#71
A New Order (1)
Flutter, flutter—
[Huhuhuhu... How is it that no matter how much trash I clean up, there is no end in sight?]
A dark night with not even moonlight shining down.
Atop a high-rise building, a black hem fluttered in the wind.
The only thing properly visible from that figure, as though cloaked in darkness, was a pair of blue lights in his eyes.
Those two eyes looked down upon the brilliantly glowing nightscape, shining coldly like an absolute being gazing down upon the world.
In truth, calling him an absolute being was not wrong.
For he was the calamity of the Auterica dimension, the Immortal King himself.
‘The crime rate in areas I’ve swept through once has gone down, but as the area I cover keeps expanding beyond that, the workload is actually increasing.’
Using the infinite mana he had obtained upon becoming the Immortal King, along with skills like 「Path of Magic」 and 「Mana Domination」, he had extensively revised the “Contagious Servitude Magic Final Version_Revised_Second_FINAL(3)_ReallyLast” that he had been using so often until now.
And thus was born the “Complete Edition of Contagious Servitude Magic.”
It became more covert, more accurate, and capable of detecting a wider range.
Because of that, his area of activity had covered all of Seoul and continued to expand, while the number of evildoers he punished was growing beyond what he could handle.
[This state of affairs, overflowing with malice, is truly lamentable. How great must the poison harbored in their hearts have been for them to become this way?]
How could the fact that society had grown this chaotic be solely their fault?
Were they not also other victims, wounded by this world?
And so...
[Yes, I shall accept all your resentment toward the world. So that you may no longer spew that malice outward... you shall enjoy eternal peace within my embrace. Kuhuhuhut—]
Someone needed to break that chain of misfortune.
And Hans, who could be called the incarnation of all that was negative, was surely the being most suited to that task.
At that moment, another new signal was detected.
Robbery and murder using an ability. Unfortunately, it seemed several victims had already appeared.
[Dear me... You have gone and done it.]
If it came to this, he had no choice but to take them in again.
Hans’s body was engulfed in darkness, and his form slowly began to blur.
Before he vanished completely, something numbering in the hundreds writhed like a clamoring swarm within the shadow cast beneath his feet.
As if fiercely welcoming the new arrival who would soon come...
***
“How is it? Can you tell anything?”
“Mm... I can tell roughly. When certain conditions are met, it repeatedly replays the trauma, and they mixed in lingering thoughts with the curse to make it impossible to bypass.”
A man with a baseball cap pulled low over his head answered with one hand placed on the head of the person lying asleep in the hospital bed.
“We already knew that. What about breaking the curse? Can you do it?”
“Ah, that? Absolutely not. The system is different too, but first of all, they’re on a higher level than me. If I mess with it carelessly, I’ll get hit with the backlash myself.”
As though dissatisfied with his answer, the man in the suit who had asked the question frowned and glared at him.
“Then what exactly can you do? Did you find out anything else?”
“One thing is certain. The human who cast this curse is an absurd monster. If it were me, rather than fight this gentleman, I’d choose to kill myself quietly.”
“...To that extent?”
Bak Hancheol, team leader of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Ability Management Bureau, roughly scratched his head and sighed.
Seeing that, the man in the cap pondered for a moment to give a more detailed explanation, then opened his mouth.
After all, he was currently cooperating with the investigation as an advisor on black magic.
“First, the level of the black magic is high. Judging by the complex and sturdy structure, it seems like they systematically learned something that developed over a long time in some dimension.”
On top of that, it was definitely not a superficial level of learning, but one where they had properly understood and acquired even its secrets.
“And the density of the dark mana is beyond words. It’s not simply a matter of there being a lot of it. The quality itself is different. I’d like to ask just how they accumulated such pure energy.”
When one cultivated energy, impurities were bound to accumulate, yet the dark mana used here was astonishingly refined.
To the point that even he had only just learned that dark mana, which was fundamentally a corrupt energy, could become like this.
“Lastly... I don’t know whether it’s a characteristic unique to that system or some secret technique, but the way they use curses doesn’t feel human.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
The man in the cap looked over the person lying in bed again, scrutinizing him carefully as if his sharp eyes could even pierce through his insides.
“Curses are double-edged swords to begin with, so you have to be especially careful when using them, right? If you make even the slightest mistake, they can come back to you.”
