Awakeners
“If I may offer one piece of advice, raising your Eloquence stat in a time like this could prove useful to you someday as well, Seong-min.”
“Because it’ll make me better at talking?”
“Not exactly. The Eloquence stat lets you keep your composure and speak calmly no matter the situation. In the end, speech can turn rough or grow stammering and clumsy depending on your emotional state. Like how your voice trembles when you’re nervous.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“What I’ve come to realize is that the Eloquence stat lets you be bold more than anything.”
“Be bold…?”
“I couldn’t manage that in the past. You seem different from how I was back then… so I don’t know whether you’ll take an interest in the Eloquence stat and raise it the way I did… but such a moment might come for you as well.”
Listening to Kang Jung-gil, Seong-min felt that what the man was really talking about wasn’t speech itself so much as the mental fortitude that let a person hold onto their composure.
Seong-min still didn’t feel any particular interest in the Eloquence stat.
In the end, following the man’s words, the core of the Eloquence stat wasn’t about turning someone into a silver-tongued orator; it was about giving them the center of gravity to speak calmly in any situation.
And that was the point Kang Jung-gil kept emphasizing.
“Have you tried all of the special skills?”
“I’ve used Teleportation.”
“And the Escape Skill?”
“Not yet. Never had a reason to.”
“I see.”
Kang Jung-gil nodded as if he understood perfectly.
“Hooo…”
He drew another deep drag.
“The Escape Skill is remarkably useful. What do you think the Escape Skill is, Seong-min?”
“Exactly what it sounds like—a skill that can pull me out of a crisis or a bad situation, right?”
“Is that how the description reads?”
“That’s what it said.”
“That’s only the rough outline. In a way, you could say the Escape Skill is even more extraordinary than Teleportation.”
“You know something about the Escape Skill?”
“At first I thought the same thing you do. But then… a desperate situation came crashing down on me.”
“A desperate situation?”
“Ju-yeon was kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped?”
Seong-min’s face filled with shock.
“Of course I had to save her, but I had no idea where she was. So I searched for every method available to me and decided to pin my hopes on one of them.”
“And that was…”
“The Escape Skill. This skill can be used not only on yourself… but on someone you wish to save.”
“……?!”
“And while the description simply says it lets you escape a crisis, the actual effect is truly remarkable.”
Seong-min waited for Kang Jung-gil to continue.
“The Escape Skill does exactly what it says—it lets you escape a bad situation. That could mean you’re being held captive, or someone close to you is. But it isn’t limited to those cases. In every kind of adverse situation, this skill can deliver you.”
“It can save me from every situation?”
“It’s limited to that particular situation, but somehow a result that lets you escape always comes about. Cause and effect that allow you to break free of the bad situation are created naturally. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“……”
Seong-min couldn’t find a reply.
If what the man said was true, then the Escape Skill was genuinely useful.
“Something like that happened to me.”
Seong-min told him about the recent incident—how an intruder had broken into the home of the landlady he was staying with, how the man had tried to force himself on her, and how Seong-min had arrived just in time to stop it.
“I see… You were lucky that time.”
“I think so too.”
If he hadn’t shown up then, something he didn’t even want to imagine would have happened.
“So what you’re saying is, if I hadn’t appeared in that situation and I’d used the Escape Skill on the landlady instead, she still could have gotten through it?”
“It doesn’t erase the situation as if it never existed. Instead, cause and effect that allow escape from that situation appear. For example, if you’d used the Escape Skill, your arrival on the scene might have been pure coincidence—or it might have been thanks to the skill.”
“……”
He’d vaguely thought of it as something that could pull him out when he himself was in danger. That was why he’d made sure he had one charge ready, just in case.
But now, listening to Kang Jung-gil’s explanation, the Escape Skill was hiding an even greater effect.
“Do you understand now why I said the Escape Skill is every bit as useful as Teleportation?”
“I understand.”
In that case, increasing the number of charges for the Escape Skill was just as much of an absolute advantage as doing the same for Teleportation.
