Forced Awakening

It's rare for life to screw you over so thoroughly that it feels like fate was decided in advance.

Especially when the fate you've been handed is complete garbage.

—"Don't bother making that one study. He's got a baksu destiny. Studying won't do him any good."

That's what I overheard a stranger say while walking down the street as a kid.

A baksu? What the hell was that supposed to be?

I looked it up. Apparently, it means a male shaman.

A shaman? Fortune-telling? In the twenty-first century?

Who was going to believe that nonsense? I brushed it off as the senile rambling of a crazy old woman and moved on with my life.

After that, I studied until I bled, graduated from university, and finally threw myself headlong into the great battlefield of job hunting.

"You prepared hard, so it'll work out."

Yeah, the job market had frozen over thanks to AI, but I'd built up a decent résumé. I had confidence.

But then.

"Come on."

"……Son of a bitch."

Rejection number 753.

Cut at the résumé screening, slipped off at the aptitude test, blocked at the interview—over and over and over. Aim lower, and they turned me down because I seemed like I'd be under too much pressure to perform. Aim higher, and it was "we encourage you to try again next time."

"What the hell am I supposed to do, seriously."

By this point, a terrible thought started to creep in.

Those curse-like words spat out with a click of the tongue by that old woman all those years ago.

—"Effort won't save you. A baksu destiny doesn't go away no matter how you struggle. The problem isn't you—it's the one sitting behind you."

Could that have actually been true?

Goddamn it.

What the hell is even sitting behind me?

Was I seriously supposed to receive some kind of spirit possession? Hold a ritual?

"Ritual, my ass. Freeze to death, you damned spirits. Begone, evil things!"

Ghosts? Go to hell.

Rejected 753 times? Fine, then I'd apply 800 times. Get rejected again? Make it a thousand.

"Just watch me become some shaman."

And the moment I collapsed face-down onto my bed, seething with spite—

"……Huh?"

When I opened my eyes, I was in another world.

"No. Seriously? This is real?"

A fantasy world flooded with magic, superhuman abilities, and gods of every description.

It didn't take me long to figure out that I'd been transmigrated to another world. The view outside the window alone was the absolute pinnacle of unreality.

Two suns hanging in the sky, and a sea of pristine white clouds stretched out beneath my feet.

Look, I could give a hundred-percent benefit of the doubt up to that point. A fantasy isekai? Everyone daydreams about that at least once during puberty.

The problem was the state of the body I'd woken up in, and the place I'd woken up in it.

Loose white pants billowing in the wind. A deep blue dopo robe draped over them. And a crumbling, dilapidated shack that creaked and coughed up dust every time the wind swept over my head.

Meanwhile, for some inexplicable reason, only the shrine altar where prayers were offered was faintly glimmering.

By every conceivable measure, I had been transmigrated into the body of a nameless priest in a fantasy world.

And a thoroughly, utterly ruined one at that.

"……Is this some kind of joke?"

I'd raised hell back in Korea fleeing that shaman destiny—and this bitch of a fate had crawled across dimensions just to shove my soul into a shaman's body anyway?

I could feel a screw coming loose in my head.

"Fine. You want to play? Let's play."

Did they really think I'd kneel down obediently in a place like this and shake a rattle for the rest of my life?

"I'm running away from this shrine, goddammit!"

CRASH!

Robe hiked up roughly around my legs, I kicked the rotting old shrine door clean off its hinges and stormed outside. The plan was to head down the mountain to the nearest village and become a mercenary or a laborer—whatever paid.

Except.

Whooooosh—!

A wind like a blade sliced across my cheek.

"……Huh?"

My heart slammed to a stop at the sight spread out before me.

An endless sea of blinding white clouds beneath my feet. Ranges upon ranges of sheer, knife-cut cliffs thousands of meters tall stretching in every direction. Perched atop that dizzying summit of razor-sharp rock, with the clouds laid out below it, were exactly two things: me, and this one battered old shrine.

A path down? What path? There wasn't so much as a staircase—just a sheer cliff face where one misstep meant a thirty-minute free fall. And you couldn't even see the bottom, because there was a goddamn layer of clouds over it.

Oh, so THAT'S why the clouds were at ground level. Not because it's fantasy—because this place is bone-crushingly high.

"Son of a bitch."

A hollow curse slipped out between my lips.

"How is anyone supposed to live here?"

The wind whipped at my robe as I stared blankly down at the clouds.

"……Still a nice view, though."

Year three of falling into a fantasy world.

