Chapter 35
“Phew... should I take a short break?”
I perched on the workbench chair and took a sip of water.
I was hammering away as usual.
“……”
But over the past few days, I’d picked up a new habit.
Click―
I turned on my smartphone screen.
Then, as if by habit, I opened the banking app and checked my account.
“……”
I stared at it for a long time.
“How many zeroes are in this thing...?”
At first, I couldn’t believe it.
I’d done this knowing it would turn out this way, but once the money actually hit my account, it still didn’t feel real.
It was definitely my account, yet somehow it felt like I was looking at someone else’s.
Even after turning the screen off and on again, the number stayed the same.
I’d always been the kind of person who stayed home and did nothing but hammer away.
I’d lived like that for ten years straight.
Of course, in the game I’d poured everything except living expenses into getting materials or new secret techniques.
Anyway, I didn’t feel all that different, so seeing a number like that in my account was just strangely surreal.
One dagger, one bow, one necklace.
I’d only made and sold three things, and this was the result.
“...Well, not bad.”
It really was nice.
At first, I kept grinning every time I looked at the account for a few days.
But after some time passed, a strange emptiness settled in one corner of my heart.
I sat there wondering why I felt empty even though I’d made money, and soon realized what it was.
I’d been making the same things for days.
The Dagger of Blaze, the Thunderbolt Bow, the Necklace of the Sea.
They were all things I’d made in the game.
So it was boring.
It felt like redoing an overused workbook from start to finish.
I wasn’t very good at tolerating boredom.
You might think it was rich coming from a guy who’d spent ten years doing nothing but hammering, but if you thought about it, I hadn’t lived the same day over and over.
Every single day had been new.
I learned new secret techniques, applied them, and adjusted each item little by little to fit the client’s needs.
There were even times I stayed up for days straight, trying to make something new with skills I’d grown used to.
That was how I endured for ten years.
But now I had money, and I was in a position to do whatever I wanted.
If that was the case, the answer was obvious.
Just like I’d done in the game.
Make something new.
And right in front of me was an entirely new world: the world of sorcerers.
And even a new skill called sorcery.
There would be no end to what I could make now.
“Good... then what should I make first?”
My fingertips were starting to itch.
“Mm-hm~”
While I was at it, a familiar sound reached my ears.
Jin Mu-young was once again parked in a corner of the workbench, tearing into chicken.
He’d clocked in again today.
“Hey, Mu-young. Don’t you have any work lately? Feels like I see you every day.”
After seeing him day after day, he was starting to feel like part of the workshop equipment.
“Aw, come on, why say something so hurtful?”
Mu-young protested, waving the chicken leg around.
“I’m popular too. Of course I can’t compare to you, hyung, but I’m still a Grade 3 sorcerer. Wherever I go, people recognize me well enough.”
That damn Grade 3 sorcerer.
That reminded me of something all of a sudden.
Come to think of it, I’d heard that every family had secret techniques passed down through generations.
Could he do that sort of thing too?
“Hey. So why did you leave your family again?”
“……”
Jin Mu-young quietly set down the chicken leg he’d been gnawing on.
His expression froze for a moment.
Hmm. I guess I asked something I shouldn’t have.
Just as I was wondering if I should apologize for making him feel bad.
“Hyung!!”
Jin Mu-young suddenly brightened and came over.
“I-I’m touched! You’re finally interested in me...!”
“Ah, what are you doing? Don’t crowd me, j-just go over there.”
With him making such a fuss, all desire to hear it vanished instantly.
“Nah, forget it. I’m not listening.”
Go away. Go.
“Tch...”
Mu-young, looking deflated, picked up the chicken leg again.
Whatever.
What did it matter to me how he’d ended up leaving his family?
“Mr. Dohyun―!”
Then Seo Ji-an walked out from inside holding a tablet.
“I finished sorting the request list. Want to take a look?”
My hand scrolling through the screen paused.
“...Are all of these requests?”
“Yep. And this is after narrowing them down as much as possible.”
No matter how far I scrolled, there was no end in sight.
The amounts listed were on a completely different scale than before.
Even just the major jobs from overseas took a while to get through.
Egypt, Dubai.
Even a request officially submitted by the Sorcery Administration Bureau.
“These ones are from the UK. And this one is...”
“...Hah.”
Looks like I really did put on a proper showcase.
No, maybe it was because of that guy, Noh Jin-hyeok.
Since he wasn’t just a sorcerer famous in Korea, word must have spread overseas too.
“Wow... hyung, you really are on another level.”
