Chapter Content
Chapter 3: Ghostcatcher
The unmanned subway came to a stop at the station.
After getting off the train, I, Lee Hajin, looked around and fell briefly into thought.
‘So this is Hongdae Station.’
Coming to a familiar place after a long time felt similar to meeting an old friend.
Because I knew its previous appearance so well, the changes stood out all the more.
Hongdae Entrance Station, now bearing the unfamiliar name of ‘Sector 14-9,’ was being neglected and slowly decaying, unlike its once clean appearance.
The station walls in particular were filthy, like a garbage dump.
Under flickering lights, all kinds of illegal advertisements were plastered everywhere.
「Recruiting electric-field surveillance hacker agents」
「We rescue unregistered fantasy creatures」
「Cybernetic body procedures finished in 5 minutes, free consultation」
「Do you need Miracles? 24-hour remote clergy on standby」
As I was examining the wall, I stopped when I noticed one particular phrase.
「Artificial Meat Hand Dumplings」
An advertisement with nothing but the name of a food written on it.
I peeled it off the wall, slipped it into my pocket, and moved on.
When I exited the station, android taxis were lined up neatly on the pitch-black road.
I got into the taxi at the very front, and the android seated in the driver’s seat spoke in a clear mechanical voice.
[Where shall I take you?]
Instead of answering, I handed over the dumpling shop advertisement.
After taking it, the android ran a brief calculation and then set the vehicle in motion.
[I will take you there quickly and safely.]
As the taxi moved, I closed my eyes to organize my thoughts.
A new world, a new body, and new abilities.
Above all, I needed to understand in more detail exactly what kind of ability I possessed.
I recalled my Older Brother’s memories.
There, I discovered one unfamiliar term.
‘Surreal Awakening.’
An ability to read and handle all surreal realities.
I couldn’t yet fully grasp what it truly was, but I clearly understood that it was an incredible power.
‘I must never let this be discovered.’
At least until I gained the strength to protect my own body, I had to thoroughly conceal this ability.
If I acted recklessly, I would end up as an experimental subject in some corporation’s laboratory.
‘I’ll need something to package myself with.’
Since I had decided to operate in this city’s back alleys, I couldn’t avoid introducing my abilities in some way.
For example, the frames called ‘positions,’ such as hacker or gunner.
‘What would be best.’
The first thing that came to mind was a clergyman.
Those who performed Miracles and commanded otherworldly spirits.
But pretending to be a clergyman came with far too many inconveniences.
Not only did I have to strictly observe various religious rites, but depending on the situation, offerings were also required.
‘Then a spirit mage who handles spirits…….’
There were two kinds of spirits.
‘Otherworldly spirits’ summoned from the realms of various religions, and ‘elemental spirits’ that resided in the reality we lived in.
Usually, the term spirit mage referred to those who handled the latter, elemental spirits.
Disguising myself as a spirit mage who controlled such beings wasn’t a bad idea.
But if that were the case…….
‘It’s better to pretend to be a mage.’
After all, to handle elemental spirits, one had to understand Magic.
Just as summoning otherworldly spirits required doctrinal knowledge.
Moreover, when it came to hiding my true nature, a mage seemed far better than a spirit mage.
Magic was used extremely commonly here, yet knowledge of Magic itself was passed down very secretly.
As such, if I introduced myself as a mage, I felt I would attract less suspicion when using a wide variety of abilities.
‘Besides, this body…….’
Even to my unaccustomed eyes, the mana flowing through my Older Brother’s body was astonishingly smooth.
‘Was Magic our family’s lineage? Even Lee Hayun ended up becoming an Archmage.’
The problem lay in the formulas used to realize Magic.
There was no way to learn magic formulas except by being taught.
I rummaged through my Older Brother’s memories once more.
If he had learned Magic, I could recall and use it.
But there were no significant gains.
‘This man completely cut himself off from Magic.’
To have never learned Magic with a body possessing such talent.
My Older Brother, who had been single-minded even in the past, seemed to have stubbornly clung only to the ‘sword’ even in the future.
‘Seriously, he was stubborn to the point of foolishness.’
For now, I didn’t want to use a sword like him.
This was a world where anyone’s head would explode equally the moment a bullet hit them between the brows.
No matter how much you reinforced your skeleton and turned your skull into steel, there would always be a stronger bullet capable of piercing it.
In such a place, using a melee weapon without proper preparation was no different from suicide.
I dug a little deeper, wondering if there might be memories of him fighting mages, but not every part of his memories was complete.
Still, fortunately, I had at least acquired beginner-level knowledge of Magic.
‘Shall I give it a try.’
Carefully lifting my hand so the driving android wouldn’t notice, I drew up my mana.
Then, while envisioning the image of the mana I wanted to construct, I manifested the mental image using mana as ink.
‘Hmm……. Magic seems to live or die on precision.’
