Burn

The man was slammed face-down onto the floor in an instant, unable to put up even a proper fight.

“Ugh…… let go, let go, you bastards……!”

Only after a while did the man come to his senses and struggle, but it was already far too late.

The Cheonhwadang staff quickly fastened black, rosary-like restraints around his wrists and ankles.

Then the bundle of talismans that had been flapping like mad just moments ago fell silent as if it had been a lie.

‘……So there was something like that.’

I didn't know what it was exactly, but it seemed to be some sort of tool that blocked the flow of energy.

I drew back the energy flowing through the sword in my hand.

Wiiiing…….

The vibration of the blade transmitted through my grip gradually faded, and the blue flames flickering over the blade scattered into the air and went out.

I quietly set the now-cooled sword back onto the display stand.

‘What an obnoxious customer, if there ever was one.’

He had caused the trouble himself, then come to carry out a terror attack while wearing a bomb vest.

The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it got.

“I mean, seriously.”

A fire-attribute sword designed to spit out flames, and then water mana―

‘……No, wait. Around here, they called it spiritual energy.’

Anyway, was it really normal to dump water-attribute spiritual energy into a fire-attribute weapon and then throw a tantrum because no fire came out?

“Ugh……”

The man sprawled on the floor let out a painful groan, his joints bent at impossible angles.

‘Tsk.’

I clicked my tongue and looked down at the sword on the display stand once more.

‘……Well, it wasn't as though Cheonhwadang, the place that had designed the circuitry this way, was entirely blameless.’

If it were me, I'd have done it differently.

I would have designed the circuit in advance to account for the user stupidly forcing in spiritual energy of the wrong attribute.

In my mind, the blueprint of the circuit I had just looked at naturally drew itself once more.

The circuit's entry point, running from the hilt to the blade.

I would add another bypass there.

If the infused energy wasn't pure spiritual energy, I'd engrave it so it couldn't even pass through the main circuit.

That way, the energy that couldn't enter the main circuit would naturally take the bypass and flow out of the sword.

Since it couldn't get in to begin with, there'd be no chance of the circuitry being contaminated by energy of another attribute and clashing.

‘……Or I could engrave a circuit inside the entry section that purified the spiritual energy coming in.’

To do that, the inscription would have to be a little more complex, so the hilt would end up a bit longer.

Then the sword's overall center of gravity would shift backward, so I'd have to adjust the blade's thickness or length to rebalance it.

The forge inside my head was already rapidly refining and completing this sword's new blueprint.

‘……Well, that was that.’

Either way, the user's mistake was clearly the bigger problem.

Besides, threatening people while holding their lives hostage was in no way something that could be excused.

“Mr. Dohyun…… Are you all right?”

Seo Jian, who had already backed away quite a distance, cautiously approached my side.

Her face was still deathly pale.

“Yes. Well, as you can see.”

As I answered lightly, the manager, who had been staring coldly down at the subdued man, sent the employees a short glance.

It seemed like an order to finish cleaning up the situation.

Then he immediately turned and came over to me.

The fierce atmosphere from before was nowhere to be seen; instead, he wore a neat smile.

“I'm Cheonghyeon, the general manager in charge of Cheonhwadang’s Goblin branch. Thank you. Thanks to your quick response, we were able to safely handle that unpleasant incident.”

He bowed politely to me.

“What happens to that man now?”

“The Geumri from the Spell Administration Bureau will be here soon to take him away.”

“Geumri? What's that?”

From the way he said it, they seemed to be something like police officers or constables.

“More importantly…… if I may be so rude, may I ask which organization you're with?”

“That―”

“Ah! Just a moment!”

Before I could even speak, Seo Jian quickly cut in and thrust out a business card.

“I'm Seo Jian, acting as this gentleman's representative.”

Manager Cheonghyeon took the business card and looked back and forth between Seo Jian and me.

“Hahaha…… the man I'm representing is dealing with a bit of personal business right now. So it’s a little difficult for him to openly reveal his identity.”

Seo Jian smoothly brushed it off with a sly eye-smile and a plausible excuse.

After watching me for a moment at her words, Cheonghyeon nodded and didn't ask any further.

