Chapter 3
6 a.m.
Thanks to the full-brain control chip, I automatically wake up even if I don't want to.
After tidying up the bedding with the chilly cold lingering around it, I shower and head out, then I have to depart for Van Bio Company headquarters in the central business district.
—Screeech.
[ Payment of 60 credits complete. ]
"60 credits?"
That's odd. Wasn't it 50 credits originally?
"Hey, what are you doing just standing there instead of getting on?"
"Why is the fare 60 credits? My destination is the business district."
"Starting today, it went up by 10 credits."
As if he'd already been asked the same question countless times, the tram guard answered while lazily waving a hand with an annoyed expression.
I had no choice but to find an empty seat and sit down.
Maybe because of the price hike, there were a lot of empty seats today.
—Wiiiiing.
A streetcar moving along the rails. The City Tram, Baldur City's public transportation, slides swiftly over the tracks.
The City Tram pushed through the towering concrete jungle as it went.
Baldur is the smallest of the Federation's seven megacities, and yet it teems with close to 100 million humans. A purely human population, excluding androids and humanoids.
Because ultra-high-density development has become routine due to the limited land area, it's hard to see even a small park inside the city.
Why are there so many people packed into this cramped city?
The scenery outside the tram changing rapidly.
The long road running alongside the tram is always congested at this hour. Autonomous vehicles of middle-class folks with some money, rattling old junkers, and noisy bikes all mix together and crawl forward.
'Nothing happening today.'
Usually, when I watch outside the tram on my commute, there are times I get to see something interesting now and then.
Sometimes an armed robber pops up out of nowhere on the road, and I even remember seeing robbers on modified bikes firing guns at a 〈Quarot Reguilera GTS〉 car worth over a million credits—only for their heads to explode on the spot.
Well, if someone can afford to run that kind of hypercar, they're probably making serious money, but how would some petty robber know whether the person inside is a wealthy entrepreneur or a high-ranking mage or a martial artist? Just bad luck.
[ This is Baldur central business district station. ]
Had it been about 20 minutes since I boarded?
The City Tram enters the edge of the central business district.
I can see skyscrapers of major corporations towering three times higher than the buildings we passed on the way here, packed tightly together.
Even without sunlight, the city center is more dazzling than anything, thanks to the exterior lighting on those supertall buildings. For a city that could collapse at any time, that is.
Ten minutes on foot after getting off the tram.
Arriving at Van Bio headquarters on time, I cleaned Rena's upper-floor office and wiped away the dust.
Until Rena finishes eating at the mansion and comes to work, once I'm done cleaning, about an hour is my only free time. Usually I grab some food at the company store, go to the restroom, then log onto the net and kill time.
[ The Quarot family's magic chip hits the market! ]
While browsing recent articles after connecting to the city public network, a network article with quite a high view count caught my eye.
[ A 'Quarot magic chip' containing the Quarot family's magic has appeared at auction and is becoming a hot topic. It appears to be a last resort to resolve the high debt ratio of 'Quarot Group', a major magic-industry corporation in Valhalla, and its affiliate 'Quarot Automobile', and to raise operating funds. ]
[ If you purchase this magic chip, you can learn the Quarot family's unique magic—magic that only the Quarot family's mages can study. Experts measuring the product estimate the selling price of the 'Quarot magic chip' at 5 million credits. ]
[ If all 100 limited units are sold out, the total proceeds, excluding fees, are estimated at around 400 million credits. The Quarot family stated that they will use all proceeds to normalize the company's value······. ]
It's a world where, as long as you have enough credits, you can shop for digitized martial arts and magic chips anytime.
If you insert a data chip containing an ability into a link port connected to your nerves, you can naturally absorb the stored data. I don't know how they developed such technology, but I couldn't help being astonished.
Of course, to use a chip, you have to have a dantian or a mana circuit. If you don't, you can't even use it.
Tap tap-
While I was reading the article, someone tapped my shoulder. An employee in charge of odd jobs in the first-floor lobby held out a thick book and said:
"This is the detailed catalog for the magic chip Quarot Group sent to Van Bio. Pass it to Lady Rena."
"I'll give it to her as soon as she comes in."
"Sure. Then, I'll be going."
