Knowledge for Power
BZZT!
A crimson beam from the laser pistol shattered the door lock on the small safe. Reaching inside, Jincheon found jewelry set with gemstones in colors unlike anything from Earth — enough pieces that both hands cupped together could just about hold them all.
"Obviously ripped off from other people," he muttered.
There was no consistency to the collection, and scratches marred piece after piece. A few even carried faint traces of blood.
"Is this everything?"
"Y-yeah."
Guotan nodded, having already pointed out every safe belonging to the boss that he knew of.
"Less than I expected. Still — a deal's a deal."
Jincheon plucked out a few pieces of jewelry and held them out to Guotan.
"Get lost. If you want revenge, be my guest."
Guotan snatched the jewelry and bolted for the exit. The parting invitation to seek revenge barely registered; the only thought in his head was putting as much distance between himself and this place as possible.
"I figured they'd have some clever way of hiding it. Kind of anticlimactic."
Jincheon muttered to himself as he returned the safe to its original spot. The handful of trinkets he'd given Guotan were payment for information — including the location of the boss's personal vault.
"Hope letting him live pays off."
He watched Guotan's frantic retreat with the quiet satisfaction of a fisherman releasing a fry that might one day grow into a prize catch. He wanted interesting fights, yes — but mindless destruction for its own sake had never been his style. Conflict born of grievance was an incident. Killing without reason was just empty violence.
Having outlived every one of his wives and spent centuries alone, Jincheon deliberately spared Guotan because he wanted more incidents to come his way.
For now, these bodies go in the freezer.
He gathered the corpses and carried them toward a metal crate fitted with a handle. Opening the door released a blast of cold air; frozen bloodstains marked the interior. It was a freezer — the kind hunters used to store their kills.
If I'm going to survive in this world, I need money.
The only skill he possessed that translated cleanly to this place was killing things. So he would use their own tools and become a hunter.
That said — where the hell is the switch on this thing?
Most household appliances from the twenty-first century had an obvious power switch. This freezer had none, no matter how thoroughly he searched. There wasn't even a power cord.
Someone might wonder why he hadn't simply asked Guotan something so basic — but Jincheon had his reasons.
Showing other people my weak spots just makes everything more annoying.
He wanted the kind of trouble that grew out of conflict. Advertising his ignorance of this world's science and knowledge was a different matter entirely. Once someone realized how little he knew, they would come at him with methods stranger than anything he could imagine.
I'll dump these bodies when we head for the White Shriek Forest.
The problem was space. Even cramming them in, the freezer couldn't hold everyone. After checking the interior dimensions, Jincheon stroked his chin and ran a rough estimate.
Chop them up, then.
Sever the limbs, portion the bodies, and bind the pieces into as close to rectangular blocks as possible. Done right, the space meant for one could greedily fit three.
There was no flicker of emotion on his face as he worked out the most efficient way to process the corpses. For a man who had personally beaten more than ten thousand people to death across centuries of life, body disposal was nothing more than a chore — no more, no less.
"Um… hey… mister…?"
"Hm?"
A familiar voice cut through his concentration.
"Ah. Right."
He'd been so focused on cleanup that he'd completely forgotten about Kunlo.
Perfect timing. I've got plenty of questions.
The kid was young, but when it came to this world, he almost certainly knew far more than Jincheon did. He turned to greet him.
"Got so caught up cleaning that I forgot I needed to call you."
"Um… mister?"
Kunlo fidgeted under Jincheon's gaze, then carefully opened his mouth.
"Are you… a special operative from Terra?"
"Huh?"
"I've never seen anyone of your species around here, so I looked it up. Closest match was an Asian from the Terra Federation."
Jincheon blinked, momentarily thrown.
Terra Federation? Looked it up? With what?
What was the Terra Federation supposed to be? There was no computer or phone in sight — what had the kid searched with?
Could Terra Federation be Earth?
Given that Kunlo had said "Asian," this world's Earth had either been renamed Terra or had always gone by that name.
The events of the day had burned into Kunlo just how brutal life on the streets could be. That was why he now wanted to offer Jincheon whatever help he could — to secure his own safety, and, in the long run, to learn something useful.
"I'm not going to blackmail you or anything with this secret. I… I can help with whatever you're doing! Even if I don't know much, if you teach me, I can make myself useful!"
Jincheon's expression shifted into something unreadable. Kunlo, mistaking it for deliberation over how to dispose of him, scrambled to keep talking.
If I play this right, he could be useful.
Jincheon needed someone to teach him about this world. The problem was that his own ignorance made him a perfect mark for anyone looking to fleece him. But a boy this desperate for safety and knowledge — someone with something real to gain from the exchange — was far less likely to try a scam.
"Hey, kid."
"Y-yes!"
Jincheon crouched down with a faint smile so their eyes were level. Kunlo answered short and sharp, instincts telling him a critical decision was coming.
Quick on the uptake. And motivated.
Kunlo's eyes burned with the raw hunger to survive. But hunger alone meant nothing — people changed the moment their circumstances did.
"Help me, and I'll make sure you can at least earn your own keep."
"Really?!"
"But if you ever reveal something I told you to keep quiet…"
"I won't! Never!"
"I don't put much stock in promises like that."
From that moment, Jincheon's tone and cadence shifted.
"Th-then…?"
Jincheon smiled thinly at Kunlo and laid out exactly what would happen if the boy ignored the warning.
