As I turned toward the source of the sound, I saw a metallic cylinder covered in abstract engravings lying on its side. Pale blue gas poured steadily from it, spreading rapidly through the air.
Seriously, why does this country have so many lunatics...?
"No, now that I look closely, they're definitely not Korean."
Correction.
Apparently, this entire planet simply had far too high a proportion of insane humans.
Only three minutes ago, I'd been thinking Earth was wonderful, and already I was regretting my reincarnation.
I'd been living quietly lately, minding my own business, so why did these ordeals keep finding me?
"All I wanted to do today was look at Earth's fish."
Yeah.
That was literally all I'd done.
"What the hell...!?"
"Forget it! Just run! Hurry!"
Unfortunately, Ahn Yoonseung's protective shield was still too primitive to filter out harmful gases.
Still, perhaps because surprise attacks were hardly anything new to us, remaining calm came naturally.
I grabbed Ahn Yoonseung by the shoulder and shouted at him to hold his breath for as long as possible and get out of here.
But apparently, even something that simple wasn't going to be easy.
"Damn it!"
In movies, villains usually wasted time rambling, giving the protagonists a chance to react.
These people, on the other hand, had appeared out of nowhere and attacked with expert precision.
***
Blink.
The eyes of the two people with noticeably dark hollows beneath them blinked in succession.
A woman and a man.
They were Awakened individuals who had worked together as a team for quite some time.
When most people heard the phrase "errand runners," they might imagine trivial tasks such as buying groceries.
But the sort of work these two handled was far broader—and far darker.
Background investigations.
Threats.
Retaliation.
And naturally, the highest-paying jobs were those involving life and death.
Veterans in this industry traditionally relied on tools such as guns and knives, but those always made cleanup troublesome.
In modern society, however, far more sophisticated methods of murder had emerged.
Awakening abilities.
That was what had transformed the market they operated in.
[Me: Are you seriously asking me to work under these conditions?]
[client: Yes.]
Thinking about it again, the job still seemed strangely specific.
The hunter duo known as 'Ally' had recently received a request from a certain Korean client.
And that request was none other than to eliminate the top-tier hunter Kim Giryeo.
"Still, an S-rank is a little much."
They had originally intended to refuse.
But not long afterward, the Korean client sent them an intriguing contract.
They didn't actually have to kill Kim Giryeo.
With their abilities, all they needed to do was give him a slight push and then disappear.
That was it.
They could flee as soon as they pleased.
And if they did this one favor, they would receive an enormous reward.
All of it.
Money.
In the end, it was the reward offered by the Korean that tempted the foreign errand runners.
Approximately 670,000 euros in cryptocurrency.
Converted into Korean currency, it came to a staggering one billion won.
Anyone would hesitate in the face of that kind of money for what was, technically, only a 'challenge.'
The errand business wasn't exactly thriving these days.
Unless a job involved extreme legal risks, such as murder, contracts offering a full billion won were exceptionally rare.
If the target hadn't been an S-rank, these veterans would have snatched up the job before anyone else even had a chance to look at it.
"If you think about it, it's actually a pretty good deal."
Team Ally exchanged several more messages with the client afterward.
Ultimately, they decided to accept.
Even in the worst-case scenario, if the mission failed, South Korea was a country where the legal punishment for simple unprovoked assault was comparatively mild.
That provided them with at least some sense of security.
"With that money, I can finally buy the building I've had my eye on."
Some people called Awakening a blessing.
But the pair known as Ally didn't particularly appreciate having gained the ability to use magic.
Strangely enough, both suffered from the same condition.
They could use their skills without issue, but their immune systems had serious deficiencies.
Mana didn't accumulate properly within their bodies.
As a result, unlike other Awakened individuals, they gained almost none of the physical reinforcement that normally accompanied Awakening.
Worse still, the abilities they had awakened were powers that affected the minds of living beings.
They hadn't been born overwhelmingly powerful like S-ranks.
Nor could their skills kill monsters.
Naturally, they couldn't become hunters.
Then why not just earn money some other way?
What nonsense.
The country they had been born in was relentlessly harsh toward people with supernatural abilities, even imposing regulations such as mandatory Awakener Identification Tags.