“I see. I have been rude.”

……

I looked around.

All the customers inside the store had already left, and the employees were busy cleaning up the shattered display cases and scattered talismans.

Well. For now, the bad guy had been taken down.

It didn't seem like there was any more reason to stick around.

“……Then we'll be going now.”

Just as I was turning to leave after saying that.

“Please wait a moment.”

Cheonghyeon stopped us.

He gave the employee beside him a brief instruction, then stepped away into the back of the store for a moment.

‘……What is he trying to do now.’

While he was gone, I casually swept my eyes over the disordered store interior and quietly asked Seo Jian.

“Ms. Jian. What grade does that Hellfire Sword fall into around here?”

“Huh? That sword?”

“I think I heard that guy mention something about a Byung-grade artisan earlier.”

“Ah……!”

Seo Jian clapped as if she had just understood.

“You said you don't really know much about this system, right?”

Summing up her explanation, it was this.

Artifacts are graded with Chinese characters, apparently.

Gap, Eul, Byeong, Jeong, Mu, Gi, Gyeong, Sin, Im, Gye.

That was the same Gap-Eul-Byeong-Jeong order taken from the sexagenary cycle.

But for convenience, nowadays only Gap through Jeong are counted as proper grades, and anything below that is just lumped together as low-grade artifacts.

“So something at Byung grade is treated like a pretty premium item. Most freelance sorcerers would go their whole lives without ever touching one.”

Heh.

I couldn't help the corners of my mouth lifting.

‘So that's how it is?’

A world where that kind of thing was treated like a luxury item.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Just then, Cheonghyeon came walking out from the back, smiling, and held out a thick envelope.

“This is a small token of thanks from us at Cheonhwadang.”

“Excuse me……?”

I took the envelope without thinking, and its solid weight was immediately obvious.

He took one more thing out from inside his jacket.

It was a small black silk pouch with a cord attached.

“This is……?”

“This is a suppression talisman we developed recently. It’s still a prototype, but we thought it might be useful to you….”

Cheonghyeon respectfully placed the pouch in my hand.

‘……A suppression talisman.’

I couldn't tell what, exactly, it was supposed to suppress from the name alone, but I decided to take it for now.

While I was putting away the envelope and pouch, the back of the store caught my eye.

The employees had already almost finished clearing away the broken display cases.

The store that had been thrown into chaos by one customer had already been put back into fairly tidy shape.

‘They really are fast at handling things.’

Then it happened.

Ding―

A short chime rang from the store entrance.

A few men in black suits filed in one after another.

They looked like staff from some big company's executive office, but the man at the front unexpectedly pulled out a thick wooden name plaque from inside his jacket.

“I'm Kang Mujin, a junior fifth-rank Daoist from the Spell Administration Bureau's Investigation Section 1. ……Where is the suspect?”

“This way. Ah, sir. I have some things to wrap up, so I'll be going now. Please feel free to visit Cheonhwadang anytime.”

He bowed once more politely and headed toward the bureau employees.

*

After leaving Cheonhwadang, we stepped back into the busy market alleys.

The moment we turned a corner, Seo Jian, who had been walking beside me, patted her chest and crouched as if she were about to collapse.

“Hoo…… I really thought I was going to die. Mr. Dohyun, weren't you scared at all?”

“……?”

As I stared blankly down at her, Seo Jian let out a pained groan and shook her head, her strength apparently gone from her legs.

“Oh, no, not at all.”

According to her, the terrorist with the bomb-laden Hellfire talismans was scary enough, but what was truly suffocating was the pressure the Cheonhwadang employees gave off afterward.

Especially the general manager, Cheonghyeon, who looked like he had permanently narrowed eyes; his aura alone was enough to give her goosebumps all over.

Energy? Presence?

What on earth was she talking about?

‘Ah…….’

Come to think of it, when that manager first opened his mouth, I had definitely felt the air touching my skin turn momentarily heavy.

I had just assumed it was my imagination.

‘Huh…….’

Come to think of it, objectively speaking, hadn't there been a terrorist in a bomb vest that could go off at any moment standing right in front of me earlier?

