Chapter
335 – My gaze became a bit skeptical.
As someone who has lived their life with stories of alien planets at the tip of my tongue, I had no intention of confessing the early stages of Ahn Yoon-seung’s reincarnation, which he was currently mistaking.
“Well, anyway, don’t worry from now on…”
Then it happened.
“Uh?”
Drip…
Just as I was about to finish my sentence and get up from the bench, I felt some liquid flowing from my nose.
‘It feels kind of like when I have a runny nose?’
I was about to ask Ahn Yoon-seung if he had any tissue on him.
But his exclamation came faster.
“Nose, Nosebleed!”
“What? Nosebleed?”
At that moment, the forgotten magical element reemerged.
“Ah, right—”
Right.
Come to think of it, before my second awakening, I had always relied on that plant’s help.
“Achoo.”
“Haaaaa!”
Familiar circumstances soon unfolded.
I lightly coughed due to a tickle in my throat, which caused bodily fluids containing iron to splatter out.
The risk of the [Divine Tree Sapling]. Internal bleeding.
True to my title of the underwater assassin, this symptom appeared unexpectedly.
‘Now, the shock my body receives is greater than the defense I get from this. What a loss.’
As a result of my second awakening, I could now resist side effects while simultaneously healing my body in near real-time.
But now the problem was time and circumstance.
As with most negative events.
“Brother! Medical staff! I’ll get the medical staff right now!”
Since coming to Earth, it always felt like things were about to go well, only for moments like this to catch me off guard.
I barely managed to hold onto the stunned Ahn Yoon-seung and began the stabilization process again.
This symptom was temporary, and the body was fine, and so on and so forth…
Just when I thought I’d lost the ability to communicate because the listener was panicking, I almost physically demonstrated how resilient my cells were.
*
Thus, the stormy times passed.
‘Oh my, save the aliens. At this rate, the mage will grow old. Indeed.’
I was quite startled a moment ago because of the [Divine Tree Sapling].
I worried that the Earthling I’d calmed down earlier might go wild again and I’d have to expose the rather peculiarity of being an alien.
However, my concerns didn’t turn into reality.
‘Indeed, kids are good-hearted.’
The words I uttered turned out to describe myself instead.
Ahn Yoon-seung maintained his stance without retracting his decision to trust me.
Thus, I successfully concluded the Earthling’s nonsensical worrying.
‘Thank goodness I managed to end this without revealing that I’m an Alphauri. There’s no need to confirm the existence of aliens, causing stress to ordinary citizens living their simple lives.’
For a brief moment, a thought crossed my mind that someone might ask, “But what about Seonwoo-yeon?”…
But that was merely a trivial concern.
There were mountains of tasks ahead, so I didn’t think I had the time to daydream.
‘Let’s finish up and come back before sunset.’
As I explained to Ahn Yoon-seung, officially I was now a body with absurd performance.
So, to commemorate having regained strength, I decided not to procrastinate and proceeded with my plan.
[Today’s To-Do List]
[● Check the corpses of the (fake) Beast Group including Enzo.]
The magic that extracts information from others’ bodies is the flower of organic golem studies.
What kind of magic isn’t like that, but this was particularly one of my specialties.
‘I’ve already finished Earth-style modifications long ago. I just hadn’t used it on higher mammals yet!’
Thus, I felt inclined to delve into the memories of the Beast group using that magic.
The reasons for all my judgments were simple.
First, I wanted to get revenge on those who almost massacred Seoul citizens by inducing their Dungeon Break.
And second, to solidify my own safety further.
‘Just because I’ve regained power doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be cautious.’
Even weak criminals could unwittingly create trouble for mages if left alone, so this was a necessary step.
Honestly, this body could retire from labor at any moment.
If something like this kept putting a semi-state in danger, it was pretty evident I’d be bothered.
‘Anyway, there’s no need to threaten them with nationality now. I want to enjoy my time living in Korea for once… if I were to plan ahead, maybe for around 50 years or so.’
Ultimately, all my actions were rooted in an unknown anxiety.
I intended to stay vigilant against any possible threats in the future.
<Autopsy Room>
And in this moment, I felt once again that being an S-Class Hunter was genuinely worth hanging onto.
‘To think I could enter such a secretive place so easily.’
As you can see, if I put my mind to it, I could easily confront vital evidence confiscated by national agencies.
Living in this another world called Earth, no matter how fierce one looked, if they lacked actual standing, it would all be for nothing.
So, I genuinely pondered whether it would be wise to just abandon fame and stealthily retreat.
“Ah, Hunter! Well then, I’ll open the storage now.”
Just then.
The person in charge of the autopsy room who had guided the alien this far moved.
“By the way, even though they were criminals, all three of these hunters are foreigners. After deactivating their gear, there shouldn’t be any special measures.”
“Yes.”
“So this is 100% a pure state. We’ve confirmed that there are no hidden artifacts in their bodies, so according to our judgment, they should be fine.”
She explained something diligently, but it didn’t quite register in my ears.
‘She didn’t come here just to pray for the peace of the hunters she killed.’
What this great mage was interested in was solely their bodies.
…Wait, now that I think about it, that sounds weird. Anyway, I seized the chance while the attendant wasn’t looking and put my hand on the head of one corpse.
Thanks to the activation of the magic circle I had kept hidden under my palm, I almost managed to uncover their backstory—
“Eh?”
At that moment, unwanted information emerged from a dark corner of the room.
*
First attempt.
I tried to extract memories from the Enzo Hunter and my lung burst.
“Eh?”
The great mage thought maybe this was a problem with the technique and tried to optimize her magic further.
