3. Another World Beyond the Alley (2)
Contrary to everyone’s expectations, Jeongjin had not lost consciousness.
‘Kuaaaargh!’
To be exact, only his *consciousness* was functioning normally. That meant he was feeling the agony of his cracked jawbone and broken teeth in the flesh.
[Identifying user.]
‘Wha… what the fuck!’
Jeongjin would rather have passed out. But his body and mind were undergoing a systematic metamorphosis, so he somehow had to maintain his sanity. The transformation of his body required his mind to provide continuous feedback to his flesh.
Put simply, in terms of the pain he felt, he was experiencing sensations that far surpassed the limits of neural transmission.
He could not grow accustomed to the pain, nor could he alleviate it. His consciousness was clear and awake, failing to miss a single signal from his body, transmitting them to Jeongjin’s soul with horrifying perfection.
‘S-save me!’
This could never be a dream. A dream with a conscience could not be this painful.
Jeongjin was swept up in a storm of unbearable agony, so much so that while being carried on a stretcher by soldiers, he would have wept tears and snot if he could.
Because the soldiers prioritized speed over stability, the jolting vehicle continuously stimulated his sense of pain, delivering fresh agony from his cracked jawbone. Moreover, the distance from the castle gate to the lord’s castle was considerable, and the soldiers were running in haste.
He saw an unidentified message floating before his eyes in the darkness, but he had no leisure to process it.
[Please wait a moment, even if it is uncomfortable.]
The system sent him a tactful message at just the right time.
‘Shut up!’
But it had no effect. Rather than questioning the incomprehensible words, he felt like bursting with rage at the system’s detached tone, as if watching a fire from across the river.
[Identification complete.]
[Loading user information.]
[Name: Lee Jeongjin (Indestructible)
Age: 25
Level: 1
Gender: Male
Class: —
Race: Human]
Crisp text appeared in Lee Jeongjin’s field of view.
‘Uheoheong.’
He wished he could just lose his mind, but rather than eliminating the pain beyond his limits, the system chose to forcibly maintain his consciousness.
The forced maintenance prevented trauma or mental contamination from the first agony he had ever experienced in his twenty-five years of life; but on the other hand, because his consciousness never dulled, the sensation of his skull being smashed by a hammer reached him completely unfiltered.
Depending on how one looked at it, it was either luck or misfortune.
While the soldiers were carrying Jeongjin through the city on the stretcher, a translucent window rose in his vision.
[You have acquired a new skill. Passive Skill: Pain Resistance]
He had no time to care about skills or whatnot. He focused on the term “Pain Resistance” more than anything else. If interpreted one-dimensionally, didn’t it mean it would help him endure pain better?
That expectation was betrayed in less than a second.
Even more detailed pain crashed over Jeongjin.
‘You crazy bastard! Why does it hurt more!’
[At the user’s request, beginning explanation of Passive Skill: Pain Resistance.]
[Pain Resistance (Lv 1, Passive, Common): A skill that grants mental protection against all negative influences inflicted upon the user. As the skill level increases, Mental Strength grows stronger.]
Jeongjin sensed the malice hidden in the explanation. Stronger mental strength meant the pain he was already feeling vividly would be felt even more actively and clearly.
‘Just kill me already……’
Was this really what a skill was, even at level 1?
Unlike earlier, when he had been screaming mindlessly, he now had the minimal mental leeway to think about his situation. First, Jeongjin briefly organized what he knew about this inexplicable phenomenon.
‘One, I’ve come to a strange place. Two, strange things are happening.’
The words of the soldier who had pointed his spear at him were from a language of an unknown country. Jeongjin had once read various trivia about dreams as a child, so he knew that knowledge he didn’t possess couldn’t appear in dreams.
‘System? User identification?’
The second was text that was bizarrely clear even in the darkness.
‘What is a system?’
A kind answer was provided to his muttering (or thought).
[It is the User Registration Terminal Single-Generation Accelerated Evolution System.]
