The System's Structure and the First Attempt
"Euheheheheh."
The young man's laughter was warping into something grotesque.
"Keuheheheh..."
It was impossible to tell whether he was laughing, crying, or imitating some kind of beast — a sound so twisted it crossed the line into outright madness.
Beyond grotesque. He sounded like a lunatic!!
"Keurreureuheheh... euhihik!"
And yet, for all that, one thing remained absolutely certain.
The young man's lips were still stretched over his ears.
Stretched to the point of tearing, no less...
For a full eight hours, the young man had stared at his phone with bloodshot eyes.
"The battery... it's infinite!!"
During those eight hours, he'd made a surprising discovery. The battery. His phone's battery simply refused to drain. It sat at 100 percent, always.
Skipping meals and staring at nothing but his phone for eight straight hours, the young man felt euphoria welling up at the 'opportunity' that had landed in his lap.
Zzzt--!
Zt-zt-zt--!
"Ah-- f-feels so gooood..."
Because he'd finally gotten the bare minimum of a chance that had eluded him for so long.
So how was he supposed to use this chance?
First, after the tutorial ended, the young man discovered that actually using the Hypnosis function was trickier than he'd expected.
In other words — whether near or far, whatever the desired command — to cast hypnosis as freely as in the tutorial, he had to reach the maximum level.
The level cap was 50.
"Level 50, huh..."
Every time he completed the prerequisites for a hypnosis attempt, EXP would accumulate and he could level up. And on top of that, once he fulfilled the conditions and successfully hypnotized someone, he earned something called 'points' — points he could spend on physical enhancements or special items.
Those were the basic conditions of the Hypnosis System.
— User: Park Geonwoo (Sole User)
The sole user on planet Earth (Planet 14A9983B-2331).
Lv — 1 (0%)
Points held — 100p
◈ Remote hypnosis unavailable before Level 10.
◈ Target's name, face, age, gender, and voice required.
◈ Hypnosis duration before Level 10: [10 minutes]
◈ Cooldown per target before Level 10: (24 hours)
◈ Prerequisites for hypnosis may vary by target.
◈ Additional information — [LOCKED]. Unlocks at Level 10.
The young man. Park Geonwoo.
This was Geonwoo's summary of everything he'd gleaned from eight hours of digging through the Hypnosis System. There was plenty more information besides, but none of it seemed worth fussing over.
"Still a shame, though. Getting a taste of the tutorial..."
Couldn't be helped. The tutorial had been a sample run simulated at Level 50 — which was exactly why Park Geonwoo intended to grind and grind until he hit that cap himself.
"Hm. So the list of hypnosis candidates from the tutorial was all people I already knew, huh."
Yes, that was it.
There had also been an "etc." category of targets, which he'd been too flustered at the time to scroll through, so he had no idea who was on it. But rough guess? Just about everyone whose face and name he knew was probably in there.
"Alright then. Until I level up, my landlady here is going to be my personal EXP farm."
Having mapped out every scrap of information and accepted his situation, Park Geonwoo decided to focus on one thing: leveling up.
This 'low-level' bracket allowed only one hypnosis per day.
He needed to escape it as fast as possible.
"Haah... Fine. Fuck it..."
With everything decided and tomorrow's plan laid out, Park Geonwoo let his eyes drift shut, satisfied with the night's results.
Chirp chirp chirp--
Chirp chirp chirp--
Birdsong, chirping away since dawn.
Any other morning, Park Geonwoo would have woken with a scowl — but today was different.
Sprang up--!!
"KUWAAAAH! Slept like a rock!!! Hahaha! Is that why? My body feels amazing!"
Eight in the morning.
Since he'd been preparing for employment, Park Geonwoo's daily routine closely resembled that of any ordinary office worker. Wake early, wrap up the day's tasks around five or six in the evening. It was a schedule he'd kept drilled and ready, so he could slide seamlessly into corporate life anywhere, anytime.
But not anymore.
"Right then. Let's start with breakfast."
After loosening up with a quick stretch, Park Geonwoo picked up his phone.
"Yep... battery's at full charge."
One hundred percent, without a single minute on the charger. On the second day running, the reality of it hit him all over again.
He launched the Hypnosis System app and searched the list of hypnosis-capable targets. Unlike yesterday, no system window materialized before his eyes — but that didn't matter. It would appear soon enough.
"Hm... so this is the extent of what I can target at Level 1?"
Once again, the names at the very top of the candidate list he'd seen during yesterday's tutorial filled his screen.
◈ Kim Sukja (56) / Building Owner / Currently: 4th floor, same building.
◈ Lee Mihee (25) / Job Seeker / At home.
◈ Kim Hyeseon (25) / Job Seeker / At home.
Only one thing was different: their locations.
Also, the landlady's husband — who'd appeared on the list yesterday — had vanished from it.
"So it really does come down to a distance limit, then?"
