An Unreadable Soul

A bell gave a bright little chime, and in the same instant a presence stirred at our backs. Han Gyeol and I spun around together, startled.

"That you would seek out our shop—what an honor."

The door we had come through was easing shut, and a man stood before it. Beneath neatly kept black hair, straight as a blade, thin eyes curved in a gentle smile. He looked to be in his mid-to-late thirties, and the mandarin-collar shirt with its immaculate tailoring felt strangely out of place in this space.

"I am An Sa-hong, proprietor of Danhong Corporation."

He bowed with the crisp, polished grace of a clerk in some ancient artisan's shop, or an attendant on a department-store floor—movements so smooth they might have been steps in a dance.

"Ah. Hello."

"…"

I returned the greeting, genuinely impressed by his manner. Han Gyeol, though, seemed to find the sudden appearance unpleasant; he pressed his mouth shut and drew his brows together. We'd been thrown into fight after fight for days, so of course his guard was high. He hadn't sensed a thing until the man was already behind us, and he was surely reading that as a threat. Still, I'd drilled it into him earlier that we needed to keep this relationship friendly, so he wouldn't be outright rude. Say that aloud, and the bastard would have roared that popping up behind someone was the ruder thing by far.

Anyway—how in the world had he done it? We weren't high-level Hunters yet, granted, but could a person really change position that fast? I had S-Rank Agility myself.

Teleportation? Or was he behind us the whole time, laying an illusion so we'd think he was in front? To fool S-Rank senses completely, how high a level would a Hunter even have to be? Is An Sa-hong an S-Rank too?

Stories of his remarkable achievements were everywhere, but I knew nothing personal about the man. Turning it over got me nowhere.

Wait. Maybe…

Then a better idea flickered up. Use this skill, and I could learn things about An Sa-hong that no one else knew.

Soul Appraiser.

The moment I felt it, a system window flared into sharp focus beside An Sa-hong's face.

Huh?

I nearly let the sound slip out. Soul grade, yet unknown. Synchronization, zero percent.

Does that even make sense? Synchronization can be zero? I never saw a number like that—not even before the regression.

All I could do was stare blankly at the absurd readout. Had that bastard of a System lost its mind?

Synchronization was never, at its root, a matter of personality or trust. Those things could color it, of course, to a degree. The rate required for Soulmate ran deeper than that, more primal. How to put it—I didn't even know whether souls truly existed, but it felt like a resonance of the soul itself. Zero percent was so alien that I found myself wondering whether he was human at all. Whether he was even alive.

And yet An Sa-hong stood right in front of me, perfectly alive and moving. His information—partial, and grotesque as it was—was still being parsed by the skill.

What if he's something like an alien…

This was a world of Awakeners, where portals yawned open and monsters came spilling out of dungeons. And, decisively, a world with people like me, who had regressed out of the past. Follow that line of thought far enough, and the window in front of me stopped looking quite so grave.

I don't know if I ought to call it a relief, but… not being able to see the grade yet means I have to meet some condition before it'll show, doesn't it?

Meet the condition, and I would learn more about him. It wasn't a total wall. What the condition might be, I hadn't the faintest guess. Either way, one judgment settled firm: from here on, dealing with An Sa-hong would demand extreme caution. Cross him, and there was no telling what might happen to us.

And if my hunch is right, I've just brushed a secret of An Sa-hong's that absolutely no one knew! I shouldn't be getting excited in a situation like this—and yet, somehow, I am. Just a little.

By the time I noticed the uncomfortable silence hanging between him and Han Gyeol, An Sa-hong was already looking at me. That look was strange. Hmm. Seeing him again, his pupils were awfully small. Without the smile to cover them, they were terribly cold… No. That wasn't the point.

Don't tell me he caught me using the skill.

A bead of sweat slid free. I couldn't afford to give a man whose identity I couldn't begin to pin down even a single opening. Right. My finishing move. The harmless smile.

"Hahaha. We found the right place, didn't we."

"So you are indeed customers."

An Sa-hong didn't pick at Han Gyeol's edged reaction, nor at me standing there in a daze. He only turned a lukewarm smile on the two of us, who must have looked like clumsy Awakeners drifted into an unfamiliar shop. My finishing move had landed. Surely. Heh heh heh.

"Of course. Hahaha."

"Quite so. And your timing could not have been better. Until a moment ago I was rather occupied attending another customer. Please, follow me farther in. The shop is a touch untidy, I'm afraid."

He walked ahead to a narrow curtain hung along the right-hand wall.

Another customer? Who? The only person I saw out on the street earlier was that white-haired…

Rings rattled. When An Sa-hong drew the curtain aside, a passage opened in the wall I had thought was solid.

There's space back there?

Astonishing. Following him in, I had the illusion that the space was widening around us. No—not an illusion. At the end of the passage a new scene opened, and my mouth fell open.

