I had not the slightest reason to protect the secrets of a family that had disowned me and nearly had me killed.
The Void Resonance Thread Art had been nothing more than a launchpad for my own unique sorcery, Dimensional Advent. A technique I could no longer feel any attachment to.
If I could reduce Gongmyeongdang’s value to an inconvenient relic of bloodline alone, I had no regrets about scattering some secret art like this as a public good.
If the problem had arisen because I hid too much of my strength after being cast out, then this was the result of changing my policy to show as much as needed.
“This is one of the reasons Gongmyeongdang was able to catch the eye of Hwanseong Group. The Void Resonance Thread Art.”
I picked up a stack of papers that had been mass-printed and roughly fastened together with a stapler.
There were two books in my hands. Their red and blue covers flapped carelessly.
“One is the original, before I touched it. The other is the final version, improved even beyond what Gongmyeongdang possesses. I prepared two in total.”
The secret art of a sorcerer family, one that no one outside the direct bloodline was allowed to glimpse, had been prepared by type.
Gong Jincheol’s greatest mistake was teaching me the Void Resonance Thread Art.
From the moment I saw the possibilities of Dimensional Advent, a small family like Gongmyeongdang had ceased to matter much.
I had no lingering attachment to them, to the point that I endured ten years of restraint despite the risk of someone else taking my position.
“You must have seen my classmates get cut apart with ease. That level of power, even though I am not of Gongmyeongdang’s bloodline. If you are sorcerers, you should understand the value of this art.”
—Take them.
It was a declaration that I was transferring ownership completely. The sorcerers who had been salivating reached out all at once, as if their reins had been cut.
They lunged like starving hungry ghosts.
Watching one family’s secret sorcery fall into a trifling general-purpose art allowed to anyone gave me a strange sense of catharsis.
The freshmen who had experienced Spatial Severance with their own bodies were especially desperate.
“Move! If I can reproduce even a fraction of that power…!”
“D-don’t push! Hey! If you got one, get the hell out of the way!”
Not only the upperclassmen who had been pretending to remain dignified, but even the professors supervising from the back threw themselves in, greed laid bare.
“So this is that bitch Gong Seoyul’s secret art….”
“Ahem…! Maintain order! There are plenty of books!”
“Professor! I saw you take three copies just now!”
The auditorium turned as chaotic as a marketplace. Sorcerers, unable to restrain their greed, coveted the secret art.
Amid it all, it was easy to find the face I had wanted to see.
Choe Taeseong, left alone in the freshman section.
Seeing him trembling with a deathly pale face, it seemed certain I had dealt a major blow to Hwanseong Group’s objective.
It was not my birthday, but wasn’t this an entrance ceremony worth commemorating?
Just as those bastards had bound me back then, I had placed a binding sorcery on him so he could clearly watch the result.
And then there was my former fiancée, Gong Seoyul.
She staggered up to me and let out a hysterical scream.
“How… how could you do this?! Releasing the secret art…! Are you trying to make us all die together?!”
“To throw your own words back at you, I suppose it’s your incompetence for failing to kill me until now.”
If they had opened a dimension all the way to another world and come after me, I would have been willing to take a hit and admit they deserved that much.
This was the price of their incompetence. The backlash of betraying me yet failing to properly dispose of me.
The sight of her clutching her precious belly with a look of disbelief was laughable beyond words.
What did it feel like to watch Gongmyeongdang collapse in real time from a front-row seat?
The only place she had left to rely on now was Choe Taeseong.
If she was already carrying a child, then it seemed they had bonded early as partners.
For a sorcerer, there was only one lifelong partner. At this point, Choe Taeseong could not abandon her either.
Or perhaps, true to his nature as a wastrel, he would make her a concubine and leave her neglected in the back room.
Wouldn’t simply ending her life be far too easy?
As befitted a sorcerer, I intended to make her feel the price of her wrong choice in her bones for the rest of her life.
“And die together? I’m not even of your bloodline. There are plenty of replacement sorceries.”
“If you were that outstanding, I wouldn’t have broken off the engagement…! Why didn’t you reveal yourself?! If I’d known… if I’d known this would happen…!”
