Chapter 119
Ian had successfully finished moving again this time. With Cecilia's help, and because he already remembered the entire furniture layout, he didn't have to wonder where anything should go, so he got it done relatively quickly.
Naturally. This too was one of the charms of regression, wasn't it.
“Phew…….”
He sat on the living room sofa and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
The season between spring and winter was still cold, but not so cold that it could steal the heat from hard work. He took a long swig of cold water and looked over at the big TV.
A black screen that looked as if a photo of the moon and little stars might start flowing out at any moment. But the TV remained quiet, and only ordinary songs flowed softly from the modern speakers. There was no sign of Mozart's phantom or any siren song.
Proof that the timeline had come back perfectly. Ian leaned back against the seat and looked up at the pure white ceiling.
‘...As expected of a god, he regressed me perfectly.’
He'd already finished checking that everyone else had survived. The Godmother, Han Yuna, Lee Seo-ah, Kim Yul, Kim Iseo, Albert, Benjamin, and the rest. Everyone he knew was living ordinary lives.
The problem was that the vampires were still alive too, but that in fact proved that nothing had been tampered with in the timeline. It seemed he had literally only regressed Earth's time.
‘I guess I should be satisfied that Eddie and that unicorn bastard aren't alive anymore.’
With that thought, Ian summoned the Hand of Recreation. The pure white grimoire usually gave off a brief vibration whenever it was held, but not this time. It was calm, and quiet.
“…….”
Lea had said that using the grimoire would be difficult for a while. He could still use Recreation magic three times a day, but he couldn't spam it like a madman anymore. That alone was enough to keep it performing at full strength, but it couldn't help feeling disappointing.
‘Well, if you think of it as the price of summoning a foreign god and regressing, it's actually pretty cheap.’
Ian set the grimoire on the table and let out a long breath. After a moment, he took a cigarette and went out into the yard.
The bike parked in the corner of the yard had been idling its engine to prevent the battery from dying. The sound wasn't very loud. If you weren't paying attention, you wouldn't hear it at all.
The Cartel's custom low-noise tuning really had been worth the money.
Sizzle.
He put the cigarette in his mouth and lit it. The gray sky looked gloomy enough to pour down snow or rain at any moment, but the flame on the cigarette tip was bright.
He leaned against the wall and blew gray smoke toward the gray sky.
“...It's a little strange.”
The world had returned to normal. The foreign god that had mimicked the moon had been annihilated, and the moon and the sun had returned to their proper places. And the memory of the world before that, the memory of the destroyed timeline, was held only by Ian. If you wanted to be specific, he was practically no different from a regressor.
Of course, if you looked at the details, he wasn't a real regressor, but still, maybe he was some kind of pseudo-regressor.
Still, that wasn't really an important title.
Ian's identity wasn't a regressor but a magician. Even if time had been turned back and only Ian remembered the previous world, nothing changed. He was still a magician.
“Phew…….”
Ian roughly rubbed out the cigarette he'd finished smoking and threw it into a portable ashtray.
The ashtray was starting to get dirty too. It seemed like it was about time to replace it.
It was a consumable anyway, and since he'd used it for so long, it seemed better to let it go now. It wasn't expensive to begin with.
‘Come to think of it, the Cartel app sold an ashtray too. Maybe I should buy that.’
He continued his thoughts and went back inside.
He decided not to think about regression and all that anymore. Naturally, it was all already in the past. The world's time had gone back, and Lea had personally killed the foreign god, so there was no longer any reason to keep guarding against the moon. It was time to face reality again.
That didn't mean he would let his guard down completely. Since time had been turned back by the foreign god's power, who knew what side effects might appear.
Worse, the head of Laplace might notice the regression and try something underhanded. It was only right to prepare as much as possible.
‘At this point... I might even be able to rebuild my failing hearing. Should I start with that first?’
An alchemical item that cleanly bypassed a regeneration user's abilities and smashed their hearing to pieces.
He wasn't sure whether using a mage's ear had created that much power. Without a control group, it was hard to compare.
But it had already been confirmed that using a mage's ear as an ingredient made it possible to break through regeneration too. If he made one, it'd be useful to have on hand when needed.
Indeed, the corpse of a skilled mage was a treasure in itself. Eddie, apparently, had been the embodiment of a true benefactor who gave generously both in life and in death.
After sending him a thank-you, Ian took only the things he needed and left the house.
He pulled the helmet on and climbed onto the bike. The bike, which had been quietly warming up, started itself as soon as it felt his weight.
[Welcome, Mr. Shin Ian. Where would you like me to take you?]
“To the workshop. Just handle the gears yourself.”
[Understood. For a comfortable ride, I will activate the heated grips and heated seat.]
Bzzzz.
In an instant, the grips and seat grew pleasantly warm. Ian smiled faintly, lowered the visor, and gently let out the clutch. As power began to transfer, the bike slowly moved forward.
He rode the bike all the way to the public road, then twisted the throttle on the open stretch. The bike shifted gears on its own to match the speed, and Ian raced toward the workshop with the cold wind in his face.
Before long, he arrived at the officetel. He parked the bike in the empty lot and took the elevator up to the floor where the workshop was located. The elevator ghost quietly pressed the button and vanished.
Bzzzz.
The elevator shot upward and came to a stop. Ian rubbed his stiff neck with his hand, opened the workshop door, and went inside.
