Chapter 156:

Free Agent Negotiations

Tongue-branch, Stage 3, [Information Alteration].

To anyone who remembered Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes, it would probably be remembered only as a spell to kill people from afar. But to a wizard, killing with magic was more or less a byproduct. They’re simply using the power they gained while climbing toward transcendence to kill.

Why is that? Why do people who cultivate themselves in pursuit of transcendence kill without hesitation?

The question itself was flawed.

Now that I’d forgotten why I ever pursued magic in the first place, I could vaguely understand the answer. To people who fear magic and don’t want to pay its price, the possibilities of magic didn’t matter.

All you can think about is how magic might hurt you. Once that thought gets lodged in your head, you start dismissing magic’s countless effects—things like guiding the way, manipulating luck, and temporarily changing yourself in whatever direction you want, even something as incredible as Material Substitution.

Objectively, every single one of those things is amazing, yet you start thinking they’re not that big a deal.

Every other effect and use of magic pales before the word lethality. You become obsessed with nothing but its killing power. You focus so much on the possibility that it could hurt you that you ignore everything else magic can do.

According to the fucking idiot I used to be, Dumbass Jemin apparently thought of magic as a kind of 'fire.'

Fire is dangerous. But if humans had refused to use it because it was dangerous, we would’ve lived as beasts forever. If we had kept our distance out of fear because fire could burn people, humanity would never have built cities or created civilization.

Focusing only on magic’s killing power is the same as looking only at the fact that fire burns everything.

Naturally, wizards despise that way of thinking. A wizard’s sense of superiority is like what a modern person feels looking at some primitive who can't even handle fire. The old me was the sort who’d say shit like, ‘Fine, spend the rest of your life afraid of fire,' then burn them with it.

How disgusting.

Magic isn’t like fire. It’s just a disgusting power. An esoteric art and a tool that should disappear from this world.

After all, no normal tool would force that much pain on the person using it.

But the villains already bewitched by that magic, the Aphorism quartet, had me surrounded, watching for any chance to force me to use it.

"Wuss-Jemin-ssi. Why are you taking so long? Want me to hit you if you don’t do it?”

"I said I’ll… do it.”

"Jemin-ssi, Heart-branch magic doesn’t hurt. Let’s just run away together."

"Hamza, are you insane? What if I use that magic that leaves me feeling like I’m starving to death, then we get isolated halfway through and monsters or hostile survivors attack us?”

Faced with the sharp reasoning of a 21st-century modern man, everyone naturally shut their mouths.

How could they fail to grasp something this obvious? They were doing way too good a job of showing just how empty their damn heads were. This was the model way of thinking an intelligent, rational modern person should have. It was reasonable.

Then a voice snapped me wide awake.

For whatever reason, Go Ryeoha was smiling brightly. She put both her hands on her hips, pulled her shoulders back, and spoke as proudly as if she were bragging.

"Hubae-nim, if you don’t want to do it, you can just stay like this. I'm good at taking care of people, you know? If I hadn’t gone into engineering, I was seriously considering social welfare!”

"Social welfare???”

"Working somewhere like a nursing home or a children’s home! Wouldn’t it be rewarding the harder it is?”

The instant I heard that, I squeezed both eyes shut.

The other three members of Aphorism didn’t react much differently.

"Ahem, hmm. Ahem."

Lee Sejun unnecessarily cleared his throat and turned his head away.

"Cough, cough. The dust…”

Hamza suddenly developed a dust allergy, covered his mouth, and doubled over.

"Our Ryeoha-ssi still… well. She tired…”

The pastor awkwardly shifted his eyes around.

Come to think of it, it looked like the pastor had vaguely caught on to the truth about Go Ryeoha as well. Before, he would’ve been fussing over “our Ryeoha” and showering her with affection, but with enough time passing and the mood becoming like this, he probably figured it out.

But Go Ryeoha was a wizard even my old self had avoided rashly challenging to a fight to the death.

At least in a 1-on-1 fight, she was a specialist who had fought Father Kang Peter and returned without so much as a scratch, even if he had been going easy on her. Carelessly shoving the truth in her face when she was that kind of person might just earn you an exploding fist that could pulverize a person instantly.

Go Ryeoha graduating in social welfare and getting a job at a nursing home…

An image suddenly popped into my head.

A nursing home or maybe a retirement community.

Elders on spread-out mats, tossinghwatu cards around with smiles on their wrinkled faces, when Go Ryeoha suddenly came barging in crying.

-Goodness. Ryeoha, why are you crying like that?

-I’m sorry, everyone. They said they’re cutting our funding…!

