“Huff! Huff! Huff!”

A man sprinted through a thick jungle like a Thomson’s gazelle, each wrinkle on his face expressing intense fear.

“Hurgh! I don’t want to die!” the man shouted as he shed tears.

The usually peaceful jungle was moving as it rumbled. Something significant was occurring inside the dark jungle.

“I must... run away!”

He sprinted so hard that he felt like his quadriceps were about to burst. He could no longer feel his legs, but he desperately wished for them to hold on.

“Ah!”

He saw a city beyond the thick branches. It was Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, a recently reclaimed city in the fourth zone.

I just have to make it there! he shouted inwardly with hope.

However, his hopes were unfounded. A tree root sprouted from the ground and pierced his heart.

“Huh?” He stared at the root in disbelief. “GAAAH!”

His screams, echoing throughout the jungle, disappeared into the immense silence. The man, illuminated by the moonlight, shriveled like a deflated balloon. Moments later, a colossal shadow engulfed Manaus.

***

The people of the Capital celebrated as if it were a festival.

“Ahaha! The Union hit it out of the park! They pulled off an alliance with Faber!”

“Now, we can freely enter dwarf cities.”

“Go to Broadway. The dwarves are building a huge item store. From what I’ve heard, it sells every kind of equipment you could think of!”

“Have you heard that a war broke out in Ferrum? The angels attacked the city.”

“I heard, as well as that the Tortoise Emperor defeated the Ten Thousand Arms, Hadafu, eighty-eighth in the world ranking!”

“Then does that mean the Tortoise Emperor’s rank has risen?”

“Yeah! Tortoise Emperor, Lee Kang-San, is now eighty-eighth in the world ranking!”

“Ahaha! I knew it! He’s the hope of humanity!”

Kang-San was originally ninety-third in the world ranking, but had risen five ranks after defeating Hadafu. He was the hope of the human race, at the bottom of the ladder that was the Mirror World. All humans cheered on Kang-San as if he were an athlete from their country making waves in the international big leagues.

“It hasn’t even been that long since he defeated Remus, but it’s Hadafu this time?!”

“Ahaha! Maybe Lee Kang-San will become one of the Ten Lords and Fiends one day!”

The humans of the Capital, whether they be Baptists or lambs, were overjoyed by Kang-San’s campaign.

“I’m sure the Tortoise Emperor pulled off the alliance with Faber, right?”

“Oh, I heard rumors that RB was involved in it.”

“Record Breaker?”

“Oh, Cheon Seong-Hwi, the only person to whom Lee Kang-San issued a first-class murder license? Could he be raising him as his successor?”

Seong-Hwi’s name also spread lightly throughout the Capital.

***

Seong-Hwi returned to the Capital and visited the main branch of the Fence Hotel in Beverly Hills to speak to Jurie.

“They will arrange for sales of high-ranking items if you give them my name,” he said.

“So?” Jurie replied.

“Since the Fence Hotel is practically a nonprofit, it has to get income from somewhere.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, so?”

“Hmph!” 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Jurie was acting weirdly. She was sitting with one leg over the other and was grumpy for some reason.

“Even if you made it big by selling information and through the real estate boom, you’ll run out of Coins sooner or later if you keep using them like this. A high-ranking item brokerage is highly profitable,” Seong-Hwi remarked, having brought Jurie an amazing business idea.

He was trying to connect Jurie with Muka, Rika, and the A-rank artisans he had grown close to in his time in Ferrum.

“Forget all that. I thought you would come to apologize with a basket of ironfruit,” Jurie remarked.

“What?” Seong-Hwi asked dumbfoundedly.

Jurie’s expression grew colder. “Hmph, get out! My dad will be back from Yeouido soon!”

“Oh, I heard from Lee Kang-San. He’ll be here around the evening, right?”

“Yeah, we’re going to have a nice and peaceful teatime, just the two of—”

“That won’t be happening. Lee Kang-San is going to accompany him, and he wants me there, too. I’ll be back in the evening.”

