Chapter 17
#17. Reunion
A brilliant mind, handsome looks, a father who was a lawmaker and former prosecutor, and a mother whose family had amassed an enormous fortune through its vast real estate holdings.
I grew up without wanting for anything.
When I entered elementary school, perhaps because of the influence exerted by the parents who had heard rumors about me, every kid in my class was desperate to become friends with me.
It was the same in middle and high school. In fact, starting in middle school, even the teachers groveled before me. Whenever I got into a fight with someone, the teachers always took my side.
Even when I unilaterally bullied or assaulted someone, the teachers would hush the whole incident up as a group and cautiously ask after my parents.
I don't remember exactly what happened back then, but I think I laughed.
Could life really be this easy?
As long as I put in a little effort to maintain my grades, I didn't have to do anything else.
Friends? Dating?
Everyone around me was nothing but a bunch of morons desperate to curry my favor.
The girls were all empty-headed things who readily spread their legs after being tempted by my looks and money.
The school bullies who strutted around? I set traps, left evidence, and either sent every last one of them to juvenile detention or blackmailed them into working for me.
Whenever I got bored, I picked some loser in the class and played with him.
At first, I started rumors that he liked the girlfriend of one of the school's bullies, then secretly stole the girls' gym clothes and put them in his locker.
When we opened the boys' lockers while searching for the culprit and found a pile of gym clothes in his, my enjoyment reached its peak.
Watching him scream through his tears that he hadn't done it was so hilarious that I almost felt sorry I couldn't laugh openly.
Still, the disappointment I felt when I heard that he had dropped out was impossible to describe. It was annoying when a toy I was playing with broke, but it was absurd when it ran away of its own accord.
Even so, finding a new toy wasn't difficult.
It was the same at university.
The department I had entered intending to fool around with empty-headed girls had a few clueless male bastards who didn't know their place.
I heard there hadn't been a single male freshman the year before, so why the hell did this happen only when I arrived?
So this time, I didn't just settle for playing with someone. I set things up so that he would break down and disappear on his own.
Just as I had in high school, I searched for someone suitably pathetic who wouldn't squirm when I stepped on him.
While gradually excluding him from the group, I talked about him whenever I was with the others. He smells, he looks at women in a disgusting way, I saw his phone the other day and he was laughing while looking at pictures of some weird woman, and so on. Of course, I had made it all up, but why should I care?
The truth isn't what matters to people.
What matters most is whether something looks plausible.
Men are just as empty-headed.
Pay them for a meal or drinks that cost next to nothing, and they abase themselves and act like dogs.
By the time most of the male freshmen were wagging their tails at me and desperately praying they wouldn't become the next target,
an oddly irritating bastard appeared.
Kang Hyunwoo, a fellow student in my department, was freakishly tall but had an ordinary-looking face. No, when he scowled, he actually looked fairly fierce.
In fact, I hadn't planned to mess with Kang Hyunwoo from the beginning.
He hadn't made a bad first impression. I had only planned to use him because, if I kept him around, he seemed like he might be useful for intimidating people.
But he kept looking at me as if he disapproved of me and continued doing things I disliked, such as refusing to attend drinking parties I hosted, so I decided to make an example of him.
I didn't care who that bastard liked, but a loser who had attended a drinking party in my absence told me which girl Kang Hyunwoo liked.
An idea occurred to me then, and it worked.
The twisted look on his face at the MT was so funny that it still made me burst out laughing whenever I thought about it.
And yet, someone like that hit me.
Who?
Me?
Bang!
A flowerpot slammed into the wall, scattering fragments in every direction.
“Fuck!!”
Jeon Hyesung vented his unbearable fury by smashing or hurling household objects with a golf club, one after another.
“That fucking orphan...!!! How dare he, how daaaare he...!!!”
Grrrk-
His voice, filled with fury, spilled from his throat past his bulging veins and echoed throughout the house.
No matter how much he smashed, his anger wouldn't subside.
“Kang Hyunwoo.”
A strange madness could even be glimpsed in Jeon Hyesung's eerie gaze as he stared off somewhere.
For Jeon Hyesung, who had always stood above everyone else, what had happened today was a fatal humiliation he could neither forget nor tolerate.
“Look forward to it. From next semester, I'll torment you until you drop out.”
First, he would recruit a suitable freshman girl and create a situation where she and Kang Hyunwoo were alone together.
Then, if he succeeded in leaving Kang Hyunwoo's fingerprints on the girl's body by whatever means necessary, he could report the bastard for sexual assault.
