The Logic of Reincarnation (2)

“Lulu~”

Although the initial rush of euphoria had subsided over time, my joy remained undiminished.

I now knew for a fact that I had reincarnated.

And if this body proved incapable of living a normal life—specifically, one where I could become a wizard—I had also found the courage to start over again.

The fact that I used to be a man was a bit of a snag, but if I could become a wizard, my previous gender was a trivial detail.

Still, it was too early to celebrate. I didn't know if this body possessed the constitution to become a wizard, nor did I know if I would be granted another life after this one.

Even if I had the confidence to endlessly repeat new lives, if the opportunity wasn't given, that would be the end of it.

“Mmm~”

But even so, joy was joy. Right now was the closest I had ever been to becoming a wizard in my entire life.

And what if I kept getting new lives? I would only draw closer and closer to my goal.

Therefore, I decided to quickly do what needed to be done.

Rattle.

I began rummaging through the room, pulling open drawers.

No matter how thrilled I was, I had to think like a wizard. While it was true that I was currently the closest I'd ever been to becoming a wizard, I couldn't be sure if I was nearing the finish line or merely chasing a mirage.

Since another life might not be guaranteed, the most ideal outcome was to become a wizard in this very body.

To do that, I needed information about this body.

I had never actually experienced being a wizard, and even if I had the potential, I couldn't know for sure. I needed to be tested and verified, and for that, I at least needed to know my own identity.

Let's see... The writing all around me is in Korean, so this must be South Korea. The calendar says 2041, too. That's the same year I died.

Unless the owner of this house was some Korea-obsessed foreigner living abroad, or a non-wizard who kept an outdated calendar on the wall, there was a high probability that the time and place weren't too far off from where I had died in my previous life.

If so, the administrative procedures wouldn't be much different. I just needed to establish my identity. This body didn't just pop out of thin air, so there must be a past, but I could figure that out later.

With that in mind, I searched the house for anything useful.

Found it.

My search yielded two items: a smartphone and a wallet. Inside the wallet was a resident registration card.

Name: Baek Sowol.

Age: 19 (legal adult).

Residence: Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Other than that, I couldn't find anything that would cause legal issues.

This should be enough to get by.

Moving on to the next step.

I immediately tested whether I had awakened.

I assumed a comfortable posture and focused inward. Although I couldn't manifest mana externally like a wizard yet, I was someone who had been capable of basic mana manipulation in my past life.

If this body was capable of awakening, I would be able to do so right now.

Slowly focusing inward, I tried to tap into a sense beyond the physical five. An inexplicable sensation began to tickle my heart.

A faint but distinct power. A sensation that some people could never feel, not even if they died and came back to life.

The power to control mana—Mana Control.

The moment I felt it, I cheered inwardly.

This is definitely the movement of mana. I've awakened!

Unable to suppress my grin, I sat in the corner of the room, giggling like a maniac for about five minutes.

Whew, calm down. Even if I've awakened, wizards are still a tiny minority.

There was no reason to make a fuss just yet. So what if I had awakened? If you actually looked for them, Awakeners were surprisingly common. There were probably over a hundred thousand of them in South Korea alone.

But wizards? There were only eleven of them among South Korea's fifty million people.

Awakeners made up about 0.2% of the population, and of those, only 0.001% were wizards.

Some said there might be more unregistered ones, but the same applied to regular Awakeners, so the ratio would remain roughly the same.

The fall is always more tragic from a higher peak.

Since nothing was certain yet, I shouldn't get ahead of myself. I needed to get tested first.

I grabbed my wallet and phone, threw on some decent clothes, and headed out.

“Ah...”

I had intended to head straight to the Awakener administration office, but once I stepped outside, I saw the sun was already setting.

I checked my phone. It was 6:11 PM.

It was too late for someone who didn't even know the local geography to go wandering around.

Well, it couldn't be helped. It wasn't a major issue, so there was no reason to be disappointed.

So, what should I do now?

My immediate task had vanished, but wasting time felt wrong.

I considered looking up more information on this "Baek Sowol," but that wasn't urgent.

If this body lacked the talent to become a wizard, I would just end up contributing to another drop in local property values anyway. If I was going to die either way, there was no point in wasting time on trivialities.

How does one become a wizard?

The standard way to confirm if someone had the constitution of a wizard was through an official test.

Since wizards themselves were involved in designing these tests, and there had never been a single case worldwide of someone testing negative but actually being a wizard, the test was highly reliable.

But they couldn't always test for wizards from the very beginning. There must have been other methods in the past.

The clearest indicator was manipulating mana outside the body... but the problem was that I didn't know how. If I had the constitution, I should be able to manipulate it, but since I didn't know if I had the constitution, I couldn't verify it.

I would find out tomorrow after the test, so I could just let it go, but thinking like a wizard, it was better to do some research beforehand.

Even if this body turned out to be a failure, I was destined to become a wizard eventually.

It was far more productive to understand the elements related to wizards than to gather information on Baek Sowol, a person who might soon become irrelevant to me.

Now that I had a way to become a wizard even if my current body lacked the natural constitution, any information I gathered would surely come in handy.

