Crimson Flame

Even after I returned to the lobby, the excitement refused to settle. Only once I had dropped to the floor and spent a long while dragging in deep breaths did I finally begin to calm.

"......"

That was how shocking Flame Burst's destructive power had been. An explosion that erased a full thirty meters of ground in a single blast. Use it wrong, and I might be the one swept up in it.

Unless I have a very good reason, I shouldn't scale the size up.

With that resolution I approached the skill merchant. The Hispanic ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠merchant's gaze turned toward me.

There it was. A new flame-series skill—Crimson Flame.

At last I had learned my third flame skill.

Burning, Explosion, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Expansion, Purification, Melting. Of the five branches of flame magic, this was the third—the skill that governed Expansion.

I had learned it, yet nothing about me looked any different. I raised a sphere of flame over my palm. Still nothing. Crimson Flame activated only when flame actually struck an enemy, so there was no way to test it in the lobby.

Should I go as far as the Labyrinth?

I considered it for a moment, then discarded the idea. Rushing was the surest way to ruin a thing. Climbing the Tower and exploring the Labyrinth mattered, but so did the world outside them.

A light dizziness came with me into the room. I wrapped myself in Mana Thread—noticeably smoother since the level-up—and headed for the bathroom. I showered, dried my hair, pulled on a tracksuit, tugged a cap low over my face, and stepped outside.

I showed the note to the taxi driver and tapped my throat twice with a finger. A flicker of pity crossed his face. Then the gears shifted, and the taxi pulled away.

The city slid past the window. Watching the scenery tidy itself as we left the cluttered streets of Daelim-dong, I laughed under my breath.

Pity. Absurd. For someone whose entire life had been confiscated, the present was already heaven.

I closed my eyes and dulled my senses. The noise fell away, and my head grew quiet. I dozed like that for a little while.

There was no need for any other heaven.

Today, too, I used the back door instead of the front. Most of the people who came through this office were Awakened. There was no reason to draw eyes by letting them see me move on Mana Thread.

When I opened the door and stepped inside, Yu Seo-ha shot up from her seat.

"You're here!"

The hair she had tied tight swayed behind a face pale as paper. A pretty face. Neat, compact features. Strange, how a face that small still managed to hold everything it needed.

"I've prepared everything you asked for. Would you like to look it over?"

I settled onto the sofa. The give of soft leather traveled up through the Mana Thread. Steam curled from a teacup on the table. When Yu Seo-ha offered coffee, I shook my head without a word and turned to the documents.

Name: Lee Seong-han. I had simply reversed my original name, Lee Han-sung. That alone changed the feel of it entirely. More masculine, you might say.

"Born in 2000. Twenty-seven. You actually look younger than that, though."

Yu Seo-ha cleared her throat lightly and went on.

"I've inserted Mr. Seong-han's information into the actual national database. Checkpoints won't be a problem, and neither will a search by the police or the Association. Of course, if someone digs deeply enough, they'll notice the records were slipped in. But if you've caused trouble on that scale, leaving the country would be the sensible decision."

She handed me a small shoulder bag. Inside were a bankbook and a card.

"You can use them freely. Visiting the bank for additional services is fine as well."

I sorted the rest of her explanation in my head. Don't cause any major incident. She hadn't said it outright, but it was plain enough that Yu Seo-ha could be the one left in difficulty.

Lee Seong-han was a person who perfectly existed. There was even a paper trail covering twenty-seven years of a life. Which meant I could do everything other people did.

"Is there anything else you need?"

I nodded at that. I needed money. I carved letters into the empty air.

Yu Seo-ha read the message, and her eyes narrowed. The slight awkwardness in her expression carried a note of difficulty.

Why? I was still tilting my head at it inwardly when she spoke.

"Um... would it be all right if I called you Mr. Seong-han?"

I nodded, and her face brightened a little.

"Our office has a fixed rule. An Awakened taking work for the first time has to complete a fair number of lower-tier requests, no matter how outstanding their ability."

I understood. It felt less like a test of skill than a way of building trust. Handing a client's private information to someone you barely knew would be nothing short of foolish.

If anything, it suited me. I had only just Awakened. However large the talent I carried, there was still a great deal I didn't know, and a great deal I needed to learn. Advancing one step at a time was enough.

"...You're really all right with that?"

At my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠message, Yu Seo-ha rose. She opened a cabinet in the corner and brought over a sheaf of documents. My eyes caught on one entry among the neatly arranged list.

