-Nasan Haegyeong
* * *
We left the scene on Jungang-ro and hurried back to the hotel.
As soon as we entered the room, Cheon Danbi asked,
“Where did Yasin show up?”
“At the chairman of Vanaheim’s house.”
“Why did he go there?”
“I told you I’d taken on a job for Vanaheim. The job was to thoroughly secure the chairman’s house in preparation for Yasin’s intrusion. As it turns out, Yasin used to work at Vanaheim as a research mage.”
I briefly told Cheon Danbi and Gil what had happened at Kim Seonho’s mansion.
I had signed a nondisclosure agreement when I contracted with Vanaheim, but I had no intention of keeping it a secret from the two of them. We were a team, after all.
Even so, I added one thing.
“Don’t go telling anyone else. Since I signed a nondisclosure agreement, if this gets out, I’ll have to pay Vanaheim astronomical damages.”
“Of course I’m not going to tell anyone else. It’s not like I have anyone to talk to about this anyway. But this is seriously unbelievable. They were making those freakish creatures in the basement of the chairman’s mansion?”
Cheon Danbi shook her head in disbelief.
“That Kim Seonho is an incredibly dangerous man.”
Gil had grasped the heart of the matter.
“That’s right. His goal isn’t merely to manufacture and sell a product called Golden Apple. He’s a dangerous man consumed by a twisted sense of heroism, someone who’ll do anything for the sake of his experiments.”
“This is no ordinary matter. Why didn’t you just blow the whole place up before leaving? Including the chairman.”
Cheon Danbi suddenly blurted out something rather extreme.
I let out a faint laugh.
“That’s a little harsh. They may have been grotesquely mutated by the Golden Apple experiments, but how could I possibly kill all the orcs there?”
“Exactly. We shouldn’t kill them. We have to save them.”
Gil quickly agreed with me. As he did so, he cast a sidelong glance at Cheon Danbi, apparently a little hurt by what she had said.
Cheon Danbi noticed and hurriedly changed her words.
“No, I only said that because I was so shocked. Of course we shouldn’t kill the orcs. Absolutely not.”
“I know. I saw the zombies after they went mad, so I understand. If they pose an immediate threat to people, there are times when we can’t help it.”
Gil’s answer was somewhat unexpected.
I had thought he always took the side of zombies and other creatures without exception, but seeing that he could say something like this, he must have spent a lot of time thinking about it on his own.
“Anyway, I sealed everything up securely so no one can touch it, so don’t worry. No one but me can undo the magical seal.”
I spoke as though mediating between them, telling them both not to worry.
“That’s a relief. Then Yasin must be pretty furious, right? He won’t be able to take the test subjects he intended to steal.”
“He must be furious.”
“Hmm. So we’re going to lure that furious Yasin over to us?”
“Yasin is a dark mage I have to face sooner or later. No matter when it happens, I’ll have to fight him eventually.”
At my calm reply, Cheon Danbi nodded and fell silent.
A brief silence passed through the room.
“The dark mage isn’t the only enemy we’ll have to fight. We’ll have to stand against Vanaheim too. How could they conduct such unethical experiments? And judging by the fact that the tentacle monsters and orcs were in that house, the Hall has joined hands with Vanaheim as well, hasn’t it?”
Gil, who had been lost in thought, spoke up.
“You’ve got a good eye. Vanaheim has been conducting experiments in cooperation with dark mages. The Hall and the government have also provided Vanaheim with various kinds of assistance. And then there’s the dwarf incident. I think there are factions within the Hall and the government that have joined hands with the dark mages.”
“There’s nowhere we can trust.”
Gil replied bitterly.
“That’s what I’m saying. I’ve never trusted the mages of the Hall in the first place. They put the interests of mages above everything else and don’t seem to spare a thought for ordinary people or other races. And there’s always a corrupt faction in any government.”
Cheon Danbi shook her head and added,
“But why do you say there’s nowhere to trust? We have our team. All we need to do is trust each other.”
“Of course. You’re right. We only need to trust one another.”
Gil answered with a bright smile.
Cheon Danbi smiled back, then turned to me.
“But don’t we have to leave right away?”
“Why?”
“You said we were leaving Daejeon and going to North Chungcheong Province.”
“That’s information I deliberately leaked to throw Yasin off. I also said it because Jang Jeyoung seemed so frightened. Besides, we paid a fortune for this suite. How could we just leave? We’re staying here tonight.”
“Really? What a relief! I thought we had to leave immediately.”
Cheon Danbi raised both arms in delight.
“But we should prepare for the possibility that Yasin might come looking for us in Daejeon.”
I immediately stood and began placing protective barriers around the hotel.
I put one barrier around the entire hotel, another around the top floor, and then layered even stronger barriers around our room.
Since the work consumed a considerable amount of magical power, any mage nearby would have noticed it.
But most of Daejeon’s mages were probably at the Jungang-ro scene or in the Mage Bureau’s situation room, so I didn’t worry too much.
“That’s done. Now we can rest comfortably here tonight.”
“Thank you. I’ll sleep well.”
Gil stretched himself out on the sofa and habitually expressed his gratitude.
I gazed at his face with a faint smile before speaking.
“But I didn’t mean you could rest comfortably. From this point onward, we could run into Yasin at any time, so shouldn’t we train in advance?”
“Oh. Yes, that’s right. We have to train.”
Gil was quick to agree. He immediately straightened up.
“Cheon Danbi, you brought the potions with you, right? Give me one. Gil and I both need to replenish our magical power.”
Using mental magic had consumed a great deal of my magical power. After putting up the barriers just now, I felt as though I had been completely drained.
