Coil
The conference room felt almost like a funeral parlor.
Park Cheolwoo, the somewhat hot-tempered president, barked at his despondent subordinates to pull themselves together.
"Is this how you're all going to sit around?! This is a matter of national safety!"
"……"
"There's a mountain of consumables we have to supply nationwide. What good does it do if we just sit here like this?!"
"B-but……"
The outer wall materials for the shelters where citizens evacuated during a Dungeon Impact.
The skeletal frames and consumables for magic stone mining heavy equipment.
Mana computation computing gear.
All manner of weapons and tools used by Hunters.
Even the specialized needles for injecting mana-processed pharmaceuticals, and surgical instruments like scalpels.
All of it required metal that could accept magic circuit processing—and for that, the steelworks had to produce metal coils by melting down magic ingots.
What happened if that supply was cut off?
The nation itself would grind to a halt.
A total industrial shutdown.
"The Shelter Management Bureau just called! They say they have no repair materials!"
"The university hospitals are in chaos too! All their surgical mana tools have stopped functioning!"
"The Energy Management Bureau as well……"
Park Cheolwoo bit down on his lip.
Just then, the conference room door burst open. It was his secretary.
"President! We've received word!"
"What now? Another demand call? Save that report for later——"
"No, sir! Magic ingots are on their way!"
Park Cheolwoo shot up from his seat in an instant.
"What did you just say? Magic ingots are coming?"
"Yes! Magic ingots are arriving!"
Magic ingots were coming?
Out of nowhere like this? The room immediately began to buzz.
"What? Magic ingots just showed up all of a sudden?"
"Did the Hwangryun Guild release the stock they were holding?"
"No way. You saw the Hwangryun Guildmaster's press conference. They already tucked their tails. The problem is that China swept up every last scrap of remaining inventory before that, so there's nothing left."
"Then where the hell did this shipment come from? Did someone have a national strategic reserve stashed away somewhere?"
Every eye in the conference room locked onto the secretary.
"It's from the Veteran Guild, sir."
"The Veteran Guild?"
"Huh? Did Veteran start producing magic ingots too?"
"They say one of their subordinate workshops produced the magic ingots themselves."
Veteran… wasn't that the place that got swallowed by Chinese capital? I've heard the atmosphere there has changed lately, though.
"How much is coming? Even a hundred thousand tons would put out the immediate fire……"
"A hundred truckloads—one thousand tons—are on the way, but……"
Even a thousand tons of support was welcome, of course.
But they processed tens of thousands of tons a day. A mere thousand tons was nothing by comparison.
"They say these are qualitatively different from existing magic ingots. Even a thousand tons, once loaded into the blast furnace and processed by the accompanying specialist, will produce the effect of over a hundred thousand tons."
"?!"
At the secretary's next words, President Park Cheolwoo lost the ability to speak entirely.
A thousand tons with the effect of a hundred thousand? That was a full hundredfold.
"Ah! The Veteran Guild trucks have just arrived!"
The secretary received a radio call and reported it at once.
There was no time to waste. President Park Cheolwoo stormed straight out of the conference room.
He arrived at the plaza.
Vrrrooom— engine noise that shook the ground itself.
Dozens of Veteran Guild heavy trucks filled his entire field of vision.
A hundred were supposed to come, so this was only the advance party.
Even so, an inexplicable pressure made it hard to breathe.
Then the truck doors opened.
Figures over two meters tall disembarked in unison and began unloading the magic ingots with perfect coordination.
"P-President! It's true! We checked—the mana content is far higher than anything we've ever seen!"
A researcher measured one of the magic ingots and cried out in shock.
Moments later, a sports car rolled in.
And the person who stepped out?
"Are you the one in charge of this steelworks? I'm Kang Hanul, acting guildmaster of the Veteran Guild."
"Heheh, hello yong! I'm Hatchery yong! Nice to meet you yong!"
While studying the man, Hanul activated Abyss Spectrum.
He had heard roughly what kind of person this was on the way over.
Park Cheolwoo was a decent man—and more importantly, someone who would be useful to his niece.
While Park Cheolwoo stood there dazed, Hanul extended a hand and added,
"For reference, I'm also the uncle of Kang Eunha, Minister of the Dungeon Management Department."
"So you're Minister Kang's uncle! I'm Park Cheolwoo, president of the Donghae Magic Steelworks industrial complex. Thank you so much for the help!"
President Park Cheolwoo clasped Hanul's hand with both of his own.
"If the Veteran Guild hadn't stepped in, we were on the brink of catastrophe."
"That bad?"
"Yes! If we made it through today, we would have had to shut down the blast furnaces. Once a mana furnace cools, restarting it alone costs trillions of won. And money isn't even the real issue—every critical production process would seize up, paralyzing the entire national system."
Park Cheolwoo bowed his head deeply.
"Acting Guildmaster Kang, you have saved this country."
"More importantly, I'd like to take a look at the blast furnace magic circuits."
"Hmm, I just ran a scan yong, and sure enough, the magic circuits here are ridiculously low-grade yong! If we dump our ingots in as-is, they won't be able to handle them yong!"
Hanul started walking before Park Cheolwoo could even guide him.
Hatchery trotted after him.
