Chapter 1
**CHAT_TITLE: The Rogue Prosecutor's Survival Guide in Another World**
The man in front of me was committing a massive blunder.
“If you knew who I am, you’d be shocked. I’m not actually the person here….”
He kept talking nonsense, but I didn’t understand a single word of it. Good. I shouldn’t.
“First, pay the overdue taxes.”
“What?”
I spoke in a crisp, refined tone—nothing more, nothing less.
“This is your third and final warning. If you refuse again, you’ll be arrested.”
But judging by his appearance, he had nothing to give me.
Tattered clothes, gaping shoes, and hair that looked like it had been combed once and never since.
Yet his eyes still burned with life.
“You dare mock me! I’m Kim Haeng-cheong, Chief of Staff of the South Korean Army! Kim Haeng-cheong!!”
He must have repeated that line every single day to keep his identity from slipping away.
“Sam Clomidian. You have violated the tax payment obligations three or more times despite lawful warnings. Under Gilorian Empire Law Article 24, you are hereby arrested.”
I recited the charges and name aloud. A summoning warrant materialized in thin air, spraying faint magic.
The warrant drifted lazily, then began to glow with blue light.
It was proof that the name and charges matched the man before me.
Once the summoning warrant confirmed the arrest, two Capital Defense Force knights stepped forward and stared alternately at me and the prisoner.
The man’s eyes darted in panic.
“Don’t come any closer! I’ll stab you!”
He backed away, swinging the dull blade wildly.
He had swung a blade a few times, but it was still blunt.
False belief becomes a blunt blade, and in the end it cuts your own fingers.
So it should have been discarded long ago.
“You may exercise your right to remain silent, refuse to answer questions that would incriminate you, and retain counsel.”
The knights who had been watching me silently began to move.
They had only been waiting for me to recite the pre-arrest rights.
With the knights’ aura-enhanced ropes, a coil shot toward the prisoner.
This was the full force of my 1st-grade prosecutor license.
I could investigate suspects, make arrests, and access their magical and financial records.
I could also summon imperial knights or public authority figures as needed.
“Fuck. You thought you’d be easy?”
The man sensed the end coming and switched his stance.
The dull blade in his hand suddenly inflated.
Darkness surged in.
It spread rapidly in all directions, swallowing the surroundings in an instant like an endless abyss.
“Watch out. That bastard is a black magic user.”
Amid the greedy darkness, a newly enlarged blade flashed.
“Dodge!”
The knights’ bodies glowed with dense light. Only knights of the Gilorian Empire could wield such aura.
But the light soon faded into the darkness.
Aura and black magic were incompatible energies.
Despair flickered across the knights’ eyes.
I watched the scene indifferently.
“Isn’t this a bit outdated? Obsessed with black magic like it’s the only color.”
“Sir Prosecutor, this isn’t the time for jokes. Run away immediately. Otherwise—”
The knights glared at the man in front of us with resolute eyes.
“We can’t promise anything either.”
Veins bulged on the hands gripping their weapons.
These were the proud knights of the Empire—full armor, national emblem of the gold dragon emblazoned on their chests, even a mithril plate shield on their backs.
They were warning me to get out of there right now.
Without realizing it, the corner of my mouth curved upward.
“Step aside.”
“What?”
“Move to that side. Even civilians are to be kept outside the cordon.”
“But—”
I raised my hand to stop the knights who were trying to argue.
Then I brought my finger to my lips and shushed them.
“Shhh!”
With those words, I walked into the darkness behind me. Their voices followed from the rear.
“There’s chaos…”
At that moment, a cool sensation brushed my feet. A rancid aura slithered into my body and sank its greedy fangs deep.
“You came crawling here to die.”
Even darker eyes than the darkness stared back at me from within it.
“You’re an Earthling too, aren’t you? You can’t hide it from my eyes!”
I stepped closer and began folding each of my fingers. Mana coiled around my fingertips.
The man in front of me blurted out, as if commenting on my actions.
“Hah… You’re a beginner, right? Pure magic won’t work against black magic.”
