Mana Crystal.
An energy source from the Otherworld that had changed the units of currency, revolutionized science and technology including electricity, and dramatically aided the training of so-called ability users like me.
Why the hell is this here?
‘This thing was discovered only about fifty years ago, wasn’t it?’
The opening of Gates and the Awakening of ability users had only begun at the very end of the twenty-first century.
By contrast, The Tale of Chunhyang was set in the late Joseon era. Mana Crystals in those ancient days, when even modernization, let alone Gates, had clearly yet to begin?
And yet, no matter how many times I looked again, the thing before me was definitely the Mana Crystal I remembered.
“......It looks like this really is completely different from the history I know.”
It was the moment when the suspicion that had been flickering unpleasantly in one corner of my mind ever since this body’s memories surfaced turned into certainty.
Byeon Hak-do’s memories seemed similar to the history I knew, yet they were misaligned somewhere.
According to what he remembered, Mana Crystals were first discovered during the upheaval of the Imjin year. But that Imjin upheaval had not been caused by Japanese marauders the way I knew it.
The Imjin Monster Upheaval, the Jeongyu Second Upheaval, and the Byeongja Calamity.
Just as the subtly different names of the disturbances suggested, the wars that Byeon Hak-do of this world had learned about were not clashes against foreign powers, but wars against Dire Species that crossed over through Dire Gates, which manifested en masse in those years.
‘In other words, I guess it was some kind of wave.’
And from that point on, as the appearance of large and small Dire Gates became commonplace, Mana Crystals harvested from the corpses of Dire Species gradually established themselves as a medium of exchange in this world as well.
Again, Mana Crystals were an energy source from the Otherworld. This place was not as advanced as the modern era I had lived in, but even here, using Mana Crystals as fuel instead of firewood had become an effective way to flaunt a household’s wealth.
Of course, the industrial revolution using Mana Crystals had not yet begun in earnest, but those who smelled money were already buying Mana Crystals instead of gold.
Byeon Hak-do was no exception.
However, there was a separate reason why he had deliberately hidden these away in the wall closet.
CLINK—
When I reached into the pouch and took out a Mana Crystal, its distinctive faint warmth flowed into my palm. I tightened my grip on the Mana Crystal and gathered the energy together as this body remembered.
SSSSSS—
The energy flowing out of the Mana Crystal began pouring into my body.
‘I wondered if it could really be......’
It was true.
Byeon Hak-do was an Awakened.
And a fairly skilled one at that, skilled enough that he already knew how to absorb mana from Mana Crystals. The fact that it took less than an hour to absorb one Mana Crystal meant this was not the skill of someone who had only done it once or twice.
Of course, compared to my old self, who had needed less than thirty seconds to absorb a Mana Crystal of this size, it was still at the level of child’s play. Even so, it was astonishing that Byeon Hak-do, a mere civil scholar, was an Awakened with enough ability to absorb Mana Crystals.
‘The problem was that he only used the power he absorbed that way in bed.’
My face twisted on its own at the shameful history of Byeon Hak-do, which I did not particularly want to examine in detail.
It seemed that, to Byeon Hak-do, Mana Crystals had been an ‘inextinguishable flame’ in a different sense.
In this era, most of those who handled abilities were military officers. Civil officials had no time to care about abilities or the like. To rise in the world, ability or no ability, one first had to pass the state examination.
Moreover, no matter how much ability one had, as the years passed, without money and background, even sitting the examination became far out of reach, let alone passing it. Passing the state examination and becoming a civil official had become a path that no one outside the small ruling class could dare covet.
It was an abuse that arose as the Triennial Exam a state examination held once every three years), which had been conducted nationwide, became nominal through the disturbances, and only Special Exams state examinations held for special reasons) began to be held.
By contrast, military officers were treated generously regardless of status or origin, thanks to the desperate need to defend against Dire Gates and Dire Species.
As a result, those who had Bloomed combat-type abilities began competing to apply for the Special Military Exam. The court granted them the newly established position of Special Military Officer, at Junior Fifth Rank.
Considering that, in the regular Triennial Military Exam, one had to pass as the top scorer just to begin official service from Junior Sixth Rank, it was fairly exceptional treatment.
In any case, with the situation being what it was, Byeon Hak-do had already settled safely inside the system and was living in luxury while sucking the blood of the common people dry. He had no reason whatsoever to Bloom his ability and choose the harder path.
