Chapter 195: the zero floor

Jun-ho didn’t drop his bags down with a rush. He set the two heavy canvas sacks down near the engine casing with a quiet, deliberate care. The absolute density of the five hundred unfiltered Tier 5 mana stones inside made the old oak deck boards give a tiny, distinct creak under the weight.

"You’re carrying too much ballast for a pair of unranked runaways," said. His voice was raspy, sounding like sand shifting inside an old iron pipe. He didn’t touch the hemp rope coiled over his shoulder, his small eyes tracking the shape of The Ash Remnant hidden under the canvas flap of Jun-ho’s duffel bag. "The ministry repeaters on the lower bridge have been whistling since five this morning. The regional director is offering twenty million won for a vanguard who handles a black iron bar with his left hand. You’re a very loud piece of freight, kid."

Jun-ho stayed right by the cargo hatch, his bare right arm cool under the river mist. The ocean of cold mana behind his ribs was perfectly still, but his high perception could hear the steady, rapid thud-thud-thud of the captain’s pulse from three paces away. The old man was terrified, but the greed inside his watery eyes was still fighting his common sense.

"The price for the southern ports is fifty thousand won," Jun-ho said, his voice flat.

"The price for a regular runner is fifty thousand," Old Man Hak countered, letting out a short, nasal wheeze that might have been a laugh. He reached into his coat pocket, his black-stained fingers pulling out a small brass tobacco tin, his eyes never leaving Jun-ho’s face. "But a runner who makes the entire central district database go dark before breakfast? That’s corporate business, kid. If the Sun God cutters find your name on my crew manifest at the lower toll line, they won’t just pull my license. They’ll sink this old timber hull and tell the auditors it was an environmental hazard."

Eun-bi walked out from behind the small wooden cabin structure, her canvas bag slung tight across her gray flannel shirt. Her dark hair was still wet, sticking to the side of her neck in thin, messy strands, but her sharp face carried that regular, flat public-sector drawl as she stepped between them. She reached down, unzipped the smaller canvas sack by two inches, and let the thick, liquid blue light of the high-density stones spill across the dark deck planks.

The old captain froze, his thumb stopping right on the lid of his tobacco tin. The blue glare from the raw crystals was so intense it illuminated the grease lines on his face, turning his small eyes into two bright reflection circles.

"Five hundred unfiltered Tier 5 gems," Eun-bi said, her voice dropping into a quiet, blunt register. "No ministry stamps, no guild registry logs. You can sell these to the black market brokers on the offshore islands for three times the paper value, and the central auditors won’t see a single percentage point on their tax screens. That doesn’t just buy a passage to the south, Captain. That buys this whole wooden boat three times over."

Old Man Hak stared at the blue light for five long seconds, his breathing coming in short, rattling gasps through his nose. He reached down slowly, his calloused fingers picking up one of the raw crystals. He didn’t bite it this time; he could feel the cold, heavy vibration of the unfiltered mana density humming right through his leather glove.

"Where did a Tier 1 meat shield dig up this kind of weight?" the captain whispered, his voice losing its raspy confidence.

"The zero floor," Jun-ho said, taking one short step forward.

The movement was fast—too fast for a regular human. Before the old man could even register that Jun-ho’s boots had shifted on the wood, the blunt tip of The Ash Remnant was resting lightly against the center of the captain’s leather coat button. The solid black blade didn’t shine under the blue light, looking like a hollow piece of shadow that had just opened up in the middle of the deck.

The air around the old man’s chest dropped twenty degrees in a microsecond, his tobacco tin falling out of his hand and hitting the wooden planks with a sharp click.

"The Sun God interception unit tried to use the tracking lines at the old refinery ruins an hour ago," Jun-ho said, his face an unmoving sheet of stone under his hood. "Min-ah is still sitting in the mudflats with six broken breastplates, waiting for the district office to send a larger detail. If you want to use your radio to call them from the wheelhouse, do it now while the line is still open."

The captain looked from the black iron wedge touching his ribs up to Jun-ho’s dark, steady eyes. The greed in his face vanished instantly, completely swallowed by the raw, ugly realization that the person standing on his deck wasn’t a running prey unit. It was a monster that had just walked out of an unfiltered primitive gate alive.

"I don’t use the radio," Old Man Hak whispered, his hands coming up slowly, his fingers open and trembling. "The battery... the battery line has been dead since the winter floods. I don’t know any mages, and I don’t care about the Sun God ledger."

"Good," Jun-ho said.

He pulled the weapon back with a single flick of his left wrist, the black blade disappearing straight back under the canvas flap of his duffel bag.

Eun-bi zipped the canvas sack closed, cutting off the blue light and leaving the deck in the gray morning mist once more. She slung her bag over her arm, a dry, sharp smile pulling at the corner of her lips as she looked down at the old captain.

"Cast off the bow rope, Captain. We’re burning diesel, and I’m not spending my morning log listening to you think about the bounty."

"Alright, nurse," the old man choked out, his black-stained fingers flying to the throttle handle as he slammed the gear into place. "Alright. The southern transit line is open. Let’s get out of this sector before the patrol drones turn their lenses toward the bank."

The single-cylinder diesel engine let out a massive, dark puff of black smoke from the copper exhaust pipe, and the old wooden lugger slid away from the concrete pier, disappearing straight into the thick yellow fog of the outer river mouth, leaving the city of Seoul behind them in the dark.