The Tyrant at the Bottom of the Tank

Leaking Heavenly Secrets.

That was the crime the Transcendents of the Gallery claimed I had committed.

My take on it was a little different, though.

At most, my posts said things like: if this bastard and that bitch threw down, this bastard would win. Who was number one in such-and-such galaxy, who was number two in such-and-such faction... that was the entire extent of it.

The scale was a touch bigger, sure, but it was the same game as arguing over who'd win between Kim What's-his-name, the Steamed-Bun Fist of Gangbuk, and Park What's-his-name, the Pig's-Trotter Master of Songpa.

Of course, when Transcendents played that game, they got beaten black and blue by something called the Law of Causality.

But I was a worthless — and I mean utterly worthless — ordinary civilian, so I'd simply been posting that sort of thing for fun.

"...Yes."

And therefore.

In my view, this was far closer to Leaking Heavenly Secrets.

The moment I pressed the confirmation with trembling fingers, what appeared was exactly what I'd expected.

"Ah."

I had become a mage.

If a man who had never once seen the world in his life were to open his eyes.

If a deaf man who had never heard a single sound were to have his ears unsealed.

I imagine it would feel something like this.

"...Ha."

Naturally, I had made plenty of attempts to become one of those so-called ability users. Every last one had come to nothing, and all it had taught me was that I could never become one under my own power.

It was as natural as a blind man not seeing, or a deaf man not hearing.

And so.

I had given up on becoming an ability user.

But with this one choice, I became a mage.

I could feel mana.

I couldn't even begin to pin down how to describe the sensation. Ask a man beholding the world for the first time in his life to explain what "seeing" feels like — what could he possibly say?

Shweeee—!WHAM!

I flung a compressed mass of air at the wall. Even with the output dialed down, the impact boomed, and cracks spiderwebbed across the surface.

"Haha, hahahaha......"

A somewhat hollow laugh kept leaking out of me. If my landlord caught sight of this, he'd raise hell demanding repair money — but I could simply pay him back tenfold and call it even.

Because I had already, once and for all, left such petty concerns behind me.

At this level, going by the rough standards of a conventional magic system, I'd be about 2-Star. I now possessed power beyond any dispute — power that plainly qualified me as an ability user.

The reason I had awakened so easily — so easily it made every ounce of my past effort feel like wasted breath — was simple. This world's laws had been written that way.

"...So it was this easy."

Snap—!

Scarlet flame bloomed to life, warming the air around me, and the instant I snapped my fingers again, the fire vanished without a trace, replaced by azure lightning.

Snap—! Crack-crackle!

Lightning danced wild between my fingers.

Snap—!

This time, it was cold. The air that had been roasting moments ago froze bone-white, and frost settled over everything in sight.

Elemental transformation.

Ironically, I had already known how to do this. Naturally — the original novel spelled out the method. The only reason I'd never attempted it was that I didn't know how to wield mana itself.

Knowledge, it turned out, had no utility value whatsoever. Only practical power — the kind that could defy the laws of the world — carried any real meaning.

And I had acquired that power just by reading a single post. What that post conveyed to me was not knowledge.

It was the power to overturn the heavens, plain and simple.

"This world really is disgustingly unfair."

The very method I'd just used was being practiced, at this very moment, in the bloodlines of ability users. Either you were born with talent, or — failing that — someone forcibly awakened you like this.

But from now on, I too would be a beneficiary of that unfair world.

There were still plenty of viewable materials left on the board. Most of them, the Grimoire of the Lost Glass Star I'd just viewed included, didn't deal in anything particularly high-level.

But when the baseline for "high-level" was transcendence, they were extraordinary things. Master any one of them to a fully ripened level, and you'd hold the power to casually shatter a planet.

"...For now, later."

I had no intention of swallowing whatever happened to fall within reach. Picking out only what each school of magic required, and learning just that, would be plenty. Anything more would be poison instead.

What I was curious about now was the Exchange function.

I went straight into the board.

"...Whoa."

Just as expected, one impossible-grade item after another lined up before me. And of course, most of the prices were every bit as untouchable.

"The cheapest one's 500,000."

My remaining points sat at a precarious hair under 80,000 — more than six times short. Not that I hadn't earned nearly 100,000 points off a single post, but—

"...Hold on."

Come to think of it, wasn't this dirt cheap? A few lines typed into a gallery, a couple of clicks — and that bought a Thousand-Year Flower? A single herb that granted even a mere mortal a thousand years of life?

It felt like the value system in my head was short-circuiting.

I skimmed through the listings below, then soon shook my head.

"...This too, later."

Things I couldn't afford right now anyway.

Eventually, I browsed through the other functions as well. None of them were much use to me at the moment.

