A Ninety-Ten Deal
An out-of-the-blue proposal for a business partnership.
Out of the blue... or was it?
No, not in the slightest.
Even from my own perspective, magic was an absurdly overpowered cheat code.
Mana—the Fifth Force of nature, completely unknown to modern civilization. This mysterious power possessed enough disruptive potential to overturn the very foundations of contemporary science. It was the only force on Earth capable of manifesting technologies that modern engineering had yet to reach.
And the sole being capable of wielding this mana was none other than me, Park Ji-hyuk.
Which meant what?
It meant I had an absolute, unadulterated monopoly on this goldmine!
Kim Hyung-jun, that silver-spoon bastard, had clearly arrived at the exact same conclusion. One glance at his face told the whole story. His eyes were practically glittering, as if the words "JACK" and "POT" had been stamped directly onto his pupils.
And true to form, he didn't even try to hide it.
"No, wait, scratch that. 'Partnership' is way too generous! Let's be real—I just want to latch onto you and ride your coattails to easy street!"
"Whoa, hey, punk. Did you just say the quiet part out loud?"
"Who gives a damn about keeping it quiet?! With a single flick of your finger, you just obliterated a technological bottleneck the entire world's been beating its head against! If you set your mind to it, you could flip the global high-tech landscape upside down! When the guy holding that kind of power happens to be my best friend, how the hell am I supposed to play it cool?!"
He was getting way too worked up. Red veins were practically spiderwebbing across his whites. If he kept hyperventilating like this, I worried he might start foaming at the mouth and pass out.
"Dude, chill out. Breathe. I'm not vanishing into thin air, so take a breath and let's talk like civilized human beings."
"Right. Yeah. Ahem."
Only then did he seem to regain a shred of sanity, clearing his throat and dropping his voice an octave.
"Anyway, here's the pitch. Business planning, raising capital, corporate administration, all the boring grunt work—hell, I'll even be your personal coffee shuttle. You only have to do one thing: snap your fingers and churn out revolutionary products and bleeding-edge tech with your magic. How's that sound? Tempting?"
Damn. Talk about an offer.
Honestly, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted.
And Hyung-jun wasn't done yet.
"We don't even need to build factories or hawk goods ourselves. First, we reveal this insane tech to the world. Then, whenever big corporations come knocking, we just etch magic circles onto their parts and collect licensing royalties. Dude, isn't that thrilling just imagining it? In less than a year, we could be on the cover of Forbes as the heads of the hottest unicorn startup on Earth!"
"Oho..."
Now that was even more enticing.
In short: flick my fingers once in a while and rake in a mountain of royalty checks?
I possessed world-shattering, magic-based technology. Hyung-jun possessed the capital and the network. While not quite on the level of a top chaebol, the backing of a mid-tier conglomerate owner's second son carried weight that could never be dismissed.
Elite technology paired with ironclad capital.
You'd have to be an absolute moron to fail with a combination like that.
My mind was already about made up, but Hyung-jun delivered the final knockout punch.
"Once we incorporate, you take ninety percent of the equity. Ten percent is plenty for me."
"Wait... Hyung-jun, are you out of your mind?"
I let out a dumbfounded laugh.
"You're putting up all the cash and running the whole company, and you're handing me ninety percent? If your old man hears about this, he'll clutch the back of his neck and faint on the spot!"
"Bullshit. I know my dad. He'll give me a standing ovation and say I made the deal of the century." Hyung-jun spoke with absolute conviction. "To be frank, I feel like even taking ten percent is highway robbery on my part. Keep this in mind, Ji-hyuk. Without your magic, this business can't even get off the ground. What I'm investing in isn't some mere interfacial bonding technique—that's just the tip of the iceberg. I'm investing in your magic. In you."
He fixed me with an intense gaze—a mixture of unshakeable faith and the razor-sharp calculation of a born entrepreneur.
"Mark my words. Within a year, our company will be valued in the trillions of won."
"Damn, Gramps Kim's head is full of blooming flowerbeds today. Where do you get off spewing nothing but sunshine and rainbows?"
"That's just how incredible your magic is, you thick-headed brat. Anyway, are you in or out? If there's anything you want to add or cut from the deal, speak now. We're crossing the line from friends to business partners, so we need to set the ground rules straight."
