The Lesser Evil Hero (3)
The machine whirred back to life.
Beginning inspection.
A mist that looked like a spirit drifted out of the machine and swirled around my body. Then the whole world brightened as the lights flared to full intensity.
Fwaaaah!
An enormous aura erupted from my body.
"Ah— no! That aura—!"
Park Seon-ah's mouth fell open. She looked like she'd been struck by lightning.
"Nngh! I-it can't be—!"
The Grand Mage Kim Do-jung beside her couldn't hide his shock either. His eyes went wide as saucers.
The aura pouring off my body like a second sun was unmistakably gold.
Absolute Pointless Lie
Aura color rewritten — Yellow
Whoooom!
The gold roaring off my body thickened, darkened, and shifted — sliding from brilliant gold into a dull, brassy yellow.
"Ah. Almost had the wrong idea there."
"Yellow after all, then."
"The machine hasn't been run in a while. Must've been a false reading."
"Gave me a start for a second too. Gold? As if an aura like that would turn up so easily. The only person in Korea with a Gold Aura is him."
"Hero Rank One. Selectio."
"Right. Nobody in this country has it except that lunatic."
Saaah—
A luminous Silver Aura unfurled from Kim Do-jung's body, rolling off him in slow, regal waves.
"What a beautiful Silver Aura."
"It is. Only three people in the entire country have this color. When I arrived here and they confirmed I had a Silver Aura, the whole world celebrated. And yet…" He looked me over with open contempt. "This boy, from the same world as me, has a poop-colored aura."
Poop-colored aura. The slur they used for Yellow Aura — not quite as worthless as Colorless Aura, which got you ignored outright, but the color of people stuck in that awkward, forgettable middle.
"At least it's a blessing he landed a medical ability. Without that, he'd have been treated as disposable fodder. But how does a poop-colored aura end up with a god's power? Hmph! He'll be a clumsy half-measure who can't even use a tenth of it properly!"
Wow. This old man really just says whatever he wants, doesn't he.
Once I level up, you're first on the list.
Click!
The door of the ability scanner hissed open.
"You did well. That's the end of today's schedule."
Park Seon-ah smiled as she said it.
"Shall we do a company dinner tonight?"
Everyone nodded. Even the old Grand Mage grimaced and tipped his chin, however reluctantly. Hometown nostalgia, I supposed. Hard to turn down a face from the old country.
We ended up at a Korean barbecue place, grilling meat over a tabletop burner.
"It looks shabby from the outside, but this is one of the best spots in the area."
She wasn't kidding about the prices. The interior was nothing to look at, but the meat cost a fortune. Inflation here seemed about on par with the Earth I'd left behind.
Sizzle!
A slab of premium-grade beef hit the grill. Kim Do-jung was the first to speak.
"What year did you arrive here, boy? It was 2019 when I came through."
"I got here in 2022."
"Oh? And how old are you?"
"Thirty."
"Hm?"
He cocked his head.
"I crossed over at fourteen. I'm well over two hundred now. Time clearly flows differently between dimensions."
Hold on. Fourteen in 2019? This geezer is way younger than me.
Our eyes met.
"I can more or less read that unpleasant look. You think the calendar makes you my senior, don't you?"
"Ah, no, sir. You've lived over two hundred years."
"Hmph. That's right."
You bratty old fossil. I am going to make you pay for this someday, and it's going to be ugly.
He knocked back his drink. He was on medication, he said, so he didn't touch alcohol.
"Medication? Someone of your stature, Grand Mage? Are you unwell?"
"Hahaha. Just a tonic."
He pulled out a pill and showed it to me.
A drug created through a highly suspicious process.
Primary ingredient: a White Aura ability user.
This lunatic—!
If he'd figured out I was a low-level Gold Aura, he would have boiled me down and drunk me on the spot. No — he'd have chewed me raw, like a fresh-dug wild ginseng root.
Kim Do-jung gave a dry little chuckle and looked from me to the doctor and her assistants.
"At any rate, I imagine you've been having quite the time of it. Haven't you?"
"Pardon? I'm sorry?"
"Hahaha, come now. Unlike our world, where men grovel at women's feet, men here are sacrosanct. Unless a fellow is hideously, offensively ugly, the women form a line."
"Hahaha."
"These are the good years. When I first arrived, the women had me so turned around I couldn't think straight. But I adapted soon enough, and like the other men here, I keep my chastity. Guarding one's virtue plays a vital role in gathering pure mana, you see. If you want to grow as strong as I have, boy, stay well away from women."
Don't make me laugh. My power scales the more I sleep with them. Listen to this castrated old fossil.
"Boy. Were you cursing me just now?"
Eye of Truth beguiles Sage's Eye.
"No, sir."
"Hmph. Did I misread that? That shouldn't be possible… In any case, my Sage's Eye sees straight through other people's hearts. Watch yourself."
"Yes, sir."
"Those women are completely smitten with you, by the way. I can see it all."
Kim Do-jung glanced at Dr. Park Seon-ah, then at Han Jo-hyun and Kang Han-na.
"I understand it, mind you. Men from our world ought to chase a little. Truth is, I spent years resenting that no one ever once sympathized with a man wanting a woman."
"I can imagine, sir."
"Heh heh heh. Having you here eases my mind a little."
"Thank you."
