Chapter 141
Chapter 141
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 141
Chapter Title: City Life
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It's been two weeks now since returning to the present world.
To sum up Siwoo's life in the meantime, it went something like this.
He ordered food like he was the Emperor of China himself, piling it on until the table legs would snap.
Five meals a day, no less.
His body didn't need sleep anyway, and with no worries about digestion or health, he could devour as much as he wanted. So as soon as the fullness faded, he'd order more right away.
Lucky for him he was in spirit form—if he'd been human, the toilet would've clogged a few times over.
"Today's daily bread as well."
After stuffing himself to the point of immobility, he'd waddle over to the bedroom that doubled as his study.
He'd even called in an interior designer to outfit one wall with corkboard, another with whiteboard, and the last with built-in shelves for filing cabinets.
Just like his old lab from back in the day.
Siwoo grabbed a water-based marker and stood before the whiteboard.
"Shall we play today too?"
And what he was so diligently preparing for? Magic research.
Truth be told, he hadn't set out to rigorously tackle magic from the start.
He'd meant to reorganize his specialty—complex analysis, particularly the essential singularities that had earned him a master's degree at such a young age.
His painstakingly written papers had vanished, after all, so it seemed like a fine way to kill time.
But Siwoo was left flustered.
He couldn't touch it at all.
He could grasp the gist of what the symbols meant, the direction of the equations, and which formulas mattered, but the all-important 'flow' eluded him.
It wasn't some slump from five years off or a decline in talent.
His brain was outright refusing to think in those terms, with bizarre interruptions chopping up the process.
And the possibility that dawned on Siwoo.
In truth, he'd suffered severe brain damage upon dying.
He'd felt almost perfectly recovered, but it wouldn't be strange if something had been lost in the process.
But Siwoo didn't despair. He sought the next path.
The fact that he'd gone from panic to picking up the pen again in just half a day might've been thanks to his mental fortitude training paying off.
Pondering just how far his abilities were restricted, Siwoo recalled that applying math to cast magic posed no issues whatsoever.
It was bizarre.
His brain might as well have restructured itself for magic research, right?
"Hmm... so it goes like this? No, that's too outdated."
Siwoo muttered to himself, chin in hand, as he filled the whiteboard.
A massive magic formula was already sketched out, and he was jotting runes and equations between the circuits, piecing together new formulas like a fill-in-the-blank quiz.
He was pulling the reformed magic from his subconscious and organizing it for clarity.
"How many are even mixed in here?"
Siwoo squinted his uncovered left eye and stepped back to survey the magic formula, whose design he'd roughly completed over the past week.
Just looking at it with his new left eye transformed it into a 3D structure, as if he'd jacked into Ain.
It even captured unwanted fine details of mana flow, making everyday life exhausting enough that he kept it covered—but it was handy for this.
Anyway, from what Siwoo could roughly gauge, a total of five magics were intertwined within his stigma, fused as one.
The dimensional shift from his prior self-generating magic research.
The law of shadows obtained from Gnosis's egg after slaying the homunculus.
"I get these two so far..."
But three more magic formulas defied identification.
They surfaced as if he'd known them forever, without even trying to recall them.
He had no clue when he'd acquired them. What a headache.
"...Guess I have to test it myself."
There's a limit to designing without actual execution.
Even genius composers test keys or play instruments while composing, don't they?
The catch was that everyone knowing he could use magic brought nothing good.
"Hmm..."
Siwoo pulled the silent, quietly whirring music box from his pocket.
Three gimmicks dangled beside the wind-up key.
Odile had explained its use in fair detail, so he had a rough idea of each gear's role.
"Like this?"
Fully wound, he gave the second lever a slight tug and release, which supposedly perfectly disguised the internal mana fluctuations.
The downside: heavy mana drain, requiring a rewind every hour. But what choice did he have?
"Appear."
Confirming the cloaking field visually, Siwoo extended his hand and amplified his mana.
No need for too much.
Just enough to activate one unidentified magic formula.
Mana piled in his stigma flowed to his hand, gleaming brilliant gold.
Visualizing the formula—its shape vaguely grasped but manifestation unknown—he slowly closed his eyes.
Mana circuits spread through his body, circulating in the cycle of the grand circulation.
Distributing it smoothly, without resistance, to where it yearned to flow.
