I kept thinking, "No way, no way," but how could I possibly end up getting kidnapped three times after reincarnating? At this point, even from the victim's perspective, the whole routine was starting to feel stale. I half-opened my heavy eyelids—which were difficult enough to move under all this excess flesh—and let a trace of displeasure show.
"Do you know?"
But Kang Changho simply continued in his usual casual tone.
"The Temple of the Rakshasa. There's no way you wouldn't remember a name like that."
And so began a thoroughly trivial, petty story.
"You haven't forgotten, have you? The Temple of the Rakshasa. Anyway, around the time that Su Yehwi was arrested, the cult's headquarters became something of a must-visit destination for thieves."
"-_-"
"That kind of thing is actually very popular on the black market."
"-_-"
"In the old days, you could satisfy your curiosity by taking advantage of a war and experimenting on prisoners, but nowadays, if you mess around with people carelessly, you get into trouble both domestically and internationally. You know what I mean?"
The sudden mention of the Temple of the Rakshasa caught me off guard. I wanted to ask the man who kept dragging out the conversation exactly what his point was.
But at that very moment, I sensed an unusual change in my body. And while I silently reeled from the realization, the Earthling in front of me continued speaking.
"Actually, whenever someone gets results from applying psychic powers to humans, information brokers are willing to pay quite a lot for them."
"-_-"
"And somehow, I recently got my hands on a copy of the cult leader's notebook from the main hall of the Temple of the Rakshasa. So, that's the introduction."
Kang Changho was cleaning a very small object with a clean cloth. The thick fabric covered most of it, making the object difficult to see clearly, but judging from the flow of magical energy, it was probably 'that' thing.
"Kim Giryeo."
At that moment, Kang Changho stopped polishing the object and addressed me.
"This probably isn't your real name, but since you don't exactly have another one to offer right now, let's just leave it at that."
As he'd said, there had been some pointless speculation in the middle, but he quickly moved on.
"I'm telling you this because it's probably something you'd want to know. Normally, a Gate undergoes a Break once the density of entities inside it satisfies the required condition."
"-_-"
"So that cultist Su Yehwi ran an experiment. He filled a bottle with tiny monsters—things like 'red fireflies'—and rolled it into a Gate. The Break condition was met almost instantly."
"Ahem."
"Anyway, since simply increasing the number of monsters is enough, whoever designed the system must have been pretty careless."
"A, ahem..."
"But thanks to the Gates being so stupid, we were able to see Hunter Giryeo from the outside, so perhaps we should be grateful. Anyway, that cult leader's notebook contained plenty of valuable research besides methods for causing dungeon breaks."
Su Yehwi.
I never imagined that even after that Earthling was dealt with, they would continue causing this much trouble.
What Kang Changho was explaining was the principle behind the incident that had taken place at my one-room apartment in Mapo-gu. According to him, there were far more aspects of Earth's Gates that humans could manipulate than anyone had realized.
"Maybe everyone was so focused on finding where the brainwashing cult leader was hiding that no one even thought to properly investigate the cult's headquarters afterward."
Just as in the example he'd given, using fireflies—or the silent beetles from the Nameless Cave—made it possible to satisfy a dungeon's Break activation condition in an extremely short time.
There was also another troublesome technique involving the removal of passages with [Collapse Particles].
First, they forcibly sent a Hunter capable of sustaining the parallel world into a sealed Gate. Then they closed the Gate completely and used either a special teleportation skill that targeted that Hunter or a marker-type method such as [Ariadne's Thread], which established contact with a predetermined target.
Then—
"Looks like what I experienced with Seonwoo Yeon is finally proving useful."
Strangely enough, according to the Earthling in front of me, this allowed a dungeon exit to be opened from the outside. The newly formed passage would appear near the target inside the dungeon, while its external entrance would roughly form near the caster.
Convenient in all sorts of ways.
"Did you obtain this information recently? Or did verifying it take some time?"
If I'd known something this useful earlier, I would gladly have handed that Ariadne's Thread item over to my backup skill tree as well. Learning that there was an emergency method for escaping a Gate nearly brought tears to my eyes.
Unfortunately, the other man clearly hadn't shared this information to make me happy.
"Now, here's the real point..."
That Earthling had used the information recovered from Su Yehwi's belongings for none other than kidnapping.
Come to think of it, hadn't this Earthling been present at both the first and second incidents as well?
"Oh."
Apparently, whenever Kang Changho and I crossed paths, fate itself was wired to produce disaster.