A room where not a single ray of light entered because the curtains completely covered the windows. He expertly turned on the lights, checked the aquariums, casually dropped his helmet on the sofa, and then yanked open the refrigerator.
“It's been a while since I saw this face too.”
Inside the refrigerator, Eddie's head, with its skull split open, sat all by itself.
As before, he cut off Eddie's ear, soaked it thoroughly in salt, and ordered the guard ghost to bring bugs. The ghost somersaulted away to go exterminate the insects in the officetel.
Since it was alchemy he'd already tried before, pulling out the necessary materials was easy enough without even consulting the grimoire.
Ian laid the materials out one by one on the crafting table, and while the ear was being salted, he sprawled on the sofa and leafed through the grimoire.
‘What was the most impressive thing you could make with the Great One's, uh, whatever?’
Thanks to Lea, he'd found out that the 'Great One' the grimoire talked about meant a foreign god.
But a foreign god wasn't something easy to kill. It was a being you could only barely neutralize after twisting yourself inside out and praying madly to the heavens. Besides, you couldn't say for certain that the foreign god would spill bodily fluids or drop chunks of flesh in the process.
The foreign god's body was that hard to obtain.
And just as hard as it was to obtain, the things you could make with that material were incredible.
[Hourglass of Time]
[Rewinds the world's time by one week.]
[Materials: a part of the Great One's body, 1 hourglass, 500 g of fine desert sand, 1 meteorite.]
[Defiant Brooch]
[Limited to 3 uses, ignores death.]
[Materials: a part of the Great One's body, 15 beast hearts, 25 gemstones, 1 kg of silver.]
[Suicidal Lullaby]
[Anyone who hears the song coming from this device will take their own life.]
[Materials: a part of the Great One's body, 1 radio, 2 meteorites, 3 L of oil.]
Every single one was absurd.
The Hourglass of Time went without saying. It was basically a one-use regression device. If he only had it, no matter what happened to the world, a single click could send him back one week.
The Defiant Brooch's effect was weaker than the hourglass, but an ability that ignored death three times was by no means something to look down on. Combined with summoning creatures of the Outer Sea, it was basically the same as calling an apex predator with no cost at all, so in terms of synergy, this was better than the hourglass.
The lullaby itself was broken. The ability to make any being commit suicide. What mattered here was the phrase 'any being.'
If, quite literally, it could make 'any being' take its own life, then it should even be possible to instantly kill an enemy you had no hope of fighting. Foreign gods were no exception.
‘A foreign god on Lea's level might be able to resist, but there are far more that aren't. Even the moon—if I had this, I could have killed it easily.’
It wasn't just the moon. Most foreign gods that dared stick their heads out toward Earth could be handled with a single lullaby. The problem was that the radio's range was unknown, and it would be hard to make sure only the foreign god heard the song. If he messed up, everyone nearby could end up committing suicide en masse.
But even with that kind of risk, the effect itself was highly tempting. If need be, it could also be used for mass killing, so it was hard to think of the risk as just a risk.
There were quite a few other alchemical items that used the Great One's body. But every one of them required other materials that were anything but ordinary, so for now they were all difficult to make.
“……Hmm.”
Just in case, Ian searched the Cartel app for meteorites. Then, after seeing that the price easily soared past hundreds of millions of won, he flung his phone away.
Maybe because they were meteorites with a very high ritual value, the prices had gone completely insane. He had heard they were items astrologers couldn't get enough of, but he hadn't expected it to be this bad.
‘It's not like I couldn't buy it if I worked a bit, but even so, the financial hit is too big. It's hard to buy on impulse.’
Since supply couldn't keep up with demand, there was nothing to be done. Ian let out a heavy sigh and lay down on the sofa.
‘Is the brooch at least worth trying...? No, let's look around a little more first.’
Since these weren't materials he could get easily, this was the time to think carefully.
So Ian spent a long while poring over the grimoire, and only when night had fallen did he close it, promising to continue another time.
*
Before long, the day he had begun the vampire request arrived. Ian, just as before, stood alone in front of the tunnel and smoked away.
“…….”
Inside the tunnel, evil spirits swarmed. Some of them even gestured toward Ian, who was standing alone, as if telling him to come in.
Naturally, he wasn't bewitched. His mental barrier was far too thick to be taken down by mere evil spirits.
“Phew…….”
A morning in early March.
There had been a light snowfall in front of the tunnel leading into the village. It wasn't much, but enough to turn the road white.
There weren't any footprints. He couldn't find a single trace that anyone had come through.
For Ian, that was a welcome sight. He rubbed out the finished cigarette in his newly bought ashtray, then grinned and put a hand in his pocket.
“Let's go.”
He slowly made his way toward the tunnel.
He didn't have any companions moving with him. He hadn't called anyone to begin with.
There was nothing he could do about that. He did regret the promise he'd made to go together all this time, but he'd recently realized firsthand that calling people vulnerable to mental control would only turn them into baggage.
Mind reading wasn't the same as mental control, but if their mental barriers were weak and they ended up exposing information to vampires for no reason, it was far better to move alone. Calling in companions was better when dealing with guys who had nothing to do with mental powers.
Of course, a foreign god's mental attack and a vampire's mind reading probably wouldn't require mental barriers of exactly the same level. There would surely be some who could resist.
But what if? Since the moon's real beginning had taken place here, Ian had no choice but to be cautious about this request. That was why he chose to move alone.
Well, maybe because there was no one watching, he felt fairly at ease.