Chapter 133: Transaction 1
Chapter 133: Transaction 1
The woman in white had strutted in, brimming with smug confidence, as if she owned the place.
Now she was being dragged off, gurgling on bloody foam.
I'd never imagined she'd be stupid enough to charge at me relying on nothing but a charm resistance perk.
She must have been an Incarnation who did nothing but cook drugs in the research wing, because
when I pulled the ice spike from my waist and drove it up under her breast,
she couldn't put up any resistance at all. Her life just winked out.
'Unbelievable.'
She'd walked right up, bold as brass, and stretched her arm out.
My hand moved on reflex, punching the ice spike between her ribs.
She let out a single "Urk!" and crumpled to the floor.
'What was she even counting on?'
A male Incarnation using charm magic.
"Well, I'm a woman, so as long as I block the charm, handling a man should be easy."
Had that been her reasoning? Charging in solo to earn some glory?
In that respect, the gender-role reversal worked beautifully in my favor.
Sure, this world had Incarnations and superpowers and magic and martial arts,
but the old prejudice still held: a man must be weak.
Then again, I'd seen plenty of idiots like that in my last life, too.
Guys who thought, "She's a woman, so I'll automatically win,"
only to take a kitchen knife in the ribs from some berserk woman
and bleed out gurgling on the floor.
'Anyway, the charm effect is solid.'
It was a new technique I'd built around my overflowing magic power.
Instead of stirring up subconscious fears like before,
this method implants an unconditional fondness for me directly into the target's unconscious mind.
And that was the result.
"Goddamn it, carry her straight, you limp bitch."
"There's an unused supply room this way, so you shut the hell up and follow me."
I'd just rammed an ice spike through a woman's chest,
and neither of them showed a flicker of disgust or shock.
On the contrary, they were actively helping me hide the corpse.
"Still, don't worry. Like I said before, I've got the local police firmly under control."
"Why the hell would we call the cops, you moron? Just handle it internally so it never reaches their ears."
They kept bickering like that while hauling the body.
Watching them jockey for my favor was almost funny,
and the practiced ease with which they wrapped the body in an air current to keep the blood from dripping as they dragged it along by the legs—that was chilling.
Well, the important thing was that it helped me.
I laid the now-silent woman down next to a mop and resumed walking.
Somewhat anticlimactically, no one else came after me again.
I stepped out of the supply room into an empty conference room,
unlocked another door, moved down a hallway, and entered the executive office.
Just as the walking was starting to grow tedious, a strange smell pricked at my nose.
'What's that?'
It didn't feel dangerous.
But it wasn't a scent that belonged in a conference room or an executive office, either.
Less like the ink-and-paper smell of a company office,
more like the chemical reek of a hospital or a dentist's office.
"Ugh, it's strong today. Cooking up something new?"
"Yeah, it's not usually this bad."
They must have seen me frown,
because the two women naturally closed in on either side of me.
At the same moment, a breeze shifted unnaturally to wrap around my face and sweep the stench away.
"There, that's easier to breathe, right?"
"Ugh, you fan-creatures, always making a big show of it."
I let their sniping wash over me as I sorted through my thoughts.
Even if someone could interfere with the charm, I could probably just brute-force it by hammering them with more magic power.
For now, my primary goal was to charm everyone in the Alchemy District.
Since I was forcibly ramming affection into people via magic,
I had no way of knowing what kinds of side effects it might have on their heart or brain.
'The more test subjects, the better.'
This wasn't the Eastern Continent.
And Han Ye-ji, who could have earned merit by rooting out a criminal syndicate,
had already decided to come to the Academy and stay by my side instead.
With that in mind, I stepped through the door the two women had opened for me.
The interior resembled an office.
'What the hell is this.'
It only resembled one.
Desks divided by partitions.
But instead of computer monitors on top of them,
I saw beakers, flasks, and the full spread of a science lab.
Purple and pink liquids bubbled and roiled inside glass,
snaking through spiraling tubes like springs
to pool in another container and congeal into a solid mass
that a goggled and masked worker was grinding into a fine powder.
But that wasn't what made me—and the two women with me—freeze.
"Welcome. Took you longer to get here than I thought."
It was the woman sitting there, crunching away on a chunk of pink matter.
Sunken dark circles framed eyes that stared out blearily, and even her front teeth were sharpened to points.
Judging by the way she was gnawing through a hard chemical lump like a snack—something the worker beside her could barely crush with a metal tool—she was no ordinary person.
More precisely, she was no ordinary Constellation.
'What's a Constellation doing here?'
Her aura had a different texture from magic power.
If I had to define it, you'd call it a difference in the caliber of her very soul.
I could not comprehend why a Constellation who had descended in her true body was sitting in the middle of a drug factory
munching on narcotics like candy.
Evidently, she was a fairly famous Constellation in the Northern Continent, though I didn't know her name—
I could feel the two women who'd guided me here going rigid with tension.