I waved my hand dismissively.
"Nothing to add, man. You're telling me I can sit on my ass, do a little finger-flicking, and get showered in money? What more could I ask for? Let's do it! Let's shake the world!"
"Pleasure doing business with you!"
Smack!
Our palms met in a crisp, resounding high-five, christening the birth of two future multi-billionaires.
Once the partnership was sealed, the two of us moved at breakneck speed.
Or rather, to be precise, Hyung-jun did all the legwork.
Incorporating the legal entity and securing office space went smoother than silk. There wasn't even a need to hunt for property, since Hyung-jun simply contributed his entire private research lab as an in-kind investment into our new venture.
Naturally, this came as a bolt from the blue for the researchers already working there. Under the pretext of ironclad corporate security, every single one of them was slapped with a voluntary retirement notice—which was just a polite corporate euphemism for being shown the door.
"Hey, are you sure that's kosher?"
"Why wouldn't it be? On top of their statutory severance packages, I tacked on two full years of salary as compensation. I even wrote glowing letters of recommendation so they could land jobs at other labs immediately. If that's still not good enough, well, there's nothing more I can do."
Hyung-jun shrugged, completely unbothered. That cold, pragmatic streak—in moments like this, he was undeniably the son of a seasoned corporate tycoon.
Still, is that really okay?
It felt a little questionable, but since the man paying the bills said it was fine, I decided not to lose sleep over it.
Thanks to his swift restructuring, I gained free rein to poke around our new company's laboratory without anyone breathing down my neck.
Right now, my attention was fixed on a CNC machine—specifically, a five-axis machining center.
"Good grief... look at this beauty. A brand-new, simultaneous five-axis machine straight from Germany. Just look at that finish."
At the SME where I used to work, even a 3+2 axis machine was considered a lavish luxury because of the astronomical price tag, but this place was in an entirely different league. A single one of these units probably cost several times the deposit on my apartment lease.
Just how filthy rich was this silver-spoon bastard?
As a side note, I had handed in my resignation letter the very next morning. Since I hadn't been handling any critical projects, my exit paperwork had been processed in the blink of an eye.
Anyway, the reason I was inspecting this machine was to engrave magic circles for automated Mana Bonding.
This was one area where modern technological civilization was undeniably superior. While high-tier magic could shape metal with extreme precision, achieving this level of speed, accuracy, and sheer repeatability just by punching in a CAD blueprint was virtually impossible with raw spellcraft alone.
In fact, setting aside the areas where magic directly intervened, modern scientific civilization outclassed Letnia in almost every conceivable metric. Those bastards back in Letnia had grown far too complacent with magical convenience. It was no wonder their technology hadn't progressed an inch in two hundred and fifty years.
As I nodded to myself in thought, Hyung-jun stepped into the lab, fresh from an outside meeting.
"Yo, you're back?"
"Yeah."
Approaching the workstation, Hyung-jun stared in fascination as the cutter head milled into the metal plate.
"Is that the Magic Circle?"
"Yup. You place the materials on top of this, channel a pulse of mana to jumpstart it, and it'll handle the interfacial bonding automatically from then on."
"Fascinating. Not that I have the faintest clue how it works."
"If you understood it, you'd be a wizard."
"Fair point."
Just then, the machining finished with a soft clatter, and the completed plate dropped into the retrieval tray. I picked it up to inspect the craftsmanship.
It was a thin titanium alloy plate, roughly ten centimeters square and three millimeters thick. Engraved across its surface was a dizzyingly intricate geometric pattern carved to razor-sharp depth. At a glance, it looked remarkably like an ultra-dense, bleeding-edge semiconductor circuit.
"Mmm, flawless."
I channeled a faint wisp of mana to test the flow, nodding in satisfaction before passing the plate to Hyung-jun.
"Huh? Can I hold it?"
"If you don't look at it, who will? This is the bread and butter that's going to feed our company, so the esteemed CEO ought to inspect it."
"Can't argue with that."
Squinting, Hyung-jun examined the engraved plate closely.
"Not that looking at it tells me anything. All I see is a headache-inducing mess of lines. Anyone who didn't know better would think this was modern abstract art." Then, as if a sudden thought struck him, he added, "Wait, this can't be replicated, right?"
"Just by its appearance? Even that wouldn't be easy with a matrix this complex."