"I'll kill every single person you've ever formed a bond with. And you — I'll ruin your body from the inside out until all you can do is barely breathe. For the rest of your life, until the day you die, you won't even be able to drink water without someone else's help."
"…"
The voice was light. The eyes were smiling. But the quiet killing intent beneath them made it clear this was no bluff meant to scare a child — Kunlo felt the truth of it in every bone.
"If you don't like the terms, leave right now. I won't stop you."
"I'll do it!"
Kunlo's mind was already made up. He accepted even after hearing the warning.
If I walk out of here, I'll just spend every day terrified of becoming bait for hunters again!
Whatever secrets there were, all he had to do was keep his mouth shut. And he wanted a better life — badly.
"Then wait here. There's something I need to finish before we talk."
With that, Jincheon hauled the corpses over to the meat-processing area, took a butcher's knife down from the wall, and began severing arms and legs.
"Another dimension…"
After packing the dismembered corpses into the freezer, Jincheon told Kunlo his story. If he was going to explain that he was a complete blank slate when it came to this world, he had to start there.
Kunlo wavered between belief and disbelief. By every scrap of common sense he possessed, "I came from another dimension" was pure lunatic nonsense.
"Believe it or don't — that's your call. What matters is that we each have something the other needs."
Even if Kunlo repeated the story to anyone else, not a single person would take it seriously. That made it safe to speak the truth and strike a bargain without any real risk.
Jincheon wanted knowledge of this world. Kunlo wanted the strength to survive alone.
"Help me, and I'll teach you the martial arts I possess."
"So… when you killed all those hunters, that was this martial arts power?"
"I used a gun for the weapon, but the reflexes, the spatial awareness, the way I moved — all of that was only possible because of martial arts."
Something in Kunlo's chest began to shift hard.
So what if the man was crazy? What mattered was staying alive.
Jincheon added one more detail.
"For the record, right now I'm barely using one-hundredth of my original strength. The more I recover, the clearer it'll become just how extraordinary martial arts really are."
Honestly, Kunlo still had no idea how much of this to believe. His face said as much.
"All right. Your turn. Tell me everything you know about this world's knowledge and technology."
"Ah… well…"
Kunlo started to squirm, clearly struggling to get the words out.
"What's wrong?"
"It's just… haah…"
Finally he exhaled a long sigh and spoke in a defeated, hollow voice.
"The knowledge you want… you just need a Bio Device implanted."
"A Bio Device?"
"It's…"
The more Kunlo explained, the harder Jincheon found it to hide his astonishment.
It's like a PC and a smartphone mashed together.
A Bio Device granted network access and single-handedly handled banking, contracts, documents, books — everything a smartphone did and more. Living in this world without one was essentially impossible.
In other words, once he had a Bio Device implanted, he wouldn't need to trade knowledge with Kunlo piece by piece.
It wasn't without drawbacks. Network access only worked on planets with established infrastructure. Connecting to sites whose servers sat on distant worlds took a long time.
So that's why he was stalling.
With a Bio Device, most of the knowledge Jincheon wanted could simply be searched through the galactic network. Kunlo must have fretted over whether to tell him — because once he did, he himself became unnecessary, and lying about it would have been exposed the moment Jincheon found out on his own.
"You don't need to worry."
"Huh?"
"If you'd kept the Bio Device from me, the second I found out about it, I would have dumped you for breach of contract."
A fragile hope began to kindle in Kunlo's eyes.
"But you told me honestly. That counts as giving me everything I asked for. Per our deal, I'll teach you the strength to survive on your own."
"Ah…!"
A Bio Device would make Kunlo unnecessary — but as Jincheon had already decided, he had no interest in cheaply exploiting a child.
"And since you were honest with me, here's a bonus. I'll let you get a brief taste of the martial arts you're about to learn."
Jincheon stepped close, took Kunlo's wrist, and carefully spread his energy through the boy. He had done something similar once while treating wounds, but back then he hadn't intended to teach martial arts, so he hadn't examined the boy with any real precision.
A carefully measured stream of refined combat force flows into alien meridians, mapping pathways foreign to any Earth-born body.
"Ugh? M-mister… something's… something's going into me…"
"Don't resist. Mm — the meridians are here, so circulate through this path…"
Guiding Tushinryeok carefully into a body whose meridian layout differed from any human of Earth, Jincheon pointed a finger at the wall.
"Kunlo. Punch that wall. Hard."
"What?"
"Now."
"Y-yes!"
Kunlo tilted his head at the sudden order, then scrambled to obey when the command came again, sharper.
"Hrrraah!"
Common sense said a fist meeting a metal trailer wall would end one way —
CRUNCH!
"Wha—?!"
—and that common sense shattered. His fist left a deep, violent impression in the trailer's metal wall. Kunlo stumbled backward in shock and fell on his rear.
"H-how…?!"
"I put a little of my power into you. Once you learn martial arts, that kind of strength will be yours whenever you want it."
"This is… martial arts…"
"You can't even picture what martial arts can do, so throwing you straight into training would just leave you frustrated. This was a sample. Plenty of people wash out right at this stage."
"…"
Staring at the fist-shaped crater in the metal wall, Kunlo felt his heart hammering in his chest.
If I had power like this…!
He had watched Jincheon fight from hiding. The thought of moving with that same lethal grace filled him with raw anticipation.
"All right then — how do I get one of these Bio Devices implanted?"
Having tasted even a fragment of martial power, Kunlo now believed. His eyes shone as he answered.