"Your ability is garbage, but as a drinking companion you might not be half bad."
"This son of a bi—"
Ah, crap. That one slipped out of my mouth instead of staying in my head.
"What was that?"
"How has life in another world treated you, sir?"
"Hmph."
He narrowed his eyes and glared at me.
Eye of Truth beguiles Sage's Eye.
"Strange. Why do I keep feeling so irritated? I'm certain you weren't about to curse at me, and yet…"
"That's just senil—"
"What?!"
"—sentiments of romance, I mean. Do you have any romantic ideals about living in this world?"
This time he stared at me with total conviction in his eyes.
Eye of Truth beguiles Sage's Eye.
"Hmph."
The Grand Mage clutched his head, visibly confused.
Heh heh heh. You pathetic bastard. This is actually fun.
"Nngh, this is odd. Did Earth's language change that much while I was gone? Everything you say keeps sounding like an insult."
"That's because you're an idi—"
"You little shit! That's it—!"
Eye of Truth beguiles Sage's Eye.
"I said that's something I, a god of illness, can confirm. Hahaha — my ability is medical, after all."
Kim Do-jung's eyes blazed like twin suns as he glared at me. But there was no way he could read what I actually meant. He took enormous pride in his ability. He would never, not in a thousand years, accept that his Sage's Eye had gotten it wrong.
"Why would you suddenly try to curse at me? I'm only a modest medical ability user. I was trying to be of help to you, Grand Mage."
"Nngh! Nngh! Nngh!"
His face flushed a mottled, furious red. His gut was screaming at him to pulverize me. His head was insisting I hadn't done a single thing wrong. Two hundred years of unshakable faith that his Sage's Eye could not possibly be mistaken — that was Kim Do-jung's greatest mistake.
"I— nngh! Forgive me! I don't even know why I'm acting like this. Meeting someone from the same hometown after so long must have thrown me off."
The doctor sitting beside me nodded.
"That stands to reason. Out of hundreds of trillions of infinite parallel worlds, you two came from worlds that are identical, or nearly so."
"Yes. But my Sage's Eye is telling me this: Lee Seonghun. This man is from precisely the same hometown as I am."
My Eye of Truth was telling me the same thing.
"Ow!"
One of the doctor's assistants had nicked her hand with a pair of scissors. She was a pure academic — no martial arts, no magic — and her body was fragile.
"She's bleeding. Heal her, boy."
I took the assistant's hand.
"Ah—"
Her face went pink. The faint flush suited her. Women in this world got worked up if a man so much as held their hand.
It was a shallow cut, barely more than a scratch. One S-Point would have been more than enough to close it.
I held her hand and focused.
What?
Altering another person's body requires additional points.
The player's current points are insufficient.
"Ah."
"What's the matter? Don't tell me that garbage medical ability of yours can't even close a little scratch like that."
This dog of a man really does not know when to shut up.
"The garbage is you."
I needled him again.
"What?"
"Calling it garbage is going a bit far, don't you think?"
Eye of Truth beguiles Sage's Eye.
Kim Do-jung never got tired of it. He kept running Sage's Eye over every move I made, checking and rechecking. The second he got an opening, he'd try to kill me. I was sure of it.
"My divine ability is special. It is not some cheap parlor trick you waste on a scratch."
"What?"
"That's right. My ability has enormous potential. And I, as its master, know that better than anyone."
I'd succeeded in hiding my real power. From here on, I had nothing to be afraid of. If anything, I needed to start showing just enough of it to set up better opportunities down the line.
"Using my ability even once consumes a tremendous amount of power. It's far too much for something this small."
"Oho. Is that so?"
He sounded interested, at least.
"Hmph! Even so, it's a half-baked ability you couldn't use in a fight if your life depended on it. I'm more disappointed than before!"
"I specialize in fixing things that are genuinely difficult to fix. Comparing me to those common healers is an insult."
"What! An insult? An insult? You dare use that word with me?"
"Yes. Can't two people from the same hometown use the word 'insult'? It's not as if I called you an idiot or a son of a bitch."
He glared at me like he wanted to take my head off.
"Then perhaps a wager is in order."
"What kind of wager, sir?"
"Show me that great ability of yours!"
"Pardon?"
"You said it yourself, didn't you? With that mouth of yours, and that thoroughly unpleasant tone."
"Hahaha. Honestly, this is a little childish."
"What? Childish? Childish?"
Kim Do-jung's face trembled, the flesh jumping as if he'd lost all reason. It would have been easy to call him thin-skinned, but I understood him perfectly. He was the Grand Mage, Hero Rank Two of the entire Republic of Korea. Nobody on earth spoke to him like this. He had lived two hundred years. He was respected wherever he went. Even the villains who opposed him watched their step in his presence.
And now a man from the same hometown had spent the entire day needling him with that off-kilter tone, and had finally dropped the pretense altogether and shown his true colors. If I'd been anyone else, he would have reduced me to several dozen pieces hours ago.
"Fine. But you'd better prepare a truly excellent reward."
"Keh keh keh. Don't you worry about that. The question is whether you can satisfy these eyes of mine — eyes that have seen every hardship two hundred years can offer."
Obviously I can.
I was the master of a Gold Aura. I had not the slightest intention of losing a little side bet against something as paltry as Silver.
"There is one condition, however."