What kind of country was this?
This was a country where people said the victim's tears were evidence. Fingerprints left on a woman's clothes and the victim's tears alone were enough to serve as evidence for a guilty verdict.
That would be enough not just for Kang Hyunwoo to drop out, but to get expelled.
Of course, it wouldn't matter even if they let him off for insufficient evidence. False accusation? That was the girl's problem to deal with. It had nothing to do with him.
Even if Kang Hyunwoo safely returned to school, rumors that he was a rapist would already have spread throughout the university.
He wouldn't be able to keep attending school in that situation.
Thinking about that slightly eased his shitty mood.
“Who should I call today?”
He looked through the DM inbox filled with countless messages before contacting a junior girl he'd never slept with.
At that age, a few pictures of an expensive hotel were enough to make girls fall for him so easily that they wondered whether they really should be doing this.
To him, women were nothing more than toys perfect for playing with.
Jeon Hyesung had no doubt that it would always be that way.
Foolishly.
Bang bang!
“What the fuck?”
The pounding on the front door, as if someone were trying to break it down, made Jeon Hyesung reflexively scowl.
Had someone come because of the noise from all the things he had smashed earlier?
‘Ha, there are so many bastards who don't know their place.’
He had two options: placate the person and send him away, or simply beat him away with a golf club.
If it was someone capable of understanding reason, he could choose the former. But if not...
‘The director is going to have his work cut out for him today.’
As usual, he'd simply slip the person some settlement money and hush the matter up.
But contrary to his optimistic thoughts, what happened far exceeded Jeon Hyesung's expectations.
Creak-
“What bastard is pounding on someone else's door...”
Wham!
“Aaaagh!!”
The moment he opened the door, a fist slammed into his face and sent Jeon Hyesung tumbling across the shoe cabinet in an undignified fashion.
“You, what the hell are you doing... F-Father...?!”
The culprit who had punched him was not the crazy bastard next door, who looked eager to go to prison and eat prison food, but the person Jeon Hyesung feared most: his father.
“Jeon Hyesung!!”
Assemblyman Jeon Jinmuk stormed through the door with a flushed face and a more vicious expression than ever.
At the sight of him, Jeon Hyesung could do nothing but gingerly rub his tomato-red cheeks.
“What the fuck have you been doing out there?!!”
“W-what...? What are you talking about...?”
He merely clenched his teeth, grateful that his father wasn't holding a golf club.
Slap! Slap!
“Because of you! The whole fucking thing fell apart!!”
“Ghk, gghk, ugh...!!”
Jeon Jinmuk slapped his son's cheeks mercilessly and with practiced ease.
“Do you think I give you spending money every month, and even pay your apartment deposit and rent, so you can do this?!!”
As he beat his son, Jeon Jinmuk remembered the call he had received from the Magic Tower earlier that day.
-M-Mage, what do you mean?! You're giving up on our cooperation now?!
-I'm sorry. It seems something unpleasant happened between one of our mages and your son. As you know, it's not our style to proceed without considering the feelings of a fellow mage from the same Magic Tower. We already have the Tower Master's permission.
-W-what?! My son?! Th-there's no way!
-I have nothing more to say.
-I'll take care of it! So please, reconsider... Mage?! Mage!!
He had spent years licking the Magic Tower's ass until it was raw to finally secure that cooperation.
Thanks to it, his reelection had been almost certain, but the Magic Tower's sudden notification had completely changed the situation.
At this rate, his reelection was as good as lost.
‘This won't do... I need to come up with something...’
-This is breaking news.
The sound of the television, which had been left on, drew Jeon Jinmuk's gaze.
-Evidence has come to light of bribery, election fraud, and massive real estate speculation involving former lawmaker Jeon Jinmuk, who is running in this election, shocking the public.
Ring ring ring-
Ring ring-
The telephone began to ring.
-Additional evidence has been uncovered indicating that the scheme originated from the maternal family of his wife, Lee Hyeonsuk, and that they made profits amounting to hundreds of billions of won, sparking further controversy.
-The evidence is so conclusive that even lawmakers from his own party are raising their voices to demand a strict investigation.
Thud-
Jeon Jinmuk collapsed into a sitting position and couldn't get back up for a long while.
***
On the day I submitted my university withdrawal application, I bought a pile of food and bottled water at a convenience store and returned home.
I had already told Mage Choi Young-ok about it, and more importantly, in one week, I would be reunited with Iris.
I wanted to see her surprised expression.
I sat cross-legged on the floor and closed my eyes.
What mattered to me now was concentration that seemed to have no end.