And yet I had acted completely unfazed.

Something about that was definitely strange.

‘Was I always this brave?’

Come to think of it, in the game I'd always hammered away calmly even in a dragon's nest spewing breath every day, or in the middle of a demon king's army trying to destroy the continent.

……But that was a game, and this was reality, wasn't it?

“……Well, Mr. Dohyun might not have felt the earlier situation as much of a threat.”

Seo Jian, who had stood up, swept her gaze over my outfit from top to bottom with a strange expression.

“I didn't notice at all in the café. So you were hiding it that thoroughly?”

What kind of misunderstanding was this?

I was hiding what, exactly?

Still blinking, having no idea what she was talking about, I remained silent as Seo Jian went on.

“Ever since you touched the jade flute earlier, it looked like your spiritual energy was leaking out a little. But when you grabbed the Hellfire Sword…… you became visibly stronger.”

‘……I-is that so?’

Indeed, the energy that had only leaked out temporarily before whenever I held a hammer or repaired something now seemed to flow naturally through my body little by little, even without me forcing it.

So this is my spiritual energy?

‘……Is there a way to test it?’

I wanted to see how far my ability and my spiritual energy would hold up in real-world sorcery.

Just then, the talismans laid out at a roadside stall caught my eye.

“Ms. Jian. Where can I buy something like blank paper used for making talismans?”

"Gwahwang paper? They do sell it at that stall over there too…… Why?"

So that's what they call it, gwahwang paper.

"I have something I want to check."

"……What?"

Instead of answering, I walked over to the old man seated at the stall.

After choosing a few sheets of gwahwang paper, Seo Jian, who had followed after me, naturally took out her wallet and paid.

“Then I’ll need cinnabar and a brush too. Let’s see…….”

“I don't sell that.”

The old man answered curtly.

Seo Jian made a troubled face and started looking around other stalls, but I shook my head.

“It's fine.”

Instinctively, I had a hunch.

That I didn't need a brush or ink or anything like that.

I placed one of the gwahwang paper sheets I had just bought on my palm and slowly closed my eyes.

Then I extended the index finger of my right hand and lightly brushed the paper's surface.

Swish.

The rough texture of the hanji.

And the tiny gaps between the fibers tangled within it flowed into my mind as if my spiritual energy were seeing straight through them.

‘Its texture is soft…… and it easily absorbs mana.’

It looked like it might even be able to store a certain amount of mana.

‘So that's how it works.’

“M-Mr. Dohyun……?”

Instead of answering, I concentrated my energy on the fingertip I had pressed against the paper.

I let spiritual energy flow from my fingertip and drew the circuit.

The same structure I had seen in the Hellfire Sword earlier.

I laid down a large main line and branched out the paths where the energy would spread.

A structure that gradually narrowed the passage, driving the pressure to its limit.

And at the end, I engraved a circuit in the shape of a whirlpool so the energy would swirl and build explosive force.

In any case, it was a disposable scrap of paper.

I discarded fine details like durability.

The goal was to pour everything into a single release.

I rapidly refined the blueprint in my head as I etched it with my fingertips.

Tssssss―!

“Wha, wha?!”

Seo Jian's mouth fell open.

Along the path my finger passed over, black geometric patterns began to appear on the yellow gwahwang paper, as if they were being scorched into it.

“H-How is this…….”

I lifted the completed talisman.

The black pattern gave off a faint trail of smoke, took on a red glow, and then subsided again.

“Then…… shall we try it?”

“What, try what……!”

Seo Jian, her face completely flustered, hurriedly trailed after me.

I looked around.

Just then, an empty fenced-off lot with few people around came into view.

“That place is……?”

“Oh, that's where they started building a shopping complex and then stopped halfway through. Nobody uses it now…….”

It was an empty lot, dirty and dug up like a construction site left half-finished.

‘Let's see about this.’

I flung the talisman into the middle of the vacant lot.

Flap, flap.

Then I fed mana into the thread of spiritual energy connected to the talisman, like flicking a tiny spark.

‘Burn.’

That was the moment.

Fwoooosh― KWAAAANG!!

A massive blaze surged up in all directions.