Kim Giryeo's casual remark became the seed of yet another misunderstanding.
Unfortunately, there was never an opportunity to correct it.
As mentioned before, Esther was exceptionally sociable for a curse sorcerer. She knew how to read the other person's intentions and, more importantly, when to begin and end a conversation.
So Esther tactfully said no more.
After a long silence, she pushed aside her empty teacup and spoke.
"I have an appointment this afternoon, so I should get going. I hope you have a pleasant rest of the day."
Giryeo nodded graciously and sincerely saw his purple-haired guest off.
Now that the visitor was gone, it was time to return to his usual routine.
No more interruptions.
Just the peaceful flow of everyday life.
"Hmm."
Beep.
Giryeo listened to the door lock click shut and sank into thought.
Cadavers donated to scholars for dissection.
Or the body of an awakened person embalmed in accordance with the wishes of the bereaved family.
As he'd briefly mentioned during the earlier conversation, those were the only possible sources of corpses that came to mind.
But how was an outsider like him supposed to steal one?
Of course, it was true that in this world, enough money could make almost anything possible.
'Buying and using a body when the circumstances of its death are clearly documented isn't exactly ideal either.'
There was still a mountain of problems to solve.
① Attach flesh to the corpse and alter its face and fingerprints.
Using an old corpse and changing its appearance to pass it off as someone else had bothered him from the very beginning.
After all, borrowing another person's body and then carelessly modifying its exterior simply because its appearance didn't suit him felt shameless.
'I don't like it.'
Just as he found many aspects of Earth's culture difficult to understand, Alphaut's customs would no doubt seem equally incomprehensible by Earth's standards.
One obvious example was the matter of altering a corpse's appearance.
On the planet of the binary star system, the physical form of the body had long been regarded as an important part of the self.
A body changed naturally with age, of course, but even wrinkles and the growth of flesh were respected as evidence of the life the deceased had lived.
'Right. Besides, this world has genetic identification technology anyway, so changing the appearance alone wouldn't be safe. Let's save that trick for the absolute last resort.'
The person occupying Giryeo's body was a somewhat old-fashioned scholar.
In modern Alphaut, plenty of young people altered their organs and even their skin simply to follow the latest trends, so the old custom of avoiding major changes to a body without prior consent had naturally begun to fade.
Even so, this archmage continued to observe that ancient unwritten rule.
Of course, sentiment wasn't the only reason.
If any part of a body acquired through body exchange was replaced with a substance of different composition or with organic matter carrying incompatible genetic information, the body's overall magical efficiency would inevitably decline.
There was also the risk of a destructive rejection response, much like organ rejection on Earth.
Perhaps there really was something to the old saying.
Maybe those abstract views on death, handed down through the ages, were actually the accumulated wisdom of his ancestors—a warning against the loss of efficiency such alterations could cause.
"Hmm."
Thump.
For that very reason, the alien mage, who had maintained a broadly similar appearance through each rebirth up to the present, touched his lips and fell briefly into thought.
"Then."
That left Options 2 and 3.
② Find the body of an unclaimed person who has no family to arrange a funeral.
③ Take the body of someone who has just died without anyone knowing about their death—and who lived alone. Then pretend to be that person after somehow coming back to life.
"Hmm..."
That would require some kind of disaster in which a large number of awakened people died.
He would practically have to pray for such a tragedy to occur.
'Do I, an archmage, really have to stoop to something this pathetic?'
Giryeo trudged along with heavy steps, lost in thought.
Now that Esther had left, he returned the [Sacred Tree Seedling], which he'd hidden in the bathroom, to its original place on the balcony.
More importantly, he had to finish the bath she'd interrupted.
He had hastily disposed of the diluted blood in case the Earthling discovered what it was being used for, which meant he now had to prepare everything again from scratch.
'Oh, for God's sake.'
Even if he'd left the bathwater untouched, the moment it cooled, the treatment would have lost its effect anyway.
But having to start over still made the whole thing an unbearable nuisance.
'I like water, but I never wanted to soak in it this often!'
Whoosh.
Giryeo sat on the raised threshold between the bathroom and living room and cast water magic as naturally as breathing.
As he watched the foldable bathtub fill, he continued considering the tasks ahead of him.
Fortunately, unlike those troublesome concerns, his final wish was fulfilled far sooner than expected.
This was, after all, the era of Dungeon Shock.
Gates were like wells thirsting for humanity's destruction, their buckets endlessly drawing up and spilling misfortune into the world.
***
Scenes like this often appeared in movies.
Whew-
A character would spend some time deep in thought, then walk into a study and pull a book from the shelf.
But if the character happened to be the protagonist of a spy thriller, there was hardly enough time in a two-hour runtime for leisurely reading.
So why had the protagonist pulled out that green hardcover book?
Rattle!
Kneek!
Because the thick philosophy book was actually a lever connected to a hidden room behind the bookshelf.
