Tracking

I went to Mapo by car. On the slower stretches I even took the wheel myself, and all that practice with the mana threads must have paid off—the drive went more smoothly than I'd expected.

Once we hit the highway, I let the threads take over and drove on in safety. Crossing Seongsan Bridge, I turned my head and looked past the railing: rippling water, and sunlight shattering into gold across it. Maybe it was because my health had come back to me in earnest, but the view looked far more beautiful than usual.

Screech!

I finished parking and stepped into the office. For once, Yu Ji-seong wasn't there. Yu Seo-ha sensed someone and looked up.

"Oh, Mr. Seong-han! We've been waiting for you. My brother stepped out for a meeting. And today, of all days, you look even better...?"

She rose from her desk with her tablet and came over.

"You're wrapped in fewer mana threads than usual, too. Did something good happen?"

My body had recovered a fair amount, so I'd reduced the number of threads while I adjusted. Balancing an Awakened's brute strength against nerves that were still too loose was harder than I'd thought. I needed time to adapt.

And what was I supposed to say at a moment like this?

...Hm.

I had no idea. One thing I'd learned lately, though: when you don't know, keeping your mouth shut is best.

Yu Seo-ha grinned.

"Mmm. Shall I guess? Have you started working out? If it's C-aminex, that's quite a good choice on the nutrition side!"

She launched into a running commentary on the new pills.

"A lot of Awakened neglect exercise just because they're Awakened, and then the imbalance between mana and physical ability causes real problems at the worst possible moment. A long expedition through the Labyrinth, for example..."

I was about to tell her to get to the point, then stopped. She knew far more than I'd expected—nearly a specialist's worth.

I typed a short line.

"You know a lot about these pills."

"Of course! I worked at a pharmaceutical company before I Awakened. I may not look it, but I was quite the talent."

After a brief hesitation, I didn't ask why she'd quit. I'd seen it in the Archive: the reason Yu Ji-seong, once a promising Awakened, had turned his back on the Tower and opened an office. Their parents' deaths.

Perhaps that was why Yu Seo-ha had left her company, too. The empty place a family leaves behind hurts just to remember—a pain like an awl driven through your organs. I knew that better than anyone, so instead of mentioning it, I changed the subject.

"Let's get to the point."

"Ha, haha. I talked too much, didn't I...?"

She laughed, a little sheepish, and set a stack of documents on the sofa table.

Five request forms. Every one of them a named commission.

"My brother was right—posting the Breath of Hatred on the board was the right call. Normally there ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wouldn't be enough data on you for anyone to request you by name. But the moment we listed a purity of 4.6, named requests came pouring in within a few days."

She said she'd kept only the trustworthy ones. I listened, and looked through them one by one.

Two from major corporations. Two from private clients. One from a public institution.

I checked the compensation. The corporate requests paid in equipment and skill books. On reward alone they were easily the best, but I still wasn't confident enough in my ability to snap them up.

Better to take the corporate work after I've grown a little more.

I set the public-institution request aside for now as well. I was operating under a forged identity. I had no desire to brazenly catch the eye of government people.

That left the two private requests. One was to clear contaminated creatures appearing on the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province. Tower mana-ore run through a faulty process sometimes leaked toxins, and the surrounding life was contaminated more often than people liked to admit. Most of the time, no one noticed until the contamination had already spread wide. They'd be desperate for a wide-area mage like me.

But it bordered Gangwon, and the distance was too far. Worse, I'd heard that cleaning up contaminated creatures could take days. It wasn't the right job while I still had to focus on treatment.

"Could you brief me on this one?"

The other private request looked considerably better. Yu Seo-ha nodded.

"The details are very simple. The client runs a clothing factory on the outskirts of Guri, and the transport driver ran off with the goods."

That was the end of it. Astonishingly, the request really was that simple. Yu Seo-ha smiled.

"Even named requests from private clients are usually simple on paper. That doesn't mean the weight of them is light."

So this was about money.

"How much were the goods worth?"

"8.7 billion won. If they aren't found within a week, they'll miss the delivery date and have to pay another billion in penalties on top of that."

For a moment my mind went blank. 8.7 billion, and with the penalty, 9.7 billion. A sum I couldn't even imagine.

