The Veteran's Recipe
Back at the dormitory, Mina followed Bihyung into the training room and began her cultivation at once.
What should I paint?
He had told her the method grew by painting into it whatever inner image she desired, and now she turned the question over and over, unsure what she was meant to set down.
...He said the ability I wanted would be born, didn't he?
If that was true, then what she wanted was to stay a long time beside the people she held dear.
Mom.
The mother who had raised her and her younger sibling alone. That back, once as steady and unshakable as any heroine's, had grown gaunt before Mina ever noticed, and the arms that had gathered the two of them close even on days wrung out with exhaustion had thinned until they were no more than dry twigs. Mina wanted her mother's laughter back.
Mom.
And her sibling — that bond she called family. They had lived with less than other people, and yet their affection had been richer than anyone's. She wanted those days returned to her.
Bihyung...
Even as she reached for bonds like that, her thoughts turned to him.
Can I... do this?
The Bihyung of her inner image seemed to smile and nod, as if whispering that she could, that she ought to trust her talent.
...Right. I'll work for it.
At last she entered the realm of no-self and stepped into the world of her inner image.
Colorless Canvas.
It was still a blank page, nothing yet drawn upon it — but under Mina's will, a picture began to take shape. A house. A beautiful house in the Eastern style, with a fire burning in the hearth and a single tree planted in the yard. The soil was fertile, and the metal ornaments glittered like costly treasures.
Then, in one corner of the garden, something changed. The earth split, and water welled up. The flow strengthened little by little until, before she knew it, it had become something one could rightly call a pond.
This is my inner image.
The house was an expression of her talent, and what she had wished for was the peace of a home. Bearing that wish, a water attribute specialized for healing sprouted anew. It was still far too faint to be called a primary attribute, and yet the Colorless Canvas Bihyung had given her held boundless possibility. If she bent her will upon it and focused, then someday it would grant her a talent worthy of that name.
The moment she understood as much, her Rank rose a full stage.
Colorless Canvas — a healing water attribute has sprouted
...Thank you.
Thank you, Bihyung.
Mina knelt at the pond's edge and let the tears fall. She still did not know whether she would ever be able to heal her mother. But if today's growth became the foundation, and if she grew strong enough someday, then she might catch hold of even a thread of hope. The thought alone drew the tears out of her.
...I have to repay him.
She wanted to repay Bihyung for every kindness he had shown her. A clear resolve kindled in her eyes, and they began to shine.
In that instant—
Thump!
Her heart beat once, hard.
"......!"
Her gaze whipped around.
"What?"
The leap of her heart came with a feeling of blood boiling in her veins, and as if in answer to it, she had felt a gaze.
This is my inner-image world. Why did I feel someone watching me?
Yet no matter how she searched, there was no one around.
"...Was it just my imagination?"
It was absurd enough to make a ghost wail.
Once he had seized a thread toward resolving the Nine Yang severance, Bihyung decided to enter the warehouse. The moment he pressed the system's warehouse entry, a notification chimed up.
Enter the warehouse?
"Enter."
Time limit: 1 hour.
Exceed the limit, and you will be ejected at once.
A few more chimes rose, and a door took shape before his eyes. He grabbed a simple bag, took hold of the handle, and turned it — and what opened beyond looked much like a logistics warehouse.
"Whoa. One look tells me finding anything in here won't be easy."
The place ran on to the very edge of the horizon, vast enough to leave him dizzy.
Why is my warehouse like this?
Bihyung shook his head and stepped inside. Still — better to be allowed to use it than not.
"Let's see. This is junk, and this is junk too."
From the instant he crossed the threshold he hunted with fire in his eyes. Whatever he could sweep up before the time ran out, he meant to sweep up.
"Junk, junk, junk... Oh. Finally found one."
He looked at the pendant in his hand — more precisely, at the gem set into its center. The effect was temporary, but it was a stone that raised one's stats according to Desperation.
In the game it was just a random buff.
How was a game supposed to know what a character was desperate for? So whenever players used it, they treated the thing like a loot box. Bad luck, and sometimes all you got was a single stat point.
"Still taking it."
Who could say it wouldn't work differently, now that this world was real? Bihyung stuffed into the bag everything he could possibly carry. And just then, a certain ore caught his eye.
"Huh? Did I leave that sitting around without using it all up?"
Riverflow Stone.
"I'm sure that was junk that dropped off a pretty high-grade anomaly."
At the time he had raged — all that miserable suffering, and the reward was a brick? The ore's true worth had only shown itself from the next playthrough on.
Kill an anomaly tied to ghosts, and that ore evolved.
A little harder. A little more sinister.
When I first got it, the description was definitely something like... soft enough that a fingertip leaves a mark?
It had been one step removed from liquid slime.
But now it's harder than most ordinary ore.
Bihyung took the Riverflow Stone as well. It looked likely to tear the bag, so he simply carried it in his hand.
"More importantly, where are the Enhancement Stones?"
That was one of the reasons he had come. Players had called them Enhancement Stones for convenience, but in truth they were rare spirit stones, each one bearing the energy of the ley lines. Use one while refining a weapon, and that energy flowed into the armament — the quality rose, and sometimes the ability itself evolved. Hence the nickname.
"Where are you, Enhancement Stones!"
