To the South Sea!
Cheongwadae.
In the room where the President and the senior officials of every ministry had gathered, a heated debate was supposed to be underway… Instead, steam was practically pouring off the table.
“Aigoo, my head…”
Barely three days earlier, the Defense Research Institute—having selected the military applications of magic as its core research topic—had submitted a proposal to piggyback on the Navy’s live-fire training period. After quiet huddles among the interested parties (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Intelligence Service, and the rest), the plan had crystallized: let Seoul’s mage Yuria put on a show of force, flood the public with information, and thereby drown any attempt to harvest truly sensitive intel under a tidal wave of open-source noise.
That was the whole point of managing OSINT—open-source intelligence. Forget the spy-movie fantasies of hacking, infiltration, theft, and kidnapping. The real flower of information warfare was public data.
A news article about a new tank prototype that carelessly posted uncensored photos of the test vehicle. A visitor who snapped a picture of a classified unit’s front gate and uploaded it to social media. A civilian airport photo of a military aircraft that somehow ended up on a community board… Individually the value was ambiguous, but in the right hands any of it could become high-grade intelligence.
From the other side’s perspective, when open sources suddenly started churning out mountains of material, collection and analysis became a nightmare.
…Or so the First Deputy Director of Military Intelligence had passionately argued to his boss, spittle flying, according to everyone who had heard the story.
And now, climbing the approval chain from the Security Strategy Center under the Defense Research Institute, came a document listing the three demands of Seoul’s mage Yuria:
1. Appropriate compensation for the magic demonstration during the exercise.
2. Sharing of future management schedules and the like.
3. Establishment of a magic-research institution, with herself as its head.
“Hmm.”
President Jeong Tae-san crossed his massive forearms, the motion sending a sharp whoosh of breath through his nostrils. With that build he looked more like a bodyguard who had somehow claimed the seat of honor. His rough, knotted hands and fierce gaze locked precisely on the Director of the National Intelligence Service.
“So, Director.”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“Can we give her everything?”
Jeong Seong-pil—gaunt, cheekbones jutting like blades, a non-field man who had nevertheless risen to the absolute peak of the NIS—shook his head.
“There’s a slight problem with the second item.”
“Hmm…”
“Mm.”
The ministers and senior secretaries nodded as if they had expected nothing else. Behind the Director, however, the First Deputy Director’s brow furrowed even tighter. After all, he was the one who had carefully assembled the original plan.
“….”
He was just about to raise his hand—nervous in front of such exalted company, yet left with no choice—when the President spoke unexpectedly.
“Why not treat her like a North Korean defector under protective observation and ease the restrictions gradually?”
“We can’t keep her locked up forever, after all.”
“That’s true, but…”
“As for sharing future schedules—don’t we already have weekly planners and such? Just write one of those up and hand it over.”
In practice, “sharing future schedules” meant plans that got overturned at the last minute and rewritten the morning of the event. It wasn’t a contractual loophole; it simply happened all the time.
“I’m in favor for now. It’s necessary work.”
The NIS Director, however, found it hard to yield.
“The process of sharing schedules raises concerns about wiretapping and plan leakage…”
“She’s a mage. I’m sure she has ways around that, doesn’t she?”
“Ah… ah?”
The sitting head of the nation’s intelligence agency—and a forty-year veteran operative—simply short-circuited.
“Let’s ask her and decide. Ask her.”
It was an absurd solution, yet it left no room for rebuttal. Jeong Seong-pil had no choice but to nod.
The Navy’s magic-demonstration schedule was locked in almost overnight.
—Iiiiiiiing
Clutching my head against the deafening roar of the machinery, every possible thought tumbled through my mind.
—Kuuuuu…
Depth: minus forty-five meters. Aboard a submarine preparing to surface, I scratched my head and replayed the previous night.
…
..
.
The night before.
“Please prepare to go out. As for attire—ah, you already have something.”
Late evening. I had been reading The Sociology of S*x in the lounge when the notice arrived. (No filthy questions about why the title is The Sociology of S*x. It’s a perfectly wholesome family-sociology text. Being rude to a respectable book is uncalled for. …Granted, I only picked it up because the title was too much to resist, but it turned out to be a solid piece of nonfiction.)
I slipped in a bookmark, changed into the formal suit the facility had prepared, and followed the agent outside. A black sedan waited.
“It’s a bit of a drive, so feel free to nap.”
It was nearly ten at night; sleepiness was already creeping in.
“Sure.”
Sli—
—p.
I slept like a rock!
I remembered chanting the Sleep spell, and the next thing I knew, the window was filled with an orange sea just beginning to catch the sunrise.
“…It’s beautiful. Really beautiful.”
The words slipped out with complete sincerity. In the other world the oceans had been a thick, murky blue-black from the industrial waste dumped by monsters, beasts, and the Demon King’s armies.
“A little early for late May, but the South Sea really is pretty.”
I made polite noises of agreement while drinking in the view.
“Wait a second. The South Sea? Where exactly are we going?”
This time no answer came.
“….”
