The familiar walls of the hospital room came into view as I materialized within the bathroom where I had been before the event.
Besides me, a familiar white haired kid was staring at the mirror with the same fascination a country bumpkin who moved to a city would have.
I sighed, already regretting my decision.
'Why did I even agree to take him with me, ugh!'
Why indeed.
He looked pitiful.
I didn't know how long he had been trapped in there but he had been desperate.
Desperate enough to even split his soul, leaving behind a mere shell of his true self.
On the bright side, he was free.
As free as I allowed him to be though since he was bound to me by a relic, he couldn't stray too far away.
The downside? He was no longer a god.
Not fully.
Despite the fact that he was merely a ghost of what he used to be, he could still level an entire city effortlessly if he wished.
I wasn't bothered, in fact I was elated.
He was a useful asset, a literal walking calamity and since he's bound to me by not one, but two relics I was almost certain that he wouldn't let me die.
"Ermmm—"
"Ash."
"What?"
"You may refer to me as Ash." he said.
"That's your name?"
"No!"
"Then—"
Ah…
I followed the line of Ash's sight and in that instant I almost facepalmed.
'This child…'
He just pulled out the name from the bathroom sink, or more specifically the brand name of the company, Ashlink.
'Ah whatever I don't care, why do I care… why should I care.'
It wasn't like the name was entirely terrible but no, that wasn't even my problem here.
Remember when I said some tainted gods were in a completely different league?
Those gods who could manipulate that corrupt energy called void? The extremely dangerous types.
Yeah turns out…
My gaze drifted to Ash, who was staring at his reflection in the mirror while mumbling something along these lines, frozen liquid or something, evolved or whatnot, like a prehistoric caveman who was brought into modern civilization.
That Ash!
Was one of them.
You might want to ask how I came to find out, well the answer was simple.
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[ STATUS WINDOW ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Kang Tae-Min
Alias: Alistar
Level: 1
Race: Human
Class: Classless
Sponsor: The nameless god
Affinity: Void
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ TITLE ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• Blood Slayer
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ STATS ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
HP (Health): 350 / 350
MP (Mana): 80 / 80
S/P (Stat points) 10/50
STR (Strength): 10
AGI (Agility): 15
VIT (Vitality): 15
INT (Intelligence): 15
PER (Perception): 10
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ INVENTORY ]
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• Weapon Ticket ×1
• Character Skin ×1
• Divine relic [Gluttonous lantern.] [Soul ring]
[ Empty Slots: 8 ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Staring at my status screen, I stifled a groan.
I was this close to death.
Just imagining if it hadn't been Ash, but an unhinged one who did things for personal amusement, then I would have been six feet under the ground before my old man.
"This is messed up." I muttered with my hands covering my face.
Yet despite everything, I was smiling.
'Jackpot.'
I had more to gain than I had to lose.
And I was almost certain that I was the only player with the void affinity.
'Ah… right.'
I unequipped the character skin, reverting back to my normal appearance.
The instant I did, I lost the benefit of enjoying the perks which came with being tall.
Ash noticed almost immediately but said nothing.
I also respected his silence.
Instead I picked up my cell phone, dialed a number and waited patiently.
Fortunately I didn't have to wait for long as a voice on the other end of the receiver sounded.
"Hello, young master?" A low baritone voice called.
I responded with a cold tone, not rude, just cold enough to sound dismissive.
"Buy me a penthouse apartment in the upper district of Gangnam-gu, one luxurious enough to fit my tastes and make sure my father's mistress and her dogs know nothing about it."
"Understood." He replied almost immediately, then paused slightly. "Then I assume you don't want the patriarch to know about it?"
"Yes, send the bill directly to my secretary, she should handle the cost. I want it done before morning."
The call ended.
A sigh escaped my lips, and with it came memories.
Countless nights of relentless beatings, multiple attempts made on my life.
After eighteen years of being brought up in such a toxic place, I could finally leave.
Well, it wasn't like I couldn't have moved out long ago.
I had the money, not my father's, mine!
I was the owner of one of the largest clothing companies in Korea and I had a chain of reputable stores under my name.
I could have bought a house whenever I felt like and I could have moved out.
There was one main issue back then, I was weak.
I still am.
Contrary to what you might expect, players could not use their abilities outside the towers, yet.
Yes you heard me.
Yet.
Apparently we had to get to level thirty before we could do so.
But now, I had a literal god with me, and I pitied the fool who would dare trespass into my home.
'Soon…'
I reminded myself.
The moment I got to level thirty.
I would be capable enough to take care of the pests still bugging me.
And speaking of pests.
I turned towards Ash.
He met my gaze with a silent question in his eyes to which I answered.
"Can you track or detect the presence of another god from a player? Can you detect who the sponsor is?" I asked.
He nodded, once.
"Yes I can, why?"
At his words, I couldn't help the grin that followed.
"There's this pest I want to kill, a very annoying thorn in my side and I already promised to do so, the least I can do is deliver."
I had decided already, the smug bastard who stole my abilities first… I was going to devour him, and get my lightning back.