"By the way, aren't these stories boring you?"
"..."
"Come to think of it, there's nothing more boring than listening to someone drone on about their past when you don't even care."
"..."
"But sorry—the truth is, I've never actually talked this honestly with anyone before."
"..."
"To be precise, I just never had a reason to tell anyone my life story. That's why I'm not very good at summarizing it—and end up rambling, telling things in whatever order they come to mind."
"..."
"Are you really that bored?"
"..."
"Then how about taking a break for a while?"
"..."
"If you want, you can sleep. There are blankets spread out behind you, and while you're resting, I'll write down the important parts separately. Then it'll be easier to understand why I'm living this way..."
"Enough—just get on with the explanation already."
"Okay."
Dry air brushed against his skin. The blond man rolled his eyes beneath the atmosphere unique to planet Earth.
A silver-armored balance scale. At the edge of his vision, it caught his attention—a luxurious magical artifact that looked terribly out of place against the cheap flooring of the one-room apartment.
"Not yet."
"I have to drag this out a little longer."
He continued speaking. In fact, aside from Seonwoo Yeon's persuasion, the resident of this small apartment had a goal of his own and was using this opportunity to buy time. When you thought about it, there was no better bait for getting a human to willingly waste time than this.
***
...Where did I leave off?
Trying to think about two things at once with a single mind caused a brief mix-up.
I stopped analyzing the structure of Justitia and focused on my recollections. What I would recount now was the period immediately after a certain green Alphaurn left the training facility.
Hooray! I got my diploma, so starting today, I'm a proper mage!
Looking back, I was generally in a pretty good mood around that time.
Why? First of all, because the matter of killing one of my own people had passed without incident.
The deep-sea-born Alphaurn had caused a major incident by partially destroying the school and even killing the headmaster in order to graduate early. In fact, the news caused quite a stir among the leadership of the planetary federation for some time.
What? The administrator of the Third Training Institute was taken down by a student?
A student?
To think he was overpowered in a head-on battle by a minor.
It wasn't just that he was overpowered. According to the testimony, the dean was hung from the main gate with his skin still on, like a national flag...
Oh my goodness.
That's creative.
Well, children don't exactly have limits when it comes to imagination.
But there was no major problem. As I've emphasized several times, this was an era when a powerful foreign invasion threatened to bring an end to all the petty conflicts within the nation at once. With the very survival of the planet at stake, a genius had been born—one brilliant enough to kill his own mentor. Would they really waste such a valuable green student by throwing him in prison over something as trivial as insubordination?
Though, just speaking personally, I honestly think the one who lost the duel was more at fault in that situation, don't you?
Curse and brainwashing techniques were still underdeveloped. There was a shortage of troops. On top of that, the waters where I had been born already had a strong cultural tendency toward meritocracy.
How could a grown adult lose to a rookie who hadn't even fully matured yet?
He was simply the weakest member of our family...
The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of recognizing it as self-defense, with 14 votes in favor and 2 against.
It's better to bury this matter.
Honestly, I never expected talent like this to be discovered in a training facility for lowborn people, rather than in a proper academic institution.
It seems the training facility's reporting system needs some refinement.
We can't allow the same incident to happen again. Who knows when another dean like the one at the Third Training Institute might appear and hide away another brilliant gem?
Overall, luck was on his side. After some discussion, the higher-ups decided not to punish the student. Instead, they reviewed the social system and took measures to ensure that another victim like the early graduate would never appear again. From any perspective, these were excessive measures for a mere commoner.
What, is no one seriously going to take responsibility for this?
At the time, I considered myself one of the few mages who had actually benefited from the war.
Ahh.
However, this immoral decision ultimately proved to be the right one for the planet as a whole. It was unfortunate for the noble family that had lost one of its bloodline, but...
Afterward, I achieved far more valuable accomplishments than the dean who had died such a gruesome death.
.
.
.
The prestigious early graduate of the academy.
Your first assignment has been decided.
Head toward the bright red sea.
And in the end, bring back our precious sea...
Beta Star.
When exactly did the sworn enemies who descended from there begin to be pushed back in earnest?
The Red Sea Massacre.
The collapse of a major swarm.
In the future, historians would point to various events as the catalyst behind the satellite's defeat. However, in every history book, the name of the one who lit the fuse would always be the same.
The Appearance of the Deep-Sea Alphaurn;
For a once-in-a-century genius to leave his mark on history was, in a way, inevitable.
Huh.