One coalescence, three transformations, three deployments.
The sluggishly gathered mana in the coalescence took physical form as thin threads.
Through transformation, the mana threads aligned vertically in a line.
Finally, they intertwined intricately into a long ribbon shape.
"What the fuck."
Siwoo instinctively grasped its nature.
This was Ea Sadal Melik's self-generating magic—the vicious ribbon that had once torn full-power Siwoo to shreds.
"Why do I have this?"
When he opened his eyes again, a single swaying ribbon—triggering trauma just by sight—hovered before his nose.
And it differed from Ea's original: not ordinary mana threads, but woven from his shadow particles, rendering it black and dark.
Even creepier: despite being utterly alien magic, the ribbon moved like an extra limb, freely obedient.
As if a new arm had sprouted from his body.
It handled so finely, he could probably jerk off with it.
Not that he would.
He had no idea what happened while he was out.
Even mustering all his magical knowledge yielded no answers.
"...We'll figure this out later."
Priority now: inspect everything one by one.
Stowing the ribbon, Siwoo methodically checked the others.
One was easier to identify.
The space revealed upon channeling mana there was one he already knew.
When he'd reclaimed his memories and entered Ain before.
There, he'd faced countless stairs and doors in the black void.
This seemed to govern 'memory.'
Regrettably, despite ample time, the final one's identity remained elusive.
Not a mana shortage or faltering focus—the formula's form simply wouldn't pin down.
Only after finer subdivision and reorganization of the fused magics would he know for sure.
-Beep beep beep beep beep
Siwoo, scribbling at the whiteboard for another stretch, heard his phone alert and set the marker down.
"Mealtime."
Every four hours.
He'd promised himself: five meals a day, no matter what.
Factoring in prep time, he needed to start now to keep it.
His head felt toasty from all the brainwork.
A breath of cool air wouldn't hurt.
Siwoo threw on a windbreaker, loaded up takeout orders in the app, and headed out.
Sure enough, with colleges and student digs nearby, every kind of eatery clustered around.
Plenty of minefields masquerading as hotspots, though.
"Famous street today."
The famed strip opposite the one-room village from his place was a treasure trove of fun and food.
He'd smoke on the way down too. Rifling his pockets yielded an empty pack.
"Grab one en route."
Perks of apartment living: cafes and amenities on the second floor, convenience store on the first—no need to stray far.
"One African Lola. Oh, lighter too."
Heading straight to the counter, Siwoo glanced at the clerk.
Siwoo wasn't the womanizer Takasho was, but objectively, anyone—man or woman—would do a double-take at this clerk.
Sinchon vibes meant clerks dressed sharp.
Long straight hair, no bangs.
Dark khaki fading into deeper mint in a two-tone dye.
Even neutral workwear looked custom-tailored, stylish.
Up to here, he'd peg her as a fashion-forward college girl and move on.
But she was too pretty.
Not personal bias—just her looks and figure were exceptionally striking.
Deep double-lidded eyes gleaming emerald green, pert nose, ample chest lifting the vest.
Exotic features with an oddly familiar warmth—probably mixed-race. She could hold her own against Gehenna witches prowling around.
She'd have agencies lining up if she modeled, yet here she was.
"Five thousand won."
Pretty girls had that haughty air, huh.
This clerk lacked zeal for the job.
Phone glued to her hand, barely glancing at customers, tapping away one-handed with curt efficiency.
"She gets away with slacking 'cause she's pretty."
Same thought as always. Siwoo lit up and walked on, mind-mapping eateries.
Scaling the steep one-room hillside—practically built on a ridge—brought his destination into view.
"Huh?"
Siwoo rubbed his eyes.
He first chalked it up to single-eye fatigue.
Far off on the department store's digital billboard, something dark crawled, clinging like a spider.
Too distant for shape, but visible from here? No way it was small.
Siwoo quickened his pace.
He wanted a visual ID.
Nearly jogging to the store, he checked the billboard again.
Just a mundane phone ad rolling.
Crowded sidewalks bustled on, oblivious.
Siwoo's eyes narrowed.
"...Not a mistake."
He'd seen it clear as day.
A chill crept up his spine for no reason.
He fished out the music box, cranked cloaking to max, and tucked it away.
In the end, the omen soured any wandering mood, so he just packed about thirty king crabs and headed home.