Chapter 2

Behold.

Just as the sown seed becomes a sprout, then bears fruit, and sows seeds again.

Even if the blossomed flame vanishes into the air, that is not the end.

* * *

“Strange. Truly strange.”

Jinseong marveled repeatedly as he looked at his rejuvenated body.

He felt no excruciating pain as if his jaw were twisting when he spoke, his voice came out smoothly from his vocal cords, and he felt no pain in his lungs and vocal cords being squeezed and torn apart when he spoke.

When he raised his hand to touch his face, the countless gunshot and stab wounds he had received during his mercenary days were nowhere to be found, and the numerous self-inflicted scars he had made while in a trance learning magic were also gone.

A clean body.

He hadn’t just become younger; he had returned with a clean body.

Moreover, what amazed him even more was the place he found himself in.

“This is my past. Truly strange….”

The house where he used to live.

It was a space that matched his memories perfectly.

At first, he thought it was a hallucination caused by excessive pleasure-inducing substances secreted before death or a hallucination induced by some unknown magic, but surprisingly, this place was real.

“Even after reality and spiritual checks, this place is real.”

Every element that couldn’t be recreated even by S-class hallucinations or hypnosis was present here, and even his troubled mind loudly insisted that this place was reality and the truth.

Putting it all together….

“I have returned to the past.”

The only truth that remained.

He had regressed.

“ॐ—”

Jinseong softly chanted a magical word to calm himself.

Chanting this magical word to calm his mind was a piece of life wisdom and a routine he had gained during his mercenary life. Despite the rough and terrible life of a mercenary, he always had to compose his mind to exert power as a magician. Without such a method to control his mind, he would not have survived.

“ॐ….”

However, even the magical word that had calmed him for many years could not easily settle him. The fact that he had regressed was enough to stir up a great turmoil in his heart.

“Joy and irritation coexist. It’s like a storm and tumult blowing together.”

All sorts of emotions were swirling inside him.

The greatest emotion was joy.

The joy of being able to change the fate that had absurdly damaged his body and led to a short life. The joy stemming from the thought of surpassing human limits with magic, achieving immortality, and holding all the magic of this world in his mind.

Magic was his life’s joy, his life’s purpose, and his everything.

‘Some may call it obsession, but so what if it is? I am neither an ascetic nor a practitioner trying to escape the cycle of reincarnation.’

Jinseong was similar to and yet different from other sorcerers.

While other sorcerers sought to transcend existence through asceticism, enlightenment, and training, he craved transcendence solely for the sake of life.

His means and ends were reversed compared to other sorcerers.

Because of this, he couldn’t transcend. Instead, he pursued a state beyond his means, learning magic haphazardly, leading to his body’s collapse and a life cut short. Ultimately, he burned his own body, experiencing endless pain until the end.

That was the entirety of his life.

‘Should I have listened to the sages?’

The many sages he met during his mercenary days told him:

To let go of his obsession.

That if he didn’t, his end would not be good.

And their prophecy came true.

To end up setting fire to his body and dying like a corpse.

Anyone who saw it might have said it was an innovative suicide method of a madness-eaten sorcerer.

But perhaps it was the most fitting end for him.

There was nothing better than magic to conclude a life lived entirely mad with magic. Especially since, after the outbreak of World War III, the number of people dying futile deaths had dramatically increased, and mercenaries often met such worthless deaths that even dying like a dog seemed honorable by comparison.

However, the certain thing was that Jinseong met his death without achieving his purpose.

He wanted life, he wanted to live even if it was wretched, and he wanted to keep breathing even if it was miserable.

[Parasite Warlock]

Thus, he was called a Parasite Warlock.

He used magic that mimicked parasitic organisms and obsessed solely over survival magic.

He wasn’t ashamed of parasitizing someone else and lived only by exacting an excessive price for his loyalty.

He couldn’t shine on his own, but he always survived alone.

Hence, he lived as a mercenary, called a Parasite Warlock with a tone of contempt.

‘A single failure, a chance given again. It’s truly strange not knowing why this opportunity was given to me.’

Given that Jinseong had lived with such a derogatory title, most of the emotions swirling in him now were of joy. But along with that, another emotion was slowly rising: anxiety.

