— 10 Minutes Before The Grand Alteration Spell —
Amidst the gleaming towers and bustling streets of Sector Alpha City, nestled in a prestigious district, lies the luxury condominium of Aryan Sharma, CEO of Astral Tech. His residence exudes modern elegance and comfort, a testant to his status.
In his master bedroom, where the CEO usually finds rest, Aryan is hard at work on projects assigned by Daniel. Tonight, he focuses on launching a new line of affordable prosthetics and smartphones featuring cutting-edge technology.
However, Aryan's concentration is fractured by a myriad of concerns weighing on his mind. Recent events, including the conflict with Tessia Kingdom and the outbreak of a bio-weapon from an underground lab, as reported by UN personnel, have left him uneasy.
During the chaos, Aryan observed unsettling phenona and found himself among evacuees escorted to shelters by soldiers clad in formidable battle armor. Later, he discovered that these soldiers were rcenaries from his boss's private military company.
The Director of his boss's PMC, Penthesilea, and her Vice Director, Odysseus, t with him to discuss cooperation due to essential resource shortages such as food and daily necessities that needed to be imported from elsewhere because of the massive influx of refugees from the Tessia Kingdom.
Currently, the security of Sector Alpha City was fully managed by the PMC, along with traditional authorities like the fire departnt and police, who were integrating into the company's employee system. Frankly, he believed that in terms of authority, the PMC seed to hold more sway than the traditional establishnts.
However, as the CEO of Astral Tech, his position afforded him the opportunity to witness many peculiar occurrences that cast doubt on the UN staff's claims that the demon-like creatures were products of science.
During his ti working under his boss, he had a chance to talk with Don Veneciale and even went out to eat with him and so of his confidantes. During that ti, Don Veneciale seed intoxicated enough to speak unfiltered. He once ntioned that in this world, there existed hidden realms where magic and creatures from myth and nightmare, such as vampires, ghosts, and demons, were real.
Initially, Aryan dismissed it as drunken ramblings. But after the war and witnessing nurous strange phenona, along with the grotesque corpses of demonic beings washing ashore, his skepticism waned. The swift intervention of UN personnel to collect the bodies and evacuate the area further fueled his doubts.
All of this led him to consider the possibility that magic might indeed be real. He found himself leaning towards believing that Don Veneciale's drunken babble held so truth about the hidden realities of the world.
At that mont, a strange light emanated from the west, the sa direction as his panoramic window. The yellow glow intensified as it approached, causing his laptop to abruptly shut down, as if power had vanished into thin air.
"Is that... magic?" Aryan uttered, before the light enveloped him and the entire city.
Aryan braced himself for the anticipated pain, expecting the searing burn of whatever strange force enveloped him. But instead of agony, he felt an intense pressure building in his head, threatening to split it open. The pain was unbearable, and he longed for relief from the tornt.
"Grrrr…" He groaned in agony, clutching his head as though trying to contain the onslaught of pain. Strange mories began to flood his mind, mories that were clearly not his own. He instinctively rejected them, recognizing them as foreign intrusions.
But his attempts to push the mories away only exacerbated the pain, intensifying it to an unbearable level. As he struggled against the invading mories, his own recollections began to fade, slipping through his grasp like sand through his fingers. Yet, he fought to hold onto them, clinging desperately to the fragnts of his own identity amidst the turmoil.
The pain dredged up mories he had long tried to bury, mories of his childhood in the ancestral ho in India. He rembered the poverty and hardship he and his mother endured, scraping together ager als and enduring the callous indifference of his noble father, who viewed them as beneath him.
Dostic violence was a constant presence in their lives, inflicted upon them by his father's cruel hands. How they survived those harrowing days without succumbing to madness or perishing under his father's abuse was a testant to their resilience and inner strength.
As luck would have it, Aryan's business acun shone brightly, contrasting starkly with the wastrel behavior of his father's four sons that were born from the so-called legal wife, who squandered their wealth on indulgent lifestyles.