Yu Seo-ha, though, was unexpectedly matter-of-fact.

"They're clothes made for Awakened, so every single piece is outrageously expensive. They even hired mercenaries for security, and once they investigated, the ones leading the crime turned out to be those mercenaries."

"They threatened the driver and stole the goods?"

"They ran off together. In front of money, ordinary people and Awakened are perfectly equal."

Yu Seo-ha shrugged, then turned the tablet toward me.

"The company has already hired a separate combat force. Even so, they named you specifically because of your wide-area fire magic. When a large battle starts, they want you to break the enemy's opening momentum and scatter their focus."

She stopped there. Her eyes flicked to the mana threads wrapped around me, and she added:

"...Not just the momentum. You might smash their bodies to pieces."

"......"

"The retainer is fifteen million won. Light for a named request, but the success fee is set quite aggressively. Three hundred million won in total."

"That's excessive for simply casting one wide-area spell. There's a reason, I assume."

"Exactly."

Yu Seo-ha smiled.

"The client's company isn't prestigious, but the circumstances aren't the sort of thing two mercenaries would touch on their own. They're suspecting an armed organization backing them."

An armed group's involvement. That meant a fight between people could break out.

Two faces rose in my mind at once. Team Leader Kim Nam-gook, smashing through a window as he fled. Executive Director Park Gwang-soo, charging in and crumpling an iron door.

At their level, I could subdue them with ease. Even so, I hadn't faced many Awakened yet, and that worried me. If someone asked whether I was prepared enough—well. I couldn't be sure.

But I had no intention of backing down, either.

Perfect was a word that lived in textbooks, not in reality. Nowhere could you hold one hundred percent certainty.

It was enough to keep making the best choice the situation allowed. I couldn't hesitate forever. This was the moment I needed to trust myself.

"If you accept the request, I'll brief you on the details. Personally... considering your ability, I think it would be little more than a light warm-up."

I nodded.

"I'll take it."

I arrived at the hotel, took the pills, and lay down. Even without the mana threads I could feel the soft give of the blanket, and the corner of my mouth lifted.

"Uuuh—aah—oh..."

...Damn it.

I'd meant to say Shall I look into it now, and that was what came out. Muscle and sensation had returned to some degree, but several functions were still completely dead.

Conversation: impossible. Fine control of my expression: impossible. Gripping anything too small or too frail: impossible. I couldn't regulate my strength perfectly, so I kept crushing things or breaking them.

Even so, it was all right. It would get better little by little. Slow progress had its own sense of achievement.

Then my phone buzzed.

Bzzzt.

"......"

In person, Yu Seo-ha was sharp and levelheaded. Every time a text arrived, I was faintly thrown. Were people these days all like that? Or was it only her?

...I wouldn't know. I'd spent all eight years getting cursed at by a foul-tempered woman. There was no way I'd understand.

I gave up on understanding and started searching the community.

Nothing came up. I checked the Archive next, and it was the same—no information. In the end, Yu Seo-ha had been right.

A private sanction, then.

Eight years. While I'd lain in that bed, the world had changed at a brutal pace.

It wasn't only economics and politics. It felt as if the axis that held the world up had warped.

The reason was simple.

To avoid annihilation, you needed points. Awakened were the ones who earned them. They staked their lives and entered the Tower.

Whenever the state tried to control them, an exodus inevitably followed. The state began watching the Awakened's moods, and their demands grew steadily firmer.

I couldn't simply blame them. Strictly speaking, ordinary people survived on the price of Awakened lives. They were the ones shoving Awakened toward death so the points would keep coming; they couldn't ignore those demands outright.

The state had no real choice either. The more the Tower and the Labyrinth opened, the stronger the Awakened became, and the state could not bind them.

In the end, after fierce debate, a social consensus was reached. It came down to three keywords.

Ordinary people. Social disturbance. And private sanction.

Don't touch ordinary people. Don't cause an excessive public stir. And private sanctions among Awakened would be allowed.

Ordinary people, Awakened, and the state were all satisfied. Naturally, their worlds split apart. Ordinary people did not involve themselves with Awakened, and Awakened did not touch ordinary people at all. An Awakened who did became subject to the state's summary execution.

Unless they'd lost their minds, Awakened didn't touch ordinary people either. Everyone knew the truth of it: the state left them alone not because it lacked the power.

