Chapter 1
Chapter 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: I Can't Live Like This.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The boy's life was a miserable one.
At age five, he watched his mother get murdered right before his eyes.
At nine, his father was doused in molten metal and burned to death.
At ten, he began seeing hallucinations and hearing voices. Meaningless letters floated before his eyes, and strange words he'd never heard in his life echoed in his ears.
"He's possessed by a ghost. Stay away. He's bad luck."
That's what people said.
Having lost his parents before his naming ceremony at age ten, he didn't even have a name.
People just called him a lunatic or a possessed freak.
Even the squad mates who should have been like family spat vicious insults at him.
"That crazy bastard? Shouldn't we just put him down? He's wasting food."
"Putting him down might be too much, but it'd be better if he just died. That freak's sucking up all the sweet perks thanks to Uncle Davis the foreman."
"But the guy's always got that dead look on his face."
"I heard he's actually the foreman's kid?"
"What? Fuck? So he's banging the kid's mom on the side?"
"Fuck, that actually makes everything fit perfectly!"
Even hearing that, he didn't get angry. He didn't cry anymore, either.
'Should I just die?'
'If I die, everyone would be happy.'
'But if I die, Uncle Davis would be sad.'
He was just too sorry to die, so he spent his days in listless apathy.
On his nineteenth birthday, right before he remembered his past life, his depression seemed like it would last forever.
'Oh... fuck.'
Don't memories you could never recall sometimes suddenly come rushing back? And once they do, you wonder why you ever forgot them in the first place.
That was exactly the moment he remembered his past life.
'Fuck... this situation is totally fucked.'
And the instant he recalled his past life, everything up until now looked completely different. It had to.
'I can't live like this.'
In his past life, he had been Kang Geohan, a trainer living in twenty-first-century South Korea.
'Bullying sucks, but... this world itself is the problem, right? Insane. A caste society?'
Once he remembered his past life, the world he'd taken for granted his whole life suddenly felt utterly horrifying.
The place he lived was the Burjoji Barony. His status was that of a corvée laborer, bound to provide his workforce to the lord, Burjoji Baron, little more than a slave.
The cushy assignment his squad mates envied was "stacking shards."
At thirteen, when he first got his assignment, Uncle Davis had instructed him like this.
-Lay white metal shards at the bottom. Then green on top, black, then white again.
-Uncle... it's too hot here...
-That's how it is. Keep going.
-Until when?
-Until the whistle blows. About fifteen hours. You get two fifteen-minute breaks for meals.
An endlessly running conveyor belt.
Pouring steam.
Endless, mind-numbing repetitive work that made his vision spin.
Kang Geohan was utterly dumbfounded.
'A world where this is considered enviable enough to talk about putting someone down...'
The sadder fact was that he could partly understand his squad mates' complaints.
They were glaring at Kang Geohan even now, venting their frustration.
"Fuck. Some of us are boiling metal at the furnace, hauling red-hot iron chunks, hammering them... and he's just standing there stacking scrap. So fucking enviable."
They weren't wrong. What Kang Geohan did was like sweet dessert compared to their work.
Hadn't his own father died doing that kind of labor, doused in molten metal?
But their misery didn't make Kang Geohan any less miserable.
So, the only conclusion Kang Geohan could reach was one.
'I have to escape. Somehow break free from this corvée laborer chain. Get out of this shithole.'
Escaping the lowest rung of a caste society.
Leaving this godforsaken place where everyone hated him.
That was the condition for living like a human.
Fortunately, there was a way.
'A month from now, the Gigant Rider candidate test will be held.'
Gigant.
The ultimate magic weapon that changed the fate of humanity.
Just being selected as a candidate rider for a Gigant earned you treatment as a knight, a semi-noble status.
Passing the candidate test alone guaranteed a human life.
He couldn't miss this chance.
Kang Geohan made a plan.
'I'll become a Gigant Rider candidate.'
But first, he had to solve one thing.
[Willpower: 2.1/18]
Kang Geohan clearly recognized his condition.
A will that shook at the slightest push.
Chronic helplessness.
A mind that welled up with tears the moment he opened his eyes in the morning.
Heart pounding, concentration shattered at the sight of people—panic disorder.
Kang Geohan knew exactly what these signs meant. He'd experienced them in his past life.
'Depression and panic disorder.'
The shackles that had naturally clamped onto the boy Kang Geohan, who grew up nameless and miserable his whole life.
That was the first obstacle he had to overcome.
'I overcame it once before. I can do it again. And this time, I have helpful abilities...!'
He needed two things.
First, sufficient nutrition and medicinal intake.
Second, exercise.
* * *
A fitness craze suddenly swept through the corvée laborers of the Burjoji Barony.
After the daily grind, thud! thud! The sound of heavy tools being lifted and dropped echoed everywhere in the barony.
"Just watch. When I become a Gigant Rider, I'll make you all freemen! Remember Brother Billy? What happened when he awakened his Gift?"
"His whole family became freemen."
"Yeah. Awakening a Gift does that much. Imagine what a Gigant Rider could do? You all owe me bows."
The sturdy-built boy, Thomas, hoisted a heavy toolbox stuffed full over his head with a grunt, then slammed it down—thud!—and bragged to his friends.
