Geon-mu shifted his gaze to the ground.
The trees of Tapgol Park were broken, and the lawn was stained blood-red.
None of it was Geon-mu's.
It was all blood from the corpses of the goblins that had charged him.
His body was hemmed in by limits on Strength and Agility, but the attack patterns flying at him were so obvious that he could overcome them easily enough.
"That was not quite enough. Do these punks not have a leader?"
His body itched, as though something in him had burned incompletely.
He felt that facing just one slightly stronger opponent would settle it.
'Come to think of it, those people went east, didn't they?'
Were they still at it?
He considered barging in uninvited to fill the gap.
"Let us go and scout, at least."
Geon-mu ran east.
And then, together with a message saying it was over,
[The <Trial of the Goblin King> has ended.]
With the message announcing the end, Geon-mu smacked his lips.
'A shame.'
He thought that was the end of it, but more messages began to rise in succession.
[Tallying rankings.]
[You slew 80 goblins in the <Trial of the Goblin King> and placed <1st>.]
[You have obtained the <Goblin King's Golden Box>.]
"A golden box?"
It said he had obtained a golden box, but what actually appeared before him was a card.
[Goblin King's Golden Box]
A box granted to the victor of the Trial of the Goblin King.
Upon destruction, you acquire items.
"It calls itself a golden box, so why is it giving me a card?"
Geon-mu could not understand it.
He would find out someday.
Without thinking too deeply about it, he slipped the card into his wallet.
Curiously, it was exactly the right size to fit.
He had received his reward and thought that was the end, but more messages began to appear.
[<Goblin King> is pleased with your battle.]
[<Goblin King> proposes a contract to you.]
"A contract?"
As Geon-mu tilted his head, another message came up.
[<Goblin King> says it will become your Patron Star.]
"And what is a Patron Star?"
He checked once against his status window.
There was no explanation of a Patron Star anywhere on it.
Then the Goblin King answered.
[<Goblin King> offers you an authority and a trait.]
An authority and a trait.
The concepts were unfamiliar and he had no idea what kinds there were, but they sounded good simply to hear.
But nothing in this world came free.
Geon-mu knew that well, so he started from suspicion and dug in.
"And in return, you want something from me, don't you?"
[<Goblin King> demands your loyalty.]
Loyalty, is it?
He felt he roughly understood what a Patron Star was.
'Something like the relationship between a king and a knight.'
The king granted land and title, and the knight offered his loyalty to that king and fulfilled his duties.
He had knocked about in a world like that, so he understood it clearly.
"Ha."
A laugh escaped Geon-mu.
It was less a pleased laugh than one that said the whole thing was laughable.
"I am to bow my head to the king of gutter rats?"
[<Goblin King> denounces your irreverent attitude.]
Goblins, which he had killed beyond counting.
Among them had been a king who commanded a legion rivaling an empire.
Geon-mu had swept that entire legion away alone, and cut down the neck of the goblin who called itself king as well.
It had been so dull that it did not reach the toes of the tension he had felt in his fierce battle with the Orc Lord.
Whether the Goblin King that wished to become his Patron Star was that same goblin or not.
Geon-mu had no intention of swearing loyalty to the Goblin King.
For one who had shattered the heavens and reigned above them to swear loyalty to craven things living down in dirt tunnels was beyond all speech.
"If you want a sucker, go find some other dumbass."
[<Goblin King> rages at your rudeness.]
[<Goblin King> harbors hostility toward you.]
"Do as you like."
Geon-mu snorted and switched off his interest.
No further messages came up.
Instead, someone approached him.
It was a man he had already seen once.
The man who had warned him it was dangerous and had left with a promise that they would meet again.
The man was staring at him with eyes gone as wide as full moons.
***
Kang Ho-seok was a D-Grade hunter of the Cheonho Guild.
Not top tier, but it meant he stood in the middle among the Awakened.
Having lived as an Awakened for close to twelve years, he was without question a seasoned hunter.
'He wiped out all eighty of those goblins?'