Jurie remained silent momentarily, then her face grew red with rage as she shouted, “GET OUT!”

Seong-Hwi, pushed out of the room, turned to Gerard, who was standing by outside the door, and asked, “Did I do something wrong?”

“Tsk, tsk. How can you ask that after sending a container filled with goblin heads? Are you that dense, or are you just stupid?” Gerard remarked.

“But those weren’t for Jurie. They were for Lina.”

“Keh! Tsk, tsk, tsk!” Gerard clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction and entered the room.

Seong-Hwi, unable to understand their attitudes, went down to the basement where Lina was.

***

Lina had remodeled the boiler room in the basement of the Fence Hotel to use as her laboratory.

“How have you been lately?” Seong-Hwi asked.

The woman with black hair and eyes, wearing purple-rimmed glasses and a white gown, replied, “My brain is working better than ever, but the constraints of time and the body are annoying.” She removed her glasses and continued, “I have to analyze the specimens you sent me, and I’ve also been pondering a different topic lately.”

“What topic?”

“To put it short... the essence of everything. Why were we Lost? What is the Mirror World? Things like that.”

Seong-Hwi nodded and thought, It’s begun much faster than in the past.

In his past life, Lina had been stuck on the Ubermensch Project, which involved forcibly heightening one’s caliber, for years. Although the project failed in the past, it succeeded in this life in the form of Cheon Seong-Hwi.

She believed she could one day find a universal method if she continued to observe Seong-Hwi, the only match to the project, to gather data and samples. She judged that the Ubermensch Project was a conditional success and moved on to her next research, the Living as a Human in the Mirror World Project, using her experience as a gardener as its template.

This project also became far more successful in this life thanks to Jurie’s help, and spread throughout the Mirror World. Its level of perfection was without question since the education facility, Edu, had chosen it as material to educate the lambs. All that remained now was periodic updates with new information and ideas over time.

Lina gained some free time after two successful research projects in a row. Since they had both been about bettering humanity, she judged that she had contributed enough to human society for now and began to think about more fundamental ideas that triggered her interest.

“Aren’t you curious? Do you think the Mirror World always existed? Or do you think someone created it?” she asked with sparkling black eyes as she blabbered like a child. She stared intently at Seong-Hwi and continued, “What are Akasha Messages? An automatic AI program? The existence of cubes is also a marvel. It’s like a video game. It’s as if... There is an architect who designed the game that is the Mirror World.”

“An architect, huh?” Seong-Hwi mumbled.

He had shaken his head when he had heard Lina’s Architect Theory in the past. Just thinking about someone having created an entire world was beyond him.

“If someone like that exists, they might possess the rumored Master Stone,” Seong-Hwi remarked, saying what Lina had said to him in the past.

Lina’s mouth slowly widened as she shouted, “Yes! The Master Stone!” She sprang up from her chair and circled it as she mumbled crazily, “It’s not a bad hypothesis. Let’s say a divine entity built this world. This god is likely not just a notion; they exist. If that’s the case...”

Looks like this is gonna take a while, Seong-Hwi thought, holding back his question as he stared at Lina deep in focus.

“Let’s call this divine individual the architect, and assume that they created the Mirror World. This world is similar to a video game. They adopted this concept. If that’s the case, is the Master Stone like a computer CPU? Considering the delivery of Akasha Messages and the calculation of cube rewards...”

She was experiencing an intellectual high as she blurted out various hypotheses. Seong-Hwi was forced to listen to a dozen more similar hypotheses.

***

Lina looked into the eyepiece of her D Weapon, Microscope of Truth. A drop of Seong-Hwi’s blood was on the glass slide.

“How does it look?” Seong-Hwi asked.

“Hmm... Nothing changed in particular. That aside, is it true that you used the race skills of goblins and angels?” Lina asked as she looked away from the eyepiece and at Seong-Hwi.

Seong-Hwi nodded and replied, “Yeah. I experienced it twice: when I fought against Jazathura, the goblin High Ranker, and when playing a desperate tug-of-war against a Chaos.” He explained everything he had felt at the time. “I could vividly hear my heartbeat, and it felt like my blood was boiling.”

