The Original and the Fragment
Chae-yeon's eyebrows trembled faintly, and the uncle wore an expression of utter bewilderment between his whiskers. I remained frozen in that humiliating pose amid the awkward silence. I wanted to die. My hands were still hovering near that embarrassing spot, and the smoke rising from my backside had settled lightly across the dojo floor, carrying a strange floral scent. Or maybe it was closer to the minty aroma I'd first noticed in the bathroom.
"Hey, Jinny... isn't that a little rude on our first meeting?" I protested in a tiny, shrinking voice. Jinny crossed her legs in midair and snorted.
Whether she knew how worried I was or not, Jinny seemed perfectly relaxed. "Just look at that big guy over there. He's so moved by my mana wave he can't even close his mouth."
Jinny flashed a mischievous grin at the uncle. "Right, mister?"
At her question, the uncle snapped back to his senses with a loud cough and straightened his chest. He slowly circled around Jinny. His gaze was far sharper and deeper than when he'd examined me earlier. In the eyes of a man who'd seen countless awakeners over his lifetime, both reverence and an inexplicable tension swirled together.
"This isn't an ordinary summoned creature, is it? A fantasy species spirit?"
With a serious expression, he began analyzing the blonde beauty spirit floating before him. "No, the purity of this mana is on a completely different level from typical spirits..." He offered various theories about Jinny's true identity. "It's almost like an ancient legend has manifested in the flesh..."
He folded his arms, lost in deep thought for a moment, then turned to me with a grave look.
"Gangjin, do you clearly understand the proper sequence of how awakeners obtain their power?"
Caught off guard by the sudden question, I answered with what I knew. "Um... first a body part awakens, and then the ability settles into it, right?"
The uncle nodded at my response. "That's correct."
Thankfully, my knowledge had been accurate.
"Every awakener begins with a specific body part reacting to mana and undergoing mutation." The body part where the primary organ for generating mana—the Mana Circuit—is located is called the awakening point. "Then energy flowing from the world's origin fills that empty vessel, completing it as an 'ability.'"
It was an explanation of the standard process for an awakener to unlock their power. In most normal cases, what the uncle described was common sense.
"Ordinary people only accept a very tiny piece of that origin... in other words, a 'Fragment'..."
Jinny had also mentioned that while she wandered the boundary, she could feel portions of her existence breaking off as Fragments. Just as she'd said, most awakeners absorbed those scattered fragments to use their abilities.
"Whether they're S-class or A-class, in the end they're all just carrying around crumbs of that immense power."
The uncle pointed at Jinny and lowered his voice. "But you are an extremely special case."
"Special case...?"
If we're talking special, I thought awakening an S-class butt was already incredibly special.
"When your backside awakened as S-class, the scale and purity of that mana must have been truly enormous." Though his tone was excited, the uncle's expression remained serious as he looked back and forth between me and Jinny. "Before any Fragment could settle in, the origin itself—the 'Original'—saw your mana reaction and jumped in of its own accord to claim its place."
"Original?"
Jinny reacted to the uncle's use of the word "Original." "Oh, not bad. That's exactly right—I'm nothing like those pathetic little Fragment pieces!"
She seemed pleased by the term Original; I could feel her mood soaring. "I'm a precious being who came into this guy's butt whole!"
When Jinny puffed out her chest with a boastful air, the uncle's eyes grew even sharper.
"Unlike Fragments, an Original possesses self-awareness. It grows on its own and connects its mana with its master's." If we assumed that Jinny hadn't leaked even a single piece of herself while wandering the boundary, then I would be the only person in the world with the powers of the 'Genie of the Lamp.'
"It may have been fate that your backside became your awakening point, but it was because you possessed such an enormous vessel that you could contain this Original spirit in her entirety."
Put another way, if my mana hadn't been S-class, this chatty blonde spirit girl could never have settled into my butt.
"Gangjin's backside has become something like Aladdin's golden lamp for Jinny."
The uncle's explanation continued. "The mana of an Original spirit is so vast that an ordinary awakener could never control it using normal mana manipulation methods."
Typical awakeners treated their abilities like tools. But in my case, because a self-aware spirit had taken up residence whole, I needed to treat her not as a 'tool' but as a 'companion.'
The uncle gestured toward the massive tires stacked in the corner of the dojo. "The key to your mana operation is suppressing Jinny's enormous mana using your glute muscles."
This meant I had to learn to control Jinny's overwhelmingly vast mana at will. "And you must master the method of refining and drawing it out whenever you need it."
Storing Jinny's mana and my own in my backside, then pulling out the appropriate amount when necessary—that was the mana operation method I needed to master after awakening an Original spirit.