“Is that so?”
Without hesitation, I drew in power and clenched my fist tightly, then opened it again.
CRACK—CRACK—CRACK—
A thunderous noise that would deafen anyone filled the air.
At the same moment, pitch-black darkness split apart, and a single bolt of blue lightning struck the ground directly.
“Wh-what is this?”
The man’s startled voice was immediately swallowed by another explosion.
KUAA—AAAAA—AAAANG!!
A colossal pillar of light erupted, accompanied by a roar that split the surroundings.
Blue lightning raged.
It grew explosively, then split into hundreds of branches and radiated outward in a fan shape.
In the midst of the raging lightning, I snatched one beam, twisted my wrist, and scattered it in all directions.
SHHHIIISSSSS—
The razor-sharp light devoured the darkness.
Blue light burst forth, and shockwaves rolled outward from the center.
The ground around me exploded. A hurricane of wind clawed at my body.
Soon, the area around me cleared once more. The rancid darkness retreated, and on my side lay a mangled lump that had been brutally crushed by lightning.
It was the man.
I approached him.
His limbs were bound by lightning. His body shook so violently it seemed it could not endure.
Yet even in that state he thrashed, screaming with veins bursting in his neck.
His eyes, still blazing with injustice, mixed with helpless resignation and despair.
“Not a novel or anything…”
The man’s frantic voice and desperate cry faded into the empty space.
The darkness had completely receded.
Now it was the time when two suns rose simultaneously.
Because of that, there was no shadow anywhere.
It would have been nice if a gentle breeze would blow, but no wind stirred at all.
When I tried to wipe away the sweat dripping from my head, the blazing sun poured down directly on me.
The knights of the Capital Defense Force looked at the charred man and spoke.
“He is an Earthling. He claims he came from a place called Earth.”
I placed my remaining four fingers on my right chest and murmured.
“For the prosperity and eternity of the Gilorian Empire!”
The knights echoed me in the same posture.
“For the prosperity and eternity of the Gilorian Empire!”
This was the 2,158th commission I had completed since falling into this world.
“But… Prosecutor?”
“Yes?”
“What are you going to do about this?”
The knights looked troubled.
Where their gaze lingered, I saw the blasted ground and a child’s swing hanging askew, barely moving in the wind.
“This is a children’s safety zone. You summoned lightning magic here again? I remember you were warned about it last time too.”
“…”
In the Gilorian Empire, using any area magic in children’s safety zones was strictly prohibited.
* * *
This place is the Gilorian Empire.
The Empire’s history began in its battles against monsters.
Now, on the continent, only two classifications exist: Gilorian Empire citizens and monsters.
Counting the Empire’s territory is meaningless.
No other civilization has risen on this continent, only the Gilorian Empire with its intelligence.
Of course, the outside world beyond the Empire remains unstable.
The shadows of countless monsters and heretical groups still lurk at the borders.
But they prefer to hide in the Empire’s shadow rather than challenge its system.
I am a freelance prosecutor for the Gilorian Empire.
I do whatever it takes.
Some think of me as a fixer, but fundamentally I am a freelance prosecutor.
My job is to find and apprehend criminals commissioned by the Capital Defense Force.
As long as the money is substantial, I’ll even appear in court myself. I don’t care about the amount of the fee.
[Tax Evader Tracking and Arrest Successful.]
[2,100,000 Cram successfully deposited into Zeo Blood’s account.]
[7,000,000 Cram special incentive deposited into Zeo Blood’s account.]
The mana stone transceiver on my wrist flashed.
It seemed the commission fee had been transferred.
The mana stone collection office had deposited the payment before I even submitted the incident report.
Even the mana stone collection office, known as the strongest in processing speed across the empire, had acted quickly.
With 2,100,000 Cram, the terms were extremely generous compared to other freelancers.
In Clovan City, the capital of the Gilorian Empire, the average monthly salary of a bartender was around 3,000,000 Cram.
So receiving 2,100,000 Cram for three days of work was, in essence, free money.
