The Tyrant at the Bottom of the Tank

I had inevitably ended up learning far too much about the Team 1 leader who pocketed cuts of my wages.

First, that the motherfucker's name was Lee Young-han.

Second, that his nickname was "One-Hand"—because one of his hands truly was an artificial prosthetic.

Third, that said fake hand was a cyberware implant, and that he was an ex-soldier.

And lastly, that he despised my very existence.

Delivery work was one of the few viable ways to scrape together a living in Jeongmyeong City within Haedong Nation. It was the sole reason I swallowed my pride and kept hauling packages even when treated like cargo shoved into a trunk. After all, I had nowhere else to fall back on.

Which meant that, aside from my final point, hardly a single courier in Jeongmyeong City didn't know who Lee Young-han was. And the reason everyone knew him was simple: he sat firmly atop the list of people you never wanted to cross. A cyberware-augmented cyborg himself, he had presided as team leader at the delivery agency for so long that management accepted his word without question. Which meant if he decided to frame someone else for his own blunders, the higher-ups took it as gospel truth. No corporate desk jockey was ever going to waste their breath listening to the grievances of a bottom-feeding delivery driver anyway.

And so, Lee Young-han reigned like a petty feudal warlord. In the minuscule pond of Haedong Nation, inside the even smaller industrial sprawl of Jeongmyeong City, carved up into fragmented sectors, he had lived as the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠undisputed tyrant prowling the bottom of a fishbowl where only a few tiny fish swam in silence.

"H-Heeek! P-Please, spare me!"

Yet the true reality of that tyrant was nothing more than a goldfish slightly fatter than the rest. He writhed across the pavement, desperately begging for mercy.

"...Why should I?"

And I had no reason whatsoever to grant it.

"L-Listen to me. I never held anything against you in the first place..."

Crawling along the ground, Lee Young-han pleaded his case with frantic desperation. Seeing me look down at him in silence to see what nonsense he would spout next, he seemed to mistake my patience for an opening.

"You were sharp and dutiful from day one, weren't you? If anything, I thought highly of you! I've never held a grudge, I swear..."

I had acted sharp and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠polite, that much was true. For someone like me who had to carve out a survival by any means necessary, a delivery job promising a modicum of steady employment was a lifeline I couldn't afford to let slip. The trouble was that the man holding the other end of that lifeline had been Lee Young-han.

"A-And, look, I was just about to give you your bonus! You worked hard this month, didn't you? It's only fair! Of course it is!"

His trembling hands rummaged through his pockets in frantic panic, pulling out a crumpled wad of bills totaling several tens of thousands of hwan.

"Please... I'm begging you... I have kids at home. If I die here, they'll all become orphans...!"

When met only with silence in response to his desperate squirming, he pressed his forehead to the dirt, weeping for forgiveness. Of course, it was true that Lee Young-han had children. I had actually seen some of them with my own eyes whenever he forced personal errands onto me.

'Hey mister, are you my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠dad's lackey?'

'Ew, smells like poor people.'

...Yeah, I vividly remembered them being utter brats. Consequently, using his own flesh and blood as a bargaining chip backfired spectacularly.

"Team Leader Lee."

"Y-Yes, sir!"

A casual, commanding address naturally brought forth a terrified, groveling honorific in return. The hierarchy had originally been the reverse, but decades of survival instinct weren't so easily ignored. His deferential reply rolled off his tongue with remarkable ease.

"Having lived as an orphan twice over, take it from me: it really isn't all that bad. Not that I ever managed it myself, but if you hit the big time later, you can write a killer autobiography starting with, 'Abandoned by my parents, I clawed my way up...' And whenever someone insults your parents, it doesn't even sting."

"...W-What...?"

Lee Young-han seemed to mull over the meaning of those words for a fleeting second. Then, his expression twisted into a snarl, and he threw a desperate punch.

Yet his fist never reached me.

Spears woven of compressed wind pierced straight through every inch of his body. Staring blankly down at his torso, riddled like a honeycomb, he vomited a thick stream of dark blood before collapsing into the dirt.

...A fitting end.

"Did I overdo it? It's tough to gauge exactly how much mana it takes to kill a man..."

I muttered, looking down at the heap of raw meat he had become. It was a rather serious concern. Since I had resolved to walk the path of an awakened ability user, encounters like this were an inevitable reality. And naturally, I had no intention of being the sort of idiot who cried about fair play or chivalrous one-on-one duels. Which meant I needed to grow accustomed to ending lives without wasting excess energy.

"Well, you did say you'd give me my bonus."

Rummaging through the belongings of what used to be a human being, I emptied his pockets. On top of the crumpled cash he had pulled out while babbling about bonuses, the wallet in his inner coat pocket held roughly double that amount. Even in the face of death, he had tried to hold back half his cash. In a way, his greed was almost impressive.

