The din of the Gozel Market was a deafening, sensory-overload symphony of commerce, desperation, and chaos.
Located at the beating heart of the Alfetus Kingdom—a realm legendary throughout the continent for its indomitable steel-clad warriors and unparalleled high-arcana mages—the market was a sprawling, subterranean-like labyrinth of wondrous trade.
Arcane energy hummed incessantly beneath the ambient noise of shouting merchants and clattering carts, vibrating from crowded stalls stacked high with shimmering, bubbling potions and weapon racks etched with glowing, pulsing runes.
It was a dark, wondrous place where literal miracles were bought and sold daily, provided one possessed the coin to pay the price.
Weaving effortlessly through the thick, suffocating crowds was a solitary figure wrapped entirely in a heavy, threadbare, drab cloak.
He moved like a silent shadow, deliberately pulling the coarse fabric tight around his broad shoulders to obscure his face, blending seamlessly into the background noise to avoid drawing even a fraction of unwanted attention.
This physical body belonged to Barn.
In its previous life, the original Barn had been nothing more than a petty fraudster and a bottom-feeding parasite who thrived on the sheer gullibility of others.
He had navigated the dangerous underbelly of the capital by taking ruthless advantage of anyone he could trick—until his shallow ambition finally outpaced his luck.
In a single, fatal mistake, he tried to swindle the wrong noble target, a blunder that swiftly cost him his life at the hands of hidden blades.
But death was not the absolute end.
The soul currently driving this mortal vessel was a transmigrator from another world—a being who had inherited both Barn’s physical shell and his deeply ingrained survival instincts.
Yet, this new soul possessed something the original parasite never had: a towering, unyielding pride, backed by an immense, cosmic reservoir of primordial knowledge from a past existence.
Combined with the body’s existing baseline talents—a respectable Third Rank mastery in the Magic Arts and a Second Rank in Aura manipulation—he possessed an extraordinarily unique cognitive toolkit.
To the ordinary citizens of this fantasy world, the seamless blend of his modern, transcendent insights and martial capabilities could easily pass for divine miracles.
He scanned the passing crowd with practiced, razor-sharp precision, his dark eyes darting from arrogant young noblemen to wealthy merchant guildmasters, calculating who among them might serve as the perfect, unwitting mark for his next endeavor.
Suddenly, the heavy fabric of his cloak jerked sharply backward.
A firm, desperate grip had snagged the rough cloth from behind.
”I found you, mister!” a sharp, crystal-clear female voice rang out over the roar of the market.
“Now, make me stronger!”
Barn froze instantly, the air catching tightly in his chest.
He slowly turned his head to look at the girl who had dared to intercept him.
An involuntary shiver ran down his spine, and an icy wave of pure dread washed through his veins.
Looking down at her, a profound, suffocating sense of foreboding gripped his soul—it felt far less like a chance encounter, and entirely too much like looking directly into the face of his own impending demise.
The girl standing before him was a striking, bizarre contradiction of immense wealth and raw, suppressed power.
Her garments were woven from rare, insanely opulent fabrics, shimmering with gold thread and intricate, enchanted embroidery that caught the ambient rune-light of the market.
The faint, sweet scent of a premium perfume—a luxury brand newly released exclusively for the highest circles of nobility—drifted softly from her skin.
Yet, beneath this glossy veneer of aristocracy, her striking beauty wasn’t born of idle pampering or courtly ease.
Barn’s sharp, heightened senses immediately picked up the rhythmic, disciplined cadence of her breathing; this was a physical vessel forged through rigorous, relentless physical and magical training.
The icy wave of dread that washed through him wasn’t just survival instinct—it was a sudden, jarring spark of memory returning from the body’s original host.
He knew her.
Or rather, the previous owner of this body had known her all too well.
She was the exact catalyst for the original Barn’s violent demise.
The dead fool had tried to swindle a highborn lady, and her unseen, lethal protectors had swiftly and violently corrected his mistake with a cold blade to the throat.
Reaching out subtly with his Second Rank Aura and Third Rank Magic, Barn silently scanned their immediate surroundings.
Sure enough, his heightened extra-sensory perception caught the faint, expert presence of hidden watchers melting into the shadows of the market crowd.
The gap in their stealth ranks was dangerously clear; whoever was tracking this girl was formidable, far outclassing his current physical vessel’s baseline limitations.
Every survival instinct embedded in his flesh screamed at him to break grip and run, yet a strange, heavy sensation stayed his feet.
He could actively feel a dense, suffocating aura of bad karma clinging to the girl.
It was the distinct, invisible stain of someone whose very existence, intentionally or not, brought absolute ruin to those around her—a path of inevitable destruction paved by her own profound, desperate ignorance and the brutal political consequences of her noble family’s actions.
Yet, his towering, transcendent pride utterly refused to let him flee like a frightened dog from the ghost of the original Barn’s pathetic past.
Without uttering a single word, Barn turned sharply on his heel and guided her away from the bustling thoroughfare, slipping effortlessly into a labyrinth of narrow, abandoned alleyways.
The vibrant, deafening sounds of the Gozel Market quickly faded, replaced by the eerie, hollow quiet of decaying stone and dilapidated slum housing.
He stopped abruptly in front of a particularly weathered building—its ancient wood rotting away, its foundation crumbling, and its small windows thick with years of accumulated grime.
The girl followed close at his heels, her aristocratic poise subtly giving way to a cautious, highly uncomfortable rigidity.
The absolute squalor and stench of the slums clearly repulsed her highborn sensibilities, yet her burning, desperate determination kept her moving forward without hesitation.
Barn reached out, pushing the heavy, creaking wooden door open, and stepped into the pitch-black, dusty interior.
She hesitated at the threshold for a fraction of a second, her hand twitching near her waist, before steeling her resolve and crossing after him.
Outside, completely concealed within the deep shadows of the crumbling slum architecture, the hidden noble sentries shifted silently, their lethal focus entirely locked onto the rotting building, waiting for the slightest sign of threat to move in and kill.