In the Name of God - vanish into fiction

A monochromatic 5-story building sandwiched between flashing, all-glass buildings in the middle of Yeouido.

Prestige Market

Its exterior, with only a single English sign that looked as if it had been scribbled hanging on it, exuded a massive sense of intimidation no less than that of the Awakeners Association.

I silently stared at Prestige Market, the Special Supplies Exchange where not only ordinary people but even low-rank Awakeners could not even step foot across the entrance threshold.

‘Anyone would think this building was constructed with barriers.’

The feast of all sorts of barriers surrounding the building filled my field of vision.

In the eyes of most Awakeners, it would look like a grand 5-story building surrounded merely by gray walls and all-glass, but in my eyes, a completely different sight was unfolding.

In my vision honed by channeling mana into Hawk Eye, the building looked like a massive cocoon wrapped tightly in dozens of layers of mana thread. The sight of each thread emitting a different spell formula and wave while stacked layer upon layer was so dense that it could be called grotesque.

Considering that even the security barrier at the Awakeners Association headquarters was only a triple layer, the density and number of barriers stacked here were at a level far beyond common sense.

‘Regardless of the individual monetary value, it must be because many dangerous artifacts are stored here.’

An artifact referred to a special weapon created by refining byproducts obtained from dungeons or monsters and then engraving delicate mana circuits onto them.

To mid-rank Awakeners or higher who manipulated mana in earnest, artifacts held a meaning beyond mere equipment. They were the sole medium capable of fully accommodating and amplifying an Awakener’s mana, which was prone to running wild, as well as strategic weapons containing formidable power in themselves.

Having an overwhelming mana conductivity that normal weapons could never reach was a given, and as the rank increased, the item itself came to hold unique skills or powerful attributes. Thus, for Awakeners, artifacts were extensions of their bodies while also being the most decisive variables that separated life and death on the battlefield.

The problem was that the backlash was at a formidable level as well, matching its efficiency. There were numerous cases where an artifact endlessly craved its master’s mana and surged backward to run wild, or where the ferocious nature of the inherent monster encroached upon the user’s mind.

Because of that, the possession of artifacts was strictly prohibited for immature Awakeners of Rank 7 or lower whose mana control was clumsy. It was because it could potentially cause the master’s mana to flow backward or make it difficult to control their abilities.

On the other hand, starting from Rank 6, Awakeners were recognized as having the minimum qualification to suppress and control the sharp energy emitted by artifacts on their own, making it possible to possess artifacts. That was why Lee Sunho and I were also finally able to enter Prestige Market, a treasure trove of numerous artifacts.

However, I was feeling an emotion quite different from the anticipation of finally being able to look around at numerous artifacts.

‘To think that the place where Prestige Market was built was right here.’

I did not know whether it was a memory remaining from when I fell into this world or a memory recovered through synchronization with the shadow fragment. However, the scenery of that day etched into my mind was excessively vivid.

Beneath the bottom of this dazzling gilding where astronomical value was exchanged, a massive sinkhole was actually buried. It was a subterranean dungeon that had suddenly opened its mouth in the middle of a disaster zone managed by Black Tail. Right under my feet, a hole as deep and dark as the building’s vertical structure was lurking.

The dungeon I remembered was not that large, but the events taking place inside were bizarre, to say the least, to the point of being disgusting. Because it was a place where high-intelligence monsters gathered to buy and sell humans, a so-called ‘human slave auction house’.

To those monsters, Awakeners were not simple prey, but top-tier food ingredients whose taste was determined by the concentration of mana condensed in their bodies.

It was a place where Awakeners were treated as a delicacy with far deeper flavor than ordinary people, and high-rank Awakeners far more than low-rank ones.

‘By current standards, it would be around a B-rank or B+ rank dungeon.’

If those monsters were normal beasts faithful to their instincts, suppressing them might not have been that difficult.

However, the bastards gathered there were all intelligent variants.

Furthermore, because they picked and caught Awakeners with language-related abilities to share and eat their brains alive, they were bastards who even fluently spoke human language.