Chapter Content
Chapter 2: Neo-Joseon (2)
Three years.
That was how long it took Lee Hyena, who had grown up being called a genius, to summon a spirit for the first time.
At the time, it was a fairly record-breaking achievement.
Among the miracles of religion, the miracle of summoning a spirit was not something just anyone could do.
No matter how well one knew the doctrines of the religion, without spirit resonance above a certain level, it was impossible to summon a spirit.
That was precisely why Lee Hyena was called a genius.
Not only did she possess an extraordinary mind capable of understanding the complex doctrines of Confucianism, but she also had outstanding spirit resonance.
And now, right before her eyes, something utterly unbelievable was happening.
A small red fireball, no bigger than a palm, cheerfully spun around in circles.
That was unmistakably a Confucian spirit—‘Fire Lord.’
‘Just how did he summon a spirit…….’
In theory, it was possible.
Religious spirits were beings that could be called forth through resonance alone, as long as one knew the doctrine.
But that man had only just manifested into the world, a person from the past who did not even know what a miracle was.
And someone like that could accurately write the extremely complex Confucian spirit summoning incantation?
‘This is…….’
Countless hypotheses crossed Lee Hyena’s mind.
At last, to confirm her theory, she forced her lips—reluctant to part—to move and asked,
“How on earth…… did you do it?”
---
‘How did I do it?’
Lee Hajin could not answer the question easily.
Because, quite literally, it had just happened.
As naturally as if he had been able to do it from the beginning.
When Lee Hyena suddenly began gesturing at empty air a moment ago, something had started to become visible.
Some kind of ‘characters’ appearing in midair, following the trail of her hand.
‘Is that how Confucian miracles are performed?’
The characters she wrote flowed together into a large circular shape, spinning around the room.
As he quietly watched them, he realized something.
‘What the hell, I can read this?’
Though they were characters he had never seen before in his life, he could understand what they meant.
Interpreted into the language of this world, they read as follows:
『This unworthy yet filial daughter of the 31st generation of the Taeseong Lee Clan dares to inquire of her ancestors regarding her wish. Please, once more shed the flesh you have taken upon yourself…….』
She was carefully writing a petition, politely pleading for them to return to the afterlife.
While her mouth spoke with manners as if courtesy were something she had never heard of, her hands were doing something completely different.
Finding that somewhat irritating, he reached out and casually brushed away one of the characters drifting near him.
‘……?’
It erased.
Thinking he might have imagined it, he erased another character, but it disappeared just as easily.
“Then, please return safely, honored elder.”
It seemed Lee Hyena had finished writing her characters, as she bowed her head deeply.
However, nothing happened.
“……?”
A question mark appeared on her previously impassive face.
In a way, it was only natural.
Because Lee Hajin had erased several characters, turning the sentence into something grammatically nonsensical.
Lee Hyena tried the same thing several more times after that, but each attempt was easily ruined.
Then, suddenly, she began writing a sentence that felt different.
『O spirit-bound existence. There is a will held by the one contracted to you, so heed the call of your contractor now…….』
‘This time, is she trying to summon something?’
The language she used was different from before, and the style was different as well.
It felt extremely businesslike, even slightly coercive.
‘Hmm…… I think I can imitate this.’
But there was a problem.
The sentence she wrote was meant to summon a ‘contracted existence.’
‘That’s not a big issue.’
If he could not summon a contracted being, then he could simply summon one to contract with.
This time, Lee Hajin moved his own hand and began writing characters.
It was something he had never done before, yet strangely, there was no hesitation.
Moreover, he slightly modified the original sentence, even adding something entirely new that had not been there before.
Flowery phrasing that conveyed ‘familiarity.’
This was a kind of rule he realized as he wrote.
Perhaps miracles became stronger when written in an appropriate style.
That might have been why the miracle meant to send him back had been written in an extremely polite tone.
‘Confucian miracles have to be polite, then.’
With that thought, he wrote out the characters for summoning a spirit.
‘Then a spirit summoning incantation should be written like this.’
He finished the sentence not in the businesslike, coercive style Lee Hyena had used, but in a tone overflowing with familiarity, and then placed a period at the end.
And the result was exactly as he had hoped.
Perhaps even a bit excessive.
〈Hello! Hello!〉
A cheerful voice of a spirit made of fire rang out.
To be precise, it was not sound, but a sensation of being spoken to directly inside his head.
He reached out and gently stroked the spirit.
It was clearly burning, yet it was not hot.
〈Nice to meet you! Nice to meet you!〉
At his touch, the spirit giggled like a child and spun around restlessly in circles.