In this world, a "shrine" was essentially a kind of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠spiritual communication base station. A vast mana network blanketed the entire continent. Believers sent their prayers through it, and priests channeled oracles through it to run their denominations. The more worshippers gathered to pray at a shrine, the more Merit it accumulated—and Merit was what let you work miracles.

But here was the problem.

Maybe it was because this massive mana network had to pass through the brain of a modern Korean job-seeker, or maybe it was some prank by the god I served—either way, this enormous mana network…… looked to my eyes exactly like an internet community gallery.

"Heave-ho."

I laid a flat, blue-tinted magic tablet slab down on the altar at the center of the shrine.

Vmmm—

With a faint resonant hum, a bluish holographic screen floated up into the air.

"Haah……"

Perfectly dead, perfectly abandoned. A ghost gallery.

The laws of this world were brutally honest. Number of worshippers equaled number of gallery users. The traffic on the boards and the reactions of believers equaled the "Merit" accumulating in the shrine.

Not that actual physical offerings gave the biggest boost, of course.

The great denominations, with their hundreds of thousands of worshippers, lounged in glittering marble cathedrals and harvested Merit by the truckload through sheer traffic volume. Meanwhile, the god I served was some unidentified old deity whose name had been erased from record, and my shrine was stuck on top of a snowbound mountain no one could climb. With exactly zero believers, there was no way a single crumb of Merit would ever pile up.

Which left exactly one thing in my hands: the admin authority sitting on top of my neck.

"What good is wearing the head-mod armband when post activity has been zero for three years?"

Grrrroowl—.

My stomach let out a dramatic roar.

So how, in this isolated dead zone with no worshippers and no Merit income, had I managed to survive three years without starving to death?

The answer was simple.

What I like to call gallery rice-farming.

My shrine's gallery might be a dead zone, but I was still, indisputably, the head mod wielding absolute admin authority. And a head mod had access to the Merit Shop—a function that let you spend Merit to summon material goods.

Can't earn Merit at my own shrine? Then I'd go shake it loose from somebody else's.

I'd infiltrate other major shrine galleries, post garbage bait threads, drop truth-bomb comments under sanctimonious priests' posts, and stir the pot. Aggro drawn from other people's galleries sucked in attention and emotional energy, and through the power of the head-mod authority, a measly pinch of "scrap Merit" would trickle into my account.

Tap.

Practiced hands opened the admin screen, and I poured in the precious Merit I'd farmed up from all that aggro-baiting.

The air rippled, and with a thud, a rock-hard loaf of bread and some salt-cured jerky dropped to the floor.

A pathetic, corner-of-the-room, pot-stirring rice-farming life. Miserable didn't even begin to cover it.

But the real problem wasn't today's food ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠supply.

A blood-red warning window blinked in front of my eyes.

More lethal than food was this godforsaken mana battery.

The civilized cities of the continent and the great temples had mana network wiring running through them as densely as electrical grids. But there was no way that kind of infrastructure reached an isolated mountaintop thousands of meters above sea level.

Which meant keeping the shrine terminal powered required periodically swapping in pure mana batteries.

The problem was that the batteries were murderously expensive.

"How much aggro am I supposed to farm to afford ONE battery?"

At the Merit Shop, a single mana battery cost a full 100 Merit. My current balance was the 3 Merit left over from buying bread—that was it, that was all.

And if the battery ran dry and the terminal went dark? Network cut off, Merit supply severed, no food, and then I starved to death. Simple as that.

The situation was dizzying. I'd only bought the bread to stave off starvation for another day—but to actually survive, I had to keep grinding the gallery.

I tapped the terminal slab and connected to the largest community on the continent.

Even the raw user count was on a different dimensional plane.

Across a screen rimmed with flashing gold trim, the ornate posts of noble priests came pouring down. I was scrolling along, looking for something juicy to sink my teeth into, when it happened.

When I opened the Hall of Fame list, the post pinned right at the top caught my eye.

Thousands of worshipful comments praising the prophecy stretched down the page in a long, glistening line.

But something was wrong.

As I sat there staring down at that post, my temples began to throb with a searing ache.

The view before me rippled, and a dark crimson mist began to smolder up from between the lines of text.

……What the hell is this?

Every individual letter looked like a heap of rotting, putrefying corpses.

A rank fish-and-blood stench slammed into my nostrils, mixed with the reek of festering viscera.

This was no trick of the mind.

It was the sensation of something enormous—something that should never have entered my skull—forcing its way inside.

