Chapter 131 - Chapter 128: Episode 126 - Mana Awakening
It's been two days since I quit my job.
I haven't had the energy to do anything; I've just been wallowing in this depression.
Right now, I'm just sitting in the living room, hugging my knees and staring blankly into space.
"Appa, I've told you a dozen times, it's okay. It's just a relief you made it out in one piece."
"Seon-ah, you've only been back on Earth for a little while. Don't be so heartbroken."
Yena and Yu-ra had no idea that Seon-ah had been violated by Seo Ju-ha and Lee Hyun-ah.
Seon-ah couldn't bring himself to tell them—not Yu-ra, and certainly not Yena.
'To think that trying to develop my adaptation ability in the Gate would end up like this...'
As expected, I couldn't predict even an inch of my own future.
"Haa..."
Seon-ah let out another heavy sigh.
Then Yena asked him a question.
"Um... Appa, you were planning on doing Hunter work, right?"
"Th... that is..."
Seon-ah trailed off, glancing sideways at Yu-ra, and hesitated.
He felt he couldn't keep hiding the truth from Yu-ra, who had even pulled strings to get him a position so he could work as a Hunter.
In the end, Seon-ah decided he had to come clean.
He told them exactly what he had been trying to do.
"I wanted to get stronger..."
Seon-ah explained his original plan.
He had wanted to use the dormant magic power in his body to get stronger, and to develop his second ability—adaptation—to make that power usable at will.
He confessed everything, admitting that he had tried to force his adaptation ability to evolve by fighting in the Gate.
Once he finished, the two of them fell into deep thought.
Then Yena spoke up.
"Um... Appa, it sounds like you can't use magic power because the pathways for it haven't been opened yet? I thought you just weren't using it from the start..."
Magic power couldn't be used properly unless you had both a vessel to hold it and the pathways to channel it.
If someone could use magic power freely from the moment they were born, they would have to be someone with absolute control over their own body and senses.
'Such a person doesn't really exist, though...'
However, Seon-ah, who had been agonizing over this alone, hadn't even known that much.
"..."
'Have I been doing something completely useless this whole time?'
Seon-ah remembered the moments he was forcibly violated by those two.
It had all happened because of his own misguided efforts.
'I should have asked Yena sooner...'
"Let's try it right now."
Yena grabbed Seon-ah's hand and began to inject her own magic power.
As she fed it in slowly and gently, Seon-ah felt something warm and clear flowing into his body.
Yena watched his face and gradually increased the flow.
She had gotten used to magic power herself back when her mother had forcibly injected it into her.
As Yena's magic power widened his pathways, Seon-ah frowned; it started to hurt once they stretched past a certain point.
Yena pulled her hand away, deciding that was enough.
When Sophia had injected magic into Yena, she hadn't bothered to check her condition like this.
It had been excruciatingly painful when she just ignorantly slammed the magic in to force the pathways open.
"Appa, I think the pathways are widened enough now... Do you want to try coating your body with magic power?"
"H-how do I do that?"
"Just follow the feeling of the magic flowing earlier. Like this."
With that, Yena grabbed his hand, flowed her magic into it, and held it in place.
"If you flow magic into your body parts like this and fix it, your body gets strengthened."
But Seon-ah couldn't do it properly.
He succeeded in opening the pathways and letting the magic flow, but he couldn't keep it fixed.
"Yena... I can get the magic flowing, but I can't keep it fixed...?"
Yena watched him, then flowed magic into her own hand and held it there.
"You just have to do it like this. Is it not working for you?"
Seon-ah was starting to get annoyed.
'What do you mean "like this," Yena...'
Yena was naturally gifted at magic manipulation.
Perhaps Seon-ah just didn't have the talent for it, because he couldn't grasp what she was talking about at all.
Even when she flowed the magic in and let him feel it directly, the "fixing" part remained impossible.
"Um, Yena... could you maybe teach me magic instead of physical enhancement?"
If he couldn't do physical enhancement, he wanted to at least try magic.
Yena shook her head.
"Appa... magic absolutely requires fixing. It's even more complex than physical enhancement, so it's impossible in your current state."
As she finished, Yena looked at him with a pathetic expression.
That look of pity was heavy.
It was the first time his own daughter had ever pitied him, and it left him flustered.
In the Demon World, he had been the one to pity Yena when she was destined to become Sophia's vessel; he never imagined the roles would be reversed like this.
"Haa..."
Seon-ah felt a strange sensation as his dignity as a father began to slip away.
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.
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Sophia had been half out of her mind since the day Seon-ah left.
Min-ah's spirit, which had been quiet since giving birth to Yena, started to burn brightly again, threatening her.
The flames she thought were extinguished had grown even larger than before.
A part of her spirit had already been encroached upon.
To calm those flames, she tried wandering through places full of Min-ah's happy memories to soothe her.
Min-ah's happy memories.
She walked the streets, retracing the memories of picking up Seon-ah from daycare or school on her rare days off.
The flames subsided, if only by a fraction.
But when she stumbled upon an unexpected ambush, a part of her spirit was devoured.
That ambush was none other than Yu-rin.
At first, she approached because the face looked familiar.
And when she stared, she had no choice but to recognize her.
Though she looked gaunt, she was the person who remained as the most intense memory for Min-ah; there was no way to mistake her.
She could never forget the face of the person who first subjected Seon-ah to hellish days.
Min-ah had spent countless hours watching those videos, fantasizing about inflicting the same pain on Yu-rin.
She had thought that if Seon-ah hadn't stopped her at the Lord's mansion, she would have killed her after all sorts of torture.
Even Sophia, who first read those memories, had wanted to kill Yu-rin just as Min-ah did.
However, because she herself was a woman who had committed the same acts as Yu-rin, she had to put that thought aside.
Only Seon-ah had the right to punish her, Miel, and Yu-rin. 'Only Seon-ah, my child, has the justification to punish them.'
'My child...?'
She felt something strange, but it felt right.
Thinking that these people—including herself—were gifts that could relieve Seon-ah's resentment, she decided to carefully 'keep' them at home.
She looked forward to the day she would present these 'gifts' to him when he returned to the home he had lived in.
She wondered what kind of expression Seon-ah would make when he received them.
The happy imagination had already taken root.
How would Seon-ah treat these women?
No, no... Seon-ah wouldn't do such a thing... What is happening to me?
She was clearly losing her mind as her spirit was encroached upon by Min-ah.
She was being influenced, bit by bit, by Min-ah's unsound spirit, which burned with jealousy and anger.
Even though Seon-ah wasn't the type of person to do such things, her judgment was being clouded by Min-ah's influence.
She had briefly thought that Seon-ah would do exactly what Min-ah wanted.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish right from wrong.
Whether this was what Seon-ah wanted, what she wanted, or what Min-ah wanted.
As other people's thoughts bled into hers, her ability to judge was fading.
Sophia had to leave this body quickly.
The fear that her spirit might be devoured by the original owner and extinguished altogether began to take root in Sophia's heart.
Though she was a spiritual being, she felt a sense of urgency she had never experienced before.
"Ye... Yena..."
Yena came to mind, and she whispered the name.
A thought that should absolutely never be entertained.
The misguided desire to take over the body of Yena—Seon-ah's cherished daughter—took root in a corner of her mind.
In her mind, the thought "I must do it" and the thought "I must not do it" continued to clash.
Sophia suffered, uglily begging for her own survival, knowing that if she committed such an act, she would never be able to face Seon-ah again.