‘So what is that?’
[It assists by subdividing the user’s stats, displaying them according to absolute standards, and elevating the caliber of your body and soul with the help of mana.]
‘Why? No, where is this?’
[Expressed in the native inhabitants’ terminology, it is the planet Olloka. It is a region where intelligent species with physical characteristics most similar to Earthlings are the dominant force.]
‘What about you?’
[I am an auxiliary terminal that provides basic knowledge to the user. This Helper may be used until the user completes the education period on the planet Olloka.]
‘Education peri… Agh!’
Jeongjin, who had been asking questions, stopped speaking (or his internal dialogue) due to a sudden surge of pain. The soldiers carrying Jeongjin’s body on the stretcher had begun ascending the uphill road to the lord’s castle, shaking his body even more violently.
[Mental Strength has increased by 1.]
‘Shut up!’
[……]
‘Why… why do I have to be here? No, what am I supposed to do here during this education period?’
Though Lee Jeongjin thrashed in pain with a ‘Kkeuugh…!’ he regained his senses and asked the auxiliary terminal called Helper what he wanted to know.
This was due to an artificial intervention that gave his mind a sense of reality after the metamorphosis was complete. In the early stages of the education period, caring for the user’s mind and directing the orientation of their thoughts toward what the system desired was, to use a crude analogy, similar to brainwashing.
But Jeongjin knew far too little to realize this. And the Helper answered Lee Jeongjin’s questions in an emotionless manner.
[You learn.]
‘What?!’
Unable to endure the stifling tone of the Helper, he screamed internally. And the Helper, still emotionless but at a noticeably faster pace, spat out long words as if rapping.
[About mana. About skills. About the system. About magic. About energy. About a different perspective that sees all things. About the universe. About history. About dimensions. About fighting Dimensionals. About technology. About intelligent races. About the past. About the present.]
About… About… About… About……
‘Enough!’
Jeongjin had been listening silently, but feeling as if his head would burst, he cut the Helper off.
‘How long do I have to be here?’
[Unable to answer.]
‘Who made you?’
[Unable to answer.]
‘Where is this?’
[Ollo…]
‘I’m asking for an exact location, not Olloka.’
[Unable to answer.]
‘…Try saying “Master.” Like, “Master, let me help you with what you don’t know~” while acting all coquettish.’
Furious, Jeongjin threw an obscene question at it.
[Do you have no further questions? As stated, this Helper is only available while the user receives education on the planet Olloka.]
The Helper cleanly ignored him.
Had divine punishment descended upon Jeongjin for that? Pain beyond familiarity crashed down on him once more. The soldiers who had reached the reception room had set him down on the floor.
‘Uheouheuk!’
[Mental Strength has increased by 1.]
[You have acquired a new skill. Unique Skill: Endurance]
[Endurance (Lv 1, Unique, Rare): Guarantees achievements beyond talent for a user who endures extreme pain. Though slight, widespread resistance effects can also be obtained.]
‘What a goddamn show.’
Jeongjin, who had been calmly reading the skill description, unknowingly suppressed a string of curses that tried to leap from his mouth.
He didn’t like a single thing about any of it.
But what could he do? The die had already been cast; whether he lived or died, he had to remain on this place called the planet Olloka until the education period ended.
For reasons he couldn’t fathom, he felt his cracked jawbone recovering.
As the pain gradually subsided, he tried somehow to find a positive angle, and he felt his hearing and other senses returning. Jeongjin realized his eyes were closed, and with faint hope, he lifted his eyelids.
‘Since I’m going to get an education anyway, I hope there’s a pretty woman.’
And the first thing Jeongjin saw when he opened his eyes was three middle-aged men staring intently at him.
“It seems this fellow has come to his senses. How about it, can you hear me?”
When he opened his eyes, he heard Verdo’s voice.
Jeongjin scrambled to his feet. No matter how much the Helper had told him he had to stay here, it was difficult to let go of his wariness toward strangers.
