A Severe Magic Addict.
Her workshop looked less like a workshop and more like a cursed room. A stuffed deer head hung on the wall, and all sorts of objects related to necromancy lay scattered across the floor.
Because the curtains covered every window, not a single handful of light seeped into the house. The lights were off as well, leaving only the feeble glow of candles and scented candles to illuminate the room. An eerie atmosphere encroached upon the space.
To put it kindly, it looked like the home of lunatics obsessed with the occult. At the very least, it was not a place where an ordinary-looking high school girl ought to be living.
But if he thought of it as the place where a mage lived, it was not entirely incomprehensible, so Ian followed her inside while looking around.
“What do you think? Impressive, right? I made this place all by myself.”
She spoke with a proud expression.
“I bought every single thing here with money I earned through blood, sweat, and tears. Look, see that candle over there? That’s an absolutely unmeltable candle that was actually used by an exorcist in France a long time ago. That one alone cost a full ten million won.”
“……That is quite expensive.”
“That’s just how this industry is. You haven’t been in it long, so you wouldn’t know.”
She said that much, then realized they had not introduced themselves and awkwardly held out her hand.
“I’m Lee Seo-a.”
“I’m Shin Ian. I’m truly grateful for all the help you’ve given me in many ways.”
“……Ahem. Well, that’s good, then. More importantly, let’s fix the way you talk first.”
Lee Seo-a said as she took orange juice out of the refrigerator. Ian glanced sideways at the blood packs filling the fridge, then politely accepted the juice she poured for him.
“The way I talk?”
“Yeah. Mages don’t normally use honorifics with each other. Unless it’s a master-disciple relationship.”
“Why?”
Lee Seo-a immediately answered his question as if it were obvious.
“Because there’s no need to make yourself look easy to mess with? Mages often use anomalies as materials for magic, but honestly, using another mage as material is pretty efficient in its own way too. If you’re looked down on, you might get stabbed in the back and ground up in a blender.”
“Ah……”
“It doesn’t matter with ordinary people. But when the other person is a mage, or someone who knows I’m a mage, it’s better to act as overbearing as possible. So when you talk to a mage, you should speak casually too.”
“Got it.”
Ian immediately changed his manner of speech. At how much faster he adapted than expected, Lee Seo-a let out a small laugh.
“Good. Then shall we get straight to the point?”
She sprang up from her seat and began clearing away the objects on the table. Ian stood to help her, but Lee Seo-a stopped him.
“No need to help. If another mage’s hands touch them, the spiritual power I painstakingly fed into them weakens. It’s much better if I do it alone.”
Since she put it that way, Ian had no choice. He gave a low hum and set the diffuser he had brought as a gift roughly by the window.
A faint lavender scent began to fill the workshop.
With the scent added to this unreal place, the atmosphere seemed to grow slightly more comfortable.
After setting down the diffuser, Ian sat back on the floor and sipped his juice.
‘Spiritual power, huh.’
Ian knew very well what spiritual power was. Since the soul was one of the three elements of magic, there was no way he would not know.
From a magical perspective, a human being was divided into two concepts. One was the body, and the other was the soul. The moment either one died, a human could no longer remain human.
If the soul was intact but the body died, it was a ghost.
If the soul died but the body was intact, it became a corpse.
Of the two, the former—that is, a ghost refined and converted into pure energy—was spiritual power.
As far as Ian knew, there was only one kind of mage who handled that.
“You learned necromancy?”
“Yeah. Nice deduction.”
Lee Seo-a answered while moving a huge skull of unknown origin. After grunting as she set the skull in a corner, she wiped the beads of sweat on her forehead and looked back at Ian.
“But don’t ever ask like that in front of another mage. It might sound like you’re picking a fight.”
“……What?”
“That’s just how this industry is. What kind of magic do you use, or have you perhaps learned this kind of magic—questions like that are basically an unwritten taboo. I don’t really understand it either, but that’s just how it is, so I’m telling you.”
“……”
It was truly a complicated society. Ian shook his head and walked over to the now-clean table.
“Have you ever met another mage?”
“No, this is my first time seeing one in person too. I know they exist through the community, but I don’t know who they are or what they do.”
Lee Seo-a naturally moved aside for him. Ian poured the items he had brought in his bag onto the table and sorted the things he needed by type. Lee Seo-a, who had been quietly examining the materials he had brought, tilted her head when she saw the cube-shaped anomaly.
“What’s this? You said you only caught Hachishaku. This is a different one.”
“I ran into it on the way. Monkey Dream. Know it?”
“Ah, that. It’s famous, so I know it too. But why is this left in reality? This thing only appears in dreams.”
“I thought so too.”
Ian let out a deep sigh and told her directly about what had happened on the subway.
After hearing the whole story, Lee Seo-a tapped her lips with her finger and furrowed her brow. Her impression had already been fierce, but when she narrowed her eyes, her face turned even more frightening.
