Chapter 52
The first place I headed was the Cheonan lab.
From Paju, where Zephyros's training facility was, to Cheonan...
It was a long way—almost crossing Gyeonggi Province and Seoul from north to south, then continuing through North Chungcheong Province.
Damn, it's far.
A private jet isn't enough. I should get a helicopter, too.
“Huh? Didn't you say you couldn't come because you were going to Paju today?”
“I came from Paju...”
“Oh my. Well, I'm glad you came. I was just about to send you the research results.”
“The results are already in?”
“Yes, the animal testing results. Even though we used only a tiny oral dose and ran the experiment for a short time, the results were clear. It really does feel like Nectar, doesn't it?”
Ohhh, Nectar, ohhh.
“Take a look. These are the results from three groups: old guinea pigs, young and healthy guinea pigs, and guinea pigs with disabilities. The effect was overwhelmingly clear in the older subjects.”
“When you say it had an effect...”
“I mean their telomeres grew longer again.”
“...Could you explain that in plain Korean?”
“Uh, well... it rejuvenates them?”
...That was shocking, but I suppose that's what it would take to call it a superior version of the Elixir.
If the Elixir preserves your lifespan, does Nectar rejuvenate you?
“It affects the disabled subjects, too, but they need far more than the amount required for simple rejuvenation. For example, this one was born with underdeveloped forelegs. Do you see?”
On the side where its foreleg was missing, there was a tiny...
red bump growing.
“Isn't that a pimple?”
“Excuse me?”
Ms. Gyuseon covered her mouth and giggled before shaking her head.
“Its leg is growing. It just stopped there because it didn't get enough.”
“Then if the subject is young and healthy...”
“It still has an effect, but not one you'd actually notice.”
So when I drank it, it was just delicious liquor.
“Honestly, there's no way to describe it other than as a divine substance itself. Now I understand why the founder of alchemy despaired.”
The Elixir was an incredible substance, too.
And the person who created it, the founder of alchemy, must have been extraordinary.
Even so...
It still wouldn't be enough to pursue a god.
“Oh, that's all for my research results. What brought you to the lab so suddenly, Mr. Segyun?”
“It's about my bacterial legion.”
When I told her that the bacteria that had helped brew Nectar had grown stronger, Ms. Gyuseon folded her arms and hummed thoughtfully.
“So what are you wondering about?”
“Aren't undead weak against holy attributes?”
But was it all right for undead to grow stronger from Nectar?
Shouldn't they have perished?
That's what I'd understood, anyway.
Ms. Gyuseon laughed when she heard that.
“People often get this wrong, but even you, Mr. Segyun? It wouldn't do for a famous Hunter like you to get confused about it.”
“...Ugh. Come on, just tell me.”
“Well, the divine attribute isn't common, so I can see how you'd mix them up. Divine (神), holy (聖), and light (光) are all separate attributes. Hmm... how should I put this? You know Hades, right?”
“Of course.”
I may not look it, but when I was young, I read every volume of those Greek and Roman mythology comics...
“He's the god of the underworld.”
“Yes. So, would Hades have a holy attribute?”
“I guess not?”
Would he have a holy attribute?
It felt a little silly to assign an attribute to a fictional god... but no matter what, that gloomy god didn't exactly seem holy.
“Would he have a light attribute?”
“Of course not.”
Hell seemed about a million light-years away from light.
“Exactly. But he is a god (神).”
“Oh?”
I was almost getting it.
“In alchemy, divinity is defined as the ultimate power of will that makes everything happen as desired. It has nothing to do with the human concepts of good and evil.”
“...That's cheating, isn't it?”
“Exactly. It's omnipotent. Just like Nectar.”
Oh, right.
“Then what is the holy attribute?”
Since I was here, I might as well get a lesson while I was at it.
“The holy attribute is said to be the power that eliminates violations of natural law.”
“...I didn't do well in school.”
“The natural order is how the world works, and violating it means going against that order. For a prime example... here you are.”
Ms. Gyuseon tapped my chest.
“Me?”
“The undead you control. Aren't they strange according to the laws of the world?”
“...Yeah, they are.”
“The reason holy power can heal people is that it greatly strengthens the natural process of healing. In any case, that's why it's effective against things that violate the natural order.”