Mu-young muttered as he peered at the screen beside me.
Just as I was casually scanning the list.
[Korean Sorcery University / Special Sealing Tool (封印具) Production Request]
“...Ji-an. A sorcery university? There’s a place like that?”
“Of course! It’s a school that trains sorcerers. Let’s see... it’s a sealing-tool production request.”
“They say there’s a newly created quarantine zone, and they need a sealing tool to lock away whatever came out of there.”
“But compared to the others, the pay is kind of... stingy, isn’t it? The sorcery university is also in a pretty remote place. Honestly, compared to the trouble you’d go through... maybe take one of the other jobs?”
I’d heard of sealing tools before.
A cursed tool used to seal cursed spirits, like a gourd or a painting, I think.
It was something I’d never made before.
More than anything, I wanted to see what a place that trained sorcerers actually looked like.
“I’ll take this one. I’ll go myself.”
“Huh? Ah... really? There are plenty of other good ones. Ah.”
Ji-an’s eyes went wide.
Then she nodded as if she’d realized something else.
“...Ah. Right. As expected of you, Dohyun.”
Ji-an looked up at me with a strangely moved expression.
“No matter how much your value has risen, you just can’t pass by a place that needs help, right? If a vicious cursed spirit were to get loose, innocent civilians might get hurt... right?”
...No.
I just wanted to see the school, that’s all.
***
After a long taxi ride, I arrived in a small provincial town.
With mountains behind it and rice fields stretched out like a barren plain in front, right in the middle of it all...
a huge university campus was sitting there out of nowhere.
A big sign hung over the main gate.
Taehu University.
“...There was a university like this?”
It was a name I’d never heard before.
The main gate had patches of peeling paint, and the flowerbeds were overgrown with weeds.
A completely empty campus with not even a shadow of a person in sight.
At a glance, it looked like a provincial private university on the verge of closure.
What kind of sorcery were they supposed to learn at a place like this?
As I was looking around the empty campus and heading toward the main gate.
“Ah, you’ve arrived!”
Someone hurried out from inside.
He was a young man dressed neatly in a suit.
Looks like someone from the school had come out early to wait.
“You must have had a hard time coming all this way. I’ll guide you.”
“Ah, yes.”
As I followed him, a small sign stuck in the flowerbed beside the gate caught my eye.
「Taehu Spiritual Training Center ― No Outsiders Allowed」
Training center? Spirituality?
What the hell was all this supposed to mean?
It sounded like something a local cult would put up.
Could they really write it this openly?
“Haha, that?”
The man noticed my gaze and gave an awkward laugh.
“Among ordinary people, there’s a rumor that we’re a school founded by a cult... Of course, we spread it on purpose. To keep people from taking interest.”
The man stopped in front of the gate.
He glanced around briefly, then raised his hand and drew something in the air.
Vwoom―
In an instant, the scenery before my eyes rippled as if submerged in water.
“Please come in.”
The moment I crossed that boundary following the man.
My vision lurched violently once, and the entire world changed.
Modern buildings that looked as if they had been carved from stone, topped with broad, old-fashioned black-tiled roofs.
Between them stood traditional wooden houses.
Even the tacky Taehu University sign had been replaced by another plaque before I knew it.
[Korean Sorcery University]
It had clearly looked like there wasn’t a single person outside.
But once I crossed the boundary, people were everywhere.
People in white robes, people with gat hats pulled low, people hung with all kinds of mysterious talismans.
They were all bustling about in strange outfits.
The grounds themselves looked several times larger than they had from outside.
“This way. Please take your time looking around as we go.”
As I walked deeper into the campus following the man, I kept looking around.
It was fascinating.
Between the old-fashioned halls, students wearing clothes that were hard to tell apart from uniforms or training robes gathered in little groups and chatted.
They laughed, talked, and messed around just like students at any other university.
But because they all looked like that, it felt like I’d been dropped into another world even though it was the same scene.
I was walking around looking at everything for quite a while.
“...Huh?”
Something strange caught my eye among the groups of students.
One person was walking with a monkey on their shoulder, and another was leading a yellow cow.
Another had a chicken perched on their wrist and was calmly talking to it.
What are those?
“Ah, they’re students who handle spirit beasts.”
The man noticed my gaze and explained.
“On campus, they’re allowed to carry them around openly like that.”
“I see.”
Spirit beasts, huh.
Come to think of it, I’d once read about it on Goblinfire.
Just as humans are born with spiritual power, animals are sometimes born with such special abilities too.
But such creatures are so rare that usually their owner raises them over many years by feeding them spiritual power.
