Clockwork of the Mind's Eye
“……What about the glasses?”
“Those glasses—did you happen to find them in Gear Land?”
I blurted out the secret in a rush.
In the original story, this was a secret that only came to light after the Academy collapsed.
I was already drawing suspicious looks, so what the hell was I doing? Still, some instinctive urge made me dodge Kang Jiye’s scolding at all costs.
Well, it was fine either way.
The Director was an ally (in the making), after all. Now that his interest was firmly fixed on me, cooperating was one valid option.
“What about the glasses, then? You’re right that I found them in Gear Land.”
The Director lifted his chin slightly, looking intrigued.
That faintly condescending gaze of his carried a clear message: If this is interesting enough, I might let you live. He’d already noticed how much I dreaded a lecture from Kang Jiye.
…But look, you need this information anyway. For the future, if nothing else.
Sure, the brainwashing I’d carefully laid would come undone—but it had never been perfect, so it didn’t matter.
I spoke.
“The glasses you’re wearing are an artifact called the Clockwork of the Mind’s Eye. In the bio-mechanical civilization, it’s treated as a sacred relic—that precious.”
“Oh-ho.”
Right then, Kang Jiye jabbed me in the side with her elbow.
Her mouth was smiling, but her eyes were screaming, Don’t open your mouth and invite more suspicion for no reason.
I only knew this because I was a “Player,” of course. From her perspective, she would assume I knew it because I was a monster.
It’s fine.
I mouthed the words. Kang Jiye answered with her eyes.
What part of this is fine?
“Ahem!”
The Director, hands clasped behind his back, cleared his throat and urged me on.
Na Hwanil was not the sort of man to stand by and watch two suspicious characters scheme among themselves.
In that moment, though, I caught a flicker of impatience in his eyes.
It was as if he was dying of curiosity about the glasses’ true nature, yet forcing himself to keep up a casual “Well, let’s hear it” expression.
My earlier rudeness didn’t seem to bother him much.
He’d probably researched those glasses extensively. The legendary item was, after all, an S-class Gate reward.
The boss’s name had been something like the Clockwork Dragon, right? Anyway, it had been worn by the right-hand man and butler of a polymorphed dragon… and the Director had taken it.
But the activation method was so different from anything on this side that he could only use a fraction of its functions right now. Unlike proper fantasy-style items, this one was packed with intricate mechanical devices.
Clockwork parts measured in octometers or nanometers were organically fused with magic circles, creating a nightmarishly complex artifact.
Of course, the performance was correspondingly outstanding.
I must be out of my mind, about to spill all this so freely.
My reason snapped back into place in an instant.
Given the timing, this was rare information worth more than a fortune. Once the glasses worked properly, they would massively boost the Director’s abilities across the board.
“Why stop halfway? If you’ve got nothing more to say, we can talk about that earlier rudeness of yours.”
The Director removed the glasses and wiped the lenses with a cloth as he spoke.
What are you doing?!
Wiping a ultra-precision item with self-cleaning functions with some random rag?
If some weird function kicked in by accident, it would be hard to reverse.
I almost snapped at him on the spot, but I took a deep breath and looked at the Director instead.
“If you want to know, I’ll charge an information fee.”
“An information fee?”
“Yes. Since no one else knows this, shall we start at roughly five hundred million?”
The Director’s eyes went round.
“…Does that mean I have permission to consult Deputy Director Kang about what happened earlier?”
Wow. This cheap old man was for real.
I couldn’t back down here.
If I just handed over information this important, I’d be treated like a sucker for the rest of my life.
If this were a desperate battlefield, I would have shared everything without caring about value—but until then, I had to extract a proper price.
I planted both hands on my hips.
“Do whatever you want. I’ll just get scolded a little, big deal.”
“Oh-ho, is that so?”
The Director grinned and fixed his gaze on Kang Jiye.
Still completely in the dark, Kang Jiye blinked a few times, then let out a sigh and called my name.
“Purple Bunny.”
“Yes?”
“If you come clean right now, I’ll take it into consideration. What did you do to the Director?”
…..!
