The Equality That Does Not Exist

A mechanical, inorganic voice that felt like it was hammering directly into my skull snapped my eyes open. The acrid stench of dirt and dust stung my nose. As I rolled my eyes across my surroundings, the first thing that tore out of my mouth was a curse laced with a gasp.

"Fuck..."

I wasn't alone. In the shabby clearing, dozens of humans lay sprawled like discarded trash. A man in blood-soaked rags, snarling like a beast. A white-haired elder groping for his sword hilt. A blond knight in full plate armor calling out to his god. And people like me—dazed modern folk in suits or hoodies, still clutching their smartphones.

Idiots with zero reading comprehension exist no matter where you go.

"What the fuck? Is this a hidden camera prank? I'll sue every last one of you for portrait rights violations...!"

A blond punk in a designer-logo shirt screamed as he stormed toward the hulking knight in plate armor. A man whose sense of reality had already snapped. The type whose brain refused to process the semi-transparent system messages hovering in the air.

"Out of my way, worm."

"What? Worm? You crazy fuck—urk!"

The armored giant's hand shot out like lightning and seized the punk by the throat. With a sickening crunch, the blond bastard's body was hoisted into the air.

"S-save me...!"

Thud!

The giant slammed him straight into the ground. The dull sound of shattering bones rang across the clearing. As the punk convulsed, spraying blood from his nose like a fountain, the modern people who had been murmuring nearby recoiled in horror.

Stats equalized at ten for everyone? Bullshit. The ten belonging to someone who'd torn men apart and the ten belonging to someone who'd only ever hammered a keyboard were fundamentally different in quality.

The overwhelming violence forged from killing intent and beast-like experience. A deathly silence descended over the clearing.

"Hey, take it easy. Cleaning up the mess afterward is a pain in the ass."

That was when a languid voice cut through the dust. A man wearing a leather cuirass thrown on carelessly, a crude iron sword at his hip. He looked like any common guard from a fantasy backwater, but his eyes carried the exhausted, worn-out weight of a life that had ground him down.

"This is Jol Village, the starting point. Looks like another batch of foreigners dragged here by the oracle. Don't expect any welcoming speech."

The guard picked at his nose and flicked the booger away as he continued indifferently.

"Rules are simple. If you don't want to starve to death, go beg the village chief or the locals for work. Oh, and..."

"Was it you bastards?"

A dark, murderous aura cut the guard off mid-sentence. A man in tattered martial robes. His frame was scrawny, but the spirit radiating from him was sharp enough to rip the guard's head off right then and there.

"Answer me. Are you in league with whoever dragged us to this shithole..."

"Ah, fuck. The murim types always throw these childish tantrums, don't they?"

The guard scratched the back of his head in annoyance. That attitude made the martial artist's eyes roll with rage.

"Die!"

Swoosh!

Even with stats locked at ten, the trajectory of the martial artist's hand blade was too fast for modern eyes to track.

But.

BAM!

"Keurgh!"

The one sent flying wasn't the guard. It was the martial artist. Before his fingertips could even graze the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠man, the guard's casual kick had already slammed precisely into his solar plexus.

Superior technique? Gap in experience? All of it was irrelevant in the face of an overwhelming difference in raw stats.

The guard's speed and destructive power operated on an entirely different level from the rest of these ten-stat rookies.

"Keuk, cough! H-how is this possible... A plain kick with no internal energy..."

"Mister. This isn't the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠world you remember. Your stats are at the bottom, and I've been rolling around here for over ten years. I've raised my own stats and picked up a few techniques from people like you."

The guard tapped the fallen martial artist's head a couple of times as he scanned the crowd.

"Let me teach you the absolute rule inside the village. No killing. If anyone tries to deliver a fatal blow, an invisible wall will stop it. Breaking a few limbs and beating someone half to death like I just did, though? That's fine."

No killing inside the village. The eyes of the strong—those accustomed to bloodshed—flickered with strange interest at those words. Meanwhile, modern people like me swallowed sighs of relief. At least it meant we wouldn't wake up with our throats cut.

"That's the end of the tutorial. Survive on your own."

As the guard disappeared deeper into the village, a new message floated into my sight while I stayed hidden among the crowd.

I scrolled all the way down and stared at the ninth option buried at the very bottom. The choice took less than a second. There was no point in agonizing over it.

Countless web novels, movies, and animations. In all the media modern people had consumed until they were sick of it, "standard power" was the exclusive domain of geniuses. Flashy sword energy? Elemental magic that required genius-level calculation? If someone with zero talent like me chose those, I'd only end up as a inferior copy of the martial artists and knights already groveling on the ground over there.

But in these kinds of death games or fantasy worlds, it was always the non-mainstream options that created the real variables. Curses, blood, tattoos, shamanism. The kind of techniques usually reserved for villains or shady back-alley supporting characters rather than protagonists.

These abilities didn't demand noble intelligence or profound enlightenment. All they asked for was malice, obsession, and the madness to cross every line.

I had spent my entire life in customer service, imagining pouring acid on the faces of nightmare customers tens of thousands of times. I couldn't face anyone honorably with a blade, but I was more than confident in cursing them from behind, offering up my own flesh, and squeezing every possible benefit from their bones.

Without hesitation, I selected Primal Magic.

Just two lines. There was no flashy spectacle of spitting fire. But for surviving in the most vile and underhanded way possible, there could be no more perfect weapon.

