Chapter 2
Behold.
As a sown seed becomes a sprout, then bears fruit, and again sows seeds.
Even if the bloomed flame disappears into the air, that will not be the end.
* * *
"Strange. Truly strange."
Jinseong repeatedly expressed his amazement while looking at his youthful body.
When he opened his mouth, he didn't feel the terrible pain as if his jaw was twisting, his voice came out smoothly from his vocal cords, and despite speaking, he didn't feel the pain of his lungs and vocal cords being squeezed and torn.
Moreover, when he raised his hand to touch his face, the numerous bullet and knife wounds he had received during his mercenary days were gone, and the many self-harm marks created by his actions in trance states while learning magic were also nowhere to be found.
A clean body.
He had returned not just younger, but with a cleansed body.
What amazed him even more was the place where he was.
"This is my past, truly strange..."
The house where he used to live in the past.
It was a space that perfectly matched his memories.
At first, he had thought it might be a hallucination caused by excessive feel-good chemicals secreted just before death, or a hallucination influenced by unknown magic, but surprisingly, this was reality.
'Even after completing reality checks and spiritual checks, this is still reality.'
Every element that couldn't be reproduced even with S-class hallucinations or hypnosis existed here, and his terrible mind was also loudly claiming that this place was reality, that it was the truth.
Combining all of this...
'I have returned to the past.'
There was only one remaining truth.
That he had regressed.
"ॐ---"
Jinseong muttered incantations softly, calming his mind.
This method of calming his mind by muttering incantations was a life wisdom and routine he had acquired during his mercenary life. Despite the harsh and terrible mercenary life, he always had to compose his mind to exert power as a sorcerer, so without this method of controlling his mind, he wouldn't have been able to survive.
"ॐ...."
However, even the incantations that had calmed his mind for many years were not settling him easily. The fact of regression was enough to cause a great turbulence in his mind.
'Joy and irritation coexist. It feels like a storm and a torrent blowing together.'
All sorts of emotions were swirling in his mind.
The biggest emotion was joy.
The joy of being able to change the fate of having a short life due to ridiculously damaging his body. The joy stemming from the thought that he could transcend human limits through magic and obtain immortality, possibly storing all the magic in the world in his head.
After all, magic was the joy of his life, the purpose of his life, and his everything.
'Some might call it obsession, but what if it is? I'm not an ascetic or a practitioner trying to break free from the cycle of reincarnation.'
Jinseong was similar yet different from other sorcerers.
While other sorcerers sought to transcend existence through asceticism, enlightenment, or practice, he craved transcendence solely for life.
His means and purpose were reversed compared to other sorcerers.
Because of this, he couldn't transcend, and instead of transcending, he recklessly learned magic pursuing a realm beyond his capacity, leading to the collapse of his body and a life shorter than his natural lifespan. In the end, with a body no different from a corpse, he suffered endless pain and burned his body to the end.
That was the entirety of his life.
'Should I have listened to the words of the sages?'
The many sages he met during his mercenary life told him:
To let go of attachment.
If he didn't let go of attachment, then the end wouldn’t be good someday.
And their prophecy became reality.
An end where he set fire to himself with a body no different from a corpse.
If someone had seen it, they might have called it a novel suicide method of a sorcerer consumed by madness.
But in a way, they might have called it the end that best suited him.
After all, there was nothing better than magic to conclude his life, which had been lived solely obsessed with magic. It might have seemed more so especially since after the outbreak of World War III, the number of people dying miserable deaths had increased dramatically, and mercenaries mostly met worthless deaths that made even a miserable death seem like a blessing.
However, what was certain was that Jinseong met his death without achieving his goal.
He wanted life, he wanted to live even if it was wretched, he wanted to continue breathing even if it was miserable.
『 Parasite Warlock 』
That was why he was called the Parasite Warlock.
He used magic that mimicked parasitic organisms and was obsessed with magic solely for survival.
He wasn't ashamed of parasitizing others, and though he never betrayed, he lived by receiving excessive payment for trust.
A sorcerer who couldn't perform alone, but always survived alone.
That was why he lived as a mercenary, called by the contemptuous title of Parasite Warlock.
'One failure, a chance given again. But it's truly strange that I don't know why this was given to me.'
