“Everyone, hold your positions!”
At the sudden order, I saw the team members stop in place, each where they stood.
GRRRRK—
It was an improvised bomb of condensed contaminated mana.
‘If that goes off, it’s over.’
But there was not enough time to pull back now. Not unless someone blocked it with their body......
I glanced back, and the faces of my team members came into view, all tense as they waited for orders to fall.
‘I suppose dragging even these little blood-clots to the underworld with me wouldn’t exactly preserve my dignity as the Ability Bureau’s lunatic.’
Once I made up my mind, the corner of my mouth twisted upward. Seeing that, one of the team members opened his mouth.
“Team Leader, don’t tell me......? N-”
Before he could finish speaking, I kicked off the ground and leaped.
‘If I’d known this would happen, I should’ve just retired early. What a waste of all the pension contributions I paid in.’
I grumbled inwardly, but the truth was, I knew. Rather than a leisurely retirement life with a hefty special pension, embracing a bomb on-site and being blown to ash in the field suited my temperament far better.
The moment I spread a barrier and seized it, muddy mana began pouring out of it beyond control.
KRA-KRA-KRA-BOOM—!
A violent impact crashed over my entire body.
Just this. I only had to withstand this. As long as I endured the explosion, those guys would take care of the rest. Whatever else anyone might say, the skills of the bastards who had rolled around and endured under my nasty temper could be trusted.
Inside the barrier I had deployed, a foul stench shook the air. My body, exposed to the contaminated mana, failed to hold out and began melting away, and from outside, I heard the voices of my team members.
“Team Leadeeer!!!”
“Nooooo!!!”
“Waaah, you crazy bastard!!!”
‘Hey, shit, who was that? I’m not letting the bastard who cursed at me get away with that.’
That was the last of it.
***
...But.
......That was what happened.
I was sure I had died gloriously in the line of duty, hugging that mass of contaminated mana all by myself......
What the hell was this situation?
It was too vivid to be a dream, and far too ambiguous to be the afterlife.
I slowly blinked my eyes again, but nothing changed.
What is this.
What the hell happened......?
When I felt around my heart, I could definitely feel it beating. Just in case, I lightly bit the inside of my mouth too, but with a CRUNCH, the pain of raw flesh being caught between my teeth only shot tingling straight to the crown of my head.
Meaning this was not a dream.
‘This is real?’
That was when it happened.
“A loyal subject does not serve two kings, and a virtuous woman does not honor two husbands. This humble girl already has one with whom she pledged to grow old together, so I beg you, please withdraw your words.”
A woman prostrated on the bare ground before me cried out in an anguished voice. Her plain clothing made it seem as if she had rushed out exactly as she had been at home, and even her hair was not tied up, but hung long down her back.
Around us, the Personnel Clerk and the other faces of the six offices, as well as the gisaeng who had just been embarrassed at the inspection, were watching this way with bated breath.
‘Wait, what is all this? Why do I know all of this?’
The difficult classical phrases, words like Personnel Clerk and inspection, too. They were terms I would have only heard in period dramas, yet I understood their meanings smoothly.
‘What the hell......’
In that instant, an intense sense of wrongness swept over my whole body. At the same time, unfamiliar memories came flooding in like a tide.
Memories of a fifteenth-year civil slave who had gone from a successful Hunter to the Ability Bureau’s Special Crimes Investigation Team Leader and spent his days rolling around in the field overlapped with memories of a corrupt official who had entered government service early on the strength of a solid background and a brilliant mind, risen from success to success, and reigned over the common people as an arrogant wastrel.
Name: Byeon Hak-do.
Position: Senior Third Rank Magistrate of Namwon Protectorate.
Age—
Wait.
Wait, stop.
...Byeon.
......Byeon Hak-do?
That Magistrate Byeon from The Tale of Chunhyang?
The corrupt public official who could represent the entire nation, the one who harassed a woman who already had someone, a minor at that, until he brought ruin on his whole house?