“...I’ve heard that a lot.”
“But this gentleman has no safeguards for that at all. It’s a method that pursues only efficiency—faster and stronger. And yet, that fits together too naturally.”
There was not a single unnecessary part in the curse meant to protect the caster.
If there had been some sort of detour, he could have attempted to break it or do something, but with this, he could not even touch it.
“Maybe he has a curse immunity skill?”
“That might be possible... but this doesn’t seem to be on that level, you know? It feels like something is subtly off? Should I say I don’t sense any humanity in it...?”
“Hah! Humanity in a curse, my ass. That bastard must have gone insane a long time ago.”
“Come on, I’m just saying that’s the feeling. And not all dark mana users are crazy, are they? Even I’m pretty normal, aren’t I?”
Bak Hancheol stared quietly at the man in the cap, An Seongjin, then sighed once again.
Of course, he was usually on the docile side, but he had a history of having a fit, causing an incident, and getting arrested.
He had prevented the mental contamination of dark mana with a special skill, but the problem was that it was not perfect.
Right after he returned, he had witnessed gangsters storming into the shop of his parents, who had been barely scraping by, and causing a scene. That had made him lose control.
Fortunately, it had not gone as far as murder, so various factors were taken into account, and now he was living while helping the Ability Management Bureau with its work.
‘He may look like that, but he’s also a high-ranking black magician. In fact, he could have run away, but he thought of his parents and let himself be taken in without resistance, so he’s also someone with a fairly sound mind.’
Since it was also true that he had been quite helpful so far, there was no longer anything he could say to him.
“You said the one who cast this curse was Hahoe Mask, right? After killing criminals, he even takes the corpses with him?”
“Yeah. Sometimes only blood full of dark mana is left at the scene, and sometimes he takes them away without leaving any trace at all.”
“Wow... Necromancy used by a black magician of this level? That’s really terrifying. Their souls will end up enslaved too.”
“...Really?”
“Death isn’t the end in front of a necromancer. They’ll recycle not only the body but the soul too, until it’s worn away. I didn’t say earlier that suicide would be better for nothing.”
Of course, as with An Seongjin, necromancy might not be his specialty, so he could be weaker than expected in that field.
He might have taken the corpses for practice.
But it would be foolish to rely only on such luck against an opponent of this level.
“The truth is, this guy here has been here for quite some time. He got hit when Hahoe Mask was in full swing and still hasn’t been discharged.”
Bak Hancheol said this while jerking his chin toward the man lying asleep in bed.
That man was also a criminal, so they had put him to sleep as they pleased in order to make the investigation easier.
“But Hahoe Mask, who had been quiet for a while, has started moving again. So there are some guys who were brought in today, and since their treatment is more or less finished, I’d like you to take a look at them.”
“What could have changed in such a short time?”
“Still, wouldn’t you be able to read something more from someone who was hit immediately beforehand?”
“Hmm... Then shall I take a look?”
Since his words were not wrong, An Seongjin obediently nodded.
And after they entered the intensive care unit, they came face-to-face with a mummy wrapped in bandages from head to toe.
“Uh... What did this human do wrong to end up like that?”
“Let’s see... arson. Since there were no deaths, it seems he got off with just this much. These days, Hahoe Mask is mainly catching violent criminals, so most of them get summary execution.”
It was only natural, as he had grown busier with his range of activity expanding.
An Seongjin nodded, moved to the sleeping patient’s bedside, placed one hand on his head, and closed his eyes.
A moment passed like that...
“Hup!”
In an instant, his eyes flew open. He hurriedly pulled his hand away and retreated several steps.
“Ah...”
“What? Is something different?”
“Aha... ahahat— So, Team Leader! What did you say you were going to do after catching this Hahoe Mask?”
Instead of answering the question, An Seongjin chuckled and changed the subject.
Bak Hancheol furrowed his brow for a moment, but for now, he answered the question obediently.
“Rather than catching him, the first priority is to identify him. After that, we’ll verify things again, then try to persuade him. He has ability, and he seems to keep to a line of his own well enough.”
“Like me?”
“Well... yes? No, but why are you suddenly acting like this? Did you find something out?”
When the frustrated man frowned and pressed him, An Seongjin smiled gently, his eyes as though looking somewhere far away.
“It seems I’ll have to take back what I said earlier.”
