9. Can I Raise It?
◈Seventh Quest
[Exercise 24/24 (hours)]
-Exceptional athletic ability can be a great advantage for a top star.
-Reward: Essence of Strength [Exercise target complete]
-You have acquired 'Essence of Strength'.
-The next quest has been activated.
◈Eighth Quest
[Perform 5/5]
-Skill is proven live. Show your skill to people through performances.
-Reward: Essence of Speed [Perform 5/5 target complete]
-You have acquired 'Essence of Speed'.
-The next quest has been activated.
◈Ninth Quest
[Dance 30/30]
-Dance that matches the song adds to the excitement. Dance to the music.
-Reward: Essence of Synthesis [Dance 30/30 target complete]
-You have acquired 'Essence of Synthesis'.
-The next quest has been activated.
The 7th, 8th, and 9th quests popped up in rapid succession and were cleared simultaneously.
The quests had conditions that were all things he'd already been doing, so they cleared the instant they appeared.
'This is insane.'
To think three quests finished at once when he hadn't done anything.
Even though the previous quests had all been easy, this seemed a bit too much.
Of course, easy wasn't bad, but the rewards were so valuable compared to the effort that he felt almost guilty.
'Well, there's no reason to feel guilty. It's not like I asked for them to be easy.'
If he hadn't put in much effort, he just had to work hard from now on to not lose these rewards.
Jinha calmed his excited heart and returned to the waiting room.
"Jinha! You did so well. I didn't expect this much. Thank you so much."
Yujin was sitting in a chair in the waiting room with a bright smile.
"I'm glad the response is good. Honestly, I was a bit worried too."
"Of course it's good. I got a feeling when I saw you at the park! There aren't many places to see performances like these days either."
Yujin clasped her hands together and excitedly shared her impressions of the performance.
'Hmm...'
Ayeong, watching Yujin bouncing around with joy from behind, smirked.
"Excuse me, unni... Could I take this camera home, save the files separately, and return it to you? I need to take some profile pictures for oppa..."
"Ah, you can keep that. Would you like me to assign you an editor as well?"
"Huh? I can really keep this?"
"Of course. You need it to capture Jinha well."
"Wow, you really have a refreshing personality. Then I'll accept it without refusing. I've needed a camera like this while working as oppa's manager. You don't need to assign me an editor. I know how to do it."
'Manager?'
Jinha looked at her with bewildered eyes, but Ayeong didn't mind one bit.
"What's with her..."
Seeing the text above Ayeong's head change, Jinha let out a sigh.
* * *
On the way home after the performance.
Having cleared quests back-to-back, his mood was at its best.
Jinha focused on the newly appeared exclamation mark icon with a light heart.
◈Tenth Quest
[Raise a Divine Beast. 0/1]
-A Divine Beast will come to you soon in the form of a small animal.
-Reward: WZ-380 'Divine Beast? WZ-380?'
He had heard of Divine Beasts before, but couldn't pinpoint exactly what they meant.
He had no idea what he was supposed to raise.
There was no need to even mention what a WZ-380 was.
'If it's a Divine Beast, surely they don't mean I have to raise a tiger or bear, right?'
Since they had been ridiculously easy until now, it felt ominous.
"Oppa? What's wrong?"
"Ah, I was just thinking about something."
"Hmm, if you're thinking about today's performance, don't worry. You really did well."
"Glad to hear it. But I wonder if Mister Gitae had a hard time alone today."
"He texted earlier; said it was pretty busy today."
Even though Jinha had told him to hire a part-timer just for today, Mister Gitae insisted he could handle it alone until the end.
Ever since the slackline performance in front of the store last time, there had definitely been more customers than before.
"Are you really going to be my manager? Earlier was just a joke, right?"
"Why? You don't like it? I can do a good job, so can't you let me?"
"It's not that I don't want you to, I just don't need one right now."
"Wow, meal prep, editing, filming. What have I even been doing all this time?"
Though it was true he didn't need a manager, he had nothing to refute Ayeong's words.
She had helped him with a lot of things.
"And you left an envelope in my room, didn't you? Wasn't that telling me to be your manager?"
"Don't try to attach meaning to a goodwill gesture. I clearly wrote 'allowance' on the envelope."
"I'm not attaching meaning. I'll use that as my salary for a while, so just try me out. My pride is hurt right now? Why? Do you not trust me?"
It was scarier than asking for a salary right away.
He knew opposing her here would only backfire.
'She'll quit soon enough.'
She might be doing this out of brief interest now, but it was obvious she'd quit on her own as time passed.
Jinha answered that he got it and headed to a coin noraebang with Ayeong.
He needed to learn more songs, and there was no better place to practice singing than a coin noraebang.
After spending three hours in the noraebang, the day had already turned to dusk.
"Huh? Look at that. It's a puppy."
In the alley on the way home.
A baby puppy was looking around with pitiful eyes inside a box.
*Yip. Yiiiip.*
It was a white-furred puppy.
It looked very hungry, but seemed too scared to even bark properly.
"Oh, the poor thing."
Jinha had never raised a dog in his life, having struggled just to put food in his own belly.
But perhaps because he now had some leeway, seeing a puppy abandoned while young and knowing nothing, he felt an inexplicable kinship.
"Is it ownerless?"
"Yeah, looking at the box, someone just abandoned it... Anyway, human trash. What sin does that puppy have?"
'Could it be...'
The Divine Beast definitely appears in the form of a small animal.
And 'soon' at that.
Could this puppy be the Divine Beast?
"If it doesn't have an owner, can I raise it?"
"Huh? You're going to raise it? Isn't that too sudden a decision?"
It wasn't necessarily because of the quest.
He truly felt that he wanted to raise that puppy.
