“Wipe out a city?!” Sun exclaimed a block later. The sentence had taken all that time to reach his brain.
“Yeah. Throw out everything you think is possible. The laws of physics don’t apply in Erebus.”
“But isn’t that dangerous? Imagine if one of those things decides to attack us.”
“They won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because the competition between factions never ends. If a big shot has to come down and deal with weak people, it means the people at his enemies’ level can’t handle it. That’s weakness. It means the faction stopped training new people. A faction that shows weakness becomes food for the stronger ones.”
“That’s complicated.”
“It’s just politics. The scale changes. Instead of a congressman, it’s a guy who flies.”
“Got it. I think.”
“Anyway. Joining the guild is worth it. You can take or post quests, and it’s the only way to get into the official ranking of adventurers and factions. Anyone ranked high gets discounts at the official shops and can gather enough fame to earn a title of nobility.”
“Nobility?” Sun nearly tripped. “We can become nobles that easily?”
“It’s not easy. But it’s possible.”
“Faction,” Rafael repeated. “You want to found one.”
“I do. Once we have a solid base.”
“Don’t count on us for the leadership, kid.”
“You’re exactly who I’m counting on. I trust you.”
“Kid…” Rafael looked at the other two. Sun wasn’t that much younger than me, but the difference in maturity between us showed at a glance. Lili could barely hold a conversation.
I turned to them.
“If you think you can’t handle it, don’t worry. If you don’t think you’re strong, I’ll give you the strength. If you don’t think you’re capable, I’ll make you capable. If you think you won’t make it, lean on me. I’ll take you there.”
The three of them stared at me, and I stared at myself too, on the inside. Where did that come from? It was a faction leader’s speech, dramatic pause and all. I had never given a speech in my life. In my life on Earth, at least. The other one, apparently, had given plenty.
I felt my ears get hot.
“Pff.” Sun snorted through his nose and then really laughed, something he hadn’t done in hours. “When you talk like that, it’s hard not to believe you, leader.”
“Don’t call me leader.”
“Yes, leader.”
“Leader,” Rafael confirmed, with the straightest face in the world.
“Lili thinks it’s nice,” came from down below, at the height of Rafael’s leg.
Great. Now I’m “leader.” It was supposed to be just a hunting group.
“Let’s go. The guild must be packed.”
It was. Crammed with people, many of them lost, not knowing what to do after losing their homes, their jobs and, sometimes, their families. A woman slept sitting on a bench, hugging a gym bag. An old man was explaining to a dwarf, very loudly and syllable by syllable, that he needed a taxi. The dwarf didn’t know what a taxi was.
“That’s awful,” Sun said, without taking his eyes off the woman on the bench.
“Don’t let that get into your head.”
“But…”
“I know. I’m not a monster. But we can’t afford to help everyone right now, when we haven’t even solved our own problems.”
It was true. Even so, the sentence came out too easily, and I didn’t like how easily it came out.
The other three didn’t argue, and we went in. Even with the lines packed and more people arriving every minute, everything moved fast. The guild staff were absurdly competent.
“Next!” called a young woman with short blond hair that reached her shoulders.
“We’d like to register.”
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“Hm.” She looked at the group and read us at once as new Erebians, born in the current world. Unlike the recruiters, the people who worked at the guild saw hundreds of people a day, maybe thousands. “Just so you know, folks: registration costs money, okay?”
“I know.” I turned to Sun. “Remember that handful of copper coins you found in the chest?”
“I do?”
I held out my hand with my best debt-collector smile. Sun looked at the hand, looked at me, and put four coins in my palm. I kept my arm out. He sighed and put in four more.
“Here’s the payment.”
Sun didn’t argue. In a way, that money only existed because of me. But he made a point of looking at me like someone writing down the debt.
“Eight,” he said.
“It was a payment.”
“Eight.”
I’d negotiated with faction leaders before. I lost that one to a fifteen-year-old painter.
“All right.” The woman ignored the scene. “You can go to the next room for the tests, one at a time.”
“Tests? What tests?” asked Sun.
“Don’t worry. It’s basic registration stuff.”
Before hearing more, I went into the room. In the center stood a tall wooden table with a white sphere.
“Just the way I remembered it.”