Ohhh, an opening. When it came down to it, a daughter(?) came first after all!
I brightened and looked at Kang Jiye.
“Really…? If I tell the truth honestly, you’ll let it go?”
Kang Jiye crossed her arms.
“Better than blurting out multi-hundred-million-won information, at least. What on earth is this about?”
Hehe.
“It’s nothing much. I just called him a senile old man. When I said he had dementia, he got all sulky.”
“…To the Director?”
“Yep.”
Kang Jiye nodded as if that made perfect sense.
From here on, I had nothing left to fear. It had been a coincidence, but I was going to milk this information fee for all it was worth. And build some trust with the Director while I was at it.
I grinned triumphantly at the Director. Threats wouldn’t work on me anymore, old man.
Thwack!
Huh?
For a second the sky turned yellow and everything started multiplying. A hot throb bloomed on the crown of my head, followed by a sharp, pulsing pain. I prodded the rising lump and stared at Kang Jiye.
“Wh-why…?”
Kang Jiye lowered her fist and answered as if it were nothing.
“What do you mean, why? If you did something wrong, you get hit.”
“But you said you’d forgive me.”
Kang Jiye gave a dry laugh.
“When did I ever say that? I only said I’d take it into consideration.”
“…….”
Had she?
She had said something like that, sure, but why did I feel like I’d been scammed?
I rubbed the top of my head and asked,
“So we’re even now, right?”
“Yeah.”
I looked at the Director.
“She says so.”
The Director, who had been watching the show, nodded.
“Hmm…… That’s a shame. Can’t be helped. Five hundred million, was it?”
His tone suggested he had never really expected that playful threat to work in the first place.
The sly old fox had just wanted to mess with me a little for revenge.
But the Director had no idea.
That threat had almost worked for real.
“I was already disappointed by the lack of progress. Even the specialized research institutes just keep spouting nonsense about gears and cogs.”
“Ah, gears and cogs are the same thing. You didn’t know?”
“…….”
The Director stared at me blankly.
“What?”
“Nothing. So what about these glasses? I think I’m ready to hear it now.”
“Five hundred million.”
“I’ll pay a deposit. Ten percent. The rest once I decide the information is worth that much.”
The Director glanced at his male aide and jerked his chin. The aide tapped at a tablet with a stylus for a moment, then reported,
“Fifty million won has been deposited into Hunter Kang Jiye’s account.”
Kang Jiye stepped forward with an urgent look.
“Just a moment. Even so, taking information from a friend you’ve only just met is a bit—”
Excuse me?
What was this woman doing?!
“Hunter Kang. Are you saying you don’t trust me?”
“That’s not it.”
The Director soothed the flustered Kang Jiye with a pleased smile.
“It’s fine. Just knowing the origin of these glasses is already worth listening to. Well… will you tell me now? All these interruptions are starting to get on my nerves.”
I clasped my hands together politely.
I truly hadn’t expected him to accept the five-hundred-million offer at face value.
It was valuable information, but he would have learned it eventually anyway.
“I apologize for keeping a valued customer waiting. Before we begin, I have a few questions to confirm.”
“……?”
Seeing my attitude flip a full one-eighty, the Director blinked.
Just as I hadn’t anticipated his receptive attitude, he hadn’t known about my professionalism either.
“Hahahaha!!”
The Director burst into hearty laughter.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Kang Jiye sigh, but I decided not to care right now.
I pointed at the glasses and continued.
“How far does the vision correction go right now? To the point where projectiles appear sharp in order of proximity?”
The Director’s laughter stiffened slightly.
That was information only the wearer could know.
“…That’s right.”
“I see. Then how well can you predict the trajectories of weapons flying in by surprise?”
“…….”
The Director’s expression returned to a calm smile.
It just wasn’t a gentle one.
A moment ago he had been a grandfather with a human scent; now it felt like he had slipped on a mask in an instant.
He had probably considered those functions a major secret, so airing them in a place this open must have felt awkward.
Still, curiosity won out. After a brief silence, the Director spoke as if surrendering.