In other words, even after Awakening, this damned bastard had not Bloomed the ability he was granted. Instead, he had stockpiled Mana Crystals like this and used them like V*agra whenever he needed them.
‘The more I dig, the shadier he gets; the more I learn, the more sick of him I become. Ugh, seriously.’
With a sigh bursting out of me, I gauged the energy accumulated inside my body, and it was even more of a mess.
“Should I call this lucky? If he had kept absorbing it like this without properly circulating it, the mana pooled inside his body would have burst sooner or later, and he would have gone straight to the grave.”
No matter if he had Awakened the ability to sense mana, blindly absorbing the energy of Mana Crystals without even Blooming an ability was no different from a free pass to the underworld.
Well, for the sake of the country, that might have been better.
“They say one bastard causes the mess and another bastard cleans it up.”
I voiced the truth of all times and places, East and West, which I had kept on my lips during my days as a civil slave, and picked up a Mana Crystal.
‘Now that it’s come to this, I need to check what this bastard’s ability is first.’
Just because I had become Byeon Hak-do did not mean I could live like the real Byeon Hak-do, did it?
It did bother me a little that the Mana Crystals before me had been gathered through corrupt means, but returning them to where they belonged would be impossible in the short term anyway. It would be a hundred times better to dispose of them with these hands now and return the value to society through another method.
Even if I could not become a perfectly incorruptible official, I had to shake off this bastard’s reputation as a corrupt official.
I straightened my posture and drew in a deep breath. Now it was time to get to work in earnest.
***
“Th-this can’t be.”
After entering the Mindscape Garden, I stared speechlessly at the scene spread out before me.
The Mindscape Garden, the personal space of an ability user, was a kind of virtual space where an ability user could check their ability and achievements. The moment I confirmed the ability name that floated before my eyes in the Mindscape Garden, instead of the Mana Crystal’s energy dissipating away, I was rendered speechless.
Because—
Sword Amid the Battlefield
What floated within the Mindscape Garden were four characters I could never forget even if I tried. The ability commonly known as the Battlefield Sword, the ability possessed by me—not Byeon Hak-do, but ‘me,’ the Ability Bureau’s Special Crimes Investigation Team Leader—was waiting to Bloom.
“Is this...... possible?”
I had never heard of two different people being granted the same ability. Abilities were as varied as human faces, unique to each individual.
And yet, even if I washed my eyes and looked again, the thing before me was unmistakably my ability, Sword Amid the Battlefield, the ability that had slogged alongside me all my life.
‘......Well, I can see why Byeon Hak-do would have hated that.’
Suddenly, I felt as if I could understand why Byeon Hak-do had Awakened to an ability and yet never tried to Bloom it.
Sword Amid the Battlefield, of all things.
Was that not an ability name that made it obvious at a glance he would have to roll around in the field?
As someone already born with a golden spoon in his mouth, Byeon Hak-do likely felt no need to choose Blooming.
However.
“I’m not him.”
Without hesitation, I seized the wavering sword before my eyes. Then, in accordance with the ability I had chosen, every blood vessel and cell began to awaken again. In response, fresh pale-green shoots began to rise in the empty garden.
They were Mindscape Flowers, also known as the flowers of ability.
“Huh?”
Watching the shoots rise, I let out a dumb sound before I knew it. Because the flower that had sprouted produced a single bloom, then did not stop there and began rapidly stretching its stems out around it.
“Th-this is......”
Before long, ten brilliantly blooming flowers filled the Mindscape Garden.
Ten Bloomings.
Full Bloom.
After its first Blooming, an ability is completed by undergoing several more Bloomings according to the individual’s achievements.
But right now, Byeon Hak-do’s body had inherited intact the ten Bloomings I had experienced before, achieving the realm of Full Bloom at the same time it Bloomed.
I had been prepared to start over from the beginning, so regaining a Full Bloom ability was something I ought to be happy about, yet something about it left a bitter taste in my mouth.
‘......This makes it seem like someone is saying Byeon Hak-do and I were connected from the start.’
Don’t tell me I’m a descendant of Byeon Hak-do or something?
The thought made me endlessly uncomfortable, but in any case, getting Sword Amid the Battlefield at Full Bloom back intact felt as reassuring as gaining a thousand troops and ten thousand horses.
