A Choice That Wasn't

"...Shit. You've got to be kidding me."

The sudden either-or choice made my head throb. I pressed my thumbs hard into my temples, trying to force my brain into gear — but a new system prompt cut across my thoughts like a blade.

I barely had enough time to think it through properly, and the system was already breathing down my neck. The whole thing made my skin crawl.

Choice, they called it. As if my opinion had ever mattered. This was nothing more than a formality — a hollow ritual of asking. I could feel that in my bones. The wording was polite, but the urgency underneath served only one party. The one-sided notice that gave zero consideration to my side was all the proof I needed.

Even the not-quite-threat of forcing the choice on me didn't make me angry. Just... speechless.

It had all come on too fast, and a flood of information had been dumped into me at once. My head was screaming that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I needed to calmly verify the data first — but my body felt agonizingly slow to receive the signals my brain was sending.

The shrinking number. My pupils blown wide. In the end I couldn't make any choice at all, just stared dumbly at the dwindling timer and let out a thin sigh.

Too late, I decided that if I was going to feel like this anyway, I might as well dig my heels in and pick option one — I reached out. But my hand only cut through empty air where the system window had already vanished.

The second my hand moved, that final second collapsed to zero faster than any before it.

Blatant. Completely, shamelessly blatant. A sigh slipped out of me.

...Shit. How long had it been since I'd felt this kind of helplessness — this kind of hollow emptiness?

My fist clenched and unclenched on its own. I'd squeezed so hard my nails had broken skin; blood welled up around them.

Tuk.

At the same instant, something inside me was ripped away by force. Before I could even try to stop it, I had to feel the full sensation of it vanishing — clean and absolute.

The feeling of something precious being extinguished against my will drained the color from my entire body. My hands and feet trembled without permission. Strength fled my limbs. There was no pain. And yet, as if to stand in for the grief of loss — for the tears that wouldn't come — blood surged back up my throat and spilled from my mouth.

The coppery smell flooded the air around me.

Both hands painted completely red, the overflow staining the floor beneath me, and still there was no pain. Only the yawning emptiness of a hollowed-out gut.

I'd felt this more times than I could count, even in my previous life. I didn't think I would ever get used to it.

"..."

A soundless scream leaked through my lips. I couldn't tell if it was a groan or just air escaping a throat that had gone slack. Like a machine with the power cut, my body refused to take any force.

Fwoooosh!!

Keres burned her entire body to ash and was recalled on the spot. Her level hadn't dropped, so she wasn't dead — just sent back.

"Master...!!"

Comet rushed to me a beat too late, her face on the verge of tears, and caught me as I swayed. Blood soaked into her pristine white apron and ruined it in seconds, but she paid it no mind — just hauled me up and started moving.

I felt the worried emotions bleeding through from Echidna, Growl, and Haze, and forced myself to signal that I was fine.

Whatever else, Echidna and Growl needed to stay at their posts. There was no telling when or how they might turn, so keeping them close under the pretext of escort was the only way to keep eyes on them without making it awkward.

"...Kh—."

I left Comet to examine my body in a relatively safe spot and pulled up my status window at once.

As if to prove that what had just happened was no illusion, Bihos's name was gone from the list of summons.

The one silver lining, if you could call it that, was that the number of summonable slots hadn't decreased. If I could remake Bihos with that... no. That would be something that merely resembled Bihos. Not Bihos. His soul had been extinguished as it was.

"...Hah."

In the middle of that exhausting, infuriating helplessness, a hollow laugh slipped out of me.

Before I could even feel grief, I was already relieved that it hadn't been Hive or Kallion — the core of my current fighting strength — who'd vanished. I coldly calculated that losing Bihos in exchange for expanding Keres's potential was the more profitable outcome going forward.

I was disgusted with myself. Instead of mourning, I was already seriously weighing what new summon I should use to plug the hole Bihos had left.

And before that, I hated the world that had made me this familiar with the feeling. Hated it so much, loathed it so fiercely I couldn't hold the rage, and closed my eyes.

This should have been the moment for tears. Strangely, none came. I must have grown too strong to still feel something that weak.

Which was just another way of saying I'd paid the price of carving away something a human being should never have to lose.

"Comet."

My voice came out dry and scraped raw. In the emotionless void, the anxiety radiating from my summons pressed in close enough to ache.