“It sounds like you were in a trance—an involuntary one, perhaps.”

“And I was met with a strange sense of certainty that I wouldn’t die. It was like deja vu; I was sure that I wouldn’t die, and that I would overcome this crisis.”

“Oh? And?”

“And... It’s hard to explain... I was floundering in a sea of information. It felt empty, but also felt as comfortable as being in my mother’s amniotic fluid...” Seong-Hwi tried his best to express his experience as detailed as possible. He continued, “And then, I instinctively knew what I had to do. I didn’t learn them—I realized them. The Sorcery Force and Holy Force moved in a pattern I had never experienced before, which activated the race skills.”

“How long did this feeling last? Can you only use the race skills in that trance state?”

“No, I was able to use the skills effortlessly after realizing them once. I tried to use other race skills, but without success.”

Lina fell deep into thought once Seong-Hwi told her everything that he had experienced. After a few minutes, she remarked, “This is very interesting. This is just a thought, but you might have peeked into the master copy of DNA.”

“Master copy of DNA?”

Lina explained, “DNA is copied during cell replication. An adult human is made up of trillions of cells. However, we begin as one cell when fertilized.”

“Are you talking about the zygote?”

“Yeah. Let’s call that the master copy. This cell will divide by making a copy of itself. It continues to divide to make four, eight, sixteen... until there are trillions of copies.”

Seong-Hwi nodded in silence.

Lina continued, “Let’s tailor our thoughts to this concept. Every race must have had a primordial copy.”

“A primordial copy...”

“The single master copy that every race has, which holds all their genetic information. You might have backtracked the countless copies and reached the master copy.”

Seong-Hwi didn’t fully understand the concept, but he had a general idea of it.

Lina continued, “Acquired traits are generally not passed down. No matter how much knowledge you accumulate in life, it doesn’t pass down to your offspring.”

“So?”

“Since humans don’t have race skills, we can only assume. It’s highly likely that race skills aren’t acquired through effort, but are an awakening of the ancestral traits dormant in their genes.” Lina continued, “Take the elves, for example. Their hierarchy is determined by blood, right?”

“Yeah, since high elves are known as pure-blooded elves.”

“Instead of being pure-blooded, I think high elf genes are just the closest to the master copy.” Lina ran her finger along her vials on the table and continued, “The genes of the specimens you’ve gathered vary in both the extracted amount and their quality. The more powerful the individual, like Semi Rankers and Rankers, and the more special they are, such as dragons, the higher in rank the genes extracted are.”

“And you think it’s because they awakened their ancestral traits, or were born with stronger expression of those traits?” Seong-Hwi asked.

“It’s just a hypothesis.”

Seong-Hwi fell into thought. Assuming her assumption was correct, it meant Seong-Hwi had awakened the traits of the master gene through copies of the goblin and angel genes.

The principle doesn’t matter. What matters is that it will be of immense help! he shouted inwardly.

He asked Lina with shining eyes, “Is it possible to forcibly awaken those master traits?”

“It’s like we share the same brain,” Lina said with a wide smile. “I was just thinking the same thing. If we can stimulate the genes of each race by manipulating them, we’ll see some progress!”

She opened a vial and added a few drops of its contents to a glass slide.

She continued, “I need to do more experiments and various specimens.”

“You mean you need more corpses, right?”

Lina nodded with a smile. “I suppose so. Oh, and I’ll extract the dwarf genes from the corpses you sent as quickly as possible. Let’s inject it with the beastfolk gene later.”

“Beastfolk gene? I don’t recall getting anything like that,” Seong-Hwi remarked in confusion.

The corpses he had gathered from Ferrum were of goblins, dwarves, and angels.

Lina replied nonchalantly, “I got it. It was easier than I thought. All it took was some ice cream.”

“Don’t tell me...” Seong-Hwi said dumbfoundedly, “You drew Thumper’s blood?”