Chapter 192: They won’t see it for long

The drainage outlet didn’t lead to a clean path. It opened directly onto a narrow, miserable strip of black volcanic stones that ran along the base of the limestone cliff. The morning sun was trying to break through the fog, but it only managed to turn the air into a flat, gray soup that smelled like wet salt, dead seaweed, and the cold grease from the lower refinery pipes.

Jun-ho walked slowly over the loose shingles, his large rubber boots making a crunching noise with every step. The black iron blade of The Ash Remnant hung low against his thigh, its matte surface perfectly dry despite the damp mist rolling off the water. Every few paces, the canvas strap of his duffel bag would shift against his shoulder, making the heavy brass lock of The Monarch’s Ledger give a dull clink against the loose coins in his pocket.

Eun-bi walked three paces behind him. She looked completely spent. Her yellow rain jacket was unzipped, hanging loosely around her elbows, and she had wrapped Gyeong-su’s old gray flannel shirt twice around her ribs to keep the wind off her skin. Her face was bright red from the salt chill, and her breath formed thick, rapid clouds of white mist that vanished into the gray sky the moment she exhaled.

"Stop for a second," she said, her voice dropping into a quiet, raspy whisper that barely carried over the sound of the small waves hitting the rocks.

Jun-ho stopped. He didn’t turn around completely, but he tilted his head, letting the weight of his duffel bag rest against a jagged boulder near the water’s edge.

Eun-bi dropped her canvas bag onto the wet stones with a heavy sigh. She reached into her plastic apron pocket, pulled out her green field radio, and set it on top of her knees as she crouched down. The back panel was still held together by the copper wire she had twisted around the battery casing earlier. She tapped the plastic housing twice with her trauma scissors, trying to clear the static coming through the small speaker.

Static. Whine. Click.

"The central district is completely jammed," she said, her fingers turning the small tuning dial very slowly. "The regional office just sent an emergency alert to all the patrol boats near the mouth of the river. They are calling it a ’system logic failure.’ They don’t know someone broke the anchor chains in Sector Zero. They think the database had a regular power surge from the lower valves."

"They’ll figure it out by afternoon," Jun-ho said. His voice was quiet, completely steady in the open air. "Sang-woo’s father isn’t going to let a Tier 4 core vanish without looking at the physical locks."

"He’s already looking," Eun-bi muttered, her sharp eyes fixing onto the small glowing dial of her radio. "But that’s not what’s bothering me. Gyeong-su’s old wire said there’s an illegal boat captain named Old Man Hak who runs an unregistered lugger down by the lower port siding. He trades with the black market islands out past the boundary grid. If we want to move this black wedge and the ledger without triggering the ministry turnstiles on the main road, he’s the only one who can carry us out."

"Then we find him," Jun-ho said.

"He’s an unranked broker, Jun-ho," she said, standing up and wiping a streak of red mud from her jeans. Her dark hair was still wet, sticking to the side of her neck in thin, messy strands. "He doesn’t work for free. If you walk onto his wooden deck carrying an unregistered primal ledger that can rewrite district drop tables, he’s going to want half the value just to turn his engine on. We have forty-two thousand won in cash and a bag of dry biscuits. That doesn’t buy a passage to the outer islands."

Jun-ho looked out toward the water. A hundred meters from the black stones of the beach, a small, weak gray distortion hung three feet above the surface of the river. It was an unranked coastal gate labeled F-4. The local fishermen used it to farm minor stone-scaled crabs for their market stalls. It was a Tier 1 zone, so weak and low-value that the government hadn’t even bothered to install an automated scanning grid on the beach.

He closed his eyes for a brief second. In the lower corner of his sight, the gray numbers were waiting, perfectly still.

[Level: 14]

[Unassigned Attribute Points: 10]

[Inventory: The Monarch’s Ledger (Ancient - Soul Bound).]

He didn’t need to ask for a tutorial, and he didn’t need to explain anything to her. He focused his mind entirely on the ten points floating in his vision. If he wanted to deal with a black-market broker like Old Man Hak, he needed raw currency—something the old man couldn’t reject.

"Put 5 points into Strength," Jun-ho whispered into his own collar. "Put 5 points into Mana."

[Attribute Allocation Detected: 5 Points to Strength, 5 Points to Mana.]

[Applying 100x Multiplier to Resource Logic...]

[Strength increased by 500.]

[Mana increased by 500. Current Mana: 2500/3000.]

The reaction inside his chest was completely silent. The frozen ocean behind his ribs expanded by another third, a deep, solid density settling into his shoulder blades and his fingers. The air right around his jacket sleeve grew cold, a thin layer of frost opening across the frayed threads of his gray shirt.

He unzipped his duffel bag with his left hand, his bare fingers closing around the cold brass lock of The Monarch’s Ledger. He didn’t pull the book out into the rain. He just held the casing under the canvas flap and directed his thoughts toward the small gray distortion hanging over the coral reef.

[The Monarch’s Ledger Active.]

[Target Sector: Unranked Coastal Gate ’F-4’.]

[Applying 10x Area Multiplier to Drop Tables...]

[Mana Cost: 1000. Current Mana: 1500/3000.]

A sharp click echoed through his mind—a sound that didn’t travel through his ears, but made the mud puddles between the black stones turn into solid white discs of ice instantly.

The gray distortion out on the water didn’t grow larger. It turned a deep, solid ink-black color, the thin blue mana threads inside the portal twisting and turning like living wires as the ancient ledger rewrote the entire drop logic of the mile-wide sector. The weak crab gate was no longer a Tier 1 zone; it was running a mutated, unfiltered framework that had never been checked by a ministry filter.

Eun-bi stopped fixing her radio. She dropped the green box into her bag, her hands catching the edge of his sleeve fast, her fingers shaking slightly from the sudden drop in temperature. "The gate signature just jumped ten degrees on my display, Jun-ho. The mist out there is turning dark gray. The local fishermen down at the lower pier are going to see the shift in five minutes."

"They won’t see it for long," Jun-ho said.

He pulled the strap of his duffel bag tight over his left shoulder, picked up the solid black blade of The Ash Remnant, and walked straight down into the cold river surf. His large rubber boots made a loud splashing sound as he waded through the white foam, the freezing water rising past his ankles as he headed toward the ink-black portal.

Eun-bi didn’t stay behind on the black shingle beach. She grabbed her canvas bag, her yellow rain jacket rustling loudly against her arms as she waded into the dark water right behind his shoulder. Her boots splashed hard through the cold foam, her hand reaching out to keep a firm grip on the frayed thread of his sleeve as they broke the perimeter line together, stepping straight into the dark gray mist of the altered gate.