“Gold? Just gold? Nothing on it—plain gold?”
“Yes. Just...”
I answered lazily while browsing the junk stacked on the shelves. Same as ever in here.
Shelves crammed so tight you can barely turn. Oddities piled any which way on every shelf.
From dead digital clocks to the skull of a spirit-beast; a two-headed turtle; comic books; a cross with a demon’s curse; toy cars; detergent whose date is twenty years out; a vajra; bundles of herbs hanging from the ceiling—
And a handsome mask inlaid with agate.
“Wow, what’s this mask?”
New stock, huh? Maybe I should buy this one.
“Quit fondling the mask and answer straight! Is it plain gold or not!”
[G-chon Pawnsh*p]—no, the Geumchon Pawnshop. Its owner, Jeong Euntaek, scrunches his already creased face and snaps at me.
“How much is the mask? The agate mask. Oh, and for the gold, I need ordinary stuff with nothing mixed in.”
“No purification or blessing? That trash mask is three hundred thousand won.”
“Oh, cheap. It looks great, though. I don’t need purification or blessings—plain gold is enough.”
“Tch. These days that’s the hard kind to find.”
In this world, gold is a consumable.
Cultists, shamans, mages, priests—whoever gets their hands on it slaps curses or blessings onto it, so plain gold is actually harder to come by.
I’ll be doing that too.
Anyway, about this mask—
“The inside’s finished in leather? Feels really nice.”
I carefully stroke the interior.
Base is wood? Then what leather is this? Human skin? I can feel a faint... not a grudge, more like lingering regret.
Not a curse—more like an unfulfilled attachment. What was the intent here? Hex? Rite? A ritual interface?
Huh? There’s a mark cut into the leather.
[ᚁ]
Doesn’t look like a maker’s signature—more like magic... Runes? Or another script? Too primitive to pin down.
“So how much gold am I getting you?”
“Sir, do you know this mark? I don’t think it’s a rune.”
“Probably Ogham script. There used to be a paired standing stone for it—long gone now. Inseok, I asked how much gold you need.”
Ogham is Old Irish. Coming from Jeong Euntaek, whose appraisal trait works, I’ll trust it.
My [Spell Mastery] trait adds a tidy footnote.
“If it’s Ogham, this one’s Beithe—birch. Ah, then the mask itself must be birch wood?”
Birch’s flower meaning is “I’ll wait for you.” Combine that with agate’s meaning and the Ogham nuance and you get, roughly, a ritual image of...
[Illusion], [Memory], [Calm], [Healing], say?
Its mana’s totally spent, so it does nothing now—but with the right handling, it could mediate a spell to ease madness or rage.
“Hey, how much gold do you need?”
“I’ll buy this first. Can I try it on?”
“Agh! How much gold, I said!”
Jeong Euntaek snatches a pebble off the table and hurls it as he yells.
[System: ‘Heightened Vigilance’ activates.]
Yikes—what did he just throw?!
The pebble is engraved [आग]. A single-use artifact that explodes on impact!
[Invisible Hand]
[Neutralize: Fire Element]
With a thin zzzing, the pebble halts in midair.
“Sir! Why are you doing this to me?!”
“Need me to spell it out? That mask is for lunatics, you maniac!”
He doesn’t stop—he just keeps grabbing whatever instant artifacts and flinging them.
After a spell of clatter—then more crashing—I finally apologized.
“Unh. My fault.”
“Get out. Now.”
“C’mon, we still need to talk gold.”
“Sigh... Right. Can’t throw out a customer. So how much gold?”
“About four hundred kilos.”
He blinks, then groans it out belatedly.
“...What? Four hundred? You think this is a trading house?”
“Take your time. And I’ll take this mask, that bundle of rowan, that—giraffe horn, right?—please pack it. And the consecrated water, is that the unit price on it?”
I point toward a corner.
Plastic water jugs stacked beside a crate of myrrh, rosin, and some herb. Six jugs, a hundred liters each.
“Water pollution’s bad lately, so consecrated water output is low. And all of that is already reserved.”
Because of water pollution? These rotten humans. How can you foul nature like this?
“Could you get me, say, twenty thousand liters?”
“Twenty thou—? Hah! You two-bit wizard! You building a swimming pool out of holy water?”
Consecrated water is the special stuff you use for devotions or rites—one or two bowls at most.
Not something you talk about in five digits.
Gathering materials won’t be easy either.
After scribbling a while, Jeong Euntaek looks up with a suddenly irritable face.
“Do you even know what this will cost? Even dropping Tudor’s name, no advance means no deal.”
“Five hundred billion for everything—works, right? I’ll wire three hundred through Vasiliisa as a start.”
At my breezy answer, he frowns instead.
“Huh... What did you even do, and where... You’ve already piled up that much cash?”
“I copied some money with magic.”
“Copy money? For crying out—fine. Money’s money.”
He mutters while scribbling in his ledger.
It’s all for making the [Golden Hairpin]. Except the mask.
Would’ve been nice to reuse Akiyama’s version.
Nope. Impossible.
[Destroy a zero-land and generate a ‘Dimensional Gate’.]
That one led to Akiyama’s home—the Abyss.
I have to craft a hairpin that leads to my home.
Still, it’s lucky I only need things you can basically buy with money...
You know how games sometimes demand this kind of thing?
Seven dragon stones you can only get by defeating the four Dark Overlords guarding the gate of spacetime.
No need for anything like that.
“Can you get it in about a week?”
“What? A week? Get lost!”
He groans, but if he tries he can get it all.
“Unh... It’s fine if it takes longer than a week. I’m counting on you.”
“Honestly! I’m already losing my ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) mind hunting silver as it is—ugh, what a mess lately.”