The request board was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠exactly what it claimed to be — a request board. The sponsorship section was likewise just for sponsoring people.

I had no use for either. Maybe that would change someday...

"Hah."

The moment I finished all that exploring, every last thread of tension snapped and went slack. I couldn't tell whether everything happening now was dream or waking life — whether it might all vanish without a trace the moment I stirred from a brief nap.

That's how unreal it felt.

But I no longer needed any barbaric procedure like slapping my own cheek to prove that this was real.

Hot.

Cold.

The mana in my palm flipped back and forth between opposite attributes, faster and faster. Yet no pain came with the sensory whiplash.

I simply welcomed it.

Jeongmyeong City, Haedong Nation.

Mapped onto the geography of my original world, it corresponded exactly to the Suwon–Ansan corridor of Gyeonggi Province. It was a region crowded with citizens of Grade 3 and below, which meant jobs were every bit as scarce as the people were many. Even delivery work was fiercely competitive.

For unregistered freelance drivers, getting dragged in by the city police and beaten with clubs was simply the norm.

Which was why Lee Young-han, Team 1 Leader of Jeongmyeong City's delivery outfit Baedal Minjok, wielded his own little fiefdom of power. He was the man who signed off on new-hire proposals and graded the performance reviews of every driver already on the roster.

"...Isn't this going a bit too far?"

"Huh?"

Lee Young-han cocked his head at the resentment glinting in the eyes of the man standing before him. Red threads of burst vessels cut across the whites of the man's droopy eyes.

"You're telling me I have to pay 500,000 won just to register? That's three months of full-time work — money nobody can even save up!"

The complaint was entirely justified. No matter how hard a delivery driver ground himself, he took home barely 150,000 won a month — and even that was only enough to keep body and soul together. And now they wanted 500,000 won up front just to register him?

Even hauling in every debt he could possibly take on, he'd fall short. For a penniless Grade 4 citizen, the only lenders willing to touch that kind of money were loan sharks — and borrowing from them meant tasting a hell beyond hell.

"Ha. Now even beggar-ass punks are..."

Lee Young-han just gave a hollow little laugh and closed the distance. The man, who had been bristling with anger, flinched and stumbled back a step, his whole body trembling.

Lee Young-han carried cyberware implants — low-grade ones, but cyberware all the same. To an ordinary person, he might as well have been a monster.

"Hey, bro. You take me for a fucking sucker? You know how much comes out of the team leader's pocket?"

He flicked the man's cheek once, twice, spitting his curses between taps.

"The kickback I pay our branch director every month is a million won. A million. Even if I take in two fresh punks like you, not one won lands in my pocket. You get that, you piece of shit?"

"......"

"Too far my ass. If you don't like it, go shop around somewhere else. How much you figure they'd charge there? 700,000? A million?"

"Ghhh... AAAAAGH!!!"

Crunch—

Crushing pain erupted from his right shoulder, the one Lee Young-han had seized. The man shrieked and dropped to his knees on the spot.

"Get lost while I'm still asking nicely, you motherfucker. There's plenty more where you came from."

"Uhhh... o-okay. I understand..."

The man bolted out of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the alley, glancing over his shoulder as if afraid of being chased. Watching him stagger away, Lee Young-han clicked his tongue.

"Crazy bastard. Tsk tsk."

In truth, Lee Young-han's words were half right and half wrong. It was true that he paid a million won a month in kickbacks to the branch director — but he was skimming nearly as much for himself, quietly pocketing a cut of every wage that was supposed to reach his drivers.

Even so, it was equally true that he was no exceptional villain. Not just in Jeongmyeong — go to any city in the nation and the only difference was degree. Anyone holding even a scrap of power used it to squeeze those a class below them.

A world ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠where you ate, or got eaten. That was simply the way of things.

Creeeak—creak-creak—

"Might rain, huh."

His wrist throbbed with a dull ache. The low-grade prosthetic arm he'd been fitted with back in his army days. But it was thanks to even this that Lee Young-han had managed to play tyrant at the bottom of the tank. Next to real ability users, it didn't even register — but with even this meager strength, he'd spared himself a truly bottom-feeder life all these years.

Though perhaps his life, too, would not end so peacefully. It wasn't the kind of thing that happened often — but the bottom-of-the-tank vermin he'd spent years grinding underfoot. If even one of them ever stumbled into a miracle and came into power...

I'd take a knife to the gut, I suppose.

Of course, it wasn't something that would happen easily. Truly, it wasn't...

"Team Leader Lee."

"...?"

Deep in those thoughts, Lee Young-han jerked his head up at the voice that cut in out of nowhere. And there, dead center in his line of sight, stood someone floating in midair.

"...Jin Sechan?"

"Your face looks especially friendly today. So glad to see you."

It seemed that thing had well and truly come to pass.