"The Demonic Stone? I'll lift that shit easy too."
The Gigant Rider candidate test was simple. Hold the Demonic Stone over your head for three seconds, done.
What mattered more than strength was will.
The village elders warned, "Steel your mind. Even a flicker of weak will, and you're dead."
But to the sixteen-to-nineteen-year-old boys dreaming of rising in status, such warnings fell on deaf ears.
All the strong ones sweated buckets training to become rider candidates.
Kang Geohan started his own preparations amid them.
Of course, his peers' reactions were ice-cold.
"What's that freak doing now?"
Thomas, from the same ninth squad as Kang Geohan, looked down on him with disdain.
"He's totally lost it. Yesterday he was stuffing his face with grass like a cow."
Kang Geohan trudged past them, a rickety leather strap backpack loaded with green grass.
"Hey! Freak!"
Thomas spat on the ground—ptui!—and stepped forward big, kicking Kang Geohan in the side.
"Ugh!"
Kang Geohan toppled with a choked groan. Having endured a wretched childhood in this life, he was skin and bones, like a scarecrow.
Thomas loomed over him as he rolled pathetically on the dirt.
"What're you doing, you possessed shit...? I told you not to show your unlucky face around me."
Kang Geohan rolled, then struggled to his feet and answered.
"Vitamins..."
"...What?"
"Omega-three... protein... and antidepressants... I need them."
"What the fuck? Is he really crazy?"
Kang Geohan's reaction was different from usual. Normally, he'd curl up like the world was ending. Thomas would stomp him flat.
But as Kang Geohan muttered incomprehensible nonsense and stood, Thomas instinctively stepped back. He sensed a madness in him.
Kang Geohan's receding back. Green leaves in his pack swayed in the wind.
Someone said,
"Isn't he trying to die?"
Thomas turned.
"Die?"
"Yeah. No way a loser like him has the guts to hang himself, so he's foraging poison grass to eat and croak."
Suicide...
Thomas eyed Kang Geohan's back oddly, spat on the ground again—ptui!—and said,
"Ah, what bad luck... This place is such a shithole. Gotta get out quick."
Thomas's friends snickered and chimed in.
"Hey, hey, if you really become a rider candidate, don't forget us?"
Thomas basked in their attention.
"Of course not, you punks! Just trust your big bro!"
* * *
Time flew by in a breathless rush.
Finally, on the day of the Gigant Rider candidate test, Burjoji Baron gathered all corvée laborers aged sixteen to under twenty in one place.
Over a thousand boys and girls. Behind the baron on the platform, overlooking them, stood the baron's castle—also the circuit-forged steel factory—belching white steam nonstop.
Hiss—
Hiss—
On the castle turrets where steam rose, rifle snipers cradled their guns, peering down at the youths with keen interest.
Squad leaders prowled among the boys and girls like teachers lining up students for assembly, eyes sharp.
Davis the squad leader was among them.
As he patrolled the ranks, he passed Kang Geohan and whispered,
"I figure you got my message."
Davis knew Kang Geohan planned to take the candidate test and had flown into a rage.
Childless, Davis had treated Kang Geohan, son of his childhood friend, like his own.
Though it was worlds apart from the caring father figure a modern person might imagine—like night and day.
"If you don't wanna get crushed, stay the fuck down. Got it?"
He was always this overbearing, always pissed off. If he had any finesse, Kang Geohan wouldn't have lived nameless this long.
'Thanks, Uncle. But...!'
Still, Kang Geohan knew Davis truly worried about him.
In this territory full of enemies, Davis was the only one who stuck up for him, even pissing off the squad.
Uncle Davis had just taken the candidate test in his youth. He knew how dangerous it was, so he tried to stop Kang Geohan.
But that's why Kang Geohan couldn't stay put.
'Uncle hates living like this too. He probably doesn't even realize it...'
Humans are born to pursue happiness. People on twenty-first-century Earth believed that, but it was bullshit on the Laniakea Continent.
Corvée laborers had no right to pursue happiness. They all suffered chronic dopamine and serotonin deficiency. They barely knew the emotion called happiness that humans could feel.
So Kang Geohan wanted to show even his sole ally, Uncle Davis, what it meant to "live like a human."
Finally, the Gigant Rider candidate test began.
The kingdom's dispatched examiner opened the box and pulled out the Demonic Stone with large tongs.
Siiiizzle—
Fwooo.
Siiiiizzle—
Whooo.
The moment the box opened, a burnt smell wafted out.
The egg-sized red stone growled like a tiger lurking in tall grass, breathing in and out, swelling and deflating.
It rumbled like a massive motorcycle engine. Steam burst with each growl, accompanied by the sizzle of cooling metal.
Burjoji Baron scanned the boys and girls with eyes mixed greed and expectation, then said,
"First, the ones recommended by your squad leaders, step up in order and give it a try. Do your best. If any of you show Burjozi spirit, I'll reward you handsomely."
Growl.
Siiiizzle.
Whooo.
Hiss—
But the boys and girls, faced with the Demonic Stone spewing steam like a demon, froze in fear.
All but one.
Only Kang Geohan’s eyes gleamed.
Full of resolve.