During this ti, Aryan got the appreciation from the patriarch of the Sharma family, his so-called grandfather, who had sponsored his education at Cambridge University. In return for this opportunity, Aryan worked tirelessly for the Sharma family, navigating through nurous failed business ventures caused by his four wayward cousins.
Despite the attempts of foreign mories to take root in his mind, Aryan remained steadfast. He had endured too much hardship to allow anything to alter his identity. Aryan was inherently stubborn, a trait that had served him well in the past. The only reason he had broken during Don Veneciale's interrogation was his lack of loyalty to Benjamin Prescott.
But this ti was different. He sensed that his mories were integral to his sense of self, and he was determined to protect them, regardless of their nature.
"Arrgggggghhh Get the fuck out of my head!" Aryan shouted with all his might, willing the intrusive mories to retreat.
In that mont, he felt a surge of energy coursing through his body, starting from his brain and flowing down to his heart and throughout his entire being. The excruciating agony ceased abruptly, replaced by a sense of clarity and renewal. Blue energy emanated from his body, dispelling the yellow light that had enveloped him monts before.
With purposeful strides, Aryan made his way to the window and looked down at the street below. People stood frozen in their tracks, as if ti itself had co to a halt, yet Aryan remained unaffected, able to move freely in the frozen scene.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, Aryan dashed out of his room, determined to find soone amidst the eerie stillness that gripped the hallway and elevator hall. Every person he encountered was frozen in place, mirroring the surreal scene unfolding on the streets below.
As Aryan navigated through the frozen hallway, his attention was drawn to a strikingly beautiful woman dressed in an alluring outfit, seemingly on her way to a night party with her equally attractive boyfriend, who stood frozen beside her. Both exuded an air of allure, with the boyfriend possessing an unnaturally handso appearance reminiscent of Korean celebrity boy bands.
"Tch…" Aryan clicked his tongue in annoyance at the sight of the lovey-dovey couple.
Suddenly, an intrusive thought invaded his mind, recalling a leisurely mont spent browsing through "n's cultural" websites. The mory of a particular style of cultural manhwa with a tagline of "Ti stop" surfaced in his consciousness.
Isn't this the sa situation as those manhwa!? A strange, mischievous smile spread across Aryan's face as he approached the side of the boyfriend, poking his cheek with his finger.
poke poke…
There was no response, no retaliation in the form of a fist aid at his face. "This plastic surgery face is really good; it has the sa texture as the real thing," Aryan mused to himself, amused by the lifelike touch of the frozen plastic surgery face guy.
Seeing this, Aryan giggled as if he had been given a jolt of energy. He quickly retrieved his pen and began to draw on the man's face, adding a "n's jewel" picture near the man's mouth and so cut-like drawings here and there, finishing it off with the words "Plastic Man."
"Hahahahahaha!" Aryan laughed to himself before heading toward the elevator. However, he suddenly stopped, as if rembering sothing important.
Turning toward the frozen, beautiful woman in the tempting outfit, Aryan hesitated, pacing back and forth. He didn't want to be the kind of person who would take advantage of a woman in a situation like this, reminiscent of the peculiar manhwa with a tag of "Ti Stop." He wasn't a degenerate.
…Okay, maybe he was a little bit degenerate, but he wasn't that bad. [But maybe… just a touch. A small touch wouldn't hurt.] Aryan thought, his gaze lingering on the woman's chest.
Moving closer, his heart rate intensified as his hand inched toward its target.
DING!!
"Arrrrg! It's not ! It's not what you think, officer!" Aryan scread in alarm, hastily retreating at the sound of the elevator.
The doors opened, revealing an African descent skinhead man stepping out, eyeing Aryan with a puzzled expression.
"What the hell are you talking about…" the man began, but then he noticed the couple and the man's face covered in drawings. He also observed the woman, her beauty undeniable.
"Ooohhh hohohoooo, you degenerate. You want to do those things from those degenerate manhwa with the Ti Stop tag? Ohhh buoyyyy." The man said with a knowing, mischievous smile as he approached the CEO.
The man was none other than Viper, the mage hunter, who had arrived on a job from The Hightower.
"So, you're one of the natural awakened mages? Can you co with , Mr. CEO?" asked Viper.
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