Uncle's Bundle, Unpacked
A niece was a truly fascinating creature.
Faces of my own flesh and blood simply surfaced in theirs, as naturally as though sketched in. Even now was no exception. As Seoyeon rattled off her litany of complaints at me, my sister's face overlapped hers with uncanny precision.
"So you're telling me you're going to a Gate. Alone. Right now."
"Yeah. I've got business to take care of."
"Nope. I'm against it! You've barely been back, and you're already heading to a Gate? What business could you possibly have?"
Seoyeon narrowed her eyes as she said it, and that expression was exactly—the exact same one my sister used to wear whenever my behavior displeased her.
"It'll only take a moment."
"No. I hate it!"
I sighed as I watched her stand her ground. I was tempted to tell her that her father might be inside that Gate, but I quickly erased the thought from my mind. Better not to raise false hope—if it turned out he wasn't there, the disappointment would be crushing.
Besides, I could understand why she was so opposed. Even though she herself was an Awakened who entered Gates, she seemed to carry a deep fear of watching someone she loved go into one.
"You saw it yourself, Uncle. That fight with those Blood Bird guys. You don't lose to anyone. Honestly, I don't think you'd lose to anyone."
"Yes, but what does that have to do with a Gate? You've never even been in one, Uncle," she shot back before I could finish.
Her logic was simple: she conceded that I was strong, but with zero Gate experience, I might still be walking into danger. Strictly speaking, she wasn't wrong. I simply didn't share her concern.
Murim had its own version of such places—secret realms, forbidden grounds. And if Oh Pilsang, a man granted A-rank treatment, was the benchmark around here, I could more or less gauge what level of threat a Gate posed.
"Honestly, it scares me. Having someone I know go into a Gate. And the thought of being left alone with Seojun again—I can't stand it."
Seeing her say that, I couldn't just bulldoze ahead anymore. The problem was that I couldn't push through her, but I couldn't give up either.
When I wore a troubled look and scratched my cheek, Seoyeon offered a compromise.
"Then come with me."
"...With you?"
I narrowed my eyes at her proposal. Honestly, having Seoyeon along would be no help at all, and the Yeouido Gate I was targeting was rated A-rank or higher. Bringing someone barely D-rank was a stretch in every possible way.
Not that I couldn't guarantee she wouldn't lose a single hair, of course.
She would almost certainly panic at the entrance and bolt. She knew all too well which Gate her father had never returned from.
"Come on. We'll go to a Gate nearby so you can learn how one works first. Then you can go."
"...Learn? Me, from you?"
I asked her with a look of pure disbelief. Surely there was nothing I could learn from my niece, after thirty years of hard living in Murim.
"Are you looking down on me right now? I may not look it, but I've got three years of hunter experience. People know the name Choi Seoyeon means business. Granted, only among D-rank hunters, but still."
She glared at me as she said it. She'd been acting as a hunter all on her own while raising her little brother, so she clearly took pride in that path.
I considered it for a moment, then slowly nodded. Now that I thought about it, there was nothing bad about the arrangement. The matter of my brother-in-law weighed on me a little, but the delay would amount to a single day at most—and it was better to put Seoyeon's and Seojun's minds at ease first. And the fact remained that I'd never set foot in one of these "Gates," so getting some firsthand experience beforehand was a sound choice.
"Fine. Then let's go together."
"N-now?"
"Yeah. You pull the bull's horn out while the iron's hot, right?"
"...O-okay. Just give me a minute."
With that, Seoyeon dashed off into her room. She took surprisingly long getting ready—I wondered what on earth needed so much preparation just to visit a Gate.
"Uncle, what are you doing?"
The question came from Seojun. And from his perspective, my behavior must have looked plenty strange—I was busily rearranging the furniture around the house. It wasn't that I was killing time while waiting for Seoyeon, either.
"Seojun, your uncle and your sister are stepping out for a bit. Think you can stay home alone?"
I asked him that, and it dawned on me: if Seoyeon and I were heading to a Gate, Seojun would be guarding the house by himself. Ten years had apparently been longer than I'd imagined.
"Yeah. I do fine by myself. Even when Noona's out."
Seojun flashed me a bright smile, doing his best to look tough. The sight tugged at my heart, but all I did was silently ruffle his hair.
"What are you doing with all the furniture, Uncle?"
"Just... making sure I can protect you, Seojun."
"This furniture protects me?"
"You bet. It's so bad people can't come poking around where you are."
One might wonder what moving furniture had to do with guarding my nephew. It had everything to do with it.
The Blood Jade Resonance Barrier Formation. A formation handed down in the Blood Sect, refined by my brilliant master. In its original form, it did little more than raise an alarm when an unauthorized person intruded—but in my master's improved version, even an elder of one of the Nine Great Sects, without a deep understanding of formations, would find himself trapped for a full day.
"Oh! I know this one, Uncle. It's like when you sprinkle salt in front of the door, right?"