For Jinseong, who had lived being called by such a derogatory name, most of the emotions swirling in him now were joy. But there was an emotion that was gradually swelling up just as much, and that was anxiety.
Why would Jinseong dislike the fortune that had come to him?
It was human to be happy even about free money, and here he had been given a new life by traveling back in time. It would be a lie to say he didn't want to jump around and shout with joy.
But the malice of all things was hidden on the other side.
'Why did I regress?'
Why, how.
Two question words that must always be kept in mind, learned during his mercenary life.
Being a mercenary was a job where there was an abundance of people trying to backstab you due to money involvement, and if you let your guard down, you were likely to die from an attack by a comrade or a knife in the back. Especially after World War III, the character of humans on Earth had gone mad to the point that even the term 'misanthropy' was insufficient to describe them, making it even more dangerous.
Those terrible backstabbings were casually delivered even by the closest and most trustworthy clients. The most common case was clients lying about or distorting information because they didn't want to pay the mercenary fee. The next most common case was clients trying to kill mercenaries with poison or ambush when they returned after completing the request.
This was how trustworthy clients were.
As for comrades, it was better to have enemies in many cases.
Brokers and mercenary organizations were not much different from criminal organizations.
『 Enemies are better than comrades. At least they don't stab you in the back. 』
When this was a common saying among mercenaries, it was truly a mess.
That was why Jinseong's life had to always be accompanied by the two questions of 'why' and 'how'.
If not, he would have died.
'Why am I back in the past?'
Those experiences made Jinseong suspicious.
Why and how was he able to return to the past?
Was some transcendent being capable of causing such a miracle playing with me by sending me back?
Was I like a puppet on a string, unable to escape fate and dying in frustration in the same situation?
Such doubts swelled up terribly along with the fuel of anxiety.
"ॐ-"
Jinseong composed his shaking mind.
'A transcendent being wouldn't do that.'
Transcendent beings.
Beings called by various names such as transcendents, transcenders, etc.
Gods, demigods, dragons, demons, spirits, yokai, giants, and so on...
The transcendent beings appearing in legends had immense power.
Literally transcendent.
Beings who have 'transcended' the limits of living beings and souls to reach a certain realm.
Gods could manipulate natural phenomena, demons were second to none in terms of mental and spiritual power, and spirits and yokai wielded tremendous authority in their areas of expertise.
That was why many people feared yet worshiped them, and this continued even after transcendent beings had difficulty interfering with the world at some point.
'But these beings don’t need to be feared more than necessary.'
It was better to keep a distance and not get involved with them, but they were not beings that needed to be feared, at least.
Because transcendent beings, without a single exception, all liked and loved humans.
However, how their expressions of affection would be perceived by humans... was a different matter.
'Transcendent beings have the power but won't do it, humans want to do it but don't have the power.'
If divided into those who could do but didn't and those who wanted to do but couldn't, how did things that can happen in the world occur?
Exceptions existed everywhere, but they only acted as a game of probability, which was called coincidence.
Coincidence had many names, but the only thing needed was my mindset to accept that coincidence as is.
"ॐ-"
Jinseong quietly put his hands together and calmed his mind.
Knock knock knock.
As soon as he calmed his mind, a knocking sound was heard as if it had been waiting.
As Jinseong turned his head towards the door, an unnecessarily ornate door slowly opened and someone peeked their head in.
"Um, are you awake?"
The one who peeked in was a slightly gloomy-looking girl.
'Lee Serin. It's been a long time.'
Jinseong was immersed in emotion as he looked at her face, which looked much younger than the last one he remembered.
The way her eyes rolled around here and there due to lack of confidence was exactly the same as in his memory, but unlike his last memory where she had short hair, her long black hair that could be described as flowing and her skin without makeup somehow gave him the true feeling of 'having returned to the past'.
"Um, it's breakfast time..."
On top of that, her awkward expression and drawling tone, as if loudly claiming "I'm uncomfortable with you," and the volume of her voice as if trying to crawl into a mouse hole.
All of these were fragments of daily life that had only existed in memory.
"O-oppa? Breakfast..."
"I got it."
"What? Yes."
As soon as his perfunctory words fell, Lee Serin closed the door and disappeared as if she had been waiting.
"Come to think of it, this household had rules."
Why were there so many things to be picky about?
Jinseong smiled slightly and changed his clothes.