I had to reach the source of the mana circle, an intangible thing, in the deepest part of my heart.
[All Knowledge Acquisition related to Basic Magic Theory Bonus +1000%]
[Mana Sensitivity Increased +1000%]
[Mana Assimilation Speed Increased +10000%]
Those were the buffs provided by the app I was currently receiving.
I didn't need the knowledge acquisition bonus right now.
What I needed were the mana sensitivity and assimilation speed buffs. Thanks to them, I was practically receiving mana's love at all times.
Of course, under normal circumstances, I blocked mana from being absorbed into my body.
A blood transfusion can be therapeutic in an appropriate amount, but exceeding a certain level can cause complications.
Mana was the same. If I tried to absorb more mana than my body could handle, my circle could collapse and I could die.
Even so, I opened myself up completely and absorbed vast amounts of natural mana.
‘Ungh...’
The moment I opened the gates, mana came rushing in as if shouting, “Oh, wonderful!”, and it felt as if my blood were flowing backward.
If I lost consciousness here, I was guaranteed to end up at least half-crippled.
Amid the tremendous pain, I stubbornly held on to my sanity and guided the flow of mana.
Hand, foot, neck, leg. No matter where the mana entered, I made it all flow toward my heart.
Of course, accepting all that mana was practically an act of suicide.
Just before it reached my heart, I filtered out a certain amount.
If I were a mage who had reached a higher level, I wouldn't have needed to go through this bothersome process. I could have filtered the mana in advance when it entered my body.
Unfortunately, I was still inexperienced.
So, right next to one of the most vital points in my body—the heart—I could only use my survival instinct to filter it.
‘Hey, if you don't want to die, filter the mana yourself, okay?’
‘...? What kind of lunatic are you? This is your body!’
‘Do I care?’
After filtering it again and again, I compressed the mana I'd gathered.
As if pressing a car down with a press until it became a thin sheet of metal one centimeter thick.
I knew. That sounded insane.
That was how difficult it was to expand a mana circle.
An ordinary mage wouldn't even be doing this.
According to Iris, the process by which ordinary mages advanced was to use an insight gained at some point to take the place of the press, compressing the mana they had accumulated in their bodies over many years.
But what about me?
I had no insight. I was simply forcing the mana to compress through a single technique for manipulating it.
Naturally, this was a shortcut, and it probably wouldn't work as my level increased.
The danger of losing my life went without saying.
Even so, there was only one reason I forced myself to continue.
‘...I can handle this.’
The mana, compressed to its limit, gradually took the form of an endlessly rotating ring.
Then it settled in the heart where mages' mana circles gathered.
“Phew...”
When I opened my eyes again, a week had passed.
Tsk, I said I'd make it in three days, so I guess I ended up lying.
As expected, my phone was filled with countless missed calls from Choi Young-ok.
I felt sorry, but she wasn't my priority right now.
[Name: Iris Lumeria Baiart Pelledia]
[Age: 524]
[Race: High Elf]
[Affiliation: EB-17]
[Occupation: Archmage]
[Disposition: Benevolent Ruler, Pacifist, Devotion, Vegetarian······]
[Would you like to rematch?]
[Y/N]
“Of course.”
The week had passed in the blink of an eye, but I wanted to see Iris.
“...Ah, wait a second.”
Before going to see Iris, I suddenly remembered a few things I needed to prepare, so I hurried around to various places.
Could it have been because I had reached the Second Circle and my entire body was overflowing with mana? I seemed to be able to run at thirty kilometers per hour. And I hadn't even been running at full speed.
Who said mages were back-line classes?
Anyway, after finishing my errands, I returned home, shoved everything into my inventory, and opened the app again.
[Would you like to rematch with Iris Lumeria Baiart Pelledia?]
[Y/N]
[Y]
The moment I accepted, a pure-white beam of light enveloped me, just like last time.
I had my eyes closed, but when I felt the flow of air reverse and opened my eyes again,
“B-but next time, I-I'll... all the way...!”
Iris was standing there, red enough to burst.
“Ms. Iris.”
“I'll do it...!! Huh? M-Mr. Hyunwoo?”
Iris had been speaking with both eyes squeezed shut, as if reciting a monologue, but she looked up in surprise at the voice coming from directly in front of her.
You didn't think I heard that, did you?
In front of the flustered Iris, I opened my inventory.
Then I took out the magical red box I had bought at a convenience store before coming here.
“Since I'm back, we're going all the way this time, right?”
It was a 0.001 mm condom made with magitech.