I held my hand over the sphere, which glowed at once, pulled my palm like a magnet and stuck to it. A small shock ran through every cell in my body. The white sphere was taken over by a dark shadow, from the inside out, like ink falling into water.
[CHOOSE A NAME]
For safety, the guild let you register an alias. That was how Kai Sehun had become the Black Radiance.
On the way, I had thought of a funny alias. But when my hand moved, the name was already written.
[Zero]
Zero. It was a good name for a fresh start. Zero is the beginning and the end of everything. A new life, a final end. I thought the explanation was beautiful.
Too bad I only thought of it afterward. When it was time to write, the name had come out by itself, like an old signature the hand knows and the head has forgotten.
[Record created]
[Zero]
[Level 2]
[Class: ?]
[Tier 1]
[Profession: Apprentice Blacksmith]
[Potential: Unknown]
“Huh?”
Not even the guild knows which lineage my class belongs to? The Guild was older than many kingdoms and knew things that not even the global system said. A class of unknown potential that absorbed the Plague had to have some precedent in some dusty archive. I made a note: look into it later. The list kept growing.
I left the room.
“Hm?” The clerk frowned at the result. “Zero, could you redo the test? I think there was an error.”
I agreed and went back, curious too. Minutes later I came out again. The same result.
“There must be some mistake. I think the artifact is defective.”
“No. I think it worked exactly the way it should.”
“Are you sure? It doesn’t cost anything to repeat it, you know?”
“It’s fine. We’re in a hurry.”
“Well, it’s up to you. Next!”
Sun went in.
“Just so you know,” the clerk said to me. “The guild registered your blacksmith subclass, but you still need to go to the Association to register as an official blacksmith. The two institutions aren’t related.”
“I’m aware.”
She kept looking at me, waiting for one more sentence, which didn’t come. He doesn’t talk much, her face said. I didn’t talk much with strangers. With strangers, I spent words the way I spent Sun’s coins.
A few minutes later, Sun came out.
“Congratulations, Hwei! Your class has Epic potential. That’s one in a hundred thousand!”
“Oh. Th-thank you.” He went red to the roots of his hair. Praise from a pretty woman, apparently, brought the stutter right back.
“Now the girl.”
Lili looked at Rafael, with not the slightest desire to let go of his leg.
“Go on. I’ll be at the door.”
“Is she your daughter?” asked the clerk.
“No. I’m looking after her,” said the big man, and his face softened for a second. The clerk blushed. Time and life had dimmed Rafael’s shine a little, but he was still a handsome man, and his calm and fatherly air made him irresistible.
I got here first, talked more, paid the fee, and he’s the one who gets the blush. Erebus justice.
Lili ran into the room.
“Did you choose your real name as your alias?” I asked Sun.
“Huh? W-wasn’t I supposed to?”
“It’s fine. I should have warned you.”
Minutes later, Lili came out too.
“Incredible!” The clerk nearly stood up. “Unique potential!”
Of course it is. The line from the index burned in my head again, and I pushed it away.
“Young lady, you have a one-in-a-million talent!” She handed Lili a card. “My name is Maria. If you need anything at all, talk straight to me.”
Lili took the card with both hands and held it the way she held the robe: checking whether it was real.
“My turn,” said Rafael, and went in.
He took longer than the other two.
“Another Epic.” Maria rubbed her forehead. “Folks, you’re ruining my average.”
You could see the math running behind her eyes: this group, well looked after, could raise a faction to a whole new level. She held out an object to me, since I was obviously the leader.
“Here. A map of the region. It should help at the start.”
“Thank you,” Rafael said on behalf of the group, since I had forgotten.
“We’re done here,” I said. “Let’s go. We have somewhere to be.”
“Where?” asked Sun.
“Isn’t it obvious? We need to level up as soon as possible.” I opened the map. “I know the perfect place.”
The map showed a region I knew very well.
The place I had been sent to twenty years before was mirrored in the same location as Seoul. I would never have imagined that luck, landing again on the same spot on the map. It was like returning to a battlefield already knowing where the wells and the trails are.
If it really is here, I can easily get everything I need to forge the bracer.
Before I knew it, I was whistling, something I hadn’t done since the wet sidewalk.