Just like modern high-precision engineering, every single stroke and curve of a magic circle was governed by rigorous calculations designed to regulate the flow of mana. The stroke length, curvature, and even the depth of the groove were calibrated down to the micrometer; deviate by even the width of a human hair, and the mana flow would distort, causing the spell to fail completely. In the worst-case scenario, it could trigger a catastrophic explosion.
"It's that dangerous?"
"Mana is still a form of power. It's energy—an unknown fundamental force that humanity hasn't even discovered yet. Think of it like nuclear energy. What do you think happens if someone tries to clumsily contain a reactor, screws up, and triggers a meltdown?"
Hyung-jun visibly shivered.
"Holy shit. Put it like that and the hair on my neck stands up. You're saying someone could cause another Chernobyl or Fukushima?"
"Well, the ambient mana density in this world is so sparse that it probably wouldn't reach that scale, but it could easily blow an entire factory off the map."
Magic wasn't just some convenient, harmless party trick. In my past life, a half-baked novice mage botching mana containment and obliterating an entire city block was an accident so common it barely made the local gossip sheets. Even after slathering magic towers in every conceivable safety ward, disasters still happened. There was a damn good reason mage towers were classified as hazardous facilities nobody wanted in their backyards.
"Then we definitely need to issue a warning. Tell everyone that trying to copy it will get them royally screwed."
"Not that warning them will stop people from trying. Still, you don't need to worry about what we produce. I'll embed a failsafe so that if anyone tries to tamper with it, the circle will self-destruct harmlessly. If anything goes wrong, it'll end with the plate breaking, nothing worse."
"The real problem is counterfeiters, then."
"Exactly."
More dangerous than a certified mage was a half-baked mage, and far more dangerous than a half-baked mage was an amateur meddling with forces beyond their comprehension.
I pointed at the CNC machine.
"If it were just amateurs trying to eyeball it, that'd actually be fine, because they wouldn't even be able to initiate mana flow. But this world is crawling with precision measurement and machining equipment. The real danger comes from the arrogant bastards who scan the surface, machine an identical clone, and brag about cracking the code."
Hyung-jun looked horrified.
"Wait... if someone copies the geometry stroke for stroke, does it actually work?"
"Not a chance." I waved my hand with a smirk. "Give me some credit, man. I'm not that sloppy. This magic circle will never activate just by copying its outward appearance. I'm designing it to require an uncopiable activation key. Just like an engine won't turn over without a spark plug, this circle won't initiate without the key. And naturally, we're the only ones who can forge that key."
I took the titanium plate back from Hyung-jun and laid it flat on the workbench. Placing the electrode and graphene samples he had prepared on top, I gathered mana at my fingertips and primed the matrix.
A faint, invisible-spectrum azure light flowed from my fingertips, sinking into the titanium plate.
The ambient mana drifting lazily through the room suddenly stirred, swirling toward the plate in an eddying vortex. It surged through the micro-grooves of the geometric circuit, amplifying exponentially before permeating the boundary between the electrode and the graphene.
It bonded seamlessly, as if two separate objects were fusing into one under the pristine conditions of an absolute vacuum.
"Another success."
The ethereal glow faded away.
Inspecting the perfectly bonded electrode sample, I handed it over to Hyung-jun. He immediately slid it under an electron microscope, took a look, and threw up two enthusiastic thumbs-up.
"And with that, my job here is officially done. The rest is on you, CEO Kim. Time to run until the soles of your shoes catch fire."
"Naturally, CTO Park. But wait... who said your job is done?"
I whipped around, staring at him in utter betrayal.
"Excuse me?!"
"Next week, our company is setting up a booth at the Inter-Battery conference at COEX to give a live technical demonstration. As our CTO, you're obviously the one taking the stage to showcase our tech."
"Gasp!"
To think he would foist such an ordeal onto someone who despised group project presentations with every fiber of his being!
"You traitorous bastard! You said all I had to do was click my fingers! You said you'd handle all the annoying work!"
"Hey, if you don't like it, feel free to teach me how to cast magic~"
Hyung-jun cackled with an infuriating smirk that practically screamed, Got a problem? Take it up with management.
Just you wait.
Tonight, I'm hitting you with a curse that will make your back itch so furiously you won't sleep a single wink.