Chapter 29
Jin silently looked at the middle-aged man.
The superheated air spread waves of scorching heat, whipping his hair about.
Within that current of heat, he sensed something unmistakable—
The rich scent of mana.
As someone who wielded mana himself, Jin perceived something not with his eyes, but with his entire body.
It could not be explained by sheer power alone.
The years accumulated within it.
The passage of time.
Something that could only be called history settled heavily upon his skin.
Yet rather than being overwhelmed by the unfamiliar sensation, Jin did what needed to be done first.
Without taking his eyes off the middle-aged man, he extended the arm holding Gravis behind him.
Then he pulled the trigger.
Bang!!
Bang!!
Bang!!
Three shots rang out.
The monster, already charred black and slowly breathing its last, had both of its heads blown apart by Jin himself.
He had practically reaped the harvest someone else had sown.
Having scooped up a feast someone else had prepared—not with a spoon, but with a ladle—Jin shuddered as fireworks of dopamine exploded through his mind.
The quest had happened to complete at that exact moment as well.
Twice the stimulation.
“Haah... damn it.”
Jin squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth.
It felt good.
And it felt fucking awful.
The forced sense of accomplishment.
The artificial rush of reward.
The primal pleasure it produced gifted him with the will to keep living.
It was like jamming ten bright-yellow bottles of plant fertilizer upside down into a withered flowerpot.
So that...
He would not break before reaching the end.
“You don't have to pull this crap... I was going to make it to the end anyway...!”
Jin clenched his trembling fist.
How much time had passed?
Objectively, only a few ticks of a second hand.
Yet the bliss seemed to stretch on forever.
Only after enduring that endless ecstasy did Jin slowly open his eyes.
Then he gave an awkward smile.
“Ah... Have you been waiting?”
The middle-aged man chuckled.
“You're a strange one.”
“Says the... stranger one?”
Jin was about to answer as usual before catching himself.
The last word came out a little more politely than intended.
His uncertain gaze was an added bonus.
Thinking about it, that middle-aged man...
Regardless of the overwhelming spell he had just cast, Jin could not sense any aura from him whatsoever.
Even now, as their eyes met, he looked no different from an ordinary homeless man.
The only evidence to the contrary was the monster that had just been burned to ashes.
Was this what martial arts novels called returning to simplicity?
Or maybe the difference between their levels was simply so great that Jin could not perceive him at all.
Either way, the result was the same.
Jin remained the weaker party.
At a moment like this, what mattered most was reading the room.
Did I accidentally say something offensive?
He was seriously retracing his memory when—
The middle-aged man spoke.
“Talk like you normally do. Don't overthink it.”
“I can?”
“When have you ever cared about minding your manners around me?”
“...Fair point.”
Jin had always spoken in that casual-but-not-quite-casual manner.
There was no reason to change it now.
Silence settled between them.
Jin stole another glance at the man.
“...”
An unknown powerhouse.
The man's very existence was one enormous variable.
If anything happened, Jin fully intended to spam Blink and flee.
But judging from the lazy smile on the man's face, he looked pleased rather than dangerous.
Still, Jin could not let his guard down completely.
Ready to channel mana at a moment's notice, he finally asked,
“Did you let yourself get captured on purpose?”
“Hm?”
“I figured maybe... you were undercover.”
After all, even the man who had blown his own brains out had mistaken Jin for an agent of the city government until his dying breath.
It was, in Jin's opinion, a perfectly reasonable deduction.
The answer he received, however, was unbelievable.
“No. I already told you. I went to sleep and woke up here.”
“...Then why were you just hanging there?”
There was no way that man had been incapable of breaking those chains.
Even Jin could have escaped whenever he wanted.
In fact, he already had.
“I was curious. Watching those fools run around is surprisingly entertaining. I was planning to play along for a while longer.”
The man smiled.
“Instead, I ended up seeing something far more interesting.”
Jin made an awkward face.
So he really had stayed captured on purpose.
Everything about him screamed that he was at least a little insane.
Jin quietly began preparing himself to make a discreet escape.
