Chapter 13
Time passed with ruthless speed.
About a year had passed since the unprecedented disaster known as the ‘Gates’ suddenly swept through our everyday lives and turned the world upside down.
Since the day dubbed the ‘Gate Crisis,’ humanity had endured terrible chaos and fear with every fiber of its being. But, drawing on its characteristic tenacity and adaptability, it was growing accustomed to this new disaster at a frightening pace.
One year. A long and yet short time. Thanks to the tireless efforts of scholars and Awakened people around the world, a great deal had been discovered about the Gates, monsters, and mana stones appearing all over the world.
First, Gates seemed to open at random, but they had the incredibly shitty habit of appearing mostly in urban areas and busy districts with heavy foot traffic and dense populations….
It wasn’t clear what criteria they used to determine population density, but Gates were more likely to appear in cities than in the countryside, and in busy districts rather than other parts of the city.
As for our country… Well, Seoul, obviously. Maybe Busan, too. Beyond that, they mostly appeared in larger cities, and only occasionally in places with smaller populations, so the Gate problem hadn’t become too serious.
Well, at least one good thing was that densely populated areas with lots of people coming and going had plenty of personnel available to deal with the situation.
In other words, whenever a Gate opened, a considerable number of people got caught up in it…. But let’s set that aside for now.
The next thing to note was the rule that a Gate would never close and would continue spewing out monsters unless the so-called ‘boss’ monster deep inside the space known as a Gate—or dungeon—was dealt with.
Of course, the number of monsters inside a Gate was limited. But after a certain amount of time, more monsters would spawn inside, and once their numbers reached a certain point, they’d come out through the Gate.
That meant if a Gate wasn’t dealt with in time, the monsters would keep piling up until they eventually came pouring out and wreaked havoc…. But, as a rule, people moved quickly to deal with a Gate as soon as it opened.
If nothing unusual had happened, the Gate Crisis might have been reduced to a series of minor accidents and incidents…. But the most important part came next.
More than anything, what completely changed the course of this world was the byproduct obtained from defeating monsters inside Gates. In other words, the appearance of ‘mana stones.’
If not for these small stones imbued with mana, which could be obtained even from lowly goblins…. Most Gates would have been little more than minor incidents, cleaned up within a day or two of opening.
That is, if humans hadn’t taken an interest in this new resource called mana stones.
Research into these mysterious, small, brilliant blue stones discovered after monsters were killed began in earnest around the world, with astronomical amounts of capital poured into it.
And before long, the existence of ‘mana,’ the unknown energy contained within the stones, was conclusively established.
This mana seeped into ordinary human bodies and changed them, ultimately becoming the driving force behind the creation of ‘Awakened’ people with superhuman powers.
Research into mana advanced rapidly, and at some point, people even discovered that mana concentrations in an area rose sharply for several days before a Gate opened there.
Thanks to these incredible discoveries and the steady research into mana, we’d become a society where people woke up in the morning, checked the weather forecast on their smartphones, and looked up the ‘Gate Forecast for Today’ as well.
「Mana concentrations across the Seoul metropolitan area are stable today. However, a localized increase has been observed near Haeundae District in Busan, so residents in the area are advised to check the locations of nearby shelters once again….」
The anchor’s voice on the morning news was as dry and matter-of-fact as the weather forecast.
Mana stones and mana, once unknown resources and sources of power, had now gone beyond mere subjects of research and emerged as a new energy source that could replace fossil fuels and power the world.
An era had arrived in which countless corporations and nations eagerly fought tooth and nail to monopolize mana stones and develop mana-based technologies.
To make up for the inadequate supply of mana stones, people had even figured out how to deliberately keep Gates open and set up kill zones inside to efficiently eliminate the monsters that appeared there and harvest the stones…. It really drove home once again that humans were a species obsessed with efficiency.
But no matter how much the world changed, my daily life remained surprisingly peaceful and mundane amid the upheaval of that vast world.
All right. Then, let’s give it our best today, too.
“Aaaaaagh! Ma’am! It hurts! Somebody help! I’m dying!!”
