11 PM. An abandoned building in Seoul.

It seemed there was no building manager, as trash had piled up around the alleys of the building. The entrance, which usually sets the first impression of a space, had rusted and turned into an eyesore. Broken lights, tiles ripped off the concrete floor, and dust that had settled in a hazy layer. The other visible elements also painted a picture that made it hard to believe the place had been recently used.

♪♫

And then, it happened. Amid the still air, a person's humming suddenly echoed through the space. It was a gentle melody that had become relatively easy to hear lately—ever since a major supermarket brand started airing its remake commercial on nearly every video through streaming apps. The CM song he was humming was actually based on a song from another country. To be exact, it is the opera Rigoletto composed by Giuseppe Verdi, 'La donna è mobile (The Heart of a Woman)'.

But the blond man standing here couldn't understand a word of Italian. And to begin with, he hadn't even memorized the rearranged lyrics from the supermarket commercial. So at this point, what use was that information anyway?

Hmm-hmm-hmm- hmm-hmm—

The melody flows again into the empty space where not a single piece of common furniture exists. The man hummed unconsciously, the sound he had heard in the commercial now coming from his lips.

Kim Giryeo was never particularly good at singing. But the creature currently wearing his skin was a marine creature that used sound waves to sense its surroundings. Because of that, it was exceptional at sensing sounds and also good at mimicking them. The song, even just by perfectly mimicking the musical scale, began to sound quite convincing. Some might hear his singing and say it lacked emotion in each phrase, or that it was plain and devoid of technique. Still, what truly mattered was that even an alien had acknowledged this local work as a piece of art.

Maybe it's because the range of sounds I can hear is narrow, but Earth's songs are so monotonous.

Of course, the evaluation itself wasn't all that favorable. Even humans on Earth had their own individual tastes, after all. So it was only natural that a being from the far reaches of the universe would have a very low chance of giving an unconditionally positive assessment of any specific concept.

Thud!The small talk has become long. Now, with the most important ingredient moved into place, all that was left was to calmly cast the spell...

Even at this moment, the illusionary dummy was deceiving the watcher in the studio apartment.

I already confirmed a while back that it works fine. Just like when I analyzed sleep patterns—casually slipping in a different question to prompt blink tracking did the trick.

On the contrary, the modern magic that controlled the flow of bodily mana to its extreme in order to keep the movements of the original body undetected. A bit of disguise, stealth, the use of an item box, exploration of the abandoned building in the body with the most mono on earth like he intended to go into but in order to continuously make use of assets with the changed identity, there were high-priced items and cash for tax evasion, buried in specific locations. Even additional surgical tools were prepared, just in case, to transfer the lungs of the suspect to a second body.

Wealth, time, stamina, mental strength. Damn it—now that I think about it, the amount of effort it took to get to this point is absolutely insane.

Huh?

Anyway, let's forget about the past. I finally got the 'most important ingredient' needed for the ritual.

Hmm.

Lowering my head, what I saw was the corpse of a man in his 30s. As for how I hid this from the Searchers and how I managed to transport it to this spot, I won't bother explaining...

There's a lot of information that would hurt Earthlings if they knew.

The more important ethical issue for me is the life this person lived. After briefly examining the deceased brain, it became clear that Kwon, a man in his 30s who committed the bank robbery, was a person who deserved to be punished.

There is one thing to be careful about when acquiring a corpse on Earth. Here, funerals hold significant meaning as an important procedure.

When a death occurs in a family, the family usually tries to retrieve the body.

Awakening is a phenomenon that mostly occurs in the younger age groups. However, if I were to steal the body of an awakened one without consent, it would naturally lead to the victim—who has lost their child's body—grieving.

It does seem a bit like a beggar selectively picking only the eggs for animal welfare...

Until now, I'd hesitated for various reasons—worrying about the victim's family, the fact that grief often turns into a driving force, and the fear that the bereaved might relentlessly track down their lost child. But if the target is trash like this... well, that changes things.

Yeah. I should've just picked a villain from the start!

A wicked man who tried to freeze someone's entire body just for some damn entertainment money. A proper funeral is a luxury that a criminal who caused social outrage doesn't deserve. Forget respect for the dead—there's not a shred of guilt in completely destroying his face. He violated ethics first, which means I'm now free to do whatever I want. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Before, I used to make excuses—saying that Earth had genetic testing technology, so it would be too risky or whatever. But honestly, if I change my appearance and deliberately blend into the neighborhood, what are the chances a regular citizen would ever be subjected to such an investigation? Besides, trash like this—who only cares about himself—is often abandoned even by their own families with a pretty decent probability.

Things went smoothly. By pure luck, this man was a perfect vessel—one with no acquaintances who would even worry about his life or death!

Honestly, right after I got the lung, I was so desperate for a body that I almost snatched up any fresh corpse I could find!

Oh my gosh. There are still nine years left on my contract with Kang Changho. This is exactly why it's a problem when a wizard is too competent. Ugh, for a genius like me, even making bets is pointless—there's just no tension at all—

I won. I won.

Well, anyway. I diligently worked with my hands, drawing on my past experience of working like livestock. While my memory is a bit blurred, I scratched a soft material of magic stone onto the ruined floor, drawing a large magic circle. Since there was a chance I might run out of mana halfway, I made sure to eat plenty of Blueshell in advance. I also connected the potion to my main body's arm in the form of an IV...

Looks like there's more than just one or two annoying things to prepare.

By the time I finally lay my body down on the floor after finishing all the setup, the clock was already pointing to 1 a.m. From the rusted window frame, a faint light trickled in—sunlight reflected off the surface of a satellite. The locals here seemed to call that thing the moon.

A world that follows such a petty little celestial body... how pathetic.

I followed the moonlight brushing against my cheek, then soon closed both eyes completely.