-Squish.

Oh my God.

I immediately shook my head hard enough to toss the thought out, then raised my right hand with firm resolve.

"I’ll use Tongue-branch, Stage 3, [Information Alteration], so please keep Go Ryeoha-ssi away from me.”

"Huh? Why? More importantly, what happened to calling me Master? Hubae-nim~.”

The one who called her Master was me back when I was a damn idiot, not the normal, respectable Baek Jemin.

Come to think of it, the people Go Ryeoha had been taken care of and crossed over to the Other Shore now…

...

My thoughts abruptly shifted.

The bodies of the people abandoned underground at Konkuk University had remained there without turning into fog.

Was there some kind of rule? Some criterion for who it applied to? Or had Go Ryeoha made some kind of deal with the 66 Society so that at least the bodies were left behind? If so, did that mean Go Ryeoha knew the truth about the fog as well?

Was there a connection between their group being reduced from 200 people to only a few dozen and the truth about the Mist of the Other Shore?

What was the difference between the people whose corpses remained and those whose didn’t?

Amid countless questions, the reason of a normal modern person flowed coldly through my mind.

Not my problem.

Still reluctant and desperately hoping there was nothing wrong with the person I was now, I stuck out my tongue.

Tongue-branch, Stage 3, [Information Alteration].

-I am as I was before making contact with the owner of the Double-Semicircle Grimoire.

......

"Baek Jemin?”

"Are you Wuss-Jemin-ssi?”

"Jemin-ssi… please stay like this… Let’s run away from the Republic of Korea together, please…”

"Hmm. I think I prefer the Hubea-nim who calls me Master after all.”

......

Strange.

Something about what I was seeing was wrong. Why were Lee Sejun, Hamza, and Go Ryeoha here? This wasn’t even a subway station. The pastor was here, but was any of this actually real?

The moment we entered the underground section of Hwaseo Station, all sorts of bizarre phenomena had started overlapping, and now the side effects of magic were piling on top of them too. It was enough to drive me insane. My sense of reality was rapidly slipping away. I didn’t even know what reality I was supposed to be standing in anymore, and the thought made me dizzy.

It felt like crossing a swaying set of stepping stones without any safety gear

A chill ran through my veins, the feeling that I stood on the edge of ruin, as if looking down would send me falling endlessly. I was certain I had been preparing to sleep in the subway station with the pastor so I could meet the owner of the Double-Semicircle Grimoire.

Then what the hell was going on here?

Was this the backlash of [Information Alteration]?

Or had I already made contact with the owner of the Double-Semicircle Grimoire, and was I now trapped in an illusion it was showing me? Where did reality begin and end, and what was I supposed to do to overcome this?

That was when a clear fragrance pierced my nose.

I instinctively sniffed at it and looked around. It smelled like flowers, clear and refreshing, calming to the mind. The floating sensation, as if I’d been suspended in midair, gradually faded, and at last I became certain that both my feet were firmly planted on the ground.

The clear floral scent stimulating my sense of smell made me realize it.

This was reality.

This might not be the world I used to live in, but where I stood was indeed reality.

I looked around at the Supreme Archmages watching me with tense expressions. Each of them looked at me with different expectations. The pastor wore a grave expression. Hamza met me with earnest prayer. Go Ryeoha was grumbling for some reason as she slightly furrowed her brows. And Lee Sejun…

"Are you Wuss-Jemin-ssi? Or are you Manly-Jemin-ssi?”

"Manly-Jemin?”

"I’ve decided to call the Jemin-ssi who knows how to stand on his own instead of relying on others, who’s full of ambition to rise higher, and who possesses the progressive, exemplary character of a Great Archmage, Manly-Jemin.”

"Hmph."

Lee Sejun.

I thought all he ever did was yap about TS and act all disgusting, but apparently even with that shallow pathetic mind and miserable excuse for a brain, he’d been lucky enough to grasp at least one fragment of the truth.

At this point, I could call him a Surpeme Fortune Archmage.

Of course everyone would wait for a Great Archmage, but everything in the world was give-and-take. If I wanted applause, shouldn’t I put in a little effort for these barely-human creatures who had been waiting solely for the return of Great Archmage Baek Jemin?

I decided I could figure out why my right eye was inexplicably fine later. For now, I’d put on a performance and collect my applause.

"I hereby grant everyone the obligation to applaud my noble resolve to risk even ruin in pursuit of magic’s mysteries. This is not an opportunity but a duty, so begin applauding immediately.”

The Supreme Archmages began clapping, albeit slowly and with complicated expressions.