Most importantly, he wasn’t happy that there were only men.
‘Judging by their clothes, they must be pretty high-ranking here. Especially that man in knight’s armor—he must be the superior of that soldier who attacked me earlier.’
Inside a grand room that felt like a high-class hotel with a medieval concept. Jeongjin slowly stepped back, observing the three men.
A hulking knight over two meters tall wearing brown metal armor in the sweltering heat.
A thin frame. But a middle-aged man with densely packed, condensed muscles visible through his thin clothes.
And the most portly, stout man of the three.
“My lord, wouldn’t it be best to explain the circumstances slowly?”
The knight, Corn, spoke.
“How curious, to have come to such a remote place.”
The thin middle-aged man, Tolji, muttered curiously.
“Ahem… Tolji, you’re fine in every other way, but that mouth of yours is the problem.”
The stout man, Verdo, scratched his forearm and chided Tolji.
It was an unfamiliar language, but strangely, Lee Jeongjin found himself understanding their conversation bit by bit. When he pressed his back against the wall and watched the three without dropping his guard, Verdo clicked his tongue inwardly.
‘He’s extremely wary. Still, it’s good that he’s subdued since the initiative has been seized.’
It seemed the shocking experience during their first meeting had made him this way.
But he did not doubt that Jeongjin was a member of the prophesied group. As proof, Jeongjin’s status, which had been invisible until just now, was clearly visible.
[Name: Lee Jeongjin (Indestructible)]
In Count Verdo’s eyes, Jeongjin’s status appeared thus. Of course, it was the same in Tolji and Corn’s eyes as well. Count Verdo took a step toward Jeongjin, who was standing awkwardly in a tense state, and gave him a kind smile.
Knight Corn, who cared nothing for the situation; Wizard Tolji, who was showing interest in Lee Jeongjin’s belongings again. In the end, Count Verdo was the only one capable of conversing with him proactively.
Clap!
Flinch!
Jeongjin visibly flinched at Count Verdo’s clap, but the Count was a man with the composure to overlook such things.
“Are you just going to stand there glaring? Let’s start with introductions. I am Count Carbon Verdo, lord of the Carbon Territory.”
‘The fattest man.’
When he clapped, Jeongjin’s eyes caught his pillar-like forearms and calloused fists. He was not simply a fat man.
“I am Corn. No family name. I apologize for the sudden action of the senior soldier earlier.”
The armored knight.
“Tolji.”
The man in thin, loose clothes.
Even in an unknown environment with unknown people, once introductions were exchanged, a connection was formed. Lee Jeongjin thought of a phrase he had read somewhere and began speaking with them.
“I… I’m Lee Jeongjin. I’m twenty-five, and this… Hel…per? said I have to stay here during the education period……”
As he spoke, he kept hearing a whistling sound from somewhere. Lee Jeongjin was bewildered by the unnatural sensation inside his mouth.
‘Huh?’
He stopped mid-sentence and rolled his tongue to check his oral cavity.
“Hurk?!”
Gone!
Several teeth were missing. A strange sensation of his tongue scrunching into the empty spaces between teeth. Lee Jeongjin frowned, checking how many teeth were gone.
“Now, now, calm down. Your teeth will grow back later. For now, isn’t there something more important to discuss? We have a mountain of things to tell you.”
Verdo corrected the derailing atmosphere and led him to a sofa in the corner of the reception room. Lee Jeongjin, led by Verdo to sit on the sofa, asked the Helper.
‘Helper, do… do the humans here get their permanent teeth late?’
[No. Olloka planet natives share such high physiological similarities with Earthlings that reproduction is possible.]
‘Are you angry because I spouted nonsense earlier?’
Lee Jeongjin was instead more embarrassed by the Helper’s blunt statement. Count Verdo, sitting across from him, watched with a broad smile.
While Lee Jeongjin was absorbed in his unproductive conversation with the Helper, Count Verdo suddenly slapped his forehead in an exaggerated manner.