However.
......Huh?
My joy lasted only a moment. At the sight unfolding before my eyes, another dumb sound slipped out of me before I knew it.
Because.
‘My Mindscape Flowers are withering!!’
The final one of the flowers that had finally bloomed so brilliantly began drying out brittlely, then started blackening and withering away. As if reacting to it, the mana that had filled my body began to surge.
What the hell is this......?
In panic, I looked around, and in that instant, the space before my eyes wavered.
“What is this?”
Mirror of Safety and Peril.
Beside the ability name Sword Amid the Battlefield, another set of characters floated up.
If characters had appeared within the Mindscape Garden, that meant this was an ability, and if gyeong meant mirror.
Yet no matter how I looked around, I could not find anything that looked like a mirror.
And besides.
‘I’ve never heard of one person having two abilities.’
What the hell is going on?
While I was flustered by unexpected events happening one after another, my Mindscape Flowers were rapidly withering. Two had already fallen, and the next one was half withered.
Feeling as if I were clutching at straws, I reached out and felt along the characters before my eyes.
!!!!!
“Whoa!!”
The moment my hand touched them, the characters flared up.
An ability that Ignited instead of Blooming?!
Flustered, I froze like that for a moment and blinked, and in the next instant, my vision went black.
“Th-this is......”
Ruins.
The space stretching endlessly before me was filled only with wreckage so collapsed, trampled, and broken that its original shapes could not be recognized.
The stench of rotting corpses choked the air on every side, and the suffocating silence pressing down on my shoulders made it difficult even to take a step.
Where the hell is this......?
The space, where only traces remained as if something supernatural had swept through it, was so thoroughly destroyed that not even a single clue was left to guess what this place had originally been.
!!!!!
The moment killing intent shot toward me, I hastily drew up my mana and summoned Sword Amid the Battlefield.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!!
With the sound of blades colliding, I slid backward.
At the same time, the one who appeared before me was a young nobleman. He looked barely over twenty. Black blood from an Otherkind clung to the tip of his sword, and the fluttering hems of his dopo robes were full of bloodstains.
Above all, the mana wavering from the blade locked against mine was no ordinary thing. He was clearly an expert who had surpassed at least the Eighth Bloom.
When our eyes met, a ghostly air beyond mere killing intent surged within them.
“What are you?”
When I asked shortly with our swords locked, I saw his brow furrow hard.
“Byeon Hak-do, if you have even a human heart left in you, die without resistance.”
“What the hell are you talking about, you crazy bastard?”
“I, Secret Edict Inspector Yi Mong-ryong, will take your head here today so the road she walks will not be lonely.”
At the words of this bastard whose voice was handsome too, of all things, I suddenly felt sour even in the middle of the urgency.
No wonder he was absurdly handsome.
So you were Yi Mong-ryong?
As everything suddenly seemed to make sense in an absurd way, a hollow laugh burst out of me.
I guess a handsome face really is narrative plausibility.
No, wait.
That was not what mattered now.
I had been staring at Yi Mong-ryong’s face as if bewitched, but when I thought back over what the bastard had just spat out, I frowned.
Chun-hyang is dead?
No, but why are you killing me? I’m innocent!
“What grudge do I have against your beloved that you are doing this?!”
I shoved away the locked blade, shook off Yi Mong-ryong, and opened some distance, but the bastard immediately rushed after me and shouted.
“Shut up, you shameless bastard! The entire Namwon Protectorate, humans and beasts alike, died in a massacre, and yet you, the shepherd of the people, survived alone. Do you still have the face to hold your head up?!”
As I blocked the sword he swung, I suddenly trembled as if struck by lightning.
......So this is Namwon Protectorate right now?
These ruins where nothing is left?
While I was frozen in shock for a moment—
“Die!!!!!”
Yi Mong-ryong’s sword flew in, aiming at my chest. Its movement was faster than lightning flashing from flint.
Tsk, tsk. Mong-ryong, I understand how you feel, but surprise attacks like that don’t work on a Full Bloom ability user—
Muttering inwardly with a relaxed smile, I opened my eyes wide.
SQUELCH!
Before I could fully grasp what had happened, Yi Mong-ryong’s sharp blade pierced straight through my heart.