Chapter 34
#34. Blind Date (2)
A quiet café near the Mage Tower.
Since the café was located in a business district, there were hardly any customers besides me now that lunch hour had passed.
‘What kind of menu name is Dirty Matcha Truffle Chocolate Shake?’
What a chaotic mess.
Still, the taste itself wasn't bad.
“By the way, I didn't expect to be rejected so decisively.”
It had already been an hour since I left the Mage Tower, but Choi Yeong-ok's completely unexpected answer kept circling through my mind.
-...I'm sorry, but a professor at the Mage Tower can't privately teach a student who isn't affiliated with her laboratory. Especially not during vacation.
Honestly, I thought she would gladly help me.
Compared to what happened with Jeon Hye-seong, I thought this was a request she could easily grant.
“It can't be helped.”
It wasn't as though I could throw a fit there, and I was already deeply indebted to her just from the help I had received with Jeon Hye-seong last time.
Besides, it wasn't as though I had gotten absolutely nothing out of it.
-Oh, right. I almost forgot. Are you free two days from now?
-Two days from now? Yes, well... I don't have any particular plans.
-That's great. Then would you like to meet my granddaughter that day?
The first meeting with the blind date prospect I'd finally secured was just two days away.
Honestly, I was fucking nervous.
The photo I received from Choi Yeong-ok showed a female mage beautiful enough to stand beside Iris and Cheon Yeo-hwa without losing out in looks.
“My luck with women sure has changed all of a sudden.”
I wasn't sure whether it was good luck with women or trouble from women, but as someone who had never even gone on a blind date, I couldn't help feeling unsettled. Whether in a good way or a bad way.
I was both nervous and excited.
Ding-
Just as I was sipping the bizarrely named drink, a text message arrived on my phone.
[S Bank]
[Withdrawal 200,000 won]
[Balance 22,171,280 won]
“Ah, rent.”
It was already time to pay rent.
Thanks to selling the magic stones, I no longer had to struggle with rent, but my heart still ached whenever I saw that only about twenty million won remained after buying all the survival supplies before meeting Cheon Yeo-hwa.
“...Should I go check out a Gate?”
Thanks to my mage registration card, I could enter Gates without a Hunter license.
Besides, parties stronger than me would be eager to recruit me as a mage, so getting carried would be easy.
‘Back in the underground dungeon, I wasn't even a backliner—I fought like some kind of warrior.’
Thinking about it now, I felt a little wronged.
I'm not some untouchable warrior—I'm a noble mage!
Then why was I dodging swords swung by monsters and turning into a hedgehog from arrows?
It was time for me to return to being a mage, one of the two great pillars of nobility alongside healers.
“Or maybe learning swordsmanship would be good too.”
To properly use the ‘Imperial Army's Mana Blade’ I had bought last time, I should learn swordsmanship.
Besides, learning swordsmanship would mean exercising as well, so it would be a good opportunity to build up my stamina and strength.
In fact, I had felt how poor my stamina was during both the underground dungeon and the mountain hike with Cheon Yeo-hwa.
Fortunately, using magic to support my body had kept me from collapsing from exhaustion, but I couldn't rely on magic to make up for everything forever.
I had realized that the stronger my physical foundation, the greater the efficiency I could draw from the same amount of mana.
“I wonder if there's somewhere near home that teaches swordsmanship or some other kind of physical training.”
Proper swordsmanship was expensive to learn.
At expensive places, annual membership fees could run into the billions of won.
Of course, I had no intention of going to one of those places. I didn't have the money, either. I just needed somewhere that could properly teach me the basic movements of cutting, stabbing, and swinging.
“...Oh? There actually is one near home?”
I searched the map app to see whether there was anything like a swordsmanship dojo near my home, and there really was.
[Full Moon Swordsmanship Dojo]
I never expected there to be a dojo around that hillside neighborhood.
“Hmm... Should I go for now? If it's a decent place, I'll sign up. Otherwise, I'll have to look somewhere else.”
After that, I planned to visit a Gate and earn some money.
What else was I supposed to do if I rested?
I might as well earn some money.
If I wanted to repay my jeonse loan and drive around in an imported car, I had to keep busy.
***
Ten minutes on foot from home.
There really was a swordsmanship dojo there. However, because of the nature of the hillside neighborhood, most of the buildings were severely run-down, so the place looked terribly shabby.
It was amazing that there was even a business operating in a place like this. It was a neighborhood where even convenience stores went out of business because there weren't enough people.
“Does anyone actually sign up?”
I had a feeling that if I paid for a year, the place would go out of business two months later.
Still, it seemed like a waste to turn around after coming all the way here. I should at least look inside before deciding.
I cautiously entered the building.
Jingle-
When I opened the dojo door on the second floor and went inside, a fairly spacious and clean interior greeted me.
Along with the desolate sight of not a single person in it.
“...Are you actually open?”
“Do you think we'd leave the lights on if we had gone out of business?”
“?!”