"For that reason, from now on you must build up your glute muscles!"
Huh? I'd half expected it, but I never thought I'd actually be doing physical butt exercises...
The uncle gave my awkward backside a light smack and fired me up. "Come on, get into horse stance! Start with 3,000 squats!"
"3... 3,000?!"
Hearing my hellish training menu, Jinny got excited. "Oh yeah! I'll just watch!"
She spun in circles above my head. "Good luck, Butt-man!"
This girl just called me Butt-man to my face. Out loud.
"You can't quit in the middle of Dad's lessons," Chae-yeon said, silently strapping heavy sandbags around her ankles. "If you don't want to get chased by Residues like yesterday, grit your teeth and do it."
At Chae-yeon's blunt, cutting remark, I swallowed my tears and spread my legs.
"Haa..."
With my short sigh, the curtain rose on hell.
"One thousand... twenty... two... one thousand... twenty... three..."
About an hour had passed. My legs no longer felt like my own. My thigh muscles screamed as if they were about to tear, and above all, my backside burned as though lava had been poured over it. Sweat poured down like a waterfall, tracing the exact shape of my body on the dojo floor like a map.
Every time I counted off another rep, the mana lurking inside my backside interfered with the muscle contractions, struggling to burst outward. It felt like water trapped behind a massive dam, thrashing against cracks in search of release.
"Hey, put more strength into it! My mana doesn't know where to go!"
Even though I was the one suffering, Jinny kept chattering advice from the sidelines. "Squeeze it tight with your muscles and push it out through your soles!"
Jinny's constant babbling echoed in my head, but I didn't even have the energy to answer. Around the 2,000 mark, my knees buckled and I nearly collapsed to the floor.
The uncle's heavy voice rang through the dojo. "Don't stop! This is the critical moment!"
Ah, I'd seen this on the internet. It was exactly like those PT trainer lines: "Just one more, member!" right before making you do ten or a hundred more.
"When your muscles reach their limit, that's precisely when Jinny's mana can seep into your blood vessels and begin the assimilation process!"
The uncle took up a horse stance beside me and encouraged me. It was fascinating. Just having him stand nearby seemed to calm the rampaging mana inside me bit by bit. Was this what people called a pacemaker?
The moment my squats surpassed 2,500, a hot, sticky energy exploded from my backside. The mana that would normally have scattered in all directions, thanks to the posture the uncle had forced me into, lost its escape route and was forcibly driven into the muscles of my thighs and calves.
"Aaaagh!"
A scream tore out of me, but paradoxically, strength returned to my legs. The mana was forcibly burning away muscle fatigue and holding my body upright. Even Jinny seemed surprised as she watched me with a curious expression.
"Oh...? The channels are opening a little."
When I finally completed the last of the 3,000 squats and flopped onto the floor, the mat beneath my feet turned pitch black as it burned, radiating friction heat. I lay spread-eagle, gasping for breath.
Jinny, who still had energy left from just watching, sat on my stomach and bounced playfully. "Good job, Gangjin. For the first day, your willpower was impressive."
The uncle tossed me a towel and approached. The smile had vanished from his face, replaced entirely by the seriousness of a martial artist. He carefully examined the black scorch marks left beneath my feet.
"The Jinny inside you really is an incredible spirit."
The black scorch left behind by the mana seemed to be a trace of restrained mana output. "When your muscles reached their limit, did you feel the mana seeping into the torn gaps to aid recovery and lend strength?"
I nodded blankly. I should have been unable to move, yet I'd felt a strange vitality forcibly lifting my body.
"That is the beginning of Mana Assimilation. It's a sensation those with only Fragments can never experience."
It had been a brief moment in which I'd physically experienced the mana of Jinny dwelling inside my backside.
"But remember this. Your backside is a colossal power that could save the world—or destroy it."
Destroy the world? What kind of world would be destroyed by my butt? If it was a world that could be ruined by something like that, maybe it was better off gone.
"...That wording is a little too scary."
When I finally managed a reply, the uncle burst into hearty laughter and patted my shoulder.
Chae-yeon, who had finished her own training nearby, approached and filled a cup from the water dispenser, setting it before me. Her eyes still looked indifferent, but there was a subtle respect in the way she placed the cup down. It wasn't because of my S-class top student title. It felt more like recognition for a comrade who had endured the hell of 3,000 squats even during Mana Assimilation.
"Same time tomorrow. You know what happens if you're late, right?"
With those words, Chae-yeon smiled at me for the first time.
"I saw you sniffling earlier, by the way."
"Ugh... yeah."
I clutched the cup and barely managed to nod.