‘Everything’s fine, but it’s kind of noisy.’
As he observed the spirit for a while, he heard Lee Hyena’s voice.
“How on earth…… did you do it?”
Unlike before, her expression was filled with confusion, though that same boldness still lingered.
To that, Lee Hajin answered indifferently.
“I don’t know.”
He shrugged his shoulders once and continued,
“Anyway, go on and finish what you were doing. I’ll stay still now.”
With that, he raised both arms, signaling that he would not do anything.
But she simply stood there, staring blankly.
“What are you doing? Weren’t you trying to send me back?”
“…….”
“You said you were busy. This body is a valuable one too, so you need to retrieve it.”
“Th-that is…….”
After that, she was unable to open her mouth for quite some time. Then, clenching her fist, she finally spoke.
“I apologize.”
“For what?”
“If you are the younger brother of Archmage Lee Hayun, and the sibling of Great-Great-Grandfather Lee Hamin…… then you would certainly not be an ordinary person……. I was far too reckless.”
As she said that, she bent deeply at the waist.
The way she instantly reverted to a respectful attitude was impressive enough to inspire admiration.
“Then let me ask you just one thing.”
Seeing her now obedient demeanor, Lee Hajin asked the question that had been bothering him for a while.
“What is this body?”
He looked down at his hand.
It felt strange somehow, yet oddly familiar.
It was definitely not his original body.
But what was this inexplicable sense of familiarity?
“That body belongs to Great-Great-Grandfather Lee Hamin.”
At her answer, Lee Hajin slowly moved both hands and muttered,
‘This is my older brother’s body?’
“To be precise, it is a body created based on Great-Great-Grandfather’s remains.”
‘Remains…….’
Come to think of it, his older brother was also a person from over a hundred years ago like himself. There was no way he could still be alive.
As he briefly reflected on his brother’s death, Lee Hyena asked,
“Is there anything you remember, perhaps?”
“Memories?”
“Yes. Since you have taken on Great-Great-Grandfather’s body, I wondered if you might also possess the memories contained within it.”
Memories contained within the body.
Now that she mentioned it, something vague had been hovering at the edge of his mind for a while, as if it were about to surface but never quite did.
‘Are these my older brother’s memories……?’
The moment he dwelled on that fuse of thought—
Suddenly, thoughts burst forth like a bomb going off, surging wildly through my mind.
‘Ugh…….’
A colossal extraterrestrial whale fell from the sky into the ocean.
The tsunami born from that impact swept across the Earth, tearing away the veil that had covered the entire world.
What had once been myths became history, and the lost surreal beyond reality returned.
Countless fragments of memory flooded into my head like a tidal wave.
Along with them, innumerable images and sounds twisted together into a chaotic vortex—
Until, at last, the eye of a gigantic creature appeared.
An unfathomably distant space, impossible to place.
A long, narrow pupil, its back to the void, stared straight at me.
‘This is…….’
And then it vanished into the darkness.
Reeling from the successive visions, I clutched my head for a moment.
‘Now…… I get it…….’
The world that had suddenly fallen into chaos, and my older brother’s desperate struggle within it.
By witnessing that, I understood why the world had become this way.
What it was that my brother had fought against his entire life, and what kind of calamities awaited the world ahead.
And even what I myself could do in the future.
‘The ability I possess is…….’
I realized a fact so shocking it left me aghast.
It was also the reason I had been able to see the power called miracles just moments ago.
I possessed the power my brother had held—‘Eyes that Perceive.’
A tremendous ability that allowed one to directly see all things surreal.
But that alone would not have allowed me to erase Lee Hyena’s miracle script.
What made that possible was another awakened ability that the younger sibling possessed.
An utterly absurd power called the ‘Manipulating Hand,’ capable of handling all things surreal.
‘So that means this is…….’
A single term surfaced from my brother’s memories.
A word that had existed only in theory.
‘Surreal Awakening.’
The unique awakening born from the fusion of my brother’s and my abilities.
The one and only awakening that could both see and manipulate all things surreal.
I realized that I possessed such an outrageous power.
“This land is currently in crisis.”
Beside me, Lee Hyena, who had been silently observing, cautiously began to speak.
With a face hardened by resolve, she continued,
“The Central Plains, which sealed their borders with the Ten-Thousand-Li Great Wall for nearly a hundred years, are showing signs of rising again. And in the Far Eastern islands that were collapsing under constant disasters, the entire nation is uniting around newly born forces.”
Stories of neighboring countries.