-Clap, clap…clap…

"That’s our youth group leader. A man who can still improve.”

"Pastor, when your starting point is below rock bottom, improvement is almost unavoidable. Still, Manly-Jemin-ssi is a lot better.”

"I’m going to miss the rational and reasonable Jemin-ssi.”

"I’m just a liiiiittle bit disappointed…Watching Hubae-nim bawl his eyes out had its charms as well.”

Praise is something you get better at with practice. Like everything else in the world.

The pastor, Hamza, Lee Sejun, Go Ryeoha.

They might have been Supreme Archmages, but apparently no one had given them a personality screening, because there was nothing supreme about any of their characters. They clearly were character-lacking bastards who had never praised another person in their lives, so every compliment had to come with unnecessary extra remarks. I didn’t like it, but their effort was admirable, so I decided to let it slide.

Now that I’d gotten my applause, there was something I actually needed to do.

"Alright, I’m going to sleep so I can contact the owner of the Double-Semicircle Grimoire. I don’t know why any of you are here, but just cover me for now. And Pastor, hand over the grimoire without making a fuss. Give it to me while I’m asking nicely. I'm only letting you live because you’re a Supreme Archmage.”

"Wait! Wait!”

"Haah~ Pastor. We already finished talking about this. What now?”

Whatever was going on, having Lee Sejun, Hamza, and Go Ryeoha here was actually better.

I could sort out the questions later. First I needed to meet the owner of the grimoire and pry some answers out of them…

"You've already met it! Baek Jemin, you met it, had your memory taken, turned weird, and then rewound yourself with [Information Alteration]!”

"Pastor, I keep telling you that Jemin-ssi is normal like that.”

While Hamza argued back with some bizarre sense of duty, I couldn’t help frowning at what the pastor had said.

"Say something that makes sense. I went weird because my memory was taken? Then how would rewinding myself bring the memory back? Is it even possible to get something back from the owner of a grimoire?”

I didn’t know what kind of being the owner of the Double-Semicircle Grimoire was, but it certainly wasn’t some ordinary being.

If it was capable of playing around with human souls, there was no way I could take something back from it with magic. Sure, maybe it would be possible with some enormous price or a sufficiently elaborate ritual, but if [Information Alteration] alone could get things back, everyone would’ve learned Ritual-type magic.

Just as I was about to dismiss the idea, a realization suddenly struck.

It was impossible for a human wizard to get a refund from the owner of a grimoire. Unless you were one of the beings in legends, it was practically impossible. Unfortunately, I was only in the process of becoming a legend. I wasn’t one yet.

But the reverse was possible. The owner of the grimoire could give it back.

Why?

The answer came to me immediately.

I understood because I was Baek Jemin, a man captivated by magic precisely because the world wasn’t equal, because people were born with inherent differences, while magic would give you the result as long as you paid the price.

At that moment, a voice that wasn’t mine echoed inside my head.

It sounded like tiny ripples gliding across the surface of a shallow, still lake.

At first, I couldn't understand what it meant. If you heard the sound of gliding waves and somehow understood a message from it, you really would be insane. Even so, the sound of the waves gradually grew louder until, before long, it filled my ears and my entire head.

My vision went blurry.

As I staggered backward, I saw the Supreme Archmages looking alarmed through my wavering vision. The pastor seemed to notice something and sprang into action.

And the instant he pulled the grimoire from his sling bag, my gaze snapped toward it as if my eyes were being sucked in.

"..."

The sound of waves stopped.

Instead, words I could understand echoed in my head.

This contract is absolutely fair.

You are being saved through this book right now. 

The ringing continued for a while, then began to subside.

The words that had been hammering into my head slowly blurred and disappeared as well.

My swaying vision turned to normal, and I could stand straight again.

But at the same time, I understood.

With the Supreme Archmages all standing there in silence and watching cautiously, the pastor slowly lowered the grimoire and asked,

"Baek Jemin, did you figure something out?”

"...Yes."

I understood why the owner of the grimoire had returned my memory when I used [Information Alteration].

And now that I knew why, there was nothing left to hesitate over.

"Give me the grimoire. Hand it over.”

"Np!!! Are you fucking insane!!!!”

"But you really do need to give it to me.”

Humans are always looking for loopholes. If the price is harsh, they hesitate to pay it. Even if the price is fair, they rack their brains trying to find some way not to pay it. I won’t deny that this helped build civilization.

But that only works against nature and civilization.

"I’m going to negotiate the contract terms and renew it.”

Loopholes don’t work on the owners of grimoires.