With that idle thought passing through my mind, I focused on his explanation again.
"—This hasn't been tested very many times, so even Su Yehwi probably never realized it. But once the entity-count condition is fully satisfied using a bottle packed with small monsters, if you then open a passage from outside and the final attacker escapes through it, the Break occurs in the direction of that passage."
"-_-"
"That's how the Gate leading to your one-room apartment was created. There was one minor problem, though. Because the Gate was pierced horizontally rather than vertically, the passage expanded uncontrollably to match the size of the structure it connected to."
"-_-"
"As a result, the building collapsed unintentionally. Seriously, with all these little malfunctions, Gates are far too troublesome to deal with."
However, by then, the conclusion could already be inferred from his unnecessarily long introduction.
In simple terms, Kang Changho had been searching for a way to drag me out of the room where I was hiding.
And apparently, his solution had been to deliberately trigger a Break and launch an all-out assault on the entire building.
"Ha..."
That was when I noticed the smell of metal nearby.
It wasn't coming from the kidnapper or from anything he was carrying.
It was the sharp, salty scent of blood rising from someone's throat.
"You're seriously... out of your mind... Don't tell me—you brought down that entire building just to drag one person out...?"
Which meant blood had been running down my throat for some time already.
Cough, cough.
At last, I managed to voice my opinion as the victim.
Unfortunately, the moment I tried, I broke into such a violent coughing fit that speaking became difficult. Like a bedridden patient choking on thick phlegm, I struggled just to force the words out.
That was me right now.
"Kaaghh!...Cough, cough!"
Compared to someone like Seonwoo Yeon, my throat was considerably thicker, yet a sharp spike had been driven straight through it.
No wonder I couldn't finish a sentence properly.
"Cough."
So that was why my mouth hadn't been covered.
Kang Changho had already anticipated resistance from his kidnapping victim and taken precautions in advance.
The object lodged in my throat was a thin awl roughly two and a half finger joints long.
And I had seen the material it was made from somewhere before.
"That weapon I saw in the Nameless Cave. He carved blue slate into a needle this small...?"
The wedge-shaped tool held by the 5-rank body-enhancement Awakener had been designed to disrupt the target's concentration of magical power.
Simply put, it interfered with spellcasting.
"Oh my. And at this size, it's still incredibly effective by Earth's standards?"
Thanks to my immunity to pain, it had taken me a little while to notice the injury to my throat.
Had this Earthling done this before?
Apparently so, because he had driven the blue awl into precisely the right place—not damaging any vital organs, yet still interfering with my ability to respond.
But when I kept shifting my throat in irritation at the foreign object lodged inside it, the kidnapper soon moved on to his next action.
"Hmm. Usually one is enough, but this time you're breathing far too comfortably."
Oh.
Let me correct myself.
Judging from his choice of words, there was absolutely no doubt that this bastard had done this sort of thing more than once or twice.
Immediately after saying that, Kang Changho raised the small awl he had been cleaning.
Then, for reasons I couldn't understand, he pulled out a disposable lighter—the sort sold at any convenience store—and held its flame beneath the tip for quite some time.
For a moment, memories of torture scenes from historical dramas flashed through my mind, and I wondered whether this was some modern variation of branding or cauterization.
"Giryeo, you don't need to know that right now!"
Afterward, Kang Changho waved the heated tip through the air several times. Only after it had cooled somewhat did he proceed.
Swish!
The man drove the anti-magic device firmly into the area between the alien's trapezius muscle and collarbone.
"If that's what he was going to do, then why did he even bother with the lighter?"
That Earthling possessed tremendous strength, and the needle-thin tip concentrated all of that force onto a single point, piercing the skin without mercy.
Well, technically, I could have blocked it by concentrating [Protection] there.
But there was no reason to.
Unlike some random passerby on the street, I had been born with the mana of the natural world itself on my side. One sealing talisman—or even two—wasn't enough to trouble me.
"Though for someone born with such extraordinary talent, I've once again been reduced to quite a pathetic sight."
I lowered my gaze.
Two awls were embedded in my upper body, while the rest of me was physically restrained to an iron chair.
Although I was currently presenting myself as an easy target, I still made sure to listen carefully to every word the kidnapper said.
"By the way, did you just say I was out of my mind for what I did?"
Oh my.
I hadn't expected him to bring that up himself.
Kang Changho paused, staring at me with a faint, twisted smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
To break the uncomfortable silence, I forced my vocal cords to squeeze out a response.
