Chapter 226: Completion
11 PM.
An abandoned building in Seoul.
It seemed like the caretaker had vanished, as trash had piled up around the alley of the building.
The entrance, which sets the first impression of the space, had rusted into an eyesore.
Broken lights and torn tiles on the concrete floor. Dust hung in the air. The remaining elements were all in a state that made it hard to believe they had been used recently.
-♪ ~♬♩
Then, suddenly, a man’s humming resonated through the calming air.
With a video streaming app running, the soft melody from a remake advertisement of a large supermarket brand became relatively easy to hear.
The CM song he was humming was originally a song from another country.
Specifically, “La donna è mobile” from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto.
But the blond man standing here was blind to Italian.
To begin with, he couldn’t recall the rearranged lyrics that the supermarket put out, so why would that information even matter now?
“Hmm hmm hmm~ Hmm hmm~”
The tune flowed back into the desolate space that held not a single piece of common furniture.
The man was unconsciously humming the sounds he had heard in the advertisement.
Kim Gi-ryeo wasn’t particularly good at singing the original song.
Currently, he was wrapped in the skin of a marine creature that could detect its surroundings through sound waves.
So, he excelled at sensing sound and could also mimic it well.
Just by perfectly imitating the notes, the song sounded quite impressive.
Some might say that his singing lacked emotion in each phrase or was too plain and simple, but nonetheless, the important thing was that even aliens recognized the local work as art.
‘Is it because the audible range is narrow that Earth’s songs are so monotonous?’
Of course, the evaluation itself wasn’t great.
Let alone, Earthlings had their own tastes.
The probability that a being from the far reaches of space would give unqualified positive evaluations to a specific concept was, naturally, very low.
-Thunk!
The chatter had gone on long enough.
Now then, having transferred the most important materials, all that was left was to calmly cast the magic…
.
.
.
Even now, a hallucination-type dummy was deceiving the watcher in the studio.
‘I had checked long ago if that thing works well. Just like when analyzing sleep patterns, I could subtly induce blinking observations with different questions.’
On the contrary, the modern magic controlled the flow of physical magic to its extreme to avoid detection.
Along with some disguise, stealth, item box usage, abandoned building exploration, a curse biting passersby, and a core for blocking information leaks.
Not to mention, to continuously utilize assets under his new identity, high-priced items buried for inheritance tax evasion and cash in a certain ratio. I had also prepared additional surgical tools just in case for transferring the Dragon’s Lung to my second body.
Assets, time, stamina, spirit.
Damn. Thinking about it, the effort it took to get here was certainly no ordinary feat.
‘Huh?’
Anyway, let’s forget the past.
I finally obtained the “most important material” needed for the spell.
“Hm.”
Looking down, what I saw was the corpse of a man in his thirties.
For the record, I wouldn’t bother explaining how I ‘hid’ this from the Seocher or how I ‘transported’ it to this place…
‘If Earthlings knew, there’d be a lot of trouble.’
What’s more important to me than that is the life this individual lived.
Upon briefly investigating the dead brain, I found out that Mr. Kwon, a 30-something involved in the Sunhwa Bank robbery, truly had it coming.
There’s something one must be careful about when acquiring a corpse on Earth.
Here, funerals hold considerable significance.
‘When a death occurs in a household, family usually tries to retrieve the corpse.’
Awakening typically occurs in younger age groups.
But if I were to steal the corpse of an Awakened without consent, naturally, there would be a victim mourning the loss of their child’s physical body.
‘It feels a bit like a beggar picking only the humane eggs……’
Until now, I had been worried about such victims, and since sorrow often turns into a motivation, I hesitated, thinking the relatives might doggedly chase after their loved one’s body. But considering it’s a piece of trash like this, the story changes.
‘Yeah. I should have gone for a villain from the start!’
This bastard who sought to freeze someone’s body for leisure.
Socially problematic criminals are not entitled to warm funerals.
Showing respect for the dead? Yeah, I could completely remodel that face, and I wouldn’t feel guilty at all.
He broke the ethics first, giving me the freedom to do whatever I wanted.
Before, I had made excuses like being at risk from genetic testing technology on Earth, but in all honesty, how likely is it for citizens to face such scrutiny if I change my appearance and fully blend into the neighborhood?
Moreover, this kind of trash, more often than not, is typically ostracized by family.
Things were going smoothly.
Fortuitously, this man was the perfect vessel with not a single friend to worry about his life or death!
‘Honestly, if I had gotten the body while still fresh, after just obtaining the lung, I would have been ready to smuggle it away at any cost!’
Goodness.
I still had nine years left in my contract with Kang Chang-ho.
See, this is why when a mage is too competent, it becomes a problem.
Sigh, for a genius like me, even a bet could never really raise any tension!
‘I’ve won. I’ve won.’
Anyway.
I diligently used my past experiences to work hard.
While pretending to think, I scratched the soft magic stone on the floor of this ruin, drawing a large magic circle.
Just in case I might run low on mana midway, I ate plenty of Blueshell beforehand. I even connected a potion to the arm of my main body like a nutrient drip…
‘So many annoying preparations.’
After finishing all my setups, just as I laid down on the floor, the clock had already struck 1 AM.
A faint sunlight reflected off the surface of a satellite through the rusty window.
The locals seemed to call that the moon.
‘A world that is under the influence of such an insignificant celestial body.’
