Chapter 12
012 – I Am an Army
Something was bothering me.
The people on the Monkey Gallery called themselves ‘magicians.’
└There’s no such thing as a wizard in this world lol
No such thing as a wizard?
I felt my mind go hazy, wondering what on earth that was supposed to mean.
Soon, three or four more comments appeared.
└Ganada Magician: If you don’t know, memorize it. Magicians are people who use makeshift methods (= magic tricks) to do things humans can manage if they try hard enough.
└Ganada Magician: Wizards are bastards who do things that are impossible no matter how much time, effort, money, and care you pour into them, got it? But no such bastards actually exist in this world.
└Ganada Magician: For example, imagine someone firing a fireball from their palm and burning down a building. Even monkeys who can’t use magic could do that with oil and a lighter. So it’s not wizardry; it’s a magic trick.
└Anon (54.21): This guy’s burning all three of his daily comments on such low-grade bait lol
└Anon (99.121): Guess he couldn’t hold back lol
It was an explanation of only a few sentences.
Even so, I felt like I could vaguely understand.
For example, suppose I learned a technique called ‘Magic Bullet’ that let me fling a pebble at the speed of a bullet.
Let’s say it had enough force to punch through a frying pan.
That would be an impressive technique in its own right, but…
It might actually be easier to just shoot a gun.
So ‘Magic Bullet’ wasn’t wizardry. It was a magic trick.
And the people who used it were called ‘magicians,’ not wizards.
I suddenly remembered the magic circles of Sealing and Opening I’d learned.
The Sealing magic circle could be replaced with a lock, and the Opening magic circle with bolt cutters.
Then… had what I’d been doing actually been magic tricks?
Was I a magician, not a wizard?
“Ah, could that be why that guy in the black suit…?”
I’d asked him if he was a wizard.
But he’d snorted at me, as if I’d told him a vulgar joke.
Because there’s no such thing as a wizard in this world─.
At least, that’s what these senior magicians claimed.
But was that really true?
Bori-bori had definitely called me ‘Meka Chef.’
That word definitely meant ‘wizard’ in ancient Aramaic.
And I could see the demon Bori-bori, even though nobody else could.
Could an ordinary person see a demon, no matter how much money, time, and care they put into it?
Could they order jjamppong for a demon and feed it tiramisu cake?
No! I didn’t think so.
Maybe that meant I was the first wizard in this gallery!
The thought made me a little excited, but…
At the same time, I felt I needed to be careful.
What if people found out I was a wizard?
The Men in Black, those people in black suits, might suddenly burst into my house.
Then they might dissect my brain, put it in formalin, and run experiments on it.
“…I hope that’s just my paranoia.”
For now, I should hide the possibility that I might be a ‘wizard’ as much as possible.
I should also investigate ‘Demon Bori-bori’ carefully, without making anyone else think I was strange.
In that sense, I was glad I hadn’t made my first post in the gallery something like 「Anyone know a demon nobody else can see?」
Anyway.
The ‘Monkey Gallery’ had given me more useful information than I’d expected.
Things like making holy water and protective gear.
# # #
====
Author: Oseonjok Exterminator
Title: Ingredients Needed to Make Holy Water
Sea salt, green onion, 100 g of frankincense, 200 ml of purified water
First, roast the sea salt for about ten minutes, lightly scorch the frankincense, then mix them together.
Sea salt is best, if you can manage it, and Hojari frankincense is the best. Anything below that honestly isn’t much better than having none at all.
Mix the salt and frankincense together finely for about ten minutes, then pour in clean water.
You can use water from a purifier, or bottled water from a convenience store if you don’t have one.
Anyway, once you’ve added the bottled water, stir the hell out of it with a green onion stalk.
Catholic tradition says hyssop or basil is better, but green onions seem to work better in Korea because of our shamanism.
Keep stirring, and once all the frankincense and salt crystals dissolve, you’ll have a weird-smelling liquid. That’s holy water.
Honestly, it’s not very holy, despite the name.
But whatever the name or principle behind it, it works well on anomalies.
====
“It’s just like a cooking recipe.”
For someone like me, who’d handled all kinds of odd jobs and recipes at a two-star restaurant, it wasn’t a complicated recipe.
“But green onions must be expensive these days….”
Hojari frankincense alone cost 50,000 won per 100 grams.
Where was I supposed to get that kind of money when I was having trouble paying my utility bills?
Maybe I could replace the green onion with the onion in my fridge.
In cooking, green onions and onions are basically interchangeable.
And the frankincense… Maybe I could use some cheap perfume I’d bought ages ago and left lying around?
“Keh-heh-heh, cooking is all about improvisation.”
And so, the cooking began.
I roasted refined salt and mixed it with perfume. I’m not even kidding—it smelled like crap.
Then I poured in water and stirred it around with the fist gripping the onion. It just kept getting worse.
“Cough, that really clears your sinuses.”
I transferred the finished liquid from the pot into a 500 ml water bottle.
Still… I wasn’t sure this really counted as holy water.
Wasn’t it just weird-smelling water?
Maybe the ingredients really did have to be the right ones.
“………!!!”
But all of a sudden, Bori-bori flinched and grimaced.
Then Bori-bori covered its nose and hurried off to the bathroom.
“Oh?”
A liquid that could drive away the demon Bori-bori with nothing but its smell.
Maybe it wasn’t holy water, but hadn’t I made something else, at least?
“Ugh, but this smell is giving me a headache.”