"...How could you... do something so... terrible..."
Being restrained from head to toe vaguely resembled the hardships I'd endured in my past life.
Strangely enough, however, I felt no real anxiety.
As I'd just established, Kang Changho's attempts to seal my magic weren't having any significant effect.
[2.7177 Changes]
• [Emergency Escape] added.
• Activation Condition: When an organ essential for physical teleportation (e.g., brain, lung tissue) is displaced more than 10 cm from its original position.
• Or when any of the following conditions are met, the soul separates from the body regardless of the caster's will. (e.g., failure to resist mind control...)
Near the end of my previous life, when most of my work involved calculating probabilities, I had determined that the likelihood of another Alpha Uran appearing on this planet was effectively zero.
However, Earth was full of creatures who had awakened miracles of their own, even without being Alphauran.
So, as insurance against unforeseen circumstances, I had continued adding supplementary modifications whenever I had the time.
Originally, I had intended to install this safety mechanism immediately after reincarnating, but at least I'd finally accomplished it after obtaining the Dragon's lungs.
That was something.
"It's a shame I didn't have enough time to make the germ bomb. If I'd completed it properly, I would've hidden it inside my stomach immediately as a backup."
Now, even without the Pyromancer's necklace, I had a way out of any truly hopeless situation.
With my mind considerably lighter, I continued speaking.
At the same time, I hoped Seo Esther or Jung Haseong, both of whom had received my group messages, would arrive to help while I stalled for time.
"...What crime did the landlord ever commit...?"
Surprisingly, however, the remark I'd thrown out in an attempt to prick his conscience didn't make the other man so much as blink.
"Oh, didn't you know?"
He even answered in the same calm tone.
"I bought that one-room building a while ago. The ownership has already been transferred."
"...?"
"I just haven't told the tenants yet."
No way.
He had actually bought the entire building.
"If you check the official registry later, you'll see the name Hwang Donghyuk. I bought it separately under his name, so I don't need to worry about the value of the building."
Who the hell was Hwang Donghyuk?
"The landlord I know has the surname Yoo."
For a moment, I was speechless at the revelation that he'd simply bought the entire building.
But there was still another issue.
"Then what about the things inside the apartments, setting the building itself aside?"
If any of the tenants owned valuables, all of them would now be buried inside the Gate.
From the perspective of the residents who had lost their possessions, the situation must have been devastating.
"And what about compensation for the people who lived there...?"
But at that moment, as though he had read my thoughts, Kang Changho answered with perfect composure.
"If there's property damage from the disaster, I'll settle it by donating roughly 3 billion won under the name of a famous celebrity, so most of it reaches the tenants. I've done it before, so it won't be difficult."
A convicted criminal.
On top of that, a man who beat people up and kidnapped them.
And yet he'd apparently accounted for the residents' losses from the very beginning.
"Did you find that unexpected?"
The corners of his mouth lifted.
"But sorry. The person who's most confused right now is me. At first, all I meant to do was overlap the Break monsters with the walls of the building and destroy a certain someone's barrier."
"-_-"
"But then the Gate suddenly malfunctioned. When my subordinates reported the distortion, I tried to collapse it again quickly using Collapse Particles. And then the guy who'd been hiding quietly in the corner of his room suddenly came running out and wasted time evacuating all the residents."
Kang Changho narrowed one eye thoughtfully.
After a long silence, he finally spoke.
"People misunderstand me all the time, but the truth is, I'm really not that bad..."
"What?"
"If anything, you could argue that I'm on the beneficial side. You're the bad one."
Tak, tak.
The culprit behind my third kidnapping closed the distance between us in two long strides.
"That's exactly how it is."
The 5-rank Awakener stopped directly in front of the iron chair to which his prey was bound.
Then, casually folding his arms, he finally revealed the real reason behind everything that had happened.
"You're not on our side, are you?"
Why Kang Changho, normally so composed, had reacted with such violence only to Justitia's result.
Why his hostility had gone far beyond simple anger at being deceived.
And, finally, how an Earthling had managed to corner an alien.
"The world's been thrown into chaos because of the Gates, and now there's a monster standing right in front of us wearing human skin. How could a human possibly be wrong for trying to stop you?"
The moment he mentioned the origin of the Gates, I understood.
"Ah!"
Damn it, that bastard Changho!
Just as I'd suspected, he really thought I was a [Gisimche] that had taken over a human body!
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