Good thing I didn’t bring Jang Hyundeok.
Under the dim light, cold spilled in white waves.
On frost-rimed shelves, [Ingredients] and [Necromancy Materials] were stacked in neat rows.
And lying among them as if asleep—Heo Sanghyun.
His pallid face frozen in silence was exactly, nothing more and nothing less, the shape of a well-kept corpse.
“It’s not just the look. He really is a corpse right now.”
Luckily, his soul hadn’t left his body.
I assembled a ward to block the chill and—pulling open Heo Sanghyun’s front—checked his body.
“Ah, as expected, the [Ancient God’s Bright Mirror] overloaded. That’s why the link cut out and the sorcery reset?”
Judging from the residue in the workings, [The One Who Tears the Veil] had tried to infiltrate Heo Sanghyun’s mind.
Not an attack vector. He probably wanted to confirm Sanghyun’s wish.
The problem is, I had set several safeguards to prevent anything happening to Heo Sanghyun...
Put simply, it went like this:
To unlock the lock I’d set on Heo Sanghyun’s soul, [The One Who Tears the Veil] mashed passwords at random—and the password attempt limit fired, so—beep! Resetting Heo Sanghyun. Something like that.
“So either way, nothing catastrophic happened.”
With my right hand I felt for the [Ancient God’s Bright Mirror] on his chest.
[shrrrriiip!]
From my fingertips, lines of mana branched out like twigs, turned into a complex circuit, and bored into the [Ancient God’s Bright Mirror].
“Well, this kind of thing—turn it off and on, it fixes.”
I fully halted the mirror’s working, reconstructed it, and brought it back online.
[viiiiiiiing—]
Simple enough.
Now I just need to breathe mana into him and wake him...
[thud]
Something fell behind me.
I paused and glanced toward the sound.
A gift box.
“...”
What’s in it? The opponent’s an abyssal being.
He did nearly wreck Heo Sanghyun by tripping a safeguard, but reading Sanghyun’s memories would’ve been easy.
And what they’d think he needed would probably be...
What to do.
I hesitated, but not for long.
“If it explodes, we’re in trouble.”
Let’s at least check it’s safe.
I opened the box in the end—
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
The thing inside wasn’t an artifact.
[The item inside the box was a single photograph.]
“Get that away. You picked this too, didn’t you?”
[Shown in the photo: Heo Sanghyun wearing a vague smile, a woman presumed to be his wife or lover, and a child. Not your first time seeing it. This is the one you burned—]
[bzzzzzzt!!]
I sparked electricity and blasted away the message window parroting what annoyed me.
“So we can gift things I’ve already destroyed, huh?”
[The One Who Tears the Veil] exists across all time.
Reproducing something I once erased would be trivial.
A new dilemma. What do I do with this?
Past me decided it had to go, and acted accordingly.
And me now?
“Ha... damn.”
I felt a stab of desire to wake Heo Sanghyun and ask what to do—but that wouldn’t be right either.
This has to go.
[fwoosh—]
Flame bloomed at my fingertips and the photo vanished in an instant.
Then I reached toward the gift box and cast.
[Material Disassembly]
[piiiiiing!]
An emerald beam from my right hand erased the gift box from the world without a trace.
“Good. That’s that.”
I breathed mana into Heo Sanghyun’s body, now cold as a “corpse,” then whispered a forbidden formula at his ear.
“Sanghyun. Time to wake up.”
With large eyes made more prominent by his gaunt face, he over-blinked and rolled his gaze, then raised his body.
“...”
Inhuman, robotic—an alien, unpleasant motion. Living things can’t move with such fixed, mechanical tempo.
He spoke soon in a courteous voice suffused with blind, crystal-clear loyalty.
“Did you call, Master?”
Ah, it really did reset. Awkward as hell.
“One thing at a time. Do you remember me?”
“Yes, I remember everything. Give your orders and I will comply.”
“You mean all of it? Memories besides ones about me.”
Catching the nuance, Heo Sanghyun nodded with the expression of a well-trained hound.
“That’s correct. Including the ones you erased for me, I remember everything.”
“Let’s erase that first.”
“My joy is to accomplish what you desire, Master.”
“...”
I didn’t answer. My left hand became tentacles and coiled around his face and head.
A slick, nasty sound rustled, but Heo Sanghyun accepted it without a flicker—and I suppressed the bindings on his mind and adjusted his memories.
His skin under the tentacles was cold like a corpse and dry like an inanimate object.
“How is it now? Any trouble with senses or memory?”
“You made it back safely, Sinhwa. You’ve worked hard.”
“Yes. And it looks like you’re all right, Sanghyun.”
“So it seems. Hm... What time is it now? I’ll prepare a meal.”
He started to rise—and realized his body wouldn’t move properly, frowning in dismay.
“Sinhwa...?”
“Ah, necromancy stalled for a bit. You’ll need more mana to move properly.”
I could have fed in plenty from the start but...
I’d intentionally given a small dose. He might have gone wild.
“I’ll share a bit more.”
Saying so, I extended my tentacles toward him.
“Mage, look at this!”
As I came out of the kitchen with Heo Sanghyun, Jang Hyundeok thrust a cool-looking item at me.
A silver tube about thirty centimeters long, pocked with holes here and there.
Occult sigils engraved on its surface.
A very faint trace of abyssal mana.
A [Silver Flute].
Not rare enough to call precious—but not something that should look “cool” in Jang Hyundeok’s hand either.
“I told you not to open that.”
It’s an artifact tied to an abyssal being. Likely came from the gift box.
