The laughter started as a low, bubbling sound in Jin-Ho's chest before erupting into a full-blown maniacal cackle. It echoed off the damp stone walls, sharp and jarring against the heavy silence of the dungeon.
To the other elves, it was the sound of a final snapping point. They pulled back, their chains clinking in a fearful rhythm. Tears welled in the eyes of the older woman in the corner. To them, the "sweet boy" Eon, who had endured two days of Julius's personal brand of hell, had finally surrendered his sanity to the dark.
They whispered among themselves, casting worried glances his way. From their perspective, he was in the throes of a psychotic break, denial manifesting as a terrifying joy. They decided to give him space, hoping that once the initial shock of his "broken mind" passed, he would settle back into the quiet, hollow shell they all were used to.
Jin-Ho, however, couldn't have cared less about their pity. He was staring at the shimmering blue windows with the intensity of a starving man at a banquet.
'A System. A real, honest-to-god System.It's connected to me. If a mere fraction of this power can give me these kinds of skills, then the entity behind it must be beyond comprehension. But okay, let's not overthink it. Focus on the tools in hand. Everything is locked, but the conditions... they seem almost too simple.'
He looked at the first entry: Matter Manipulation.
'Condition: Study magic for the first time?'
'How do I study magic in a hole where even the light is a luxury?' Jin-Ho's eyes shifted to the girl beside him. She was the one who hadn't cried earlier, the one who seemed to know the most about their current plight. He needed information, and he needed to play the "amnesiac victim" card perfectly to get it from her.
He crawled toward her, the iron collar around his neck biting into his skin with every inch of progress. "Hey," he whispered, keeping his voice soft so as not to spook her again. "I... I have some questions."
The girl looked up, her large eyes red-rimmed. "You really did lose it, didn't you? Your memory, I mean. I had my suspicions, but seeing you laugh like that..." She sighed, "Okay, ask away. What do want ot know?"
"My head is a mess," Jin-Ho admitted, which was technically the truth. "I've been trying to figure out why we haven't just... left. We're elves. Don't we have something like magic or something? Why haven't we blasted these walls down?"
The girl let out a dry, bitter sound that might have been a laugh in another life. "So you've even forgotten the collar, dummy. Listen up. This isn't just iron. It's imbued with Dwarven runes, Anti-Magic property."
She leaned closer, the scent of damp earth and unwashed hair clinging to her. "It negates mana flow. It can't be broken by force, and it can't be bypassed. Only the keyholder can unlock it. If you try to cast a spell, it doesn't just fail; it backfires, electrocuting your brain until you're a vegetable. And even if you did manage to run, the keyholder can track the collar's signature from miles away. Escape isn't an option, it's just a faster way to die."
Jin-Ho frowned. "The Dwarves made these? I thought humans were our enemies. Why are the Dwarves helping them?"
The girl stared at him; she was stunned. Then she broke out in laughter, "Haha, The Dwarves and Humans aren't allies. Far from it."
She looked toward the bars. She thought for a second about how to explain it to him. Then her voice dropped into a storyteller's cadence. "We were at war with the Dwarves for centuries. They were on the brink of defeat until they developed these slave collars and a few other 'legendary' artifacts to turn the tide on us. But before they could use them on us, the Humans invaded them."
She paused for a second, but continued again, "Humans are opportunistic parasites. They used the Dwarves' own weapons against them, driving them to near extinction."
She clenched her bony fists. "Even when Dwarves, our long enemy, were defeated, we elves didn't get to celebrate for long. After the Dwarves fall, the Humans turned their sights on us. Our King declared war, but it couldn't be called a war; it was just a slaughter. Humans had the Dwarves' technology and their own sheer, ruthless numbers. We lost everything in a single year. Our forests burned, our people got enslaved, and when the final hope, our High-King was killed, so was our hope."
"You talk like you also fought in that war," Jin-Ho remarked, noting the detail in her voice.
"I did," she said, a sudden spark of pride flickering in her eyes.
Jin-Ho thought he hadn't even asked her name all this time. So he asked.
"My name is Vaeloria Syltharian Elsanawe'tharion. But you used to call me Elsa. Before I was this, I used to be a White Knight of the Aurelindor Line. I led platoons, Eon. I fought on the front lines."
Jin-Ho's mind whirred. 'A White Knight?', but instead of pondering on his own, he continued the conversation. Trying to get information from her.
"And magic? How did it work back then? For you and the mages?"
Elsa's expression softened into nostalgia. "Magic is simply the art of manipulation. Mana resides in everything, every rock, every drop of water, every living cell. To use it, you must 'sync' your internal mana with the matter around you. Once you understand the matter at its... what did the scholars call it? The 'subatomic' level... You can mold it to your will. We used to build dams, create rain, and slay monsters with just simple spells of our Elven magic."
Jin-Ho's heart skipped a beat. 'Subatomic.' To a medieval-level society, that was a high-level philosophical concept. To a science-major student from Seoul who had spent years studying chemistry and physics, that was Tuesday. Or so he thought.
"So," Jin-Ho pressed, hiding his excitement, "if you can sync with matter, why do you need the spells?"
Elsa smiled sadly. "Because humans and elves aren't gods, Eon. Syncing is taxing. Trying to manipulate matter through raw willpower alone uses a hundred times more mana than it should. It would burn your soul out in seconds. That's why we can't use magic with this collar on. It severs our link to the magic chants. Chants and spells are like... shortcuts. They provide the structure for the mana to follow, reducing the cost to something manageable. But the collars... they react to the vibration of the chant. The moment you start a spell, it strikes."
Jin-Ho went silent, retreating into his own thoughts.
'From her perspective, magic without a chant is impossible because the mana cost is too high. But my Status Screen says I have 3,000 mana and 16,000 Insight. And more importantly... I don't need a chant to understand the subatomic structure of iron.'
'I know what an iron atom looks like. I know about metallic bonding. I don't need a 'shortcut' spell to tell me how to pull those atoms apart. Maybe their chants help them to connect with mana and matter. But what if I can do it on my own?'
Suddenly, the air in front of him rippled.
{SKILL UNLOCKED: MATTER MANIPULATION}
[ - STATUS - ]
Race: High Elf
Mana: 3,000 / 3,000
Insight: 18,000
Skill Points (SP): 5
[ - SKILLS - ]
Unlocked: Matter Manipulation (Lv. 1: 0/1000)
Locked: Heat Manipulation (Condition: Master Matter Manipulation to Lv. 10)
...…
Jin-Ho's lips curled into a slow, predatory grin. He looked at the iron shackle around his left wrist. He didn't need to chant. He didn't need to alert the collar's sensors with a spoken spell.
He just needed to will it.
'Finally,' he thought, his blue eyes glowed with a faint, dangerous light. 'Some action time.'
He reached out and touched the cold, rusted iron of his chains. Elsa had returned to her corner, burying her face in her knees, lost in her own grief. She didn't see the way the metal under Jin-Ho's fingertips began to hum with a low, violet frequency.
"Oh, yeah. Now we're talking in my language," he whispered, a satisfying smile on his face was visible. "Let's see just how 'unbreakable' Dwarven magic really is."