Patter.Raindrops tapped down on my cheeks.My eyelids fluttered, and once my consciousness returned a vicious thirst came crashing in.I was definitely camping at Bisti just a moment ago…I tried to speak, but my lips were sealed dry by the thirst choking up from my throat.And then—A headache, pins and needles in my hands and feet. My vision swam with dizziness, my senses dulled.Dehydration symptoms.In his former life, Jo Yookang had experienced the same thing while on an operation in the desert.Nearly a 15% loss of body water.Exhaustion following visual impairment and dulled touch.By heaven’s grace, rain fell right before death and snapped him back.I forced my head up from the dirt.After checking my surroundings, I crawled toward a pocket of pooled water.Clatter, clatter.The chain linking my handcuffs dragged along the ground, and when I reached the puddle I met a face.What—!?Jo Yookang stared at the face reflected in the water, eyes going wide as he swallowed his breath.Th-this is me?A face he had never seen.Skinny and haggard; a young man who didn’t look twenty yet was looking back at him.But the surprise lasted only a moment.The thirst that felt like it would desiccate his guts made him wet his throat first.“Haah… now I can live.”With moisture replenished, the slow heartbeat began to steady.Only then did he have room to think.Jo Yookang looked again at the boy mirrored in the puddle. And then—“Ugh! Urrrgh—!”A short but blinding headache, and with it a stream of memories seeped into his skull.A poor Joseon man named Lee Maksan.Dreaming of rising in status, he set out for the Gold Rush he had heard about by chance, but after boarding a ship in Shanghai, Qing, for California, what he arrived at was not hope but despair.Slave contracts; days of dying or being chased by Indian raids and outlaws without so much as touching gold. Then a white man approached Lee Maksan under the guise of kindness.Unable to understand speech, he pieced the meaning together with hand and foot gestures.— I’ll introduce you to work where you can eat, sleep, and even get paid.But it was all a bald-faced lie.The man was a slaver, and he approached to sell Lee Maksan as a slave to the South.With the cotton gin that teased lint from cotton, demand for plantation slaves in the South exploded, and whether Black or Asian, slaves fetched a good price. However—— Damn it! Grab that bastard!— That goddamn punk!Lee Maksan seized a chance and managed to escape.The problem was that in this harsh West, you could ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) barely find people, let alone drinking water.Worse, he had no survival knowledge to live out here.So he wandered the wilderness and finally collapsed from dehydration.All the memories settled in.Jo Yookang—no, Lee Maksan—exhaled through the subsiding pain and let out a long sigh.Twenty by Joseon count, eighteen by American age.So I’ve ended up inside this body…It didn’t feel real at all.The sensations coming in through the five senses were vivid, but all he wished was to wake from the dream as soon as possible.He simply thought he was quenching his thirst inside a dream.Slurp… slurp…He shoved his head back into the puddle and drank mindlessly again when—“An Oriental slave bastard can run all he wants. Heh-heh.”Someone came up and prodded him with a boot.When he lifted his head, a white man stood there with a sneer. From Lee Maksan’s memory, one of the men hired by the slaver.In Joseon terms, he was a slave catcher.For him to get this close without me noticing!His body was not right.Seeing Lee Maksan’s wavering eyes, the man grabbed a fistful of hair.When his face was yanked back, the man spat and opened his mouth.“I’d love to cut off all your limbs. Tch. Be grateful you’re a slave.”Smack.A slap across the cheek, a fall, then the kicks came.Thud, thud!His face twisted; his body trembled.Pain in the body. Being beaten made him realize it.That this was absolutely not a dream.That he would have to live not as Jo Yookang,but as a Joseon man in the era of the Western frontier.When the reality dawned, the pupils that had been thrashing calmed. The crouching gaze of Lee Maksan went cold.“There are plenty of slaves besides you anyway. I can just report you died in the wilderness.”Boiling with anger, the man stomped Lee Maksan hard enough to crush bone.If he let himself be dragged off like this, more enemies would be waiting, and escape would be even harder.Kill him.The body was a wreck, but just once—If he could seize an opening and wring out his strength, it was possible.And that opening would be when the man’s eyes shifted to anything but him.“Filthy slave trash. Do you know how many days I suffered because of you!”The man seized his hair and hauled him upright.“On your feet, bastard. If I miss my party, I’ll carve strips off you and eat ’em. You’re my emergency rations now. Heh-heh.”He began to drag the staggering Lee Maksan along.Then Lee Maksan deliberately let something drop from his pocket with a tock.“Hm?”The man’s gaze flicked down.A small round metal piece glinting in the rainwater.A pendant that looked like silver at a glance.As his eyes narrowed and he stooped to pick it up—Now!Lee Maksan shot out the handcuffs linked by the chain beside him. In an instant it looped the man’s neck, and he yanked, collapsing over him.From back mount, he flowed straight into a rear choke.