"Here's your fare for the River Styx."

Leaving behind a single 1,000-hwan bill, I pocketed the rest. Aside from the cash, there was his citizen ID, a pack of luxury cigarettes, and a sharp karambit knife. If I were truly desperate, I could have ripped off his cybernetic prosthetic arm as well; salvaging it for parts might fetch a few coins. But I had no desire to turn my stomach carrying around a severed limb, so I left it where it lay. Looking at the haul, his personal effects were rather modest, which was somewhat disappointing.

"Where did all the money he squeezed out of everyone go? Did he stuff it all into his wife's purse? No wonder she looked so well-kept."

Given how easily he went down, it was easy to forget that in the eyes of my past self, this bastard had practically been the final boss. In games, whether it was a mid-boss or the main villain, defeating a named enemy was supposed to drop at least one piece of signature loot. Lee Young-han had utterly flouted the universal laws of gaming.

I decided to leave his corpse right where it was. No matter how much he had puffed his chest out, his registry still labeled him as a Grade 4 citizen. The moment investigators caught wind of the residual traces of mana etched into the body, the case would be closed on the spot without another word.

I drew a cigarette from the pack and lit it. Though I had been a notorious chain-smoker in my past life, I hadn't touched a single cigarette in this one. The reason was mundane: tobacco was an absurdly expensive luxury item.

"Phew..."

A long plume of smoke billowed out after coating my lungs. It had been an eternity, and this body had never once inhaled nicotine, yet the sensation was as welcoming as greeting a long-lost friend. Truly, all those web novels that described protagonists coughing their lungs out on their first cigarette after reincarnation were full of shit. Had those authors ever lived twice?

A faint sizzle escaped as I ground the butt beneath the heel of my boot. With this, my past three years in this dump were officially settled. There were plenty of other scumbags I held a grudge against, but hunting them down one by one was a waste of my valuable time.

And so, on that day in Jeongmyeong City, two Grade 4 citizens were processed as deceased and missing, respectively. The investigation concluded before nightfall.

Outrage poured through the Multidimensional Transcendent Gallery without pause. Oz, whom Wandering Merchant had gone through hell to track down, had vanished immediately after making a single post.

Of course, barely a few hours had elapsed. In the Great Thousand Worlds, where causality and the flow of time twisted at a whim, such a span was nothing more than the blink of an eye. Yet the sudden disappearance of a user who had been furiously replying in the comment section naturally aroused suspicion. Considering the stature of the transcendents inhabiting the gallery, the likelihood of a sudden crisis or urgent incident striking their daily lives was virtually nil. After all, wasn't that precisely why they were wasting their cosmic lifespans shitposting on a forum...?

Consequently, the atmosphere across the gallery verged on a full-blown riot. Vandals shattered storefront windows beyond overturned stalls, fled clutching looted groceries, and stripped the tires off parked cars.

(Which is to say, low-effort shitposts were flooding the board at breakneck speed.)

In the comment sections, users searching for Oz were trading gunfire and stabbing each other in the back.

(Which is to say, they were engaged in vicious flame wars.)

Ultimately, a mock trial was convened for Wandering Merchant—who, until just a few hours prior, had been hailed as a national hero for dragging Oz back into the gallery. Naturally, the verdict ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was the death penalty.

Such was the usual final death cry shouted by a condemned man standing on the scaffold. And right as they were in the middle of deicide via roughly one thousand three hundred comments dogpiling Wandering Merchant at the gallows—

A solitary post uploaded by Oz. It was utterly cryptic and defied all divine interpretation, yet—

It instantly captured the undivided attention of the cosmos and brought an immediate halt to all hostilities.

Amidst it all, there was naturally incomprehensible nonsense, but the mere fact that Oz had casually dropped a single low-effort post was enough to draw an avalanche of transcendent traffic.

A few wild speculations followed, and the matter was settled with that general conclusion: Ah, looks like some transcendent entity was acting up and got wiped out.

And before long, an issue infinitely more important than the death of some random being took center stage.

Oz's tier list debates had imperceptibly established themselves as a premier regular sport within the Multidimensional Transcendent Gallery. Even though countless cheap imitations had cropped up in the meantime, all had been dismissed as pale derivatives and forgotten. When would the original master chef make his triumphant return?

His immediate reply came without delay.

Flipping in a heartbeat from an active warzone into a roaring festival—such was the true, bipolar nature of the Transcendent Gallery. Considering that the vast majority of transcendents possessed the mental stability of clinical psychiatric patients, calling them deranged was hardly an exaggeration.

With that final comment, Oz's next topic was revealed.

And at that very moment, deep within the Void—the cosmic gathering ground of transcendent horrors known as the Void Domain—

A colossal shockwave erupted from its very heart.