Secret spaces like that usually contained things like bulletproof umbrellas for agents or pens fitted with concealed poison needles.
A place belonging only to you.
A secret hideout no one else knew existed.
The romance of such an idea wasn't limited to seven- or eight-year-old children.
But what if that secret room truly became a space no one knew about?
Suppose an unnamed character forgot to tell an elderly retired couple about the hidden mechanism in the bookshelf before completing the sale of the mansion.
Would that same secret space still seem charming?
Especially if a burglar then began hiding and living inside it?
At that point, the concept would no longer feel charming at all.
For intelligent beings like us, ignorance often becomes synonymous with fear.
...
...
"Hello?"
I spoke into the connected phone.
"Ah, yes. Hello. I saw on the app that you're only taking orders by phone right now. Yes. Yes."
What emerged from my throat was the dry sound produced by the respiratory system of a dead body.
The problem with my lungs had been resolved, but my vocal cords still bore the changes caused by smoking and genetic factors.
"Please deliver one single-serving cheese donkatsu set. I'll pay in cash. I have a 50,000-won bill."
As long as communication remained possible, it didn't really matter.
"There's no rush, so take your time and drive safely. Yes. I'll hang up now."
Tuk.
I ended the call, slipped the phone with its darkened screen into my pocket, and stretched.
It was another Monday, though I'd long since lost count of which one.
More precisely, about forty-eight hours had passed since Esther's visit.
Yet despite the passage of time, one scholar remained stuck in exactly the same predicament.
Secretly searching for a corpse in a civilization this advanced...
'If I use Blueshell, I could probably manage invisibility magic somehow, but I wonder if my kidneys would give out before I even finished digging up the body...'
Complicated.
Maybe I should fill my empty stomach first and think about it afterward.
'I've still got time before the food arrives. Might as well clean while I'm waiting.'
Giryeo's studio apartment.
Perhaps because I'd spent so much time living in this tiny space, I was beginning to feel attached to it.
Instead of using my tentacles, I raised one finger and made a simple gesture to activate a household spell.
It was a telekinetic technique that gathered light debris from around the room into a single point in midair.
"No!"
Unfortunately, the cleaning magic I'd cast without thinking consumed more magic power than expected, and dizziness washed over me for a moment.
"This is insane."
Until recently, I'd always cleaned using both arms, so when the time came to dust again, I'd promised myself that this time I would definitely use the spell I'd prepared!
"This damn body..."
Keugh.
I stopped in the middle of the living room, pressing one hand to my forehead.
Then, still grumbling, I headed toward the veranda to continue cleaning.
The whole thing was so absurd that I almost laughed.
Before my respiratory problem had been fixed, even that tiny drain of mana would have thrown me into temporary mana exhaustion and left me suffocating again.
Well...
"I suppose this much is enough."
I took the duster the body's original owner had bought before his death and used it to brush away the miscellaneous debris on the shelves that I couldn't be bothered to deal with using magic.
That took about five minutes.
Next, I vacuumed the floor and went over it with a wet mop.
That took another ten minutes.
Since I still had time, I scrubbed the bathroom thoroughly with a brush, spending another eleven minutes on that.
Then I carefully hung up the contents of yet another clothing delivery that had arrived that morning under the name Seo Yohan.
"_"
Before I knew it, an hour had passed.
Only then did I realize that, for some reason, today's food delivery was taking much longer than usual.
Of course, I had told them there was no need to hurry, but...
Just then, a melody sounded from my pocket.
I reached down and pulled out the phone.
Someone was calling Kim Giryeo's number.
"Hello?"
But the news that came through the receiver was...
"What? An accident?"
Boom.
At the same moment, a faint sound resembling a gas canister exploding echoed from somewhere beyond the window.
"And a dungeon break too?"
So does that mean I can't eat now because of the Gishumche's feeding behavior?
***
The dungeon break site.
The area had been peaceful only moments before, but the modern streets had transformed into a scene from hell in an instant.
The air was filled with the cries of mammals—or rather, screams.
Looking around, it was difficult to tell whether this was still Seoul or the interior of a dungeon.
That was how grotesque the scenery had become.
It was a humid afternoon just before the rainy season.
Beneath the setting sun, dark silhouettes of trees could be seen.
They had rooted themselves directly into concrete and asphalt, as though forcibly wedged into the city, and spread in every direction.
That was how the disaster had unfolded.
Crackle-
The two-story franchise café across the intersection was already covered in huge cracks, its walls pierced through by spreading tendrils.
With monsters embedded in the surrounding structures like this, recklessly trying to subjugate them could easily cause entire buildings to collapse.
As a result, the Hunters could do little except evacuate civilians through the back routes as efficiently as possible.
"Everyone, stay behind me! Hold hands! Don't get separated!"
Grrrr.
Amid the continuing chaos, voices calling for order rang out.
An A-rank Hunter armed with a mace and metal shield risked himself to guide civilians to safety.