This was absurd.
Had the shock from the explosion thrown me into a folk village or something?
But the unfamiliar memories that surfaced in my head were far too vivid and distinct to laugh off lightly.
Days when he extorted commoners and indulged in women without the slightest shred of shame flashed through my mind. Even when he was appointed Senior Third Rank Magistrate of Namwon Protectorate, he had not been delighted by his unprecedented, lightning-fast promotion. Instead, the memory that came to mind was his delight at the thought that he could finally take his fill of the women of Namwon, known as the land of beauties, and I felt like strangling this neck with my own hands.
‘I don’t know whether this is reincarnation or a hallucination, but why, of all people, did it have to be Magistrate Byeon?’
I may not have been incorruptible, but I had prided myself on living a fairly upright life in public service. Yet when I opened my eyes, I was a corrupt official inside one of the Korean people’s super-classic stories.
In a sense, perhaps this really was hell.
“Clerk Jeong.”
Even the voice that came out of my mouth was unbearably unfamiliar. What drove me mad was that the name I had just called was obviously one I had never said before, yet it felt familiar, as if it had always belonged on my tongue.
Clerk Jeong was my—no, the owner of this body, Byeon Hak-do’s literary retainer, whom he had kept with him ever since he first began learning his letters. In other words, his personal secretary.
‘No, I mean, how does it make any sense that I know all this?’
I had never even read The Tale of Chunhyang. All I knew was what I had skimmed in textbooks. The same went for history.
To begin with, I had even skipped the civil service exam because I was hired through special recruitment!
Meanwhile, Clerk Jeong, who could not possibly hear the inner screaming on my side, had his head bowed as if waiting for an order.
At any rate, in times like this, confirmation came first.
“Who am I?”
At that, Clerk Jeong let out a deep sigh, as if he found me both ridiculous and pathetic.
Right, this guy had always been openly insubordinate—
No, that was not the point.
Could you not look at me like that? You’re making it seem like I really am that hopeless case, Byeon Hak-do.
“Good grief. What sort of fuss is this the moment you take office, just because you want to do something to a girl whose head-blood hasn’t even dried yet?”
“What?”
I frowned and asked back at the words Clerk Jeong had muttered under his breath. Then, as if nothing had happened, he cleared his throat once and shouted toward the woman who was still kneeling prostrate on the ground.
“Listen here. Did you say your name was Chun-hyang? Do you know whom you now stand before? Lord Byeon Hak-do mastered the Four Books and Three Classics at the age of three, passed the state examination at sixteen as the youngest top scorer, and after serving as Magistrate of Unsan, Deputy Magistrate of Pyeongyang, and Magistrate of Yeongbyeon, is a prodigy among prodigies, a towering man of eight cheok who possesses both literary and martial excellence—”
“Enough.”
If I kept listening, I was going to die of embarrassment first.
I asked who I was. Who asked him to recite my public-facing profile?
Anyway, so that meant I really was the corrupt official Byeon Hak-do, and the one kneeling over there was Seong Chun-hyang?
Then was this the famous moment of ‘Chun-hyang, attend my bedchamber’?
Oh......
No, that was not the point.
“Attend what?”
The words slipped out before I knew it.
Byeon Hak-do, that bastard. If he was going to go insane, he should at least have gone insane in a decent way. A sitting high-ranking official demanding sexual tribute in broad daylight, in front of everyone, and brazenly at that.
Senior Third Rank meant director-general level. In modern terms, if a director-general-level official went around doing that, it would not end with only him getting fired. Even the higher-ups would be dismissed en masse, and then some.
“It really must have been the end times.”
Clerk Jeong, who was standing beside me, tilted his head at my words.
“Pardon?”
“Never mind. More importantly, clear it all away.”
“Pardon?”
“I said my mood is gone, so clear it all away.”
