Iponia
As I returned home, trying to defend myself from the downpour of Secretary Kim’s questions, I locked my door before taking Iponia out of the case.
“Hiss! Hiss!”
It bared its teeth and raised its fur, its green eyes giving off some desperate energy.
“Oh my. Calm down, kid.”
Director Oh advised me to refrain from touching it with my bare hands, but I didn’t mind it at all. When I caught the little guy running away to the corner of the case with both hands, Iponia twisted and rebelled without any strength. Doing so, it scratched at my forearm. However, blue light immediately flowed out of the bracelet as Auto-Heal was activated, and the wound disappeared without a trace.
“Now, I’ll put you on the floor.”
It had been in a situation where it was constantly threatened and starved. The excessively bright light of the displays would’ve also put it on edge. Not surprisingly, as soon as I put it on the floor, Iponia limped without looking back to hide in the dark space under the bed. It was a pity that it couldn’t even run properly even at the moment it tried to hideaway.
“I have to feed this kid too.”
I found the contact information of the guild’s supply department on my device and made a call. The other person didn’t panic even at my sudden request and only repeated, ‘Yes, yes!’ And exactly thirty minutes later, what was delivered were some skill cards.
“To give out guild assets just like that with a single phone call. It’s like a private organization.”
Of course, if what I asked for was something like a more valuable weapon-type artifact, it would’ve required approval from the guild leader, but this seemed to be okay.
“He chose some good ones.”
As I could see, each piece was precious.
“He only picked cards that were completely useless.”
That had been my request. One of the misunderstandings of ordinary people around this age was that, whatever their type might be, skill cards were very valuable and useful in some way. Most of the skills known through the media were gorgeous swordsmanship skills, magic spells, or even mysterious special abilities, so it was understandably misleading.
However, if you were to look at the skill cards found in dungeons, most of them were neglected even by F-class hunters and remain unused. This was because they took up a limited number of skill slots. Those were called trash skills. Usually, there were two types. Those with effects that were useless, or those where the mana consumption was impossibly great such as 300,000 (the maximum mana officially recorded in my past life is about 50,000).
If the latter were discovered, they were set aside and taken care of, but the former was treated as junk. The ones that came into my hands today also belonged to the first category.
[Self-Blind (Rank: F, Active)]
-Temporarily, the caster loses his sight. Mana Cost: 6
It was a typical trash skill. If you don’t want to see something, you lower your eyelids and close your eyes. You don’t need to spend as much as 6 Mana. I flipped over the next card.
[Promote Hair Growth (Rank: F, Active)]
-Creates several hair roots on the surface of the subject’s skin, allowing rich body hair to grow. Mana cost: 7 per 1.9 square centimeters
If I had landed in a time a little more to the past, I could have used it commercially, but in this era, hair loss had long been eradicated. Next.
[Luring Quebados (Rank: F, Active)]
-When the skill is cast, a very sweet scent that attracts Quebados for a certain period is released, and Quebados finds the caster attractive. Mana Cost: 25
For any reason, if you needed a Quebados, this skill might be useful. The only problem was that the Quebados didn’t live on Earth, and no one even knew what kind of creature it was. All other cards were similar. Okay, now···
I spoke to the guy who stared at me with a defensive look from under the bed.
“Are you hungry? Let’s eat.”
I quietly lay my gaze inside myself. A small amount of mana had been consumed during the event in the afternoon, but it had recovered naturally over time. I only took one card in my hand and then concentrated my mana on it. Immediately, the skill card responded.
Vwooom!
The card disappeared as it turned into light, leaving an oozing blue mana crystal in my palm. If that mana crystal were left alone, it would be absorbed into my body, combine with my active mana, and engrave a unique pattern. As a result, a new skill would be stored in the skill slot. After that, according to the stored information, the man moved, and the skill was activated. But I didn’t intend for such an event.
Vwoom! Vwoom!
I deliberately prevented that natural absorption by repelling it with mana. Then, I squeezed a little more mana out to cover it as if I was wrapping a crystal.
Drrr!
I rolled the crystal under the bed and then leaned over to look inside. Iponia, who was busy being cautious towards me, fixated on the rolling mana crystal. A fire lit in the eyes of the starved little guy. How long must it have been since it ate?
