How to Survive as an Extra

Chapter 93

The arena’s fevered atmosphere showed no sign of cooling.

Snowman continued to dominate the stage with unstoppable momentum.

“Magnet Man? Hey, is that not a little tacky? Once you debut in the arena, it is hard to change your name later, so think carefully.”

We were processing the fighter registration at the counter near the entrance.

“Please proceed with it as is. The name does not matter anyway.”

“What? If you insist, I suppose I have no choice. …All right, it is done. Magnet Man, you will have to wait until four more fighters go up before you can enter the ring.”

“If there are four ahead of me, about how long will that take?”

“That depends on Snowman. If his opponent seems even a little competent, he tends to toy with them. It is not as if he is relieving stress or anything, but still.”

“I see.”

Lee Eunho—no, Magnet Man—successfully completed his registration.

He planned to fight barehanded.

Barehanded in name only. The moment his fists made contact, he would discharge invisible electricity.

As though he were holding stun guns in both hands.

“Hey, are you entering too?”

The large employee at the counter asked me.

In the original work, I would not even have needed to consider it, but I was not sure whether Lee Eunho could defeat Choi Suhyuk.

It would not be a bad idea to put my name on the roster as insurance, but….

If Lee Eunho could not defeat Choi Suhyuk, could I?

Of course, if I wore a mask and used the Demonic Eye, I would have an advantage.

Moreover, with the training I had done with An Hwigom, I had enough experience to create a few decent variables.

Above all, Lee Eunho would not go down easily, so he would at least drain some of Choi Suhyuk’s stamina.

“Is it possible to withdraw from a match due to personal circumstances?”

“Does not matter. If you do not show your face when your turn comes, they just move on to the next slot. There are plenty of guys who sign up bravely and then run the moment they see the champion’s skill.”

“Then I will register.”

“Name?”

A name.

Without hesitation, I answered.

“Phantom Thief. Use Phantom Thief.”

Would anyone suspect that the Phantom Thief would be running around using the Phantom Thief’s own name?

“That is at least a tolerable name. The waiting room is over there. For a mask, just pick up whatever is lying around inside and put it on.”

Lee Eunho headed to the waiting room with a tense expression.

Calling it a waiting room was generous. It was a space barely three square meters, partitioned for changing clothes.

I watched Snowman from nearby, and only then realized that Gwon Chihun was nowhere in sight.

Of course, in the original work, Gwon Chihun did not appear in this episode.

So it likely would not affect the course of events, but I could not help worrying that he might be doing something reckless.

“How annoying.”

I scanned the arena for a moment, and once I concluded he was not inside, I went out.

Outside, the sky of Seoul awaited me, with not a single ray of sunlight.

It was an ordinary daytime scene, but because I had been in the arena, I had unknowingly mistaken it for evening.

Was this what it meant for the senses to become dulled?

“If you get hooked on the arena the wrong way, it will be a disaster.”

In any case, I relied on sound as I moved to find Gwon Chihun.

I reached an alley with sparse foot traffic, and there I found him.

More precisely, I found him being beaten one-sidedly by several men.

“You bastard, what kind of nerve do you have, wandering around the outskirts?”

“Did we not warn you last time? The moment we see one of you Gwon Clan bastards, we are going to ruin you.”

A rare sight: a cadet from Hero Prep getting beaten one-sidedly by thugs from the outskirts.

When I examined him with the Demonic Eye, Gwon Chihun’s body was under the influence of a status ailment.

A typical method used by outskirts thugs.

The investigation instructors had emphasized, again and again, to beware of status ailments….

Well, he had probably guzzled down some drink someone handed him at the arena without a second thought.

Still, what was I supposed to do here?

Should I save him?

Gwon Chihun was still holding on to his senses.

If I stepped in unnecessarily, I might only bruise his pride.

And more than anything, I did not have the authority to intervene.

Because they were not beating Gwon Chihun for no reason.

“You are still living by clinging to Dispel, huh? You cockroach bastards.”

“So that ridiculous superiority complex is still alive too, I see.”