Did she think I had scattered the secret art purely out of revenge?
To put it extremely, for me, who was not of Gongmyeongdang’s bloodline, the Void Resonance Thread Art was not much different from any other general-purpose sorcery.
Besides, I had already prepared safeguards.
Just as I had easily suppressed Gongmyeongdang’s sorcerers.
Breaking the sorcery, reverse-calculating it, seizing control. There were countless ways to counter it.
No matter how many enemies came at me using the Void Resonance Thread Art, they would only expose their weaknesses instead.
Gong Seoyul screamed, unable to do anything, while Choe Taeseong stood frozen stiff.
I pleasantly committed the losers’ appearances to memory, then left the academy first.
‘It wasn’t intentional, but I ended up landing a blow on Hwanseong Group too.’
I had planned to retaliate in order, but judging by Choe Taeseong’s reaction, my disownment had not been his independent decision.
I had thought that, like the wastrel he was, he had been bewitched by Gong Seoyul’s looks and used his power, but thinking it over carefully, it made no sense.
No matter how close a family was to having its line cut off, the value of its secret art and bloodline did not diminish.
If they had already completed their plans for the future by taking in an adopted son, even a prestigious family would not be able to interfere in the major affairs of another family.
Even if Gong Jincheol permitted it, the people around him would not.
If families could be absorbed in that manner, everyone would have already joined under a prestigious house.
Whether voluntarily or not, no one welcomed a rival growing larger through expedient means.
“Maybe this is actually good?”
Even so, if Choe Taeseong’s entry as a live-in son-in-law had been approved, didn’t that mean Hwanseong Group had paid a price worthy of it?
Yet the secret art they wanted had become public property in an instant, so all they had truly obtained was Gong Seoyul’s body.
Even if she gave birth every year, one child a year would be the limit.
Next time, should I try crushing Choe Taeseong’s testicles?
***
Only one day had passed since the Void Resonance Thread Art was leaked.
Gongmyeongdang’s dream of clinging to the ranks of prestigious families collapsed overnight.
It had already spread to every family in the country, and since even foreign students were enrolled at the academy, it was spreading overseas in the blink of an eye.
“Uaaaaaah!! What the hell happened?! Hwanseong Group said you would handle the cleanup properly!”
The reception room was littered with furniture that had been smashed by his own hand because he could not overcome his rage.
The man shouting at the top of his lungs amid the wreckage was Gong Jincheol.
Ordinarily, he was the sort of person who would not have dared even breathe loudly in front of Hwanseong Group, but with his family on the verge of collapse, he could not keep his composure.
“Gongmyeongdang is finished now! The family’s secret art has been completely exposed! How is Hwanseong Group going to take responsibility for this loss?!”
“…Responsibility? You entrusted the cleanup of Gong Siu to me, didn’t you?! To begin with, the reason we lost the bastard after he ran away was because you people were incompetent!”
“You were the one who threw a tantrum insisting he had to be killed! If we had just placed a restriction on him and driven him out quietly, then at least something like this wouldn’t have…!”
“If we hadn’t killed him, he would have prepared in secret and taken even greater revenge! Your information was wrong too! You said he was a cripple who couldn’t even use sorcery! Why the hell did his restraint have to come undone on that exact day?!”
Smack—!
With a sharp crack, Gong Jincheol’s head snapped to the side.
Choe Taeseong, who had been arguing with him, had slapped the head of a family across the face without fear.
As if telling him not to forget who held the upper hand in this deal.
Gong Jincheol could not bring himself to swing the fist he had clenched tightly, and could only swallow a groan.
“Grrgh…!”
“Isn’t it because your information was lacking that we couldn’t kill him?! You called him your son, but you knew that little about him? I looked into it, and the day his restraint began was exactly ten years ago! You were deceived by that orphan bastard and handed him your liver and gallbladder!”
“Y-you were the one who set the schedule, saying it would make a good picture if he was disowned on his birthday….”
“So you’re saying it was my fault?!”
Smack! Smack!!
