044 – Oinoi and the Little Stationery Store # 8
"That fool's about to do something reckless again. I can feel it."
Ever since Ha Ildo had emailed her his paper on dimensional rifts, Seo Yerim had been monitoring his every move — every gesture, every breath.
The reason, and the right behind it, was crystal clear.
"Ha Ildo is a temporary affiliate of our Telos. If he goes off somewhere and causes trouble, our stock price takes the hit. That's all there is to it."
An entirely reasonable argument. Ahn Yeongeun, Seo Yerim's secretary and friend, found it rather amusing that her boss had suddenly developed such a passionate interest in stock prices — but she agreed with the logic anyway.
After all, she too could sense it in her gut: something extraordinary was about to happen.
So the two of them watched together. It looked as though the group was attempting to reopen an identical rift by manipulating variables — an experiment that seemed outright impossible. And yet the impossible experiment succeeded.
They had actually managed to reopen a rift that had closed in the past. This was something Telos had barely accomplished after inviting Dr. Newgate and pouring astronomical sums into development and research — and now a handful of people had pulled it off on their own.
"That's genuinely impressive."
Ahn Yeongeun marveled with unfeigned admiration. But she couldn't afford to simply stand there admiring it.
"Still, the mana detection readings are abnormal. This is just my opinion, but it's at least an A-rank rift. Yerim, it's far too dangerous for us to just keep watching from here like─"
"At least A-rank!?"
Seo Yerim had been observing Ha Ildo's bizarre experiment from a distance. If a powerful mana wielder like her loitered too close, she'd introduce far too great a variable and disrupt the test — that was her reasoning.
But if the rift they'd opened carried an A-rank threat level or higher, the calculus changed entirely.
"Telos personnel, coming through! Everyone, please clear the area! Effective immediately, I, Seo Yerim, S-rank awakener, will take charge and secure this site! Please step aside!"
Seo Yerim marched straight toward the rift. Fortunately, she was a celebrity; the crowd recognized her at once and fell in line with her control measures without protest.
A low hum of mana rolled through the air as she crossed the threshold — and on the other side unfolded a landscape lashed by frigid snowstorms. Not that a snowstorm was anything more than a minor inconvenience for her.
Fwoosh.
Seo Yerim radiated the mana within her body, raising the surrounding temperature in an instant. Snow and glaciers alike began to melt on the spot.
The S-rank awakener pressed deeper into the rift, reshaping the very climate around her with every step, until at last she spotted Ha Ildo locked in combat with a four-meter monster.
A troll? No — it's bigger than that, and its skin looks like living ice. Definitely A-rank monster material, at least. Ha Ildo, you lifetime D-ranker, you're holding your own against an A-rank monster, aren't you?
It was remarkable. Part of her wanted to simply stand back and watch the fight unfold, but a rift was no playground — it was a place where lives were staked. Eliminating the danger came first, so Seo Yerim turned up the temperature of her mana.
"One Mind, One Blade — Ultra-Heat Inferno."
At the burst of her mana, the ice monster began melting away like a snowman left under the blazing summer sun. It shrank before their very eyes, diminishing and diminishing, until nothing remained but a single small, blue orb.
"Easy."
An S-rank awakener was practically a force of nature.
The claim that a single person could alter the terrain and the climate of an entire region was, it turned out, no exaggeration at all.
"That's… borderline cowardly."
Kurish, the Troll King I had struggled so desperately against. That monstrous creature had melted and collapsed onto the floor like an ice cream bar some convenience store clerk had failed to shove into the freezer in time.
All of it, simply because Seo Yerim had shown up.
Even Lee Jina, who'd been staring death in the face moments ago, seemed to lose a bit of her edge at the sight.
"So that's an S-rank awakener. Like a sun fallen out of the sky and dropped onto the ground."
She was feeling a great wall looming before her, no doubt. That quiet, gnawing question — could I ever reach that height, even if I worked my hardest? — would be settling into her chest right about now.
Because that was exactly how I'd felt, once.
That said, right now I had more pressing matters than brooding over impressions. Gazing at the floor, I spoke up.