"No need to be so stiff. I'll leave those two be. Let's just talk business."
"Business?"
"Yeah, business. You came all this way in person for a reason, didn't you?"
The woman tossed the half-eaten pink chunk aside as if it were a sandwich she'd lost interest in.
Figures in full protective suits immediately moved in
to clean it up with a device that looked like a vacuum cleaner.
An inhuman Constellation running a drug factory.
Honestly, my brain was struggling to keep up.
The plan had been: charm the criminals,
dispose of anyone the charm didn't work on,
use them as test subjects for my bloated magic reserves,
and then hand everything over to the Northern Continent Constellations or the Academy at my leisure.
But now a Constellation who chews on narcotic lumps had popped out
and was going on about "doing business." How was I supposed to parse that?
"Hm, what's this? You're not here about the business? I saw you casually take out one of my people and figured you were on our side."
"Business? What are you talking about?"
Right—from this exhausted-looking woman's perspective, she'd seen me
crash a drug-fueled orgy, plant myself between two of the women,
and personally skewer one of her researchers who'd been running his mouth.
...Honestly, when I stop and think about it, that wasn't exactly a justice-driven approach, was it?
Given the way I'd precisely punctured a lung with an ice spike
and then ordered the women I was escorting to dispose of the corpse,
I could see why she'd conclude I was from a rival outfit.
"Hm, so you just wandered in without knowing? This is what I'm talking about. This."
She held up the pink and purple chemical lumps and began to explain.
And as I listened, I realized just how worthless the common sense from my previous life really was here.
'Drugs aren't illegal? What kind of nonsense is that?'
Back in my old world, there had been countries where certain drugs were legal to some degree.
Medical marijuana, the legality of soft drugs, that sort of thing.
But this world took it to a whole different level.
Because here, magic and esoteric powers and psychic abilities existed—
'What a bizarre butterfly effect.'
Medicine in this world was incredibly advanced.
Not in the sense that they'd developed cures for cancer or hair loss.
No—here, they had a 'method' to fix every single part of the body except the mind.
The cost was high, the efficiency was poor, and mass production was impossible,
but with healing Authorities wielded by Priest-class types or Angel Constellations,
you could mend severed limbs and crushed spines cleanly, without any side effects.
Barring damage to the soul and the psyche, anything could be healed.
And the biggest reason drugs were illegal back in my world
was because they caused harm not just to the individual, but to society as a whole.
So, by this world's logic, you could frame it like this:
if a Constellation manages the process and cures the damage with an Authority,
and there's no harm to society or the individual—
then what's the problem with using drugs?
"So, you want to test a new compound?"
"Right. I was sure of it the moment I saw those two next to you. A Dream Demon. Why didn't I think of this sooner?"
Hideous abominations that tore people apart, melted their flesh, and devoured them—monsters.
To fight those monsters, Incarnations took drugs.
The rush of high spirits and courage the drugs provided let them finish their battles safely,
and just when the side effects and addiction started creeping in, they'd be shipped to the rear lines,
where their wounds and drug damage alike were completely healed.
Setting aside the drug debate entirely—
was that not an astoundingly efficient system?
"Even if drug use by Northern Continent Incarnations is legal, the side effects are still a hassle. In simple terms, my goal here is cutting costs by developing a new product."
So drug use by Incarnations was legal.
With that context, the Constellation before me snapped into focus.
A woman who introduced herself as Wilhelmina.
A Constellation of the Demonfolk from a fantasy world.
An alchemist and narcotics manufacturer.
"If drugs are legal—"
"Hm, are you from a different continent?"
"What about all those people out there?"
"Naturally, they're volunteers who were curious about the drugs. Men and women both. Since the Constellation's Authority guarantees them a complete cure, plenty of people sign up for all sorts of reasons. For the pay, out of curiosity, or because they want to have sex with an Incarnation."
I almost asked what the hell that meant, but the more I chewed on it, the less strange it became.
The classic example I knew from my old world was Hollywood.
Didn't famous people there leak sex tapes for clout
and cause all kinds of chaos with affairs and drugs?
It's human nature to chase something even when you know it will wreck your body.
If you threw in money and guaranteed healing on top of that, how many people would leap at the chance out of sheer curiosity?
"Anyway, this place is a legally sanctioned business registered with the continent. That expression of yours says you came here for a different reason, but that's fine. A Dream Demon is too rare a guest to squabble over motives."
The more I listened, the more my head spun.
If what she said was true, then this wasn't a criminal organization at all, was it?
Had I just walked into a Hongdae-style club and stabbed a club rat?
It wasn't guilt I felt.
It was the sheer embarrassment: I'd been swaggering around, playing the cool, hard-eyed operator,
and it turned out I'd been barking up entirely the wrong tree.
'Fuck. The Unfading Giant Tree was a farmer from the Eastern Continent, so of course she wouldn't know a damn thing about the Northern Continent's drug situation....'
Thank god for the black fog.
I meant that with all my heart as I let out a weary sigh.