The Distorted Mana of Plot #2
“I'm home.”
“Oh, there's Ji-on!”
The scene that greeted me when I arrived at the house (Grandpa Choi's house, of course) was a strange one. My father was patting Grandpa Choi on the back.
“What are you two doing?”
“Ah, he said his back felt a bit stiff!”
He's calling him 'Father.'
He'd only been in this household for a single day, and already the honorifics had melted away. Once again, I marveled at my father's almost frightening people skills. I should've gotten that close with my clubmates too, damn it……!
Apparently, while I'd been at school, my father had accomplished far more than I'd expected. Everything had been handled in one smooth sweep. The business account receiving the farm's income had been converted into a family co-owned business, and the debt had been paid off in full with the money sitting in that account — apparently structured so the least possible tax would come out. The business really had become something the whole family shared in now.
And it seemed the housing problem had been more or less solved as well.
“Chairman Choi Tae-seok went out of his way to help, so we saved a lot of time running around making calls.”
The conclusion was that the old, collapsed house would be torn down completely and a new one built in its place. Thanks to Grandpa Choi, the building permit had sailed through today, and construction was set to begin tomorrow. The estimated build time was six months. Until then, the family would be staying in another vacant house near the fields — which was why everyone was packing their things.
“You rented an empty house? How?”
“As it turns out, Chairman Choi dislikes having people living too close to him, so he bought up several properties in one go.”
Wow. That's money flexing.
Then again, for billionaires who value their privacy, is it really a flex?
Anyway, the upshot was that of all the houses he'd purchased, he was lending us the one closest to the fields. The immediate, practical problems had been dealt with. A relief — but something worried me.
“So the plan to buy the fields with what's left has been pushed back?”
Building a house takes serious money. I knew there was a decent amount piled up in the account, but nowhere near enough. My father looked at me, stroked my head, and said:
“No, the house will be covered by a loan and subsidies for now. Once we expand the business, we'll pay that off in no time.”
It had always been Seo Jae-mun's iron rule that big purchases don't come straight out of your pocket. Leverage whenever possible. And now that the debts were cleared and a fresh business entity was established, his credit had fully recovered. He couldn't very well shove the family's burdens onto his son's shoulders alone.
“So with that in mind, the plan for today is to finish moving in, then go take a look at the fields we might be able to buy. Will you come along?”
Inspecting land before purchase was, of course, the single most important step. Obviously I had to go.
“Let's do it!”
We moved the luggage first. For a house that had sat empty for quite a while, it was neatly kept. My mother and Grandpa Choi took charge of organizing the move, and once the sorting was left to the two of them, my father loaded me into the car and floored it.
“Wha——?”
'This man is fast! Incredible!'
The thought leaked out of Seo Bong-gu, the honey badger hiding in my bag. He still insisted on sneaking into my backpack whenever I went to school, and since letting him loose at the house was awkward for the moment, I'd just decided to bring him along.
……Still, annoying as he was, there was no helping it. The original culprit behind this whole mess, the little troublemaker. Ever since the day the house collapsed, he'd been milking every spare moment for affection. Did he really think that would make me forgive him?
Bong-gu and I could communicate through thought alone, like a kind of telepathy. It seemed to be the function of the passive interaction skill, I Know Even Without Words.
'He really is fast, though.'
'We're all gonna die at this rate?'
'No, we won't. My dad's actually a good drive——'
Then it hit me: with his injured leg, I'd never once seen him behind the wheel.
……He IS a good driver, right?
Screeeech—
We hadn't even gone far when the sound of hard braking filled the air. The seatbelt dug into my chest.
“Ugh!”
I-I survived.
“Now that was my first drive in far too long.”
Saying this with a face as bright as could be, my father shut off the engine and opened the driver's door. I slung my bag over my shoulder, climbed out after him, and asked:
“Um, Dad? Where exactly is this……?”
Instead of answering, my father opened the passenger door and fished something out of the glove box. A map and a black marker.
“I figured with what money we have left, buying land and boosting our harvest output first would be the smarter play. So I spent the morning pounding the pavement.”
I couldn't help admiring my father's sheer execution speed all over again.
“From here to here.”
Scriiiitch — the marker squealed across the map for a long moment, then stopped. Next to a small circle, a large area had been outlined, and numbers were written inside the outline.
One through three.
“This circle here is our house, and the hatched section is the field we already manage. The parts with just an outline are the candidate fields we can afford with our budget.”
“……!”
Ah, that's why the numbers.
When I nodded, my father continued. “This is Plot #1, where we are now. It has the largest area and it's closest to the house. But the waterway is unstable, apparently, so it needs repair work.”
It was a rectangular field bordered by the main road, close to home. The amount and flow of mana it held were also nothing to sneeze at. All right — on hold until I've checked every other field.
“Can we see Plot #2 and Plot #3 today too?”
“Of course.”
We moved from one to the next, and every plot turned out to be in solid condition. Plot #2, the largest of the candidates, had a greenhouse on it — a little weathered-looking, but sturdy — and Plot #3 had been groomed into easy-to-manage flat terrain.
