Chapter 48
Chapter 48
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 48
Chapter Title: How Much Could It Cost?
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How much could it cost?
Spring is the season of beginnings.
With vacation over, writing class teacher Ho Hye-mun was swamped.
Geum Yeongyeong, who had crammed through her winter break assignments at the last minute, was also dragged off to the Gold Workshop.
All because of her half-assed, slapped-together homework.
Seoran began studying puppetry as well.
Her goal was to create orthodox puppets with autonomy.
Regrettably, she planned to shelve manual control for the time being.
She already had plenty of unorthodox results.
Seoran still had the beginner, basic, and advanced puppetry manuals she had borrowed long ago.
She had forgotten to return them, but the Scripture Pavilion seemed to have forgotten too.
Probably because no one else wanted to borrow them.
It was a clear sign of just how fringe puppetry was as a school of magic.
The beginner manual covered puppeteers directly controlling their puppets.
Manual control was Seoran's specialty.
In game terms, it was like the tutorial Yeopo.
The basic manual dealt with autonomy.
The puppeteer pre-programs logical structures, and the puppet moves on its own.
This was exactly where Seoran had stuck out her tongue, tasted the bitterness of upright bipedal walking, and rolled around.
The advanced manual covered even deeper topics.
Puppeteers who reached this level could grant their puppets special abilities.
There were puppets with shared vision, auto-repair, and even communication capabilities.
Seoran figured she needed to master the advanced manual perfectly before tackling the Learning Puppet Research Notes.
Which meant perfecting the basic manual first.
Joyful upright bipedal walking time had arrived.
Seoran cried out in surprise.
“Why is it walking fine?!”
The clay puppet suddenly roamed the garden like a person.
Startled by the unexpected success, Seoran grew afraid.
Sudden luck could vanish just as quickly.
Seoran hurriedly made a duplicate.
Identical form, identical logical structure.
But the two puppets performed completely differently.
Seoran cried out again.
“Why did it stop moving?!”
The duplicate clay puppet, which had been walking just like the first, came to a complete halt.
After watching and waiting a bit longer, it did start moving again.
But not in the way Seoran wanted.
The clay puppet suddenly started moonwalking.
Staring at the forward-walking puppet and the backward-walking one, Seoran felt like she was losing her mind.
“What the hell?”
But puppetry was a fringe school of magic.
There was no one to ask why the puppet was acting up.
She had rarely felt this lonely and miserable, even with hair on her head.
What kind of battles have you fought alone, Teacher Puppet Enthusiast...?
Seoran suddenly thought of the Puppet Enthusiast.
She newfound respect for how he had created wooden puppets in the puppetry wasteland of the Western Continent.
Seoran looked up at the sky.
In the distance of the sky, the Puppet Enthusiast (old man, imagined) seemed to be grinning mischievously.
*****
Seoran desperately wanted someone to teach her puppetry.
So she searched and searched, and ended up going to Damcheong.
To be precise, her target was the deer antlers, the receiver for the weird transmission faction.
“Damcheong, could I borrow your antlers for a bit?”
Damcheong, happily swimming with the carp in the garden pond, startled and asked back.
“My antlers? What on earth is with that terrifying request? A dragon's antlers aren't like fingernails that keep growing back after being cut.”
Seoran cleared up the misunderstanding.
“I'm not saying I'll pull them out. I mean borrow their power, not the physical things. The ability to read heavenly secrets.”
The solution Seoran came up with was thoroughly modern.
When you don't know something, ask a search engine.
She vaguely remembered hearing in her past life that even programmers just googled it if they didn't know.
Damcheong, who looked a decade younger, crawled out of the pond.
“Fine, what are you curious about?”
Beaming, Seoran said.
“What do I need to fix to advance my puppetry?”
Damcheong answered immediately.
“Hmm, no idea. If I find out, I'll tell you too.”
“No, you have to read the heavenly secrets. You know, like when the deer antler glows.”
“The ability to read heavenly secrets is just passively hearing the secrets heaven deigns to tell. I don't know about other dragons, but I can't ask heaven anything. I just wait around, and if I'm lucky, I get something useful.”
Finishing his words, Damcheong slipped back into the pond.
Disappointed, Seoran trudged back to the clay.
And started tinkering with the clay puppet again.
Spring passed, and Seoran mastered upright bipedal walking.
From now on, she couldn't make puppets with just clay.
To improve functionality, it was time for expensive materials.
But Seoran wasn't worried.