After the emergence of a certain deep-sea Alphaurn, the Beta beings found themselves on the defensive for the first time.
It all began at a single farm.
The young green-blooded mage, fresh out of the training facility, was on his way to a distant sea region in accordance with military orders. And while traveling toward the first post assigned to him by the state—he finally encountered one.
Is that a being from the upper layer?
In a forest of seaweed growing upside down, a creature bent its hard white body as it stole the crops.
It was a Beta being, an enemy he had only ever heard about until then.
Moreover, for the young mage, it was his first time seeing the enemy's actual form with his own eyes.
It looks exactly like the artist's pointillist painting I saw at the training center.
To think they'd come all the way down to farmland just to steal crops like this...
At the time, the young green mage was accompanied by several soldiers and a large beast, making their approach difficult to miss. Thus, the Beta being quickly noticed the approaching natives of the planet and immediately attempted to use its characteristic teleportation magic.
This works out perfectly.
The genius who had risen from the deep sea effortlessly deprived the enemy of its freedom.
Fractures, pneumothorax, hemorrhaging.
The early graduate inflicted all of those conditions with a single breath.
The Beta being that had been stealing food from the farm was critically wounded and captured. And what followed would eventually become the reason the sight of green alone filled its kind with terror.
The deep-sea native tore apart the enemy's limbs and thoroughly analyzed the captured Beta specimen.
Oho, so this is what the structure actually looks like.
His voice, brimming with curiosity, sounded like that of a child. Despite being a fresh graduate from the academy, the green mage somehow did not fit the image of a rookie at all.
So that's why it withstood the teleportation magic. The outer shell is incredibly tough.
He was seasoned and cruel.
Moreover, as anyone could see, he was a creature half-mad with his thirst for knowledge before he was a mage.
What would happen if the body of a captured enemy soldier fell into the hands of such a mage?
[Table of Contents]
[Alphaurn Middle History]
[VI The Transformation and Fall of the Beta Species: The Recapture of the Upper Layers]
This is where the counterattack began.
ooo! oo!
o-!
ooooo...oo!
The white shell-like skin of the upper-layer beings scattered through the water. Their torn flesh quickly piled into new hills and mountains.
Unintelligible screams echoed without end.
OOOOO!
Considering his place of birth and his family's standing, the fact that someone who had emerged from what could practically be called the lowest point in this world managed to force a powerful invading army into a helpless retreat was an achievement worthy of recognition.
This tactic was commonly used among the Alphaurns.
A battalion would consist of numerous close-range magic users and knights, with a small number of mages stationed at its center. While those central mages completed their powerful spells, the rest of the army would buy them time.
It was a formation centered entirely around defense.
It's inefficient.
However, one young mage chose not to follow that path.
In his very first battle, he decided to send most of the specialists to other fronts.
And then he accomplished an unprecedented feat all by himself.
Using the Beta specimen he had acquired at the farm, he came up with a makeshift spell and improved it just enough by the time he reached the front line to put it into practice.
The magic he had modified proved more threatening than any weapon that had existed until then.
The Beta species naturally possessed tough, rock-like armored skin, a defense that covered their entire bodies.
They were so durable that even ordinary spells could not leave a scratch on them.
ooo-!
oo. oooo.....
o!
Moreover, they were capable of high-speed movement, their coordinates changing rapidly in the blink of an eye, making it extraordinarily difficult to target their vulnerable flesh through that tough exterior...
Yet, before a genius who seemed to have been born for the sole purpose of making a living through magic, all those advantages became meaningless.
ooo. oooo.
A fuel of transcendent power circulated through his body like the crushing pressure of the deep sea.
Even as an infant, the tremendous magical power he possessed had been enough for others to mistake him for a savage, and his innate ability to manipulate that power was already exceptional.
Bubbling, bubbling.
Whoosh!
It was the beginning of a disaster.
Horrifyingly, the moment the early graduate swung his tentacle once, dozens of Beta beings suddenly burst apart.
The hard armor they had always taken such pride in—their skin—shattered all at once.
While dissecting the enemy he had captured at the farm, this Alphaurn had discovered that a pathway for mana transmission pierced through the Beta species' shell.
Skin this hard and dense wouldn't easily absorb magic from the outside. Well, naturally, I figured there had to be a separate breathing hole.
No matter how strong tempered glass is, hit the wrong corner and eventually the whole thing shatters.
Breathing hole.
This was the first weakness of the enemy discovered by the early graduate from the training institute.
