Chapter 11
A serious magic addict.
Her workshop looked less like a workshop and more like a cursed room. A taxidermied deer head hung on the wall, and all sorts of objects related to necromancy were scattered across the floor.
Because the curtains covered every window, not a single sliver of light seeped into the house. The lights were off too, so the faint glow from the candles and incense sticks was the only illumination in the room. The eerie atmosphere had taken over the space.
To put it kindly, it looked like the house of lunatics obsessed with the occult. At the very least, it was no place a perfectly ordinary high school girl should be living.
But if you called it a place where a mage lived, it wasn’t that hard to understand, so Ian followed her into the room while looking around.
“How is it? Pretty amazing, right? I made it all by myself.”
She said proudly.
“I bought each one with money I earned through blood, sweat, and tears. See that candle over there? That’s one of those indestructible candles that were actually used on exorcists in France. That one alone cost a whopping ten million won.”
“……That’s really expensive.”
“This line of work is just like that. You probably don’t know since you’ve only just gotten in.”
She stopped there, then seemed to realize they hadn’t exchanged names yet and awkwardly held out her hand.
“I’m Lee Seo-ah.”
“I’m Shin Ian. I’m truly grateful for all the help I’ve received in so many ways.”
“……Hmph. Then that’s a relief. More importantly, let’s fix your speech first.”
As Lee Seo-ah took orange juice out of the fridge, Ian stole a glance at the blood bags filling it and politely accepted the juice she poured for him.
“You mean my speech?”
“Yeah. Mages don’t use honorifics with each other. Unless it’s a master-disciple relationship.”
“Why?”
Lee Seo-ah answered his question at once, as if it were only natural.
“Why make yourself look weak for no reason? Mages often use anomalies as magical ingredients, but using other mages as ingredients is actually pretty efficient too. If you look weak, you might get hit from behind and ground up in a blender.”
“Ah……”
“It doesn’t matter with ordinary people. But if the other person is a mage, or if they know I’m a mage, it’s best to act as domineering as possible. So you should talk casually when speaking with mages too.”
“Got it.”
Ian corrected his speech right away. Lee Seo-ah snickered at how quickly he adapted.
“Good. Then shall we get down to business?”
She sprang to her feet and started hurriedly clearing the items off the table. Ian got up to help her, but Lee Seo-ah stopped him.
“You don’t need to help. If another mage touches it, the spiritual power I fed into it weakens. It’s much better if I do it alone.”
Since she put it that way, Ian had no choice. He clicked his tongue and casually set the diffuser he’d brought as a gift by the window.
A faint lavender scent began to fill the workshop.
With fragrance added to the surreal place, the atmosphere felt a little calmer.
Ian left the diffuser there and sat back down on the floor, sipping his juice.
‘More to the point, spiritual power.’
Ian knew exactly what spiritual power was. Since the soul was one of the three components of magic, he couldn’t not know.
From a magical standpoint, human beings are divided into just two concepts: the body and the soul. The moment either one dies, a human can no longer remain human.
If the soul is intact but the body dies, it becomes a ghost.
If the soul dies but the body remains intact, it becomes a corpse.
Here, it’s the former. In other words, spiritual power is pure energy refined from ghosts.
As far as Ian knew, there was only one mage who handled that.
“You studied necromancy?”
“Yeah. Good guess, huh?”
Lee Seo-ah answered while moving a massive, unidentified skull. After grunting as she set the skull down in a corner, she wiped the sweat from her forehead and turned to Ian.
“But don’t ever ask another mage that way. They might take it as a challenge to fight.”
“……What?”
“This line of work is just like that. Things like, ‘What kind of magic do you use?’ or ‘Have you learned this kind of magic?’ are practically unspoken taboos. I don’t really get it either, but that’s just how it is, so I’m telling you.”
“……”
What a complicated society it was.
“Have you ever met another mage before?”
“No. This is the first time I’ve seen one in person too. I know they exist through the online community, but I have no idea where they’re from or what they do.”
Lee Seo-ah naturally stepped aside. Ian dumped the things he’d brought in his bag onto the table and sorted the necessary items by type. Lee Seo-ah, who had been quietly examining the materials he brought, tilted her head at the cube-shaped anomaly.
“What? You said you only caught Palcheokman. This is a different one, isn’t it?”
“I ran into it on the way here. Monkey Dream. You know it?”
“Ah, that one. It’s famous, so I know it too. But why is it still in the real world? Isn’t that something that only appears in dreams?”
“I thought so too.”
Ian let out a long sigh and told her about what had happened on the subway.
After hearing the whole story, Lee Seo-ah tapped her lips with a finger and frowned. Her already fierce face looked even more menacing when she narrowed her eyes.