“Ah, right! Look at me. I have somewhere to contact briefly. Wait here a moment. Ollie!”
He opened the door and called for someone. Soon after, Count Verdo gestured an apology to Lee Jeongjin and left. A maid approached the uncomfortably seated Lee Jeongjin and skillfully poured him herbal tea.
“Ah… thank you.”
Lee Jeongjin secretly stole glances at the maid’s attire to calm his mind. Tolji looked at Lee Jeongjin slightly pitifully, then came over holding a lighter and sat on the sofa. Most burdensomely, Tolji sat right next to Lee Jeongjin.
Tolji, who cared nothing for the atmosphere. He stared at Lee Jeongjin’s profile and suddenly spoke.
“I am Tolji, the territory wizard. Did you say you were twenty-five?”
“Sigh… magic… Ah, yes. I’ll be twenty-six in a week. This happened at the end of the year……”
“How many days in a year?”
“Pardon?”
Tolji slid across the sofa, leaning in so close that his shoulder pressed against Jeongjin’s.
Jeongjin found it burdensome. Especially seeing muscles that didn’t suit the word “wizard,” he felt like an idiot for having worked out so hard before.
“In the world you’re from, how many days make up a year?”
“Ah… 365 days. Generally speaking.”
“Generally?”
“Well, there are leap years……”
Lee Jeongjin sent glances around for help to escape Tolji’s persistent questioning. But Corn simply stood at the entrance like a guardian statue, and Count Verdo had not returned.
When he averted his eyes from Tolji, Tolji pressed his face close. He asked persistently.
“Then what about seconds? How is the standard for one second determined?”
“Well, cesium atoms……?”
Though Lee Jeongjin had been a science student, the knowledge that had been rotting in his head for six years was too full of holes to explain logically to a scholar who had devoted his entire life to the arcane.
In the end, Lee Jeongjin gave up on a detailed explanation and pulled out his smartphone to use the timer.
“…Yes! This much time is exactly one second. And sixty seconds make one minute……”
He was showing the passage of time with the timer when he thought of another function.
‘Didn’t the smartphone have a built-in encyclopedia?’
“Here it is. Cesium-133 atoms… between energy levels… electromagnetic waves?”
But Tolji was no longer listening to Lee Jeongjin’s explanation. The middle-aged wizard had easily realized through brief conversation that the young otherworlder’s knowledge was shallow and parroted from simple memorization.
Rather than satisfying his curiosity about Lee Jeongjin, he was more interested in the smartphone he was holding. Tolji—a man who liked to achieve maximum efficiency with minimum action—quietly watched the smartphone in Lee Jeongjin’s hand.
“…Would you like to try it?”
In the end, unable to overcome Tolji’s gaze, Lee Jeongjin held out the smartphone to him, and a foreboding hypothesis flashed through his mind.
‘Is it okay to hand over modern civilization’s goods this casually? Won’t there be problems later?’
Handing an object containing almost all of Earth’s information to a mage who looked like a madman. Wasn’t that exactly how the picture would look? Just as his hesitation kept his hand from readily extending—
Click.
Count Verdo opened the door and entered.
“Sorry to leave you alone. Thank you for your efforts as well, Knight Corn.”
Count Verdo offered brief thanks to Corn, then approached and sat across from the sofa where Jeongjin was. When he shushed and gestured with his hand, Tolji rose from the sofa hiding his disappointment—a sight that could not have been more relieving.
Smiling faintly at Lee Jeongjin for a moment, Count Verdo pulled a stiff parchment from his pocket and placed it on the table.
An item that had automatically appeared in his inventory upon meeting Lee Jeongjin. Count Verdo was certain this proved Lee Jeongjin was one of the prophesied ones.
“Jeongjin, I imagine you must be quite confused right now.”
Count Verdo sat leisurely on the sofa, looked at Lee Jeongjin, and leaned forward.
“Ah, yes. I am……”
“You’ve heard basic explanations from the being called the Helper, but you don’t know why you had to cross over to another region for training?”