“Word is the villagers didn't want to buy Plot #2; apparently no one's maintained it for a long time since the previous owner died. Plot #3 has an ownership dispute ongoing, so buying it right away is out of the question.”
Each had its own pros and cons. What struck me as odd was that people avoided Plot #2 even though both its mana flow and its energy were perfectly sound.
“Why do people avoid Plot #2?”
My father scratched the back of his neck at my question. “Well…… there's some strange rumors going around. A few years back, someone who went into that field supposedly went missing. Then there's talk of sounds heard every night, and of shadows flitting about inside the greenhouse.”
He seemed to find it funny even as he said it, shrugging his shoulders. “It's all just ghost stories, of course. But there's been so much talk that the price keeps dropping, even though the conditions are good.”
“Then could we buy Plot #1 and Plot #2 together?”
The two plots faced each other across a narrow road, so buying both at once would make managing them far easier.
“Should be possible. Plot #2's price has come in lower than expected.”
The budget would hold, then. Buying both seemed like the right call — though of course, there was one final check to make first.
The final check was simple: I only needed to test whether I could connect with the land directly through mana. I'd already done it with Plot #1 while we were looking around. A plot that matched me wonderfully — excellent compatibility. What remained was Plot #2.
With a plastic greenhouse already standing on it, I'd have to go inside. But the door was locked with a rusted padlock.
“Ah, this is a problem. Can't get a look inside now.”
My father, troubled, called the realtor.
“You don't have the key? It's broken?”
Listening in on the call, it sounded like the realtor had said they'd bring a cutting tool over.
Wait around for that? Please.
I wrapped mana around my hand and lightly gripped the padlock.
Crack!
With a rather unclean snap, the lock broke.
'Oooh! Friend, so strong!'
'It's not strength, it's magic.'
I did use mana, roughly speaking, so magic it is. Amen.
My father still had no idea what had happened. I carefully opened the door and stepped into the field alone.
The soil looked tremendously healthy, even if the fading dusk kept the greenhouse dim and my assessment imprecise. The earth gleamed with just the right amount of moisture — a dark brown soil visibly rich in organic matter. When I squeezed a handful, it didn't clump; it crumbled soft and yielding in my palm.
“It really is prime land. So why on earth……”
That instant, Bong-gu shot out of my bag. He snuffled around the area, then stopped at a certain spot and waved a paw frantically.
“Something weird here! Something weird!”
I followed him over — and there really was something.
“……What is this?”
Along the frame lines of the greenhouse, the flow of mana was warped in a strangely deliberate way. I lowered my stance and reached out to the spot where the mana twisted.
It was twisted, unmistakably. An artificial current, as though someone had deliberately wound it out of true.
“I can't begin to guess why.”
“Me neither!”
Clearly, the mana had been left distorted and neglected for far too long. Not a single small clue offered itself to explain the cause. But thankfully — this much, I could fix.
Restoring warped mana was simple. You flooded it with a large volume of fresh mana to force the flow back into true. And that was something I could attempt right now.
“Thank goodness my father's waiting outside.”
Interfering with a mana flow as a 1st Circle mage demands real finesse, let me tell you.
I steadied my breathing and pushed my mana into the distorted current.
Vmmmm—
My mana circle began to spin furiously.
“Oh no……!”
Far more mana drained out than I'd anticipated. The rift kept demanding more, absorbing everything the circle around my heart held and still coming up hungry. Lose focus, even for an instant, and it would wrest control from me. If that happened, it wouldn't just end my life as a mage — done wrong, it could end my actual life. I had to concentrate harder.
If my own mana wasn't enough, I simply had to draw from elsewhere. With Mana Breathing, I devoured the mana around me — from the air, from the soil, from every scattered corner of the surroundings I pulled it in. I forced open the channels connecting us and widened them, kept routing the drawn mana, shaped an artificial flow according to a fixed rhythm, and poured it back into the rift. The unnatural wind kicked up by the process swept through the inside of the greenhouse.
'Good — the flow is roughly in line.'
……Just a little more, and it'll be fully restored!
“Hngh—!”
Trickle—
A warm liquid ran down from my nose. And in that moment, I felt the rift seal shut.
Hooo. The wind died. Everything that had been twisted snapped back into place. At last—
Thud. I collapsed where I stood. Bong-gu, who'd been hunkered down against the wind, came sprinting over the moment it stopped, scrambled up onto my knee, and probed at my face with his snout, shrieking:
“Blood! Ji-on bleeding from nose! Big trouble! What do!!”
“……It's nothing. I'm fine.”
I peeled the hysterical little guy off me and wiped the blood away. Judging by how much had smeared on my hand, it would stop soon enough. My body had simply been put under a brief strain from handling so much mana all at once. A nosebleed like this stops in no time. I'm young and healthy — I can manage this much.
And with the problem solved, all that remained was to buy this now-healthy land.
“I need to get up before Dad comes in……”
I moved to rise — and froze.
The moment I flexed my body, something made itself unmistakably felt. Something had changed.
Vmmm—
A shift in the energy radiating from my heart.
“My circle…… it grew?”