Chapter 87
Before long, time passed and the final day of the holiday break dawned. Ian set to work on alchemy with the materials he had prepared in advance.
As he had decided earlier, the first item he would make was the ‘Blood-Chasing Compass.’ It was better suited to tracking than to searching, but it had more uses than one might expect.
For example, say you lost a companion during a commission. Then you’d have no choice but to go look for the missing companion.
Then the compass would be an excellent tool. It could tell you not only whether the other person was alive, but their exact location as well, so there was no better tracking tool.
It did have the drawback of needing blood prepared in advance, but that was hardly a difficult matter.
Of course, not all partners would readily hand over their blood. But that didn’t matter.
If they provided it, he’d go look for them. If they didn’t, he’d leave them be. That was all there was to it.
“Uuugh…….”
Right before starting work, Ian sat in the chair and gave a long stretch. A cool, relieving sensation as his stiff muscles and joints loosened ran through his whole body.
Rubbing his stiff wrists, he stacked the materials neatly on the table. He placed the most important compass in a corner and carefully set the blood and leeches beside it.
Although the amount of blood required was fairly large, he had already prepared some, so it wasn’t a major problem. The leeches had been bought through the cartel shop as well, so they were in good condition.
In alchemy, the quality of the materials was always what mattered most. Just as a sharp knife was better than a rusty one, and soft silk better than worn cloth. Naturally, fresh blood was better than dead blood, and lively leeches better than feebly wriggling ones.
Fortunately, both were top quality.
Ian smiled in satisfaction and began drawing the magic circle on the paper. A rather complex pattern slowly took shape, and after drawing the final stroke he set the pen aside and let the blood flow into the jar.
As the cold blood flowed in, the leeches reacted at once. Ian waited quietly until they had drunk all of it.
A moment later, the red liquid in the jar had vanished without a trace. In its place, the leeches’ bellies had puffed up a little.
“Eugh…….”
At the disgusting sight, Ian frowned, but he immediately took the leeches out one by one and placed them on the magic circle. The writhing leeches spun around in place as if trapped inside an invisible wall.
Next, he poured in the blood. The blood, poured precisely into the very center of the magic circle, did not spread anywhere else and stayed fixed like a puddle. He carefully set the compass on top of it.
Tzzt…….
The blood seeped into every part of the compass. The pure white surface was dyed red, and the needle spun madly clockwise. A sinister gaze, as if searching for something, began to be felt from outside the window hidden by the curtain.
He ignored it. Ian simply opened the grimoire and recited the spell.
“O gaze of the devourer. A being that deceives God’s gaze, rules over vile things, and hunts them down. Offer me your tongue and receive the Great One’s grace. Thus shall your hand forever hunger for blood.”
The moment the chant ended, the magic circle trembled. The leeches all turned to dust and vanished at once, and the compass needles flicked left and right before freezing motionless at the N pole. The pooled blood gathered at the compass’s center, and the tabletop was left spotless as if the compass had been there from the very beginning.
“Hm.”
Ian picked up the lone compass and, to test its effect, dripped a little of his own blood into the pool gathered at the center.
At that instant, the compass needle snapped around to point directly at Ian. There was no warning whatsoever. As though it had always been pointing that way, the needle fixed itself on him. In a sense, he had become the N pole.
“It’s working.”
The test ended successfully. Ian nodded with satisfaction and gave the compass a few shakes. The blood he had dripped began seeping out little by little through the gap in the compass’s underside. With every drop that fell, the needle slowly turned from Ian toward the N pole.
It seemed he needed some time to replace the blood. He could probably extend the tracking time by continuously injecting the same blood, but replacing it repeatedly in the middle looked impossible.
Well, that was acceptable enough. Ian carefully set the compass in front of the bathroom mirror, then came out into the workshop’s living room and collapsed onto the sofa.
“Phew…….”
Fatigue pressed down on his whole body. Alchemy was all well and good, but this strange drained feeling after using it was really unpleasant. It wasn’t severe, but this sensation of his concentration slipping was anything but pleasant. If anything, it felt closer to irritation.