He searched for them, calling out in earnest, and before he knew it thirty minutes had already passed since he entered.
I've already secured every material for the elixir refinement. Now I just need the Enhancement Stones.
He had already passed low-grade and mid-grade stones several times over. What he wanted was high-grade at the very least, so he had let the lesser ones go.
Did I not store them?
No. He was certain he had been stockpiling them from around the time he could enjoy the game even without enhancements.
There had to be a thousand of them, at least.
He was scurrying through the warehouse, turning it inside out, when something strange caught his eye.
"...Did I store a mountain in here too?"
Far off stood a backdrop that had no business belonging in a warehouse. It was a mountain. Bihyung ran to it at once, scooped up a handful of soil, and examined it closely — and when he understood what he was holding, a hollow laugh escaped him.
"This is Heaven-Gifted Soil."
Soil in which the ley lines' energy had condensed, such that even a weed planted in it could be grown into a spiritual medicine. He had gathered it and gathered it again, and somewhere along the way it had piled up into this. Another achievement of a veteran, surely. He was snickering over the thought when—
"...Huh?"
In the hollow where he had scooped the earth away, something glinted strangely.
"...Don't tell me."
Unease crept over him. He dug — scrape, scrape, scrape — and the instant he pulled the glittering ore free, a jolt ran up the back of his skull.
"Why is there a supreme-grade Enhancement Stone in here!"
From the look of it, the stones were mixed all through the Heaven-Gifted Soil. Wasn't this exactly the same as having to mine them out of a mountain?
Time left... about eight minutes. How many can I dig up?
He had no idea where they were buried, or how many. Digging blindly would only waste what little time he had.
...I'll use a technique.
Bihyung sank his Roots at once. He called up a fragment of the next domain of the Ghost-Discerning Combat Art — something he had glimpsed before, inside the library anomaly's domain — and laid an art over the Roots.
What I need this time isn't wood art. It's earth art.
Advance. Sink them vaster — vaster — vaster still.
The next domain of Ghost-Discerning Combat Art grows clearer!
Bihyung ignored the system message and gave himself over entirely to sensation. The Roots that had begun at his feet had already spread wide enough to pierce nearly half the Heaven-Gifted Soil. Feeling them there, he drove down a true stamp.
As if a giant's footfall had rung through heaven and earth, his stamp became a massive quake and set the mountain of Heaven-Gifted Soil shuddering and roaring. A portion of the heaped soil collapsed, and the things that had slept inside it were laid bare.
"Nice. How many is that!"
Watching supreme-grade Enhancement Stones tumble through the air, Bihyung broke into a beaming grin. The glittering stones looked for all the world like stars.
Only as many as I can carry.
Wouldn't do to tear the bag. Delighted, he started snatching up the falling stones — and in that moment, something else came into view.
"Oh? This was in here too?"
The warehouse's allotted time ran out. When Bihyung returned to reality, Eodugi was there to greet him.
"My lord! Have you laid hold of everything you desired, my lord!?"
"Yeah. More or less."
Bihyung smiled, thinking of the elixir materials and the supreme-grade Enhancement Stones packed into the bag.
And I did grab these, too.
He drew a few coins from his pocket.
"So I was keeping these as well."
They held no particularly grand effect. They were simply coins that could be spent inside the Academy.
More precisely, coins that work inside the domains of anomalies the Academy has subjugated.
Feed one into a vending machine within an anomaly's domain, and an item dropped at random. The great majority were useless junk.
Still, if your luck was good, something actually useful turned up now and then.
That was probably why he had stored them — so he could pull stunts along the lines of clearing the game on nothing but items drawn from those machines.
Come to think of it, I never saw that.
The pillar left behind when the spear he had obtained at the place he first met Eodugi exhausted its durability. It was a sizable thing, and he hadn't found it anywhere in the warehouse.
Farther in, maybe? I'll look the next time I have reason to go back.
While he was turning that over, Eodugi asked.
"My lord. Then what, pray, do you intend to do from this moment on, my lord!?"
Regular classes at the Academy were still a long way off. What did he mean to do with the time that remained? That was what Eodugi was asking.
"What am I going to do?"
At the question, Bihyung grinned.
"Grow, obviously."
He had to hold his place at the head of the class, so he intended to spend this stretch — hours when the others couldn't train — down to the last minute.
First, I step into the next domain of the Ghost-Discerning Combat Art.
And he would pile up a decent measure of proficiency in his main body's Rank as well.
"For that, going into an anomaly's domain is still the best move."
He had just come into the coins, besides. Slipping into that particular domain wouldn't be a bad idea.
"Ooh!"
Eodugi bounced where he stood.
"The library anomaly!? The sight of my lord seizing that domain in a single stroke was magnificent beyond words, it was! Am I to behold such a tale of valor yet again, my lord!?"
Eodugi's eyes sparkled. It had the look of the admiration a subordinate offers the boss of the Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts.
What on earth did this one think he was?
Bihyung let out a hollow laugh and waved a hand.
"Well, going into an anomaly's domain is second on the list, for now."
"...Then what, pray, is first, my lord!?"
Bihyung gave his bag a few pats.
"Making spirit elixirs, obviously."
The time had come to put a veteran's recipe for elixir refinement to use.