"Do your job."

The world wasn't going to wait for me. I couldn't afford to sit here staring into space.

"...Yes, Master."

Whether she'd read the thick emotion beneath the indifference or not, Comet accepted the order with a somewhat subdued expression. Wherever she passed, blue circuit-light unfurled across the ground.

From a distance I watched machines and scrap metal break down into powder and gather around her, and I poured mana into her without holding back, supporting every movement.

Power isn't the problem. Don't waste another second. Move fast.

I watched her for a moment longer, then listlessly pushed myself up, shaped a chair out of shadow to prop my drained body, and sank into it like I was lying down.

"Book of Summoning."

Shrrrk!!

A black book answered the call at once, settling into my grip with a solid, heavy weight. I flipped through the pages, checking the summon list.

[12. Undifferentiated Spirit] — [Spirit Entity]

One thing had changed since summoning Comet: next to Undifferentiated Spirit, a new entry had appeared — [Spirit Entity].

Probably born from what had just happened. Was I supposed to be happy about that? With a flat expression, I pressed Spirit Entity and checked the information.

Its base form was an amorphous shape, low and spread like gas. The pale, whitish appearance resembled a spirit, but overall it sat a tier below — same grade as an Undifferentiated Spirit, yet with a distinctly different feel.

If I had to put a finger on it, the difference was whether it was rooted in the Spirit Realm or in reality itself.

Because of the eerie aura, it was half-treated as undead, and its Luck sat at 0 — same as Keres.

Keres had been the same. Odds were that the undead as a race needed some method of raising that Luck stat to break through their ceiling. For Keres, that method had simply been the absorption of souls.

Subjugator essentially added its boosted stats on top of existing ones — so if a stat wasn't present at all, the effect never applied. That was why I hadn't known until now.

And the reason I'd chosen this one was simple.

To test whether gaining Luck would trigger the same kind of incident as with Keres — or not.

I already had information on the Bone Disease race. Repeating a situation where I definitively lost someone wasn't bold experimentation. It was just stupid.

So I'd picked an entity as similar to Keres as possible while still being different. Part of that was because undead was the only racial difference I could be sure of — but more than that, I had zero interest in letting a sudden situation like this happen a second time.

Not everything in the world moves according to my will. Fine. But at the very least, the things connected to me should be under my control.

What exactly did I think I was going to accomplish when I couldn't even properly grasp my own power?

I didn't know, so it doesn't count? Ignorance isn't a sin? Don't make me laugh. Failure is failure. Ignorance is a crime in its own right. If I'd been thinking at all, I never would have left that ignorance alone.

So I'd committed a sin. And as a result, I'd lost the piece called Bihos. As a commander, it was the kind of blunder that should never have happened.

"There won't be a next time..."

I grabbed my own collar and yanked hard, just to bleed off a fraction of the tightness in my chest. The shadow wrapping my body peeled back, and I exhaled deeply. The gesture was meaningless from the start.

This suffocation was coming from somewhere mental.

I almost wished someone would just chew me out. That's how cornered I was. Irritation made me tighten my grip further.

Pathetic.

I'd shoved everyone away myself. Kept my distance, watched from a step behind — and now I was looking for someone to lean on? Pathetic didn't begin to cover it.

I knew better. There was no one like that in this world.

I don't trust people as a rule. Trust them and you get betrayed. Trust them and you get jerked around that much easier.

So if I didn't at least go through the motions of hurting myself like this, I felt like I wouldn't be able to stand my own incompetence — and I'd end up actually harming myself for real. That would hurt like hell. I'd come to my senses too late and regret it.

You worthless piece of shit. What was all that "I've been through this before" garbage?

I'd told myself a hundred times that people don't change easily.

"...Huu."

I let the breath out and slowly released ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the tension in my body.

Self-recrimination was a waste of time. I'd flailed enough. From here on, I needed to figure out — desperately — under what structure the Book of Combination activated, and what its conditions were.

Fortunately, this place was an excellent environment for a Spirit Entity to grow. Keep hunting the same kind of beings and something was bound to develop.

More than that, choosing the Spirit Entity was also insurance. If I decided this thing was dangerous, I was prepared to feed it to Keres if that's what it took to stop it.