Eventually, they could no longer even hold ordinary jobs.
Wherever they went, people stared at them like chained beasts.
Ordinary citizens shunned them, telling them not to steal normal people's jobs and to go crawl into dungeons instead.
"Let's take the job."
In [N O V E L I G H T] the end, they drifted into illegal work.
At first, it had merely been a matter of survival.
They crossed seas and mountains, abandoned their homeland, and earned money as illegal immigrants before eventually settling in Spain.
Later, they cleaned up their identities and appearances, reaching a point where they no longer needed to cling to this kind of work.
But by then, they could no longer be satisfied with the income of an ordinary profession.
Ten million.
A hundred million.
A billion.
They hadn't put in any extraordinary effort, yet their awakened abilities were like a magical pot that endlessly produced money.
Eventually, they grew quite fond of this line of work.
They couldn't have cared less whether their actions worsened the public perception of Awakeners.
In a way, people such as Go Byeongdo of the Hunter Association—those who had come to despise superpowered individuals—were probably the product of criminals like them.
The sudden arrival of an age of magic, intertwined with capitalist society, had created all manner of problems.
And so...
***
Team Ally accepted the mysterious commission to provoke an S-rank hunter.
But why had the two of them, alike enough in build to resemble a matching pair of wings, chosen today of all days to strike?
Because today gave them the best chance of escaping.
Their preliminary investigation had revealed that the bald man over there was Kim Giryeo's closest friend.
"A sudden trip to an aquarium in broad daylight on a weekday? How unusual."
Their work always required a certain amount of time.
So the person Ally had actually been monitoring wasn't Kim Giryeo.
It was Ahn Yoonseung.
The two errand runners had devised their own method of keeping Kim Giryeo occupied.
"Can we really pull this off?"
"Don't worry. Just trust me."
Shoooooooo.
As the strange device discharged into the surrounding area, the curly-haired woman was the first to rush forward.
For an Awakened individual whose body was frail because of a chronic condition, it was an aggressive move.
But everything had a reason.
"Ugh!"
As she charged, the fleeing Ahn Yoonseung immediately twisted around to avoid being caught.
That was exactly what the attacker had been aiming for.
The foreign Awakened feinted toward his lower body, waiting for his shield to drop, then swiftly sprayed something concealed in her hand the instant an opening appeared.
Silver particles of unknown origin.
They were powdered fragments of a [Scream Stake] dagger.
They had ground down the portion of the unique-grade item that inflicted pain and scattered the resulting powder over their opponent.
"Ahhhhh!"
"Yoonseung-ah!"
A scream immediately erupted.
And that wasn't all.
The cylinders Ally had thrown before charging in were status-effect items, each producing a different effect.
Sleep.
Paralysis.
Confusion.
Blindness.
It was a second method of weakening the target—one so obscure that even the torturers of the Rakshasa Temple had never discovered it.
In truth, the Awakened of this world tended to suffer a drastic decline in their resistance to abnormal statuses when exposed to several negative effects simultaneously.
"U-Ugh...?"
Before long, Ahn Yoonseung, the Korean hunter, slowly dropped to one knee.
Mental-type attacks truly were several times more dangerous than ordinary ones.
Even though he was a defense-type hunter with a sturdier body than most, once they pierced the one weakness he possessed, subduing him became easy.
"It's done."
Once Ahn Yoonseung had been incapacitated, the person who had remained behind finally began closing the distance.
The male member of the foreign Awakened team possessed a unique ability.
He could drag others into a world of illusions, imprisoning them inside something resembling a lucid dream under his complete control.
There, he could torment his opponent however he wished.
[Invitation to Dreams]
That was the name given to the supernatural ability in this country's language.
No matter how powerful an opponent might be in reality, once they entered that phantasmal space, it was over.
Within the mental world formed by his magic, he was effectively a god.
"Driving him into fatal shock would be too much, but I can probably knock him unconscious."
The unnamed man poured his mana toward his target.
The blond Korean.
The idea was to torture someone who wasn't even the S-rank's teammate, forcing Korea's fourth S-rank hunter to remain behind out of concern for his close friend.
Then all they had to do was maintain the appearance of a fight while prolonging his exposure to the cylinders' status effects.
