A Name Without Memories
Jin
[ 180,553P ]
"...Damn, these things pile up disgustingly fast."
Two shitposts had netted me 180,000 points. Factoring in the 20,000 I'd already spent, that made an even 200,000.
And thinking about what those points could actually buy only made it more absurd. I could purchase secret manuals and grimoires by the armful—the kind where a single volume, once unleashed, could turn the mortal realm upside down without breaking a sweat. A few more posts here, and I'd soon be able to lay hands on things truly worthy of the name heaven-defying.
Of course, if there was a problem, it was that putting those heaven-defying materials to use remained, for now, a touch beyond me. They hadn't earned that label for nothing—at my current level, I couldn't so much as lay a finger on them.
That said, I'd already settled on a way to resolve the issue. I couldn't swear it would work without fail, but at least going by my instincts, it was entirely solvable. Which meant the hardship facing me right now was something else entirely.
"Wh-what brings you here, sir?"
The elderly goblin stammered, his panic plain for anyone to see. What he had originally meant to say was surely nothing so polite as what brings you here.
"Uuuurgh—"
"Ah... aaah......"
If the bodyguards sprawled out behind me along the corridor I'd come through had been in any shape to complain... if it were me lying there like that, dragged in by the collar in their place... he would no doubt have let loose a nice, crisp bellow of what the hell do you think you're doing in here!
"What do you think it is?"
"Th-that is......"
It was a spectacularly rude way to hold a conversation. But that was simply how mages, on average, spoke. Among the Four Major Ability Paths—Cultivators, Mages, Martial Artists, and Augmenters—they were rated the most devoid of humanity of the lot. In a word, it meant they were worse than androids. I was merely staying strictly true to the lore.
Of course, as a result, the face of the old goblin—who had received a question in reply to his question—was curdling by the second. From where he stood, I must have looked like a calamity dropped straight out of the sky.
And so, as the goblin's ordeal dragged on—
'...Hm?'
For an instant, I caught the man's eyes shifting. In that split second, I reflexively threw up a barrier around myself.
Clang—!
A heartbeat later, a bullet came flying in from behind and slammed into the bulkhead woven from my mana, dropping to the floor. With a metallic clatter, the wretchedly crumpled slug tumbled to a stop. And with that, the life-or-death ambush fizzled into nothing. The face of the one who'd pulled the trigger went slack with bewilderment in real time.
"Ha."
With a hollow laugh, I gave my hand a light flick. The mana hanging in the air compressed into a single line, and at my gesture, that line swept across the throats of the men sprawled out behind me.
"H-hiiiek—!"
A crimson line traced itself across each throat in unison, and the men expired on the spot. Having witnessed the whole scene, the old goblin immediately smashed his forehead against the floor and shrieked:
"Spare me—just spare me, I'm beggin' you!!!"
He hadn't needed to say it; sparing him had been the plan all along. I needed the man, after all—at least for the moment.
Sssssss—
But perhaps his terror had been a touch excessive, because an ominous sound followed on its heels. Watching a yellow puddle spread across the floor alongside it, I fell into genuine deliberation.
...Should I just kill him?
CAUSE OF DEATH:Loss of bladder control on the floor
The old goblin, who had come within a hair's breadth of meeting his end under precisely that heading, bowed his head as submissively as his body allowed.
"W-well, in these parts, this old man has something of a reputation! However did you find your way here? What an honor that you came all this way!"
I largely tuned out the goblin's flattery, spewed without a shred of sincerity behind it. I'd only ever planned to handle the business I needed and be on my way. If he hadn't insisted on setting bodyguards in my path, there would have been no blood to spill at all. It wasn't as if I were some killing machine.
If anything, they'd been closer to hardened criminals than anything else, but the act of taking a life had never once felt pleasant. Though even that came as a mild surprise, truthfully—Lee Young-han aside, killing the others had stirred nothing in me beyond simple displeasure. Was it because I'd gained power? Or was this simply what everyone who wielded magic eventually warped into?
"Do you happen to have an identity you've been using?"
"I do, but I intend to have it struck from the records entirely."
"Ahh, I see. Of course, that can certainly be arranged."
For all that his voice sounded composed enough, the old goblin's arms shook violently as he scurried back and forth between the shelves. The trembling was so vivid it looked as though an earthquake had struck his entire body, and I found it ridiculous. Sure, I had in fact diced every last one of his underlings—but this was a man who, before that, had surely killed dozens of times more people than I ever had.
"I won't kill you after the job's done, either."
".....?"
"Stop shaking. I'm telling you to hurry up and finish what I asked."
"Y-yes, sir!"