Seojun grinned up at me. Just like his mother—he'll try anything, won't he. He'd apparently mistaken it for some kind of superstition, but there was no pressing need to correct him.
Instead, I opened the bundle I'd carried back from Murim and drew out a single crimson gemstone. A Blood Jade Stone—a formation eye, the core that powered the barrier. Simply put, it was a battery that fed the formation its energy.
I flung the Blood Jade Stone up toward the ceiling, out of Seojun's reach, and embedded it there.
"...Whoa!"
As the gem sank into the ceiling with a soft thud, Seojun let out a gasp of wonder.
And then—
"What on earth are you doing?"
Seoyeon, who had just finished preparing, was staring at me with an exasperated look on her face.
"Perfect timing. Go grab that weapon of yours."
"What? No, what is that thing in the ceiling?"
"It's for Seojun. Something like a CCTV. And more importantly—go get your weapon?"
"Ugh, why?"
Sulking, Seoyeon drew the dagger she always carried from its sheath.
That thing's falling apart.
My brow furrowed as I took in her dagger, its edge chipped away in patches. It wasn't just the dulled blade—the handle was wrapped in duct tape. Frankly, at that state it was less a cutting tool and more something you'd use to forcibly tear things apart.
"...What are you staring at?"
"Hold on a second."
I said that and thrust my hand into the bundle I'd brought from Murim. When my arm sank in up to the shoulder, I could see both Seoyeon's and Seojun's eyes go wide.
"Wh-what is that?"
"Whoa! Magic! It's magic!"
Seojun crowed about magic, but of course it was nothing of the sort. The treasures I'd carried back from Murim—or more precisely, from the Blood Sect—were too numerous to count, and all of that was never going to fit inside an ordinary bundle.
The bundle was bound with a spatial compression formation called the Folded-Earth Hidden Treasure Formation, another of my brilliant master's creations.
In game terms, think of it as a subspace pouch.
Back in the day, I'd told my master about the inventory system in the games I used to play, and a few months later he'd presented this bundle to me as a "gift."
Anyway, I searched through the countless items inside for something to give Seoyeon.
"Found it."
With that, I pulled my hand out, and in it was a sword roughly the same size as the dagger she carried.
"This one's called Jeok-a—the Blood Infant Sword. It'll serve you far better than that scrap metal you've been hauling around."
"It is NOT scrap metal!"
Seoyeon pursed her lips in a pout, yet her eyes wouldn't leave the sword in my hand. Like aunt like nephew, or rather—she had a sharp eye for weapons, apparently.
Jeok-a was no ordinary sword. Though it looked plain enough on the surface, it responded to its wielder's qi and optimized the flow of the blade itself. The mere rumor that Jeok-a lay dormant somewhere had been enough to send every martial artist in Murim scrambling for it at the risk of their lives—one of the legendary treasures of the martial world.
Of course, I had no intention of telling Seoyeon any of that. No need to saddle her with needless pressure—and besides, the bundle held countless other treasures besides Jeok-a.
"...Fine, if you're giving it to me, I'll take it. Thanks."
Despite her words, Seoyeon accepted Jeok-a carefully with both hands. Apparently the feel of it in her grip wasn't bad at all—I could see the faintest curl at the corners of her mouth.
"Uncle, what about me? Don't I get a present?"
Seojun looked up at me with sparkling eyes, and for a moment I wore a puzzled expression. I'd given Seoyeon a fitting weapon because she was Awakened, but Seojun was not. I couldn't exactly hand a blade to a kid still so young, so my brain briefly ground to a halt.
"Your present, Seojun? Of course I have one."
The bundle held more treasures than could be counted, and naturally there was at least one gift worthy of him.
"Ta-da! This one's yours, Seojun."
"...Clothes? They look way too big for Seojun to wear?"
Seeing what I'd pulled out, Seoyeon said that with a face that made no sense of it. But as I said, everything in that bundle was special, without exception.
"Seojun, hold your arms up."
At my words, Seojun raised both arms high, and I dressed him in the garment. The clothes that slid over his body swayed a few times, then promptly resized themselves to fit him perfectly.
Cloud-Heaven Heavenly Silkworm Silk. Cloth woven from silk harvested from a spirit silkworm—something ordinary blades couldn't cut, nor even a sword-qi strike. It hadn't originally possessed size-shifting properties, but that, too, was one of my master's improvements.
"Wow. This is so warm. It feels nice. Thank you, Uncle."
I let out a chuckle as Seojun bowed to me at the waist, his hands folded like a little acrobat. If any of Murim had witnessed that scene, they'd have vomited blood—I was handing out treasures of staggering value. Yet not a single ounce of it felt like a loss. If anything, I found myself wondering what else I could give them.
"...Uncle."
"Hm? What is it, Seoyeon?"
"What ARE you, some kind of Doraemon?"
I couldn't help but laugh outright at that. After all, I knew that the robot cat from that old cartoon had been her favorite character back in her earliest childhood.