chapter 16
pat-
A bright light emanated from the leaves.
‘Please inventory magic!’
However, what was in the leaf was not inventory magic.
It wasn’t any other magic.
It contained only a fragment of Alan’s memory.
**
An empty space without sky or ground,
Alan was facing a woman.
Her name is Helen.
It was one of the fundamental beings that supported the universe here.
A thousand times bigger than Alan, she opened her mouth to Alan, who felt relatively smaller than an ant.
[Alan, you have changed so much. The first time I spotted you, you were throwing yourself into an oncoming truck trying to save a child. Where did the kind and foolish young man of that time go?]
Alan smiled and answered her.
“Humans are animals that rarely change. But a completely different environment can change a person. Also, time as long as eternity can change a person. I belong to both of those things, so if it doesn’t change, that’s even weirder.”
Helen didn’t respond to his answer and asked something else.
[Soon this world will return to nothingness. Because you did such an irresponsible thing not too long ago. Is this the ending you really wanted?]
Alan answered without erasing the smile from his face.
“Don’t put all the blame on me. This ending was decided when you first brought my soul into this world. And now the situation… Not bad. There will be no end more glorious than the last of all things to perish with the last remaining god here in the universe. For me as a human being.”
Then Helen shook her head.
[You cannot meet your end here. As for the universe, just as its birth must be perfect, its extinction must also be perfect. As the universe turns to nothing, everything will fall into place. Your soul, which is not originally from this world, will also return to its original place. It is an ancient law that is higher than the authority of a god. No one can break that law.]
Alan’s expression hardened.
“What do you mean? Are you going back to your original seat?”
Helen answered with the first smile.
[The moment this universe disappears, your soul will return to the original universe. ‘Earth’ is the planet.]
“Aeons of time have passed since my soul came here. Is that universe still alive?”
[Oh, poor Alan. I don’t know anything about other realms besides this one. After all, you are human. Time is relative. While eons of time have passed here, only a few seconds have passed there. So go back there and continue living your previous life until you die.]
At her words, Alan murmured softly.
“Oh no···.”
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.
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Returning home, Alan hurried.
I thought I had mastered all the principles of the world, but I didn’t know my own destiny.
I thought I would end up here in this world, but I never thought I would return to my ‘home universe’.
Soon Helen will disappear.
If she dies, the universe here, having lost its last pillar, will also collapse.
Then, his soul will cross the dimensional boundary and return to Earth.
‘Before that, I have to take care of myself as much as possible!’
Allen already knew.
Like the sea, the vast knowledge and memories belong to the body and not to the soul.
When one’s soul leaves the ‘current body’ and settles down in the ‘previous body’, most of the knowledge and memories accumulated in this world are lost.
It will become normal again.
‘No, it was below average.’
Alan has no memory of his life as ‘Choi Min-hyeok’.
Because the memory of that time belongs to ‘Choi Minhyuk’s body’.
Since he came to this world and received a new body, of course he had no memory of his previous life.
However, I have seen Choi Min-hyeok’s life through Helen’s eyes.
It was a truly pathetic life, always living with others.
‘I don’t want to live like that again!’
It’s better to just die, I didn’t want to live the life of a loser like that.
Therefore, you must bring the knowledge and memories you have accumulated here.
It wasn’t that there was no ‘storage space’ in the soul.
But it just wasn’t enough to contain everything.
‘I have to compress the information as much as possible and engrave it into my soul!’
Alan predicts that only about 100,000 years will remain until Helen dies.
100,000 years is a long time like eternity from the point of view of ordinary people, but it was just around the corner to Alan, who lived an eternal life.
‘We must find a way to compress information within 100,000 years!’
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30,000 years later
Alan searched half the universe to find the seed he was looking for.
It was the seed of a tree that is about the cousin of the ‘World Tree’.
This tree had a very unique property: it could store memories and knowledge in its leaves.
When the seed grows into a huge tree and has countless leaves, Alan can put all his memories and knowledge into the leaves.
Alan planted the precious seed in his garden.
And after a while, the seed sprouted and grew into a young tree.
Alan looked at the tree with satisfaction.
It had 20 thin pale green leaves hanging from it.
Alan looked at the tree and said.
“Starting today, I will pass on my knowledge to you. You’d better store my favorite spells in your first leaves. What kind of magic would be good…”
Alan pondered for a moment before opening his mouth.
“ah! Let’s start with inventory magic. I can’t buy it because it’s inconvenient without it.”
Alan changed his mind as he tried to store inventory magic in a single leaf.
“no! Let’s start with memories. The reason why I raised you. Then, let’s put the inventory magic.”
Alan put his fingers on the leaves of the sapling.
pat-
An intense light emanated from it.
***
After watching Alan’s memory, I opened my eyes wide and shouted to the manager.
“Alan was me! My previous life was Alan! No, was Alan’s past life me?”
At my fuss, the manager nodded and opened his mouth.
“What are you so surprised about? I already told you before. Alan and you have the same soul.”
When I thought about it, the manager at the time meant this.
Anyway, what was far more important than the fact that Alan and I were the same person was the ‘inventory magic’.
