The Equality That Doesn't Exist
The equality that doesn't exist. Every person's goodwill springs from "leisure." That was the bitter truth I had carved into my bones after twenty-eight years of scraping along the bottom of capitalism, smoothing over countless difficult customers and staring at ledger numbers until my eyes bled. A man whose bankbook is fat and whose next meal is guaranteed can afford to be graceful. Bestowing alms on the homeless or shedding tears for another's misfortune is a luxury only the well-fed can indulge in. What if you were starving to death today? What if you stood on the cliff's edge, forced to steal someone else's bread just to stay alive? Ninety-nine point nine percent of ordinary people—including me—willingly become beasts when survival is the only law left. Selfish. Ugly. Quick to drive a knife into a neighbor's back. That was why I despised the paltry goodwill and solidarity the other "newcomers" had shown me moments ago. They still hadn't realized this world had already stripped them of every last scrap of leisure. When the gnawing hunger and biting cold arrived, that fragile sense of kinship would be the first thing to twist into fangs that tore each other apart.
I walked alone through the filthy alleys of the slums, fleeing that pit of ruin.
"……"
The outskirts of Zol Village—the so-called "dump for the fallen"—looked even worse than its name. The stench of filth and rotting wood clawed at the nose. Listless figures sat slumped along the roadside, their eyes dull and empty. They were surely people like us, dragged here years ago and broken by the world before they could adapt. No talent for martial arts or magic, no ferocity to survive among the monstrous otherworlders, no chance to seize even a single opportunity for growth. Just bodies with every stat locked at ten, barely clinging to life. I quickened my steps, trying to ignore their hollow gazes. Looking at them felt like staring at my own cursed future.
When I reached the edge of the commercial district, the first thing that hit me was the smell. Freshly baked coarse bread from the ovens. Meat sizzling in oil. My stomach growled violently. The blood I'd drawn from my finger earlier must have drained what little strength I had left; dizziness washed over me. Yet my pockets held not a single coin.
I need work.
Leisure required capital, and capital required selling my labor. I ran a cold, objective inventory of my specs. Strength: 10. Agility: 10. Hauling heavy loads or darting between tables was impossible. Only one option remained—the jobs everyone else refused. The filthiest, most repulsive work that demanded nothing but patience and a strong stomach. I passed the gleaming weapon shops and tidy restaurants, following the reek of blood into the back alleys where flies swarmed.
Before long, a massive tent and yard came into view.
Grum's Beast Dismantling Yard
Monstrous carcasses the size of bison lay scattered across the yard. Apron-clad men hacked meat from bone with heavy cleavers. Blood pooled on the ground; the stench of viscera hung thick in the air. Any normal modern person would have gagged and fled. To me, it was the perfect workplace. The most avoided three-D jobs always had the lowest barriers to entry. And here, scattered everywhere, lay the perfect medium for my Primal Magic—blood and bone, in endless supply.
I tapped my cheeks lightly, forcing my expression into the flawless, capitalist smile I had once worn for the worst clients, then stepped inside.
"Excuse me. Are you hiring?"
I bowed deeply to the largest, most intimidating man present. He slammed his blood-smeared cleaver into the cutting board and looked me up and down.
"What the hell are you? Skinny little bastard—another one of those sky-dropped foreigners, huh? This ain't a place for empty cans like you to wander around. You couldn't even lift a proper bone, so what work do you think you can do?"
"I'm not offering to haul heavy carcasses or perform skilled dismantling," I answered evenly, refusing to flinch under his open contempt. "Just the dirty work—mopping up blood, sorting discarded entrails, scrubbing grease off tools. The tedious, filthy cleanup that wastes your skilled workers' time. I'll handle it."
"……Oh?" His eyebrow twitched.
I drove the wedge deeper. "You don't even have to pay me a single coin. A crust of leftover hard bread and a corner in the warehouse to sleep—that's enough. If I'm no good, throw me out. I won't complain."
Utter dumping. No labor cost, nothing to lose. Grum stroked his beard and gave a short snort.
"At least you've got guts. Haven't seen an outsider with eyes this dead in a long while. Fine. Grab the bucket and broom in the corner and start scrubbing the floor. The smell of burst guts is getting on my nerves."
"Thank you, boss."
The work was far harder than I'd imagined. A body with every stat at ten struggled even to carry a water-filled bucket. Scraping dried blood and hauling rotting entrails sent fire through my lower back. Still, I endured in silence. My mind remained startlingly clear.