Rare ingredients? How much could they cost?
Through her transformation-combining three-headed six-armed giant puppet Vajra Yaksha, Seoran had earned a massive development budget.
Problems solvable with money held no fear.
Seoran headed straight for the Scripture Pavilion.
She already felt like a puppet master.
But Seoran never received her development funds.
Unfortunately.
*****
Last fall, once his house arrest ended, Jang Ok-gi was assigned to work at the Scripture Pavilion as community service.
The brutal six months without even holidays finally ended.
Yet Jang Ok-gi was still working at the Scripture Pavilion.
The reason? “It's fun.”
He meant document drafting, copying, and cataloging were fun.
Even his birth parents didn't know, but Jang Ok-gi was born for it.
Heaven had given him a burning passion.
And talent to boot.
Give him ink and paper, and he could go all day.
So he stretched his work hours like taffy.
First to arrive, last to leave.
The Scripture Pavilion manager, who had lived centuries, had never seen such a capable and passionate young man.
When Jang Ok-gi's community service ended, he was immediately promoted to the lowest rank in the finance department.
He crushed a field of stellar applicants.
Despite his criminal record penalty, Jang Ok-gi survived the finance department selection battle royale with flying colors.
Every organization is the same, but finance departments wield more power than explicit authority.
That's why the integrity of members is crucial.
That was why Jang Ok-gi was selected for the finance department.
No one swayed by greed could run a private gambling den for years without pay.
His criminal record turned into a guarantee of integrity in that moment.
The man who would never embezzle reported for duty at finance.
He opened the door—and freaked out.
His lofty seniors were in chaos.
“The sect has no money!”
“What do we do, Senior? The budget's run dry...”
“Bankruptcy! We're all going bankrupt!”
“This morning, Ryu Susa applied for puppet development funds. It's a huge amount—what do we do?”
“Puppets?! Are you insane?!”
“Go tell her absolutely no!”
“Give her that, and Black Bamboo Sect is really done for!”
Soon, people from other departments came running.
“Hurry and give us budget! If we don't cover this promissory note by today, it's default! The sect's credit will be ruined!”
“The spirit plant hall has no spirit stones right now— all the spirit herbs and trees are on the verge of dying! If they do, restoration will take centuries!”
“Emergency, super emergency! The labyrinth speech hall's emergency food stock is almost gone! If we don't import from other sects immediately, we'll run out of food to trade for underground resources! This is a diplomatic issue involving treaty violations!”
It was like the apocalyptic day from prophecy.
The grand capital sect with thousands of years of history teetered on the brink.
Not because there were many thieves embezzling sect assets.
There was only one thief: Ryu Seoran.
Hostile capital sects, sensing crisis from Black Bamboo Sect's youngest-ever succession rite, had cursed thus:
The hasty rite would fail, and recovery from the losses would take centuries.
Their desperate curse was half right.
Seoran succeeded in the rite effortlessly.
In exchange, Black Bamboo Sect was driven to the edge of bankruptcy.
Sect succession was a distant future prospect, but the imminent default on promissory notes was right in front of them.
The finance members were blameless.
They had proven their elite status.
Through near-miraculous fund juggling, they had delayed Black Bamboo Sect's doom longer than expected.
Of course, they couldn't delay it forever.
Seoran's puppet development funds, which she hadn't even glimpsed, evaporated under the perfectly valid excuse of budget shortage.
No matter how wronged she felt, there was nothing to be done.
Ask where all the money went, and finance would no doubt point straight at Seoran.
Black Bamboo Sect, months away from bankruptcy declaration.
*****
Petty thieves steal gold from warehouses.
True thieves bring ruin to nations.
The greatest bandit of the age, who drove a massive sect to near death—Ryu Seoran—couldn't sleep all night.
Faces of her dear Black Bamboo Sect family kept flashing in her mind.
What if the sect collapses like this?
Will we all scatter?
My vow to repay them with sect succession?
In the end, she didn't sleep a wink till morning.
But she couldn't just sit still.
Seoran woke the sleeping Damcheong and left Black Bamboo Sect.
She flew northeast past the grand barrier.
Reached the border and went through exit procedures.
Not fleeing abroad after sucking the sect dry.
It was a girl heading out as family breadwinner to earn foreign currency.
In one corner of the Susun Realm international market, someone shouted.
“Earth affinity, water affinity—one each, hop on!”
Seoran jumped up and yelled.
“Me!”
The cultivator labor market went on as usual.