Chapter 2
Chapter 2
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: Doppelgänger
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The mana circuit in my body was fine, and I had no trouble connecting to the device to send a signal.
It seemed the phone had been damaged in the blast.
*Right. It’d be stranger if it wasn’t broken after I stopped an explosion that big.*
With a sigh, Haon put the phone away and headed for the exit. Since I’d come in uninvited, I decided to leave.
As I opened the lab door, something caught on the bottom.
*What’s this?*
Looking down, I saw the body of a woman. Her face was hidden by her hair, and a pool of blood had formed under the back of her head.
My face went pale. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them. That was it.
I didn’t feel sick, and my legs didn’t give out.
Two years of war had changed this timid, fearful scientist.
*She hasn’t been dead long.*
On high alert, I peeked outside the door. No one was there.
*Whoever did this couldn’t have gotten far. A remnant of the terrorists?*
I tried to calm my racing heart, then froze.
*This woman… why does she look so familiar?*
I carefully brushed away the hair half-covering the corpse’s face.
As the bloodless face was revealed, my own filled with shock.
“That’s… me…?”
The dead woman had the exact same face as me.
The same brown bob, the same brown eyes.
The mole under her left ear and the faint mark on her right index finger.
Even the gunshot scar on her right thigh was chillingly identical.
On top of that, the name embroidered on her lab coat was ‘Eun Haon’.
*Am I in REM sleep? Am I dreaming right now?*
The scene was so unreal my mind couldn’t process it. No matter how I looked at it, the dead woman before me was myself.
*It feels strange, like I’m looking at my own corpse. But…*
The tight, thigh-slit mini-dress ‘Eun Haon’ was wearing was something I would never wear.
The high heels, red lipstick, flashy nail polish, and the strong scent of perfume and cigarettes were the same.
*She’s different from me.*
But to have the same face, name, and even profession…
*A doppelgänger? Or a clone created through mana engineering?*
My gaze shifted to ‘Eun Haon’s’ forehead. There was one more thing that bothered me.
*She was shot.*
The bullet hole in her forehead was distinct.
The terrorists were all mana engineers, so they rarely used guns. Not unless their phone batteries or mana ran out.
*I don’t know what happened, but I need to find the others first.*
Just as I thought that and began to stand up…
Suddenly, the body burst into flames. There was no smoke, no sparks.
“Wh-what?”
I jumped back, startled. The body was instantly engulfed in flames.
“B-Blue! Find a fire extinguisher!”
“Aaaah!”
As I panicked and scrambled around, the flames swelled, and the body vanished without a trace.
Not even a scorch mark or a bloodstain remained on the pristine white floor.
I stared blankly at the spot where the body had been. Not that it would bring the corpse back.
*Was I hallucinating?*
Just as I was doubting my eyes, a breeze rustled my hair.
*Huh?* I looked up to see the lab door sliding shut.
*…When did it open? No one came in.*
As I stood there, dazed by the series of incomprehensible events, someone suddenly sprang from the shadows beside the door.
“Wha-what, huh!”
“Hey, Doc.”
My shock at the surreal sight was fleeting. Recognizing the familiar voice and face, the tension left me, and I felt a wave of emotion.
“Juyeol!”
On the verge of tears, I threw my arms around my precious childhood friend who had come to find me.
The next thing I knew, I was grabbed by the scruff of my neck and thrown to the floor.
“Agh!”
I clutched my aching back, a look of shock on my face.
“Ju-Juyeol?”
“What the hell is this new act?”
He brushed off his clothes as if disgusted.
“Juyeol. Wh-why are you doing this?”
Bewildered, I asked, tentatively reaching out a hand.
Disgust filled his dark eyes. He knelt and shoved a gun under my chin.
“Why the hell are you calling me that? Did you major in pissing people off?”
The sharp scent of gunpowder made my heart plummet.
“Hey, Dr. Eun.”
He scoffed, pressing the muzzle harder against my chin.
“You didn't even bat an eye when you got a bullet in your leg. Suddenly pretending to be scared?”
“N-no. I cried a lot back then, too. Don't you remember? Juyeol. I-I'm scared.”
He let out an irritated sigh at my tearful, rambling words.
“What the hell are you talking about? Did you experiment on your own brain? And you look like a beggar today.”
With trembling eyes, I watched him lower the gun and stand up.
