I Made a Tier List the Transcendents Are Obsessed With - Chapter 5

WeTried Translations

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

Chapter 5: Jin

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[ 180,553P ]

“...They really pile up disgustingly fast.”

Two shitty posts had earned me 180,000 points. Considering I had already spent 20,000, that made 200,000 points.

It was even more absurd when I thought about what I could do with those points.

I could buy several secret manuals or grimoires that would turn the Mortal Realm upside down if even one were released.

And if I wrote a few more posts, I could obtain materials that could truly be called Heaven-Defying.

Of course, the problem with those Heaven-Defying materials was that they were rather difficult to use.

They were not called Heaven-Defying for nothing.

At my current level, they were things I could not even lay a hand on.

Still, I had already decided on a way to address that problem.

I could not guarantee it would work, but my intuition told me it was entirely possible.

So that was not the hardship currently facing me.

“W-what brings you here, sir?”

The elderly goblin clearly looked flustered as he stammered.

What he had originally wanted to say probably was not, “What brings you here, sir?”

Uuugh...

Ah... Ah...

If the guards lying behind me had been all right.

If I had been the one dragged in here and beaten into that state instead of the guards.

He would surely have shouted something like, “What the hell are you doing here?!”

“What do you think I’m here for?”

“W-well...”

It was an exceptionally rude way to speak.

But that was how Mages spoke, on average.

Among the Four Great Ability-User Types, Cultivators, Mages, Martial Artists, and Augmenters, they were considered the least human.

They were said to be worse than artificial humans.

I was merely staying true to that image.

Naturally, the old goblin's face soured after receiving a question in response to his question.

From his perspective, I must have been a disaster that fell from the sky.

Then, as the goblin's suffering continued.

‘...Hm?’

At some point, I saw a brief change in his eyes.

In that instant, I reflexively raised a barrier around myself.

Clang!

Immediately afterward, a bullet fired from behind struck the wall of mana I had created and fell away.

With a metallic sound, the badly crushed round rolled across the floor.

That put an end to the desperate ambush.

The face of the one who had pulled the trigger went blank in real time.

“Ha.”

With a dry laugh, I lightly waved my hand.

The mana floating in the air compressed into a single line. At my gesture, that line cut through the necks of the guards sprawled behind me.

“H-hiiik!”

Red lines appeared across their necks, and they died as one.

At the sight, the old goblin immediately buried his head against the floor and shouted.

“Just spare me! Please, just spare me!!!”

I had intended to spare him even if he had not said that.

I needed him for the moment, after all.

Pssssss...

But perhaps his terror was too much, because an ominous sound followed.

Seeing the yellow puddle forming on the floor, I seriously debated it.

...Should I just kill him?

* * *

The old goblin, who had narrowly avoided an ending of Cause of Death: Pissing on the Floor, bowed as submissively as possible.

“I have a bit of a reputation in this line of work, sir. I don't know how you found out, but you came to exactly the right place!”

I mostly ignored the goblin's insincere flattery.

I only intended to take care of what I needed and leave.

If he had not tried to stop me with guards, there would have been no need for bloodshed.

It was not as if I were some kind of killing machine.

To be fair, they were closer to villains than not, but killing people was not a pleasant feeling.

That itself was a little unexpected. Leaving aside Lee Yeonghyeon, I had felt nothing but discomfort even when killing other people.

Was it because I had gained power?

Or did all magic-wielding people end up like this?

“Do you have an identity you’ve been using?”

“I do, but I plan to erase it completely.”

“Ah, I see. Of course, that can be done.”

Despite his calm tone, the old goblin's arms shook as he moved between the shelves.

The trembling running through his entire body was so obvious, as though an earthquake had struck him, that I was dumbfounded.

Sure, I had cut all his subordinates into pieces.

But he was obviously someone who had killed dozens of times more people than I had.

“I won’t kill you once this is done.”

“...?”

“Stop shaking. Just finish what I told you to do.”