The car finally stopped at the naval base in Jinhae…
A military… base?
Why?
Uniformed personnel ushered me along: a quick cup of coffee, a V-sign photo op, a rambling welcome speech.
What is this?
What is happening right now?
I seemed to be taking part in some kind of ceremony, and before I knew it a female officer was holding out a crisp white uniform folded with military precision.
Re-enlistment?
The possibility… exists!
A strong, highly capable Hero with prior service experience? And doesn’t the Korean military already call its soldiers “heroes”?
Okay, maybe I got a little carried away…
“Here’s the uniform and shoes—”
“But why am I even here?”
“…Excuse me?”
—Grab!
I seized the shoulders of the blank-faced officer.
“Nobody told me anything… I’m not re-enlisting, right? Right? You’re not seriously going to make a returnee start with military service right out of the gate…!”
I wasn’t genuinely throwing a tantrum—just a tiny bit of petty revenge for being dragged all the way to the South Sea at the crack of dawn without a word of explanation.
“No, wait. Hold on. Uwaaah…”
My half-hearted fussing was cut short by the agent who had heard the commotion outside and come in.
“Sheesh… Still half-asleep?”
“Ahem. Actually I was just bored.”
The agent heaved a long sigh, rubbed his forehead, and finally explained why I was here.
“Remember the firepower demonstration? The one we talked about earlier—using strong magic out on the open sea.”
“Ah, right.”
That conversation had happened.
I obediently put on the naval uniform. No rank insignia—more like a civilian experience uniform—but the clean white-and-gold design was rather nice.
“Shall we go?”
…
..
.
Back to the present.
And so here I was, somewhere far out in the South Sea.
Stuck inside a windowless submarine, my mind had gone completely blank. All I wanted was for that damned low-frequency engine noise—or whatever it was—to stop.
“Aigoo, my head. Aigoo, my head…”
I massaged the back of my neck, trying to forget the headache, while a restless petty officer hovered behind me.
“As soon as we surface you can disembark.”
“Urgh…”
I hadn’t expected my body to be this vulnerable to sonic assault, so the damage hit even harder. I wanted to soothe the headache with magic, but casting inside a sealed submarine would leave me without mana for emergencies. The deep ocean shielded mana; for a mage it was a lethal environment.
—Beeeep
“Vessel has surfaced. Hatch ramp open.”
Having secretly completed a mana-deficiency survival drill no one else knew about, I felt the cool rush of mana flooding back in and headed outside.
—Click, click
Submarines always looked small on the news and in videos, but…
“It’s actually enormous.”
I hopped down from the protruding hatch and hovered just above the water. The sailors and officers who had followed me out stared with open curiosity.
“Whoa.”
I was the one more fascinated by the submarine. From the briefing inside I knew it displaced 3,600 tons and measured just under ninety meters. The largest imperial flagship in the other world had been a 2,500-ton ironclad magic vessel. The wet, gleaming deck of this sub was wide enough to set up several ping-pong tables and still have room to play.
“So, I just use magic now?”
“No. Ships from Busan and Jeju haven’t arrived yet, so you’ll need to wait about twenty more minutes…”
Were they late? One of the officers, sensing my concern, added an explanation.
“Originally we were going to wait submerged and then surface-transit, but you seemed to be suffering badly from seasickness, so we surfaced early.”
“Ah. In that case, thank you.”
Still, I couldn’t just sit around wasting time.
Time to show them some ridiculously flashy glowing-dinosaur magic. I had prepared a little performance combining mild illusion and luminescence spells.
—Flash
“Standing around is boring. Want to watch some magic?”
A five-on-five extinction battle between a luminous Tyrannosaurus and an RGB-gaming Allosaurus ought to be enough to set any man’s heart racing.
—Flash! Flash!!
—Kuuwoooar!
The Tyranno clamped its jaws on the Allosaurus’s neck and spun it like a windmill. Mouths dropped open all around me.
Yes, yes. Any man who isn’t interested has already lost his soul.
Or lost something precious… like me.
Sorry, Ttolttol. Hope you find a better owner in the next life…
—Kwaaaaah!
The final Tyrannosaurus glowed bright green and dissolved into light, ending the twenty-minute mini-play.
—Clap clap clap clap
Even the older-looking uncles were going “Heeeh~” and applauding. I realized every last one of them still carried a boy’s dreams inside.
And right on cue came word that the training fleet was almost here. I rose lightly into the air above the submarine.
“I can’t stay inside any longer.”
“Hmm… Let me just get clearance…”
The liaison officer spoke into his radio for a moment, then nodded.
“Permission granted. But stay as low as possible and stick close to the submarine. Otherwise you’ll light up every radar…”
I nodded, waved to the people disappearing one by one into the hatch, and watched the silhouette of the submarine slip beneath the waves with a soft gurgle.
“…Wouldn’t it be fun if I just shot off south from here?”
A crazy thought flickered through my mind, but I discarded it. The people inside would probably all have heart attacks.
Besides, the military wouldn’t be moving without contingencies.
…Right?