The magic that would be attempted from here on was a smaller version of [Soul Transfer], the cause of reincarnation, and it differed slightly from the body-swapping technique commonly used by the Alphauri. When Alphauri people typically used body-swapping, they would move key organs like the brain, heart, and the middle section of the transparent spine, along with the Y-axis coral bones (an organ that doesn't exist in Earthlings) attached to it, in order to maintain their sense of self.

The sorcerers who failed to interpret the soul properly always experienced some degree of inconvenience. Minor memory loss. And since the previous flesh had to be transferred into a new vessel, there were also issues like a reduced proportion of pure internal mana per gram of brain mass removed...

But through my research on souls, I finally found a way to preserve the personality elegantly. In a way, it could be said that the experience of moving my own soul during the reincarnation process allowed me to intuitively uncover one more layer of the secrets of the world. In any case, this method is free from all the past side effects.

Yahoo. That means starting tomorrow, I just need to quickly restore my status in this new body.

Even with just the body of that robber lying next to me, I'll be able to use over a hundred more spells—From now on, corpse theft will be a piece of cake.

Goodbye, Kim Giryeo. Still, thanks for lending me your body all this time.

I left a final farewell for the original owner of the body and laid both arms comfortably on the floor.

Flash!

Soon, a flash of light signaling the completion of high-level magic filled the abandoned building.

.

Tuk, tuk, tuk.

How many minutes had passed since the blue light began to glow? In a dry building where there was no moisture, a lump of water suddenly fell.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

However, the sound it made was far too viscous to be that of ordinary water. And on top of that, its color was extremely dark.

That's right. The substance was, in fact, the blood of a mammal, and at the center of the abandoned warehouse, a creature drenched in that blood was now crawling sluggishly across the floor.

K, keugh...

A harsh coughing sound echoed through the space. The man, with his right side completely soaked in blood, weakly pressed his trembling hand against the floor. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't muster any strength in his arm. After several attempts, he finally collapsed back onto the cement floor, utterly drained.

Thud.

In this situation, a quiet question and a bit of contemplation suddenly came to mind. The man, lying on the floor, slowly turned his head to gaze at one side of the abandoned building. His gaze was directed toward the north of the room, where the new shell—the corpse of the bank robber—had been laid.

But what the—Just a moment ago, there had definitely been a carefully cleaned mammalian body in that spot. Now, only an unfamiliar scene is visible through the pale moonlight.

One was the simple clothing that the corpse had been wearing. The other was just a large pool of gathered red blood.

Blood, blood, blood.

Haha.

The man lying face-down stared blankly at the pool of blood for a moment, then let out a dry chuckle. It was a dry laugh—and the pitch of its vibration was far too familiar to be considered something entirely new. After all, the voice that had just broken the silence came from the vocal cords of a certain blond.

Hah, hhh...

Swish.

The archmage moved the familiar form of flesh scratched the ground with his fingertips. After deliberately ruining the magic circle that had been drawn by his own will, he shouted—

Hahahahaha! This f*cking thing!

For a while, shouts in an oddly cheerful tone echoed over the brutally exposed concrete floor.

It couldn't have been helped. The archmage had just successfully completed the body exchange—but an unexpected and significant variable in the outcome had forced them to hastily return to this original body.

So what was that unexpected variable?

Shockingly, the bank robber's shell shattered completely the moment a foreign consciousness entered it.

It exploded, to be exact. It started with a tiny crack at the tip of a fingernail, spreading greedily outward. And in the end, every bit of flesh and all 206 bones of the body disintegrated—leaving behind not a single trace.

The archmage briefly glances at the unnatural pool of blood left by his side. Once again, it must be said—the thief's body no longer existed in this world.

Heuk...whoo...

Casting advanced magic with such a pitiful amount of mana leaves him breathless. Yet even amidst this struggle for a breathed. Because of this, when they switch to bodies of extremely low-ranking creatures like mice or centipedes, the intense speed at which the wizard naturally attracts mana often causes the entire body to explode.

Yeah.

Thud. The blond man pressed his hand against the floor, and with all his strength, barely managed to flip himself over. He lay flat on his back, arms and legs spread out. Then, staring up at the ceiling, he muttered in despair.

It couldn't withstand the weight of the soul... and it... exploded...

The weight of the soul. He had just called it the weight of the soul, but in other words, it was also known by another name—Rank Pressure Phenomenon.

In fact, competent wizards tend to easily draw external mana more easily than others even if they just stood still and breathed. Because of this, when they switch to bodies of extremely low-ranking creatures like mice or centipedes, the intense speed at which the wizard naturally attracts mana often causes the entire body to explode.

And it seems that the new substance called planetary magic was not as beneficial to Earthlings as they had imagined. Usually, it ends with the body's extremities slightly splitting, so the original pressure isn't a big deal, but how can a mammal's body explode like a bomb and splatter blood?

Haha, ha.

It's puzzling.

But why...

The blond man looked at the pouring moonlight and cursed.

—Why the hell couldn't a c-rank corpse withstand my soul?!

As things escalated to this point, a new hypothesis slowly began to take shape.

Perhaps. Perhaps from the very beginning, he had been gravely mistaken about something. Of course, that wasn't the only mystery he had to solve.

The moment the prepared corpse exploded, the Archmage was left with no choice but to drift through the air as a disembodied soul. And during that brief exposure, he unintentionally stumbled upon a clue—a clue that hinted at yet another mystery.

Also, what is this place? What in the world, what is going on with this planet...?

Hahahahaha

The blond man lying on the ground, covered in blood stains, laughed again, holding his stomach like a crazy person. It was a confused laugh mixed with various emotions.

Author's Thoughts: Hi, from now on, I will update this novel 3 chapters/week. Thank you for all your support so:)