Moreover, apprehending heretics came with a juicy bonus.
Each heretic apprehended brought a special incentive of 7,000,000 Cram.
That was how much the Gilorian Empire feared heretics.
I didn’t know the exact reason.
Lifeforms instinctively avoided viruses, so it was natural to treat Earthlings who claimed to have come from the outside world as similar.
But I couldn’t be sure.
I didn’t need to know.
Some conspiracy theorists claimed the imperial family captured heretics for experiments, but no concrete evidence had ever surfaced.
“Why do you work as a freelancer, Prosecutor? With your abilities, you could become a temple inspector or a high-ranking officer in the Capital Defense Force. Your pay and treatment would be far better.”
“It’s too much hassle to commute.”
“Ah…”
I gave the knights a suitable answer to their question.
But it wasn’t a complete lie.
Working as a prosecutor for the Gilorian Empire brought many benefits.
Salary was high, and prosecutors were provided with dedicated housing.
And remarkably, a pension as a public servant after retirement.
The problem, as always, was identity verification.
To be officially appointed as a prosecutor, I would have had to submit a detailed report on my birthplace, parents, education history, and recommended teachers.
But that was impossible for me.
More precisely, my current forged identity carried too great a risk of being exposed.
I was a heretic.
A heretic who used Earth experience to work as a freelance prosecutor.
Still, as a veteran, my results were quite good.
After ten years of this, I now took on any case requested by various institutions of the Gilorian Empire.
Currently, I worked as a freelance prosecutor attached to the Capital Defense Force—the flower of the prosecutors.
“Yeah. It wasn’t easy for me either… it wasn’t easy before either…”
Before I opened my eyes in the Gilorian Empire, I had been tied to a chair in an abandoned building, about to be murdered by my superior, the Deputy Chief Prosecutor.
He had brought me along because he liked my resemblance, but when he discarded me, he was merciless.
Was my crime the fact that I stood in the way of his desire to live lavishly on dirty money?
Or was it because I recited every detail of his crimes with photographic memory?
I thought I was dead, but when I opened my eyes, my vision was filled with an enormous modern city.
Elves, goblins, and other demi-humans walked alongside humans in the city, while unknown monsters outside the city stared greedily at Empire citizens.
I chose to survive by adapting to this world and doing what I did best.
Life goes on.
Since I was born this way, I would live hard no matter what.
Even if I had to roll like a dog.
[Guidelines for the New Gilorian Empire]
In my hands, dropped into the Gilorian Empire, were a small amount of money to pay taxes, a crudely forged identity card, and this very guideline.
The guideline vanished like smoke the moment I read it, but it was deeply imprinted in my brain.
Just as the language and basic history and culture of this world had been automatically input into my mind.
BEEP—
As my thoughts trailed off, the mana stone transceiver on my wrist woke me from my reverie.
[Request for Incident Report Submission]
Ah, I had been distracted by useless thoughts and hadn’t sent the incident report.
I pulled out a sheet of paper from the drawer of my desk and began writing the incident investigation report.
[Incident Report]
▷ Recipient: Mana Stone Collection Office, Second Division
1. Suspect Information
▷ Name: Sam Clomidian
▷ Age: Unknown
▷ Address: Unknown
2. Incident Overview
▷ Tax non-payment more than three times (Violation of Gilorian Tax Collection Act Article 35)
▷ Escape and refusal to be arrested (Violation of Gilorian Criminal Code Articles 234, Paragraph 1 and 2)
▷ Heresy and disclosure (Violation of Gilorian Citizen Law Article 1)
3. Date of Arrest
▷ Gilorian Empire Calendar Year 2024, Month 14, Day 117
4. Reporter: Freelance Investigator Zeo Blood (#34867-0032)
Charge: Violation of Citizen Law Article 1—Heresy and Disclosure.
The man was now sentenced to death.
At that moment, the mana stone transceiver lit up red. The words that appeared:
“Ah, right! A written confession!”
I clicked the folder containing the confession.
I opened the 202nd file.