Chapter 168
Chapter 168
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 168
Chapter Title: The Curse Weaver
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"Shh. I'm dispelling the protection magic."
Lee Seo-jun clamped his mouth shut at my words.
And about eight seconds passed.
Click.
I'd successfully undone the protection magic.
"Done."
"Wow. It feels like it took less than ten seconds..."
Eun Seol-ah muttered in a surprised voice.
Lee Seo-jun smirked at the sight.
"She must be pretty shocked. It is pretty amazing the first time you see it."
"I've never seen anyone dispel a barrier this fast in my life. Even Grandma couldn't do it this quickly..."
I shrugged at Eun Seol-ah's mumbling.
I've seen reactions like this so often that I'm used to it now.
"Well then, shall we open it?"
Rattle.
I opened the drawer.
Inside was a single small book.
"Looks like a diary."
"Yeah, seems like it."
I flipped open the first page of the diary. It was filled with entries from her school days.
The contents were more ordinary than I'd expected. What she did with friends, what classes she had at school— just everyday life like that.
"More ordinary than I thought?"
That was when I was flipping through the pages.
I found a page that stood out from the rest.
[Today, I joined a secret club at the Sorcerer's Academy. It's called the 'Mystery Research Club,' made by Senior Jin Cheon-woo.]
Lee Seo-jun reacted the strongest to those words.
"...Mystery Research Club?"
He fell into serious thought, peering at the next page of the diary on his own.
At that moment, I spotted another photo at the bottom of the drawer.
It was a picture of someone who looked like Eun Seol-ah's mother and a black-haired woman together.
But the black-haired woman's face in the photo looked familiar.
It was a face I'd seen on the news before my regression.
Seonghye.
She was the one who'd cast the curse on Eun Seol-ah.
Eun Seol-ah spotted Seonghye's photo too and muttered.
"Must be Mom's friend. It says the name Seonghye here."
"Looks like it."
For reference, Seonghye wasn't an ordinary human. She was a fiend.
Even decades ago in the past, fiends lived mixed in among humans.
That was when it happened.
"Urk!"
Eun Seol-ah let out a groan of pain and clutched her head.
"You okay?!"
I rushed right over to her.
Eun Seol-ah kept clutching her head, still in agony.
I laid her down on the floor and placed my hand on her forehead. It was burning hot like a fireball.
The mystery fever had begun.
But I felt a sense of doubt.
Why had the mystery fever suddenly flared up? I'd heard she had about a week before it fully onset.
"...No way."
I shouted to Lee Seo-jun.
"Look after her for a sec!"
"Huh? Oh, sure."
I handed Eun Seol-ah over to Lee Seo-jun and looked out the window.
As Eun Seol-ah had said earlier, the mystery fever flared up every 15 days.
But there was another trigger for outbreaks.
It was when she got close to the sorceress who'd cast it.
I scanned outside, and sure enough, someone was passing by on the street.
A black-haired woman.
Her face matched the sorceress from the diary.
I'd thought it'd take a while to run into the sorceress, but she'd shown up way sooner than expected.
I bolted out the door.
"Kim Seon-woo! Where are you going?!"
"Wait there!"
The moment I stepped outside the building, I sprinted in the direction the woman had gone.
The woman turned around, sensing my presence.
She stared straight at me with a puzzled look.
"...Did you just come out of that building?"
The woman asked me.
She seemed to know this was the space Eun Seol-ah's mother had used.
She'd probably been intentionally lurking around here.
"You look pretty young..."
"You're the sorceress who cast the mystery fever, right?"
At my words, the woman looked at me with shocked eyes.
"...What are you talking about?"
She denied it, eyes full of wariness.
I ignored her for a moment and immediately activated Character Appraisal.
Seonghye.
It was definitely the fiend Seonghye who'd cast the curse.
And her magic power rank was A-.
But magic power rank was just numbers in the end— not everything.
In this world, 'experience' mattered more than magic power rank.
And her age was 45, as shown in Character Appraisal.
She probably had tons of combat experience.
At that moment, Seonghye gathered her magic power.
I immediately fired a spell at her.
Since she was a fiend, I wanted to use light attribute, but to avoid Lee Seo-jun's suspicions, I attacked with a neutral magic orb.
Bang!
A flash burst from my fingertips, and the spell shot toward her.
She immediately spewed black demonic energy, spreading a dark curtain.
Due to my sudden ambush, she'd been forced to use her fiend powers.
I said to her as if I hadn't known.
"So you are a fiend."
"...Tch. You little punk. I'll kill you!"
The moment Seonghye tried to raise her demonic energy, someone came running from the villa.
"Kim Seon-woo!"
It was Lee Seo-jun, supporting Eun Seol-ah.
Seonghye saw Eun Seol-ah and looked genuinely startled.
Eun Seol-ah was the same. The person from the photo was right in front of her.
"Y-You're...?"
"That silver hair... You're Eun Mi-yeon's daughter?"