Training would restore it quickly enough, but there was no harm in receiving some help from a potion.
“Okay! Here you go.”
Cheon Danbi quickly handed us the potions.
“These are my premium elixirs. I saved them to give to you two, so drink up.”
Gil and I immediately accepted the potions and drank them. They were highly viscous and tinged with purple.
The term “premium elixir” was no exaggeration. The moment I drank it, vitality began coursing through my entire body. The magical power that had settled at the bottom of my reserves began to stir, and then waves of it surged upward.
“Wow, this is really good.”
Gil seemed to feel the effects quickly as well.
“Of course it is. Who do you think made it?”
Cheon Danbi puffed herself up proudly, then sank into the sofa and buried her nose in her phone.
“Then you two train hard. I’m going to check the news. See if there’s any trouble with the dwarves, and whether there’s any news about Yasin…”
“Sure. Check the news for us. Gil, let’s go into the rooms and train.”
Gil and I each took one of the rooms and began training.
It would have been more effective to train in the magical space in my house.
No, that was merely an indulgent thought.
A mage had to be able to train anywhere and at any time, whether in the desert or at the edge of a cliff.
I sat cross-legged, closed my eyes, and entered a state of concentration.
Gradually, I grew still and began resonating with the waves of magical power filling the universe. As long as I existed and the outside world existed, magic could be performed anywhere. The resonance of the waves was the origin of this universe.
As I grew calmer, waves of magical power filled my body. It felt as though the universe were surging into me.
* * *
At the same time, a woman was walking into the hotel lobby.
Though it was the middle of the night, the woman wore black sunglasses. Her jet-black hair hung long around her face, and she was dressed in a leopard-print jacket and pants.
After entering the lobby, the woman stopped and stood still for a moment, then turned around and walked back outside. A moment later, she returned through the revolving door.
‘Not a bad barrier. All right, I’ll give you that.’
A crooked smile hung from the woman’s lips. It looked less like a smile than an expression born of a curse.
With a lively stride, she crossed the lobby and approached the desk.
“Give me a room on the seventeenth floor.”
“Do you have a reservation? May I have your name?”
“I don’t have a reservation.”
“Oh, is that so? Then please fill out this registration card.”
The woman filled in all her personal details on the card the hotel employee handed her with complete nonsense, but she wrote her name correctly. It was a name she had given herself.
[Nasan Haegyeong]
“Room 1705. It’s a double room. Is that all right?”
“That’s fine.”
“Here is your key card. Do you have any large luggage?”
“No.”
“The elevators are over there. Have a pleasant night.”
After paying and accepting the key card, Nasan Haegyeong headed for the seventeenth floor.
She had already confirmed their location from outside. Those small fry were staying in a suite.
It was a shame she couldn’t stay in the same suite as them, but she couldn’t go up to the eighteenth floor, where yet another layer of protective barriers had been erected.
The barriers surely had an alarm function as well. At the moment, Nasan Haegyeong had completely suppressed her magical power. That was why they had failed to notice her even after she entered the barriers surrounding the hotel, but going any farther would be dangerous.
‘This is such a pain in the ass.’
Maintaining the suppression of her magical power was quite bothersome. She was hiding her true nature as well, which put her in an even worse mood.
As soon as she entered the room, Nasan Haegyeong began cursing.
“Why does that idiot Yasin keep running around and causing trouble on his own, dumping this kind of annoying work on me? That stupid bastard. When he gets back to the Magic Tower this time, I’m not letting him off.”
The reason Nasan Haegyeong had hurriedly come over from the Chinese continent was Yasin.
Yasin had ignored Samir’s orders, acted on his own, and even ended up injured, leaving them short-handed.
There still weren’t many dark mages in the country capable of properly carrying out their roles.
There were plenty of people going around loudly proclaiming themselves to be dark mages, but they were merely small fry who could handle trivial tasks.
At best, they could be used as test subjects in the Golden Apple experiments. They lacked the skill to carry out a terrorist attack.
That was why Samir had called Nasan Haegyeong back from China.
‘Well, thanks to him, I did get a chance to earn Lord Samir’s recognition. No. The problem was that I never received proper recognition in the first place because of that idiot Yasin.’
Samir favored Yasin. It was probably because Yasin was useful, having worked as a researcher at Vanaheim in the past. They said his magical abilities were quite impressive as well.
And Yasin was kicking away Samir’s trust with his own feet.
“That damn old man. What on earth is he wandering around doing…”
Still grumbling, Nasan Haegyeong raised her head and looked up toward the floors above.
This was no time to be cursing Yasin. The true enemy was upstairs.
The task assigned to Nasan Haegyeong as soon as she returned to Korea was to carry out a terrorist attack in Daejeon.
The jellyfish terrorist attack had been infinitely beautiful, effective, and powerful.
She had never imagined that someone could neutralize it so easily.
Finding and killing the mother jellyfish was understandable. But she had never expected him to analyze Euphoria and devise a way to counter it.
‘I’m going to smash you to pieces.’
Nasan Haegyeong ground her teeth.
She had wanted to confront him immediately at Jungang-ro, but Samir had given no such order.
He had said the man was extremely interesting. He wanted to watch him for the time being.
Of course, this wasn’t the end of the jellyfish terrorist attack, so it wasn’t as though Nasan Haegyeong had lost to him.
Creating terror in the human world was easy. Humans themselves were foolish, so confusion tended to spread on its own.
But the fact that Nasan Haegyeong’s remaining task was to monitor that man was enough to drive her mad with annoyance.