“And finally, light is...”
“The lowest-ranking attribute. It's just light, plain and simple. Light itself does contain a certain amount of divinity, but only a little.”
Wait, then...
“Could undead strengthened by the divine attribute...”
“Since it's a higher-ranking attribute, lower-ranking holy or light attributes can't do anything to them. Of course, the holy attribute is highly effective against things that violate the natural order, but... most of its effect would be canceled out.”
“No wonder...”
‘It displays powerful resistance to all types of external forces.’
That was the description of the yeast that had been exposed to Nectar.
“So just because they're undead, they won't melt away or get unsummoned when they come into contact with the divine attribute?”
“That's right. After all, deities like Hel from Norse mythology and Mexico's Santa Muerte look like undead. That doesn't mean they're not gods, does it?”
“It's because all you ever see are necromancers getting pushed around by priests and Crusaders. It's a cliché.”
“A cliché?”
“Oh, it's nothing.”
Ahem. This person wasn't a fan of Hunter fiction.
She was a research fanatic.
Anyway...
Undead with a divine attribute.
Isn't that overpowered?
With attack power, utility, and defense all covered...
The only things I had to worry about were holy Gates and Hunters with holy attributes.
Now I'd found a way to cover that weakness.
Nothing else mattered right now.
I needed to establish a mass-production system for Nectar as quickly as possible.
It felt like this could account for half my combat strength.
...And maybe half my spending money, too.
**
If wine was magic made from nothing but grapes, traditional Korean liquor needed a little more than that.
Unlike grapes, which naturally contained yeast and moisture, rice had neither moisture nor yeast.
You had to add those in before you could make liquor.
Put positively, that left more room for human intervention. Put negatively, it made the liquor more artificial.
Of course, that could make it easier than wine for someone like me, who could control bacteria completely.
...Or so I thought.
“Hey, I'm full. I can't drink any more. Hrrrk... Every time I burp, I can smell the nuruk.”
“How was this one?”
“How was it? Just the same as the others.”
“Tsk.”
I guess it was the same after all.
“By the way, Senior, you're really not drinking?”
“I don't drink alcohol because it'll cost me muscle. Alcohol inhibits protein synthesis, interferes with nutrient absorption, and disrupts hormonal balance...”
“...Never mind.”
I shouldn't have asked...
I asked because I didn't like how he only picked at the food, and even then only ate the meat for its protein.
The liquor I was aiming to make was cheongju.
Basically, makgeolli made from rice, filtered and clarified.
Wow, but it wasn't easy.
I tried recreating cheongju made by some of the industry's top masters, but...
Nectar didn't form at all.
I wondered what the problem was, and then...
“I told you. The traditional liquor market in Korea may call itself traditional, but it's basically modern liquor. The real stuff went extinct after being wiped out once during the Japanese occupation, then again during the makgeolli brewing bans in the 1960s and '70s.”
“I know. I've heard that.”
I had a feeling that was the problem.
“So why bother using liquor that barely has any tradition left as a reference? You'd be better off making it your own way. You did a pretty good job brewing that liquor, didn't you?”
“That was wine...”
And even then, I used Pétrus's ingredients and followed the Pétrus method, so of course it turned out well.
It was easier when I had a solid reference from an industry leader like Pétrus.
“Then why not use Japanese sake as a reference?”
“That's a bit much.”
Of course, I knew sake was more popular around the world and had been studied more thoroughly.
Even so...
Well, it's not that I'm blindly patriotic or anything.
Maybe it's just that my national pride won't allow it.
It'd be embarrassing to make ‘world-class sake’ in Korea.
“Who's saying you should make sake? I'm saying you should study it. It's similar, but definitely different in certain ways.”
“Oh?”
“And if you're going to make Korean traditional liquor that's closer to modern liquor anyway... why not make it however you want?”
“That's what I'm going to have to do.”
With references like these...
Not that there was anything wrong with the liquor itself.
It just wasn't the sort of extraordinary liquor that made you go, ‘Whoa,’ and formed Nectar.
“No, there must be a way you can do it that no one else can. That's why you keep making amazing things.”
“...Well, that's true.”