I wondered if this was what it would smell like when middle-aged women and men wearing overpowering perfume pressed against each other on a packed subway during rush hour.
Before my stomach turned any more, I screwed the bottle cap shut tightly.
The smell still seemed to be seeping out, so I drew the ‘Sealing’ symbol on the cap, too.
I didn’t forget to open the windows wide and air out the house.
For the record, Bori-bori didn’t come out of the bathroom until a while after dinner time.
Bori-bori had seemed displeased by the smell, but only started wagging its tail after eating two bowls of the curry I’d made for dinner.
“Mwehehe.”
# # #
When you make something, you want to taste it or feed it to someone.
Holy water was no different.
I was itching to test how well it worked.
‘Should I go back to the basement of Dori Building?’
I pictured the place in my head, then shook it off.
That wasn’t somewhere I should go right now.
The Monkey Gallery’s nationwide haunted-house rankings had classified it as a ‘Hohwan-class’ danger zone, of all things.
From what I’d learned while lurking on the gallery, the danger levels of the mysterious and the uncanny were divided into roughly three tiers.
The first was Dusk-class.
The lowest tier, like a dark shadow. About one or two people went missing each year.
The second was Hohwan (虎患)-class.
A level where someone disappeared about once a week, as if they’d been carried off by a tiger in the old days.
Its difficulty was dangerous, like a hungry tiger.
The last, third tier was Gwima (鬼魔)-class.
From this level onward, there were too many variables. If you were unlucky, it could turn into a mass disappearance that wiped out an entire neighborhood.
The ranks of magicians who dealt with anomalies followed the same criteria.
If you dealt with a Dusk-class anomaly, you were a Dusk-class magician.
Clear a Hohwan-class anomaly, and you were called a Hohwan-class magician.
“Come to think of it……”
Dori Building had been rated Dusk-class because nobody had died there.
The people in those black suits must have given it that rating.
The *Dusk-class* label on the contract I happened to see when I was applying for night security work at that building was probably their doing, too.
But the people on the gallery couldn’t clearly identify what was down in that basement, so they’d provisionally classified it as Hohwan-class.
In other words, it wasn’t a place for a transfer student who’d only just tried roasting salt water to stick their head into.
I did want to test what I could do, and how far I could go.
But I didn’t want to die.
Honestly, scary things were still scary, just like before.
So what should I do?
Eager to show off my abilities, I started browsing through internet posts.
Then I found a post.
I called right away.
“Hello. You’re looking for help, right?”
Time passed, and the next morning arrived.
I woke up to a tickling sensation at the tip of my nose.
Sshak—.
When I opened my eyes, Bori-bori was curled up on the cushion, as if nothing had happened.
It had been a few days since Bori-bori started waking me up.
I suddenly got curious.
“Bori-bori, don’t you sleep?”
I didn’t think I’d ever seen Bori-bori sleep.
“……”
There was still no answer.
After taking care of breakfast with chicken breast and protein supplements, I headed to Cheongdo-dong, the neighboring neighborhood.
It was about a thirty-minute walk.
Swee-o, swee-o.
Eo-ship, eo-ship—.
Jjejejejejejejeje—.
The weather was scorching, and the cicadas were screaming noisily.
Honestly, at this point, they weren’t ‘crying’ so much as ‘barking.’
Wearing a tracksuit top lined with aluminum foil on the inside in that summer heat, I felt sweat trickle down my forehead.
Aluminum-foil armor.
I’d made it because the gallery said it was effective against anomalies, but I didn’t know if it would actually work.
The thing bothering me right now was…
‘…I really should’ve brought the aluminum-foil hat, too.’
…But! Bori-bori had growled at me when I put the aluminum-foil hat on!
It wasn’t that Bori-bori was wary or afraid of me. Bori-bori had looked at me with contempt, as if to say, “Look at that guy doing something weird!”
By the time I’d finished making excuses to myself, I’d arrived at my destination.
“Wow….”
I was a little overwhelmed.
I wondered if there could really be a house with such a huge garden right in the neighborhood next to ours.
‘…There’s even a fountain in the garden!?’
I’d experienced demons and ghosts, but a house with a garden and a fountain somehow felt even more unreal.
The tiled roof made it look just like some grand nobleman’s mansion.
I felt completely intimidated.
‘Get it together. You brought your 「secret weapon」 for once.’
Smack, smack—.
I slapped my cheeks to get a grip, then rang the bell at the front gate.
Then I spoke into the intercom.
“I’m ‘Meteor,’ the one who contacted you yesterday.”
Meteor was my magician alias.
My name was Yuseong, and it carried my ambition to someday become a wizard who could drop meteors from the sky.
Soon, a voice came through the intercom.
━Come in, quickly.
I passed through the wide-open gate and entered the spacious house. Strangers were sitting on the sofas or leaning against marble pillars.
The house seemed to have a staircase leading up to the second floor and another leading down to the basement.
It was my first time seeing such a huge house, and as I looked around, I heard someone snicker at me.
“…What, a transfer student?”
“The homeowner’s really scraping the bottom of the barrel, bringing in every Tom, Dick, and Harry.”
At that moment, I realized.
Those people.
─They were magicians.
At the same time, a loud roar came from the basement stairs.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah let me ouuuuuut get that thing out right noooooow━─!!!”
A scream that could tear your eardrums.
I’d never heard a scream like that in my life, and it felt like everyday life had turned unreal in an instant.
Something was about to begin.
No, maybe it had already been going on for quite some time.