Using his innate attributes, he deployed various defensive abilities, smashed through the mysterious thorn-covered trees blocking the road, and eventually led the citizens safely to the cordoned-off four-lane street where paramedics were waiting.
However, something about his condition seemed wrong.
"Ugh."
The young man, whose piercings and shaved hairline completed his stylish appearance, seemed to have run into some kind of trouble.
He clutched his shoulder and grimaced in pain.
That was when it happened.
Suddenly, the murmuring around them doubled in volume.
Even the injured people receiving first aid all raised their heads at once.
With everyone's attention drawn in the same direction, there was no ignoring whatever had just appeared.
"Huh?"
The A-rank Hunter spotted the source of the commotion and immediately sprinted toward it.
"Brother!"
"Oh, right. Yoonsung. It's you."
That distinct, precise pronunciation people always mentioned whenever clips of this person circulated through online communities.
A relatively steady, low register.
Slight vocal-cord paralysis caused by smoking.
In other words, a hoarse voice.
"Were you handling the break?"
The newcomer was Kim Giryeo.
The blond Hunter greeted the other man in his usual distinctive voice.
And when someone with overwhelming power appeared at the scene of a disaster, there could only be one reason for it, couldn't there?
At the site of the dungeon break, Ahn Yoonsung encountered Giryeo.
The young man's face immediately lit up.
"As expected of you, Giryeo! I only happened to be nearby, but you got here this quickly before the Association even sent out a call!"
"_"
Yet for some reason, there was no response from the other side.
Giryeo merely shifted his gaze in silence before finally forcing out a question.
"But anyway... what on earth is all this?"
Long, jet-black thorns jutted out in every direction.
Farther away stood an overwhelming mass of pitch-dark trees, packed together so densely that approaching them seemed unthinkable.
Giryeo looked around as he asked, and Yoonsung immediately answered.
"Oh! This? I only heard about it a little while ago myself. Wow, it's seriously ridiculous."
He began explaining the situation.
"Apparently, about ten minutes ago, there was a robbery at the nearby Sunhwan Bank."
"What did you say?"
"Some retired C-rank Hunter lost his money in an investment scam. So he stormed into the bank with a weapon... or something like that."
Ahn Yoonsung continued recounting what he'd heard, recalling the testimony of an accomplice being taken away by the police.
"But before the awakened police officers could even arrive, this happened."
"If by 'this' you mean..."
"Monsters suddenly appeared inside the bank and all over the road outside. Considering the number of them and the timing, it's probably related to that, right?"
In the past, Giryeo would barely have understood half of what an Earthling was saying and would simply have stood there blankly.
But ever since he'd learned how to use a phone, dungeon-related information had become one of the things he searched for most frequently.
Thanks to that, he had no trouble understanding what Yoonsung meant.
"There must have been an 'Unstable Gate' underneath the bank."
An Unstable Gate.
A passage formed within a powerful flow of magical energy, difficult for modern devices to detect.
In short, a catastrophe born when a dungeon buried silently underground reached the end of its life—
and collapsed explosively along a straight path.
'Coordinate errors truly are a long-standing tradition in the magical world.'
Yet Giryeo showed no particular reaction to the disaster before him.
The truth was, this alien hadn't come here to deal with the dungeon break in the first place.
'Let's see. Anyway, this should be the apartment building where the deliveryman is trapped...'
During the earlier phone call, Giryeo had learned that the person carrying his food—the owner of the tonkatsu restaurant—had been caught up in the dungeon break.
As a result, the family-run restaurant had immediately closed its shutters out of concern for the safety of one of its family members.
"...But."
'I really wanted to eat from that place today!'
From the moment he'd gotten out of bed, Giryeo had been enduring the day with the thought of enjoying a delicious dinner later.
How could his plans fall apart because of such an absurd turn of events?
Devastated by the restaurant's sudden closure, Giryeo had ultimately arrived at the obsessive conclusion that he needed to personally retrieve the food the deliveryman had been carrying.
And that was why he had come all the way here.
But if he'd known things would turn out like this, he would simply have suppressed his craving and stayed home.
"Hmm."
Contrary to what he'd expected, the affected area was huge, and there were far too many people watching.
If an S-rank Hunter showed up, dipped one foot into the scene, and then immediately disappeared again, it certainly wouldn't look good...
'Eh, whatever. Why should I care about public opinion? I'm going to abandon this body soon anyway.'
Even so, Giryeo came up with the petty excuse of claiming he'd developed a stomachache after rescuing the tonkatsu restaurant owner, just to preserve his image.
If he became seriously involved in suppressing the dungeon break, his workload would inevitably increase.
So he intended to remain on the sidelines as much as possible.
"Brother, by the way, we have a serious problem."
But at that moment, the Hunter in front of him began stamping his feet anxiously, his expression filled with worry.
"The bank robbery is one thing, but... you see that huge black monster dome over there? They finished analyzing it, and apparently the boss monster is inside too."