Then—
“So. What's your name?”
The question came out of nowhere.
It was not difficult to answer.
If anything, Jin welcomed it.
“Jin Evernight. Cool name, right?”
He immediately gave his full name and even wiggled his eyebrows.
After all, he had paid thirty-five million credits for that surname.
He hoped it sounded just as impressive to other people.
The middle-aged man's reaction, however, was strange.
“...Evernight, huh? An alias?”
Jin's expression stiffened.
Had the man seen through his forged identity?
Honestly, it would not matter much if he had.
But figuring it out from the surname alone was another story.
As Jin seriously considered whether he should abandon the surname he had only recently grown attached to, the middle-aged man stroked his rough chin and continued,
“If it's not an alias, then that's unexpected. I figured you were some distant branch of the family with quite the story behind you...”
He shrugged.
“No... on second thought, it's better if you don't share their blood.”
He somehow looked relieved.
Jin might have had a habit of wandering off on tangents...
But the middle-aged man was no different.
The two simply stood there facing each other, each talking about something completely unrelated.
The atmosphere became strangely chaotic.
Both of them continued muttering to themselves.
Anyone watching would have wondered what on earth they were doing.
That bizarre standoff continued for quite a while.
In the end, it was the younger Jin who emerged from his thoughts first.
“...Um... excuse me? Hello?”
Jin snapped his fingers repeatedly to get the man's attention.
Only then did the middle-aged man blink and look back at him.
“Hm? Was I saying something?”
“You were about to. Anyway, what's your name, Senior?”
“I'm Lokan.”
The man who introduced himself as Lokan quietly studied Jin's face.
It was as though he were waiting to see his reaction.
Picking up on that expectation, Jin scratched his cheek.
“...Guess you're pretty famous.”
It was the best response he could come up with.
Though, truthfully, it was hardly a satisfying answer.
If Jin had ever looked beyond the tiny world surrounding his own life and taken an interest in the greater world beyond it—
His next question would have been:
“Do you bear the surname Zahad?”
Had he asked that, Lokan would simply have shaken his head.
He would have added that he had abandoned that name long ago.
Zahad.
The foremost house among the Seven Great Families.
A name that reached the very heavens above the Lost City.
Even towering skyscrapers seemed to bow before it.
And the man standing before Jin...
Was the madman who had kicked that name aside.
The madman burst into hearty laughter.
He was delighted by the look on Jin’s face, which made it clear that he truly knew nothing.
“What a foolish brat.”
“Huh? Even if you’re my senior, if you insult me—no, this great one—no! If you insult me, sir...”
What could he even do?
Run away?
Jin sucked in a breath and swallowed the rest when he found himself with nothing meaningful to threaten him with.
Lokan tugged up the corner of his mouth and asked,
“So, who is your master?”
“I don’t have one.”
“...”
The immediate answer left Lokan speechless for a moment.
He slowly opened his mouth.
“You have no master, despite possessing mana of such exceptional purity?”
He could tell simply by looking.
Jin’s mana was not merely extraordinarily pure. There was not the slightest obstruction in the way he manipulated it either.
He possessed a canvas capable of containing the entire world, and he was already a master calligrapher on top of that.
Yet he had no teacher?
“You’re saying you taught yourself?”
“Something like that.”
Jin nodded.
He could not tell him about the status window, so this was the best answer he could give.
And although he had not technically learned everything by himself, he certainly had learned it the hard way.
Had he not endured the agony of having his brain rummaged through?
He was not exaggerating when he said it genuinely hurt.
The pain was enough to make saliva dribble from his mouth uncontrollably.
As Jin’s shoulders trembled from the sudden return of those traumatic memories—
A booming laugh erupted without warning.
Lokan threw his head back so far that his Adam’s apple was fully exposed, then spoke through lips still trembling with laughter.
“To think a body truly blessed by mana exists. The heads of the Seven Families would lose their minds if they found out. It’s almost a shame I won’t be there to see their faces.”
There was even something relieved about Lokan’s expression as he muttered those words.