“It must have been starving, yet it doesn’t eat right away.”
It must be very hungry, but it still had tremendous self-discipline. Upon seeing this, I kept speaking.
“Eat a lot and stay healthy. Enough to digest the special meal I prepared for you.”
The meal that I wanted to give it was the curse skill that an unknown being put on Seo Jin-wook, which was still sleeping inside this body. After colliding with The Successor’s Eyes, it had been lying dormant, and there hadn’t been a whisper that induced my actions after that, but I didn’t know when it would trigger again.
Just because I was okay now didn’t mean that I could always live with a curse in my body. That was why I needed Iponia…it couldn’t swallow an SSS-level skill right now, so it needed some preparations. In addition to recovering Iponia’s health, it would also need to work on its ability to separate the bone from the food. Instead of constantly staring at it, I decided to look away and sit down at the desk again. Since it had been starved for a long time, it could only wait for so long. If it felt safe, it would eat.
*
The next day, as soon as the sun rose, I called Secretary Kim. I asked for a favor that would be the start of the most important thing to work on from now on.
Secretary Kim responded over the handset, puzzled.
“Angeli… Who? Please tell me the name again.”
“Angelica Heard.”
I said her name clearly. I searched for her myself until late last night, but as expected, nothing had appeared yet. I needed an expert’s help.
“Then, we will proceed with this when I ask the independent company to identify the people who attacked us.”
“Yes, please tell them to dig into every aspect, and I want to hear about even the tiniest details they dig up. Without any restrictions, everything about Angelica Heard.”
Her awakening would be a year from now, so she must now be living as an ordinary civilian. That was why nothing came out with my search. I only knew brief information about what Angelica was doing in this era; she didn’t like to talk about her past before she awakened. It was strange, thinking about it. Even if she were reluctant to talk about it, how could she not have such documentation? The past of a woman named Angelica Heard…
At first, I understood it as a measure to protect the person with the rare talent of prophecy. If personal information leaked out and an accident involving a family member or a neighbor happened, it would become a difficult situation. But it was strange that even after I climbed up to the guild’s highest rank, I could hardly find any documents related to her past. Looking at it, there were also signs of intentional augmentation of information.
Still, if the information released to the media and what she said in person were true, Angelica would now live in a coastal city in Portugal. I first conveyed all the information I knew as of now to Secretary Kim.
“Oh, and…”
“Yes, please speak.”
I was hesitant to ask for a further investigation of another person. That is, about a hunter named ‘Choi Seung-Hyun.’ Yesterday, I wasn’t just searching for Angelica. Decades had passed by for me, but I made several attempts on the Internet using information from my previous life that I clearly remembered. I looked back, from checking the account opened under my name at the time, even to all the traces I left on the Internet.
But there were none. As if I didn’t exist as a person, there were no traces that I had made that I surely remembered in this reality. I didn’t have a family, so instead, I looked for my few acquaintances at the time. Of course, they existed, but there was no trace of me being with them in their lives, at least not ones published on the Internet.
The past that changed due to Choi Seung-Hyun’s return didn’t only affect Seo Jin-wook. As if to respond to that, it seemed that the existence of Choi Seung-Hyun had probably ceased.
“No, that’s it.”
Instead of leaving this to Secretary Kim, I decided to check it out myself later on. The circumstances were almost certain, but I still had to see it with my own two eyes.
“Now then, I’ll trust you with it.”
I thought after hanging up the phone. It would certainly mean something for me to return to this body at this point. I naturally recalled it, the source of all these events.
“Angelica.”
While pretending to be the Earth’s savior, a maniac pushed the Earth to the pit of damnation at the crucial moment.
“I have to find her now before she awakens.”
What happened on the hundredth floor of the Tower of Choice flashed before my eyes, and the last moments of my colleagues played back. I ground my teeth.
“Why on earth did you have to do that?”
There was a lot of time left before the future took place, but coming into contact with her now, I may answer my questions. No, it didn’t matter, even if I didn’t get an answer. Even if I didn’t find her motives out…the priority right now was to stop it from happening.
I clenched my fists as determination silently set in my eyes.
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