Chapter 182: On Earth
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 182: On Earth
The blue planet, Earth.
Home to eight billion humans.
An age where there were so many people that humans hated other humans the most.
And at the same time, an age where humans loved other humans the most.
The 21st century.
One man and ten women descended upon this place.
There were so many people that no one noticed anything strange about eleven new humans suddenly appearing.
It was the same even in the Republic of Korea, a country with a population of a mere fifty million.
“So this is…”
“Wow… There are so many big buildings.”
The witches let out cries of admiration at their first sight of Earth. Agapeite, who was from the future, and Regina, who remembered the distant future, flinched at how closely Korea resembled the future of the Empire.
They worried for a moment that they had returned to that future world… but thankfully, seeing the people bustling about inside the buildings put those thoughts to rest.
The place was teeming with East Asians with black hair and black eyes, just like Yohan.
“There are so many people who look just like Yohan!”
“If you look closely, they’re not exactly the same… but they are similar.”
“Teacher, are you being racist?”
Yohan let out a hollow laugh and chided the witches. Perhaps because they were ethnically close to Slavs, they seemed to have trouble distinguishing between Asian faces.
Watching the witches wander around, looking here and there, Yohan told them the most important things to keep in mind.
“Like I said before, there’s no such thing as magic here, so you can’t use it in front of people.”
“Why? If they don’t have magic and there are no holy knights, they can’t possibly harm us. Shouldn’t we be able to just go on a rampage?”
“If you did that, you’d end up fighting the whole world. The population here is a little on the large side.”
“How large could it possibly be…”
“Eight billion.”
“…Billion?”
Hekaterina tilted her head as if she had misheard. But Yohan confirmed it for her, as if to say she hadn't.
“Eight billion. Each country has tens or hundreds of thousands of soldiers. They have about as many weapons, too… so if you don’t want to be crushed to death by the sheer number of people, you’d better be careful.”
“What… From the looks of it, the size of the land here and in our world seems about the same. And there are eight billion people? I feel like I’d die from feeling so cramped.”
“You’re right. In fact, this place is full of people who feel like they’re dying from suffocation.”
Especially here.
Yohan muttered to himself as he looked up at the towering 63 Building.
Seoul, Republic of Korea. A piece of prime real estate with the seventh-highest population density in the world.
The first thing Yohan did upon arriving on Earth was to check if his identity was still intact.
He was an orphan who had been getting by on part-time jobs. Thanks to that, he had no mandatory taxes or duties to fulfill, and no one had been looking for him or filed a missing person report with the police.
The only problem, if you could call it that, was that his overdue phone bills had drained all the money left in his bank account.
‘Not a single penny left.’
He had no money. In the 21st century, where capitalism reigned supreme, having no money was a huge problem. Yohan thought for a moment about how to solve this, then simply decided to pull a fast one.
“Teacher!”
“Hmm? Yes?”
“Is it possible for you to create gold?”
“Of course.”
“Can you make something that looks exactly like this?”
“If it’s a request from my dear Yohan, I’ll have to give it a try.”
Evangeline smiled, closed her eyes for a moment, and began gathering and arranging atoms from the air. A moment later, a gold ring set with a sparkling diamond materialized in her hand.
Handing the ring to Yohan, Evangeline smiled sweetly as if asking what he thought. Yohan took the moderately large ring and nodded.
“This is great.”
“Heehee. It’s nothing when you leave it to your teacher.”
“Then, Teacher, I’ll be right back. Please wait here. No matter who comes, you absolutely cannot hit or kill them. Got it?”
“Don’t you worry.”
Though he gave her a very worried look, Yohan quickly went to a jewelry store to have the ring appraised. He made it seem like he was in a bit of a hurry, and the shop owner immediately started to lowball the price.
The appraisal came out to ten million won. It was a ring that looked like it could easily fetch twice that, but Yohan was in urgent need of cash, so he accepted the offer and had the ten million won deposited into his bank account.
The moment the money came in, all sorts of vultures came to take their share for taxes and phone bills, but enough was left to get through the day.
“Teacher, I’m ba—.”
