Chapter 357

So then, while the original body was being moved around, what was the alien’s mind doing?

Wow!

At that very moment, the reincarnated alien was thoroughly enjoying life as a rock pigeon.

Until now, corpse-manipulation magic had only allowed him to gradually share the senses of animals. It had been a long time since he had achieved complete control like this, as though a spirit had fully possessed a shaman.

Naturally, his spirits were soaring.

As far as the conscious pigeon was concerned, this was practically a picnic.

This wild raspberry is really sweet.

Moreover, Esther’s movements had remained just below the threshold required to trigger the impact detector.

Even the emergency alarm he had installed as a precaution remained perfectly silent.

And so, in the middle of autumn, an unexpected incident occurred.

The original body had escaped.

***

After a brief whirlwind of events, the scene had already changed.

_-

How many minutes had passed?

Unlike the studio apartment, which still had light fixtures that looked ten years out of date, this room was decorated with the latest fashionable imported lamps.

It was a private area within the Korean Magic Tower, accessible only to those carrying a special key.

To put it simply, it was also the lounge Seo Esther primarily used.

“Are you sure you used the skill properly? Then why isn’t his fever going down?”

“I-I really did everything I could as a healer.”

“No, first of all, don’t be scared. Listen to me. I’m not trying to blame you right now. I’m just frustrated.”

The person standing before her had studied diligently from childhood and entered medical school.

Then, after the Dungeon Shock, as though their awakening had built upon that accumulated knowledge, they had become a new type of Awakened—a healer.

It was rather remarkable that someone so capable was standing right here.

Esther was an S-rank hunter with more money than she could possibly spend.

Naturally, she had long since hired a dedicated healer.

“Could he have been hiding the fever because he didn’t want to attract media attention?”

The real problem was privacy.

After considerable thought, Esther had brought only people from within the industry to this location.

Once they were inside this building, there was no need to worry about outsiders.

More importantly, there was far less risk of information concerning Kim Giryeo being leaked.

And yet, despite all the emergency treatment, the results remained unsatisfactory.

“No matter how I look at him, he doesn’t seem relaxed at all.”

The familiar blond man lay stretched out on the reclining sofa.

He was usually rather dry and expressionless to begin with, but today he looked emptier than ever as he stared blankly at the ceiling.

“Giryeo-ssi.”

Her fellow hunter remained silent.

“Giryeo-ssi, are you feeling any better?”

The guild leader of the Korean Magic Tower addressed the man on the sofa once more.

But when he continued to say nothing, apparently sunk deep in thought—when in reality the magic had become unstable after being removed from its designated residence—her concern quickly deepened.

“So there really was a reason you took a leave of absence.”

That sharp, capable hunter had weakened this much.

Esther would not have cared even if her guild were reduced to half its current size.

If bearing that sort of loss meant he would recover, she would gladly accept it.

Though, admittedly, the reason she felt that way was somewhat personal.

Without this Awakened, our country is going to have a hard time.

The only competent person left would be that Jung guy...

She had not even felt this devastated when SDM, the online game to which she had devoted much of her youth, shut down.

How was she supposed to endure a future without that hunter?

What sort of mindset would make that possible?

“Damn this world! The people who ought to die never do!”

It was at that very moment.

The man reclining on the sofa suddenly spoke.

“I... I need to go home.”

It was a single sentence.

At last, the magic operating on the basis of Kim Giryeo’s memories had managed to overcome the error.

“Heuk.”

By the same principle, this shell could imitate the original owner’s speech patterns to a certain extent.

However, even if it was capable of producing responses appropriate to a situation...

“Home? You don’t mean that tiny little studio apartment, do you?”

_-

“If you really want to go, Giryeo-ssi, I can take you back whenever you like. But once you’re in that cramped little room again, what exactly are you planning to do there all by yourself?”

The man was immediately met with a heated rebuttal.

The dead man’s eyes rolled slowly toward her.

And around that moment, the heavy lids above them unexpectedly caught the attention of the person speaking to him.

“That’s right.”

The shell formed another sentence whose meaning was difficult to interpret.

In truth, it was little more than the automatic reproduction of a thought Kim Giryeo had frequently carried while alive.

Even if he went home, there was nothing waiting for him there.

No one would greet him.

So why had he always been so desperate to return?

Perhaps his delivery work had simply been exhausting.

Perhaps what he had longed for was never a specific home at all, but merely the abstract idea of one.

“Uheuk!”

Esther, of course, had no way of knowing that this was nothing more than a memory being replayed.