"So is it fully down? From what I could tell, some kind of core in its chest was regenerating the body. Is that it — that orb?"
Zeeeung—!
At that moment, the Troll King's 'core', lying there on the ground, began to rise into the air. An inexplicable sense of dread crawled up my spine, and I swung the Beam Saber still gripped in my hand, cleaving straight through it.
"Thunderbolt Slash—!!!!"
My ultimate technique — a full-body burst of power that could split a sheet of thick steel like paper. I'd named it after the finisher move of a character who'd been popular back in the day.
Zeeeung, chwaaaaak—!
The single stroke sliced clean through the orb. Wounded, it dropped to the floor with a soft thud.
No more ominous mana radiated from it. The situation was, at long last, truly over.
Only then could I let out a breath of relief and speak.
"Yerim, I've got a lot to say to you, but first — thank you for saving us. It was dangerous back there. You saw that thing, right? That was the Troll King. Easily A-rank, minimum."
"I've got plenty to say too, but for now I'm just glad you all look unharmed. Two C-rankers holding out that well, huh? Wait — did you seriously name your ultimate move after yourself? Wow, what even─"
As she rattled on, Seo Yerim glanced around at our surroundings.
"Anyway, what is this place?"
Beneath the melting ice, staircases and stone structures were beginning to emerge — and beneath the snowstorm, a field of blue was revealing itself to the sky.
It was hard to believe this had been a place of mortal danger mere minutes ago. Beautiful didn't even begin to cover it; the scenery alone bordered on breathtaking.
How reassuring could the world become with just one person — one Seo Yerim — standing in it? This was what the hero of my dreams looked like.
Moral of the story: power matters. People need strength.
Gwuuuk—.
Just as I clenched my fist around the bitter taste of inadequacy, Lee Jina asked,
"So… how do we get out of here? The exit's already closed."
She was right. The exit had sealed itself shut. Lee Jina looked flustered, but honestly — now that the Troll King was down, the exit was the least of my worries.
"Remember what that ice-water nymph, Coris, said? We can't leave the temple because the Troll King is guarding the exit. Which means this rift probably has a fixed exit somewhere else entirely."
Not that I could guarantee it.
Still, we agreed that moving beat standing around, so we set about exploring the now fully melted temple. It was a far grander piece of architecture than expected, and after a good while of searching, we found the exit near what seemed to be its central chamber.
Though it looked a little… odd.
It was a door. Made of stone, its center was pitch-black as a starless night, with no telling whatsoever where it might lead. Seo Yerim frowned at the sight of it.
"Where do you suppose it connects to? If this thing opens into somewhere like the bottom of the Pacific trench, we are in some serious trouble."
"Hold on."
I'd come prepared for exactly this kind of situation — with more gear, of course.
Shk—.
I drew a drone from my waist. A reconnaissance model specially built by Ohsa Group.
"A drone? Hey, Ha Ildo! You're the brokest guy I know — how do you own this much equipment? So that's why you never had any money! You blew it all buying gadgets!"
Seo Yerim laid into me, and she wasn't wrong. I'd burned through a fortune purchasing this gear and that. If my internal mana won't grow, then upgrade the hardware — that was the philosophy behind most of it.
And the recon drone had proven its worth more than once.
"This one's built to withstand a rift's rebound shock. It'll operate without a hiccup all the way up to A-rank. Now, if I just fly it through this door─"
Buuung—.
The drone lifted off. The camera mounted on its frame projected a live feed onto the screen of the palm-sized controller in my hand.
Buuung—.
At last, the drone slipped through the black door. And what appeared on the other side was─
"A room?"
It was a room walled on every side with stone. Roughly the size of my studio apartment, it was a perfect cube with not a single window — which made it feel distinctly unsettling.
"Looks like we'll have to go in and check it out ourselves."
I stepped through the black door.
Zeeeung—.
The instant I drew my Beam Saber, the room flooded with light — and there they were: paintings on the walls.
They depicted long-eared people meeting short, pointed-eared people and shaking hands. Elves and nymphs, huh? — the thought had barely formed when Lee Jina scowled.