“So, I’m just asking you to come with me for a moment.”
“…”
“Hey, you no speak Korean? We go to. Give you money. Okay?”
In that short time, someone had started hitting on his teacher. It was to be expected. From Hekaterina and Beatrice, who looked like young middle schoolers, to the other witches who looked like beauties in their twenties.
When so many beautiful women were gathered in one place, it was impossible not to draw attention.
Yohan approached the man who was talking to the witches and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Excuse me.”
“—What, who are you?”
“I’m with them.”
“With them? Ah, are you perhaps their interpreter or guide? This is who I am.”
The man immediately handed Yohan a business card. After reading it, Yohan instantly knew what the man did. A scout from an entertainment management company.
In other words, he was someone from the entertainment industry who had come to scout his teacher.
“So?”
“Do these ladies have an agency?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Then please—wouldn’t you consider working with our management company? With their looks, I’m certain…”
“We’re not interested.”
Flick. Yohan flicked the business card back and smiled brightly at the witches. Fortunately or unfortunately, the witches couldn’t understand Korean.
It was completely different from his own experience of being able to understand the language of the other world as soon as he arrived. Yohan had a rough idea of why there was such a difference.
‘It must be the power of divine energy or something…’
In his mind, it was common sense that ‘an earthling who falls into another world gains a language cheat ability.’ Why? Because every fantasy novel he had ever read described it that way.
Of course, it was just a convenient plot device, but as a reader, Yohan had no reason to think that deeply about it.
Whatever the reason, every light novel and fantasy story Yohan had read depicted the other world that way, and that became his common sense, granting him language abilities there. The witches, however, had no such thing.
“Let’s go, Teacher.”
“Wa-wait a minute—!”
Leaving the talent scout calling desperately after him, Yohan headed with the witches to the hotel where they would be staying.
It was a famous hotel in Seoul. Normally, it wouldn’t have been easy to find rooms for ten people, but since it was the off-season and a weekday, it wasn’t too difficult.
The real problem was the money. A double room, with just a bed and a bathroom, cost 200,000 won per night. To house all the witches, they would need over a million won every day for these rooms that seemed incredibly cramped to them.
Of course, he had just earned ten million won from a diamond ring that took less than a second to create, but he couldn’t make a living by constantly selling magically created jewelry.
‘The administrative power of the 21st century isn’t something to be taken lightly.’
What if he, an orphan with no proper job, suddenly started making tens of millions by selling jewelry that came from nowhere? The National Tax Service or the police would surely get suspicious and come looking for him.
If he knew a fence who could launder the money for him, it might be a different story, but there was no way Yohan, who had lived an ordinary life, would know such a person.
“First, I need to make some money…”
Fortunately, with witches who could use magic, earning money wasn’t that difficult. After all, with witches who could create matter, leap through space, and even twist the axis of time, there were countless ways to legally make money without getting caught.
Having immediately thought of a way to make money, Yohan left his room and headed for the one Agapeite was staying in. She was sharing a room with Margaret, who looked just like her twin, and was delighted to see Yohan visit.
“Yohan, welcome.”
“Disciple. What’s up?”
“I have a job for you, Agapeite.”
“For me? Just say the word.”
Yohan entered the room and used the computer in the hotel room to access a crypto exchange. He poured all the remaining money from his bank account into it, buying Bitcoin, and ended up with about $5,000 worth of coin.
Now, he would multiply this by thousands.
Agapeite looked at the green and red lines shooting up and down and tilted her head from side to side, as if asking what it was.
“Alright, Agapeite. Can you see whether this line will go up or down?”
“Yeah, I can see it.”
“Then if the line is going to go up in the future, press the green button. If it’s going to go down, press the red button.”
After a brief lesson on long and short positions, Agapeite nodded as if it were incredibly easy. Yohan immediately set the leverage to 125x and grinned.
If you could see the future, making money in modern society was incredibly easy.
With an ability like Agapeite’s, even with a starting capital of just ten thousand won, it wouldn’t even take a full day to make hundreds of millions.
On this day, the Bitcoin exchange rankings recorded a new figure: someone who had achieved a return of two million percent in a single day.