The Shaman Desires Transcendence

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“Great Mother Capital, Sambon Money.”

This place was commonly referred to as private lending or loan sharking.

Jinseong laughed as he watched the golden smoke wrapping around the building’s second and third floors like a snake.

“Loan sharks have a lot of money.”

It’s a given that loan sharks are wealthy. Due to the public’s perception of thugs or collectors dressed in shabby clothes collecting debts, it’s hard to truly grasp how much money they actually have. These loan sharks often play a clever game, dancing on the border of legality and illegality, which means they tend to hoard slush funds, gold bars, and such. Especially since they often need to flee if things go south, they usually possess high-value, compact items.

“But loan sharks are broke.”

However, there’s a contradiction. It’s not worth it to rob a loan shark because they often don’t have any cash.

These loan sharks are all too aware that they are viewed as golden goblins.

Let’s say a capable person with significant power were to commit a robbery.

Where is the best place to hit?

A household?

It offers no real reward.

You might find spare change and maybe some wedding gifts, but even then, the gifts are a hassle to deal with and must be sold on the black market, ending up with barely any real profit.

A wealthy home?

This place also doesn’t add up.

Wealthy households certainly have slush funds or emergency cash, and touching it would indeed be profitable.
But there’s always a catch.
Wealthy folks detest and even hate having their loss or dignity damaged.

A bank?

A location often depicted in movies as being flush with cash.
It’s like a stereotype—robbery equals bank robbery that’s drilled into people’s heads.
But this is the worst choice.
Strong capable individuals are stationed there, and the moment a robbery occurs, the police are notified through every means available. Then the police swiftly strategize, surround the bank, and the special forces launch an all-out assault on the robbers.

And that’s not all.
Let’s say you’re so powerful that you successfully steal money. Do you think you can splurge it freely?

Once the money is snatched, the pursuit begins.
Magic, science, sorcery…

They mobilize every means available to track down and apprehend the robbers. If they can’t catch them, they ensure that not a single cent can be spent.
The human obsession with currency has reached a level of madness.
Most simply cannot bear this insanity.

So where is the best place?

Not a household, not a wealthy home, not a bank—where to strike?

Where money flows like a fountain, with no strong capable defenders, no aftereffects, and where the public authority can’t track you down? On top of that, a place where instead of receiving scorn for the theft, one might even receive cheers from the people—where is that?

Loan sharks.

From the perspective of strong capable individuals and violent criminals, these loan sharks are downright laughable.
People often regard the image of loan sharks as that of ruthless criminals.
But those who consider human life worth no more than a fly wouldn’t choose to be loan sharks. They jump into the realm of true vicious crime, like murder, kidnapping, drugs, and organized violence. Alternatively, they often become mercenaries or bodyguards who can exercise violence legally.

“And so, the mercenary world is filled with all sorts of lunatics. What a horrifying reality.”

Jinseong, who considered himself somewhat of a rational person, could hardly tolerate how many insane individuals were there; it could indeed be called a hellscape.
For Jinseong, who had witnessed such a hellscape, loan sharks were merely low-tier scum.
In other words, they existed at the level of punks.

They claim to be thugs, goons, or organizations, but aren’t they just people who prey on the weak?
Naturally, in the violent world where blood spills and corpses are scattered or in the power struggles of capable people, loan sharks could only be seen as ridiculous.

Loan sharks are aware of how they’re viewed, which is why they’ve taken various measures. They puff themselves up to appear intimidating, threatening all around them, or they try to purchase strong capable individuals to use as their pawns.

But really, what does that mean?
Have you ever seen a bear pass by a honey pot just because it’s angry?

No matter how fearsome they try to look, they don’t become genuinely frightening.
Just like a cat trying to stand on end doesn’t impress a lion as anything but a cute display. From the perspective of true crime organizations, they only see some punks chattering away, and strong capable folks think the bugs making a scene are nothing to fret over.

Similarly, the capable individuals they buy off with money can also be dealt with by those who seek money themselves.
There are plenty of money-hunters out there, and just like Jinseong, many powerful individuals are prowling about looking for cash.

Thus, loan sharks took numerous measures to protect themselves, and they chose two things:

A powerful backer.

A safe that is safe and sturdy.

And this survival tactic has proven effective, allowing loan sharks to endure up to modern times.

“So I’m not to wipe out these punks and loot their stuff…”

Divination is inherently enigmatic and ambiguous, making it hard to decipher its meaning easily.

Tarots, astrology, turtle shells, trump cards, yut, mountain branches…
There are countless tools to divine the future, all of which can indicate possibilities, but none provide a clear answer. The future is susceptible to change at any moment and is subject to countless probabilities and conditions.

The guiding divine object created by Jinseong does offer an answer to his questions but does not clarify what he should do. Hence, what he needs is…

“Patience.”

Jinseong closed his eyes and bowed his body.
He bent at the waist, leaning forward with his hands nearly touching the ground.
His back arched outwards.
His body jutting out at an abnormal angle.
His knees slowly bent like rebar flexing, and his neatly arranged hair became disheveled.

“Frost settling upon life.”

Crack!

Once his form resembled that of a hunchback, grayish-white mold began to overtake his body. Starting from his neck, it spread like roots reaching out across his form, emitting an off-putting scent akin to rotten grass.

The mold enveloped him like frost settling on a cold day, spreading its might.
His skin, once sun-kissed and alive, transformed into an unsettlingly pale hue, reminiscent of wax figures or corpses.
Gone was the vibrant color, replaced with an awful appearance, as if concrete and flesh had mixed together.

Crack!

Just like the inorganic color of the mold covering him saw its nature follow suit.
The network resembling stone held him in place, like a plaster mold enforced the pose he struck.
His protruding back remained jutting, his bent knees stayed as they were.

In an instant, Jinseong had turned into a short hunchback.

And from there, he opened his mouth again.

“Similar things give birth to similar ones.”

This was the principle of homogenous sorcery.
Similar entities give rise to similar ones.
The similar grow closer to one another.
Causes mirror effects, and effects become causes.

“Frost that has settled. The color that envelops the body.”

Since ancient times, humans have imitated nature.
They created sleeping bags by imitating cocoons.
They built airplanes by imitating birds.
They crafted swords by imitating beast fangs.
They constructed houses by imitating caves.

So what did humans imitate to don their bodies with another color?
What something stone-like entrapped a person?

“Become stone.”

The grayish-white covering him resembled stone.
And thus, he became stone.

“Stone is hard.”

Since stone resembles the hard, he could transform into something solid.
The grayness morphed into black.

“What is cloaked in hardness is like an insect.”

What roams around cloaked in something hard is an insect.
Stag beetles, centipedes, cockroaches.
Beings that possess exoskeletons and traverse the world freely.

Thus the stone statue formed seams and crevices.

“What the insect cloaks is armor, so become armor.”

Humans, in their mimicry of insects with exoskeletons, created armor.
And thus, Jinseong became a human donned in armor.

Similar things breed similar things.
A person wrapped in white mold became a human in armor.

Mold that infests bugs, and a human mimicking bugs.

“Kur-huh.”

Jinseong smiled.
He laughed while wearing a black mask resembling an insect.

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