Chapter 4
My dearly missed master once said that.
When you first find yourself dropped in the middle of nowhere, your priority is to confirm the conditions for survival before moving around recklessly.
A place to rest.
Food and water.
And finally, information.
My master always emphasized that order.
No matter how powerful a mage was, their judgment would grow clouded without sleep, and no one could withstand hunger and dehydration forever.
And finally, without information.
You die.
There are deaths that even magic cannot prevent.
A year had passed since Kael began working with Harun. Simply by working here, he no longer had to worry about a place to rest or food to eat. He even had some money left over, so he had managed to build up an emergency fund.
Even so, once work was over, he diligently gathered information about this place called Magitera while keeping his identity hidden.
Magitera.
There was no king, nor was it ruled by nobles.
On the surface, there was a city council and a Public Security Bureau, but the entities actually moving the city were the massive corporations known as megacorps.
It was astonishing. It would not have been an exaggeration to say that nearly everything in this place was the work of corporations. Magitera was their playground.
And the “citizens” here were closer to registered assets belonging to them. The power of the megacorps was more overwhelming than that of any emperor or king Kael had ever seen.
The city was divided into multiple levels, and descending from the surface level to the underground levels was not difficult.
There were many ways to do it: falling into debt, committing a crime, losing one's status, or displeasing a corporation.
Conversely, there were almost no ways to go back up.
The underground levels were a completely lawless zone.
That was the closest description.
But the biggest problem Kael faced was something else.
Even after a year, there was still no sign that Kael's mana circuits were recovering.
At first, he thought time would solve the problem.
But that faith was betrayed all too easily.
A mage who could not use magic… There was no more ridiculous contradiction than that.
The moment a mage lost their magic, they became an ordinary person.
An ordinary person who simply knew a little more about magic.
That was Kael now.
As for combat ability, he was pathetic.
It wasn't that Kael had never trained to fight with a sword, but he was neither a warrior nor a hero.
If he confronted a magical beast head-on without mana, he would struggle even against a single one the size of a stray dog.
“….”
Just as Kael was lost in thought, Harun's voice came from ahead.
“Hey, Kael! We got an order!”
The moment he raised his head, something came flying at him.
Kael almost reflexively reached out and caught it.
It was a magitech device about the size of his palm.
A crystal plate was embedded inside a black metal casing, and three mana input ports were attached to its side. It was probably a stabilization module used in a small magilight or a low-grade security device.
Kael turned the device over.
Metal chips clinked across the old metal plate Harun used in place of a counter.
“There are three more. Can you finish them today?”
“Sure.”
“That's my circuit tinkerer.”
“Don't call me that.”
“I don't want to.”
Harun grinned.
Kael ignored him and opened the side of the device.
The internal circuits were a mess, just as he had expected.
Two parts of the conversion circuit had been scorched by overheating. The stabilization crystal was intact, but the flow had reversed.
It would not take long to fix. Kael picked up a thin metal probe and scraped it across the circuit board.
It was not that different from a magical formula.
They simply called it magitech here.
Zap.
The first device lit up.
Kael immediately picked up the second device.
Then the third.
The fourth.
His hands moved faster than he had expected.
Harun had been bringing in orders like this frequently lately.
At first, it had only been a matter of repairing a few devices that were practically scrap. But at some point, rumors had begun to spread.
That there was a stall in the Underground Level 19 scrap market that could repair anything.
Perhaps because of that, Harun had been grinning much more often lately.
“I told you, I have more regulars. More regulars.”
He said that whenever he got the chance.
“They've finally recognized the true worth of Harun.”
“I'm the one doing the repairs.”
“You repair them at my stall.”
“The ones you can't repair.”
“Let's call it a joint operation.”
“Exploitation, more like.”
“Don't put it so unpleasantly. Down here, we call it business.”
Since it wasn't wrong, Kael did not pay it much mind.
The volume was still manageable for him.
More than anything, he needed this work, too.
The more discarded magitech devices he handled, the more he felt he could see the structure of the circuits used in Magitera.
“Phew….”
“You done? It's time to close up.”
Even the underground levels, where there was no sun, had quitting time.
Harun was pulling down the metal shutter in front of the stall.
Screeech.
The rusty shutter descended with an unpleasant noise.
Kael placed the last device on the cloth.
“Finished.”
“You've gotten faster.”
“You keep throwing them at me.”
“There’s no better teacher than hands-on experience.”
“My master used to say that, too.”
“Did he die?”
Kael fell silent for a moment.
Harun saw his expression and shrugged.
“I'm not going to apologize. People ask that sort of thing all the time down here.”
“This is the kind of place where they would.”
Kael gave a short reply.
Harun watched him for a moment, then asked no more.
Kael liked that about him.
Harun was talkative, greedy, and his eyes lit up whenever he smelled money, but at least he knew which lines not to cross.
By underground standards, that made him a fairly decent human being.
Of course, Kael had no idea whether the same applied by surface-level standards.
He had not seen many people from the surface levels up close.
Kael wrapped the last repaired device in cloth and pushed it toward Harun.
“This only needs its output stabilization redone. You shouldn't have any trouble selling it.”
“There'd better not be. The guy coming to pick it up tomorrow has a nasty temper.”
“Is there a single customer of yours who doesn't have a nasty temper?”
“There is.”
Harun said as he lowered the metal shutter all the way.
“Customers with money.”
“As if.”
Harun locked the shutter and straightened his back.
Creak.
He frowned, then pulled a thin metal cigarette from his pocket. After tapping its end twice, a blue ember caught at the tip.
“So.”
Harun exhaled a puff of smoke.
“Why were you spacing out so much today?”
