11 PM. An abandoned building in Seoul.
There seemed to be no building manager, judging by the trash piled up throughout the alleys surrounding the building. The entrance, usually the first thing to shape one's impression of a place, had rusted over until it became an eyesore. Broken lights, tiles torn from the concrete floor, and dust settled in a hazy film over everything. Every visible detail made it difficult to believe the building had been used recently.
♪♫
And then it happened.
Amid the stillness, someone's humming suddenly echoed through the empty space.
It was a gentle melody that had become relatively common lately, ever since a major supermarket chain began playing a remake of it in advertisements that appeared on nearly every video streamed through various apps.
The commercial song he was humming had actually been based on a piece from another country.
To be precise, it was 'La donna è mobile (The Heart of a Woman)' from Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto.
But the blond man standing there couldn't understand a single word of Italian.
For that matter, he hadn't even bothered memorizing the rearranged lyrics used in the supermarket commercial.
So at this point, what use was that information anyway?
Hmm-hmm-hmm- hmm-hmm—
The melody once again drifted through the empty space, a place devoid of even the most ordinary furniture.
The man hummed unconsciously, reproducing the tune he had heard in the commercial.
Kim Giryeo had never been particularly good at singing.
However, the creature currently wearing his skin had originally been a marine organism that relied on sound waves to perceive its surroundings. Naturally, it possessed exceptional auditory sensitivity and was equally skilled at reproducing sounds.
Even by doing nothing more than perfectly imitating the pitch of each note, the song sounded surprisingly convincing.
Some might have criticized the performance for lacking emotion from phrase to phrase, or for being plain and ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) devoid of technique.
Still, what truly mattered was that even an alien had acknowledged this local creation as a work of art.
Maybe it's because the range of sounds I can hear is limited, but Earth's songs are so monotonous.
Of course, even that assessment wasn't especially favorable.
Humans on Earth had their own individual tastes, after all.
So it was only natural that a being from the far reaches of the universe would have very little chance of unconditionally praising any particular concept.
Thud!
The idle thoughts had gone on long enough.
Now that the most important ingredient had been moved into place, all that remained was to calmly cast the spell...
Even at this very moment, the illusionary dummy back in the studio apartment was still deceiving its observer.
I already confirmed a while ago that it works perfectly well. Just like when I analyzed sleep patterns—casually slipping in an unrelated question to provoke a blink response did the trick.
On top of that, there was the modern magic that manipulated the body's mana flow to its absolute limit in order to conceal the original body's movements.
A little disguise.
Stealth.
The use of an item box.
Scouting out this abandoned building while inhabiting the body with the greatest amount of mana on Earth.
And since I intended to continue making use of assets under a new identity, I'd even hidden expensive items and cash intended for tax evasion in specific locations.
I had also prepared additional surgical equipment, just in case I needed to transplant the suspect's lungs into a second body.
Money, time, stamina, mental strength.
Damn it—now that I think about it, the amount of effort it took to get this far is completely insane.
Huh?
Anyway, forget the past.
At long last, I had obtained the 'most important ingredient' required for the ritual.
Hmm.
When I lowered my gaze, I saw the corpse of a man in his thirties lying before me.
As for how I managed to hide it from the Searchers and transport it all the way here...
I won't bother explaining.
There are plenty of things Earthlings would be better off never knowing.
The more important ethical matter was the kind of life this person had lived.
After briefly examining the deceased man's brain, it became clear that Kwon, the man in his thirties who had committed the bank robbery, had been someone deserving of punishment.
There was one thing I always had to be careful about when acquiring corpses on Earth.
Here, funerals held considerable significance as an important social procedure.
Whenever someone died, their family would normally attempt to recover the body.
Awakening was a phenomenon that occurred primarily among younger people.
Therefore, if I stole the corpse of an Awakened without permission, it would naturally cause suffering to the victim's family, who would be left grieving after losing even the body of their child.
It does feel a little like a beggar selectively choosing only free-range eggs...
Until now, I had hesitated for several reasons.
Concern for the victim's family.
The fact that grief often became a powerful driving force.
And the possibility that the bereaved might relentlessly pursue whoever had taken their child's corpse.
But if the target happened to be trash like this...