There hadn’t been any sign of this when he made things in the workshop that he didn’t need to make. What a pity.
Ian leaned back against the sofa and turned his gaze to the Deep-Sea Grimoire on the table.
“…….”
Since the Pygmalion incident, the Deep-Sea Grimoire had been asleep without the slightest movement. Every now and then, it would twitch, but that was all. It no longer showed the usual signs of vibrating or clinging to him.
He couldn’t use summoning magic either. However, the other spells were still usable. Breathing underwater, withstanding pressure, talking to fish, and so on. The useless-but-useful spells worked just fine. The attack and defense spells did as well.
‘Looks like something has gone wrong on the Outer Sea…… The cause is probably that foreign god’s brief descent. The grimoire got overloaded.’
A grimoire written by a foreign god wasn’t on the same level as the foreign god itself. It was far stronger than an ordinary grimoire, but not strong enough to remain unharmed after containing a fragment of a foreign god. Of course it was bound to be overloaded.
‘If it had been summoned by magic, that would be one thing. But it briefly manifested with the grimoire as its core, so there’s nothing to be done.’
Still, if only the summoning magic was sealed, the situation wasn’t all that bad.
Summoning magic was, in a sense, a sort of trump card. From the start, it was hard to use unless the conditions were right. Even if the opponent was a terrifying monster, if it was only one and small, then no matter how many summoning spells he used, survival couldn’t be guaranteed. He might even be eaten in return by a creature from the outer sea.
It was a classic case of the strong bullying the weak. Or rather, in a case like this, maybe it was determined by the size of the prey.
Anyway.
Having one of the many means Ian could use sealed away was nothing to fuss over. Re-creation Magic was still usable, alchemy was still intact, and the other spells in the Deep-Sea Grimoire could be cast without any problem. He’d be able to handle the commission without difficulty.
But well, that was that.
Personally, he wanted it to recover quickly and go back to vibrating and acting playfully as usual.
It seemed he had grown attached to the grimoire without even realizing it. Ian let out a small laugh and tapped the cover of the Deep-Sea Grimoire with his finger.
Bzzz.
That was when the phone he had tossed aside next to him suddenly vibrated.
When he checked it, he saw a call coming in from Kim I-seo. Ian narrowed his eyes and answered it.
“Hello.”
[Ah, Wizard-nim. Hello. I trust you had a good holiday break.]
Kim I-seo spoke in an even tone. Ian answered casually.
“I got through it more or less fine. More importantly, why are you calling?”
[I’m calling to send you a Lunar New Year gift. Is there anything you’d like?]
“...A holiday gift? They do that too?”
[Think of it as a kind of welfare service. Feel free to tell me whatever you want.]
Ian let out a low hum and pondered her question.
She wasn’t the kind of person to call out of the blue just to play a prank, so her claim that she was giving a gift was probably true. If so, there was no need to refuse.
“Just pick anything and leave it there. If I have a chance to stop by next time, I’ll take it with me.”
[Understood. Then would you be able to come tomorrow?]
“Tomorrow? Why?”
[A matter of cooperation has come up.]
A faint clack came over the line. Ian let out a chuckle.
“So that was the real purpose from the beginning?”
[I won’t deny it. However, I judged that putting it in this order would be a good way to avoid upsetting Wizard-nim.]
Kim I-seo replied without any sign of being rattled.
Putting it in that order to avoid upsetting him. It was a fairly excellent judgment. If she had brought up the cooperation first, Ian wouldn’t have responded so gently either. She seemed to have some knack for dealing with people.
After a short silence, Ian leaned back and spoke while staring at the aquarium where the fish were swimming.
“What’s the job?”
[It’s something that happened in a small rural village.]
Kim I-seo answered.
[It’s a very small place called Happy Village, rare to see these days. There aren’t many people living there, and the average age is close to fifty.]
“…….”
[There, a child made a wish, asking that everyone in our village be able to live happily from now on.]
“Did the wish get twisted?”
[No. The wish was granted. But the one who granted it is the problem.]
Kim I-seo continued, a faint rustling coming through the line as if she were adjusting her phone.
[By any chance, do you know the Monkey’s Paw?]