The northwestern supply route. Mud thick as tar. A sky blackened with crows. And grotesque black blotches blooming over the bodies of soldiers with their throats slit open.

The Black Plague.

Goosebumps rippled across my entire body.

What IS this feeling?

The voice of that old shaman woman from my childhood—the one who'd demanded a rite be held because I could see spirits—flickered past my ear. A baksu destiny. A spirit sickness.

I didn't know why. But I was certain.

That expedition was fated to be annihilated—not by defeat, but by a plague tearing through its supply lines.

As if possessed, my fingers moved.

The moment the comment posted, mockery came pouring down in real time.

Contempt and abuse lined up one after another.

"Unbelievable. I even warn them, and this is what I get."

I let out a hollow laugh and was about to shut off the screen when—

Ding—!

A notification chime, clear and bright, unlike anything I'd heard in my entire life, rang out through the little room.

At the same time, a red notification banner bloomed large across the top of the screen.

I doubted my own eyes.

Zero. The number that hadn't changed once in three whole years had, like a miracle, turned into "1."

"……A visitor?"

My heart plummeted. Someone had crawled into my dead shrine's gallery by tracing the comment trail I'd just left in the Sun Shrine Gallery.

With trembling fingers, I tapped the notification window.

Hanging forlornly in the empty board was a single new post.

"J-JetblackSword?"

The moment I confirmed the username, my jaw locked up.

I knew this name well.

A top-tier, hot-blooded believer who was treated quite favorably even by the priests in the Sun Shrine Gallery. Someone who poured out astronomical offering money without blinking—meaning, a whale. A big spender.

And in particular, one of the most anticipated rising stars at tomorrow's Sword Dance Festival, hosted by the Northern Grand Duke. A genuine celebrity of both imperial high society and the martial world.

So why would a name like that roll all the way down into the gallery of some backwater ruined shrine?

The author's username, and a brief body of text. Two sentences soaked through with barely-concealed anxiety.

But the instant I clicked the post and opened it, something utterly unforeseen happened.

Along with a surge of nausea far worse than before—

a vision bloomed before my eyes.

Woooong—!

The ancient stone embedded in the shrine altar resonated violently.

The azure crest of an illustrious imperial knight family. A frail hand, deathly pale, gripping a sword hilt. The face of a young blue-haired knight, trembling with anxiety, overlaid itself translucently behind the text.

"Gahk—!"

My breath caught in my throat.

The sensations of the time and space my client was standing in—on the other side of the screen—poured into my five senses without a drop of filtration. The chill of the frigid night air. Sticky cold sweat beading out on her palms. Even the crushing pressure and naked terror constricting her chest came through raw.

What is this? What the hell is this?

Was it the power of the old god I served? Or had that insufferable shaman's gift sleeping inside me finally ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ruptured?

I wasn't even given time to sort out the confusion. The moment ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I tried to peer deeper into the threads of causality, a thunderbolt of agony tore through my skull.

It felt like my entire head was being split apart.

"Kgh—aaagh!"

Scalding liquid surged up from the back of my nose and spilled down my chin, dripping onto the floor. Pit-pat.

Red drops of blood spread across the blue folds of my dopo, and across the terminal slab.

My head felt like it was burning. On the very edge of blacking out, through a bizarre, blinding flare of light, the scene of destiny seared itself onto my retinas.

—"WAAAAAAAH!"

The frenzied roar of tens of thousands of spectators. A sea of people surging like clouds to catch a glimpse of the famous genius swordswoman with the blue hair. The upper wooden stands of the arena swayed under their collective weight.

—KRAK!

A horrible sound of splitting wood as the railings gave way beneath the crowd.

CRRACK—BOOM!

Hundreds of wooden supports snapped at once, and a colossal plume of dust erupted skyward. Bodies and razor-sharp debris came raining down.

And in the very heart of that collapsed wreckage—

the blue-haired knight, waiting for her match in the ready area, was buried alive with everything else.

Trampled underfoot by fleeing crowds, a splintered wooden pillar piercing through her chest as she vomited blood.

She wasn't going to suffer because she'd lost tomorrow's Sword Dance Festival.

She was going to suffer because of a horrific stampede disaster at the Sword Dance Festival itself.

The vision snapped off, and reality slammed back into me.

Haah. Haah.

Gulping down ragged breaths, I wiped the blood from beneath my nose with my sleeve.

And then my fingers began to move on their own.

Tak. Tadak.

With bloodstained fingertips, I hammered roughly at the slab and drove my reply into it.