Well, that changed things.
Yeah. I should've just chosen a villain from the beginning!
A wicked man who had tried to freeze another person's entire body merely for some damn entertainment money.
A proper funeral was a luxury that a criminal who had caused such public outrage didn't deserve.
Forget respect for the dead.
I didn't feel even the slightest guilt about completely destroying his face.
He violated ethics first.
Which meant I was now free to do whatever I wanted.
Before, I'd made excuses to myself.
Earth has genetic testing technology, so it would be too dangerous.
Things like that.
But realistically, if I changed my appearance and deliberately blended into the neighborhood, what were the odds that an ordinary citizen would ever be subjected to that kind of investigation?
Besides, trash like this—people who cared about no one but themselves—were often abandoned even by their own families.
Things went smoothly.
By sheer luck, this man had turned out to be the perfect vessel.
Someone with no acquaintances who would even care whether he lived or died!
Honestly, right after obtaining the lung, I was so desperate for another body that I nearly snatched up the first fresh corpse I could find!
Oh my gosh.
There are still nine years left on my contract with Kang Changho.
This is exactly the problem with being too talented as a wizard.
Ugh, for a genius like me, even making bets is pointless.
There's no tension at all—
I won.
I won.
Well, anyway.
Drawing on my former experience of working myself like livestock, I diligently got to work.
My memory was somewhat hazy, but I ground a soft piece of magic stone against the ruined floor and drew out an enormous magic circle.
Since there was always the possibility that I might run out of mana halfway through the process, I made sure to consume plenty of Blueshell beforehand.
I also connected a potion to the arm of my primary body in the form of an IV...
There really are far too many annoying things to prepare.
By the time I finally finished setting everything up and lowered my body onto the floor, the clock was already pointing to 1 a.m.
A faint light streamed through the rusted window frame.
Sunlight reflected from the surface of a satellite.
The locals here apparently called that object the moon.
A world revolving around such a trivial little celestial body...
How pathetic.
I followed the moonlight as it brushed across my cheek, then slowly closed both eyes.
The magic I was about to attempt was a scaled-down version of [Soul Transfer], the very spell responsible for my reincarnation.
It differed slightly from the body-swapping technique commonly used by the Alphauri.
Whenever Alphauri ordinarily changed bodies, they transferred essential organs such as the brain, heart, the central section of the transparent spine, and the Y-axis coral bones attached to it—an organ Earthlings did not possess—in order to preserve their sense of self.
Sorcerers who failed to properly understand the nature of the soul inevitably suffered certain inconveniences.
Minor memory loss.
And because portions of the old flesh had to be transplanted into the new vessel, there were also issues such as a reduced proportion of pure internal mana for every gram of brain mass removed...
But through my research into souls, I had finally discovered a way to preserve personality elegantly and intact.
In a sense, one could say that the experience of transferring my own soul during reincarnation had allowed me to intuitively uncover yet another layer of the world's secrets.
In any case, this method was free of all those old side effects.
Yahoo.
That means that starting tomorrow, all I'll have to do is quickly restore my status using this new body.
Even with nothing more than the robber's corpse lying beside me, I'll be able to use over a hundred additional spells.
From now on, stealing corpses will be a piece of cake.
Goodbye, Kim Giryeo.
Still, thanks for lending me your body all this time.
I offered one final farewell to the body's original owner and rested both arms comfortably against the floor.
Flash!
A moment later, a burst of light announcing the completion of high-level magic filled the abandoned building.
.
Tuk, tuk, tuk.
How many minutes had passed since the blue light first began to glow?
Inside the bone-dry building, where there shouldn't have been any moisture at all, a drop of liquid suddenly fell.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Yet the sound was far too thick and viscous to belong to ordinary water.
And its color was far too dark.
That's right.
The substance was blood.
Mammalian blood.
And at the center of the abandoned building, a figure drenched in that blood was now crawling sluggishly across the floor.
K, keugh...
A harsh coughing sound echoed throughout the room.
The man's entire right side was soaked in blood as he weakly pressed a trembling hand against the ground.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't gather enough strength in his arm.
After several failed attempts, he finally collapsed back onto the cement floor, utterly exhausted.