“Sometimes, you reach a higher level by breaking free of form and convention.”
If he put it that way...
Maybe I should think in that direction.
**
First, following Zephyros's advice, I studied Japanese sake.
The biggest difference between sake and Korean cheongju was, as expected, the starter culture.
Sake was brewed in a controlled environment using koji. Korean nuruk, the traditional fermentation starter, could be controlled too, but in theory it was nearly impossible to control it perfectly.
They said at least twenty different kinds of bacteria and other microorganisms went into nuruk.
Instead, Korean nuruk produced a wider variety of flavors and had greater saccharifying power.
Saccharifying power meant the degree to which a given amount of starch was converted into sugar.
Since it produced more sugar, it was suited to making higher-proof liquor.
“...High-proof cheongju, huh?”
It didn't need to be strong enough to leave a dragon half-dead.
Around 40 percent would probably be fine.
Not liquor whose proof had been raised by adding spirits like distilled soju, but high-proof liquor made by my powerful yeast.
As Zephyros said, I wasn't bound by convention, so the possibilities were endless.
Of course, the higher the proof, the more unhealthy substances like methanol it produced, too...
Help me, Gyuseon-emon.
She developed a way to filter out methanol using alchemical techniques.
Thanks to that, I could make batches at 20, 30, and 40 percent alcohol.
The steps that normally required waiting days after brewing were skipped in an instant, so enormous quantities of liquor were mass-produced in no time.
And finally, about a week later...
[About 100 ml of the liquor you brewed has been made perfectly. Nectar has formed.]
It was a tiny amount, but I had liquor that contained Nectar.
This bottle was now my reference.
I used that one reference and kept improving on it.
I even tried using the Pétrus yeast, which was normally used only for wine.
As a result...
[About 3 L of the liquor you brewed has been made perfectly. Nectar has formed.]
[About 5 L of the liquor you brewed has been made perfectly. Nectar has formed.]
[About 10 L of the liquor you brewed has been made perfectly. Nectar has formed.]
The ingredients were just rice, water, and nuruk...
No, to be precise, I'd used several kinds of bacteria extracted from the nuruk.
Anyway, what I'd made could hardly be called traditional liquor.
But since Nectar had formed, it was a success.
It went down incredibly smoothly for me.
Still, I needed an opinion from a drinker.
I brought a bottle of the finished liquor to Zephyros.
He was supposedly some kind of wine master, after all.
“What is this now?”
“Cheongju.”
“...This? Why does the aroma remind me of a grand cru wine?”
That guy's nose really is sensitive.
“I used yeast from Pétrus.”
“Ah, I knew it. It was made from rice, but it has the feel of a fine wine. Not bad.”
And the moment it went down his throat...
“Ugh!”
It hit his throat with a strength you wouldn't expect from cheongju, which was usually only around 10 percent.
I wonder if he'd ever tasted 40-percent cheongju before.
And it wasn't the uniform taste of pure alcohol you'd get from a distilled spirit, either.
At first, he briefly furrowed his brow as if it stung his throat. Then he got absorbed in the flavor of the high-proof liquor, which preserved every bit of the richness that came from the rice, and spent a long time nursing his glass.
I said it was a tasting.
You should take it easy.
“One more glass.”
“Are you sure? This is strong.”
“I'm fine. I drink whisky, too.”
After repeatedly sipping the strange cheongju (?) I'd made, Zephyros let out a hollow laugh and shook his head.
What was it? Was something wrong with it?
“If something's wrong, just tell me...”
“No... it's funny.”
“...What's funny?”
“I don't think I'll ever touch something like whisky again.”
“What about sake?”
“What's sake? Is that some kind of liquor?”
Fine.
This was a huge success.
Even if I extracted 80 percent of the Nectar from it, the taste of the liquor wouldn't change that much.
Its effects would definitely be much weaker, though.
Then I could extract the Nectar and use it separately, and sell the liquor.
It couldn't be helped.
Who drinks liquor to improve their health, anyway?
。
。
。
And just a few days later...
The Pétrus winery went and caused a stir on my behalf.
They'd sold the wine I'd left behind to the world exactly as it was.
Now the whole world would be clamoring for liquor infused with Nectar.