Here, it looked like everyone carried one around like a pet.
They really have everything here.
Though dragging a cow around is a bit much.
“Ah, by the way.”
The man walking ahead suddenly turned back as if he’d just remembered something.
“Have you heard the details of the request?”
“Ah, yes. Roughly.”
“Haha...”
Honestly, I didn’t think you’d really come. I was completely surprised.
“Is that so.”
“Yes. It’d be best to hear the details directly from Professor Gu. He teaches sealing studies, and he’s one of the top experts in the field.”
Sealing studies, huh.
“He should be in class right now... Let’s just say hello, then you can have some tea with me while we wait.”
The man stopped in front of a large hall.
It looked like an auditorium.
When he gestured at the air once more,
Swoosh
A faint barrier opened over the tightly shut door.
“Let’s go in.”
***
Truthfully, the guide had been quite shocked for a while now.
Who would have thought the rumor that he was barely twenty was actually true.
How on earth had he become an E-rank artisan at that age?
The young man’s face, which he had stolen a sidelong glance at, looked youthful no matter how you looked at it.
He looked like someone you’d believe was a university freshman.
And that person was the Blade Emperor who had turned the entire sorcery world upside down.
It still didn’t feel real.
The young man simply followed quietly behind him without showing any reaction.
And then, just as he led the young man into the auditorium.
The atmosphere was oddly chaotic.
In the middle of the auditorium.
Several students were hanging onto thick ropes and pulling something in.
White talisman cloths were tied in rows to each rope, fluttering.
At the end, a black mass was thrashing while hanging there.
It looked like sealing practice was in full swing.
But then.
“...Where did the professor go?”
I was told he was definitely in class, but Professor Gu was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, there was only a young woman standing off to one side of the auditorium.
She looked like an assistant.
Only then did the female assistant spot the two people standing by the door.
“Huh?”
she cried out in alarm.
“You can’t come in here!”
“Ah, well...”
The guide bowed politely.
“We brought a guest and came to see Professor Gu.”
“The professor isn’t here right now. More importantly, this person is―”
That was when it happened.
Snap―
With a dull crack, one of the taut ropes snapped.
“A-ah, ah...!”
“No!”
The balance collapsed.
The students holding the ropes were thrown backward.
The bound black mass broke free and shot up into the air.
Fwoosh―
The moment a sinister aura spread in all directions.
The guide’s face stiffened.
‘...That thing.’
At least a Grade 2 cursed spirit.
‘...This is bad.’
The guide quickly loosened the tie he was wearing.
It looked like an ordinary tie, but in truth it was a limiter that suppressed his spiritual power.
The spiritual power he had been suppressing was released.
He immediately took prayer beads from his chest and wrapped them tightly around his hand.
‘...Until the professor gets here... I have to hold out somehow.’
If it was Grade 2, he couldn’t fully subdue it with his own strength.
But stalling for time, at least, he could manage somehow.
Just as he was about to draw up his power...
The black mass whipping around the ceiling suddenly changed direction.
Straight toward the young man standing right beside him, of all people.
“...!”
The guide turned deathly pale.
Whether E-rank or not, an artisan’s role was only to make cursed tools.
That was a completely different matter from confronting a cursed spirit directly.
An artisan who’d never once properly fought a cursed spirit in his life had no way of handling something like that.
“A-artisan! Please dodge!!!”
But then.
The young man didn’t flinch at all.
He slowly reached into his clothes and pulled something out.
‘...A gourd?’
Then he pulled out the stopper and casually held the opening toward the charging black mass.
And then.
Swoooooosh!
The pitch-black cursed spirit mass was sucked entirely into the narrow mouth of the gourd.
Brrrrr― Brrrrr―
The gourd vibrated wildly in his hand.
The young man casually pressed the stopper back in as if it were nothing.
He took out a cord from his clothes and tied it once around the gourd’s neck.
Click.
Once the knot was tied, the thrashing gourd became quiet as if nothing had happened.
“...Useful enough.”
The young man muttered, giving the gourd a slight shake.
“……”
The guide froze in place, prayer beads still wrapped around his hand.
‘...What did I just see?’
It had definitely been a Grade 2-or-higher cursed spirit.
The students who had been sprawled out, the shouting assistant.
All of them stood there with their mouths open, blankly looking back and forth between the young man and the gourd in his hand.
The female assistant finally managed to speak, her voice trembling.
“W-who are you...?”
The young man answered, giving the gourd in his hand a slight lift.
“Ah, I’m just the kind of person who makes things like this.”
***
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