Thud.
In the midst of that situation, a quiet question suddenly surfaced in his mind.
The man lying on the ground slowly turned his head toward one side of the abandoned building.
His gaze settled on the northern part of the room, where the new shell—the corpse of the bank robber—had been placed.
But what the—
Just moments ago, a carefully cleaned human body had unquestionably been lying there.
Yet now, beneath the pale moonlight, an entirely different scene filled his vision.
One thing remained.
The simple clothing the corpse had been wearing.
The other...
Was merely a large pool of red blood.
Blood.
Blood.
Blood.
Haha.
The man lying face-down stared blankly at that pool for several seconds before letting out a dry chuckle.
It was a hollow laugh.
And yet the pitch of that vibration was far too familiar to belong to anything truly new.
After all, the voice that had just broken the silence had come from the vocal cords of a certain blond man.
Hah, hhh...
Swish.
The Archmage moved his familiar body and scraped his fingertips across the floor.
After deliberately ruining the magic circle he himself had drawn, he shouted—
Hahahahaha! This f*cking thing!
For quite some time, shouts filled with a strangely cheerful tone rang out over the brutally exposed concrete floor.
It couldn't be helped.
The Archmage had successfully completed the body transfer.
But an unexpected and extremely significant variable in the outcome had forced him to hurriedly return to his original body.
So what exactly had that unexpected variable been?
Shockingly enough, the bank robber's shell had completely shattered the instant a foreign consciousness entered it.
Exploded, to be precise.
It began with a tiny crack at the tip of one fingernail.
Then the fracture spread greedily outward.
And in the end, every scrap of flesh and all 206 bones in the body disintegrated completely.
Not a single trace remained.
The Archmage briefly glanced toward the unnatural pool of blood beside him.
Once again, it had to be emphasized.
The robber's body no longer existed anywhere in this world.
Heuk... whoo...
Casting advanced magic with such a pitiful amount of mana left him gasping for breath.
Yet even in the midst of that struggle, one explanation rose clearly to mind.
Competent wizards naturally drew external mana toward themselves more efficiently than others, even while doing nothing more than standing still and breathing.
Because of that, whenever they transferred into bodies belonging to extremely low-ranking organisms such as mice or centipedes, the overwhelming speed at which the wizard's soul attracted mana could cause the entire body to explode.
Yeah.
Thud.
The blond man pressed one hand against the floor and, using every ounce of strength he had left, barely managed to roll himself over.
He lay flat on his back with his arms and legs spread wide.
Then, staring at the ceiling, he muttered despairingly.
It couldn't withstand the weight of the soul... and it... exploded...
The weight of the soul.
That was what he had just called it.
But there was another name for the same phenomenon.
Rank Pressure Phenomenon.
In fact, highly capable wizards naturally attracted external mana more readily than others, even when doing nothing more than standing still and breathing.
For precisely that reason, transferring into the bodies of extremely low-ranking organisms such as mice or centipedes could result in the wizard drawing mana at such an extreme rate that the entire body ruptured.
And apparently, this newly discovered substance known as planetary magic had not been as beneficial to Earthlings as he had initially assumed.
Normally, Rank Pressure would cause little more than slight splitting at the body's extremities, so the phenomenon itself was hardly a serious concern.
But how could a mammalian body explode like a bomb and scatter blood everywhere?
Haha, ha.
How puzzling.
But why...
The blond man stared at the moonlight pouring through the window and cursed.
—Why the hell couldn't a C-rank corpse withstand my soul?!
With matters having progressed this far, a new hypothesis slowly began to take shape.
Perhaps.
Perhaps he had been fundamentally mistaken about something from the very beginning.
Of course, that wasn't the only mystery left for him to solve.
The moment the prepared corpse exploded, the Archmage had no choice but to drift briefly through the air as a disembodied soul.
And during that brief period of exposure, he had unintentionally discovered a clue.
A clue pointing toward yet another mystery.
Also, what is this place?
What in the world...
What the hell is going on with this planet...?
Hahahahaha
The blond man lay on the floor, his body smeared with blood, clutching his stomach as he burst into laughter once again like a madman.
It was a bewildered laugh, tangled with countless different emotions.