WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: WeTried

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◈ I Made a Tier List the Transcendents Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 3: The Tyrant at the Bottom of the Tank

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Revealing the Secrets of Heaven.

That was what the Transcendents on the Gallery called what I had done.

But I saw it a little differently.

At most, it was saying which guy would win if he fought which bitch.

Who was Number One in some galaxy, who was Number Two in some faction... That was about it.

The scale was a little bigger, but it was just like arguing over who would win between Steamed-Bun Fist Kim Somebody from Gangbuk and Pork-Trotter Palm Strike Park Somebody from Songpa.

Of course, when Transcendents did it, they got pummeled by something called causality.

But I was a lowly, insignificant ordinary person, so I had posted those things for fun.

[ Grimoire of the Vanished Glass Star ]

[ Points Required to Read: 20,000P ]

[ Would you like to access this material? ]

[ Yes / No ]

"...Yes."

So, in my view, this was much closer to Revealing the Secrets of Heaven.

When I pressed the first option with trembling fingers, exactly what I had expected appeared before me.

"Ah."

I had become a mage.

* * *

If a blind person who had never seen anything in their life opened their eyes.

If the ears of a deaf person who had never heard a sound opened.

Maybe this was how it felt.

"...Ha."

Naturally, I had made countless attempts to become what people called an ability user.

They had all come to nothing, and I had realized that I could never become one through my own efforts.

It was as natural as a blind person being unable to see or a deaf person being unable to hear.

Therefore, I gave up on becoming an ability user.

But with this single choice, I had become a mage.

I could feel mana.

I could not figure out how to describe the sensation.

What could a blind person, seeing the world for the first time, say if asked to explain the sensation of being able to see?

Whoooosh!

Thud!

I hurled a compressed blast of air at the wall.

Even though I had controlled its power, the impact echoed through the room, and cracks spread across the wall.

"Ha. Hahahaha..."

A hollow laugh leaked out.

If my landlord saw this, they would scream for repair costs, but I could just pay double.

I had already said farewell to such trivial concerns forever.

At this level, I was roughly a two-star mage by ordinary magical standards.

I now possessed enough power to be clearly called an ability user.

The reason I had awakened so easily, enough to make all my past efforts feel futile, was because the laws of this world had been set that way.

"...Something this easy."

Snap!

Vivid red flames rose and heated the air around me. When I snapped my fingers again, the flames vanished without a trace and turned into blue lightning.

Snap!

Crackle!

Lightning ran wild between my fingers.

Snap!

This time, it was cold.

The air, which had just been heated by the flames, froze white as frost settled over everything.

Attribute Conversion.

Ironically, I already knew how to do this.

The original novel had described the method.

I just had not known how to use mana itself, so I had been unable to put it into practice.

Knowledge alone had no value.

Only real power that could defy the laws of the world had meaning.

And I had acquired that power from reading a single post.

What that post had given me was not knowledge.

It was heaven-defying power itself.

"What a fucking unfair world."

This was how things worked in ability-user families.

They were either born talented, or if they were not, they were forcibly awakened like this.

But now I, too, would benefit from that unfair world.

There were still several materials on the board that I could access.

However, including the Grimoire of the Vanished Glass Star I had just read, most of them did not deal with knowledge of an especially high level.

Still, considering that Transcendence was the benchmark for that high level, they were incredible.

If I mastered any one of them, I would gain enough power to casually destroy a planet.

"...Later, for now."

I did not intend to learn just anything I could get my hands on.

It would be enough to select only what I needed from each school.

Anything beyond that would be poison instead.

[ Exchange ]

What I was curious about now was the exchange function.

I immediately entered the board.

[ One Thousand-Year Flower ]

[ Ancient Dragon Heart, well preserved ]

[ Three Chunks of Thunderbolt ]

[ Executioner's Red Scythe, Sacred Relic ]

[ Thunder Giant's Hammer, Quasi Sacred Relic ]

[ 50 ml of World Tree Sap from the Former Second Dimension ]

[ Ownership Rights for an Unexplored Blood Jade Dungeon, Secret Trove Grade ]

"...Wow."

As expected, every item was absurd.

Naturally, most of the prices were also beyond reach.

"The cheapest one is five hundred thousand."

I had just under eighty thousand points left, so it was more than six times that.

Of course, I had earned nearly a hundred thousand points from a single post, but...

"...Wait."

Come to think of it, was this not an absurd amount for so little work?

A few clicks to write a Gallery post, and I could get a whole Thousand-Year Flower?

A medicinal herb that gave even an ordinary mortal a thousand years of life?

It felt like the value system in my head was breaking down.

I skimmed farther down the listings, then shook my head.

