Chapter 27
Chapter 27
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 27
Chapter Title: Clay Dolls Have No Wings
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Seo-ran felt a strong need for offensive spells while traveling through the secular world.
But Rock Bomb was out of the question.
Its explosion radius was far too wide.
It was on the level of the aerial bombs she had seen on YouTube in her previous life.
The explosion made it incredibly tricky to handle.
In fact, she hadn’t been able to use it freely when fighting the White Waterwood Fish in the lake or hunting the Black Scale Reverse Flow Blood Snake underground.
It only exploded on impact, so its effective range was short despite the massive kill zone.
Seo-ran needed power she could control precisely.
So she headed straight to the Scripture Pavilion.
“Please show me the list of offensive spells.”
The librarian brought out an incredibly thick book.
Seo-ran, the superhuman speed-reader who devoured two pages per breath, finished the list in an instant.
Then she went back to the librarian and asked.
“Why are there no Earth-attribute offensive spells?”
“There aren’t?”
“No, strangely enough, not a single one.”
“Then there aren’t any. How about using offensive spiritual tools instead?”
Seo-ran quietly returned the book.
She left the Scripture Pavilion and sat on a park bench.
Clutching her head, she muttered to herself.
“Why? Why aren’t there any? How can there not be even one?”
Countless delusions swirled in Seo-ran’s mind.
Had the archive storing only Earth-attribute offensive spells burned down, wiping them all out?
Or were they sealed away because they were too powerful?
No, that couldn’t be—surely there had to be at least one?
Of course there was a reason.
Earth-attribute offensive spells had never existed in the first place.
The Black Bamboo Sect had been founded by fire- and water-attribute cultivators working together.
The “black bamboo” of Black Bamboo Sect referred to charred bamboo.
But no matter how you looked around the mountain range where the sect was located, there was no black bamboo—only green.
It seemed odd, but the history made it simple.
Here, “black bamboo” didn’t mean a bamboo species—it meant bamboo burned black to ash.
When the sect was first founded, there were so many bamboo groves that the cultivators were tearing their hair out.
In the end, the fire-attribute cultivators breathed flames to burn the groves to the ground, and the water-attribute cultivators summoned rain to put out the fires.
The ash from the burned bamboo blanketed the mountains for a time.
That was the origin of the Black Bamboo Sect.
Since it was a sect founded by fire- and water-attribute cultivators, there were plenty of techniques and spells related to those affinities.
This skewed cultivation environment offered a powerful draw to multi-spirit root cultivators.
In the end, everyone chose fire- or water-attribute techniques.
With so many cultivators of specific affinities, research and development of related techniques and spells flourished.
There was no reason to take the hard road when the easy one was available, so new cultivators naturally followed suit.
The cycle repeated eternally.
From the sect’s perspective, it was a truly positive loop.
Of course, for Ryu Seo-ran, the pure Earth-attribute single spirit root holder completely outside the mainstream, it was a tragedy.
Seo-ran, with her incredibly high mental resilience, quickly shook off the gloom.
She fired up her brain-attached happiness circuit at full throttle.
The important thing was an unbreakable spirit.
It’s fine. I’m a genius, after all.
I’ll build it up step by step from the ground.
I’ll start an Earth-attribute craze in the Black Bamboo Sect myself.
Seo-ran left the park and headed back to the Scripture Pavilion.
With renewed determination, she reviewed the offensive spell list again.
If not Earth-attribute, then even neutral-affinity ones would do.
Most of the spells in the book were fire- or water-attribute.
Next came wood- and neutral-affinity, with metal-attribute dead last.
The harsh reality nearly broke her heart again.
In that vast sea of spells, she barely fished out one gem.
A neutral-affinity offensive spell called Prism Ray.
She wondered if she could modify it somehow.
Just in case, Seo-ran combed through every spell list like a madwoman—defensive spells, utility spells, everything.
But there were hardly any useful Earth-attribute spells.
The only gains were a few neutral-affinity ones: healing spells, flight spells, reinforcement spells.
Seo-ran trudged home.
Does this even make sense?
There are weird bathing spells like Threefold Branch Technique in the water-affinity section, but Earth-attribute is completely wiped out?
This is infuriating.
Once home, Seo-ran began practicing neutral-affinity spells.
Prism Ray.
An offensive spell that shot beams of light fueled by spiritual power.
It was called Prism Ray because the beam’s color varied with the cultivator’s spiritual power affinity.
For reference, Pure Earth Spiritual Power produced a yellow beam.
A field mouse hit by the beam instantly turned to dust.
It was too weak for yokai, but fun to shoot around everywhere.