The bizarre sight of Park Cheolwoo and the steelworks staff scrambling after them unfolded instead.
They arrived at the blast furnace.
Heat of several thousand degrees Celsius slammed into their faces.
"Hatchery."
"Yes, Master yong! I was just about to start anyway yong!"
Hatchery hopped up and perched on the blast furnace control panel.
Her tiny fingers danced through the air.
Crack— geometric shapes and characters bloomed across empty space.
They seeped into the blast furnace's magic circuits and began to glow.
"Hah! What is this? The formula computation speed is unmeasurable!"
The steelworks' chief engineer stared at his terminal in horror.
Wherever Hatchery's fingertips touched, the red circuits were rewritten into blue light.
"Retuning complete! The blast furnace can finally breathe again yong. These mana conduits were completely clogged yong!"
"Well done. Then we move straight to the next process."
"Yes! Goat De— I mean, workers! Load the magic ingots into the furnace."
The massive men who had been standing by—actually polymorphed Goat Demons—moved at once.
Clank— clunk—
They casually hoisted bundles of magic ingots weighing hundreds of kilograms and carried them over.
"I-is that even possible? Without any machinery?"
"Are those people not ordinary workers but actual Hunters?"
President Park Cheolwoo's mouth fell open.
The other steelworks employees were no different.
Regardless, the men—no, the Goat Demons—moved with emotionless, perfectly synchronized efficiency.
Every time the giants' arm muscles flexed, high-purity ingots poured into the furnace like a waterfall.
Fwoooosh—! KRAAAAA—
The blast furnace roared.
Not the usual yellow flames, but a blue-white radiance that filled the entire furnace and spilled light outward.
"What are you waiting for? Preparations are finished. Giving the formal order to begin is the president's job, isn't it?"
"Ah, yes! You lot—start the operation!"
Park Cheolwoo shouted.
Thousands of monitors in the central control room all flipped to green at once.
Every gauge reading exploded upward.
"Output has broken two hundred percent! Pressure is stable!"
"Purity unmeasurable! This is… not metal—it's at the level of a crystal!"
Exultant reports burst from the engineers.
Moreover, after Hatchery had overhauled the magic circuits, the entire process seemed to have accelerated.
Already, metal coils were flowing out along the production line.
Even their color was different—a silver shot through with a faint violet sheen.
This was no ordinary steel. It was closer to a work of art.
"Ooooh!"
The floor workers erupted in cheers as if they had rehearsed it.
"I've never seen anything like this. You can tell the quality is completely different just by looking."
"President, this is a revolution. There is no precedent for this anywhere in the world!"
Not only Park Cheolwoo but the executives as well spoke in trembling voices of admiration.
And Hanul?
He simply watched with an expressionless face.
To him, this was no great miracle.
"You can handle the rest on your own now, right?"
At Hanul's words, Park Cheolwoo straightened his back.
"Of course! With this volume and quality, we can normalize the entire Republic of Korea within a week!"
"Good. We'll keep additional supply coming so it never runs dry. Our office manager will contact you about settlement—handle it according to that."
"Understood!"
Hanul turned.
Hatchery scurried after him.
As they stepped out of the steelworks, Park Cheolwoo and the staff bowed deeply in farewell.
"Thank you so very much!"
"Please take care on your way!"
With the factory inspection finished, they climbed into the car.
It was the sports car the guild had assigned to Hanul for his use.
"Master, would it be okay if I modified this later yong?"
Her small fingers traced the carbon grain of the dashboard and poked at the ambient lighting.
"You like this car?"
"Yes yong! The design is so sleek yong! The only flaw is that it's lacking in function and decoration, so if I add all sorts of accessories……"
The "accessories" Hatchery had in mind.
Probably stringing human skulls all over the hood, or swapping the wheels for ones made of bone.
Or maybe not wheels at all—attaching human legs so the car ran on them instead.
"No modifications."
"Yes yong! But making something similar in the workshop is fine, right?"
"Make whatever you want. Just don't drive it on public roads. If you really want to drive it, go do it in the Demon Realm."
Bzzzt— bzzzzzt— a call came in just then.
The caller was Office Manager Seo Jihun.
"Acting Guildmaster, this is Seo Jihun. Are you free to talk right now?"
"Yeah. We just left the steelworks. Something urgent come up?"
"Yes. I just received word from the Association. The schedule for the SSS-class promotion exam has been confirmed."
Seo Jihun's voice was lower and more solemn than usual.
"They said it would take two weeks. Faster is fine, but why did they move it up?"
"Actually, a trilateral summit between Korea, the United States, and China had already been scheduled soon over the treatment of the northern Korean Peninsula. They're coming for that as well, apparently."
Hmm. A summit, is it.
The state of the country?
Having lived this long, Hanul could see it clearly.
It was being torn at from every direction.
The Korean Peninsula's geopolitical position was already poor enough.
And ever since high-density magic stones and dungeons had been discovered in the northern half?
North Korea had collapsed.
The situation afterward only grew more severe by the day.
China, the United States, Japan, Russia—even the major European powers.
Just from the news and papers, you could see them all twisting their way in, trying to stick their spoons into the pot.
So this matter as well?
They were probably crawling in again to plant another spoon.