Jin, having no idea what he was talking about, could only blink.
“Mind letting me in on the joke?”
Seriously, the man was clearly not right in the head.
Jin rapidly began constructing a profile of Lokan in his mind.
A homeless master who had returned to simplicity.
Also slightly insane.
Was it because the city itself was such a dump?
How had not a single person here managed to grow old with dignity?
While Jin grumbled inwardly, Lokan finally finished laughing and talking to himself.
He added with satisfaction,
“I can’t remember the last time I laughed like this. You’ve shown me something worthwhile. Staying tied up was absolutely the right decision.”
“Well, as long as you enjoyed yourself, I guess.”
After giving that soulless response, Jin began thinking of a suitable farewell so they could finally go their separate ways.
“I don’t know what kind of picture you’ll paint from here on out, but I suppose adding a single stroke to it wouldn’t hurt.”
As Lokan spoke, he took one step.
The next instant, he was standing directly in front of Jin.
Jin had not reacted at all.
He had only seen a streak of violet lightning briefly embroider the air in a zigzag before fading away.
Lokan’s voice slowly entered the ears of Jin, who had become no more than a witness.
“It’s nothing special. Merely something fundamental...”
Jin did not hear the rest.
Beyond his vision, where time seemed to have slowed almost to a halt, only Lokan’s finger continued approaching at an ordinary speed.
The fingertip touched his chest.
A tiny spark leaped from it.
KRAKOOM!
Lightning struck inside Jin’s head.
It was the moment the most violent point in the world carved a message into him with wild, lawless strokes.
I’m fucked...
His eyes rolled back.
It was a very long time before Jin managed to regain his senses.
He was a complete mess.
His hollow eyes were entirely unfocused, while his arms and legs were spread wide like the figure in Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes as he stared up at the factory ceiling.
“Fucking... bastard...”
Perhaps it was because he had been thoroughly marinated in pain beyond the capacity of language to describe.
Jin’s body and mind had both been reduced to limp, exhausted wreckage.
The fact that he did not even grow angry at the status window blinking furiously in the corner of his vision, practically screaming for his attention, said everything that needed to be said.
And so he remained there for a long time.
The faint moonlight passing through the factory windows gave way to the blue glow before dawn, then gradually transformed into the light of sunrise.
After lying motionless like a corpse all night, Jin finally raised his upper body.
He dragged both hands over his face and swept back his disheveled bangs before looking around.
The surroundings had changed considerably.
For one thing, all the flayed corpses had been reduced to ashes.
The various pieces of equipment whose purposes had been impossible to guess had also been smashed beyond recognition.
It was probably Lokan’s doing.
Jin could only stare in disbelief.
“...No, why would he just leave someone lying here? Because of him, I...”
His metallic, hoarse muttering trailed off.
Eventually, Jin looked toward the corner of his vision.
The relentless blinking was still there.
“What? What? What the hell do you want, huh?”
Perhaps it had merely been waiting for him to pay attention.
The next instant, the status window filled his vision.
[777
NEO ?? ??? Zahad
??? ?? ???? ?????
?? ??? ?? ?? ????
You again?
Jin shook his head at the unwelcome face that appeared every time he was just about to forget it.
Then he suddenly froze.
“Huh?”
He rubbed his eyes and examined the unfamiliar sentence on the status window once more.
Then he reflexively squeezed his eyes shut.
His inner world appeared in an instant, illuminated like a night sky.
Jin whipped his head from side to side.
His gaze crossed between one nebula and another until, at a certain point, it suddenly came to a complete stop.
Found it.
A new constellation that had never existed before.
This was not something Lokan had intended.
Even he could never have dreamed that such a thing would happen.
Who could have known?
The mana he had poured into Jin merely to bestow a small lesson upon a blessed body had become a catalyst for someone forced to survive this absurd world.
And now—
Above the tip where a tiny light had begun to sprout, a majestic bolt of lightning looked down upon Jin.
[Zahad]
The secret magic of one of the Seven Great Families unleashed a thunderclap without sound.