“This is a pretty serious matter. If an anomaly that should only exist in dreams has intruded into the real world, someone else must definitely have been involved.”
“……”
“Well, whatever. Honestly, that part doesn’t matter. What matters is that you were exposed to the subway’s CCTV.”
“I tried to hide as much of myself as I could.”
“Do you think that’ll be enough? Once there’s evidence, the Bureau will definitely try to find out who you are.”
Lee Seo-ah shook her head, looking fed up.
Apparently she had plenty of experience dealing with the Bureau. She’d probably lived as a mage for quite a long time, so she’d had even more dealings with them.
Ian gave a wry smile, tore open the fish packaging, and pulled out the eyeball.
“But there’s no other way. It’s not like I can fool the surveillance cameras there.”
“Hmm... that’s true.”
Lee Seo-ah said that and crossed her arms as if deep in thought.
Ian left her to it and opened the grimoire to study the alchemy formula.
He had brought everything he needed.
One eyeball from a living creature and the flesh of an anomaly. He had drawn the human blood himself at home and brought it with him, and he bought the water and poisonous herbs before taking the train.
He hadn’t forgotten a single thing. It seemed he could start alchemy immediately.
This was his first alchemy attempt since the primate-killing knife. He had already verified that the knife’s effect was considerable, so the item he was making now should be just as effective.
A tool that could crush the other person’s eyeballs without any risk. Unless he was up against an enemy who was already blind, the value of a tool that sealed off one of the five senses was bound to be high. It was a shame it was consumable, but he could just make another one.
‘I wonder if other alchemists make things like this too.’
He couldn’t be sure. He’d have to meet another alchemist or read some related books to know for sure.
‘I’d like to see the things they make with my own eyes, too.’
Ian thought that as he took out a sheet of paper and spread it on the table.
At that moment, Lee Seo-ah, who had been standing still up until then, cleared her throat and took the bone urn down from the shelf.
She opened the urn, stared at Ian, and lifted a pinch of bone ash.
“No choice. I’ll help you this one time.”
“……With what?”
“The subway incident. How long has it been since you got out of there?”
At her question, Ian stopped what he was doing and checked the time.
“About thirty minutes?”
“That’s a little ambiguous. The Busan branch is pretty slow, but even so, thirty minutes should have been enough to finish securing the scene... They’re probably already erasing memories too. They may have checked the footage long ago. Or they could be checking it right now.”
But.
After saying that, Lee Seo-ah slowly scattered the bone ash in her hand onto the floor.
“If we contaminate the footage now, at least it won’t be too late.”
“Contaminate it?”
“It’s a common ghost story, isn’t it? Ghost-infested videos, a ghost caught on CCTV, that sort of thing. If you use necromancy, summoning a ghost that can do that kind of thing isn’t hard at all.”
Lee Seo-ah used her foot to sweep the bone ash on the floor into a circle. Then she pricked her finger with a needle and dropped a bead of blood onto it.
The blood crawled over the bone ash like a living creature with a will of its own.
Ian was witnessing another mage’s magic firsthand for the very first time in his life.
Ian took a step back, his eyes shining with interest.
Lee Seo-ah gathered a handful of bone ash in her hand, let it trickle down slowly, and moved her lips.
“Come forth. Evil spirit wandering the nine heavens. I, your master of mysteries, command you to manifest here in accordance with my will.”
As soon as she finished speaking.
From the bone ash piled on the floor, a pale arm suddenly burst forth. Soon, it crawled up off the floor and glared at Lee Seo-ah with murderous eyes.
No matter how you looked at it, it was an evil spirit full of resentment. But Lee Seo-ah didn’t panic, and with an expressionless face, gave it a command.
“If you want to resist and perish without ever settling your grudge, go ahead. But if you want to keep wandering the nine heavens, move as I command.”
“[……You, young Taoist. How dare you defy Heaven’s will and command an evil spirit? Are you not afraid of divine punishment?]”
The evil spirit said, weeping tears of blood. Lee Seo-ah snorted.
“That’s not something I want to hear from an evil spirit. Shut up and do as you’re told. You know why I brought you here, don’t you?”
“[……]”
“Hurry up and go. Or should I get rid of you here?”
Lee Seo-ah snapped her fingers. At that moment, a towering woman appeared behind her.
It was her guardian spirit. The moment the evil spirit confirmed its presence, it wailed and crawled toward the wall. The thing passed through the wall as if that were the most natural thing in the world and sped off toward the subway.
Ian looked at the evil spirit with a sour expression, then turned to the guardian spirit.
The guardian spirit, with a kitchen knife lodged in its forehead and blood streaming down, waved at Ian.
Ian, still dazed, waved back awkwardly.
It felt rather strange.