I pressed a finger firmly against the request. A message carved itself above it.

On the way back I bought a few more pairs of shoes and some clothes, then returned straight to the motel and stretched out on the bed. The rustle of the freshly drawn blanket tickled along the Mana Thread. Better, at least, than the blanket in a thirty-dollar-a-night room.

I opened my inventory and took out an item.

A single glass bottle, no larger than my palm. It looked like nothing. In truth, that little bottle was a concentration of magitech.

Not a substance that existed in any ordinary sense—a container for a monster's life essence. If mana stones were the heart of the generation that produced electricity, then Breath of Hatred was the heart of every potion and medicine made from monsters. Demand always outran supply. Because of that, nearly every office kept the request on hand as a matter of course.

I went straight to the community boards. The item was famous enough that information wasn't scarce, and one post in particular caught my eye.

I read the information post straight through. Worthy of its verified tag, the contents were sharp and substantial—the structure of the Labyrinth, the monsters and items that appeared in each zone, the hazards, even the manners and cautions Awakened were expected to keep among themselves. If everything I had seen on television until now had been built for spectacle, this post was packed with practical use. I lost track of time, sunk in the information.

And then I reached the part I actually needed.

Southwest of the Labyrinth. A kobold colony set inside an enormous canyon. I double-checked it against other verified posts and confirmed what I needed: a place built for area-skill users, and difficult enough that not just anyone could attempt it.

A place that suited me perfectly.

This is where I should go.

With the hunting ground decided, something else occurred to me. I opened the phone I had received from Yu Seo-ha and checked the contacts. Four numbers in all—Yu Seo-ha's personal phone and Yu Ji-seong's, plus the office's official number and its unofficial one.

I sent a message to Yu Seo-ha's personal phone.

A-Kroine was the name of the pills I took. The reply came at once.

"......"

She seemed to have mistaken me for the type who couldn't be bothered with anything beyond essential nutrients. Rather than correct her, I waited. The next message arrived.

There was no reason to refuse.

I nearly wrote one box, then the Mana Thread hesitated. The kobold colony. I had judged it a place that suited me, but I couldn't be certain the hunt would succeed.

Reading the messages, I laughed to myself. Stiff and awkward in person—and, online, quietly full of life. That was Yu Seo-ha.

The next day I stopped by the lobby and sought out the equipment merchant. Lately it was a stop I never skipped.

"Dazzling progress."

Behind the visor, the knight's gloomy eyes raked over me.

I checked the equipment piece by piece. Nothing worth buying with 1,360 points—but that didn't matter. What I wanted had never been an ordinary item. Cursed gear. Equipment bought off other Awakened and put back up for sale.

There.

For the first time in a while, two such items were listed. The first since the cursed wooden doll.

One was restricted to Awakened of the assassination trait. Perhaps because I couldn't use it, even the options failed to appear.

The other was different.

Appraisal. A skill that read the information of items obtained in the Labyrinth. A general skill, so it wouldn't be anything extraordinary—but it would at least sort what to discard from what to keep.

The price was high for cursed gear, and that, too, made sense. A detection skill had to stay active through an entire hunt. Appraisal, by contrast, was something you used only for a moment, when you needed to check an object. A brief hindrance to mana absorption was no reason for the price to collapse.

Even so, this was the Labyrinth, where anything might happen. A gap that brief could still be fatal. It simply didn't apply to me. I had Meditation at maximum level.

I headed straight for the Labyrinth. Two things needed confirming: the Crimson Flame skill, and Appraisal. Whether both of them would climb all the way to maximum level.

And what the destructive power of a max-level Crimson Flame would actually be.

"Hello, Awakened Transcendence."

My eyes met Administrative Officer Lee Hee-yeon's. She inclined her head with perfect courtesy.

"I hope your exploration of the Labyrinth is a safe one."

I walked into the passage on the Labyrinth's left. The moment the open field opened ahead, I turned due west, just as the community post had said.

It wasn't long before a red dot rose. A goblin.

"......"

My heart beat hard at the thought of testing the new skill. I could grow. I could move forward. For me, as I was now, that single fact was enough.

Fwoosh!

I seized the sphere of flame hovering over my palm and hurled it. Fire lanced through the pitch dark like a bolt of lightning. Watching it burn through the goblin whose chest had been blown apart, I called the skill to mind.

Crimson Flame. Its power was expansion.

I murmured it inwardly.

As if it had heard me, the flames shuddered once, hugely.

And then the message I had been waiting for rose.