Chapter 14
I calmly gauged the amount of mana scattered throughout my body.
The culmination of a year’s worth of painful, capitalist sweat, exchanged for the ample fat of middle-aged women who wanted to lose weight.
For something born of the worldly business of getting paid to help people lose weight, the purity and quantity of the mana coiled inside me had reached a level that could hardly be dismissed.
Judging solely by the amount of mana I had, I could compare myself to some of the more capable mages from that other world.
And so.
“Maybe it’s about time I made one… a mana circle.”
A mana circle. The heart of a mage, a core mana organ that could be called an engine for amplifying and circulating mana, and the most important artificial mana organ a mage could possess.
There was a world of difference in efficiency between using mana through the crude circuits of an untrained body and using it through a structured circle built inside the body. So anyone who began studying magic naturally made forming a circle their first goal.
Of course, permanently using up a tremendous amount of mana to form an artificial circle inside the human body was the price of admission, but the benefits it offered were practically limitless.
Since it used the mana stored in the circle, the speed of casting and activating spells increased dramatically, mana consumption became extremely efficient, and, above all, it brought the natural recovery of mana depleted inside the body up to the limits of the body itself.
However, given the conditions here on Earth, that last benefit was practically nonexistent.
“There’s no mana in the atmosphere, so faster recovery doesn’t mean much.”
In that other world, the circles built around the heart rotated, naturally storing the mana absorbed through breathing… but Earth was a place where mana didn’t exist.
Even if I successfully built a circle, I couldn’t draw mana in from the outside by breathing, so I couldn’t expect to recover naturally unless I burned calories myself to replenish it.
In the end, I’d have to keep squeezing my customers’ bellies and manually refueling myself.
I could also gather mana inside a Gate, but if I went into one for that reason, my parents would hang me upside down. So that was out of the question.
Ahem. Anyway, even if the automatic recovery function was useless, the faster spellcasting and more efficient mana consumption were more than enough reason to build a circle.
Being able to cast a spell even 0.1 seconds faster in an emergency could mean the difference between life and death.
And so, I sat cross-legged on my bed and quietly closed my eyes.
If this were my first time walking this path, I’d have to be cautious, controlling even the faintest flow of mana as I painstakingly carved the circle into place. But I was a great mage who had already reached the end of this path.
I concentrated the vast mana gathered inside my body near my heart, formed a ring around it, then slowly rotated it as I solidified its shape.
The various kinds of mana gathered by burning so many people’s calories began to converge into a single flow under my will.
Vwoom—!
Before long, the first circle was complete, and a pleasant ripple swept through my body along my blood vessels. Honestly, the first circle wasn’t all that difficult.
All I needed was a certain amount of mana.
The moment the circle formed, it felt as though a blocked passage had opened. The subtle strain from the mana spread throughout my body seemed to disappear, leaving me feeling refreshed.
But I didn’t stop there. There was still plenty of fuel left in the form of belly fat, the product of humanity’s endless appetite and the dreaded yo-yo effect.
The second circle, then the third. Without a hitch or the slightest resistance, all three rings settled around my heart and began rotating in a steady rhythm.
As soon as the circles were complete, I let out a long breath.
“Phew.”
As I opened my eyes and exhaled, the air in the room suddenly turned cold, and the window frames and panes trembled. But I quickly reined in the mana within my circles, and the room soon returned to normal.
Three circles. This was a fine level that would make everyday life more convenient and let me cast most combat and support spells in the blink of an eye, using hardly any mana at all.
“Good. This should be pretty useful.”
I smiled with satisfaction at the steady flow of mana slowly turning around my heart.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
So, even though I’d successfully completed my mana circles and was steadily earning money and mana through my diet massages…
I couldn’t neglect my main job as a student retaking the entrance exam!
By day, I worked as a slave to capitalism at the gym; by night, I put on buffs to my intelligence, wisdom, and memory and pored over CSAT prep books. It was a truly strange and exhausting double life.
Still, thanks to the buffs, there weren’t really any problems. Even difficult books were etched into my mind after just one read, and I never forgot them.
While I was preparing for the CSAT, our peaceful living room erupted into chaos over a breaking news report during the evening broadcast.
「Major universities nationwide have confirmed the large-scale introduction of a ‘Special Admissions Track for Awakened People’ starting with this year’s admissions. Government-registered Awakened people will undergo a special document review and interview process, regardless of their CSAT scores….」
“Hey! You’ve got it made! Are you kidding me? You can get into a prestigious university with a government Awakened ID card alone?!”
My older brother, who’d been sprawled on the sofa playing a game on his smartphone, burst out laughing at the TV. Mom, who was making dinner in the kitchen, also stared at me with wide eyes and an excited expression.