From the outside of the building, no one could have imagined a room this vast. High ceiling and broad walls were filled, floor to rafters, with display cases set too high for any hand to reach, and those cases were packed with goods all the way to the topmost shelf: monster byproducts of every kind, gems, specimens of creatures I couldn't name, and all manner of things that looked expensive. The floor was no different. Heavy chests were stacked across it, and before them stood magnificent weapons of the sort only an S-Rank would wield.

Is it really all right to just leave items out like this? What happens if a thief hits the place?

At the same time, relief washed through me. The explanation I'd given Han Gyeol hadn't been completely off. Even in this era, An Sa-hong was unmistakably an extraordinary merchant. I glanced sidelong at Han Gyeol, and our eyes met.

"You were right."

"Obviously."

"Is there a particular item you are seeking?"

An Sa-hong turned back toward our whispering. Behind him the shop's dazzling interior stretched away, imposing enough to press on me for no reason I could name. It felt like meeting the uncanny master of a secret shop.

"Ah—could we sell some dungeon byproducts first? We'd like to use the money to buy weapons."

"But of course. If you wish to sell first, this way, if you please."

An Sa-hong climbed a mezzanine stair. The space above looked like an office: a broad desk heaped with pens, documents, and the like. A low hum. He swept the clutter to one side and extended a hand over the cleared space, and a glowing rectangle, like a system window, formed above it.

"Kindly place what you wish to sell upon this. You may draw the items straight from your inventory; that is quite all right."

I worked my inventory and tilted my head.

The method isn't as secretive as I expected. This is just a skill to keep anyone from cheating the trade.

A grinding whine, then a clatter, and Ether Stones piled high across the desk.

"Will this be the whole of what you intend to sell?"

"Please tally these first."

"Very well."

An Sa-hong reached over the heaped stones. His eyes lit yellow, and light of the same color wrapped the Ether Stones.

An appraisal skill. Just as I thought—an Awakener specialized for trade.

A soft flick, and he drew his hand back.

"Ether Stones, without a doubt. The grade is Low. The count is twenty-five in all. The price at which I can purchase them is eighteen million won."

"Huh? Eighteen million?"

When I startled, An Sa-hong tilted his head.

"The price of every dungeon byproduct and item is forever in flux. You are aware of this, I trust?"

"Ah, of course I know, but… even so, it seems like far less than I expected."

Low-grade or not, Ether Stones were essential for enhancing weapons, and these weren't even clearing a million won apiece. What he said next hit harder.

"Too little… Have you perhaps inquired after prices elsewhere? As far as I know, no merchant along Dongmyo Street appraises Ether Stones more generously than I. Frankly, they are nothing but fragments of stone possessed of a trace of mana and no function whatsoever, are they not?"

No function at all?! What was that supposed to mean? What in the—

"You are welcome to look in on other shops, but as you know, every Awakener has gone out in support of the dungeon-disaster response. I am the only merchant remaining here. If you do not wish to trade, then perhaps another shop, next time…"

"Ah—no. That's not—wait. Wait! Let me think!"

I walked off toward a corner to get my thoughts in order.

Right. Of course. There's still no information out there about item enhancement. I can't believe this. Nobody knows about item enhancement yet? Was that how it was?! Ha. This is huge.

I was the only person who knew Ether Stones could enhance items. Enhancement required a related skill, of course, so it wasn't something I could manage alone. Which meant that, so far, there were no Awakeners tied to enhancement at all. It meant that with the Second Open as the starting point, enhancement-type Awakeners would newly appear. Right. So that was how it had gone.

Huge, sure—but I still can't make money off Ether Stones yet. A shame, though twenty-five of them won't take long to gather again. I won't be able to enhance the Hermes' Shoes right away, either…

Even at a bargain price, I had to sell everything we were carrying and get our gear in order. Then we could run dungeons and sell Ether Stones again. I went back to the front of An Sa-hong's desk, wearing a carefully meaningful look.

"I'll sell the lot for now. Wait—there are other dungeon byproducts, too."

A hum, a patter, and fresh items spread across the desk: spoils from hunting gnolls and goblins. Laid out of the inventory, there were more of them than I'd thought. An Sa-hong began appraising the heap, piece by piece.

"…Very good. Taken together, the sum comes to seventy-two million, three hundred and fifty thousand won."

"Good."

Accounting for the era and the going prices, An Sa-hong really was paying generously. It wouldn't buy anything extraordinary, but it was a decent sum.

"Your turn, Gyeol."

"Yeah."

Once Han Gyeol finished his own trade, both our pockets sat comfortably heavy.

"Now, then. What would you like to acquire?"

And this was the important part. Our take had come in lower than I'd planned, so we couldn't gather every item I'd first had in mind. But there was one thing we absolutely had to buy—and we'd scraped together just enough for that.

At my words, An Sa-hong's eyes flew wide.