In a desperate moment, what skill could possibly be better?
“And the other reason I came looking for you is to ask you something else.”
“Go ahead.”
“When you received this power, did an old man appear to you as well?”
“Well… I don’t know if he was an old man, but some kind of being did give me the Status Window. That’s a fact.”
“I saw him. That person… was an old man. And he said certain things to me.”
“What did he say?”
For the first time, Seong-min spoke about the old man he had met.
He had never imagined he would find someone he could share this with.
After listening all the way through, Kang Jung-gil seemed to be turning something over in his mind.
“Something definitely happened, then.”
“Happened?”
“If what you say is true, then perhaps… you and I were never meant to meet.”
“You think so?”
“If this place was the one where you were fated to become a Transcendent, then I would never have become one. Conversely, if this was the place where I was meant to forge my destiny as a Transcendent… then you would never have obtained a Status Window. Of course, that only holds if, as you said, we are living inside parallel worlds.”
In each parallel world there would have been only one being destined to become a Transcendent.
Seong-min had formed that hypothesis while turning over the old man’s words, and Kang Jung-gil accepted the idea with complete seriousness.
“Then how do you explain the fact that we’ve met like this?”
“This is… only my own speculation, but… it seems the worlds have overlapped.”
“Overlapped…?”
“If parallel worlds truly exist… and if the being who gave us this power is that distant and vast… then such a thing might be possible. Of course, only the being who appeared to us as that old man and granted us the Status Windows would know the truth.”
“Is that really possible…?”
Seong-min asked as if he couldn’t believe it.
“Seong-min, does any of what’s happening right now look ordinary to you?”
“……”
The power he and Kang Jung-gil possessed.
And the existence of the Awakeners who had appeared in the world.
Even those alone were four-dimensional things that would have been completely unbelievable before. Things that had only ever been possible inside fantasy, impossible to accept in a modern world of advanced science.
“Then what happens now?”
“Seong-min.”
“……?”
“There’s no need to overthink it. The Awakeners have appeared, and you and I met while both holding Status Windows. Whether parallel worlds are real or the world has gone off-kilter—that has nothing to do with us. For us…”
Kang Jung-gil’s eyes turned colder than ever.
“What matters is this life.”
“This life…”
“Thinking about it any further right now won’t produce an answer. And I actually consider the present situation a good thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Through the Jungang Clan I had already brought the underworld under control, and after that I was moving forward with plans to change this country. Then this whole affair erupted.”
Kang Jung-gil crushed the finished cigarette butt into the ashtray.
“Seong-min, let me give you one piece of advice. Whether they’re Awakeners or superhumans, the important thing is that we possess Status Windows they do not. What’s the difference, you ask? Just watch. Look at me… and I’ll show you how extraordinary the Status Window you hold truly is—how incomparable it is to theirs.”
This man…
In Kang Jung-gil’s cold eyes Seong-min saw a darkness like a bottomless abyss.
Eyes that seemed to hold no emotion at all.
Or perhaps it was more accurate to say the emotion simply couldn’t be read.
Looking into that icy gaze, that was the thought that rose in Seong-min’s mind.
That night, after being treated to the dinner Ju-yeon had prepared, Seong-min left the house.
“I’ll be going, then.”
“Of course.”
“Thanks for the meal.”
“It was nothing…”
Ju-yeon answered with a shy smile.
Seong-min opened the front door and stepped out.
He walked to the elevator and pressed the button.
What are you thinking?
You’ll understand once you watch.
He told me to watch. He’s clearly planning something.
Seong-min still didn’t know what that something was.
But one thing was certain: the man had declared he would show the difference between the Awakeners who wielded mysterious powers and those who possessed Status Windows.
And Kang Jung-gil had been right about something else as well.
Worrying about parallel worlds and the rest of it right now wouldn’t produce any answers.
What mattered was the present they were living in.
When the elevator arrived and the doors opened, Seong-min stepped inside with his thoughts somewhat settled.
The man had said the time wouldn’t be long.
If he waited, he would find out.