“It depends on the monster, but right now I only get a little assistance. In close combat, wearing the glasses or not makes almost no difference.”
I nodded.
“As expected, they’re deactivated. All the core functions are locked.”
“Core functions? What are those?”
“The Clockwork of the Mind’s Eye is a ‘divine relic’ of the mechanical civilization. It elevates the user’s vision to something nearly godlike. It instantly analyzes every object in sight and predicts the past and future with considerable accuracy.”
“…Hmm.”
The Director looked unimpressed. He still didn’t seem particularly moved.
“So how do you use it?”
“While repeating the chant I give you in your mind, cut yourself anywhere hard enough to draw blood. Then press the glasses against the wound.”
These glasses belonged to a bio-mechanical civilization. An item meant to bond with living tissue had been worn like ordinary spectacles, so of course its functions were limited.
Looking half-skeptical, the Director cut his palm and pressed the glasses to the wound. In an instant the glasses were sucked into the cut.
“……!!”
There it was.
I casually added something that had just occurred to me, to the stunned Director and his aides.
“Oh, right.”
“……?”
“You can’t remove them until you die.”
“Director, are you truly all right?”
After Purple Bunny and Kang Jiye had left, the aide looked worriedly at the Director, who stood staring blankly out at the harbor still wearing the glasses.
But the Director had no room to answer.
He was fully occupied with the “user settings” the glasses provided. Unlike before, a sudden flood of visual information demanded his full attention.
This is……
People, objects, animals, insects, wind, sky, earth—even the flow of air and mana waves. Everything in sight was instantly analyzed and stored in his mind.
Just as Purple Bunny had warned, he could see with crystalline clarity what state they had been in before and what they would become next.
A whole new world.
The Director suddenly looked at the aide beside him.
He could see the exact nature and quantity of the man’s mana. Grasping his skills and their proficiency levels was a given.
—But remember. This isn’t omnipotent. I’ll explain the precautions, so……
Not omnipotent?
Of course nothing in the world was omnipotent. He already knew perfection didn’t exist; he would have been careful even without the warning.
And yet……
“Heh, heh. …Now I understand why they call it a divine relic.”
It felt as if he had become a god looking down upon the world.
With this level of function, he could probably handle ten S-class monsters at once.
It was completely different from the mere trajectory prediction of projectiles he had known before.
Director Na Hwanil had to pour every ounce of will into calming his excitement for a while.
“Director?”
“Ah, sorry. I had something to think about for a moment.”
The Director patted the aide’s shoulder.
“I’m fine. Perfectly fine.”
“Is that so? I’m glad.”
Purple Bunny.
He was beginning to grow seriously curious about her true identity. How on earth had she known about the Psychology Hagweed, and who was the force that had attacked the ship with her?
And how much did Deputy Director Kang Jiye actually know about Purple Bunny?
“…….”
After a moment of thought, the Director called the aide.
“Team Leader Han.”
“Yes, Director.”
“Deposit the entire amount I can authorize under my authority into Deputy Director Kang’s account. And provisionally reclassify Purple Bunny as S-class.”
“Pardon?”
“She’s the woman who successfully used a skill on me and taught me how to use a legendary. She deserves that level of treatment as a matter of course.”
The aide asked curiously,
“Understood. Um… what skill did she use, exactly? I wasn’t skilled enough to sense her mana waves.”
“I don’t know either.”
“…….”
He didn’t know—but one thing was certain.
She could conceal her mana.
The moment the glasses activated, the Director had felt the brainwashing skill dissolve. And he had realized that the subject he had completely forgotten was precisely this: Why can’t I sense Purple Bunny’s mana?
It must have been a considerable secret for her.
Why take such a risk to give him the information? She could have been arrested on the spot for an ability that mocked the nation’s mana detection systems.
No matter how he thought about it, there was only one conclusion.
Purple Bunny trusted him quite a bit.
Without the certainty that she wouldn’t be interrogated right then and there, it would have been impossible.
……Interesting.
Whatever the case, he would have to keep her close so she couldn’t run off.
She was destined to become a hunter who would one day represent the Republic of Korea.