It might sound cruel, but if something had to be lost, you cut the smaller piece. And as long as it wasn't permanently extinguished, dying any number of times didn't matter.

Of course, the best outcome was that nothing like that ever happened. But stacking exception on top of exception and planning for the worst was how you stayed alive longer.

I confirmed the selection of Spirit Entity and reshaped the hologram floating above the Book of Summoning.

The form stayed amorphous, but I molded it closer to liquid — like slime — rather than gas. Form only; the body itself wasn't actually liquid.

If anything, a Spirit Entity was closer to gas. But treating it that way was the worst possible move — it would lock the summon into a hard ceiling.

The summon I was about to build needed to check and balance Keres. If one was a depleted existence that endlessly craved something, the other had to be an abundant existence that never ran dry no matter how much it took.

I was done relying on the system to make my summons.

From now on, every summon I created would be shaped from start to finish by my will alone — wringing every thought dry. This had to be a power no one else could touch.

I would make it so. No matter what.

Thak!!

I slammed the book shut hard enough to break it, forcing the hologram back inside its pages.

Then I poured my mana into it. The Book of Summoning began greedily devouring the power as if it had been waiting for exactly this.

It trembled like it was drunk on pleasure, sucking down everything I fed it — and the moment it reached for more than I was giving, I cut the supply completely.

Flinch!

At the sudden cutoff, the trembling book froze unnaturally still. I bared a savage grin at that.

Strength flooded into my grip on its own. Hard enough to wrinkle the cover. Hard enough to crack the ornaments.

Whoom-whoom!

Mana condensed in the hand holding the book and started thrashing it around against my will. It looked exactly like something thrashing desperately to escape pain.

So the effects of Sadism and Torture worked on it after all.

"You. You really were alive, weren't you?"

I'd thought something was off from the very beginning.

After getting the Summoner class, I'd looked into other summoners — and every one of them received Summoning Magic, not some bizarre skill like the Book of Summoning.

At first I'd assumed it was because I'd rejected my destined class and taken Summoner instead. That I had no talent for summoning, so the system had handed me a crutch to compensate. I'd believed that completely.

Even Lee Se-rin hadn't known a thing about this book.

A skill that even she — with her near-omniscient breadth of knowledge — didn't recognize. That was what had first made her take a real interest in me.

And so she watched me, always, to satisfy that curiosity. No matter how far apart we were, she could see me. That was the contract.

Figuring there had never been a case like mine, I'd gathered information on my own.

I'd put it off and put it off until I literally couldn't wait any longer — and only started using this book after enrolling at the Academy.

Honestly, I hadn't even wanted to do that much. A man who couldn't trust people was hardly going to put his faith in a system.

Why I touched it anyway was simple. If I didn't, I was going to die before I ever got a look at that bastard god's face.

So I'd decided to use this power for all it was worth.

The enemy was using me. Was there some rule that said I couldn't use the enemy right back? If there was, the math didn't work out in anyone's favor.

This world is a carefully built game board.

If the other side starts ignoring the rules, the board starts to shake — and everything piled up until now collapses in the blink of an eye.

Even that son of a bitch doesn't want that, so he's forced to play inside the game's rules.

Which means if I can just properly grasp those laws, turning the enemy's methods back on them is simple.

Deceive the enemy. Cover their eyes. Whisper false information until they believe it.

Scheme against the world — and against the one calling himself a god.

...Of course, that only works when the weight class is close enough to actually trade blows. Which is exactly why I was grinding myself down building power like this.

I still don't really know what this world is.

Right now, the only one holding a key to that secret is Lee Se-rin. At least for the moment. That's why, back then, I'd refused the goodwill she'd offered and insisted on a proper contract instead.

To make sure I didn't lose the book, I used shadow to warp my hand into something monstrous and clamped down hard enough to crush it. Then I wrapped the entire book in shadow.

Apparently that hurt badly enough — it abandoned the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠act of being an ordinary book and started thrashing like a mad thing. Not enough to escape my grip, though.

The fact that Subjugator started climbing the moment it began thrashing told me it had definitely started recognizing me as an enemy.

I confirmed that, then looked straight up into empty air and spoke.

"I exercise my privilege."

Fwoosh!

Sparks burst in front of my eyes and formed into letters. Crooked characters, as if scrawled in filthy paint — a fragment of the contract I'd written by burning away my own lifespan.