Not the slightest margin of error was allowed in weaving Magic.
It felt completely different from Miracles, where it was enough to simply connect characters according to grammar.
If I had to compare, Miracles were like sentences in literature, while Magic was like mathematical formulas.
‘Fire, ice, electricity, gravity, telekinesis…….’
A flawless mana arrangement formed above my hand without excess.
Soon, the mana manifested into magical power of various attributes, glowing as a small flame, then sparkling as ice, then crackling with electric sparks.
‘This is insane…….’
Just how incredible this was could be explained by a single line from my Older Brother’s memories.
‘Most mages die after managing to manifest only a single attribute in their entire lives.’
Perhaps the reason my Older Brother hadn’t learned Magic was because it took too much time before it could be used in actual combat.
He could read Surreal, but unlike me, he couldn’t manipulate it freely.
‘Alright. I’ve got a rough sense of it now.’
After trying out every attribute that came to mind once, I chose a few that I liked the most and began practicing them intensively.
[We will arrive shortly.]
At some point, the taxi was already slowing down.
There were mountains of things left to experiment with, but for now, this was enough.
[Have a pleasant day.]
After getting off at the destination, I looked around.
It was a neighborhood where haphazardly built concrete buildings formed winding alleys.
I moved my steps beneath streetlights that flickered as if having a seizure.
‘Is that the place?’
In the distance, smoke was rising from a building as if there were a fire.
On closer inspection, it was steam billowing from a dumpling steamer.
It didn’t look like a normal dumpling shop.
There wasn’t even a proper signboard.
As I approached the old-looking store, I saw a humanoid robot mincing meat.
[What would you like to order?]
Without even looking at me, the robot played back its stored customer-service line.
The machine looked as worn out as the shop itself, and perhaps due to illegal modifications to expand its storage space, its belly bulged out conspicuously.
“Is the owner here?”
[What would you like to order?]
“I’m here to see a fixer.”
[What would you like to order?]
When the conversation kept looping, I went straight to the point.
“I heard there’s someone here named ‘Choi San.’”
At that, the robot stared straight at me with its heavily scratched lens.
It remained blankly in that state for quite some time, just as I began to wonder if something had gone wrong.
From the back of the shop came the sound of a rusty metal door opening.
“Who did you say you came looking for?”
A short stature and a head that looked solid.
A beard grown thick all the way down to his waist.
Boss Kim, whose true name was Choi San, was a dwarf.
“Are you Boss Kim?”
“How did you know that name earlier?”
Before I could even answer the question, the dwarf cleared his throat loudly and jerked his chin toward the inside of the shop.
“Come in.”
---
The inside of the dumpling shop was like a steam room.
Steam pouring out of the steamers lingered indoors, driving the temperature and humidity up like madness.
“Bear with it even if it’s hot. Damn ventilation system’s busted. Wangbo! Close the shop for today!”
When the owner shouted, the robot called Wangbo moved with a creak, its rusted joint motors whining.
“You said you came to find a fixer?”
Once again, he didn’t give me a chance to answer and walked deeper into the shop.
After following the dwarf through several narrow passages and stairways, we arrived at a room packed full of large refrigerators.
Boss Kim stopped abruptly in front of the humming refrigerator handles and turned around.
“First time seeing your face.”
There was no need to worry that he might recognize my Older Brother’s face.
My appearance and voice were completely different from his.
‘She must not have wanted to leave any unnecessary openings.’
My Older Brother’s great-granddaughter seemed to be extremely thorough.
“Did River send you?”
Boss Kim asked with suspicious eyes.
I didn’t know why her name suddenly came up, but it was both correct and incorrect.
As I hesitated over how to respond, the dwarf went ahead and made his own assumptions.
“Must be. She’s the only one in this city who knows my true name.”
The dwarf clicked his tongue and continued.
“You came to ask for work, right? But I’ve been pretty busy lately. I don’t have the leeway to worry about rookies. Even if River sent you.”
“Are you refusing?”
“Well…….”
Boss Kim tilted his chin upward.
“That depends on you.”
I could roughly tell what he meant.
Satisfy me.
Fail, and I’ll politely turn you away.
‘So there’s no such thing as a parachute here.’
Thinking that, I raised my right hand and drew up my mana.
It seemed faster to show rather than explain with words.
The image I envisioned was cold ice.
The chill of a blizzard-filled winter day.
Soon, a beautiful, perfectly harmonized formula took shape, and a sharp icicle formed above my grasp.
“Hmm……. A cryo-type Magic user?”
The dwarf said, stroking his beard.
But the demonstration didn’t end there.
This time, lightning striking down from the sky.
With a completely different image in mind, I manifested new mana above my hand.
Crackle—!
Blue electricity flashed around the icicle with a sharp sound.
A simple projectile spell combining the piercing power of cryo-type Magic and the destructive force of electro-type Magic.
