Ties from a Previous Life (10)
What… just happened…?
I couldn't make sense of any of it. I'd moved my mana on pure instinct and somehow finished the exchange, but what had actually happened—and what had made the attack fire at all—was a complete mystery.
So I thought like a mage.
I had just used a power I didn't understand. And through that power, I had landed a real hit.
The principle? I could figure that out later. Right now, getting out of this mattered more. My opponent was still reeling from an attack he never saw coming. If I followed up, I actually had a chance.
“…So you still had something left in the tank…?”
If my body had been anywhere near normal, maybe. But I'd been half-dead a moment ago. There was no way I was back to full strength.
“No matter how gifted you are, you can't win. You already know that, don't you?”
He wasn't wrong. There was no real path to victory. What had just happened wasn't deliberate resistance—it was an accident born from my body moving on its own.
If anything, the situation had gotten worse. If I'd kept that power hidden and used it after being kidnapped, I might at least have had a shot at escaping. Lee Jihyeon seemed to have gotten away, so even if I were taken, it wouldn't have been the absolute worst outcome.
By revealing my hand, all I'd done was make sure he wouldn't let his guard down again—and tighten the control he had over me.
“Give it up. Even if that woman brings reinforcements, it's already too late. There's more than one entrance, you know.”
“Shut up…”
“Resisting will only make things harder for you. I don't know what the client wants with you, but they didn't know you were a mage either. They'll take what they want from your parents and send you home. It's not just about money—there's a whole web of other interests involved—so your safety is guaranteed. So stop. Quit getting angry and give it up.”
He must have already written me off as a caught fish, because he was volunteering far too much information.
From what he was saying, I could piece together a fair amount about Baek Sowol's parents. This wasn't simply a rich household.
Money is a one-and-done transaction. That's why kidnappers so often kill the victim the moment the deposit clears. The victim knows almost everything—their identities, the route, their faces. Why would they hand someone like that back in one piece?
In the past, when kidnapping-murder carried a heavier sentence, there were more cases that went the other way. These days, not returning the victim was far more common.
Mystical tracking methods made it almost impossible to stay free if the victim was still alive—unless you fled the country or had serious backing. So more often than not, they simply never let them go.
“So money isn't the real goal. If it were, they'd kill me the second the deposit hit.”
“You already know that better than I do. I never took you for stupid. If it were just about money, why go through the trouble of a kidnapping? This only works if you make it home alive.”
If this had been nothing more than a nouveau riche family with deep pockets, he wouldn't be talking like this.
Which meant it wasn't money… it was power. What kind, I couldn't say. A member of the National Assembly, maybe. A high-ranking official. A corporate chairman, or someone from a chaebol family.
If the client demanded something other than cash and returned Baek Sowol unharmed in exchange—then yes, he could be certain they'd send me back in one piece.
People that high up had to care about public perception. Once they committed to something, walking it back wasn't easy. If they carried out whatever was asked of them after the kidnapping and I came home intact, they couldn't reverse course.
Of course, if Baek Sowol actually died, they'd say to hell with all of that and go full UFC. So the point was: I could get home alive.
I'd gotten what I needed to know.
“So give it up. That last hit was pure luck. It's impossible for you right now. Not because you lack talent—you just haven't had enough time to grow. A few months of internet restrictions at worst, and you'll be home. You won't want for anything. They won't dare treat you poorly.”
I had no particular urge to argue. If he was telling the truth, further resistance was meaningless.
The odds of winning were already low, and if his words held, I'd be treated reasonably well wherever they took me. Most of the people who'd gone through political exile, fallen from high office, or fled into asylum still lived as the upper class wherever they landed.
It would only be a few months. Fight back and they'd clamp down harder; stay quiet and they'd at least guarantee the basics.
With the odds this absurdly stacked against me, staying still was the mage's choice.
And yet… why was there still this faint, nagging sense of wrongness?
A sensation I couldn't name, washing through me as the strength drained from my limbs. My head understood everything perfectly. Somehow my body refused to follow. It wouldn't move the way I wanted—it kept trying to do something on its own.
This has never… happened before…?
It was a little different from when I'd met Lee Jihyeon. Back then, it had felt like my emotions were syncing with my past life. Right now it felt more like I was piloting a game character.
I was the one moving, the one operating, the one adjusting the controls—and yet it wasn't me. I couldn't fully read the state I was in. Every so often, it seemed to move on its own.
What do I do?
I had to choose. Hand it over to my body, or make the rational call. Either path carried risk.
There was upside, too—but there was risk. What I needed to weigh was the value of the return against the value of the risk.
How much did I stand to gain? How much did I stand to lose? If I trusted my body, attacked, and succeeded? The upside was immediate escape. No complications at all.
And if I failed? The risk was… escape getting a little harder?