You have to put money in your inventory so that you can stretch out and sleep.
Fortunately, Alan has stored an inventory spell in one of the first 20 leaves on the tree.
I looked at the young tree.
3 out of 20 leaves turned red.
It’s because I’ve inherited 2 magical knowledge and 1 memory so far.
So, one of the 17 green leaves contains inventory magic.
I’m not sure exactly which leaf it’s in.
I asked the manager.
“When will we be able to take over the next knowledge from the tree?”
Only when the sapling regains its strength can it inherit another piece of knowledge.
“It’s different each time, but it restores strength between 18 and 30 hours.”
It was said that knowledge could be handed over roughly one a day.
If you’re very, very lucky, you can learn the inventory magic right away tomorrow, or maybe it’ll take 17 days because you’re too good to shoot.
No matter what, I would never go out of the mountains until I learned inventory magic.
In the current situation, there is no safer place than the shelter prepared by Chairman Kim.
hmm-
For the time being, I will live as a ‘natural person’ in the mountains.
***
tweet-
I woke up to the sound of birds chirping.
15 days have passed since I lived in the mountains.
“I can’t ‘take’ really dirty.”
In the meantime, magic knowledge was inherited from the 15 leaves, but inventory magic still did not come out.
There are now 2 leaves left.
If you shoot well, it’s tomorrow, and if you can’t shoot, it’s sand, so there’s no need to be impatient anymore.
I got down from the cot.
For the first few days, I slept in the driver’s seat because I was worried about the money in the cargo compartment of the truck.
However, after learning the <Sense> magic that allows her to feel the presence of people nearby, she was sleeping comfortably on the bed inside the container.
If someone approaches you, you’ll know right away, even if you’re sleeping.
So far, no one has approached this area.
Eulachacha!
I turned on the stretcher coolly.
My throat was sharp.
I picked up a bottle of mineral water.
Still, bottled water and long-term food were piled high in the container, so there was no problem eating and drinking.
‘ice.’
yup-
The cold air that came out of my hand enveloped the water bottle.
Soon the water in the bottle became cold.
Beep beep-
‘Oh, how cool!’
I took a cool drink of water and came out of the container.
And headed to the nearby valley.
Fu- Fu-
I washed my face in the clean valley water and looked up at the sky.
There was not a single cloud in the blue sky.
‘Life as a natural person isn’t bad either.’
I picked a flat stone and washed it clean.
He opened a can of ham and placed it on a stone plate.
Then, the ham was sliced to a certain thickness with the lid of the can.
‘Fire.’
Hwareuk-
Flames spewed from his hands and heated the stone plate.
Sizzle-
There was an appetizing smell as the ham was being grilled on the stone slab.
In the meantime, add water to the pot.
The pot was in a container.
The pot was heated with fire magic.
Soon the water in the pot began to boil.
I put instant rice in the boiling water prepared like that and heated it.
Voila-
Warm rice and grilled ham.
Breakfast is complete.
I would have gotten tired of eating the same thing every day, but it was fortunate that there were many kinds of canned food.
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After breakfast, we returned to the train station.
jump-
I opened the locked cargo door.
Then he squeezed inside and started counting the money.
There was nothing else to do.
how the outside world is going,
Did the police search Chairman Kim’s factory?
Did Chairman Kim’s son tell the police about me?
I had a lot of questions, but I couldn’t turn on my phone.
The moment I turn on my cell phone to check the news, the location information that I was here remains.
And that might catch me up later.
So let’s be patient a little longer.
You can learn inventory magic within two days at the latest.
If you put the money in your inventory and go down the mountain, this job will be neatly finished.
Even if Chairman Kim’s son told the police about me, it doesn’t matter.
He knew nothing about me.
I don’t know his name and I don’t know his phone number.
I guess I can just draw a montage by remembering my appearance.
But even that was no problem now.
Because my appearance has changed beyond recognition in the past 15 days.
As I grew taller, the pants I was wearing became ‘slender pants’.
There was also a huge change in the face.
The protruding cheekbones and square jaw became smooth as if they had undergone two-jaw surgery.
His stubby nose grew high and straight, and all the patchwork that had appeared here and there due to stress-induced hair loss disappeared, and his hair became plentiful.
And the pimples and pimples on her face completely disappeared and she became a ‘honey skin’.
When I get tired of counting money, my hobby these days is to look at the changed face in the driver’s rearview mirror.
‘handsome!’
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Night came again.
After counting my money, I entered the container and fell asleep on the cot.
***
I was standing in the backyard of a factory.
The young trees in the flower bed were emitting bright light.
He is ready to pass on another piece of knowledge to me.
“I really hope that this time it will be successful. If the inventory magic doesn’t work today… On the one hand, that’s great too. Because it’s hard to film wrong like that.”
I didn’t pay attention to the manager’s words that made fun of me.
I put my hand on one of the two remaining green leaves.
pat-
A dazzling light emanated from the leaves.
And a magical knowledge came into my head.
phew-
I let out a short breath.
‘I had a hard time living in the mountains!’
Finally learned the inventory magic!
It is now possible to liquidate the life of a natural person and descend the mountain.