A Peaceful Day and the Hidden Clue of Mithril
To put it bluntly from the start, it had been a complete false alarm and an utterly absurd waste of effort.
The suffocating sense of otherworldliness he'd felt at the dead end of a dark alley wedged between the high-rises of the busy district, and the sharp, chilling tension that had made the dimensional boundary seem to writhe and distort.
Yushin had drawn his dantian's C-rank mana all the way up to his fingertips, gripped the hilt of the soul-engraved magic sword Heukwol at his waist, and readied himself for every conceivable form of combat — primed to face whatever vicious interdimensional beast or unidentified assassin might come bursting out at any moment.
Yet the scene that unfolded before Yushin as he stormed into the alley at full alert was nothing more, and certainly nothing less, than a pathetically plain, almost embarrassing slice of ordinary real-world back-alley life.
A rusted, dented tin trash can; an old red brick wall with its cement peeling away in patches; cigarette butts scattered across the ground and filthy stains left where yesterday's rainwater had pooled and then baked dry under the sun.
Not a single 0.1 percent of murderous intent, a vicious demonic aura, or a trace of mana could be found anywhere, even if he'd scoured the place with freshly washed eyes.
"……Don't tell me I raised my mana sensitivity too high and saw something that wasn't there?"
Yushin swallowed a hollow, self-conscious laugh and swept his gaze thoroughly over the surroundings, embarrassed at himself.
Out on the main road beyond the alley, cars were honking and blaring their horns, students in school uniforms chattered as they passed by, and office workers strolled along chatting peacefully on their phones, one hand wrapped around an iced americano.
The world was rolling along in the most perfectly normal fashion imaginable — as if the tension from moments ago had been nothing but one man's grandiose delusion.
At that very moment, the mechanical chime of the system Yurang-i rang out crystal clear inside his head.
An abnormal environmental measurement has been observed.
"I don't see anything at all, so what exactly is abnormal about this?"
The ozone layer over this alley has suffered severe depletion, and the total volume of ultraviolet radiation striking the surface is being measured at an abnormally elevated level compared to standard values. Prolonged exposure carries an extremely high risk of skin aging and burns.
"……Excuse me? You raised a full-blown alert because the UV index is a little high?!"
Yushin pressed a hand to his forehead, feeling his sanity begin to drift up toward the heavens.
What any ordinary Earthling would dismiss without a second thought — the sun's a bit harsh today, better put on some sunscreen — the system had splashed across his vision with a warning as dramatic as if some grand dimensional catastrophe had just broken out.
By the biological standards of frail, mana-less mortals, it is a clear and definitive hazard.
"Ha, honestly…… Not a monster attack or a dimensional rift, but the ozone layer and UV rays. This world is more peaceful than anything the Hunter society could even imagine."
Yushin burst out laughing and completely released the tension that had locked every muscle in his body rigid.
He leaned back against the alley wall and stretched his dimensional sense out in a wide radius of several hundred meters in all directions, but truly, that was all there was.
A world of perfect harmlessness and quiet — no Abyss's murderous bloodlust and crimson demonic beasts, no swarms of Arhen's mutated monsters, not even the suffocating net of mana surveillance that the Hunter Association and the great clans of real-world South Korea constantly exuded.
Re-evaluating the ecological risk level of the current dimension.
Risk Grade: Extremely Low (a pristine zone ideally suited for extended stays and rest for body and mind).
"Right — you're correct on one thing at least. You picked a hell of a vacation spot."
Yushin drew Heukwol's energy deep down into the recesses of his dantian, thrust both hands into his trouser pockets, and ambled out into the crowd with perfect leisure.
The faces of the people walking beneath the warm afternoon sun carried none of the killing intent, the weariness, or the gnawing anxiety about when the next Gate might open — none of the hallmarks unique to the Hunter world.
Some were browsing the gorgeous clothes in shop windows; here and there couples clapped along to a street performer's song.
A world without demonic beasts, without dimensional invasion, without the cutthroat schemes of political marriages that demanded one's very life.
A peaceful everyday life like this…… isn't nearly as bad as I thought.
At the comfort that came from a day when he could sleep without a sword hilt in his grip, ready to bet his life at any moment, a soft, easygoing smile spread across Yushin's face all on its own.
Warning. Airborne concentrations of fine dust and ultrafine particulates are at the 'Very Bad' level. Use of a respiratory-protection mask is recommended.
"Please just filter out that kind of trivial environmental report yourself, Yurang-i."
Yushin pulled out his smartphone and walked slowly down the bustling streets, skimming through the news on a portal site.
The peace and quiet were a genuinely sweet balm, but for a man whose blood ran with a Hunter's instinct — a man who carried mana in his dantian and crossed between dimensions — strolling the streets aimlessly with no goal at all was starting to itch and bore him, little by little.
It was then that a flash of a clever idea streaked through Yushin's mind.
"Yurang-i. Even on this mana-less parallel Earth…… do rare minerals like mithril — the kind that show up in fantasy novels and magic worlds — actually exist?"