Those who crossed the line vanished without a trace. After that happened again and again, the Awakened drew in on themselves. They understood quickly enough.

Cross the line and you die—but so long as you don't, the state will never intervene.

"Hoo..."

I let out a light breath and leaned back against the bed. I went over the company information and the course of events Yu Seo-ha had given me, several times.

My job was simple: seize the initiative the moment I met a large number of enemies. If there turned out to be fewer of them than expected, I might take a sum in the hundreds of millions without so much as exerting myself.

But underneath, I was uneasy. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Awakened were a kind of superhuman. How ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠well my magic would land on them, whether I could effectively defend against their threat—nothing was certain.

...Something I'll only know once I run into them myself.

Thinking that, I drew a deep breath. I laid a hand over my heart and clenched my jaw. It was time for treatment.

I squeezed my eyes shut and used Heal.

"Kkgh—ghhk—!!!"

Agony like death swept through my whole body.

The next morning.

"Hwaaaahm..."

Fortunately, I felt refreshed. The pain from Heal had melted away on Healing Wind. The pairing of the two skills—one that wrecked me, one that restored me—was perfection itself.

I took the wheel in a body far lighter than the day before. Driving around, I could feel that I was recovering faster than I'd thought.

I decided not to use the mana threads at all.

Vroooom.

The destination lay to the southeast: Seongnam. A place once called Old Seongnam. After redevelopment was canceled, large mercenary companies began buying up the abandoned districts, and it had long since become a mecca of private armed groups, home to outfits big and small.

I climbed and descended the sloping roads peculiar to Old Seongnam for a long while. Then I saw a sign painted a vicious red.

I turned the wheel and drove in past it. A wide empty lot. About ten Awakened were moving about busily.

When I stopped the car, a man approached.

"Who're you?"

"...Mage."

Fortunately, my voice had been working since this morning. Not completely, of course. It was thick with a metallic rasp, and if a sentence ran even a little long, it cracked badly.

Still, what a relief this was. Just being able to form proper words left me more than satisfied. The problem remained: I had no choice but to keep it short.

At the brief answer, the man's face creased slightly.

"Ah... you mean that fire mage?"

I nodded instead of answering. The look he gave me was sour, but I ignored it. We'd only met for work, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it was better than spraying mana into the air like water and drawing needless eyes.

"Prep's basically done. A mage with a fee like yours won't need any special help, so wait in the office."

I walked where he pointed. A fairly spacious gray container.

I opened the door and stepped inside. Someone was already perched on the sofa.

"Ah, hello...?"

A young man with a somewhat guileless look. We shook hands lightly, and he spoke.

"I'll be handling tracking for this operation. My name is Wi Kang-jun."

I nodded. The mercenaries outside were the combat team. This young man, Wi Kang-jun, looked to be the Awakened in charge of tracking.

"Can I see?"

"...Pardon?"

"The item."

"Ah... y-yes, of course."

Wi Kang-jun nodded and drew something from inside his coat. A small transparent plastic bag, packed with hair and scraps of tissue.

He said, a little awkward:

"Parts of the driver's body, and items stained with bodily fluids. I tried a tracking skill, and they were easy enough to find."

"Location?"

"Ah... I already pinned the location down last night. The driver and the mercenaries seem to be staying in the same place."

I nodded, then held out a hand.

"I want to see."

"Ah, here."

I took the bag from Wi Kang-jun, opened the zipper, drew out a hair, and set it on my palm. Then I used the tracking skill at once.

Shhh...

The hair drifted lightly on the wind. North. Its tip pointed north.

That was all. The hair lost its strength and slowly bowed its head.

"Ahaha... tracking skills aren't as easy as they look, are they."

Wi Kang-jun laughed awkwardly. I ignored him and stared at the hair for a moment. The message I'd been waiting for rose.

The hair did not rise. Instead, black dots pricked the floor one after another, then became a thin line that ran out of the building.

Wi Kang-jun scratched his head.

"Please don't be too disappointed. If an elemental mage were good at tracking too, people like me would have a hard time making a living, wouldn't we...? Haha."

That thin line, it seemed, was invisible to Wi Kang-jun's eyes.

© Domhwangcha #1ylk2