It might be that he wanted comfort in knowing he wasn't the only one who had suddenly been thrown into a new world.
"I'd be happy if you raise it, but did you even like puppies? They say if you're just going to take it out of brief interest, it's better not to."
Jinha deeply wondered if he was doing this to soothe a momentary loneliness, but it wasn't.
Jinha thought with Ayeong at the spot for a while, then picked up the box and went home.
[Raise a Divine Beast 1/1 target complete]
-All first-stage locks have been released.
-You have acquired 'WZ-380'.
▶WZ-380
-Can purchase songs.
As soon as he entered the rooftop room carrying the puppy, the quest completion message and reward popped up.
As expected, this puppy was the quest's answer.
'What about the next quest?'
But the next quest didn't appear.
'Is it over?'
He'd thought they would appear infinitely, but it seemed ten was the end.
He'd obtained ten rewards so far, so he was grateful enough, but he couldn't help feeling somewhat disappointed.
* * *
Raising a dog wasn't exactly easy.
He had to go to the hospital, and buying this and that cost quite a bit of money.
*Woof! Woof!*
The puppy approached Jinha, who was deep in thought, and wagged its tail.
Tongue out, it wagged its tail with eyes full of expectation.
"You want to go for a walk?"
*Woof!*
It was as if honey had been spread outside; he had to walk it at least three times a day.
*Woof! Woof!*
"Alright, alright. Come here."
The hassle was nothing compared to the happiness the puppy gave.
"To think you're a Divine Beast. No matter how I look at you, you're just an ordinary dog."
Jinha turned the puppy around this way and that, then changed clothes and decided to go for a walk.
"Oppa, are you going for a walk? Let me come too!"
*Woof! Woof!*
When they went downstairs, the puppy heard Ayeong's voice and started jumping up and down, wagging its tail.
"Hey, Gaetteong, stay still."
"Gaetteong? Sigh... That's animal abuse-level naming sense. That name isn't quite right."
"What's wrong with Gaetteong? It's folksy and good."
"Then change your name to Gitong too, with the surname Byeon."
"I can't change the name my parents gave me. Then how about Heabi?"
"Heabi? It's fine, but if it's Happy, it's Happy. What's Heabi?"
"It's cute. Anyway, from now on, it's Heabi."
*Woof!*
The puppy seemed to like it, barking excitedly the moment it heard the name Jinha gave.
On the menu board behind Ayeong were written bean sprout 'Hae'multang and bean sprout 'Bi'bimbap, but she didn't seem to notice.
"See, Heabi likes it."
Ayeong had a somewhat suspicious expression but stopped arguing and prepared to go on the walk.
The name didn't matter as long as the puppy liked it.
He grabbed Heabi's leash and went outside.
"Gaetteong, come here."
*Pitter-patter...*
"Yes, Heabi. Good boy! Smart like your owner."
Jinha filmed Heabi walking with the camera and was struck by a fresh wave of emotion.
Until recently, he couldn't have imagined himself coming to the park and filming a puppy video.
"Should I upload a Heabi video on YouTube too?"
"I think it'd be good? These days people upload vlogs, just daily life stuff."
"Yeah. I made a channel already anyway, so uploading some would be fine."
Jinha checked his YouTube channel that Ayeong had made for him.
The slackline video in the park had only 19 views.
For Ayeong having spent the whole day editing, it was a miserable result.
*Woof woof!*
Heabi approached people in the park with a cute face, as if conscious of being filmed.
"Oh my, how pretty."
"Wow, look at this dog. So cute."
It was cute how it approached people, wagging its tail.
Heabi tilted its head and jumped in front of people, gathering all kinds of attention.
"You've got talent too."
Jinha captured all of Heabi's appearance on camera.
He didn't plan to make a channel focused on Heabi, but editing and uploading occasionally seemed fine.
Jinha handed the camera to Ayeong and decided to check the last reward he'd received.
'What the heck is a WZ-380?'
With such a strange name, it didn't seem like an ordinary item.
*Fwoosh!*
The moment he focused on the icon, light burst from Jinha's hand and a small audio device appeared.
Looking around, this too seemed invisible to others.
"Whoa..."
He reached out and pressed a button, and the screen in the center turned on.
[Thank you for running WZ-380 for the first time. Please select a song.]
"Song?"
Several lines of text floated on the screen in the center of the audio device.
- 1 (5:06) - Chiron
- 2 (2:12) - Chiron
- 3 (3:32) - Chiron
'What is this? And what's a Chiron?'
A row of numbers.
The color of the text differed for each number.
Red, yellow, blue.
"Could these be... songs?"
Though the title sections were different, it was similar to the music list he'd seen on the music streaming site Ayeong showed him.
Jinha focused on the '1' written in red among them.
*Wooooong-* As expected.
Music flowed out as expected.
A song filled with resonating sounds without lyrics.
Somehow majestic, making one's mood float.
Bizarre but captivating.
"Oh..."
After the song ended, this time he focused on the '2' written in yellow.
*Di-ding-di-ding-ding.*
Unlike the previous one, it was a cheerful and light song.
This song too had no lyrics.
Finally, '3'.
This song's text was blue.
This time, as soon as the music played, Heabi beside him reacted.
*Woof! Woof!*
Heabi, playing far away, suddenly ran over, spinning in circles and wagging its tail.
"You like this song?"
*Woof! Woof!*
"No, more importantly, can you hear this music?"
Heabi panted and nodded.
He checked if people around could hear the music, but couldn't sense anything like that.
The same went for Ayeong.
[Please select a song. After payment, you may acquire ownership of the song.]
"Ownership? Could it be... these songs... can I use them?"
Jinha pondered for a long time, then selected the last song, '3'.
[The price is 7.83 million won based on this place's exchange rate. Will you proceed with payment?]