I selected the first privilege.

As if to remind me all over again, the price of using the privilege surfaced. Just thinking about paying it made my brow furrow.

Whether she'd been watching even that expression or not, a soft giggle brushed my ear along with a faint, sweet citrus scent — and at the same time, I felt the gaze that had been fixed on me vanish completely.

"...Haze."

At my call, space tore open and a chat window appeared. No messy emoticons this time. It knew my situation wasn't one that could take a joke.

"Block it."

Wuum!

A purple field sealed the radius around me. With that, even space itself was perfectly cut off. The only things in this space now were me and this book.

"...Huu."

From here on, this was something I had to handle alone. And I had no interest in handing over information about this book — the one area where I was uniquely ahead of that woman — if I could help it.

I took a steadying breath and opened the book.

Grrk!

But no matter how hard I forced it, the book's mouth wouldn't budge.

It felt like gripping a brick shaped like a book. And the harder I pushed, the heavier it became.

Without the stats boosted by Subjugator, I would have dropped it long ago. I tightened my grip even further.

A hold meant purely to inflict pain — and for an instant, the book's weight lightened. So attacks worked on it. Confirmed.

"Open."

I laced the word with killing intent, but the book didn't change.

I shifted my grip. I put force into it as if I meant to tear it apart right there, and the surface warped, twisting like it was about to rip.

"I won't say it three times. Open."

Of course I had no real intention of tearing it. This thing was as good as my lifeline — why would I cut that?

But now that it was confirmed to be a living thing with a self, if I didn't establish dominance at this stage, there was a real risk it would refuse my orders at some critical moment.

That could not be allowed. Ever.

Flinch...!

Under the pressure of Charisma as well, it twitched once — then slowly, reluctantly, began to open. The sight of it looked so much like a clam clamping its shell shut to keep from losing its pearl that I almost laughed.

Ridiculous or not, I still had a job to do.

"What are you?"

Shrrrk.

At my question, the pages of the Book of Summoning turned and formed letters.

That was both the skill's name and the book's name. So this thing was a skill that also possessed a self? Or maybe it had possessed a self as a book before it was ever a skill.

"...I am Jang Sinwoo."

The Book of Summoning was answering immediately now. I continued in a flat tone, feeling like a trainer dealing with a wild animal that hadn't been broken in yet.

"And I am your master."

"You knew that, and you still dared to defy me?"

Shrrak!

The moment I furrowed my brow hard, the pages flipped in a panic and letters scrawled themselves out. I hadn't planned to hurt it further, but watching it prostrate itself on its own made me feel the effort of crushing its spirit from the start had been worth it.

"You're not here to persuade me. You're here to make me accept it."

I don't fall for sweet talk. I don't trust in the first place — so unless I genuinely understand what I'm hearing, it's useless.

This thing had been with me a long time. I trusted it knew exactly what kind of bastard I was.

Shrrrrrk...

The pages flipped back and forth as if choosing its words. Then they stopped cold and began forming a long stretch of text.

The pages that had always been crisp went limp and slack. The words were chopped up like a child's speech, but not so broken I couldn't read them.

The book was appealing to me. Asking me to see it not as a mere medium or tool for summoning, but the same way I saw my summons.

"...Taken?"

It kept stressing that it had been first, snapping the book shut and open over and over. Hard to read on a book, but it was probably grumbling and acting something out.

Before I could call it on the behavior, though, my brow furrowed. Taken. Whitey. Those words dragged the situation from moments ago back to the surface.

"Are you talking about Bihos?"

The metaphor was a little off, but it was the right answer. Which meant Whitey was naturally the Book of Combination.

"...Bihos was extinguished."

Letters exploded across the pages in a rapid-fire burst. I carefully read the chaotic scrawl — like something scribbled roughly in a notebook — and sighed.

We weren't completely failing to communicate, but I wasn't going to get a proper grasp of the situation without hearing it directly from the other party.

"Book of Combination."

Tuk.

At my call, a pure white book appeared in midair and dropped. I caught it, and the Book of Summoning fluttered its pages with a snarl at the newcomer's arrival.

It spoke sharply, yet still carefully started drawing mana from me — wary of more pain. I simply let the mana flow.