Wait.
Now that I think about it… there's barely any difference, is there?
The risk? Even if I failed, they couldn't kill me. They couldn't torture me, either. At worst: resistance was severe, so we significantly restricted her freedom—that was the full extent of what they could do.
Life would get a lot more inconvenient, but I wasn't someone who couldn't endure that much. I was the kind of person who'd considered spending years as a slave if it meant becoming a mage.
And the return was enormous.
Almost no risk. Massive upside.
I handed my body over to that unknown power.
Woooooom—
I still had no idea why it felt like this. Everything about it defied understanding. For a mage, that was a bad sign—the incomprehensible was something a mage was supposed to keep at a distance.
But refusing to use something just because you didn't understand it yet wasn't the way of a mage either.
Long before Newton discovered gravity, humanity had been using it just fine. And the person who actually explained the principle of gravity came centuries after Newton—Einstein.
Not knowing something didn't mean you couldn't use it.
So I let the mana flow however it wanted to flow.
“Foolish! Do you really think you can win like this?”
The assassin finally caught on. Calling it a stupid move, he closed the distance.
He meant to subdue me. His hand reached for my throat—choke off the oxygen, put me under.
Then the impossible happened.
“…What did you just do?”
The closer his hand got, the slower it became. Panicking, he shoved harder. His hand finally closed around my neck—and that was all it did.
No matter how hard he tried to squeeze, nothing changed in his grip.
“What… the hell is this…?”
The man hurriedly checked his own body. He clenched and unclenched his other hand. It worked fine. Then he looked at the hand locked around my throat and scowled. He tried to squeeze again. Nothing. As if something vast were pushing back against him.
“…Physical resistance? That can't be right.”
If some kind of physical barrier were in place, the ideal design would keep anything from making contact at all. This wasn't a technique meant to guarantee physical protection.
So why was he being obstructed?
“Time… is slowing down…?”
He answered his own question.
Wheeeeeee—
He wrenched his arm free and retreated three full steps. He'd moved so fast the air tore with a sharp crack.
He drew a dagger from inside his coat and flicked it lightly. Not enough force to kill—just enough to wound. As the blade neared my body, it began to slow.
I wasn't about to stand there and take it. I raised my arm to block. The edge nicked me where it touched, and blood welled up—but everything moved with glacial slowness, like footage from a high-speed camera.
I pulled my hand free and struck the flat of the blade. The dagger spun away. The impact left my palm stinging.
That settled it. This only slowed time.
Physical force still transferred normally.
“Nngh…”
Of course, none of that meant my body was in good shape.
“…Looks like you're still far from recovered. If you'd awakened sooner, you might actually have won.”
“…Do you know what this is?”
“You think I wouldn't? It's a unique ability. You pour out mana with no particular technique and produce a grotesque effect like that—what else could it be?”
A unique ability… So that was it. I hadn't known. Now I did. That was enough.
“So what's your move? Unfortunately, you don't look like you're in any condition to run.”
He was rattled, but he was still reading the situation calmly. A variable had exploded in his face, and he'd decided he could still handle it.
“Is that right? I don't see it that way.”
Unfortunately for you, you've already lost.
I didn't come here alone.
“…Ha.”
He thought it through and arrived at the critical realization.
To catch me, he'd let Lee Jihyeon go. She was an A-rank hunter with energy left to run—she would have reached the entrance some time ago. She would have explained the situation. And if I never showed up? They would come looking. With people. An A-rank hunter's word wasn't something you dismissed as fantasy, so they'd come in numbers.
The moment they arrived, he lost. My condition was a mess—but his was only better by comparison. He wasn't whole either.
“I can hold out now.”
And now I had the power to do exactly that. Ten minutes. If I could last just ten minutes… I could walk out of here alive.
I watched him with a thin, cold smile. He seemed to grasp the shift and settled into a stance.
The board had flipped. Until now, I had been the one who needed to break him. Now he was the one who had to break me.
The fight resumed.
“So… she went in through here?”
“Yes. That's right.”
“Tsk. Of all times to be inside when something like this blows up.”
“Tell me about it. If things have already gone south in there, this is going to get messy.”
At that same moment, at the C-Rank Gate, two hunters of A-rank or higher stepped through the entrance.
And then—
“No, even so, the two of us going in alone would be—”
“If he's really strong enough to hurt a hunter like you, we won't fare any better. We don't even know how much stamina he has left—”
“Baek Sowol is in danger!”
“That doesn't mean we can just—”
“Hurry! Someone is about to be kidnapped right now!”
Near the entrance, the two of them found Lee Jihyeon shouting at the top of her lungs.
“…Hey.”
“Yes.”
“Something's gone wrong, hasn't it?”
“Yes.”
They started moving at once.