Confirmed. Mrs. Kim Sukja was inside his own building, and as far as he knew, Lee Mihee's place was about five minutes away. Kim Hyeseon was ten minutes out. That settled the distance-based conditions for registering a hypnosis target, as far as Geonwoo was concerned.
"One per day for now. That'll go up as I level, right?"
One shot per person. One per day.
With his EXP sitting at a flat 0 percent, he had no idea how many successful hypnotisms a single level-up would take — so he started with the closest target, Kim Sukja.
Register Kim Sukja (56) as a hypnosis target?
[Y] / [N]
"YES!!!"
A start similar to yesterday's. The difference was that yesterday, the hypnosis would have executed the moment he willed it. Today, that wasn't the case.
The content was the same — the distance was what had changed. Remote hypnosis was locked out entirely; only close-range hypnosis was possible.
And there was a 'special' prerequisite attached.
To hypnotize Kim Sukja (56), the following conditions must be met first:
◈ Condition 1: Remain within 1 meter of target Kim Sukja (56) for 10 minutes.
◈ Condition 2: Induce a state of arousal in Kim Sukja (56).
Two conditions.
Hard if you call it hard, easy if you call it easy. The real problem was maintaining a distance of one meter or less for a full ten minutes.
Inducing arousal? That part wasn't difficult at all.
"Hm... how the hell do I keep her within a meter, though?"
A method. He needed to think of a method.
One meter was practically pressed up against her. And he had to sustain it for ten minutes.
How? Under what pretext?
"Huh? Wait... could that actually work?"
Geonwoo's thoughts latched onto one particular incident from yesterday.
The landlady. The moment she had come to him and begged forgiveness, completely naked.
It had been the product of hypnosis — but it was absolutely worth verifying.
"Alright. Let's do this."
Decision made, Park Geonwoo raised his phone.
"Huh? Wait... do normal functions still work?"
Not a single call or text had come through since yesterday, so the thought had never crossed his mind — but now that he was actually about to text his landlady, he had no way of knowing whether his phone worked like a phone anymore.
"Only one way to find out."
Whatever it was, you learned by trying.
Tap-- tudu-duk tuk-tuk tudu-dukk--!
"There we go!"
Luck? Or simply to be expected? Either way, having confirmed his message had sent properly to the landlady's phone, Geonwoo waited for a reply.
Tap--
Tuk--
Tuk----
"Come on, why won't it show up!!!"
Ten minutes after sending, the (1) sitting in front of his sent message refused to disappear.
"Should I just call her?"
His patience worn thin, Geonwoo's finger hovered over the call button — and just then!
Shoop--!
"She read it!!!"
The moment he'd been waiting for, at long last. And with it, a reply from the landlady.
"Huh? What's this?"
Her reaction was... strange.
She'd bared herself naked in front of a man who wasn't her husband. So what was with this brazen confidence? Had he missed something?
Flustered, Geonwoo scrambled through the system's functions to figure out what he'd overlooked — and soon stumbled onto one astonishing fact.
"Hypnosis binding strength... scaled by level?"
Binding strength.
Once he'd checked what this binding strength actually was, Geonwoo swore to himself, harder than ever, that he had to reach Level 50.
Why?
Because this was how binding strength scaled with level:
Levels 1–9: The target recognizes, after the hypnosis ends, that their actions were not of their own will.
Levels 10–19: The target recognizes it wasn't their will — but accepts it.
Levels 20–29: The target recognizes it wasn't their will — but brushes it off as nothing.
Levels 30–39: The target genuinely mistakes it for their own will.
Levels 40–49: The target mistakes it for their own will — and actively embraces it.
Master Level: The target accepts it as a matter of course.
He had to reach Master Level.
At Master Level, everything that happened under hypnosis became 'perfectly natural' to the target. In other words, the landlady's brazenness yesterday — she'd been hit by a Master Level hypnosis, a Level 50 Park Geonwoo's hypnosis, during the tutorial.
"Of course, today will be different..."
Which made his goal all the clearer. Somehow, he had to get face-to-face with the landlady.
Which meant...
"Ugh... so this is a whole different problem, huh?"
God, this was... not easy.
Taking everything in stride was supposed to be a good thing, but in practice it caused problems on all fronts.
"Nothing for it, then."
Park Geonwoo.
The man had just succeeded in sending his landlady sprinting toward him that very instant.
Meanwhile — just as the landlady set off toward Park Geonwoo!
"Hmm... what mischief is this, I wonder?"
In a space that might have been a scale model of the Earth itself, an old man stroked his luxuriant white beard as he gazed down at somewhere in the model Republic of Korea.
"Hmm... dear me... there it is again. Just how many souls must I banish?"
The old man frowned, as if something had soured his mood.
"If you receive and wield a power that was never granted... then you shall be banished, child."
Banished?
Child?
Just what... was this old man?