Groundwork: Daemo Capital, Sambon Money
Jinseong smiled as he watched the golden smoke coil like a serpent around the second and third floors of the building. The place was known as Daemo Capital and Sambon Money—a so-called private lender, part of the loan-sharking industry.
"Loan sharks have plenty of money."
It was an obvious statement, yet undeniably true. Most people pictured shabby debt collectors or thugs in cheap suits harassing debtors, so they never realized just how much cash these operations actually held. Loan sharks operated in the gray zone between legal and illegal, which meant they often stockpiled slush funds, gold bars, and other hidden assets. Since they frequently needed to disappear at a moment’s notice, they favored compact, high-value items that were easy to carry.
"But loan sharks have no money."
Here was the contradiction. Robbing a loan shark rarely paid off. These creatures knew perfectly well that they were viewed as golden goblins. Consider a powerful ability user turning to robbery. Where would be the smartest target?
A normal household? Pointless. At best you’d find pocket change and wedding jewelry. Even the jewelry would be difficult to fence—either sold on the black market at a loss or kept hidden, yielding almost nothing.
A wealthy mansion? The numbers still didn’t add up. Rich families certainly kept emergency funds and hidden cash that would make for a nice score. But the aftermath would be brutal. The rich despised anything that bruised their wallets or their pride; they hated it with a passion bordering on obsession.
A bank? The classic cinematic target, the very stereotype of robbery in the public mind. Yet it was the worst possible choice. Powerful ability users stood permanent guard, and the instant a heist began every alarm channel would light up. Police would swarm in heavy armor, surround the building, and deploy special forces to crush the robbers outright. And that was only the beginning. Even if your abilities were godlike and you actually got away with the money, could you ever spend it? Tracking would begin immediately—magic, science, shamanism, every resource deployed until the thief was caught. If they couldn’t catch you, they would ensure you could never spend a single won. Humanity’s obsession with credit currency had reached the level of madness. Most people simply couldn’t withstand that kind of pressure.
So where was the ideal target? Not a home, not a mansion, not a bank. Where could you rob and watch the money pour out like water from a broken jar? A place with no powerful guardians, no lingering grudges, and no way for the authorities to track you through public systems. A place where, instead of curses, you might even earn the public’s cheers.
Loan sharks.
From the viewpoint of truly powerful ability users or vicious criminals, loan sharks were laughably pathetic. Ordinary people often lumped them in with violent offenders, but anyone who truly treated human lives like insect lives didn’t waste time running a lending operation. They went straight into murder, kidnapping, drugs, or full-scale criminal syndicates. Those who preferred legal violence usually became mercenaries or bodyguards.
That’s why the mercenary world was packed with every kind of lunatic imaginable. It truly deserved to be called a demonic realm.
To Jinseong, who considered himself relatively sane, the place had been filled with madmen he could never accept. Having witnessed that hell, he saw loan sharks as the lowest of the low—nothing more than a pack of two-bit punks. No matter how much they strutted about calling themselves gangsters, hoodlums, or organizations, they only preyed on the weak. To real criminals who lived among blood and corpses, or to ability users engaged in brutal power struggles, loan sharks were simply ridiculous.
Knowing how they were perceived, the loan sharks had prepared various defenses. Like pufferfish inflating their bodies, they tried to look menacing from every angle. They bought powerful ability users with money and used them as limbs. Yet what did any of it matter?
Had anyone ever seen a bear ignore a honey pot simply because the bees were buzzing furiously? Looking scary didn’t make them scary. A cat puffing up its fur might look intimidating to a mouse, but to a predator it was merely amusing. To real criminal organizations they were just yapping street punks. To a truly powerful ability user they were insignificant bugs throwing a tantrum.
Ability users bought with money could be handled by other ability users chasing that same money. The world was full of people enslaved by greed, and plenty of strong ability users sought cash for the same pragmatic reasons as Jinseong.
That was why loan sharks had developed multiple layers of protection. The two they relied on most were a powerful backer and an impregnable safe. These survival measures had proven remarkably effective, allowing the industry to survive into the modern age.
So the divination isn’t telling me to slaughter every one of these punks and empty their vaults…
Divination was mysterious and endlessly ambiguous; its true meaning was never easy to grasp. Tarot, astrology, turtle shells, playing cards, yut sticks, divination rods—there were countless tools, yet none of them revealed the future with perfect clarity. The future was fluid, forever changing, shaped by countless probabilities and conditions.
The guide artifact Jinseong had created would answer his questions and show him the path, but it never told him exactly what to do. What he needed now was simple.
Patience.
Jinseong closed his eyes and lowered his body. He bent at the waist until his hands nearly brushed the ground, back arched outward, torso thrust unnaturally forward. His knees folded slowly like bending rebar. His neatly combed hair fell into wild disarray.
"Frost that settles upon life."
"Like begets like."
"Frost that has settled. The color that covers the body."
"Become stone."
"Stone is hard."
"Those wrapped in hardness are like insects."
"What the insect wraps is armor, so become armor."
⟨ Homologous Sorcery ⟩
Crack.
When his posture fully resembled that of a hunchback, gray-white mold began to bloom across his entire body. It spread from his neck like roots seeking soil, carrying the sharp, fermented scent of crushed grass. The mold covered him as frost settles on a cold morning, claiming every inch of skin. His already pale complexion turned a sickly, waxen white that evoked corpses and porcelain dolls. All traces of vitality vanished, replaced by a hideous texture like concrete stirred into flesh.
Crack.
The mold’s inorganic color shaped its nature as well. The stone-like web hardened around him like a plaster cast, locking his body into the exact pose it had assumed—protruding back, bent knees, hunched shoulders. In an instant Jinseong had become a short, crooked hunchback.
He opened his mouth once more and completed the incantation. Like begets like. Similar things produce similar things. The result resembles the cause, and the cause becomes the result. Humans had imitated nature since the dawn of time. They copied cocoons to make sleeping bags, birds to build airplanes, fangs to forge blades, caves to create houses. So what had they imitated to wrap their bodies in a different color? Something stone-like—how had it embraced a person?
The gray-white that enveloped him resembled stone. Therefore it became stone. Stone was hard, so the gray transformed into black. Those wrapped in hardness were like insects—longhorn beetles, centipedes, cockroaches. Creatures with exoskeletons that roamed the world freely. Seams and gaps formed across the statue-like shell. What insects wore as armor, humans had imitated to create their own. Thus Jinseong became a human clad in armor. Like resembles like. The man wrapped in white mold had become a man wearing armor. Mold that fed on insects; a human imitating insects.
"Krrrk."
Jinseong laughed. He laughed beneath a black mask shaped like an insect’s face.
"Ah, fuck. What a goddamn unlucky day."