“Yes.”
“And you know nothing of what happened to the world you lived in before coming here?”
“…Yes.”
“And you have no idea what you must do from now on. Correct?”
“…….”
Jeongjin hung his head low as his anxiety grew with each question. His heart was beating like mad, yet it was almost miraculous how clearly his mind was listening to the Count.
At the same time, the forcible mental protection measures provided by the system were working furiously. The fact that Lee Jeongjin wasn’t going crazy and could converse with Count Verdo was more than ninety percent thanks to the system’s aid.
Count Verdo, who had appropriately stoked tension, slammed his palm on the table and thrust his face toward Lee Jeongjin.
Bang!
Jeongjin jumped up from the sofa in surprise, but Count Verdo gave him a hearty smile and held out the parchment he had placed on the table.
“There! To a man like you, I give this special parchment as a gift.”
“…Pardon?”
“Using this, you’ll understand the general situation without a long explanation.”
“Uh, uhh……”
The moment Lee Jeongjin received the parchment, a milky window appeared before his eyes.
[Magic Parchment (Magic): Shows stored information to the summoner. However, as it is an item created using illusion magic, the form it takes may differ depending on the user’s knowledge and disposition.]
‘Illusion magic? You want me to use this? And how?’
Lee Jeongjin couldn’t easily muster the courage to casually use an item given by a stranger in this faraway land. Especially since it was illusion magic.
“…….”
He glared at the parchment and Verdo with suspicious eyes, but Verdo just shrugged leisurely and gestured with his chin toward the parchment. In truth, even if he refused, Lee Jeongjin—who had already entered the tiger’s den—had no choice.
‘Ah… whatever. Either way.’
He touched the golden surface of the smooth parchment with trembling hands. And then someone grabbed Lee Jeongjin’s head in midair and yanked him upward.
Huaaak!
“Urk?!”
No, he wasn’t actually being pulled up. But Lee Jeongjin’s senses felt him shooting upward through the reception room’s ceiling at tremendous speed.
He ascended so fast that the surrounding scenery blurred, and he saw only a cylindrical passage made of vertically stretched lines of light.
Then stop. The universe unfolded before his eyes. A vast space of dark, dark black, with tiny, twinkling starlight all around.
Had it given him a brief moment of respite? In less than a second, as Lee Jeongjin looked upon the scenery that had changed from the reception room to outer space, he felt his body moving again. He swam through endless space at a speed he had never experienced before.
“Uh! Uhh!! W-wait!”
It wasn’t the same psychedelic passage as before. But the changing environment delivered visual information to Lee Jeongjin as if stuffing it into his brain.
Far away, a white sphere smaller than a fist. And a massive planet in the direction Lee Jeongjin was moving. A green landmass with continents shaped differently from Earth’s.
His sense of perspective shattered by the impact, Lee Jeongjin approached the distant planet at incredible speed.
“Gwaaaaark!”
Perhaps it pitied him shrieking his hoarse scream while being toyed with in zero gravity; Lee Jeongjin’s body stopped. But he tensed his body sharply, wary of another sudden interstellar movement.
He hadn’t stopped. He didn’t know, or rather his senses perceived it as “quite slow,” but Lee Jeongjin’s absolute movement speed was by no means slow. As if to prove this, the blue planet he circled around and brushed past several times gradually grew larger.
“…What the hell.”
Lee Jeongjin muttered, looking at the blue planet.
As if fixed in a vise, he couldn’t turn his head by force.
At the same time, the planet rotated. No, not just the planet—everything in the universe moved, ignoring Jeongjin.
Thus, with his gaze fixed on the unidentified planet, he watched time flow past on it as if fast-forwarded thousands of times.
There were small races on that planet. Different from humans, but races that had prospered with their own unique culture and science.
‘To think I’d see aliens like this.’
Lee Jeongjin forgot the mindless situation he had been in and became completely absorbed in the development of the races on the planet.