I roughly waved him off and spat the words out as if irritated. This was not the time to get into an argument with these people.
Perhaps displeased by my sudden change of heart, Clerk Jeong muttered loudly enough for me to hear.
“I mean, an inspection is not a feast. Is it the sort of thing you can clear away just because the mood is gone? And this from the gentleman who was acting like he would untie his trouser sash at any moment just a little while ago.”
“Clerk Jeong.”
When I called him again in a low voice, only then did Clerk Jeong look around and shout loudly.
“Did you hear him? He says to clear it away.”
At that, the yamen runners surrounding Chun-hyang looked this way with awkward faces and asked.
“W-where should we clear her away to?”
“We can hardly make a girl who is not even on the gisaeng registry serve as a gisaeng. Tell her to go home.”
“!!!!”
I felt the gazes of people staring at me with startled eyes, but I pretended not to notice and turned sharply, then walked away.
Chun-hyang or whatever, now that things had come to this, that was not what mattered.
If I was Byeon Hak-do, she was Chun-hyang, and the question of attending my bedchamber had come up......
Did that not mean the secret royal inspector Yi Mong-ryong would come bursting in before long?
‘The real Byeon Hak-do bastard lapped up all the honey, and now I’m the one about to be punished? Not a chance.’
Muttering inwardly, I left the East Hall and headed straight for the West Hall, the magistrate’s private quarters.
Whether I fled as I was or somehow tried to hold out longer, there was something I needed to check first.
Just as I was about to step onto the wooden veranda, Clerk Jeong’s breathless voice came from below the stone foundation, as if he had hurried after me.
“Magistrate! Goodness, Lord Magistrate. What is the rush?”
“Enough. You do not need to follow me either, so go and rest.”
“Are you so heartbroken just because one woman rejected you? Shall I discreetly call the Revenue Clerk back in?”
What the hell was he talking about?
I was not some three-year-old child.
Besides, what would I call the Revenue Clerk for? To have her dragged back in?
He sure knew how to say things he did not mean.
Jeong Yu-bong. Also known as Clerk Jeong, he was a person whose head was comparatively screwed on straight, considering he had stayed at the side of this human garbage, Byeon Hak-do, all this time. Of course, he was not so upright and clean that he would risk his life to offer blunt remonstrance to Byeon Hak-do, but he was not as rotten as Byeon Hak-do either.
In the original story, he might have been close to a petty man, but seeing him like this, he seemed more like a soulless office worker who had met the wrong boss.
“Did you not hear what I said earlier? If I said to leave her alone, then just leave her alone. Do not make me say it twice.”
“Pardon?”
Jeong Yu-bong stared at me with his eyes wide. His face said he had expected me to hurry up and tell him to wrap her up in secret and bring her back.
Seeing that reaction, I had neither the strength nor the desire to explain any further, so I scowled fiercely and waved my hand.
“After coming all this way and finishing the whole inspection in one go, I’m exhausted. I am going to rest, so withdraw and come back tomorrow.”
The way Jeong Yu-bong stared at me made it clear he was thinking, Why is that madman being fickle again? When I openly scowled, only then did he finally open his mouth, still looking unconvinced.
“......Then I will withdraw.”
Good, go.
Hurry up and go.
After confirming that Jeong Yu-bong had disappeared, I quickly entered the room and locked the door.
Beyond the ornate folding screen, I unlocked the padlock on the wall closet and pulled out the odds and ends. From inside came a pouch the size of an adult’s head.
“Damn.”
I wondered if it would be here.
It really was?
Before I knew it, I had sunk to the floor with the pouch clutched in my arms.
CLATTER—
From the jolt of me dropping down, one of the objects inside rattled and rolled out.
Mana Crystal.
Ever since the first Gate opened on Earth and the first ability user began to Awaken, this resource from the Otherworld had overturned the entire order humanity had built up. And now, the pouch that Byeon Hak-do had hidden was stuffed full of it.