The rankings had been tallied, and Kang Ho-seok checked the names on the list.
1st. Kim Jin-hyeok (80)
2nd. Kang Ho-seok (41)
3rd. Kim Na-seon (12)
.
.
.
'Hold on, this doesn't make sense.'
The condition for receiving a reward was simple.
The party's average level must be no more than 5 above the appropriate level.
Unless there were special conditions, support in a trial could only be received within the trial's range.
This man called Kim Jin-hyeok had satisfied every one of those conditions.
It meant he was within 5 of the appropriate level and had put them all down with his own hands.
'This makes no sense.'
Goblins might be weak for their level, but they were not creatures some nameless human could kill without a single weapon.
Still less could anyone look that relaxed, without so much as a scratch, as if he had done nothing more than morning calisthenics.
'Is there a man in Seoul with skill like that? If there were, his name would surely be known.......'
The face was unfamiliar, and so was the name.
The first impression of a man he had written off as insolent had somehow swollen into something enormous.
The man came trudging over.
"I had no wish to see you again, and yet here we are."
"......."
"Did you kill all the goblins in the east?"
"What? Ah, yes. Th-that's right."
Formal speech came out of Kang Ho-seok's mouth without his meaning it to.
"I see. A pity, but it was entertaining enough."
The man muttered that and turned his back.
Kang Ho-seok quickly caught hold of him.
"E-excuse me."
"Hm? What is it?"
The man looked back, and Kang Ho-seok asked.
"Might your name be Kim Jin-hyeok?"
"Kim Jin-hyeok?"
"Yes. I only wanted to congratulate you on placing first in this trial......."
"I thank you for the congratulations, but my name is Cha Geon-mu."
"Pardon?"
"Did you not hear? Cha. Geon. Mu. That is what I am called."
Kang Ho-seok was thrown.
The name in first place was Kim Jin-hyeok, yet the man insisted he was Cha Geon-mu.
And he did so with overwhelming force and utter confidence.
So imposing was he that for a moment Kang Ho-seok fell into the illusion that he had misread the list.
"Ah, I-I see......."
"Is that all you wanted?"
Of course, that was not all.
Kang Ho-seok had spoken to him meaning to trade for the Goblin King's Golden Box.
He had intended to exchange the <Goblin King's Silver Box> he had received, plus cash on top.
But even those words refused to leave his mouth.
Cha Geon-mu.
The presence of that being was so overwhelming that he could not bring out any proposal at all.
"If that is all, I will be going."
And so the conversation ended.
Watching him walk away, Kang Ho-seok clenched his fists and trembled.
'What is this? Damn it, shaking like this in front of some young punk......!'
This might be a world that ran on the logic of power, but he was not fool enough to be frightened of a man he was meeting for the first time.
Grinding his teeth at the weakness rising out of his own instincts, he watched Geon-mu's retreating back.
"Ah, right."
Geon-mu remembered something belatedly, turned around, and walked back to Kang Ho-seok.
Kang Ho-seok, who had been watching that back, flinched and shuddered.
'Surely he didn't read my thoughts?'
Unease flickered across his face.
"I-is something wrong?"
"Could you show me where I need to go to apply for a name change?"
Faced with Geon-mu's supremely arrogant manner, Kang Ho-seok answered.
"I have a car. I will take you there myself."
***
The place Kang Ho-seok took Geon-mu was the family court.
"I am here to apply for a name change."
"Have you filled out all the required documents?"
"I brought them."
There were systems he had used maybe once before, but he was not practiced at them.
Kang Ho-seok helped him, and thanks to that he was able to assemble every document he needed.
At Geon-mu's answer, the clerk assisting him stared at him blankly.
A look that said what sort of man is this passed over that face for an instant, and then the clerk went back to attending him pleasantly.
"May I have your name?"
"The name on the documents is Kim Jin-hyeok."
"Kim Jin-hyeok....... I'm sorry, but do you have identification?"
"I have identification."
Geon-mu took out his ID and handed it to the intake clerk.