There were conflicts and disputes. Through a continuous series of discoveries that could be called miracles and an unceasing spirit of inquiry, the race achieved dazzling development in a very short time and finally advanced into space.
At the same time, another sight appeared in the corner of his vision.
Beyond the planet, a dark-colored fog approaching from even farther than the sun (or what he assumed to be the sun). As the fog drew closer over time, Lee Jeongjin realized the substance composing it was a living entity.
“Huk……!”
In the zero-gravity space at minus 200 degrees, so many uninvited guests that he couldn’t cover them all with an outstretched palm. They were slowly approaching the planet, which continued to develop.
The planet’s natives had also realized their existence. They built massive spaceships and developed large cannons of mountainous scale to prepare for the approach of the unidentified lifeforms.
As the cluster of lifeforms gradually approached, Lee Jeongjin could make out their forms even with his vision.
Their true nature could be described as an aggregate of grotesquely twisted lifeforms.
Beings with rotting slime dripping where arms should be, and dark purple gloom swirling from fluttering wings. The growling reverberation from their mouths spread across space to the planet, stimulating the natives’ anxiety.
The unknown invaders, clearly not benevolent, and the planet’s natives. Their clash was almost inevitable. The envoy the natives sent as a formality melted like ice dropped into lava, and with that as the signal, the two races began their war.
“Th-that…! It’s dangerous!”
Lee Jeongjin was a complete bystander to the battle between the two races.
A space battleship larger than a decent-sized island brushed past the tip of his nose, firing beam-type attacks. The invaders filling space left only minor losses as they systematically crushed the battleship.
And the natives aboard the battleship were likewise torn to shreds and reduced to prey for the invaders.
Dark, red holes opened all over the planet, and from within them, invaders continued to pour out. The natives resisted the invaders with guns and bombs, but… the effect was minimal.
Time flowed faster and faster.
The natives were now modified to such an extent that their original forms were hard to guess. They had left their mark beyond their own planet to others.
The invaders had greatly swelled their forces. The natives were at a disadvantage, and some beings were so gigantic that Lee Jeongjin, there in space, could see them moving on the planet’s surface.
Finally, did their numbers exceed hundreds of billions, or was it easier to count them in trillions? The invaders, bolstered to a point where resistance was meaningless, covered the planet’s surface in blackness. The natives had long since vanished without a trace into the bellies of the invaders.
The blue planet was now gone without a trace, and a massive black sphere emitting dark waves was reflected in Jeongjin’s eyes.
“…….”
Some of the increasingly aggressive invaders flew back out into space. Others were endlessly sucked into holes created in the void, while the majority decorated the dead planet’s surface.
Overwhelmed by the sight, unable to even groan, Lee Jeongjin heard a voice by his ear.
—The universe is cruel.
“?!”
Lee Jeongjin twisted his now freely moving body and looked around the desolate universe. But the owner of the voice was nowhere to be seen.
—Prepare yourself.
“Why are you doing this?! What are you trying to tell me by showing me this!”
—Protect Earth.
With those final words, Lee Jeongjin’s body stretched like taffy and moved beyond the universe.
“Kuaaaargh!”
A bizarre scream. A creeping sensation in his body… a chilling feeling in his crotch like falling through the air. And finally, after passing through another unidentifiable, kaleidoscopic cylindrical passage, Lee Jeongjin’s consciousness returned to reality.
Crash!
As Lee Jeongjin thrashed, the sofa he had been sitting on toppled backward entirely.
“Heuk!”
Corn, Tolji, and Count Verdo watched him with deep gazes as he let out a scream.
“Heueok……! Keu… hueeeok!”
Count Verdo approached Lee Jeongjin, who was breathing heavily with his hands on the floor, and held out his hand.
“How was it? Do you understand?”
Lee Jeongjin, who had been dripping snot and tears, took a deep breath and barely raised his head.
“I don’t understand at all.”
Count Verdo smiled warmly.
“Yes. That’s what they all say.”