As I followed the moonlight touching my cheek, I soon closed my eyes entirely.
The magic I was about to attempt was a miniature version of [Soul Movement], the cause of reincarnation, and differed slightly from the body-swapping technique commonly employed among the Alphauri.
The Alphauri usually transferred major organ cells like the brain and heart when using body-swapping techniques, along with the dual-symmetric coral bone (which Earthlings don’t have) attached to the midsection of the transparent spine to maintain the self.
Sorcerers who failed to interpret souls experienced minor memory loss every time.
And since they had to fit their previous flesh into a new vessel, there was also the issue of pure internal mana being reduced per gram the brain occupies…
But I, through my research on souls, finally found a method to preserve consciousness elegantly.
In a way, it could also be said that I intuited the secrets of the world by having moved my soul during the reincarnation process.
In any case, this side was freed from all past side effects.
Woohoo.
So starting tomorrow, all that remained was to rapidly restore my stature with my new body.
Just stepping into that thief’s flesh would let me use over a hundred types of sorcery. Moving forward, stealing corpses would be child’s play.
‘Farewell, Kim Gi-ryeo. Still, thanks for lending me your body all this time.’
I left my final farewell to the body owner and comfortably placed my arms on the ground.
-Abruptly!
A flash that heralded the completion of the high-level magic filled the abandoned building.
.
.
.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
How many minutes had passed since the blue radiance?
From within the dried-up building, a sudden sound of droplets hitting the ground echoed.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
But unlike normal water, its sound had an unusually high viscosity.
Moreover, the color was very dark.
That’s right. This was actually the blood of a mammal, and in the center of the abandoned warehouse, something was crawling on the ground drenched in that blood.
“Gah, cough…”
A rough cough was heard.
The man, completely soaked in red on his right side, used his trembling hand to push against the ground.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t muster any strength in his arms.
After several attempts, he finally collapsed helplessly back down to the cement floor.
Thump.
In such a situation, a quiet question and a bit of contemplation suddenly surfaced.
The man lay face down and slowly turned his head to gaze toward one side of the abandoned building.
Where his gaze landed was the north side of the room, where the corpse of the bank thief had been laid.
And lo and behold.
There had been a pristine mammal’s body neatly cleaned over there just a moment ago.
Now, however, only the dim glow of the pale moonlight revealed an unknown scene.
One was the simple clothing the corpse had worn.
And the other, just a puddle of congealed red blood.
Blood, blood, blood.
“Haha.”
The prone figure stared blankly at the blood puddle and then released a chuckle.
A dry laugh. At the same time, the rhythm of it was too familiar to be considered new.
After all, it was the blond man’s vocal cords that had just made that sound.
“Ha, heh…”
Swish.
The great mage moved the familiar skin, scratching the ground with his fingertips.
After ruining the magic circle he had drawn with his own will, he shouted.
“hahaha! You shitty bastards!”
For a moment, a cascade of positive exclamations erupted repeatedly over the brutally exposed concrete floor.
It was only natural.
The grand mage had just successfully completed a body swap, but he had encountered an unexpected major variable and rushed back to this body.
So what was that unexpected variable?
Shockingly enough.
As soon as the bank thief’s shell became inhabited by a strange consciousness, it shattered into pieces.
It meant it exploded.
Starting from a small crack at the tip of the fingernail, it greedily spread, gradually cracking apart.
Finally, all flesh of the body and 206 bones decomposed without leaving a trace.
The grand mage glanced at the unnatural blood puddle left beside him.
Again, the thief’s body no longer existed in this world.
“Haah… Phew…”
Casting high-level magic with meager mana left him breathless.
Yet even amid this oxygen deprivation, the brain inside was ceaselessly generating new thoughts.
The grand mage had already roughly grasped why this situation had transpired.
“Right.”
Thunk. The blond man pressed against the floor, barely managing to roll over with all his might, lying sprawled out.
Staring at the ceiling, he mumbled with a hint of despair.
“It exploded… because it couldn’t bear the weight of the soul…”
The weight of the soul.
He had just referred to it as the weight of the soul, but that could also be called a pressure differential phenomenon.
In truth, capable mages tend to attract external manas more easily while standing still and breathing.
Because of this, when they switched to the body of extremely low-grade beings like mice or centipedes, the natural influx of mana would often damage the corpse.
And it seemed planetary mana was unimaginably detrimental to Earthlings.
Usually, it only ends with slight ruptures in the extremities, making pressure differentials not much to worry about, but how could a mammalian body explode, splattering blood everywhere?
“Haha, ha.”
It was perplexing.
“But why…”
The blond man, squinting up at the pouring moonlight, yelled in frustration.
“──Why the hell could a ‘C-Class’ corpse not withstand my soul?!”
After events had escalated to this point, a new hypothesis began to rise.
Perhaps.
Perhaps from the very beginning, we had been gravely mistaken about something.
Of course, that wasn’t the only question that needed answering.
At the moment the prepared corpse exploded.
The grand mage was forced to float in a state devoid of a shell, momentarily drifting in the air, and this brief exposure led to an insight into another mystery.
“Plus, what is this? What on earth is this planet, what the hell is going on…”
Hahaha!
A blond man lay on the ground, covered in bloodstains, laughing like a madman while holding his belly.
It was a chaotic laughter, mingled with various emotions.