Cold sweat immediately began to bead across her skin.

I’m screwed.

Did I just say something awful?

Did I sound completely insensitive because I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth?

No, but still...

Why does an S-rank hunter keep choosing to live in places this shabby?

Considering the actual reason the mage’s consciousness was absent, her worries were remarkably trivial.

“Ugh.”

But once words had been spoken, there was no way to take them back.

“Uh, anyway... the potion you took probably hasn’t fully kicked in yet. So all I’m saying is that you should rest for another five minutes before going home. I only blurted out something weird earlier because I was worried...”

Mumble, mumble.

Rather than retracting what she had said, Esther decided to bury the awkwardness beneath several more remarks.

At the same time, she continued what she had been doing.

Tuk.

Quantum computers.

Airplanes.

Superpowers.

And yet the method she had chosen felt strangely primitive for such a modern age.

She had taken some ice from the refrigerator in the Korean Magic Tower’s break room, wrapped it in a chilled cloth, and placed the makeshift ice pack against the man’s forehead.

“How is it? Does that feel a little better?”

After every sophisticated skill had failed, she had finally resorted to an old-fashioned method of lowering his temperature.

But the instant the cold touched his forehead, the shell lying on the reclining sofa recalled something.

A dead man’s thought?

That might sound contradictory.

In reality, it was simply a stored memory being drawn out by the stimulus.

_-

A dark room.

A door left slightly ajar, with lamplight spilling through the narrow gap.

And, somewhere in the distance, the voices of children.

Unfamiliar images flickered through his mind one after another.

The truth was that the real Kim Giryeo had never once been cared for like this while he was alive.

Not even once.

The orphanage where he had grown up had not been abusive.

But it had been operated according to strict rules and procedures.

Whenever a child caught a cold, their priority had been isolation.

As a result, the memories this body carried of being sick consisted almost entirely of being [N O V E L I G H T] left alone in a quiet room.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Now, a woman stood in front of him, repeatedly lifting and replacing an ice pack.

She was simply making sure the guest’s forehead did not become too cold.

_-

_-

Something within those Sambangae eyes silently followed the movement of her hand.

Esther, unaware that the gaze itself held no particular meaning, immediately grew tense.

Had she made him uncomfortable somehow?

“As expected, I guess I interfered too much, huh? Then instead of wasting any more time here, why don’t we just head straight home?”

Besides, there’s nothing more I can do anyway.

Wooong.

The unexpected out-of-body incident did not last long.

Before long, Esther had seated her guest in the company car driven by her secretary, and they were on their way.

“Ah, right. Hunter Kim Giryeo, did you hear about that?”

Naturally, the drive back to the studio apartment was fairly long.

“Gu Seohyoung-ssi. I still keep in touch with her from time to time, and apparently she’s been training her skills so much lately that she’s practically sick of it.”

The conversation continued idly.

“She says her middle-school classmate is right beside her, thriving as an S-rank, so it’s frustrating being the only one left behind. That’s why she wants to improve her skills as quickly as possible...”

_-

“But even if she says that, I think that Enchanter is working so hard because of you, Giryeo-ssi.”

_-

“By the way, Jung Hasaong and I feel the same way.”

The blond shell instinctively turned toward the window, following the habits ingrained in the body.

“Honestly, you’ve helped us so much all this time.”

Anyway, what is that?

Swish.

Apparently, fewer companies had purchased advertising space on that building today.

On a distant giant billboard, instead of a commercial, an ordinary news report was playing.

It showed a sequence of footage from the [Inevitable Malice] incident, when a certain blond agent had effortlessly slaughtered a dancer.

“I just want to repay the help I’ve received. So please don’t feel too burdened by what happened today.”

_-

“I’m not... worrying about Kim Giryeo in some especially strange way or anything. If anything, you were the one who started all of this first.”

The sounds of the road drifted through the car.

Because the body called Kim Giryeo remained silent due to its technical limitations, the conversation soon died away.

Time passed like that.

Before long, the company car reached its destination.

“Ugh. This corner of the room really does look like some hole-in-the-wall shop.”

For someone who had never known poverty, the living space was unbearably cramped.

But would complaining about it accomplish anything when the patient’s fever had not even completely subsided?

Hold it in.

Hold it in.

As a mature Awakened, Esther restrained herself.

There were no further problems until they stepped back into the studio apartment.

Kieeek.

Crack.

And the spy’s body faithfully followed its ordinary routine upon returning home.

“So even a water-element Awakened just uses the sink like a normal person?”

