacrifice neared the Purgatory Surface."
Kim Cheol-su looked at An Young-hee.
"Three hundred years ago, I fell into a sorcerer's trap and nearly lost my body. So I was gathering sacrifices for a vessel."
"Solve it with your specialty?"
"I disperse backlash and risks. If I could ignore curses aimed at me too, I'd rule East Asia."
Kim Cheol-su spoke firmly.
"No time, so straight to the point. The 300-year-old monster mistook my state and wants my body. His true name isn't Cheol-su, so he'll crumble fast. Hit him once for me."
"Why me?"
Kim Cheol-su tossed the sports bag at his feet.
"The cursed tools inside are ones I gathered traveling the world."
An Young-hee's expression was blank.
Cursed tools from around the world, so?
"Sell 'em rough, get over 10 billion won. And my workshop key's in there. All custom engraved. Land one hit on the old monster, and it's all yours. This is a contract on the name of true name Kim Cheol-su."
10 billion! And a workshop! Real estate!
An Young-hee hesitated.
Without knowing what the old monster coming for Kim Cheol-su's body was like, he couldn't rush into a contract.
"No time."
"Just one hit?"
"Yes."
"If I fail?"
"No risks. Personal grudge."
"I'll do it."
⚡ CONTRACT ACTIVATED ⚡A golden cord rose from the bag.
"In the name of Kim Cheol-su, a contract unbreakable even in hell's deepest pit is sealed!"
The golden cord snapped in half, wrapping one end around Kim Cheol-su's wrist, the other An Young-hee's.
Kim Cheol-su's body toppled forward. The halted collapse resumed, but slowly.
The fallen Kim Cheol-su pushed off the ground and raised his head.
"Clearly possessed a living body. Yet this is the Purgatory Surface?"
A lower, heavier voice than before.
The 300-year-old sorcerer scanned around. No ghosts in sight.
His body was crumbling. He needed to seize even a stray soul's Death Qi.
To buy time to decipher this bizarre situation.
"Hm?"
The sorcerer looked down.
A wrist protruding from the ground gripped his ankle.
His feet sank into the earth. He poured curses using the Purgatory Surface's Death Qi, but all futile.
The curse targets were on the world's opposite side.
Knees, waist, shoulders sank. Only his head remained.
"What in the world..."
Shadow fell over the sorcerer's head, baffled by the unheard-of sorcery.
With his neck sunk, he couldn't even turn.
Hands and feet bound, the sorcerer raged.
"Who are you! What sorcery is this?!"
"Secret technique, Heaven-Earth Flip."
"Heaven-Earth Flip? What's that?"
"No need to know. I'll make good use of the cursed tools and workshop."
The hammer swung hard, smashing the sorcerer's head.