“Just looking at this bastard makes me retch. If it were not for his grandfather, we would not be living like this, treated like trash! You deep-rooted evil bastards!”

The Gwon Clan, Dispel’s deep-rooted evil.

The investigative line of work was treated worse than other professions.

Whether in financial conditions or social prestige.

As a result, those affiliated with Dispel often carried the perception that they were serving awakened society.

Among them, the Gwon Clan—whose family members were largely employed by Dispel—was a well-known family even within awakened society.

At first, calling them Dispel’s deep-rooted evil family was merely a harsh way of emphasizing the clan’s notoriety, but in the awakened world of today, it was used as a slur directed at the Gwon Clan.

The incident that flipped the Gwon Clan’s reputation overnight happened during the tenure of Gwon Yongshin, Gwon Chihun’s grandfather, when he served as Commissioner General of Dispel.

That is, Investigator Gwon Yongshin, the man who came closest to capturing the Phantom Thief.

Seoul originally had only an inner city.

Even then, the traces of the Great Rift were smaller than they were now, but as time passed, those traces widened, and eventually the idea emerged that Seoul needed to be expanded and reorganized.

The problem was that countless people were flooding into Seoul and Gyeonggi-do.

In response, Commissioner General Gwon Yongshin created the concept of the inner city and prohibited entry by non-awakened people.

The reason was simple.

To protect non-awakened people, who lacked the knowledge to handle items.

From the perspective of awakened beings, it was an obvious decision, but to the non-awakened people crowding near Seoul’s inner city, it felt like discrimination.

Gwon Yongshin understood the non-awakened people’s resentment, and with the Bureau’s backing, created the concept of the outskirts.

That is, what are now District 11 through District 30.

Even with the creation of the outskirts, it was not possible to accommodate everyone.

Among the candidates were those with awakened family members, those who had fought in the Great Rift as non-awakened people, and children under twenty with the highest probability of becoming awakened.

Dispel began accepting those who fit the criteria into the outskirts, but unfortunately, with the manpower available at the time, it was impossible to control tens of millions of people.

In the end, the outskirts were indiscriminately “occupied” by massive crowds.

Public security fell to the bottom, unprecedented food problems emerged, and misuse of items—what the Bureau had feared—compounded the situation, leading to casualties not far short of Great Rift victims.

But an even worse problem was the awakened beings of the outskirts, left unmanaged.

They soon formed power blocs in the outskirts and began calling themselves the Psychic Mafia.

Gwon Yongshin struggled more than anyone to handle the incidents in both the inner city and the outskirts, but….

With incidents numbering in the hundreds of thousands per day, his patience was ultimately set aflame, and he began to forcefully insist on a special law that the Bureau had been holding in reserve.

The Bureau accepted the demand of Gwon Yongshin, the practitioner with the strongest influence, and within days, the special law called “summary execution” was enacted in Seoul.

Its content was an outrageous statute: “If an unregistered awakened person commits a superpowered crime, a Dispel investigator may immediately kill the offender on the spot.”

In a sense, it was the most fundamental solution.

If only it had been implemented right when Seoul was reorganized.

The special law turned the outskirts into a battlefield in an instant.

In the process, some investigators resigned due to differences in conviction, and Hunters whose livelihoods had been faltering voluntarily chased superpowered criminals for pay.

The residents of the outskirts naturally protested fiercely, but all they were given in return was the forced acceptance of an unspoken difference in status from the awakened beings of the inner city.

Gwon Yongshin’s special law was abolished after two years.

That is, in only two years, the outskirts were subdued.

As a result, Dispel branches were established in the once lawless outskirts, schools were built to teach knowledge of superpowers, and basic living conditions improved through various guilds.

Cultural integration between the inner city and the outskirts might have been delayed by several more years without that special law.

Those who acknowledged that point found it easy to understand Gwon Yongshin’s decision, but the people of the outskirts who had lost family members would grind their teeth at the mere mention of the name Gwon.

Just as I was witnessing in real time now.

Gwon Yongshin was a man who inspired sharply divided evaluations.

