The Nymphs and Dark Ha Ildo # 3
Back when I was a kid, my little sister used to play with this liquid monster toy, and one day she shoved it down my shirt as a "prank."
It was cold and squishy and a deeply, deeply unsettling sensation.
Squirm, squirm—
That was EXACTLY how I felt right now!
Some unidentified parasitic creature was launching itself straight at me!
"Uwaaah!"
In the face of this urgent, highly irregular emergency, I frantically tore my clothes off.
And then I managed to grab the wiggling parasite squirming its way up my stomach with my bare hand.
"Gotcha!"
Pip—
But then something astonishing happened.
The parasitic creature suddenly went limp, lost its strength entirely, and dropped to the floor with a wet plop.
It was like melted snow pooling on the ground—the way the liquid monster simply gave out.
Watching it, I found myself flustered in a number of ways, my brow furrowing without my permission.
"…Did it die?"
It stopped moving altogether.
Gong Daenam was extremely flustered by the whole situation, muttering "Aw, man, my moneymaker…" with the air of someone mourning a genuine loss.
Had I somehow killed the parasitic creature by touching it wrong?
It was the thing that had lunged at me first, but I couldn't help feeling a little guilty anyway.
"Sorry. I didn't do it on purpose or anything…"
"Nah, it's fine. These things happen. Looks like it was already on its last legs anyway, from what I can see. Shame, but what can you do…"
Gong Daenam sounded genuinely disappointed.
Right at that moment, a sharp beep-beep-beep rang out.
The sound of the hacking on the bag being complete.
"Shall we see what's inside?"
Click—
Gong Daenam began undoing the locks on the bag we'd taken from Ki Seung-jae, one by one.
Clunk, clack—
Whirr, snap—
The bag started opening with surprisingly sleek, almost romantic little sounds.
Psssssssh—
Venting something like gas, the bag yawned open, and inside…
…something magnificent, gleaming with a beautiful chrome luster, lay crouched.
━Kwang-kwang…!
The first to react was Kwang-kwangi.
Toward the thing inside the bag, Kwang-kwangi lifted its left foreleg, then its right foreleg, alternating between them in a greeting that could only be described as friendly.
And then the object in the bag responded in exactly the same way, moving its left foreleg and right foreleg just like Kwang-kwangi had.
━Myo-ong—.
It was an odd little cry.
It almost sounded like the happy noise Keongkeongi made when it was in a good mood.
Watching this exchange, Gong Daenam let out a whistle of admiration.
"Whoa, this looks like a 7th-gen drone. A drone made of shape-memory alloy with self-learning AI—automatic repair and regeneration built right into the metal. You see these pop up on the Deep Deep Web now and then, but here of all places…"
Fishing a pair of glasses out of his pocket, Gong Daenam leaned in and examined the drone perched on the bag from every angle, oohing and aahing the whole time.
He called it a drone, but to me it looked, no matter how I squinted at it, like a dazzlingly cool wolf spider.
It was about the same size as Kwang-kwangi, and it moved just like Kwang-kwangi too.
━Gwang, gwang—!
If there was anything unusual about it, it was only that its cry sounded like gwang-gwang.
The chrome sheen, a gorgeous blend of ash-gray and silver, was honestly stunning, and I was moved in a number of ways.
"That's seriously cool."
"If you sold it, you'd get at least a hundred million won for it—probably more with a collector's premium thrown in. Want me to look into a buyer for you? I'd bet there's a line of people dying to get their hands on it."
Gong Daenam's interest in the mechanical spider was piqued.
The gloom over the parasitic creature's death had vanished without a trace, which told you just how impressive this mechanical spider was.
If I sold one of these, how many drones could I buy, hmm~?
Heh heh heh—
I was in a good mood too, now that I had money for new equipment coming my way.
But then something about Kwang-kwangi started nagging at me.
━Hio-ong…!
Kwang-kwangi was slowly extending a foreleg toward the mechanical spider, swaying its body from side to side.
Then it even started singing—hio-ong, hio-ong—and watching the whole performance, I couldn't help but feel warmly fuzzy about it.
A friend.
Was that how it saw this?
Dog-squirrels, tiger owls, honey ants—they'd all shown up in droves around Primeval Village, but wolf spiders were exceptionally rare, so Kwang-kwangi had never had a friend of its own.
No wonder it felt such kinship toward a 7th-gen drone that looked so much like itself.
"Want me to run a spec test and put a price tag on it? We'd need to take it apart first, of course."
Heh heh heh— Gong Daenam rubbed his hands together.
The moment he carried the mechanical spider off and set it on some eerie measuring device, Kwang-kwangi deflated like a punctured balloon.
━Hio-ong….
It had figured out that the friend it had finally made was about to disappear.
I deliberated in a number of ways, but in the end I steeled myself and reached a conclusion.
"No. Selling it feels a bit wrong. I'm going to keep it and use it myself."
"Really? Well, I suppose gear this good makes you want to get your hands on it personally. Honestly, I'm a little jealous myself. Looking at it, this bag seems to double as a charging case, not just a container, so—"
And just like that, a mechanical spider joined my family.
Its name: Myeong-i.
Because it cried myo-ong, you see.
Kwang-kwangi seemed quite pleased that its new friend had been given the name Myeong-i, too.
━Hio-ong…!
━Myo-ong…!
"And that's the story of how Myeong-i became part of our family."
Click—
I showed Oinoi the bag-style charger plugged into the wall outlet.
Oinoi gazed at the mechanical spider Myeong-i sitting demurely on top of it and marveled.
"What a magnificent wolf spider this is…! Its metallic, elegant form is truly splendid—it ranks among the finest spiders this Oinoi has ever beheld, it does…!"