“Ghk!”Instead of a forearm, he pressed the carotids with the handcuff chain. He trapped the man’s arm in his armpit to bind it from moving.When his hand couldn’t reach his gun, the man thrashed desperately to tear free of the chain.Veins stood out on Lee Maksan’s forearms, and the man’s fingernails raked his skin as he flailed.From pouring strength into the cuffs, the skin on his wrists peeled, and blood dripped.Bloodshot flooded the man’s eyes.His face went beet red, then turned blue.His desperate convulsions ended in one great spasm, and his body went slack.Even so, Lee Maksan didn’t let go at once.Usually ten seconds to lose consciousness, four minutes for brain-cell damage.Only after confirming he was completely dead did Lee Maksan ease his grip.His strength was already meager. He had wrung out even his last drop to finally manage the kill.“Huff… huff… if this were any other day… a piece of shit like you…”Panting raggedly, Lee Maksan reached a trembling hand to the corpse.The man was separated from his party anyway. It didn’t look like anyone would come here right away.He found the key to the cuffs inside the man’s coat.Thock.He dropped the bloodied handcuffs to the ground, then transferred every bit of clothing, belongings, and gear onto his own body.Is it that you’re small, or this body’s big?Lee Maksan muttered as he looked down at the corpse.The white man’s clothes felt on the small side.With nothing to compare build against, he couldn’t even get a proper read on his own height.It’s just malnutrition. The body’s good.At least his limbs were intact, and his arms and legs were long and straight. His fingers were thin and long, but from hard labor his hands were rough and blunt.Only belatedly did Lee Maksan start moving this way and that to grasp the body and adapt to it.Then he filled a canteen with rainwater and took the man’s long coat and cowboy hat as well.Chewing dried jerky, Lee Maksan stared at the now naked corpse.There wasn’t even a trace of guilt—only calm.Feelings he hadn’t had in his former life would hardly sprout in the era of the Western frontier now.Jo Yookang, possessing Lee Maksan’s body, had no compunction about killing.“Thanks to you, my first start in the West is going to be pretty well-off. I’ll put it to good use.”If the man hadn’t shown up, a kit like this would’ve been a pipe dream.After turning from the body, Lee Maksan took a few steps and stopped.I almost left something important behind.The small metal pendant dropped on the ground that he’d used to draw the man’s eyes.Amazingly, it was the same as the one Eric had given him.It didn’t have a necklace cord attached, but the pendant’s material, shape, and markings were identical.So this is what called me here, is that it.According to the memories soaked into Lee Maksan—When he had fled the slavers and was wandering the wilderness, he stumbled on the pendant.He didn’t know why, but it was clear it had summoned Jo Yookang into Lee Maksan’s body.What on earth was this thing.Why had it hurled him into the era of the Western frontier.He stared at the strange letters engraved on the pendant’s surface.He had no clue…Jo Yookang decided to think simply.That Eric had pulled strings from the sky.That he was telling him to chase his dream in the West he had dreamed of.Whatever the era is.Jo Yookang, in Lee Maksan’s body, chose gladly to enjoy a new life.“Eric! Watch closely from the sky how I live!”Lee Maksan’s voice spread across the wilderness.The Wild West.The land of opportunity.The age of outlaws.He had just danced on the edge of death, but the thrill and the tingle spread through every inch of Lee Maksan’s body. The steady drizzle weakened, and the sun showed through the clouds.There’s got to be a horse somewhere.They wouldn’t have tracked a runaway slave on foot. After circling the area, he found a horse tied to a rock.Neigh—!The black horse kept a wary eye on Lee Maksan, who wasn’t its master. But it had known human hands; after a few strokes it gentled.Small bags dangled around the saddle. There were alcohol and cotton for treating wounds.I can’t die from disease.Hygiene and cleanliness mattered.Trifling illnesses in the future could be deadly in this era.Without proper antibiotics, a small cut could fester and risk tetanus.He disinfected the scratches from fingernails and the raw spots from the cuffs with alcohol, then wrapped them with bandages.The basics are done…Where should he even start.He was lost in the vast wilderness.He had no sense of where he was, or where he should go next.On top of that, problems towered for Lee Maksan.How to handle food, clothing, and shelter.How to overcome the race problem.The biggest riddle was how to live in the body of a Joseon man—an Asian—in this land.Of course, returning to Joseon was one option.From San Francisco, California, he could board a ship bound for China.But—What’s there for me if I go back?Right now Joseon was under King Cheoljong.Lee Maksan was the lowest of the low.Even if he went back, all that would change was going from a Southern slave to a Joseon slave.And the ceiling on what his abilities could win him would be night-and-day different.A dangerous place where he could win everything.The Western frontier—where he could carry out his own justice—was exactly the world Jo Yookang had dreamed of in his former life.“I’ll see this through in America!”With that resolution set, he swung himself onto the horse.Under the hot sun, pressing the cowboy hat down over his brow, Lee Maksan turned the horse north.“Hyah!”Neigh—!Thud.“Dammit… I’ve never ridden a horse.”Dumped in the dirt, Lee Maksan grunted his way back into the saddle.Seven years in the ROK Special Forces.Seven years as a mercenary.A horse was a first.

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