I walked over to the desk and turned on the computer. I searched for related videos on NewTube.

It was difficult to find reliable papers or data at my current level. To access those, I would at least need Baek Sowol's detailed personal information.

How was I supposed to figure out bank accounts or passwords to various accounts while stuck in this room? I could just verify all that tomorrow. For now, let's just search for general information.

And then, I regretted it.

[Let's learn about magic...]

[Did you guys know this? Apparently, this is how ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a recent wizard awakened...]

[You're seriously missing out if you don't know this! How to awaken...]

Slam!

“It's all complete garbage. They're just absolutely starved for views.”

I slammed my hand on the desk and clicked my tongue. Ninety percent of the videos I looked up were utter nonsense.

At least the full-length videos had fewer outright lies, but they either stopped at presenting vague hypotheses or just listed incredibly obvious facts.

The short-form videos made it look like they were delivering groundbreaking secrets, but the vast majority were fake.

This is why short-form videos are such a plague. I heard AI-generated content was running rampant, but to make videos without even a shred of fact-checking?

Unless they were planning to grab some quick cash and run, this was highly un-wizardly behavior. No wonder the people making these videos could never become wizards. They didn't even care about the absolute basics, like cross-referencing their sources.

On top of that, some were clearly blatant viral marketing. Anyone who fell for this stuff had no hope of becoming a wizard anyway, so I had no intention of stopping them.

“At least about ten percent of them are harmless...”

There were a few decent videos.

But even within that ten percent, most were just memes capitalizing on current events—videos cracking jokes about famous Awakeners, various guilds, and corporations.

But that didn't make them useful. They just weren't harmful, serving as nothing more than cheap entertainment.

It seemed like they all copied a single source, too. Otherwise, it would be impossible to find multiple videos with identical content, save for the tone of voice and narration.

Still, just in case, I kept digging through the videos like someone searching for a pearl in the ocean, when—

“What's this?”

I found something interesting.

[A gamer leaked military secrets because his country's tank was underpowered in-game?]

The video summarized cases where people leaked actual military secrets for the most bizarre reasons—like wanting to win an online argument, or because they felt a military vehicle they worked on was underpowered in a video game.

When I searched for it in English, I found there were actually quite a few real-world cases.

Wow. How does anyone even come up with such a bizarre idea? Leaking military secrets just to win a single online argument.

It was a concept a wise prospective wizard like me could never even fathom. Risking classified information over something so trivial.

But wait... doesn't this mean relevant information might actually get leaked online?

A possibility presented itself. A sane wizard would never leak magic like that, but wizards weren't the only ones who possessed magical knowledge.

Wizards were simply those with the physical constitution to cast magic. Explaining the underlying principles could be done by non-wizards. Even non-wizards could construct magic theories.

Therefore, the same phenomenon could apply to magic. It was entirely possible that someone out there was leaking magical theories just to win an online argument!

The conditions are simple. A site with highly aggressive users where arguments break out constantly.

One place immediately came to mind. A familiar place, too, since I had searched for information there multiple times in my past life.

South Korea's largest online community, the Gallery. Specifically, the board that dealt with hunters and Awakeners in general.

[Hunter & Awakener Minor Gallery]

Commonly known as Heon-Ma-Gal, or the Hunter Gallery. A place that covered gates, guilds, and hunters.

I immediately went there to gather information. Most of it would be lies or jokes, but a true wizard had to be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠able to sift through the noise.

I spent a considerable amount of time browsing the posts.

Naturally, the vast majority were useless spam or low-effort rants. The very few that seemed to have any substance were either bait posts or endless debates comparing different Awakener classes.

There were also a few posts that looked like stealth marketing, but the moderators quickly deleted them.

Among them, one post caught my eye.

It was a thread asking why wizards were rated ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠so highly when their actual combat power was similar to other classes. It was the perfect breeding ground for a massive online argument.

There was a high chance that someone, in their heat of passion, might have leaked actual information in a thread like this.

I clicked on the post immediately.

It was obvious bait designed to start a class war.

Naturally, the comment section was already a toxic wasteland.

It was clearly bait, but they just couldn't ignore it. Usually, you're supposed to feed trolls with silence.

But looking at what he was saying, that guy seemed to know a decent amount.

It wouldn't hurt to poke him a bit.

To trigger someone, you have to know them very well. That's the only way to find their exact trigger button. And that argument was the ultimate sore spot for wizards.

Because a wizard's raw combat power wasn't actually the strongest.

Of course, a real wizard wouldn't get angry at such slander. No matter how much meaningless criticism they faced, a wizard's value remained unchanged.

But those close to wizards might not be so detached. So, I deliberately poked the nest.

The reaction was instantaneous.

I kept gently poking him. Eventually, the argument would get so heated that a moderator would delete it, or the other ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠guy would just block me and leave.

But there was a small chance of hitting the jackpot.

And then...

Instead of throwing another tantrum or blocking me, he had simply dropped a link.

...Wait, did someone like this actually exist? Was he really leaking information over this?

Spellbound, I clicked the link.

The page that loaded was...

“Who the hell is this guy?”

Why was he suddenly linking some dead, obscure gallery? What was this guy's deal?