“Hm? Silver?”
“Yeah, silver. Someone’s been buying silver and herbs by the crate.”
Some cult somewhere must be gearing up for a rite.
“Ah, so that’s why the herbs and myrrh are stacked separately?”
“Yeah. Still haven’t secured the silver.”
He scratches his head with his pen.
“You’re making something, right? Why the one-week deadline? Need it fast?”
“No. It’s not that urgent. Handle the urgent stuff first.”
“Don’t know what you’re cooking up, but—Paju’s getting restless again. If you plan on living a while, keep your head down out there.”
“Thanks for the worry. By the way, how’s Yeeun? Doing okay?”
“She’s fine. I told her to stay home—mock exam tomorrow.”
“Oh, prepping for college?”
Come to think of it, same age as Hyeona.
“Kid’s too dense for college. She’ll probably whine about inheriting this place instead. Ugh. Hopeless brat.”
He waves me off, making a face like he’s disgusted.
Well, everyone loves their granddaughter in their own way.
The Lacrex Grimoire was fully deciphered three days ago.
Forging the [Golden Hairpin] isn’t actually a hard task.
The problem was in a completely different direction.
[The Golden Hairpin generates a gate to the coordinates you designate.]
Damn it.
Yeah—that’s my problem.
I don’t know the coordinates of the spacetime I lived in.
If I can’t set clear coordinates, the [Golden Hairpin] is nothing but a super-spacetime weapon that punches a random hole.
“What if we just drill a hole anywhere—at random?”
The mutter slipping from my mouth—no, that’s the fox-mask talking.
“Can’t. If we miss, we could punch straight into the Abyss—”
“Even if it isn’t home, as long as it’s a dimension where you can dodge annihilation, that’s half a win, right?”
In one sense, that’s not wrong.
I want out of this world because it’s slated for annihilation.
“This isn’t that simple.”
If the hole just opened into a medieval-fantasy world and I started a new adventure—honestly, the thought alone makes my chest tight—but maybe, if I conceded a hundred times, I could accept it.
But if a random [Dimensional Gate] links near the [Living Flame]...
The true body of the Living Flame is a blazing supernova—temperature about 10,000 K to 50,000 K.
For reference, the Sun’s surface is 5,778 K. The moment that door opens—no pause button—we roll credits on the annihilation ending.
In terms of rank, [Source of Life] sits far higher—but among Abyssals, plenty are problems just by existing.
Beams that petrify you on sight; deadly toxins; some even vent straight radiation.
Anyway, in [Cthulhu World], messing with spacetime is a bad idea.
“We’ve got a spacetime-tinkering expert dropping by soon anyway—let’s hear them out first.”
In a week, Future Gong Isu arrives.
Back at Paju Central Hospital, when I talked with Gong Isu, I wondered why they were coming now—but I’ve decided there’s a reason.
From Gong Isu’s side, they’d want to visit before the guy who can peel the hounds off them leaves this world, too.
There might be another purpose—but either way, it’ll be a useful talk, maybe a deal.
The moment I finish at Geumchon Pawnshop, I head for Vasiliisa.
I need to pick up the reward for today’s [Mermaid’s Eggs]—
“So the day Gong Isu comes is the 13th?”
Plenty of time.
What should I do till then? Maybe figure out a way to replace this left hand that still won’t move right?
“Hi, Orb. You been well?”
Vasiliisa, which had been closed for a while, is open again.
Because Shin Woojin, who’d been watching the place, is dead.
Thinking of what happened with Yang Seohu back then, it’s not exactly happy news—but Tudor, who doesn’t know the details, beamed and said:
“Ahaha—my dear made my wish come true! Ah, my love, of course!”
A wish...
Wasn’t moving to a new location your wish? Well, if she’s happy, fine...
Lately, the word [wish] leaves me with mixed feelings, so I can’t help feeling complicated.
“Sinhwa? Why that face?”
Orb waves a hand in front of my eyes to get my attention.
A thick, fine forearm like twisted rebar, a perfect broad hand wagging back and forth.
And crowning a body built from every virtue on Earth—where a head should be, a big old CRT monitor instead.
I look straight at that quirky head and answer.
“Ah—zoned out. Tudor inside?”
“Mm. Here. Pani will call Tudor.”
Before he finishes, a relatively small, willowy woman—Pani, with an old lantern in place of a head—pinches a handful of the skirt of her classical maid dress and tip-taps off toward Tudor’s office.
“Cute move, but isn’t that a bit much?”
“Tudor told her to.”
[=~=] pops up on Orb’s screen. Troubled face?
After a minute of banter, there’s a racket—then Tudor comes running.
“Oh! Darling, you came at the perfect time!”
Ugh. She looks very pleased. That’s worrying.
“What? I’m taking time off again.”
“Mm~? If you really insist, that’s fine—but hear me out?”
With a triumphant smile, Tudor strides up.
At 1.9 meters, the witch is hard to miss.
That flamboyant red hair streaming as she walks is enough to turn every head in Vasiliisa—but that smile is ominous.
“Tudor, haven’t you leaned a little too hard into flashy tastes lately?”
She gracefully ignores the comment and starts:
“Red Blade wants to hire you.”
That’s a name.
“Red Blade? As in the Triumvirate’s Red Blade?”
“Yep. That Red Blade.”
“You think I’d take a job from Red Blade?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why?”
She grins like a mischievous kid.
“Because the pay is fun.”
I scratch my head, then ask:
“What’s Red Blade offering?”
“Park Gwangrim.”
...Huh?
Park Gwangrim?
“Park Gwangrim?”
“You haven’t been able to reach him lately, right? Red Blade has him.”