"...This can wait too."

I could not buy any of it right now anyway.

I checked the other functions as well.

But none of them were useful to me yet.

The commission board was truly just a commission board.

Sponsorship was also simply where one sponsored others.

I had no reason to use either.

Maybe I would someday...

"Haaah."

The moment I finished looking into everything, all strength left my body.

I could not tell whether everything happening now was a dream or reality.

It felt as though it might disappear without a trace once I woke up.

But I no longer needed some barbaric procedure like slapping my cheeks to prove that this was real.

Hot.

Cold.

The mana in my hand rapidly shifted between opposing attributes.

Yet the sensations brought no pain.

I was simply happy.

* * *

Jeongmyeong City, Haedong.

If one overlaid the geography of the original world, it was exactly where Suwon and Ansan in Gyeonggi Province would be.

There were relatively many third-class citizens and below in the area, so jobs were equally hard to find.

Even delivery work faced fierce competition.

Unregistered independent delivery drivers were normally caught by the city police and beaten.

That was why Lee Yeonghyeon, leader of Team One at Jeongmyeong City's delivery company, Baedal Minjok, possessed a certain degree of power.

He was responsible for submitting hiring proposals for new drivers and evaluating the performance of existing ones.

"...Isn't this too much?"

"What?"

Lee Yeonghyeon tilted his head at the dissatisfaction in the eyes of the man facing him.

The man's wide-open eyes were bloodshot.

"You're saying I need to pay five hundred thousand hwan to register. Isn't that more than I could earn in three full months of work?"

The complaint was entirely reasonable.

No matter how hard a delivery driver worked, they could earn only around one hundred fifty thousand hwan a month.

Even that was barely enough to survive on.

Yet they were asking for five hundred thousand hwan to register him as a driver.

Even if he took out every loan he could, it would not be enough.

There was nowhere but private lenders that would lend that much to a penniless fourth-class citizen, and borrowing from them would mean experiencing a hell beyond imagination.

"Ha. What kind of beggar trash is this now..."

Lee Yeonghyeon only gave a hollow laugh as he walked toward him.

The man, who had been openly angry, flinched at Lee Yeonghyeon's movement and stepped back.

Lee Yeonghyeon had low-grade cyberware implanted.

To an ordinary person, he was practically a monster.

"Hey, mister. Do you have any fucking idea how much I have to pay to keep this team leader position?"

Tap. Tap.

Lee Yeonghyeon tapped the man's cheek a few times as he spat out curses.

"I pay our branch manager one million hwan every month. Even if I shove two drifters like you into the job, not one hwan goes into my pocket, you piece of shit."

"..."

"Fuck whether it's too much or not. If you don't like it, look somewhere else. How much do you think they'll ask for? Seven hundred thousand hwan? A million?"

"Guh... Aaaagh!"

Crunch!

A shattering pain tore through the man's right shoulder in Lee Yeonghyeon's grip.

The man screamed and dropped to his knees.

"Get lost while I'm still asking nicely, you fucking bastard. There are plenty of people besides you."

"Ugh... I, I understand. I understand..."

The man ran out of the alley.

Watching him stagger away, as though afraid Lee Yeonghyeon might follow, Lee Yeonghyeon clicked his tongue.

"That fucking idiot. Tsk, tsk."

In truth, what Lee Yeonghyeon had said was half right and half wrong.

It was true that he paid one million hwan in tribute to the branch manager, but he was taking in nearly as much himself.

He skimmed off an appropriate portion of every wage meant for the drivers.

Even so, it was true that he was not an especially evil man.

Not only in Jeongmyeong City, but in any city, the only difference was one of degree.

If someone possessed even a little power, they used it to exploit the class beneath them.

It was a world where you ate or were eaten.

Creak... creak...

"Is it going to rain?"

His wrist throbbed painfully.

The low-grade prosthetic hand he had been fitted with during his military service.

Still, it was thanks to this that Lee Yeonghyeon could at least be a tyrant at the bottom of the tank.

His strength was nothing compared to real ability users, but even this paltry power had kept him from living at the true bottom until now.

Still, his life probably would not end peacefully.

Such a thing would not happen easily, but the bugs at the bottom of the tank that he had trampled on.

If one of them encountered some miracle and gained power.

'I might get stabbed.'

Of course, that was not likely to happen.

Really...

"Team Leader Lee."

"...?"

Lost in those thoughts, Lee Yeonghyeon raised his head at the sudden voice.

And directly ahead, he saw someone floating in the air.

"...Jin Sehun?"

"Your face looks especially dear today. I'm really glad to see you."

It seemed that the unlikely thing had happened after all.

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