“Just hold on a little longer. We’re almost done. If you tense up because it hurts, it won’t be as effective.”
In a small VIP room at a gym in the heart of the city, run by one of Dad’s former junior colleagues.
Wiping the beads of sweat from my forehead, I answered with a bored expression, both hands firmly planted on the abdomen of the middle-aged woman thrashing like a fish on the massage bed.
“What kind of massage hurts this much?! It feels like you’re roasting my flesh over a fire!”
“Ma’am, I clearly warned you when I had you sign the consent form, didn’t I? I’m physically squeezing the fat out and burning it, so it’s going to hurt a lot. If you can’t take it, I can refund you right now. Should we stop?”
“N-no! We can’t stop! I’ve been waiting for days to get this done!! Keep going, keep going! Ow!”
Over the past year, I’d been running a perfectly diligent and discreet, legally (?) operated ‘women-only diet massage parlor.’
At first, I’d started small, working on Mom’s acquaintances. I didn’t even have a proper place, so I went to clients’ homes to offer an in-home massage service…. Ahem. That sounds a little sketchy.
Anyway, it had started as a modest little massage service, but it didn’t take long for word to spread among the madams about its miraculous results. Each treatment made anywhere from three to seven kilos of fat disappear…. My record was ten kilos. The difference was so obvious that clients could feel it in their bodies.
Demand from the madams and neighborhood ladies kept growing until even three of me wouldn’t have been enough. And after it became a waste of time to travel between clients’ homes for in-home massages…
Dad eventually stepped in and rented me a room in a corner of the gym run by his former junior colleague. That was how I started operating in earnest, offering diet massages by appointment only.
Of course, the fact that I was a government-registered ‘Awakened’ person was kept strictly secret. I even hid it from Dad’s former junior colleague, who’d rented me the room.
Aside from that, I made sure the service was women-only and required a 100% referral for appointments. It was a special massage with a painstaking process… though the referral system wasn’t exactly subject to any special screening.
One woman even waited by the exit, struck up a conversation with another woman groaning in pain, bought her a cup of coffee, and asked if she could get a referral. I kept the process loose enough that anyone who really wanted in could find a way.
For the record, I’d publicly presented it as nothing more than a ‘special meridian massage with incredible results.’
Even the gym owner, Dad’s former junior colleague, had been skeptical at first.
“Suyeon, seriously, 250,000 won for a ten-minute massage? And the customers are screaming their heads off like that. This isn’t some kind of illegal treatment, is it?”
But after seeing gym members who could barely lose a kilo despite spending all month sweating on the treadmills walk out of my room just ten minutes later, shortening their belts by a notch and looking absolutely blissful, the owner stopped asking questions.
On the contrary, a lot of people started signing up for the gym because they thought combining the massage with exercise would work even better, or because they wanted to shower right after their massage. It was a win-win, wasn’t it?
“Oh, ma’am. You’re back again after just two weeks. You’ve gained all the weight back, too…. I told you that if you didn’t watch your eating habits, the weight would come right back.”
“Oh, goodness, ma’am! I had a class reunion yesterday and went to a hotel buffet. I lost control and even cleared out the dessert table…. I’ll pay whatever you want, so please do something about this belly and get it back to how it was!”
It was enough to drive me crazy.
Even people who’d come in doubtful would experience the miracle of their waistlines shrinking in just ten minutes, then open their tightly shut wallets like devoted fanatics.
Modern people were overflowing with the desire to lose weight easily, even if it meant suffering through ten minutes of hell instead of painful exercise and dieting. That desire more than outweighed the high price of the treatment.
Thanks to that, my personal bank balance had soared far beyond what you’d expect from an ordinary student retaking the entrance exam, and all the ‘mana’ produced by burning my clients’ fat had been absorbed by me and steadily accumulated.
In terms of sheer mana reserves, I had enough to rival even some of the well-known mages from that other world.
Well, with my means of recovering mana limited, I couldn’t use it as freely as I wanted…. Actually, maybe I have enough to give it a try.
Maybe it’s time to make one…. A mana circle.