Even I, who had used inner-city and outskirts conflict as material, found it difficult to categorize his disposition cleanly.

If I, the original author, was like that, what must it have been like for his grandson, Gwon Chihun?

The reason he disliked social care beneficiaries like me and Choi Jaejin was part of that same context.

And the reason he was always coming and going through the outskirts was likely the same.

In the original work, Gwon Chihun had always tried to understand Gwon Yongshin’s choice.

Perhaps that was why he kept getting beaten by outskirts thugs.

After all, his status ailment had been lifted just a moment ago.

I sent the alley’s location to a nearby Dispel branch and left.

“Well, he will either come back to the arena on his own, or return to Hero Prep.”

I headed back to the arena and descended the stairs underground again.

From the entrance alone, fierce cheers were spilling out.

For the sound to be this loud, it meant the match was turning out to be quite interesting.

For instance, Magnet Man putting up a performance against Snowman.

“Has Lee Eunho already entered?”

I passed through the entrance and approached the railing that overlooked the ring.

But contrary to my expectation, Magnet Man was sprawled on the stage.

—And once again, it is Snowman’s victory! That was truly on a knife’s edge! It was a masterpiece match, the likes of which we have not seen in a long time!

“…….”

Lee Eunho had lost.

***

The special ward affiliated with Saint Sienna Magic School.

Do Minyeong and Cha Yeri followed the staff member down the corridor.

The ward was quiet overall.

Now and then, nurses in protective suits appeared, but they only cast listless glances and offered no greeting.

Suspicious of the ward’s atmosphere, Cha Yeri casually asked the staff member.

“It is quite quiet. I do not see any patients walking around either.”

“They are all critically ill. And each room has soundproofing as well.”

Soundproofing meant that there were patients here with psychiatric disorders.

In general, awakened beings did not become physically ill, but mental issues were an exception.

Most psychiatric patients suffered from trauma acquired in battles with monsters or aftereffects from superpowered crimes, but the problem was that the public perception was not so negative that the entire ward needed to be concealed.

In most cases, if they did not encounter the source of their trauma or aftereffects, they had no trouble in daily life.

In other words, this place handled disorders far more complex than that.

Perhaps they were doing something illegal while avoiding the Bureau’s eyes.

“This is it. The room that Mr. Choi Suhyuk, the guardian, visits from time to time.”

Stopping at the door, the staff member turned to Do Minyeong and Cha Yeri and continued.

“First, promise me that you will not take any action. Also promise that you will not speak to the patient more than necessary, and that you will not disclose anything that happens in the room to the outside.”

“Of course. I swear it on my name.”

Cha Yeri’s firm declaration.

Do Minyeong, still hiding her face, only nodded.

“Keep the visit within five minutes. It is about the time she will be awake, so that will be enough. I will wait outside the door.”

When the staff member pressed a card to the terminal, the lock disengaged.

Do Minyeong and Cha Yeri carefully entered the room.

It was a single room, and it was not very different from a normal ward.

Aside from how somewhat stifling it looked due to the soundproofing, and the window being quite small.

Upon entering, the two immediately faced a woman who was half reclining against the bed.

“Who… are you?”

She was a woman to whom the word delicate seemed made to fit.

According to the small nameplate under the bed, her name was Choi Seol.

Her eyes resembled Choi Suhyuk’s, but for some reason her hair had turned completely white, and her body looked alarmingly frail.

Considering she was hospitalized in a special ward, there was nothing particularly conspicuous about her appearance.

Cha Yeri carefully spoke.

“Pleased to meet you. We came from Hero Prep.”

At the words Hero Prep, Choi Seol brightened.

“Oh! You must be Suhyuk’s friends. I am so relieved. It is wonderful to hear that Suhyuk is making friends. He is so shy that, as his older sister, I have been worried.”

“…….”

The moment she heard the word older sister, a chill ran through Cha Yeri’s entire body.

A rumor she had once heard about Choi Suhyuk’s older sister surfaced in her mind.

“So, is Suhyuk doing well? He is still a first-year, so he must have a lot to learn.”