*Come to think of it, it looked like he jumped out of the shadows. Was I imagining things?*
Even besides that, something was off.
My childhood friend was tall with broad shoulders, but not *this* tall. His body, packed with hard muscle, was also unfamiliar.
The man before me wore tight, all-black clothing that revealed the contours of his body, along with a black harness and belt.
A goblin emblem was emblazoned on his chest, and he even had a gun and a knife attached to his harness.
It was the kind of special-ops gear Juyeol would never wear.
And his kind, gentle demeanor was gone, replaced by an unbelievable roughness.
He seemed like a different person with the same face. Just like the ‘Eun Haon’ who had disappeared.
“Are, are you Juyeol's doppelgänger too?”
“Fuck. What the hell is this act?”
“I guess so. My Juyeol doesn't swear.”
*Bang!*
Before I could finish, the crack of a gunshot assaulted my eardrums, and a bullet embedded itself at my feet.
“Waaah!”
My shoulders shot up. Pale-faced, I scooted backward on the floor.
“Stop saying my name. It’s disgusting.”
As the man aimed the gun at me with a menacing expression, I pressed myself flat against the wall, on the verge of tears.
I think I bumped a button on the wall, but with a gun in my face, I didn’t have the luxury of caring.
“Th-then what should I call you!”
“Just call me Ghost like you always do!”
“Ghost?”
*Ghost?* As I muttered in a daze, the blinds covering the lab wall slid up.
The floor-to-ceiling window it concealed was revealed, displaying the city’s nightscape.
Mesmerized by the twinkling lights behind me, I turned to look at the glass.
“…Huh?”
Outside the window was the night view of Gimpo, something I hadn’t seen in two years.
The Gimpo from before the war, with no collapsed buildings or smoke in sight.
“What is this?”
But it wasn’t exactly the same as the Gimpo I remembered. The atmosphere felt different, too.
In particular, the Gimpo Institute of Technology, one of Gimpo's landmarks, was gone. In its place stood the imposing Gwonyoung Rehabilitation Center.
This wasn’t the city I knew.
As I slowly pieced together everything that had happened, a realization struck me like a bolt of lightning.
*Dimensional travel!*
Unaware that blood was dripping from my side, I staggered to my feet.
I’d never considered that this could be another dimension. It was only natural.
It was possible to collect and use residual mana that naturally flowed from other dimensions, but there had been no successful cases of direct travel to another dimension.
It was widely considered an impossible experiment, and dozens of projects had been scrapped before they even began.
But now, I, a mana engineer from GIT, had become the first to reach another universe.
My shoulders trembled with exhilaration. I raised my phone high, not even hearing the *click* from behind me.
“Above Mana! There are People!”
*Bang!*
“Aaaah!”
Startled by another bullet landing at my feet, I frantically stamped them.
“Wh-why again…!”
I turned around, my face crumpled in distress, to find the man glaring at me, dumbfounded.
“Looks like you hurt your head, so why are you bleeding from your side?”
“I…”
Facing the man, I was at a loss for words.
Now that I recognized this was an unfamiliar place, looking at him brought a strange mix of relief and emptiness.
The man before me was probably Woo Juyeol, but he wasn’t the ‘Juyeol’ I knew.
Judging by the large signs outside, even the name of this city—so similar yet different from Gimpo—wasn’t Gimpo.
In an instant, I had lost my home and my friend. My heart ached.
“This is annoying. I didn’t come here to trade words, so cut the crap and talk.”
The face of her kind, smiling best friend superimposed itself over his crooked scowl, then crumbled away.
“Ab-about what?”
“I brought the item, just like you asked.”
Juyeol took a black leather pouch from inside his jacket and opened it.
A fist-sized golden orb, shining like the moon, was revealed. My eyes widened.
*It’s a Mana Core!*
What he held was the very Mana Core the terrorists were after and the mana engineers were protecting.
It was a natural energy source, mana from the air condensed into a fist-sized gem, usable for various purposes.
“You said you'd tell me if I brought the Awakening Sphere. Now talk.”
It seemed they called Mana Cores 'Awakening Spheres' here.
I desperately needed that Awakening Sphere. I needed it to quickly fix my broken mana engineering tool—my phone—and smoothly synchronize the dimensional data.
But the ‘Eun Haon’ he was looking for wasn’t me.
I hesitated, then said tentatively.
“I am Eun Haon, but I'm not the ‘Eun Haon’ you know.”