I quietly looked down at the thug still groaning on the ground. The red blood flowing from his head had mixed with the mud to form a dark puddle.

Blood as a medium, huh...

My fingertips trembled faintly. Not from fear. Because the first material I needed to become a predator instead of prey in this insane world was lying right in front of me.

I silently lowered myself. Slipping into a narrow alley where no one's eyes would reach—still inside the safe zone governed by the village rules—I kept my mind spinning without pause.

The jaded guard's bored tutorial had contained critical information for survival, scattered among his worn-out lines.

First, this place was a kind of dumping ground where humans from other dimensions fell periodically, and the natives were completely adapted to the phenomenon.

Second, besides the abilities the system granted at the start, it was likely possible to acquire the local martial arts or magic as separate techniques.

Third, ordinary modern people like us were not heroes or saviors. We were nothing more than prey and the lowest class of refugees to the villagers.

But there was one more rule—perhaps the most important one—that I had realized myself in this moment.

Whatever you do, don't get caught.

I already had an instinctive understanding of the true nature of the sorcery within my Primal Magic. Sorcery and tattoos that used blood and mediums. If those martial artists and knights sprawled in the clearing saw me smearing blood and drawing grotesque patterns?

It was obvious. I'd instantly be labeled a cultist, black magician, or demonic practitioner and have my throat slit on the spot.

My abilities had to be completed thoroughly in the shadows, hidden from everyone else.

Hiding against the wall of a deserted alley, I wanted to catch even a rat to draw blood, but my sluggish body with all stats at ten made that impossible. The only option left was my own blood.

I picked up a sharp tree branch rolling on the ground and, without hesitation, sliced deep into my left index finger.

"Huuup...!"

Cold sweat broke out from the pain of tearing living flesh. Red blood began dripping steadily from my fingertip.

I quickly pressed the bleeding finger against the inner side of my left forearm. A crude regeneration pattern to stop the bleeding and ease the pain. I drew rough lines and circles, leaving bloody marks.

I focused my mind with ferocious intensity on the single purpose of activating the skill. It was far more desperate concentration than when I used to read the psychology of unruly customers.

A strange wave flashed deep inside my mind. The trigger to drag this bizarre power into reality came to me instinctively.

In a low, cracked voice, I spat out the word.

Tattoo.

Sizzle!

With a chilling sound like flesh burning, the bloodstains on my forearm wriggled on their own and burrowed beneath the skin as geometric patterns. At the same time, the pain in my cut finger faded and the bleeding stopped.

But the price was horrific.

"Keheuk, haa, haa...!"

The moment the tattoo completed, every ounce of energy in my body vanished as if sucked into a vacuum. Just engraving one tiny regeneration pattern left my legs shaking like I'd pulled an all-nighter and run a marathon, my heart pounding as if it would explode.

Knowledge about the harsh side effects and mechanics of Primal Magic flooded into my mind like data. The "my blood" I had just used was a low-quality medium with zero sorcerous value. Because I had forced low-grade blood to serve as the medium, it had devoured my life force and stamina in place of mana.

Unlike other structured magic or martial arts, this cursed Primal Magic was vicious beyond measure, consuming the user's stamina and energy on an entirely different scale.

And that wasn't the only thing. If I later used the blood of a powerful demonic beast or monster to create a tattoo? I would gain power, but a chilling intuition told me that the creature's ferocious nature or bizarre instincts might be forcibly—and perhaps permanently—branded onto my mind and body.

Fuck... What a piece of shit skill.

I caught my ragged breath and covered the bloodstained forearm with my sleeve. A fucking ability that would get me killed if discovered and felt like death even when I used it. But it was the only weapon I had to survive as a predator.

"...Excuse me."

A cautious voice came from behind me. I reflexively tensed and turned my head. A man in his forties wearing a torn suit, a woman in yoga clothes, and a young man in a delivery vest stood at the mouth of the alley. Modern "colleagues" who had fled the slaughter in the clearing.

"Thank god. You're Korean, right?"

The man in the suit approached with a friendly but clearly calculated fake smile.

"Those people left back there aren't in their right minds. For ordinary people like us to survive, shouldn't we stick together? We can find a safe place, gather information, look for work as a group..."

I clenched my hidden left hand into a fist and cut him off coldly.

"What ability did you pick?"

"Sorry? Oh, there were a lot of magic options, so I chose elemental magic. But I don't actually know how to use it yet..."

"You chose magic but don't know how to use it?"

The air in the alley froze instantly. I looked at the three dumbfounded people in turn and spoke dryly.

"Then you're no different from those lumps of meat lying on the street over there. You're just dead weight with ten stats who couldn't even beat a single passing guard."

The man's face flushed crimson then pale. The woman gasped.

"Hey, that's too harsh, young man!"

"If this were a world where you could survive by networking and holding hands, then go ahead and huddle up all you want. As for me, I'll dig through the villagers' shit if I have to just to shove a piece of bread into my own mouth."

I turned away without regret, no longer bothering with their bewildered stares.

"Don't follow me. Before I decide to use you as meat shields and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠throw you away."

I didn't wait for an answer. What I needed right now wasn't some comforting social club. I needed to recover the stamina drained by the tattoo's side effects and find bottom-tier work that would let me exploit my meager stat advantage to gather unlimited low-quality blood.

The real struggle of rolling in the filth to survive had only just begun.