That was their plan for breaking the S-rank's resistance.
"Huh?"
What was going on?
The instant his eyes met the blond man's, the sorcerer activated his skill.
A wave of dizziness swept over him, as though his consciousness were being sucked somewhere else.
Surprisingly, the mental intrusion succeeded within mere seconds.
It was as though he'd attacked some pathetic F-rank weakling.
***
An empty white space.
The Awakened individual—whom we will call Errand Runner 2 for convenience—became certain of his victory the moment he saw that pure white void.
As mentioned earlier, abilities from the real world hardly mattered here.
No matter how low his own rank might be, inside this pure white space, he could trample even an S-rank underfoot.
"..."
The blond Korean silently looked around, seemingly bewildered.
"Confused?"
For the first time, the foreign Awakened addressed his target directly.
"We have plenty of time in here anyway, so let's talk."
"..."
"Actually, this is my first time facing an S-rank. So I'm curious. About all sorts of things."
"..."
"If you answer properly, I might even give you a hint about what's going to happen next."
In any case, he'd accepted this request partly out of curiosity.
Yet now it all felt strangely anticlimactic.
He'd been so tense because his opponent was supposedly an S-rank hunter.
But this?
There hadn't even been the slightest thrill.
The mental intrusion had succeeded immediately.
How could the mind of a top-tier Awakener be this weak?
If S-ranks really were only this impressive, perhaps he could start accepting these kinds of jobs more casually.
And someday, once he'd saved enough money, he could buy himself a place in Hawaii and enjoy a leisurely retirement.
"Why aren't you saying anything? Can you hear me?"
The two were clearly of different nationalities, yet strangely enough, Kim Giryeo heard the other man's words in Korean.
Even now, Ahn Yoonseung was being relentlessly attacked by the man's partner outside.
The fourth-ranked S-rank hunter in Korea stared intently at the Hispanic man speaking to him.
In response, Ally's sorcerer shrugged.
"Feels strange, doesn't it? I don't know what your awakening ability is, but you won't be able to use it here. Hmm... because I don't want you to."
The blond man answered.
"Is that so?"
A short, concise response.
"That's right. Everything here goes exactly the way I want it to. In this place, I'm an S-rank hunter. A superhero. And you're nothing but a powerless ordinary person."
At that moment, a blue droplet—just like those inside the aquarium—suddenly splashed into existence within the pure white void.
With that, the foreign Awakened demonstrated that he could create something from nothing.
"So watch what you say and do... Actually, never mind. Resist as much as you want. It'll be more fun that way! The struggles of an S-rank, huh?"
Unlike his timid demeanor in the outside world, the errand runner carried himself with remarkable arrogance here.
It couldn't be helped.
As long as this awakening ability activated successfully, anyone would eventually kneel before him.
Once the initial condition had been met, it was a truly overwhelming power capable of dominating virtually anyone.
Now all he needed to do was mentally torture the S-rank hunter in front of him until the man lost consciousness.
Then he and his partner could escape.
Mission complete.
Tsk.
He snapped his fingers.
A torrent of water crashed down over the blond man's head.
...But something about the reaction was strange.
Even after water poured over his head, the man didn't respond.
Not even a blink.
He simply continued staring at him.
"...?"
A few more seconds passed.
And then something unimaginable happened.
The man who had been silently watching him suddenly changed his expression.
His lips parted.
His eyes narrowed.
It was as though something merely wearing the appearance of a human being had suddenly opened its mouth.
"Thank you."
The words that followed were just as bizarre.
"Huh?"
"You really do use magic without thinking, don't you? This skill drags a specific target into your own mind. It's not as though the two of us are meeting in some unknown third world."
"What are you..."
"Ha. I'll admit, the ambush startled me. But of all things, how did someone with an ability like yours end up becoming an assassin?"
"..."
"You still don't understand what I'm saying?"
For some reason, unease began crawling up his spine.
The foreign Awakened felt an inexplicable discomfort in the other's tone and frowned without realizing it.
Kim Giryeo's expression, however, remained unchanged.
"You're the landlord, and you just threw open your front door and invited someone inside."
Drip.
Drip.
He continued smiling without the slightest change in expression, even as droplets of water ran from his hair and across his eyes.