After a one-day recovery period and making excuses in the meantime, I headed toward the frozen storage again.
“Wait, just a moment.”
Then I initiated the second attempt.
That day, while investigating a short-statured impersonator who was Enzo’s companion, my lung burst again.
“Why?”
The bodily symptoms I experienced when I submerged the dungeon kept repeating.
What could this possibly mean?
“Is it, Kim Gi-ryeo Hunter?”
Doubt swiftly morphed into certainty.
The wizard who had taken on the name Kim Gi-ryeo in this world had already grasped the situation through these two investigatory acts.
However, unwilling to acknowledge the crisis he was facing, he began to sweat profusely, which was unbecoming of an alien, and entered the storage with persistence.
“Are you alright…?”
And with the conclusion of all this came the very last day.
Today marked the sixth day of my investigation attempts.
Kim Gi-ryeo reached out with every possible preparation that Earthlings couldn’t comprehend.
Yet, to my surprise, the same response occurred even while investigating the final impersonator.
“Ah, damn.”
“Uwaaaah!”
“Is there someone with a recovery skill outside? Please, let them in right now! Quick, bring them in!”
Every time I tried to scrape memories from the corpse, my lung shattered.
As a result, a wizard was confronted with an unforeseen problem.
‘Kim Gi-ryeo!’
This body, it revealed, was still incapable of using numerous spells.
‘What the hell, spending money on everything else but cigarettes!’
In an outburst of anger, I almost blurted out insults.
However, contrary to such grim reflections, the current situation was not just Kim Gi-ryeo’s dilemma.
As evidenced by the recent one-time body exchange associated with the gate in [Thornbush Forest].
Earthlings were still very much akin to primitives by the standards of magic studies.
Thus, their resistance to magic was low, and they didn’t take in the particles that served as the ingredients for magic positively.
Like the old man who ended up a vegetable trying to awaken, negative occurrences were evident.
To sum it up, Earthlings couldn’t properly become mages yet.
But thinking within that framework, the one currently in the deepest trouble was surprisingly the ‘great mage’ occupying Kim Gi-ryeo’s body.
‘Damn!’
It appeared that the human Kim Gi-ryeo had already exhausted most of his capacity merely by housing a powerful soul.
So, even with such a brief memory investigation, someone’s lung burst.
Though spells that a specific individual wielded seemed deceptively simple, most of them constituted a complex structure of modern magic.
Therefore, a primitive’s body would more easily hit a threshold like that.
[?? – Critical Collision Detected]
[Body Rupture When Using Magic Above Certain Grades]
Should I try to use advanced magic beyond a certain level, immense magical power gathered to form a miracle would tear the body apart.
‘This… is…’
He wasn’t even a crying creature to begin with, yet he almost burst into tears.
‘This is a nightmare…’
In his view, the threshold for his body to endure the load felt alarmingly low.
However, from the perspective of Earth natives, despite these risks, the strength of a second awakener was already astounding.
In the first place, the report: ‘Using too much magic caused the body to endure so much it ended up torn apart,’ didn’t even exist on Earth.
This much indicated that this individual had regained a considerable amount of ability.
Similar to what happened against Enzo.
With his mind set, he could crush even S-Class hunters unilaterally, and moreover, he could unleash high-level magic even at the cost of bodily rupture.
‘Ugh.’
But for an Alphauri who managed magic as proficiently as appendages, there certainly was a sense of loss.
“Are you really planning to go home just like this, Hunter? Are you sure you don’t want to get treated?”
“I’m fine.”
“Oh my, goodness. I thought I’d seen Kim Hunter’s health news making the rounds in the Discheat newspaper lately…”
“Seriously, just stop clinging to me and open the door again.”
Thud thud.
The alien with golden hair returned from conducting the investigation.
After several attempts, I decided I had gathered a decent amount of the information I wanted, but my body and mind were already in tatters.
My lungs had burst three times.
It had been six days since then, including recovery periods.
‘What in the world happened here.’
The shock from this experience had been so significant that I spent most of my time bedridden, and as a result, couldn’t even proceed with the discharge process.
Thus, Kim Gi-ryeo had no choice but to return to the hospital.
“Patient~ did you sprint over today? Your blood pressure is a little high.”
“Uh…”
“Oh, now is not the time to speak. Just a moment~”
Thus began the disaster for Earthlings.
‘Why is he the one who speaks first and then tells me to be silent?’
Having awakened beyond the S-Class, I had high expectations of being able to freely use magic from now on.
But as the relentless harsh reality crashed in, the great mage from another world underwent a monumental shift in mindset.
He felt irritable, his personality turned prickly.
‘Moreover, this is surely a hospital. Who the hell is smoking so much that it keeps smelling like tobacco in non-designated areas…’
Surely, this was just a mere short-term outburst.
However, hadn’t he also recently been recording something important?
‘No, that’s not it. Upon rethinking it, the smokers on Earth are not to blame!’
The shock of being bedridden led the mage to stealthily glance around his head.
‘This rotten world that forces even toxic substances down their throats and just tolerates it really needs to reflect on itself.’
No matter how many restrictions there are, the ceiling of talent this body possesses is beyond what an ordinary Earthling could ever reach.
Furthermore, as an alien, he possessed knowledge that was truly that of a real mage, at least on this planet.
Thus, aided by the power of dungeon resources and ongoing research, there was nothing particularly challenging for him at this stage as he continued grading these matters in a grumpy state.
The action was not merely going to be canceled.
From the perspective of the planet’s mammalian inhabitants, this was by no means a positive situation.