As the sun sank and the day's work wound down, I approached Grum, who sat smoking his pipe.
"Boss, Shedborax Continent is a strange place. I hear mages can shoot fire and ice. Are there people in the village who deal in 'curses' or 'tattoos'?"
"Pfft—! Koff, koff!" Grum choked on his smoke. He stared at me, incredulous. "Curses? Tattoos? What the hell kind of question is that coming from a face that looks halfway sane? Ah, don't tell me you picked that shady crap as your so-called 'gift' when you fell from the sky? Some of you outsiders go crazy and dig into that kind of filth."
When I neither confirmed nor denied it, Grum clicked his tongue and flicked ash away.
"Tsk. You stepped in deep shit. To the mana-circle crowd holed up in their towers, that stuff just looks like primitive savages playing with mud. And honestly, the efficiency is absolute garbage."
I tightened my grip on the rag. "What do you mean by 'efficiency is low'?"
"The one advantage is that even ordinary folk without mana circles can use it. But the conditions are brutal. To curse someone, you need a powerful medium—hair, blood, that sort of thing. Tattoos are the same. You have to hunt a strong magical beast, grind its blood and bones into the ink, and even then it eats the caster's stamina and life force like crazy."
Grum continued, sounding almost pitying. "Think about it. Why go through all that hassle and burn your own life just to cast one curse when you could just swing a sword and split a skull or throw a fireball? That's why, even among the natives, the only ones who bother with Primal Magic are crazy old hags in the back alleys or warriors who fight with their lives on the line."
He was right. It was neither flashy nor convenient. The process was messy and repulsive. But—
For me, it's perfect.
I cheered inwardly. Unlike elemental magic that demanded advanced calculations or swordsmanship that required carving bone through endless training, Primal Magic could overturn the physical limits of a stat-10 body as long as the medium was available. And look where I was standing. While mopping the floor today, I had carefully collected the blood of every beast we dismantled—horned boars, low-grade fang wolves. Several sharp bone fragments already sat in my pocket. To others this was a trash heap. To me, it was a free item warehouse.
"Thank you for the explanation, boss. Still, it's my lifeline. I have to make it work somehow."
"Tsk. Don't run off tomorrow. If you're done cleaning, open the side door to the warehouse and sleep there. I left some bread and a water jug by the threshold—eat and get some rest."
Night had fallen over the yard. Carrying a bucket of blood-tinged water, I stepped into the shabby warehouse. The air smelled of dust. I collapsed onto the floor, tore into the cold, hard bread like an animal, and swallowed. It stuck in my throat, but that didn't matter. This was the necessary price for the leisure I sought.
Once the bread was gone, I pulled a sharpened fragment of low-grade fang wolf bone from my pocket. The searing pain and exhaustion I'd felt when using my own blood earlier. If I replaced that with a magical beast's blood and bone, I could push my sluggish body beyond its limits.
In the pitch-black corner where even moonlight failed to reach, I gripped the fang-wolf bone shard and drove it without hesitation into my right thigh.
"Ugh……!"
A groan of pain escaped, but I clenched my teeth and twisted the shard deeper into the flesh. The sickening sensation of skin tearing open. Using the bone fragment itself as both brush and needle instead of ordinary ink, I poured the beast's blood from the bucket generously over the wound.
A beast's trail, carved to endure tomorrow's grueling labor and survive this wilderness.
Tattoo.
The moment I whispered the skill name, a horrifying reaction began.
Hisssss—!
"Kuh, kuh-heuk……!"
The beast's blood covering my skin burrowed beneath the torn flesh like a starving parasite, carving geometric patterns on its own. My entire body locked up from the agony of living flesh burning. But the true horror wasn't the physical pain.
[Awooooooooo—!]
Deep inside my skull, a chilling wolf howl struck my eardrums like an auditory hallucination. The beast's savage ferocity, flowing in through blood and bone, began invading my brain along my veins. An insane urge to smash through the warehouse door and sink my teeth into someone's throat clawed at my sanity—an impulse I had never felt before.
The real side effect of Primal Magic. The terrifying realization that, in exchange for power, I might be devoured by the beast's own nature. I bit down hard enough to split my lips and draw blood, desperately suppressing the roar trying to tear free.
Using my body and mind as collateral, the most desperate and primal magic required for survival was being brutally etched into my flesh.