Startled by the presence behind me, I spun around.
A woman who looked about two heads shorter than me was standing there.
‘When did she...?’
Until she spoke, I hadn't even noticed or sensed that someone was standing behind me.
Perhaps because I had fought monsters in the underground dungeon and even killed bandits, my first thought was that if this had been real combat, I would have been beheaded before I could react.
“Scared?”
Moreover, when I looked closely, she wasn't human.
She had wolf ears on top of her head and a wolf tail trailing from her tailbone—a beastkin, the second-most populous race after humans.
“So, human, what brings you here?”
“Isn't this a swordsmanship dojo? Obviously, I came to look around and decide whether to register.”
The beastkin woman looked at me strangely.
Silver hair and golden eyes... Even allowing for how unusual other races' appearances could be, I'd rarely seen anyone so striking.
“Are you a Hunter?”
“No.”
Her speaking so casually had been a little irritating from the start, but most wolf beastkin had personalities like that.
They were an ill-mannered race. Whether someone was older than them or a complete stranger, they didn't care in the slightest.
At least they tended to show respect if someone was stronger than them, but most carnivorous beastkin had that tendency.
In any case, they were famous for having foul tempers and frequently picking fights in the streets, and their outstanding physical abilities meant they beat their opponents to a pulp.
There was a reason people said that if you wanted to hear a wolf howl, you should walk past a police substation.
“One million won a month.”
“...Excuse me?”
“If you pay for a year, I'll do it for eleven million won.”
Was this woman insane?
Even if this was a swordsmanship dojo, how could she charge a million won a month at such an old dojo that didn't seem to have a single student?
“Do you even want to stay in business?”
I had meant to keep that thought to myself, but it slipped out of my mouth.
“You can afford it anyway, can't you? If you want to learn somewhere else, ten million won a month is the baseline.”
“Even so, paying a million won every month in membership fees is...”
Honestly, I had been leaning toward registering, but one million won a month was far too expensive.
“You still say that after seeing this?”
Vwoooom-
What shattered my hesitation was the vivid blue energy surging from the tips of the wolf beastkin woman's fingers.
It wasn't sword qi, which was said to be usable only by experts at least as skilled as B-rank Hunters, but sword force, which was said to be usable only by the tiny number of monsters known as A-rank Hunters.
“What do you think?”
That day, I paid eleven million won in a lump sum and bowed to pay my respects to my master.
***
Although registering at the dojo and heading home went smoothly, my head was filled with unresolved questions.
“Why would someone like that be at a swordsmanship dojo in this hillside slum?”
I considered asking her why, but it didn't seem like something I should interfere with, so I held my tongue.
What if I somehow offended my master and she offered me a refund?
Learn from an A-rank Hunter for a mere ten million won a year?
Even if I paid ten million won as a daily fee, it obviously wouldn't be enough.
At this point, wasn't it basically a donation of talent?
“Full Moon Swordsmanship Dojo... It doesn't show up no matter how much I search.”
It appeared only on the map, and there wasn't a single post about it on any blog or online café.
Naturally, there were no posts about the wolf beastkin woman who ran it, either.
Someone that skilled would have become the subject of rumors whether she liked it or not.
I couldn't deny that I felt a little uneasy, but I resolved to focus only on the fact that an A-rank Hunter was going to teach me personally.
There was no point racking my brain over something I knew nothing about; it wasn't as if I would find an answer.
If a problem arose later, it wouldn't be too late to think about it then. I had the otherworld dating app and connections in the Seongbuk Choi clan, after all.
“Now, should I find a suitable Gate? It's still daytime, so there should be some posts looking for parties.”
After obtaining my mage registration card, I was able to use the Hunter-exclusive app operated by the World Hunter Association.
With it, I could find a suitable party without worrying about bait posts, and I could also see the list of Gates I could enter right away.
“A D-rank party...”
Unfortunately, the only party that looked suitable for me right now was a D-rank party.
Honestly, I had wanted to get carried as a mage, but a D-rank party wasn't quite what I had in mind.
If I compared my current abilities to Hunter ranks, I was probably around D+. The monsters I had dealt with in the underground dungeon had been D or D+ rank, after all.
But if I joined a D-rank party, I wouldn't be getting carried—I would be the one driving the bus.
“Nothing suitable...”
Ring-ring-ring-
Just as I had been looking through party recruitment posts for a while, I received a call from an unknown number.
Voice phishing?
“Hello?”
-Hello.
An unfamiliar woman's voice came through the phone. It was slightly low and sexy, too.
-Am I speaking with Mr. Kang Hyeon-woo?
“Yes, that's me, but who is this?”
There wasn't a woman I knew who looked like she could get five million subscribers from ASMR alone.
No, actually, I didn't know any women at all.
-My name is Choi Hye-na. Did you hear about me from your grandmother?
“Ah.”
I wondered who it was, but it turned out to be my blind date prospect.
-Something suddenly came up two days from now, so could we meet this evening instead?