Chapter 104
“The community nickname is UnicornLovingDog. His real name is Park Seok-hyeon. He is 36 years old, a mage who went to the U.S. when he was young and later returned to Korea. They say his parents were gone when he came back.”
An alley in Yongsan.
The two of them moved to a quiet spot and talked as soon as they got out of the taxi.
“Probably dead. Vasago didn’t tell me that much, so I’m not really sure either.”
“It doesn’t seem to be a particularly important matter, so it probably doesn’t matter much.”
“That’s true.”
The Godmother took a sip of the Americano she’d bought on the way here and said.
Ian drank the same drink. The two had more similar tastes than he’d expected.
“As you said, Ian, the magic he uses is a spell that deals with the blood of the pure. He’s a ritual mage, and apparently the blood of those who aren’t pure can’t be used in the spell.”
“No matter how I think about it, the conditions are really unusual. I wonder where he learned magic like that….”
“Magic that handles blood is usually passed down by high-ranking vampires. Park Seok-hyeon will probably be the same.”
A high-ranking vampire, huh.
Ian shook the plastic cup in his hand as he thought about the vampire hunt he’d set as his next job.
The vampires Ian had faced so far were all little more than beasts with almost no reason left in them. Their limbs were grotesquely long, and their skin, pale to the point of being grayish-white, looked closer to a corpse than to a living thing.
The vampire Albert had fought at least seemed to have some intelligence, but even that wasn’t at a particularly impressive level.
In contrast, high-ranking vampires, the ones commonly called vampire nobles, possessed intelligence on par with humans. Passing magic on to someone was hardly impossible.
But if a vampire had taught magic, did that mean all high-ranking vampires could use magic?
‘...No, probably not.’
If all vampire nobles could use magic, Earth would already have fallen into their hands. So it was more reasonable to think that only a few of them could use it.
The vampire Ian was probably going to hunt was likely someone whose powers were closer to psychic abilities than to magic. Mind reading had long since been socially accepted as a psychic power. Vampires were no exception.
Anyway.
Even if he had learned magic from a vampire, nothing would change. Ian finished off the nearly empty Americano and tossed the cup into a nearby trash can.
“How are you going to kill him?”
Ian asked. Even though he’d used the word kill so bluntly, Eunha showed no sign of surprise as she replied.
“If possible, we should wait for the moment he comes out of the house. But if we do that, there could be onlookers depending on where he goes, so it would be hard to pick the right timing. If we’re unlucky, we might miss him.”
“Then an ambush would be better.”
“Right. But to ambush him, we’d have no choice but to go into his residence….”
“Even if he’s a ritual mage, he’s still a mage. The risk is pretty high once we go in.”
Eunha nodded. Ian stared at the old house that had started to come into view in the distance and racked his brain.
Openly remodeling the house? It wasn’t a difficult thing to do. The problem was that it would be hard to absorb the fallout afterward.
No matter how much support they got from the Bureau, if they used magic openly in the middle of the street, there would inevitably be some humans who noticed magic existed. Ian wanted no extra eyes on them either.
Then should they go inside and activate the magic?
It wasn’t a bad strategy. If he could sense the presence inside and respond while dodging every spell that came pouring down, there was no better plan than that.
‘If only Deep Sea Chronicle had been working properly, I wouldn’t have had to worry about this.’
Ian clicked his tongue and asked Eunha for permission before putting a cigarette between his lips. Fortunately, she was the kind of person with overwhelming decency who could fully understand a smoker’s heart. Ian felt his favor toward her steadily rising as he lit the cigarette with his lighter.
The weakest creature in Deep Sea Chronicle, the Messenger. It was something that looked a bit like a jellyfish, or maybe just a mass of tentacles, and it was so economical that it could be sustained with just three ghouls and one animal carcass. If summoned and left loose in the house, it would wander around on its own and devour Park Seok-hyeon, along with the blood and the corpse.
But it was a method he couldn’t use right now. If it had been any other magic, maybe, but summoning magic was still completely dead after the Outer God’s true body appeared. He couldn’t pull out even plankton, let alone the Messenger.
‘If it was going to be like this, it shouldn’t have come out at all.’
Ian silently cursed the master of the Outer Sea and exhaled cigarette smoke. He could feel the grimoire in his bag vibrating violently, but he ignored it. He didn’t have the leisure to indulge the Outer God’s tantrum right now.
“How should we do it?”
Ian asked as he tapped ash into a portable ashtray. Eunha, standing a good distance away from him, tapped her lips with a finger as if she were thinking.
