Work Text:
The ambient temperature of his mana had been a permanent companion to Jong-In ever since he awakened. It had the advantage of meaning that he never had to bother with coats or scarves or anything for warmth - other than for style of course - but it did mean that if he got worked up that he could accidentally raise the temperature a few degrees before he could even catch it.
So when he woke up in the middle of the night shivering, he knew something was drastically wrong.
He tried to gather his mana, tried to bring the ambient temperature back up, but his mana felt… different. His mana had always been quick and volatile, easy to spark and move, but suddenly it felt, well cold for starters. It was wide, and still, and deep, and dark and manipulating it felt like trying to move the ocean.
He crossed his arms over his chest, the cold seeming to seep into his body as moving his mana seemed to be gathering a darkness around him, crawling up from the ground, climbing up the walls, seeping over his sheets, spreading up his body, consuming his warmth as it went.
He almost expected to see his shuddery breath on the air with the bone deep cold that now saturated him.
When suddenly a floating blue box appeared in front of him. He glanced to his mirror, seeing only empty space there, so whatever magic this was wasn’t manifested into the world, it was somehow only affecting him.
A second box appeared behind the first, overlapping the text somewhat and making it slightly more difficult to read.
Due to a memory pointer error the Shadow_Realm_Archive cannot locate Player Sung_Jin_Woo
Error? Memory pointer? Player? And he couldn’t even just send it to the IT department to have them explain it, or just fix it and not try to explain it to him. He tried to swipe the message away, but it remained in place. He sighed, trying to reach out for the mana of the box and dispel it. And although he couldn’t feel the mana of the box the first one did vanish.
Defaulting to the largest mana pool of nearby available hunters
He supposed, as the only other S-rank mage in Korea, he probably did have the next largest mana pool after Sung Jin-Woo. Although he’d always thought that with the power difference between Cha Hae-In and everyone else, it meant that she was a lot closer than people expected.
He dispelled the second blue box only for a third one to pop up in its place.
While debugging is occurring you have acquired the title “Temporary Shadow Monarch”.
Access to the System is restricted at this time.
There were too many things happening all at once and none of it made any sense. But as he dispelled the third text box, the feeling of his mana changed again. The depths that had felt so still and unresponsive suddenly seemed to writhe, to be stuffed full of movement and feelings and thought and creatures and monsters, all clamouring at the edge of his shadow, pressing at his mana, at his mind.
He clutched at his head, trying to piece out the different mana groups, keeping them all in his mind, laying them out in the depths of his mana as if he was creating a spread of fire spheres but not manifesting them into reality.
They still moved, not quite fighting against his control but wanting to move on their own.
“Just wait,” he muttered, in frustration more than expecting the instruction to work, but somehow his mana seemed to calm down slightly. He still felt cold and although the end of his breaths still shivered slightly he was beginning to grasp how to manipulate Sung’s mana.
Eventually he managed to separate out all the different entities in the depths of his mana, and damn holding them all in his mind at once was going to give him a headache, but there were over a hundred, nearing the max number of flame spheres he’d ever summoned.
The exact number was 127.
Hunter Sung had 127 summons on his person at all times.
That man was an enigma.
Although apparently, for the moment, it was Jong-In who was an enigma.