“That’s a pretty serious matter. If an anomaly that should only exist in dreams has eroded into reality, then someone else must have intervened.”
“……”
“Well, whatever. Honestly, I don’t really care about that. The important thing is that you were exposed to the subway CCTV.”
“I hid myself as much as I could.”
“You think that’ll be enough? As long as evidence remains, the Bureau will definitely try to find out who you are.”
Lee Seo-a shook her head with a fed-up expression.
It seemed she had suffered quite a bit at the hands of the Bureau. Since she must have been living as a mage for quite some time, she would naturally have had more chances to get entangled with them.
Ian smiled bitterly as he tore open the fish packaging and plucked out an eyeball.
“But there was no other way. It’s not like I could fool the surveillance cameras there.”
“Mm…… That’s true.”
After saying that, Lee Seo-a crossed her arms as if deep in thought.
Ian left her alone and opened the grimoire to examine the alchemical formula.
He had brought everything he needed.
One creature’s eyeball and a piece of an anomaly’s flesh. He had drawn human blood himself at home and brought it with him, and he had purchased water and poisonous herbs before taking the train.
There was nothing he had accidentally left behind. It seemed fine to begin the alchemy right away.
It was his first attempt at alchemy since the knife that killed primates. Since the knife’s effectiveness had already been thoroughly verified, the item he was making now should also be outstanding.
It was a tool that crushed the opponent’s eyeball without any risk. Unless one was dealing with an already-blind enemy, a tool capable of sealing one of the five senses could only be highly valuable. It was a shame that it was consumable, but he could simply make another.
‘Do other alchemists make things like this too?’
He could not be certain. He would only know after meeting another alchemist or reading relevant books.
‘I’d like to see the items they created for myself as well.’
Thinking that, Ian took out a sheet of paper and spread it over the table.
At that moment, Lee Seo-a, who had been standing still until now, cleared her throat and brought over an urn from the shelf.
She opened the lid of the urn, stared at Ian, and lifted a pinch of bone ash.
“It can’t be helped. I’ll help you this once.”
“……With what?”
“The subway incident. How much time has passed since you escaped from there?”
At her question, Ian stopped what he was doing and checked the time.
“About thirty minutes?”
“That’s a bit awkward. The Busan branch is pretty sluggish, but even so, after thirty minutes, they’ll have finished controlling the scene…… and memory erasure should be underway. Maybe they’ve already checked the footage. Or they might be checking it right now.”
But.
After adding that, Lee Seo-a slowly scattered the bone ash in her hand onto the floor.
“If we corrupt the footage even now, at the very least it won’t be too late.”
“Corrupt it?”
“It’s a common ghost story, isn’t it? A video possessed by a ghost, CCTV that captured a ghost, stuff like that. If you use necromancy, summoning a ghost capable of doing that sort of thing isn’t difficult.”
Lee Seo-a dragged her foot through the bone ash on the floor, drawing a round shape. Then she pricked her finger with a needle and dropped blood on top of it.
The blood crawled over the bone ash like a living thing with a will of its own.
It was the first time in his life Ian had directly witnessed another mage’s magic demonstration.
Ian took a step back, watching her with intrigued eyes.
Lee Seo-a clutched a handful of bone ash and slowly let it spill as her lips moved.
“Come. Evil spirit wandering the Nine Springs. Your master, who wields mystery, commands you: follow my will and reveal yourself here.”
Her words ended.
At the same time, a pale-skinned arm suddenly sprouted from the bone ash piled on the floor. Soon, it crawled up from the floor and glared at Lee Seo-a with murderous eyes.
No matter how one looked at it, it was an evil spirit overflowing with resentment. But Lee Seo-a did not panic and gave it an order with an expressionless face.
“If you want to be annihilated without ever resolving your grudge, you may resist. But if you wish to keep wandering the Nine Springs, move as I command.”
[……You, young Taoist. Why do you defy the will of heaven and command evil spirits? Do you not fear divine punishment?]
The evil spirit spoke as tears of blood flowed from its eyes. Lee Seo-a snorted.
“That’s not something I want to hear from an evil spirit. Shut up and do as you’re told. You know what purpose I brought you here for, don’t you?”
[…….]
“Hurry up and go. Or should I erase you right here?”
Lee Seo-a snapped her fingers. At that moment, a towering woman appeared behind her.
It was her guardian spirit. As soon as the evil spirit confirmed its presence, it burst into sobs and crawled toward the wall. As if it were only natural, the thing passed through the wall and swiftly flew in the direction of the subway.
Ian looked at the evil spirit with an uneasy expression, then turned his head toward her guardian spirit.
The guardian spirit, blood streaming down from a kitchen knife lodged in her forehead, looked at Ian and waved.
Ian, bewildered, waved back.
It felt rather strange.