Oinoi cooed over how dashing Myeong-i looked.
And fair enough—the tips of Myeong-i's legs were sharp as awls, and its whole silhouette blended graceful curves with lethal edges. It looked, frankly, like a final weapon.
In personality, though, it seemed to take after Kwang-kwangi—timid—and it kept hiding inside the charger bag, reluctant to show itself.
Watching this, Oinoi said:
"Wolf spiders are famously skittish when they move to a new home—they love hiding in some tucked-away corner for days, they do…! But given time, it will surely adapt, it will…!"
Come to think of it, when Kwang-kwangi had first appeared near our house, it had hidden in a woodpile or something similar and spent every single day observing the situation.
Of course, this one wasn't actually a spider—it was closer to a drone—but Oinoi genuinely seemed to believe it was a real spider, and honestly, so did Kwang-kwangi.
━Hio-ong…!
In front of the bag, Kwang-kwangi danced and sang in a number of ways.
Watching it, I felt reassured in a number of ways too.
"I'm glad Kwang-kwangi finally has a friend."
Keongkeongi had Fey the flying squirrel.
Ang-angi had Elizabeth, who warbled her ororong.
But Kwang-kwangi had been alone, and that had always looked rather lonely to me.
Granted, Kwang-kwangi seemed to enjoy itself plenty on its own, singing and dancing every day—but that was just how it felt to watch from the outside.
"But now we can rest easy."
And so we celebrated welcoming our new family member.
The next morning, after a deep, blissful sleep—
"Feeling fantastic."
I woke up to the same refreshing morning as always.
Only my body felt lighter than usual, and strength seemed to be surging through every inch of me.
I was in better condition than normal, no question.
And I had a pretty good idea why.
"Could it be… the fruits of my training are finally kicking in?"
I had never once skipped my daily physical conditioning.
Those efforts were surely paying off now, returning with a solid, unmistakable interest.
"Hard work really doesn't betray you, huh."
I headed out to the yard.
There sat the A-rank training dummy Cha Yura had made for me—a super-dense eternal ice block so tough that anything short of an A-rank attack wouldn't leave so much as a scratch on it.
When the weather got too hot, the likes of Kwang-kwangi, Keongkeongi, and Ang-angi would lounge around it, soaking up the cool air.
And it doubled as a sparring partner for my techniques.
"Something tells me today's the day I can actually cut it down."
Vmmmmm—
I drew my Beam Saber.
Then, with everything I had, I swung my arm down at the ice.
"Il-do Slash!"
Pwee-shoom! Krrrk-shatter—!
With a piercing shriek, the top of the ice block cracked clean through and broke apart.
That meant exactly one thing.
My internal mana had risen to nearly A-rank levels.
"I'm already at this level? I figured I had at least a few more years to go. Is this actually real?"
How tremendous was this?
I couldn't contain the surging emotion.
"Oinoi! Come out here and look! I smashed the ice! Oinoi… did you go out to walk Keongkeongi or something? Oinoi? Anyone? Keongkeongi! Kalinoi! Is nobody home? Hm?"
Nobody home, huh!
Anyway!
Proper testing would have to come later, but for now I was drenched in gratitude over my rising mana reserves.
Click—
Thrilled, I slipped into the bath to wash off the sweat I'd worked up—and that's when I noticed something strange in the mirror.
"What the…?"
It was a tattoo.
A tattoo the size of a fist, etched into my chest just below the sternum.
The design was a circle, and its color was a deep, absolute black.
At a glance, it almost looked as if a black hole had punched straight through my chest.
"What is this thing?"
Had I blacked out last night during Myeong-i's welcome party and initiation rites, maybe after drinking one of Illinoi's infamous Makes-Your-Mood-Dark potion? Had I gotten a tattoo during the missing hours?
Click—
I opened the fridge. Illinoi's potions were still there, all five bottles, untouched.
Neither increased nor decreased.
"What on earth is going on."
I ran my fingers over the black mark, rubbing it this way and that.
It felt odd in a number of ways.
"Could it be…"
Was it connected to that parasitic creature from yesterday?
Even if I said so myself, it was a plausible theory.
Thinking something out there might help with my current situation, I sat down at my computer.
Suddenly got a tattoo on my chest.
Parasitic creature engraved a tattoo.
I searched a dozen different ways, but nothing useful came up.
As I wandered the internet in a number of ways, I discovered yet another post about me—yes, me, Ha Ildo—sitting at the top of the best-of board with the most upvotes.
Title: Honestly, if you're jealous of Ha Ildo, smash that upvote
Should I press the upvote button too if I want a dog-squirrel and a honey ant of my own?
A very heartwarming post, all things considered.
But one comment made my blood pressure spike.
A dog-squirrel launcher.
An aircraft carrier.
I liked those words.
Because they were true.
Frankly, these days Keongkeongi, Ang-angi, and the tiger owl handled the bulk of my work for me.
The title of "Aircraft Carrier" was one I fully deserved.
But today, for some reason, I found I couldn't let this talk slide!
It was as if a destructive urge and a wave of negativity were bubbling up from somewhere deep inside me, and the conviction that I could not leave that comment unanswered sent my internal mana roiling.
"How DARE you leave hate comments on me."
On any normal day, I'd have scrolled right past it without a second thought—but—
Clink—
Right now, I did something I would never have done under ordinary circumstances.
I picked up the mouse and pressed DOWNVOTE for the first time in my life!
"Downvote!"
In that instant, a strange sensation of omnipotence and depravity blazed through my entire body, and the world swayed dizzily before my eyes.
How should I put it—the mana inside me felt like it was churning even more violently?
TelTalk!
Right at that moment, my phone buzzed.
I wondered who it could be—it was Seo Yerim.
"……."