Just like this land, they too had not escaped unscathed—but they were now slowly regaining their strength.
“And that’s not all. Megacorporations wielding absolute power are trying to swallow this country whole. This land was once called cursed for its lack of natural resources, but in truth, it is filled with relics from the mythic age.”
No.
Those were trivial problems.
Compared to the fate that was yet to come.
“If you truly wish to return to the underworld, Elder, I will do so for you. But if you wish to live a second life here…….”
A second life.
My previous life had been one filled with regrets.
I had died absurdly, far too easily.
“Please help me.”
As Lee Hyena voiced her plea tinged with hope, she thought,
‘Perhaps…….’
Though she had lived through countless hardships and learned not to trust people easily—
‘If it’s this person…….’
The younger brother of a legendary hero.
And the elder brother of the first Archmage.
Perhaps he could overcome the current crisis, upon which the very survival of the world depended.
With that thought, she bowed her head.
“Please stand with me and establish justice on this land.”
‘Justice……?’
Watching her quietly, I let out a small snort of laughter inside.
‘She really is his great-great-granddaughter—she even acts the same.’
My older brother, good-natured to the core, lived his life helping others as if bound by some obligation.
Even on the day his younger sibling died in an accident, he had been out delivering coal briquettes.
A man who lived to uphold what he believed was ‘right.’
That summed up my brother in a single line.
‘If I’d followed him to carry coal briquettes that day, maybe I wouldn’t have died.’
Recalling the past, I looked at Lee Hyena.
Those gentle yet resolute eyes.
Looking closely, they really did resemble my brother’s.
“Will you help me?”
My answer was brief.
“No.”
Perhaps my brother would have helped without hesitation.
But I was a completely different kind of person.
If anything, I might have had more in common with my younger sister, whom I used to fight with the moment our eyes met.
“…….”
For a moment, confusion flickered across Lee Hyena’s face at my reply.
But she quickly masked it with practiced composure.
“Even so, I won’t return to the underworld either.”
“I understand.”
Had she judged the situation quickly?
Surprisingly calm, she accepted it and asked,
“Then what will you do now?”
“For now, I need to go outside.”
At that, Lee Hyena took a plastic business card out of her pocket.
“Then allow me to introduce myself again.”
The card she handed over bore not the name Lee Hyena, but an entirely different identity.
“I am a fixer active in Seoul. My name is ‘River.’”
“A fixer…….”
“Someone who brokers various jobs in the underworld. I don’t use my true name, Lee Hyena, outside. It would be best if you used an alias as well, Elder.”
Knowing someone’s true name allowed many things.
When performing miracle-like abilities, a true name functioned as a kind of coordinate.
That was what I knew from my brother’s memories.
“I would like to help you adapt to this world until you’re settled, but doing so would draw unnecessary attention.”
I agreed with that to an extent.
It seemed best that no one knew about what had happened in this room today.
“So what I recommend is—”
“No.”
I deliberately cut her off.
Because there was already a place I had decided to go, drawn from my brother’s memories.
“Is someone called Boss Kim still alive?”
“Boss Kim…….”
Quickly grasping my intent, Lee Hyena handed me a small card and continued,
“You’re planning to go to another fixer, aren’t you? It would’ve been nice if I could have given you work directly, but that’s unfortunate. I hesitate to say this, but most of the jobs I handle are only possible for veterans. Still, Boss Kim seems like a fairly suitable choice.”
When I took it, a holographic string containing brief location information appeared.
“I’ve loaded enough fare for transportation onto the card.”
I nodded lightly in thanks, grabbed some outerwear, and headed for the door.
Then I heard Lee Hyena’s voice from behind me.
“Until we meet again, please stay well…….”
Lee Hyena, my Older Brother’s great-great-granddaughter.
No—Fixer River.
I was certain we would meet again someday.
---
As I stepped outside, a night sky like a powered-off monitor greeted me.
Only after breathing in the cold air thick with fine dust did it truly sink in that I was in Seoul.
“Whew…….”
The city glittered like stars in the distance.
A forest of towering skyscrapers reaching high into the sky, and beneath them, a concrete jungle densely packed and buzzing.
In a world where the term light pollution had become obsolete from overuse, countless lights illuminated the night.
It looked beautiful on the surface, but this was no longer the Seoul I once knew.
To survive in a city that had turned into a wilderness of survival of the fittest, there was only one way.
‘Gain power.’
Power that no one could ignore.
And here, power and wealth were synonymous.
That was why choosing my first goal was not difficult at all.
‘I need money.’
With that, I turned my steps toward the dark back alleys of the city.