Seo-ran, firing beams nonstop from her fingertips, suddenly had an idea.
Can I shoot this from my eyes too?
That would look so cool.
And my hands would be free.
The graphics card in her brain next to the happiness circuit whirred to life.
A monster shooting beams from its eyes and spewing fire from its mouth.
It was even dual-wielding swords with both hands.
Powerful and practical.
Seo-ran immediately modified the spell.
Moments later, beams shot from her eyes.
There was one fatal flaw: she couldn’t see a thing.
After spending a good while on field mouse extermination duty, Seo-ran moved to the next step.
Reinforcement Spell.
It infused objects with spiritual power to make them tougher.
She tested it on a tree branch and struck with it, shattering a rock into pebbles.
Of course, useless against yokai.
Healing Spell.
It rapidly treated wounds.
No effect on targets with spiritual power.
Another useless spell.
Flight Spell.
Flying through the sky without a flight spiritual tool, using one’s body alone.
It worked like floating on a balloon—extremely slow.
Is this trash even a spell?
Having finished her spell practice, Seo-ran made a decision.
She’d refine the Rock Bomb and use that instead.
Research was conducted on a riverside sandbar for safety.
Her primary goal was shrinking the explosion radius.
Destructive power would drop too, but she didn’t care.
Rock Bomb’s power was plenty strong as is.
First, she tried reducing the amount of spiritual power injected.
She hurled a stone orb at a target rock she’d set up.
The orb collided but didn’t explode.
Probably insufficient internal pressure.
She gradually increased the spiritual power injected.
The riverside was already a wasteland from repeated tests.
Seo-ran finally found the right internal pressure.
The launched Rock Bomb sliced through the air and hit the target.
An enormous explosion followed, disintegrating everything within the radius.
The aftershock radius was astonishingly narrow.
The refinement attempt was a resounding success.
The explosion range had been drastically reduced with barely any loss in power.
This should be safe enough for real combat—no risk of self-destruction.
Now she just needed a way to land Rock Bombs on enemies.
Seo-ran pondered briefly, then transformed into a gray bear.
She left the sandbar pocked with craters.
Her destination was a nearby beehive.
She’d overworked her brain too long.
She craved something sweet.
Spotting the hive, Seo-ran nimbly climbed the tree.
Enraged bees swarmed to attack her.
But their stings couldn’t pierce the bear’s thick fur.
Seo-ran sat leisurely, savoring the delicacy.
Maybe because she was in bear form, but the honey tasted even sweeter.
Food stolen from others always tastes best.
Sugar replenished, Seo-ran lay down in the tree shade.
Sleepiness crept in after eating.
The bees were still buzzing around furiously.
Bzzzz, buzz buzz.
Wait, buzz buzz?
A bee swarm?
Just as deep sleep beckoned, inspiration struck.
*****
In her previous life, Seo-ran had been a cold city dweller.
Naturally, she wasn’t close to nature.
To a cold city man, nature meant street trees on the commute and mosquitoes buzzing by his ears before sleep.
She especially hated the sound of mosquitoes in flight.
It was like a motor whirring right by her ear—enough to make her skin crawl.
Seo-ran particularly despised repetitive noises.
Dental drill motors.
Vacuum cleaners from upstairs late at night.
Delivery scooters bragging with their roaring exhausts.
What popped out from Seo-ran’s “modern things I wish didn’t exist” memory collection was a bad memory of delivery scooters.
And that was the answer to landing Rock Bombs on enemies.
Rock Bomb, honeybee delivery service, and the forgotten Doll Art.
Operation: Unlimited Bomb Doll Deployment.
Seo-ran bolted up from the tree hollow, yelling Eureka!
She rushed straight to the Scripture Pavilion, of course.
She borrowed every book: Doll Art Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced.
The Doll Research Notes from her lucky encounter were too advanced, still locked away in the safe.
Back at the riverbank, Seo-ran dug up clay.
She molded it into a cute doll.
In moments, a terracotta figure straight out of a museum was complete.
Next, she memorized the Beginner Doll Art.
The basics of Doll Art were like puppeteering: the master directly controlled the doll.
Seo-ran cast the spells in the order described in the book.
A connection formed between her and the clay doll.
Now to control it.
Focusing her mind, the clay doll began to move.
It jumped in place, did handstands, even danced.
Seo-ran danced for joy too.
The headache-inducing problem was solved with a small clue.
All that was left was to hone her Doll Art.
The rootless wild dance went on for a while.
Days later, Seo-ran kicked the clay doll, shouting.
“Another error! Why won’t it move?!”
At the same time, she realized why Doll Art was considered non-mainstream.