Random box or not, the output really is all over the place.
My box’s [Model Mansion Lv.1] pissed me off but was an insanely rare, high-performance artifact.
Heo Sanghyun’s box held not even an artifact, just a photo I’d burned long ago; and Jang Hyundeok’s box produced a low-grade artifact linked to abyssal beings.
“Do you know what this is? It’s not normal, right? It’s got this woo-ooong—wavy-wavy to it?”
His eyes glinted blue.
True Sight grants you a peek at the essence of a target.
It doesn’t read minds or grant x-ray vision—rather, it lets you see transparents, illusions, distorted forms, mana, spirit, that kind of thing.
What he was sensing now...
“That’s a flute made from a shinbone. You trap a soul in the bone, then coat it with silver to keep it bound.”
The specialist speaks—Mr. Heo Sanghyun.
“Eh?! Is this a human bone?”
“That ‘woo-ooong wavy’ you mentioned is a dead person’s grudged will. If you’re going to be a medium, you should at least tell that much apart.”
“N-no. I don’t want to be a medium! Besides, this—uh—this waviness is completely different from the ghosts around here!”
“What’s different? Looks the same to me.”
I answered with no enthusiasm, and Heo Sanghyun supplied detail.
“It’s because the necromancy comes from a different culture than what you’ve seen. A necromancer of a lineage different from East Asian shamanism or the necromancy I use made this. Likely voodoo. Not a traditional approach, and... hm. A few heterogenous techniques are mixed in. Seems like Modern Voodoo—a contemporary reinterpretation—but I haven’t studied that branch deeply...”
Staring blankly between Heo Sanghyun, the flute, and me, Jang Hyundeok tried to decide which word to latch onto, then asked again:
“So anyway it’s a human bone!?”
“Mm. Since a human soul is trapped in it, probably.”
“Using one’s own bone is surest, so I’d say yes—human.”
He nearly threw the [Silver Flute] away on the spot, then looked regretful and asked another question.
“So what does it do? Summon a soul? No—ah! Voodoo! Can I summon zombies?”
“It is used as a medium for summoning or control workings. But drop the ideas you can’t handle and hand it over.”
He scowled at me and hid the flute behind his back.
“Aw, why! I got it!”
“Does that look like a toy? Right now—”
I considered just ripping it from him... then changed my mind.
“Fine... it might be useful later. Aunt, and you too, Sanghyun—keep an eye on this blockhe—no, this idiot so he doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“Understood.”
“Switching ‘blockhead’ to ‘idiot’ is still insulting, you know!”
We finished a slightly late dinner.
Outside, the moon had climbed high, and Jang Hyundeok drove off to work in his five-hundred-million-won used car.
“At least that car I’ll have to sort out. Timing’s awkward.”
Not a hard problem. Put, say, two billion in his hand and he’ll manage.
I walked toward the forest of Jangmyeongsan under moonlight pouring through the mist.
“All right, envoys from the Cat Kingdom. Let me set your table.”
[viiiiiiiiing—]
I reached toward the woods, and the bags of cat food floating behind me flew, in sharp formation, to bowls set throughout the trees.
[wararararak— warrrrrr—]
[meow— weeeong—]
[woooong— mueeong—]
The sound of kibble pouring, followed by the chorus of cats.
Eyes glinting in the dark. They ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ were ordinary cats—and not ordinary at all.
Anyway, they’re envoys sent by the [King of the Cat Kingdom].
In a sense, my sharing this kibble is an offering to the god’s envoys.
Once they’re hungry, they’ll start eating the ghosts of Jangmyeongsan.
“Hey.”
From a tree above, a cat black as night spoke to me.
It had more eyes than it should. Not three or four.
A beast like its body was studded with jewels of every kind—dreamlike and beautiful.
This cat led these ninety-nine and came as their captain. If cats were cultists, she’d be judge class.
She came from Saturn, and her name was Kongsun.
“This offering is a bit bland. Change it.”
“I shall.”
I swap the feed every time, and she has never once been satisfied.
Kongsun flicked her four absurdly long tails in a beguiling way and went on.
“Want some good intel?”
I kept my eyes on the moon so as not to meet hers and answered like I was talking to myself.
“I’m curious about nothing, but if someone has a good tale to tell for my sake, I’d be delighted.”
“There’s an abyssal being hiding inside you.”
“That’s probably the shards I swallowed with my [Mana Devourer] ability. No need to worry.”
Heh-heh—
The pitch-black cat chuckled ominously and melted into the dark.
I watched her a moment, then turned back toward the [Hungry Mansion].
“Junior, did you feed the cats?”
“Ah, you’re here, senior. Did home treat you well?”
“I came from Paju Central Hospital.”
So he’d recognized that as home? He sounded out of sorts, so I didn’t ask more.
“By the way, what did you get for your gift?”
“A book.”
“A book? A grimoire?”
“Nothing grand. A picture book I lost as a kid.”
“Ah.”
Whether that’s true or not, there’s no way to check.
“What did you get, junior?”
“Want to see?”
I took out the [Model Mansion Lv.1] and showed him.
“Paha! Took that one right on the chin.”
“Ugh.”
“How about it?”
“How about what?”
“Are you going home?”
“I have to.”
“Drop everything?”
“Yes.”
Gong Isu looked at me in silence for a moment (a figure of speech—he has no eyes).
“Good. Obstacles are cleared, so—shall we make the Golden Hairpin?”
“Let’s.”
Then first, secure a workspace, and fetch the gold I ordered last time.
Looks like I’ll be busy again for a while.