Even with that reaction, the Book of Combination remained utterly impassive. Something about it felt hollow. Like an egg that hadn't hatched yet, maybe.

And in that moment, a thought struck me.

...When exactly had this thing gained a self?

When had it started thinking and moving? When I first chose my class? After that? Before? I didn't know. I'd never even paid attention.

Looking at the somewhat dim-witted, childlike quality it was showing right now, I thought: summons are treated as a type of skill.

So it wouldn't be strange if the Book of Summoning — a skill intimately tied to summons — had been influenced by them and started behaving like a summon itself.

In a mad world where a mere human could work the miracle of creating life under the name of a "skill," you had to leave every possibility open.

...Park it for now.

I stopped the train of thought and looked at the Book of Summoning. As mana ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠refilled it, the crumpled cover began stiffening back to crisp.

A current of black light licked across the white book like a caress — then scattered without gaining anything. The pages drooped again, turning weakly, and left behind letters.

I hadn't expected much, but the deflation still hit.

Honestly, the moment I'd seen the Book of Combination, I'd had a fair idea. Red embroidery that hadn't been there before had been added to the pure white cover in a strange pattern.

It was a similar change to when I'd offered a sacrifice to the Book of Summoning.

The Book of Summoning had started by turning from old to new — but the Book of Combination, maybe because the "sacrifice" it had eaten was high quality, had skipped that process and jumped straight to this.

If this so-called branching point was the key to unlocking the Book of Combination, then Bihos had been nothing more than a sacrifice for that first step.

"...How many more times am I going to have to do this?"

The words left my mouth on their own the moment the thought formed.

Shrrrk!

The Book of Summoning flipped its pages sharply in protest, but I forced it still with a firm grip.

I had no interest in bleeding my current strength dry to invest in an opaque future either.

But leaving this thing as it was also grated on me. If it had never existed, fine — but I didn't want to operate while carrying a time bomb that could go off at any moment.

This incident was overwhelmingly my fault. I hadn't even properly assessed them. I'd written them off as simple skills and never bothered to understand what they actually were.

If it had reflexively touched what was mine to fill a lack — then what if I made it so abundant it wouldn't need to reach out at all?

"Hey. Can you give the sacrifices you've eaten over to that one?"

Question marks flooded the Book of Summoning. Then they wiped clean, leaving one very large exclamation mark.

I had my opening. If it needed sacrifices, I'd just give it sacrifices. And there was no rule that said the combination material had to be one of my summons.

You use what you can use. As much as possible.

"There are plenty of Spirit Entities here."

Keres had eaten through this whole area, but move just a little and heavy spaces still sat everywhere. And the one I was about to summon was extremely compatible with places like that.

Fortunately, this dungeon's clear condition was "eliminate the cause."

Which, flipped around, meant that as long as even a little yin energy and Spirit Entities remained, I could delay the clear.

Originally I'd planned to clear the dungeon the moment Comet finished her work. I'd changed my mind.

"Confirm."

At my word, the Book of Summoning responded at once and began turning its pages.

No system window appeared. The paper flipped and started writing letters, and I watched.

The name field still empty, waiting on my will. I shaped a fountain pen from shadow, pricked my fingertip, and wet it with blood.

Shiz. That was the name I gave it.

The dictionary meaning was "to seize" — but it also carried the sense of "to confiscate." A name chosen with the resolve that next time, no matter what happened, I would never let go.

I glanced at the small letters written beneath, then poured in mana. No more need to hide anything.

"Haze."

At my call, the purple space collapsed at once and light flooded in. Whether the two hours were already up or not, a gaze settled on me the moment the barrier fell.

Looking at Haze's completely drained, drooping emoticon, blocking that woman's gaze must have taken everything it had.

I gave the emoticon a couple of approving taps on the head, then asked Hive to prepare the sacrifices. My own mana alone was starting to run short.

"Kraaak!"

Sacrifices burst from the shadows, shattered at high speed, and began pouring into the Book of Summoning.

I felt it with perfect clarity — souls tearing apart, something mixing in the rifts, then settling back into me. I committed every scrap of that sensation to memory through mana. Not one detail missed.

At the letters drawn across the Book of Summoning, I immediately layered mana over my fingers.

Come forth.

"Shiz."

Tak!!

A clear, ringing sound — and mana detonated outward.