Unable to admit his own mistake, Choe Taeseong mercilessly swung his palm at Gong Jincheol’s scar-covered face.
Compared to Gong Jincheol, whose face had turned bright red from rage and the blows, Choe Taeseong’s expression, though he was the perpetrator, looked frightened somehow.
“S-stop it…! Fighting like this won’t solve anything!”
“You, a mere machine for giving birth, should keep your useless opinions to yourself!”
“Kyaaak!”
Unable to keep watching, Gong Seoyul tried to dissuade Choe Taeseong, but even though she was his wife carrying his sleeping child, he reached out without hesitation.
Thud! Thud!
Gong Seoyul desperately shielded her stomach and endured the kicks, while Gong Jincheol pretended not to see and lit a cigarette.
The sight looked far too grotesque to be called a family.
A relationship like master and slave, something that should not exist in the modern age.
“Ghk…! Sob!”
“Hoo… hoo….”
As his excitement gradually subsided, Choe Taeseong sank down powerlessly.
His mind was in chaos, and his entire body felt heavy, as though he were carrying a thousand pounds.
“Ha… how am I supposed to explain this to Father….”
No matter how much of a wastrel he had been, he could never defy the chairman of Hwanseong Group.
The reason he had been able to act so arrogantly was entirely because the chairman had tacitly allowed it.
How would his father react to this failure?
Beside Gong Seoyul, who was sniffling sorrowfully, Choe Taeseong clutched his head.
***
My reputation hit its peak overnight.
A madman who, for the sake of revenge, had released an entire family’s secret art.
The behavior of whispering behind my back had not changed in the slightest, but it was somewhat pleasing that most of the reactions were favorable.
The smaller families were dazzled by a level of sophistication far beyond their own secret sorceries, and even for prestigious families, high-level secret arts were precious.
The Void Resonance Thread Art I had improved seemed to be receiving quite a high evaluation.
Spatial Fault, Spatial Severance. On top of that, Subspace.
Could it not be called the unmistakable king of general-purpose sorcery, equipped with both offense and defense as well as convenience?
Before long, it seemed the entire ecosystem of sorcery would greatly transform based on the Void Resonance Thread Art.
But just as not everything in life goes well.
Since morning, I had been summoned to the faculty office and was receiving a lecture.
“Do you understand? Student Siu. I understand your circumstances, but skipping procedures on your own cannot be permitted. The commotion went too far.”
“But suspension after just one day of enrollment?”
“…It would have been better if you had consulted with the academy in the first place. We have always welcomed donations of sorcery.”
I had done it after taking everything into account, but I still ended up receiving a painful punishment.
The disposition I received was three days of suspension. I had become a delinquent student suspended from the very first day of enrollment.
But for the sake of impact, it could not be helped. I did not have time to leisurely follow procedures.
“There will be no leniency. We also need to adjust your treatment as a student, so please understand that it cannot be helped.”
“Surely no one would be insane enough to assassinate me while I’m staying in the dormitory?”
“…I will tell you that there is precedent.”
“Huh.”
As expected of the gloomy sorcery world. What did these bastards think the law was?
Ah. It wasn’t as if I was particularly innocent either.
“…Still, suspension from the first day is not good.”
After silently leaving the room, I could not stop the sigh that escaped me.
My purpose in coming to the academy was partly the obligation to graduate, but it was also for Estella’s sake.
Gongmyeongdang’s sorcery had long since revealed its bottom, and for the past few years, I had only been learning magic one-sidedly.
Since I called myself her master, I needed to pass new knowledge on to Estella as well.
“May I have a moment?”
Just as I was wondering whether I should try sneaking into lectures despite the risk of extending my suspension.
Someone spoke to me from behind.
“My name is Tsuchimikado Ren. I look forward to getting along with you.”
When I turned around, a Japanese-style beauty dressed in a modified shrine maiden outfit was offering me a handshake.
On top of that, she spoke perfect Korean.
“This may be sudden, but would you become my fiancé?”
The woman I was meeting for the first time was asking me to become engaged to her in needlessly fluent pronunciation.