“I just had something on my mind.”
“You've always got something on your mind. If I could turn even half of those thoughts into money, I'd have moved up to Underground Level 18 by now.”
“I was thinking about how to get to the surface level.”
Harun's hand stopped. The blue ember at the end of his cigarette fell away.
After a brief silence.
“What the hell did you eat?”
Harun asked in earnest.
Kael looked at him.
“Nothing.”
“Then did you handle the wrong chemical container? Some of yesterday's waste had something mixed in that gently melts your mind.”
“I'm fine.”
“Someone who's fine doesn't start talking about the surface level.”
Harun laughed as though he could not believe his ears.
But when Kael's expression did not change, the amusement slowly faded from his face.
“Are you serious?”
Kael nodded.
Harun took the cigarette from his mouth.
“Wake up from your dream.”
Harun sat on an empty crate beside the waste-heat pipe. The playfulness had vanished from his face.
“There is no way to get from the underground levels to the surface level.”
“There has to be some way.”
“Everyone who says that starts out the same way.”
Harun tapped ash from the end of his cigarette with one finger. Blue ash fell to the floor and quickly cooled.
“It's not that there are absolutely no ways. There must be some opening somewhere. Someone must have gone up. I'll be different.”
He looked at Kael and said,
“And most of them croaked.”
“If you say most, then that means not all of them.”
“Don't split hairs. Not if you want to live a long time.”
“I need to know precisely.”
“Then I'll tell you precisely.”
Harun leaned forward.
“To get from the underground levels to the surface level, you have to pass an inspection. To pass an inspection, you need an identity. To obtain an identity, you need residency rights. To obtain residency rights, you need employment registration and tax records. But to create those, you have to be registered with a surface-level institution in the first place.”
“Hmm.”
“That's right. The people above build doors among themselves and distribute the keys among themselves. Anyone below gets chased away before they can even approach the door.”
Harun gave a short laugh.
“What about illegal routes?”
Kael asked.
Harun laughed again.
This time, it was a laugh of utter disbelief.
“There are some.”
“Where?”
“In the grave.”
There was still no trace of a smile around Kael's mouth.
Reading his expression, Harun put the cigarette back between his lips.
“Smuggling transport pipes, closed-off lift shafts, old maintenance tunnels. It's not as though places like that don't exist. But naturally, those routes belong to someone, don't they?”
“Gangs?”
“Gangs, corporate security forces, Public Security Bureau informants, organ traffickers… There are quite a variety, aren't there?”
Kael studied Harun's face.
“Have you ever tried?”
Harun did not answer. He simply exhaled a long stream of smoke.
That silence alone was enough for Kael to understand what he truly meant.
“You failed.”
“You have a pretty way with words.”
“Since you're alive, it wasn't a complete failure.”
“Should I thank you for putting it that way?”
“If you want.”
“Get lost.”
Harun spat the words out.
Only after a long while did he open his mouth again.
“It was a long time ago. I was young then, and both my eyes still worked fine. There were some guys I worked with back then.”
“Did you try to go up together?”
“Rather than trying to go up, we believed we could.”
Harun tapped his lens with a finger.
“This was the result.”
Kael did not ask anything further.
Harun's one eye, his dilapidated stall… twelve years on Underground Level 19.
That was answer enough.
“Have you ever seen anyone who made it up?”
“By legitimate means?”
“By any means.”
Harun shook his head. Then he held up three fingers.
“I've never seen anyone do it myself. But I've heard plenty of stories.”
“For example?”
“There was a guy who saved up to buy a fake residency permit. He was arrested at the inspection checkpoint, and I never saw him again.”
Harun folded down one finger.
“A guy who hid aboard a smuggling transport pipe. Rumor had it he was shredded by a waste compactor midway through.”
The second finger.
“A guy registered as a subcontracted worker for an upper-level corporation. He did make it up, but three months later, he came back down as a corpse. They said several of his organs were missing.”
The third finger.
“A guy who sold information to the Public Security Bureau and received a temporary pass. He ended up hanged down in the underground levels. Informants don't live long.”
Harun lowered his hand.
“Is that enough?”
“It's not enough.”
“Of course it isn't. You want to hear a different answer.”
Harun continued quietly.
“But there is no such answer. People born in the underground levels or dropped down here usually end here. If they're a little lucky, they die of old age. If they're unlucky, they die young. If they're exceptionally unlucky, they live long enough to be sold.”
“I have no intention of ending here.”
Harun stared at Kael.
“I've seen plenty of people say that.”
“I'm different from them.”
“I've heard that plenty of times, too.”
“So?”
“So I told you that most of them died.”
Kael had not survived merely to be buried here. He had to return.
Leon, Aileen, Miria.
He did not even know whether they were still alive.
He did not know what had happened to his original world after he disappeared, either.
Or perhaps only he had been thrown out, while that hell had still not ended.
He did not know.
That was why he had to go up.
“There has to be some way.”
Kael spoke.
Harun frowned at his words.
“What did I just say?”
“You said there was no legitimate way.”
“I also said the illegal ways get you killed.”
“If there are ways to die, then that means there are routes.”
Harun opened and closed his mouth.
He stared at Kael for a long while, then finally let out a sigh.
“People like you are the most exhausting.”
“I hear that often.”
“And you never change even after hearing it?”
“I haven't seen the need.”
Harun ground his cigarette out on the floor.
He glanced around for a moment.
At the edge of the market. Most of the stalls had closed.
A few drunken laborers staggered in the distance, while a small drone slowly passed beneath the old lights.
Harun waited until the drone disappeared, then spoke in a very low voice.
“There is a way.”