Van Bio is a magic-industry company. Maybe that's why it ended up on their sales list.
Still, since it's the family's magic, it's better to sell it to somewhere reasonably trustworthy than to let any random dog or cow buy it.
[ Quarot — Magic written together with 320 years of family history. A magic containing the essence of the high-ranking mage 'Quarot Agrid', who was one of the Twelve Emperors in the distant past······. ]
I opened the catalog and skimmed through it.
Price, installment interest rates, magic performance, buyer courtesies, and so on.
'It's supposed to be the family's secret magic, but there are more prerequisites than I expected. Still, if you have the money, it's something you could buy reasonably enough.'
Whenever I see articles like that, I always end up thinking the same thing.
If I have enough of a stash in my head, could I sell my martial arts and magic later, too···?
Just the unique magic I remember numbers in the hundreds. Most martial arts are in my head as well, excluding the ultimate arts of prestigious sects.
During 35 years in Murim and 15 years living in the magic tower, I learned even the martial arts and magic I wouldn't use—just in case, for the next life.
Unless it's a special situation like a company's financial crisis, there's no high-quality martial arts or magic circulating on the market.
Because corporations and families guard their secret arts so jealously, even a shoddy chip can be traded for a decent price, and if I dumped the magic and martial arts I know onto the market, the reaction would definitely be explosive.
Most of what's sold are basic manuals like the Three Talents Sword Art, Eagle Claw Hand, Bamboo Leaf Hand, and the Unqi Tonap Method—along with flashy-but-useless trash martial arts no one's ever heard of, all traded with a premium slapped on.
But who would believe the words of some mere servant?
And if someone pretended to believe and took me away, it would be even worse. I could end up becoming a vending machine that spits out martial arts and magic while being tortured for the rest of my life.
.
9 a.m.
Time for Rena to arrive at the office.
I don't have any grand duties assigned to me.
I just wait in a corner with a bored face, and move only when Rena tells me to do something.
For example, errands like making coffee, fetching something from another floor, keeping her company, opening a window to air the room out, and so on.
Usually, Federal Supreme Court precedents regarding patent litigation···
Honestly, at the company I'm just wasting time without doing anything. I'm not a secretary—literally just the owner's 'servant'.
Ever since Rena took charge of company work, this time has felt maddeningly precious, but there's no real way around it.
All I can do is wait and wait for a chance to escape, while steadily filling my empty dantian.
'Still, if I can just remove this full-brain control chip······I can go even higher than my realm in reincarnation.'
The childhood I spent in the incubation incubator.
There was nothing I could do inside it.
With a child's body that couldn't speak or move even though my mind was perfectly clear, all I could do was accept memories being injected day by day, as if I'd always known them.
So I practiced meditation and mental imagery training in parallel.
For a full 'ten years'.
Throughout that long span, I reviewed and reviewed everything I'd studied. When else would I have had time to refine my will for so long?
As my will grew deeper and deeper, I fell into no-self, and that state of no-self soon led into a time of enlightenment.
In the end, from the time I was a child with not a shred of inner power, my ren and du meridians opened cleanly, and my upper dantian opened wide.
At some point, when I broke free of no-self and came back to my senses, the world had drawn one step closer.
In other words—Creation Realm.
[ Huh? ]
A lofty realm of enlightenment I couldn't reach even in my Murim days, and I stepped into it with the body of a child that had no inner power at all.
Originally, the ren and du meridians are open at birth, then naturally close as you grow older and turbid energy accumulates—but since I essentially did ten years of wall-facing cultivation from infancy, isn't it only natural?
The problem is that the gap between mind and body is far too great.
This is the body of a servant with no inner power and no physical training.
What good is getting close to Creation Realm by opening the upper dantian? If some third-rate robber swings a knife, I'll drop dead in an instant.
I can't tell whether I'm supposed to be happy about this or hate it.
'That great Bodhidharma shut himself in the Shaolin cave and gained enlightenment after nine years of wall-facing cultivation······.'
A man who did wall-facing cultivation longer than Master Dharma.
A man whose mind alone is Hwagyeong.
That man is me.
"Levan! Hurry and deliver these documents to the lobby!"
"······."
A Creation Realm errand servant, Levan.
#Episode 4. Long-Awaited