They exist, definitively. The compositional elements of a planet's crust are shared across dimensions, because the physical laws governing them are shared as well.
"It really does exist?!"
Yushin's eyes snapped wide open.
Even in a world without mana, it meant the planet's own mineral resources obeyed laws common to every dimension.
Your smartphone's search database has been fully synchronized with the underground facility network. Please verify at your leisure.
"Okay, now that's nice!"
Yushin immediately opened his smartphone's search bar and typed in the word mithril.
A flood of fictional lore from countless fantasy games and martial-arts novels came pouring out, but Yushin dug relentlessly into the communities' expert-knowledge boards and academic resources.
Then, on a science-humor board, a post with a bizarre and intriguing title seized his attention at a glance.
Intrigued, Yushin tapped the screen with his finger.
The instant he came face to face with the attached photograph of the silver-white mineral, the mana in his dantian stirred and resonated with a faint tremor.
It was an extraordinary metal with a particle structure startlingly similar to the magic crystals of the Abyss.
The contents of the post were remarkably specific — and shocking.
Far harder than steel or titanium, yet lighter than aluminum.
When exposed to the atmosphere, a self-forming oxide film coats its surface, making it absolutely impervious to corrosion from even the most powerful acids.
A miraculous heat resistance — its form never changes, whether in extreme cold or in furnace temperatures of several thousand degrees.
By taste, it is dozens of times sweeter than sugar.
Drawback: a lethally toxic Class-1 carcinogen — inhaled or touched, it turns the lungs to stone.
"Found it……! So in this world, they call it beryllium!"
Yushin slapped his knee and let out a cry of admiration.
A metal that was hard yet feather-light, that never rusted, and that endured even extreme heat.
It was, in every sense, mithril itself — the legendary metal of fantasy worlds.
"But it says this stuff is a lethal Class-1 carcinogen. Am I going to get poisoned handling it carelessly?"
Please do not concern yourself, Master. The pure, refined C-rank mana flowing through your body breaks down and purifies simple chemical toxins and carcinogens of every kind without fail.
"Aha! So for someone with mana like me, it's just a safe, easy-to-handle, top-tier alloy mineral!"
Yushin scratched his head and roared with laughter.
To mana-less ordinary Earthlings, it would be treated as dangerously radioactive-grade poison — but to him, whose body could shield and purify itself perfectly through mana, it was nothing short of a vast, sprawling treasure trove lying in wait.
If he later collected beryllium in bulk and fused it into Heukwol's blade or forged new armor from it, its attack power and lightweight properties would surely be maximized.
"Good — now that I've got a treasure-hunting goal, might as well earn myself some honest pocket money first, so I can move around this world freely."
The thought of using mana to rob a bank or run a scam never crossed his mind even once.
Since he'd come all this way for a bit of rest and recuperation, experiencing life down on the ground — where ordinary people's sweat soaked into the earth — had its own flavor of fun for a man like him.
Yushin's feet carried him to a shabby, large-scale day-labor office on the roadside at the edge of the busy district.
Under a faded red signboard reading "JACKPOT MANPOWER," rough-looking laborers who hadn't found work since the early morning hours squatted in a row, burning through their cigarettes.
Ding-a-ling.
As Yushin pushed through the glass door and stepped inside, a wave of stale air hit him at once — acrid cigarette smoke, the cloying sweetness of instant mixed coffee, and the sour tang of life's exhaustion and sweat soaked deep into everything.
The gruff-looking middle-aged office manager, seated at the counter flipping through a ledger with a magnifying lens perched on his nose, ran his eyes up and down over Yushin from head to toe.
"What's a young fellow like you here for? Come looking for work?"
It was the flat, dry-eyed look of a man who had watched thousands of day laborers pass through his doors.
Yushin simply nodded calmly, making no show of his strength.
"Yes, sir. Do you have any same-day site work I could head out on today?"
The manager scanned Yushin's build sharply — one hundred seventy-eight centimeters tall, solidly muscled — and clicked his tongue.
"Your frame looks decent enough…… but this line of work is a different animal entirely from pumping iron at a gym. Cocky college boys usually run off within an hour."
"I've done my military service, and I'm confident in my strength."
The manager mulled it over for a moment, then flipped open his ledger, tapping his ballpoint pen against it.
"As it happens, one of our harder-working men just flaked out over at the demolition site for the commercial building in the redevelopment zone. You'll be smashing concrete walls and hauling off scrap material — you'll be eating dust by the bucketful and your back will be begging for mercy. Still up for it?"
"As much as you need."
"Good. Name?"
"Go Yushin."
Having scrawled the name into the ledger, the manager tossed him a worn-out yellow hard hat.
Go Yushin — a man whose dantian surged with C-rank mana, whose strength and stamina had already reached the inhuman heights of D-rank superhuman.
And so the Dimensional Wanderer, whose sights were set on the very summit of the world's three great powers, cheerfully took his very first step into a dust-choked construction site on the peaceful, mana-less Earth.