After a long while, she looked back at Ian and asked cautiously.
“...There is one way. It’s a spell I’ve long used in situations like this….”
“Ah, is that so? Then right away—”
“B-but if two people use it together, the image gets a little weird.”
Eunha twirled a lock of hair around her finger. Ian ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and slightly furrowed his brow.
“...What do you mean by the image getting weird?”
“Th-that is….”
“Could it be that we have to take our clothes off, or something like that—”
“N-no, that’s not it!”
Eunha shouted, her face turning red. She hurriedly pulled the black scarf she had packed in her bag back out and added an explanation.
“There’s a presence-suppressing spell on this scarf! B-but if I’m by myself, that’s fine, but to make it work for both of us, we have to, um….”
“...Wear it together?”
“Y-yes….”
Eunha answered in a tiny voice, fidgeting with her fingers. Ian dropped the cigarette butt into the ashtray and closed it, letting out a low hum.
A spell that suppresses presence and a spell that lets you slip from sight are distinctly different. Both had their pros and cons, and each often proved effective in certain situations.
When raiding a mage’s residence, the presence-suppressing spell was the more suitable of the two. Magic circles, unlike eyes, noses, or ears, often sensed an intruder’s presence. Exceptions existed when the mage themselves activated one manually, but in any case, remotely cast magic could be casually thwarted just by erasing one’s presence.
So Eunha’s spell was quite effective in the current situation.
As she said, wrapping the scarf around both of them would look a little odd, but rather than dawdle and waste time for no reason, it was far better to swallow his embarrassment and get it done quickly. Having made up his mind, Ian turned to Eunha and nodded.
“Let’s do it. It’s not like we have any other good option.”
“...Mm. Okay. It’s only embarrassing for a moment, anyway….”
Eunha said that and wound the scarf tightly around her own neck. Then she looked up at Ian and beckoned him over.
“Please come closer.”
He did.
Worried he might smell like cigarette smoke, Ian flapped his coat a few times before standing beside Eunha. Eunha stared at his face up close and swallowed hard. Being this close to a man for the first time in her life made her heart pound on its own.
‘N-no, this won’t do. This is work. He’s not a man, he’s a mage. I can’t think of him as the opposite sex.’
With that self-hypnosis, she wrapped the scarf around Ian’s neck. Her breath, coming out in little huffs, brushed past his lips and nose, but Ian did his best to stay composed as he adjusted the scarf at his throat.
Because it was fairly long, they didn’t need to stand pressed tightly together to move. Their shoulders were bound to touch at that distance.
“Isn’t it uncomfortable?”
“...Hoo, I’m fine.”
Since Eunha was about a head shorter than Ian, the scarf wrapped around both their necks at quite a slanted angle.
Still, it didn’t really choke their necks. It looked like it would come loose quickly if they moved too abruptly or failed to keep pace, but as long as they were careful, there didn’t seem to be any problem. Ian nodded and turned to Eunha.
“Let’s go right away. I’ll match your pace, so move carefully.”
“Y-yes.”
Eunha swallowed hard and slowly started taking steps. Ian followed her, moving at the same pace as he walked alongside her.
A strong fabric softener scent drifted from the scarf. Beneath it, a faint trace of Eunha’s own scent seeped through. If he had to describe it, it was closer to lime.
“…….”
Even if she didn’t want to think about it, the distance was so close that the scent couldn’t help but drift over. Ian acted as if nothing was wrong and tapped his thigh with his fingers. Eunha stole a sidelong glance at him and, hiding the lower half of her face with the scarf, let out a soft huff.
‘...I don’t smell any cigarette smoke.’
She had thought there might at least be a slightly unpleasant odor from having just smoked, but the scent drifting from him wasn’t unpleasant at all—in fact, it was almost sweet. Honestly, she thought it probably wouldn’t matter if she kept breathing it in.
“...!”
At the sudden thought that crossed her mind, Eunha mumbled under her breath and lowered her head. Maybe because she had never dated anyone in her life, she just wasn’t used to this kind of atmosphere….
“...Oh my, look over there. I have no idea what they’re doing, clinging to each other like that in broad daylight.”
“Leave them be. If they’re happy, what can we do?”
The voices of the middle-aged women on the street gently reached Eunha’s ears. Blushing, she pulled the scarf down to just below her eyes.
[How ridiculous.]
Solomon tossed the remark out in a laughter-tinged voice. Eunha furiously thumped the grimoire tucked inside her jacket with her fist.