Why would Jinseong dislike the fortune that came to him?

If people are happy even when they receive unexpected money, how could he not be ecstatic when given the chance to turn back time and start a new life? It would be a lie to say he didn’t want to jump for joy and shout out loud.

However, all malice is usually hidden behind the scenes.

‘Why did I regress?’

Why and how.

These were the two questions he had learned to always keep in mind during his mercenary life.

Being a mercenary involved money, which meant that there were always people looking to stab you in the back. If you let your guard down, you could get killed by a colleague’s attack or stabbed from behind. This was especially true after World War III, when human nature on Earth had degraded to such an extent that the word “depravity” seemed insufficient, making it even more dangerous.

The most brutal betrayals often came from those closest to you, the very people you needed to trust. A common case was clients lying or distorting information because they didn’t want to pay the mercenary fees. Another frequent scenario was clients attempting to poison or ambush mercenaries after the job was done to avoid paying them.

If this was the level of trustworthiness from clients, it was often better to face enemies than to rely on comrades, as many of them were worse. Middlemen and mercenary organizations were hardly different from criminal gangs.

“Better to face an enemy than a comrade. At least the enemy won’t stab you in the back.”

This was a common saying among mercenaries, illustrating the chaos they lived in.

Thus, Jinseong’s life was always accompanied by the questions “why” and “how.” Without them, he would have been dead.

‘Why have I returned to the past?’

Such experiences made Jinseong suspicious.

Why and how could he have returned to the past?

Could it be that some transcendent being capable of such a miracle was toying with him by sending him back?

Was he merely a puppet on strings, doomed to repeat the same failures and die in similar circumstances?

These doubts swelled into an immense anxiety.

“ॐ-”

Jinseong calmed his trembling mind.

‘A transcendent being wouldn’t do such a thing.’

Transcendent beings.

They were called by many names: Transcendentals, Transcenders, and so on.

Gods, demigods, dragons, demons, spirits, yokai, giants, and more.

These legendary transcendent beings possessed immense power.

Transcendence, literally.

They were beings who had surpassed the limits of living beings and spirits to reach a certain state.

Gods could manipulate natural phenomena, demons were incredibly powerful in the realms of the mind and soul, and spirits and yokai wielded enormous power in their specialized domains.

Because of this, many people feared and worshipped them, a practice that continued even after it became difficult for these transcendent beings to interfere in the world.

‘But they are not beings to be feared unnecessarily.’

While it was best to keep a distance and avoid getting entangled with them, they were not beings to be feared to the point of paranoia.

Transcendent beings, without exception, liked and loved humans.

However, how their expressions of affection were perceived by humans… was another matter entirely.

‘Transcendent beings have the power but choose not to use it, while humans have the desire but lack the power.’

If the world is divided between those who can but choose not to and those who want to but cannot, then how do events occur in the world?

Exceptions exist everywhere, but they function merely as probabilities. These we call coincidences.

Coincidences have many names, but what is needed is the mindset to accept them as they are.

“ॐ-”

Jinseong lowered his voice and clasped his hands together to calm his mind.

– Knock, knock, knock

As if waiting for him to calm down, there was a knock on the door.

When Jinseong turned his head toward the door, it opened slowly, revealing someone peeking in.

“Uh, are you awake?”

The one peeking in was a slightly gloomy-looking girl.

‘Lee Serin. It’s been a long time.’

Jinseong was moved by her appearance, which seemed much younger than he last remembered.

Her eyes darted around nervously, just as he remembered, but her hair, now long and flowing instead of the short bob he last saw, and her makeup-free face somehow made him feel the reality of having returned to the past.

“It’s… time for breakfast…”

Her awkward expression and slow speech, as if she were declaring, ‘I feel awkward around you,’ along with her soft voice, made it clear she was uncomfortable. Everything about her was a fragment of the daily life he once knew.

“Uh, oppa? Breakfast…”

“I got it.”

“Ah, okay.”

As soon as his uninterested reply left his lips, Iseorin closed the door and disappeared as if she had been waiting for it.

“Now that I think about it, this house had rules.”

Such a stickler for rules.

Jinseong chuckled and changed his clothes.