And the moment he identified that vital weakness, he immediately tested the strategy he had devised on the battlefield.
[Telekinesis]
At a speed that easily overwhelmed even the Beta beings' high-speed movement, he pierced their internal coordinates and exposed the skin around their breathing holes from the "inside out."
One.
Two.
Even when the number reached dozens, as long as they entered his field of perception, he carefully tore open their sides one after another.
Just as his hypothesis had predicted, the breathing holes were indeed a fatal weakness of the white Beta beings.
Was it due to their physical structure?
Whatever the reason, a mere palm-sized crack was enough to cause their hard skin to shatter across their entire bodies.
ooo, ooo, ooooo! (That's a monster...!)
Crack!
Crack.
The green deep-sea being drove the enormous group of invaders to the brink of death and finished them off.
oooooooo!!
The waves, the currents, and the monstrous roars of the Beta beings mingled with the tiny bubbles of biological respiration, eventually forming a cold mountain in the distant waters.
Swoosh!
The green mage struck down the heads of every Beta being with rapidly formed wedges of ice.
If hell truly existed, it would surely have looked something like this.
The upper-layer beings, their skin split apart and the muscle beneath exposed, could not withstand the attack. They were fragile, writhing in agony.
Yet the terrifying mage who had completed the large-scale spell did not even appear short of breath.
As expected.
The voice of disaster flowed through the water.
After that, green gradually became a symbol of terror to the Beta beings.
Whenever a green figure appeared on the battlefield, their fellow upper-layer beings collapsed in droves. And whenever those tentacles swept through the water, even the strongest generals could not survive more than two strikes before dying.
Eventually, one day, the young green Alphaurn single-handedly annihilated an enemy settlement known as the 'Colony'.
From that point onward, the Beta beings would faint in terror at the mere sight of green—even the green stems of seaweed.
A single Alphaurn who caused mass death wherever he went, like an infectious disease.
Hurray! Hurray!
Hurray—
The pride of the planet! Hero!
Only a few weeks after the rookie mage first appeared on the battlefield, the green deep-sea native had reclaimed 27% of the waters that had been lost.
It was an extraordinary achievement.
How about carving a mountain range in the shape of our compatriot to commemorate the achievement of [!!!]?
Good idea!
By then, the Alphaurns had begun referring to the mage with grandiose titles such as "War God" and other lofty epithets.
But strangely enough, the person responsible for all these miracles merely glanced indifferently at the praise of his own people.
Hmm.
Good.
No matter how great a general might be, at this stage of their civilization they still needed rest and had to attend to basic necessities such as sleep and food.
The Alphaurns' body-modification technology had not yet fully developed.
So after every battle, the marine creature returned to the temporary barracks provided by the state to rest.
Lying there with one side of his head resting against his soft tentacle, he thought to himself.
This damn war. I'm sick of it!
The career he actually wanted was still far away, yet the moment he graduated from school, he found himself being sent from one battlefield to another.
Not that fighting itself was particularly exhausting.
His dream had never been to become a soldier.
What he truly desired was the grand task of unraveling the mysteries of the world, spending his days wrestling with the neurons inside his own mind—the humble occupation of a researcher.
That was his goal.
I need to drive these germ-like enemies away as quickly as possible so I can start studying!
He wanted to become a scholar of magic.
However, not long before, an ordinary soldier he met on the battlefield had casually asked him a question.
Don't people usually want to live a leisurely life once they've made enough money?
By that point, the man who had been making such a terrifying impact on the battlefield had already been promised various rewards by the state.
Most graduates of the training institutes usually said they wanted to relax and enjoy themselves once the war ended.
But judging by this man's attitude, it seemed he was even more determined to work after the war was over.
Why do you want to become a researcher so badly?
However, the green Alphaurn could not answer the question immediately.
To him, magical science was simply a fixed star he was destined to follow.
No matter what pleasures or beauty he encountered in the world, his heart always returned to the study of magic.
Hmm. I don't know.
What had caused it?
Perhaps it was the primitive magic he had witnessed his caregiver use during childhood.
Or perhaps, as the rumors suggested, his unknown parents truly had been gods blessed with tremendous mana.
I just love magical science.
He did not know why.
He had simply loved magic for as long as he could remember.
And considering his unparalleled talent as a sorcerer, perhaps the alien now inhabiting Kim Giryeo's body and the mysterious discipline known as magic had simply loved each other in equal measure.
...But, as so often happens in stories, the protagonist would eventually ruin his own fate because of that very love...
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