Death Is Not the End
Death is not the end. Behold. Just as the seed that is sown becomes a sprout, then bears fruit and scatters its seed once more. Even if a blooming flame vanishes into the empty air, that is not the end.
"How strange. Truly strange."
Jinseong kept murmuring in admiration as he stared at his own youthful body. There was no longer the excruciating pain that once twisted his jaw every time he opened his mouth. His voice flowed smoothly from his vocal cords, and even after speaking, he felt none of the agony that used to squeeze and tear at his lungs and throat. When he raised a hand to touch his face, the countless bullet wounds and blade scars from his mercenary days had vanished without a trace. The numerous self-inflicted marks left behind from the trances he had entered while learning sorcery were also gone.
A clean body. He had returned not merely younger, but completely purified.
What astonished him even more was the place where he now stood.
"This is my past… truly strange…."
It was the house where he had once lived. The space matched his memories perfectly in every detail. At first he had thought it was a hallucination brought on by the flood of pleasure chemicals released right before death, or perhaps the influence of some unknown sorcery. But astonishingly, this place was real.
'I've completed the reality check and the spiritual check, yet this is still reality.'
Every element here existed in a way that even S-rank hallucinations or hypnosis could not replicate, and his own brutally trained mind was screaming at him that this was real, that this was the truth.
When all the evidence was put together…
'I have returned to the past.'
There was only one remaining truth. He had regressed.
"ॐ---"
Jinseong quietly chanted a sorcery mantra to calm his mind. This method of murmuring mantras to steady his heart was a piece of life wisdom he had gained during his mercenary days, and it had become one of his routines. Even in that harsh and horrific line of work, he had needed to keep his mind sharp at all times in order to wield his power as a sorcerer. Without a way to compose himself like this, he would never have survived.
"ॐ…."
Yet the mantra that had soothed his heart for so many years was not easily calming him now. The fact that he had regressed was more than enough to stir up enormous turbulence within him.
'Joy and irritation coexist. It feels like a storm and raging waves crashing together.'
All kinds of emotions were swirling inside him. The strongest among them was joy. The joy of being able to change the fate that had absurdly ruined his body and condemned him to an early death. The joy that came from the thought that he might now transcend the limits of humanity through sorcery, obtain immortality, and engrave every sorcery in the world into his mind.
Sorcery was his life's joy, his life's purpose, and everything he was.
'Some might call it obsession, but what of it? I am neither an ascetic nor a practitioner seeking to escape the cycle of reincarnation.'
Jinseong was similar to other sorcerers, yet different. While others sought transcendence through asceticism, enlightenment, or rigorous training, he had craved transcendence solely for the sake of survival. The means and the goal were completely reversed.
That was why he had failed to transcend. Instead of reaching transcendence, he had chased after realms far beyond his capacity, learning sorcery in a haphazard frenzy until his body collapsed and he could no longer live out his natural lifespan. In the end, he had burned what was little more than a corpse, enduring endless pain until the very last.
That had been the entirety of his life.
'Should I have listened to the words of the wise?'
The many sages he had met during his mercenary days had told him the same thing: let go of your obsession. If you do not abandon it, your end will not be a good one. And their prophecy had come true. To die by setting fire to a body that was already no better than a corpse. Anyone who saw it would probably have called it a novel suicide method devised by a sorcerer devoured by madness.
Yet in a way, it might have been the most fitting end for him. After living his entire life obsessed with nothing but sorcery, there could have been no better way to conclude it.
Especially after World War III broke out, the number of people dying meaningless deaths skyrocketed, and mercenaries often met ends so worthless that even a dog's death seemed like a peaceful one by comparison. So perhaps it was only natural.
What was certain, however, was that Jinseong had died without fulfilling his purpose. He had wanted life. Even if it was wretched, he had wanted to keep living. Even if it was miserable, he had wanted to keep breathing.
Parasite Warlock
That was why he had been called the Parasite Warlock. A sorcerer who mimicked parasitic organisms and obsessed over survival-oriented sorcery. He felt no shame in leeching off others, and while he never betrayed anyone, he demanded an excessive price for his trust. A sorcerer who could not shine alone, yet would always survive by himself. Because of that, he had lived as a mercenary under the scornful title of Parasite Warlock.
'One failure, and a second chance. But I truly find it strange that this opportunity has been given to me at all.'