“Y-yes, sir.”

He did not look like he believed me, but he could think whatever he wanted.

Even if he didn't believe me, it would only make him uncomfortable.

The work began soon after.

He brought out several extremely complex devices and began operating them.

He stacked three old terminals, inserted an unidentifiable chip between them, then unplugged the connection cable from the back of his neck and connected it to one of the terminals.

Hummm.

Several dozen windows floated into the air.

At first, I thought this was part of forging an identity card.

But it was not.

“What is this?”

“T-the Citizen Network, sir.”

The old goblin pushed one screen aside with a trembling hand.

Similar windows appeared one after another behind it. Residence records, tax records, medical records, entry and exit records.

Those were only the ones I could recognize. The rest were nothing but numbers and letters whose meaning I could not even understand.

It was a somewhat fascinating sight.

There had been some descriptions of it, but honestly, my knowledge about Augmenters was rather limited.

After a certain point, they practically became priests of the Machine God.

His fingers moved no differently from those of hackers in Korean crime dramas shouting, “All right, players, enter!”

Of course, unlike that fiction, he was actually doing it.

“Do we really need to put in all of this?”

“A person cannot suddenly rise out of the ground, can they, sir?”

That was true.

The background he made up for me was quite detailed.

Three years ago, I began living on the outskirts of Hyeondeok City, then six months ago, I started renting a room while taking commissions and contract work within the city.

It was information suited to the identity I had asked for, one that would let me operate with a reasonable amount of freedom.

“All done.”

“That was faster than I expected. You didn’t cut corners, did you?”

“Never! That would be an utterly outrageous accusation...”

The old goblin protested his innocence with his entire body.

I gave a small laugh.

“Name.”

“Pardon? My name is Kricks...”

“No, we need to put a name on the identity card.”

Perhaps embarrassed himself, he scratched the back of his head and asked again.

“Ah, my apologies. What should I put down?”

Oz.

I almost answered reflexively, but stopped myself.

It was a familiar name, but using it would be inconvenient.

Of course, nobody who heard the name Oz would connect the me from the gallery to my real appearance.

Even so, using the same name felt unpleasant.

The same went for Jin Sehun.

It was a common name in Haedong, and I had used it for the last three years.

Still, it felt like it would bring me bad luck.

There was not a single good memory in any moment I had lived under that name.

“Jin.”

“Jin. Will that do?”

“Yeah.”

So I chose the single syllable shared by my real name and this body's name.

* * *

Madam Papi, the owner of Zelkins Inn, welcomed a pleasant morning.

Seeing the way she held her shoulders high and the excitement written all over her face, anyone would have guessed nine times out of ten that it had something to do with a man.

And that guess would usually have been right.

Today, however, was a little different.

It was only a little different because there was indeed one man behind her good mood.

It was just not because she had landed herself some beefy muscleman. It was because the wealthy traveler who had arrived last night had paid more than triple the usual lodging fee.

He was even staying for a month.

She had barely managed to hide how delighted she had been at the sight of that stack of bills.

In any case, she had gained a sizable sum all at once, so she welcomed the morning feeling refreshed.

Hmm-hmm-hmm...

Humming happily, she prepared breakfast.

Breakfast was provided to guests who had paid for meals.

Normally, they would come down to the first floor and eat in the dining room, but the pale young man who had arrived last night wanted his meal brought to his room.

What did that matter?

He was a guest who freely handed over the enormous sum of 500,000 hwan.

All she could hope was that he would stay there for a very, very long time.

So the madam wiggled her large hips as she climbed the stairs.

Then, after a light knock, knock on the door, she stepped inside.

Krrraash!

“...!!!”

At the same time, some hunk of metal flew past her face with murderous force.

It had lodged more than an inch into the wall and trembled uncontrollably with its remaining force.

Had it been just an inch to the side, she could have been badly hurt or even killed.

The moment she realized that, the madam dropped the plate she was holding.

Crash!