“Oh? So you did find something out!”
He nodded proudly and slowly opened his mouth.
“It seems I... should die right now. ...Still, I’ve helped with government work quite a bit all this time, so I’ll get a pension for distinguished service, right? How much money did I save up...?”
At the sight of An Seongjin suddenly beginning to ramble, only then could Bak Hancheol properly read his expression.
His pupils were unfocused, his eyes staring blankly into empty air, and his face, with the corners of his trembling mouth forced upward into a smile, was already covered in cold sweat.
“...Are you all right?”
An Seongjin recalled what had happened just moments ago with a dazed expression.
The moment he had looked closely into the curse to obtain information.
He had met eyes with “that being.”
[Ho—? What are you?]
He had thought it was a simple remnant thought like the ones he had seen in previous curses, but... something was different.
A shape like an endlessly dark abyss condensed together, with a pair of blue-shining eyes, was staring straight at him.
At that gaze, as though it pierced even his soul, An Seongjin’s mind went completely white for an instant.
When he came to his senses, he was frantically severing the connection as if having a seizure...
And even in the midst of that, the pair of eyes was simply watching him in silence.
Until the moment he left, without taking its eyes off him even once.
“Hey! What’s wrong with you? Get a hold of yourself!”
“Ahaha... I’m fine. Still, I think I need to call my mom first, so could you leave me alone for a moment? Tell her I was assigned to a secret mission for a little while, and I’d appreciate it if you processed me as killed in the line of duty.”
The difference between the curse he had examined first and this curse.
It was not simply that it had become stronger or had grown.
The density of the very existence was different.
Just glimpsing a fragment of it for a moment had been enough to shake his soul.
Because he, too, was a high-level black magician, he could understand that much, even if only slightly.
He lowered his gaze and looked down at his hands.
Seeing both hands trembling uncontrollably, he clenched his fists tightly and steeled his resolve once more.
‘My existence has already been exposed. Since my soul was directly observed, if he puts his mind to it, he’ll be able to find my location at any time.’
Depending on Hahoe Mask’s whims, his surroundings could become dangerous at any moment.
If that man were to come when he was at home...
‘No! It’d be better to die now! And if it’s now, maybe my soul won’t be captured and I can pass on immediately—’
Smack—!
“Hey! An Seongjin! Are you not going to snap out of it?”
Along with the burning pain transmitted from his cheek, his mind returned for an instant.
Only then did his surroundings begin to properly enter his eyes.
“Hey! I can more or less guess what happened, but calm down first!”
Only after Bak Hancheol slapped the panicking An Seongjin’s cheek and saw the light return to his eyes did he let out a sigh.
“First, something you need to know. Until now, Hahoe Mask has only punished criminals. And even then, he has his own standards and differentiates according to the crime.”
In the case of violent crimes such as intentional murder, it was summary execution. For the rest, like the criminal beside them now, he carried out punishment according to his own judgment.
“And he’s known from the very beginning that we were chasing him. Even so, he hasn’t laid a hand on us until now.”
Because Hahoe Mask had a clear line: he judged only criminals.
“Got it? You’re not in your right mind right now. Calm yourself and think it through.”
“Ah...”
After hearing his words, An Seongjin took deep breaths and sorted out the situation.
Yes, now that he thought about it, he had not discovered any particularly important information.
Of course, he knew nothing about Hahoe Mask’s identity or location, and even about his ability, all he knew was that it was “incredible.”
It was just that, somehow, by chance, he had met his eyes through a remnant thought.
Before long, he was able to view his own state objectively.
He had merely faced a fragment of that existence through the curse for a very brief moment, yet he had been terrified and fallen into a panic.
“Ahaha... I see...”
“Have you calmed down?”
“Yes... Um, Team Leader?”
“Yeah! Yes! What is it? Do you have something to say?”
“I’m just going to rest for a little while...”
Thud—!
An Seongjin, whose tension had loosened in an instant, collapsed on the spot as if fainting.
“Huh? Hey! Suddenly? Here?”
Bak Hancheol’s voice sounded as though it came from far away, but An Seongjin no longer had the mental strength left to weigh various matters.
***
[Hmm... There are cases like this as well.]
Within a space surrounded on all sides by darkness, Hans silently gazed in one direction.
At the end of the direction his blue eyes were turned toward... stood exactly one hospital.