He looked about as far from convinced as could be, but he was welcome to think whatever he pleased. His disbelief would only discomfort him, after all. In any case, the work soon began. The goblin produced an array of bewilderingly intricate devices and started manipulating them this way and that—stacking three antiquated terminals one atop another, wedging chips of unknown purpose between them, then unplugging the interface cable jutting from the nape of his neck and jacking it into one of the machines.
Vmmm—
Dozens of windows bloomed into the air. At first I took it for the identity-forging process. It was not.
"What's all this?"
"Th-the citizen network, sir."
The old goblin pushed a single screen toward me with trembling hands. Similar windows kept popping up one after another behind it: residence records, tax records, medical records, entry and exit logs. That was as far as my recognition went; the rest was nothing but strings of numbers and characters whose meaning I couldn't even begin to guess. It was a rather fascinating sight. Granted, I'd seen the concept described here and there, but honestly speaking, my knowledge of Augmenters was relatively shallow—past a certain threshold, after all, these fellows practically became disciples of the Machine God.
Aaand—the pro steps in—
His fingers moved no differently from those of a hacker in a K-drama crime procedural shouting that exact line. Unlike that fiction, though, this differed in one crucial respect: very real manipulation was actually taking place.
"Do you really need to enter all of this?"
"People can't very well spring up out of the bare ground, can they, sir."
Fair point. The fabricated history the goblin spun out for me at length was remarkably detailed: living on the outskirts of Hyundeok City for the past three years, then moving into a rented room half a year ago and scraping by on commissions and freelance work within the city. Exactly the sort of information suited to the 'moderately free to come and go' identity I'd requested.
"There—all finished."
"Faster than I expected. You didn't cut any corners, did you?"
"Wh-what—! Such an outrageous thing to say......"
The old goblin protested his innocence with his entire body. I let a dry smirk slip out and said:
"Name."
"Yes? My name is Crax......"
"No—a name to put on the ID. We need one, don't we."
Even he seemed embarrassed at that point, and he scratched the back of his head before asking back:
"Ahh, my apologies. What should I write in, then, sir?"
Oz.
I nearly answered on reflex, then stopped myself. It was a familiar name, but using it came with certain complications. Granted, nobody who heard the name Oz would connect it to the gallery me or to my actual face. Even so, reusing it left an uneasy taste. The same went for the name Jin Sechan. In Haedong Nation it was a perfectly common name, and it was the one I'd gone by for the past three years—but it positively reeked of misfortune waiting to latch on. Not a single good memory existed in any of the moments I'd lived under it.
"Jin."
"Jin? Will just that do, sir?"
"It will."
And so, from my original name and this body's name, I chose the one syllable the two shared, and made it my name.
Madam Papi, proprietress of Zelkins Inn, greeted a delightful morning. With her shoulders swaggering and her face visibly giddy from every angle, anyone would have assumed nine times out of ten that it had something to do with a man—and in practice, that guess usually landed dead on the mark. Today, however, was a little different. The reason it was only a little different was that the source of her good mood was, admittedly, still a man. Just not in the sense that she'd snared some hulking slab of muscle—rather, the greenhorn fat cat who'd turned up the night before had paid her more than triple the going rate for lodging. A long-term guest, no less, booked for an entire month. How she had contained the urge to die of joy the instant she saw that bundle of banknotes, she would never quite know. In any case, with a tidy windfall suddenly in hand, she was free to greet the morning in high spirits.
"Hmm-hm-hmm~"
Humming a cheerful tune, she set about preparing breakfast. It was served to lodgers who had paid the meal fee—by house rule, they were meant to come down to the first-floor dining room to eat it. But the pale, gangly young man who had checked in the previous night had asked for his meal to be brought up to his room. What did that little thing matter, though? This was a guest who had slapped down the princely sum of 500,000 hwan without so much as blinking. Her heart brimmed with one wish alone: please, please stay here a long, long while. And so the Madam went wiggling her considerable backside up the stairs, gave the door a light knock-knock, and let herself in.
KWA-GAGAGAK—!
"......!!!"
In the same instant, a vicious hunk of metal came screaming past her face. It had buried itself more than an inch deep into the wall and quivered there, unable to contain its own force. Had it strayed a single inch to the side, she could have been gravely wounded—or killed outright. The moment that fact landed, the Madam dropped the plate she was carrying straight onto the floor.
Crash—!
With a single sharp ring, it burst into porcelain shards. And at that very moment, Jin's mind—sunk deep in selfless trance—awoke.
"Is it morning already?"
Chaos sprawled before his eyes. Looking at the Madam slumped where she stood, the strength gone from her legs, he gave a shrug.
"I distinctly told you yesterday that things might get a little noisy."
"......"
No answer came back.