"So what Kurish was guarding wasn't the exit after all."
Then what were we supposed to do? Were we trapped here for good?
That was when Seo Yerim spoke.
"My friend Yeongeun is about to reopen the rift from our side. Dr. Newgate developed a technique that punches a hole through a dimension by tracking biological mana wavelengths. She's probably finished installing it and started it up by now."
Zuuuuuung—.
Right on cue.
A small portal blossomed into existence mere steps from where Seo Yerim stood — a portal just large enough for a single person to pass through.
"Look at that."
"Good heavens. Just how far is this technology supposed to go?"
We returned to the front of the Alpha Stationery Store.
No one was injured, and no one had been left behind. By every measure, it was a resounding success.
I found myself staring at the machine installed in front of the store. It resembled a mirror, but electricity ran through it — it crackled and shimmered, holding itself in the shape of a door.
"Truly incredible."
At my murmur of admiration, Secretary Ahn Yeongeun replied,
"It's a machine developed by Dr. Newgate in collaboration with the elves. It's called the Bifrost, and this technology is going to become the very core of the 5th Industry. Amazing, isn't it? Do you have any idea how much a single unit costs?"
It truly was amazing. I hadn't the faintest grasp of the principle behind it.
And that was when it happened.
From among the crowd, the ice-water nymph Coris cried out.
"This is saying that it resembles the door the long-eared foreign fairies showed when they came seeking the native nymphs…! After the elves arrived, the cold winter came with them, and it was truly hard on everyone, it is…!"
The elves had come to the nymphs?
I didn't quite know what to make of it — but then, in the 21st century, elves had appeared on Earth when the rifts opened, too. Considering that, it was a story worth chewing over from more than one angle.
Anyway.
I was exhausted.
I sank to the ground where I stood. Now that it was all over, the day's events finally replayed before my eyes, one after another — and there had been more than a few moments that skirted the edge of oblivion.
Surviving at all was a miracle.
And at the same time, I was bitterly frustrated.
Because my own strength had been so painfully lacking. If Seo Yerim hadn't appeared — what would have become of me and Lee Jina?
Grrk—.
Honestly? It stung. Next to the real deal, I hadn't even crossed the starting line yet. That was the conclusion I kept arriving at.
"We've gathered more than enough experimental data, and Dr. Newgate says she'd like to run field trials too. We're honestly one step away from commercializing the Bifrost now."
Ahn Yeongeun beamed as she oversaw the recovered equipment. With this rift experiment behind them, all that remained was for Telos to stand tall among the megacorps of the 5th Industry.
But Seo Yerim's expression was anything but cheerful.
"……"
"Yerim? What's wrong? Is it because you nearly got trapped in the rift?"
"Huh? No, look at this. This core from the Troll King — it was the center of its body. The only way to put it down for good was to damage this. And it's absurdly hard. I tried melting it at two thousand degrees and it didn't budge an inch."
"Really!? Two thousand degrees is heat that would stagger even most A-rank monsters! That marble thing can withstand that? You actually managed to take down a monster like that? That's our Yerim for you."
"I didn't take it down. Ha Ildo swung that laser saber and cut it open like — this."
Seo Yerim's thoughts drifted back to the moment. When the orb had glowed blue and begun to whip up some strange phenomenon, Ha Ildo had severed it in one lightning-fast strike, and the helpless core had dropped to the floor.
At the story, Ahn Yeongeun's eyes went wide.
"A C-rank awakener unleashed instantaneous destructive power on par with an S-rank — no, an A-rank? Ohsa Group's laser saber is that powerful? Isn't this genuinely dangerous!? If Ohsa has technology like that─"
Inside the Telos Group's development wing, while her secretary fretted over the brewing war between corporations, Seo Yerim gazed out the window at Macheon City, its skyline glittering with a thousand lights.
"So either the saber's performance really is that good… or─"
The second possibility, Seo Yerim chose not to voice aloud.
"Maybe — just maybe — he could have brought it down even if I'd never shown up."