The drooping-eyed woman looked oddly disappointed by that discovery.

Still, she made no further complaint.

“You still have a fever. I’m genuinely worried enough to lose my mind over this.”

Ha...

She simply checked her fellow hunter’s condition.

Then, worried he might collapse from dizziness, she hurriedly guided him over to the bed.

Fortunately, the blond man’s body temperature had dropped somewhat compared to before, thanks to Esther’s meticulous care, the outing itself, and several other contributing factors.

“It’s a keypad lock anyway, so I’ll just leave like this. Oh, and if you’re going to sleep, I’ll turn the lights off for you.”

But then...

Tak.

The person who had been lying on the bed staring at the ceiling parted his dry lips.

***

Whoa...

What is this?

Something is hitting my body right now.

I had only been flying through the vast sky, sightseeing around the world, for a few hours.

Then, as an Archmage, I suddenly received a warning.

Although I was still airborne, I immediately severed my connection to the pigeon carcass.

I needed to redirect my consciousness back into my true body as quickly as possible.

The body of the S-rank Awakener.

“What the hell is going on?”

Moreover, I had practiced this kind of consciousness transfer countless times in my previous life.

My awareness flowed back as naturally as water.

I returned to Kim Giryeo’s body and immediately opened my eyes to assess the situation.

“Giryeo-ssi! Giryeo-ssi!”

Flash!

But what the hell was happening?

The instant I returned to my body, I was greeted by an utterly unimaginable sight.

Esther, the leader of the Korean Magic Tower Guild, was frantically smacking my forearm.

For reference, those blows were precisely what had triggered the warning I felt while flying.

“What...?

Why is she in my room?”

Her presence itself was the greater problem.

Before leaving, I had unquestionably cast an instruction along the lines of:

Do not let any visitors inside.

Still...

This was my first time using this sort of spell on Earth.

Maybe something had gone wrong.

Just as I began resigning myself to that possibility, the S-rank curse caster who had been pounding on my arm finally spoke.

“Phew... phew! Thank goodness. I thought you’d passed out from the fever or something...”

“Yes?”

Her explanation began in a rather repetitive fashion, but soon enough she managed to get to the point.

“No, it’s just... you said something before closing your eyes earlier, Giryeo-ssi. Remember?”

“What?”

But even that was difficult to understand.

“Tell them I’m grateful.”

“To whom?”

“Exactly! That’s why I asked you again! I mean, you suddenly closed your eyes and stopped responding. You scared me.”

_-

“So anyway, who did you want me to give that message to? Seohyoung-ssi?”

The curse caster had apparently been asking about it ever since.

“So...

Wait.

You’re saying I said that, and then passed out?”

As you already know, this body had not been in any condition to hold a normal conversation.

“Hunter Kim Giryeo?”

But as I reconstructed what had happened during the period when my conversation with Esther had been interrupted, I suddenly understood why things had turned out this way.

“No way.”

Still...

No matter how extensively the spell had relied on the body owner’s memories, how could such a simple magical construct produce cognition at this level?

“Strange...

This is...

Really unexpected.”

It was a completely unforeseen situation.

Still, what had happened had already happened.

Having reached a conclusion, I began dealing with the aftermath.

First, I would calm down the curse caster, whose heart was still pounding, and send her home.

Then I would deactivate the security magic I had installed in advance.

Soul.

To explain the decision I had just made, I need to return to that concept.

A soul is originally something that belongs to nature and returns to it after death.

However, the appearance of an Alphahet had changed the circumstances completely.

To be precise, Kim Giryeo’s body had not decayed.

On the contrary.

Someone’s magic had settled upon it and continued preserving it day after day.

But in this universe, a soul is an extraordinarily subtle thing.

Material existence and personal development are inseparably intertwined in its formation.

The heart.

The brain.

And everything else.

Within this blond body remained traces of the life its original owner had lived and the growth he had undergone.

Among those remnants of the soul were what we call memories, persisting in quantities so small they were almost negligible.

By the time a person dies, approximately 99.98 percent of their soul disappears.

And even the remaining 0.02 percent that I had inadvertently kept from vanishing...

I wanted to let it rest forever.

Without disturbing it any further.

“Tell them I’m grateful.”

To be honest, even I wondered why I was going so far over something that might ultimately be meaningless.

But now that this uneasy feeling had taken root...

I no longer wanted to use the automatic maintenance magic so carelessly.

“Anyway, what a ridiculous thing to say.”

After all...

I had been reincarnated precisely so I could afford to indulge this kind of stubbornness whenever I pleased.