Having lived under such a contemptuous name, most of the emotions now swirling within Jinseong were joy. But there was another feeling slowly swelling up alongside it: anxiety.
Why would Jinseong dislike the good fortune that had come to him? Any human would rejoice at receiving free money, let alone a brand-new life that turned back time itself. It would be a lie to say he did not feel like jumping around and shouting in delight.
Yet malice always hides behind the surface.
'Why did I regress?'
Why, and how. These were the two questions a mercenary had to keep in mind at all times. Because money was involved, the profession was overflowing with people ready to stab you in the back at any moment. Let your guard down and you would die to a comrade's attack or a knife in the spine. It was the perfect job for that.
Especially after World War III, human nature on Earth had gone so insane that even calling it "disgusting" felt insufficient. The horror of betrayal was worst when it came from those closest to you. Even the clients who had to be trusted would casually stab you in the back without hesitation.
The most common case was when they lied about or distorted information because they did not want to pay the mercenary fee. The next most common was when they tried to kill you with poison or an ambush the moment the job was finished and you returned.
If even the clients you were supposed to trust were like that, comrades were often worse than enemies, and brokers or mercenary organizations were hardly any different from criminal syndicates.
That was a saying mercenaries openly shared. The whole business was utter chaos.
That was why Jinseong's life had always been accompanied by those two questions: why and how. If he had not asked them, he would have died.
'Why am I back in the past?'
Those experiences had taught him to suspect everything. Why, and how, had he been able to return to the past? Had some transcendent being capable of such a miracle sent him back merely to toy with him? Was he nothing more than a puppet on strings, unable to escape fate, only to face the same situations again, despair, and die?
Such suspicions swelled horrifically, fueled by anxiety.
"ॐ-"
Jinseong steadied his shaken mind.
'A transcendent being would not do such a thing.'
Transcendent beings. Also called transcendent species, Transcendents, or by many other names. Gods, demi-gods, dragons, demons, spirits, youkai, giants, and so on…
The transcendent beings that appeared in legends possessed immense power. They had literally transcended. They were existences that had gone beyond the limits of living beings and souls to reach a certain realm.
Gods could manipulate natural phenomena, demons were overwhelmingly powerful when it came to the mind and soul, and spirits and youkai wielded terrifying authority in their respective domains. Many people feared them even as they worshipped them, and that continued even after the transcendent beings had become unable to interfere easily with the world.
'But there is no need to fear them more than necessary.'
It was better to keep one's distance and avoid getting involved, but at the very least, they were not beings that needed to be feared. Without a single exception, every transcendent species loved and cherished humans.
Whether their way of expressing affection would be perceived as love by humans… was another matter entirely.
'Transcendent beings have the power but will not act. Humans want to act but lack the power.'
If the world were divided between those who could but would not, and those who wanted to but could not, then how did anything ever happen? Exceptions existed everywhere, but they operated purely as the playthings of probability. That was what people called coincidence.
Coincidence had many names, yet the only thing that mattered was the mindset with which one accepted that coincidence as it was.
"ॐ-"
Jinseong quietly brought his palms together and calmed his heart.
- Knock, knock, knock.
The moment he settled his mind, a knocking sound rang out as if it had been waiting. When Jinseong turned his head toward the door, an unnecessarily ornate door slid open and someone cautiously peeked inside.
"U-um… are you awake?"
The one who poked her head in was a slightly gloomy-looking girl.
'Lee Serin. It's been a long time.'
Jinseong fell into a strange emotion as he looked at her face, which appeared far younger than the one in his final memories. The way her eyes darted around nervously, lacking confidence, was exactly as he remembered. But unlike the short bob from his last memory, her hair was now so long and black that it could be described as flowing. Her skin, completely without makeup, somehow made the realization that he had truly returned to the past sink in deeper.
"Th-the… breakfast is ready…."
On top of that, the unnecessarily awkward expression that seemed to scream 'I feel uncomfortable around you' with all its might, the drawn-out way of speaking, and the voice so quiet it seemed ready to crawl into a mouse hole. Every single thing was a fragment of the daily life that had once existed only in his memories.
"O-oppa? Breakfast…."
"I know."
"Y-yes. Okay."
The moment his curt reply fell, Lee Serin closed the door and disappeared as if she had been waiting for it.
"Now that I think about it, this household had a lot of rules."
Jinseong let out a small chuckle as he changed his clothes.