Even to an ordinary person ignorant of Magic, the double bolt I created radiated a threatening energy.
“Oh…….”
The dwarf’s hand stroking his beard began to move faster and faster.
“So you’re a spellcaster. And a double, at that.”
Boss Kim’s eyes widened as he exclaimed in admiration.
“River really does have an eye for people.”
He let out a hearty laugh, then suddenly flung open a refrigerator door.
“Go on in.”
Go in? Where?
As that question crossed my mind, Boss Kim casually walked straight into the refrigerator.
‘Why a refrigerator…….’
Standing there dumbfounded, I saw the dwarf stick his head back out and urge me on.
“What are you doing? Never been inside a refrigerator before?”
With no choice, I followed Boss Kim inside.
---
Perhaps because the refrigerator door had been built to suit a dwarf’s height, going in and out was extremely inconvenient.
As I ducked my head and stepped inside, I pulled my collar tight against the sudden cold.
It felt less like a refrigerator and more like a freezer warehouse.
Sharp meat hooks for hanging artificial meat were fixed to the ceiling, and boxes of unknown contents were scattered everywhere.
And in one corner lay the reason this refrigerator had been made so large.
A massive computer churned away noisily.
The heat pouring out from it was being cooled by cold coolant flowing from the refrigerator.
‘Did he stick it in a refrigerator just to deal with the heat?’
That computer seemed to be used either for breaking through high-level security or, conversely, for protecting something.
“Alright. Then shall we talk business properly now?”
Boss Kim said, leaning his back against a table.
“What do you want?”
“As you said, I’m looking for work.”
“Then let’s make one thing clear. Are you trying to become a Ghostcatcher?”
Ghostcatcher.
A free-lance operator active on the underside of this city.
In the past, it referred to specialists who dealt with ghosts that appeared in the world, but as time passed, it came to mean those who handled all kinds of dirty work in the back alleys.
“Yes. Can you give me work?”
“Hm……. Fine. We don’t call it ‘work.’ We call it an ‘operation.’”
Boss Kim tapped the table with his knobby fist and flung open a drawer.
“To be honest, I’m a bit hesitant to start brokering you already. Instead, I’ll personally commission you with one simple operation.”
He continued speaking as he rummaged through the drawer.
“Don’t take it too badly. Even in this backworld that looks like a lawless zone, there are procedures of our own. No matter how much of a double spellcaster you are, I can’t exactly connect an unproven rookie to a valuable client, can I?”
He then pulled out a small data chip.
“Here. A briefing chip. Plug it into a port.”
As I stood there holding the chip, Boss Kim looked at the back of my head and asked,
“What is it? Don’t tell me you haven’t even had a port plug implant?”
“Yes.”
“Good heavens. What are you, someone from the Korean era or something……. Wait here.”
With that, he began rummaging through the drawer again.
“Where did I put it……. Ah, here it is.”
What he took out was a pair of smart glasses shaped like ordinary eyewear.
When I put them on, the information stored in the chip began to appear before my eyes.
A convenience store in a sparsely populated alley.
An android clerk standing blankly at the counter.
A wide storage room behind the store…….
Various pieces of information flashed rapidly across the lenses of the smart glasses.
“Looks like an ordinary convenience store, right?”
The dwarf said with a smile carved into his tough-looking skin.
“The location is Sector 12-6B, north of here. It’s a very simple operation. All you need to do is blow up the target stored in the convenience store’s warehouse.”
Blow it up?
At Boss Kim’s words, I examined the warehouse photo more closely and spotted something metallic.
“It’s an ammonium nitrate tank.”
It was something that should never be found in a convenience store, yet there really was a long storage tank sitting in the warehouse.
“The method doesn’t matter. You can plant an improvised bomb or fire off Magic from a distance. Do whatever you want.”
“So I just have to blow it up?”
“That’s right. The important thing is the explosion. As loud and flashy as possible, enough to draw attention. You know what I mean, right?”
At that point, Lee Hajin sensed something off and asked a question.
“Draw attention? Don’t tell me I’m just bait?”
At his words, the dwarf raised an eyebrow.
“Whoa, bait? No, nothing like that. It’s what you’d call a ‘diversion.’”
When Lee Hajin didn’t withdraw his suspicious gaze even after that explanation, the dwarf spoke in a serious tone.
“Alright. Normally I wouldn’t say this, but since you’re an acquaintance of River, I’ll tell you specially. Not far from that convenience store, other Ghostcatcher will be carrying out an operation to steal a certain item. You’ll just be giving them a little help so they can work more smoothly.”
It definitely smelled dangerous, but this line of work was usually nothing but that kind of thing.
In any case, it was true that it was a simple operation where all I had to do was cause an explosion.
“In that case, I’ll need to receive an advance payment.”
Even so, I had to squeeze out whatever I could get.