“Oh my goodness! Our daughter’s troubles are over! Suyeon, remember how you talked to the government and got registered as a non-combat Awakened? Doesn’t that mean you can go to college without taking the CSAT?”
It was true that I had an Awakened ID card, thanks to the discussions I’d had with them back then… And sure, getting into a good university without taking the CSAT sounded great, but!!!
“This is so annoying!!!”
“Why? Isn’t it a good thing that you can get into a good university so easily?”
“What about all the effort I put into studying?!!!”
“Well, it can’t be helped, can it?”
My brother said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, but…
“If they were going to announce something like this, they should’ve done it sooner!!! There are less than a hundred days left before the CSAT! What were they thinking, announcing this now?!!!”
“Well, it’s obvious. They’re probably planning to enroll Awakened people and get them to cooperate with various research projects. Or maybe they think that having more Awakened people would be useful in all sorts of ways?”
Well, that was probably it. If they were making this available specifically to Awakened people… it was pretty clear-cut.
“Besides, the government might be doing this to get unregistered Awakened people to register properly. Not everyone becomes Awakened, but not everyone who does is going to quietly report it to the government, right?”
Hmm. Unregistered Awakened people. There had been a few problems related to them already.
In a country where everyone’s resident registration number was recorded and fingerprints were taken, it was only natural to register and keep track of Awakened people, too.
Even so, quite a lot of Awakened people remained unregistered. In my own family, I was the only registered Awakened person.
“But still! They could’ve told us sooner! It’s so unfair to the Awakened people who’ve been preparing for the CSAT!!!”
“Hey, what’s there to be upset about? You’re already registered with the government as someone with a weight-loss ability, and the university can tell you’re Awakened just by checking your resident registration number. Why take the long way around? Just use the special admissions track and pick the best university you can get into. Life’s all about timing.”
My brother’s smug teasing was irritating, but it was one hundred percent true.
“Your brother’s right, Suyeon. There’s an easy path to guaranteed admission right in front of you. There’s no need to be stubborn. They say all you have to do is submit some documents, so why force your way through that narrow entrance?”
Faced with my family’s thoroughly practical and efficient advice, I had no choice but to pout and nod.
I wasn’t so stubborn and inflexible that I’d reject an easy expressway just because the effort I’d put in might go to waste.
“Ugh… Fine. I’ll submit an application through the special admissions track for Awakened people.”
But my pride as a great mage and all the knowledge I’d crammed into my head were too precious to me to end my exam-prep days just like that.
“Still, I’m going to take the CSAT! Even if my admission’s practically guaranteed, I won’t be satisfied until I see for myself how much of the knowledge I spent a year cramming into my brain I actually retained!”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
And then, the long-awaited day of the CSAT arrived.
With the most reassuring and overwhelming safety net imaginable—the Awakened admissions track, an advantage possessed by only a tiny fraction of test takers—I walked into the exam hall with my head held high and not a care in the world.
The other test takers were pale with nerves, their hands trembling as they looked over their error-review notes. My mind, on the other hand, was as calm as a still lake.
The moment the test papers were handed out and the sharp chime signaling the start of the exam rang through the room, I quietly accelerated the rotation of the three circles settled in my heart.
‘Wisdom Enhancement.’
‘Hall of Memories.’
Vwoom—!
My mana-enhanced processing power and memory made my mind feel as cool and clear as if I’d dipped it in ice water.
I raced through the dense, brick-like passages and picked out the right answers in the blink of an eye.
Even the math problems that would usually have taken me ages to calculate and solve were a breeze with my magically enhanced processing power.
Compared to when I’d studied with an ordinary mind before forming my circles—or even before I’d ended up in the other world—my thoughts had become explosively faster. While everyone else struggled over one question, I had the leisure to solve three and check my answers.
‘It’s nice to finish everything so quickly… But, ah, would getting a perfect score be a problem? An interview would just draw unnecessary attention to me…’
I felt a tiny bit of self-reproach at the fact that a great mage who’d once explored the truths of magic and fought to save the world from destruction was abusing magic just to get a high score on the modern-day College Scholastic Ability Test.
Well, so what? I wasn’t going to use this test score to get into college anyway. The only reason I was sitting in this exam hall was to satisfy myself and make up for how unfair the past year had been.
I filled in my OMR answer sheet at a ridiculous speed.
And the result was, as expected, a complete success.
According to my preliminary score, every answer was correct except for the few questions I’d deliberately gotten slightly wrong to avoid a perfect score.
I probably wouldn’t be the top scorer in the country, but I’d earned an excellent, astonishing score that could get me into one of Seoul’s most prestigious universities in a popular department through regular admissions.
“Looks like I could’ve done without the Awakened admissions track.”
“Yeah. Good for you.”
I ignored my brother’s grumbling and simply smiled with satisfaction.