He remembered his days in the present world faintly, so he had a rough idea of what was needed.
"Kim Jin-hyeok...... Ah, you Awakened at the start of this year? And what is your reason for applying for a name change?"
"Because my name is Cha Geon-mu."
"Sorry?"
"Because I am Cha Geon-mu."
"......."
The intake clerk looked at Geon-mu's face, then down at the ID.
Both were the same person.
But the air about them was completely different.
The man in the ID photo was neatly dressed and smiling, while the man standing there carried the solemn air of a human being who had lived through long ages.
Geon-mu had not particularly set out to look solemn.
Decades of fighting through his last life, in the seat of the Asura King, had naturally worked a venom into his face.
In any case it was the same person, so the name change went ahead.
"Understood. Then we will file the application that way."
"How long will it take?"
"There are various reviews to go through, so it will take between two weeks and a month. We ask that you wait until then."
"Hmm. Understood."
He did not press.
It was not that they refused; it only took time, so he would wait as told.
Geon-mu closed the documents and walked over to the man standing behind him.
Kang Ho-seok.
The very man who had driven him to the family court.
"Thank you for the help."
"N-not at all. It was nothing......."
Kang Ho-seok scratched his head, looking awkward.
"Come to think of it, you are thirty-two? I am twenty-one now, so I should be calling you Brother."
"There's no need to go that far."
"No. Would a Confucian society permit otherwise? I will call you Brother. So you may drop the formal speech with me."
He had lived longer than other people, but he had no intention of throwing that around.
When you came to Rome, following Roman law was the wisest course.
Geon-mu always kept that in mind.
"Ha ha, sh-shall I, then?"
He was used to speaking casually to younger men, but doing it with Geon-mu, ten years his junior, felt unsettling.
Though the man was simply standing there, it felt as if someone far older were looking down at him.
'Kim Jin-hyeok...... So he really is Kim Jin-hyeok.'
He had wondered whether the man was simply being wary of him, but he insisted his name was Cha Geon-mu to everyone else as well.
While helping with Geon-mu's paperwork, Kang Ho-seok had naturally skimmed through his information.
'Born an orphan, and an utterly ordinary civilian right up to now, at twenty years old.'
Two months earlier he had discovered his status window along with the Awakening pains and registered with the Awakened Association.
But there had been no activity since.
'Common enough, though.'
It was a profession steeped in slaughter, so there were many who went to ground despite being Awakened.
The work demanded that much nerve, and if you could not do it properly, you could lose your life.
If you wanted safety, you registered as an Awakened and went on living the same ordinary life as before.
'But after two months he showed himself again.......'
And cleared the <Trial of the Goblin King> with an overwhelming score.
There was no record of him entering or leaving dungeons, so his level should have been 1.
'Killing goblins sitting around the mid-teens in level, at Level 1?'
Kang Ho-seok, who had rolled around in this world for twelve years and been through battles on mountain and water alike, could say it with certainty.
It was impossible.
A level difference of 5 or more created an overwhelming gap.
With the level gap, the damage you dealt weakened and the damage you took grew.
Goblin stats might be on the weak side for their level, but they were not creatures weak enough to die to a Level 1.
Items could balance things out somehow, but there was no way to overwhelm goblins bare-handed the way Geon-mu had.
'Did he take an elixir? By what means?'
Some prestigious swordsmanship house or a conglomerate family, perhaps, but an elixir the size of half a bean that cost hundreds of millions was not something one came by easily.
He had not taken an elixir, had not raised his level, and two months after Awakening had fought his first battle against an absurd opponent.
However he had done it, it meant he was a figure outside Kang Ho-seok's common sense.
'Which means I have to win him over somehow.'
Greed soaked into Kang Ho-seok's eyes.
Geon-mu had noticed what Kang Ho-seok was thinking long before.
'He seems to be thinking useless thoughts.'
How many humans of this sort had he met?
Geon-mu was long since used to it.
So what would he do?
'Turn that scheming intent back on him and squeeze him dry.'
Above the one who runs, there was the one who flies.