At the mention of Eun Mi-yeon's name, Eun Seol-ah's expression hardened.
"You're the sorceress who cursed my mother."
"Heh heh. Yeah, that's right. I don't know how you figured out it was a curse, but I did it."
Seonghye admitted it surprisingly easily.
"Why my mother?"
"Honestly, no big reason."
Eun Seol-ah furrowed her brow at Seonghye's words.
"No big reason?"
"Yeah. She was better than me. Jealousy, I guess. Of course, back when I was a teenager, someone being better than me was a huge reason."
"How could you..."
Even in the midst of her mystery fever agony, Eun Seol-ah glared at Seonghye with venomous eyes.
"Well, besides that, I needed a test subject for my newly acquired mystery powers. Of course, the conditions were tricky, so I had to earn her trust first."
Then Lee Seo-jun set Eun Seol-ah down and drew his sword.
Rage burned in his eyes.
"Filthy scum."
Seonghye looked at Lee Seo-jun's face and stiffened for a moment. She must have recognized him.
Her boss was Jeong Hyeon, who'd infiltrated the Sorcerer's Academy as 'Professor Chris.'
"...You looked familiar. No way... Lee Seo-jun?"
Lee Seo-jun didn't answer. He just swung his light-attribute sword aura at Seonghye.
Seonghye barely dodged the attack and muttered.
"...Fighting here isn't a good idea."
But Lee Seo-jun wasn't one to let Seonghye escape.
He relentlessly swung his sword at her, and eventually, Seonghye pulled a small orb from her bosom.
"I didn't want to use this!"
Seonghye infused magic power into the orb, and it shattered with a clang.
Strong magic power surged from the ground where Lee Seo-jun stood, and darkness spewed out, swallowing him whole.
In an instant, Lee Seo-jun's body vanished.
I realized what that magic was.
It was a mystery-infused magic tool only fiends could use: 'Shadow Bind'.
Similar in concept to Elrin's 'magic circle' tattoos, but a higher-level technique.
The downside was it could only be used once.
"Tch. Wasting something this valuable."
Grinding her teeth, Seonghye glared at me and Eun Seol-ah.
"But Jeong Hyeon-nim told me to run no matter what if I ran into Lee Seo-jun, so no choice. I want to rip you two apart right now, but... the Association might detect the demonic energy, so I'll spare you this once."
With that, Seonghye turned around.
Even though I was watching her clearly from behind.
The moment Seonghye tried to flee.
I unleashed a spell straight at her back.
Boom!
"Argh!"
Seonghye screamed in pain and collapsed to the ground.
"You're underestimating me way too much."
회귀한 엑스트라가 천재가 됨
170 화
I slowly approached Seonghye sprawled on the ground.
I thought I'd hit her squarely in the center of the back, but since I hadn't infused light attribute, it was regenerating quickly.
"Urk!"
Seonghye pushed herself up and glared at me.
"Sneaking up and attacking from behind...!"
Black demonic energy began to swirl around her body.
The foul energy made my eyes narrow involuntarily. She'd tried to run earlier, but now she seemed intent on fighting me.
I raised my magic power in preparation for her next attack.
Her specialty seemed to be support-type magic.
She had 'Shadow Bind,' a kind of spatial barrier that trapped Lee Seo-jun, plus curses and hexes, so I had to be careful.
Of course, curses and hexes had tricky activation conditions, so she'd probably never use them mid-battle.
I had no intention of going down easy either.
That was when it happened.
Seonghye dispersed the demonic energy swirling around her.
Then she glared at me murderously and said.
"I want to rip you apart right now! But the situation is urgent, so I'll specially spare..."
Bang!
I fired another spell.
Seonghye cut off mid-sentence and hurriedly spread her dark curtain.
Thud!
Her curtain blocked my spell.
She'd reacted to my shot at a speed that was hard to follow, and her reaction time was better than expected.
"Another ambush?!"
"...You sure talk a lot."
"Fine. If you wanna die, I'll kill you now."
Whoosh...
Black demonic energy erupted from her entire body once more.
The aura was markedly different from before.
I set her as the target and prepared for full-on combat.
"Haat!"
Burning thorns manifested above her head and shot toward me.
However, as a manifestation mage, not a manifestation spell— it wasn't much of a threat to me.
I didn't even feel the need to defend, simply stepping aside to dodge her attack.
Boom!
Her attack slammed into the wall behind me with a roar.
"Not bad!"
Seonghye gathered demonic energy again and began casting a new spell.
Judging by the lack of manifesting magic power forms around her, it wasn't the same manifestation-type spell as before.
That meant her specialty, support-type magic, was coming.
The most practical support spell in combat was, of course, binding magic.
Whoosh!
And as expected, fiery rings manifested in the air, trying to bind my body.
I calmly raised my magic power and created magic orbs.
For attacks like this, it was better to intercept with spells than dodge.
I quickly fired orbs to take out the fiery rings.
Boom!
"Tch!"
Seonghye bit her lip hard as her attack was blocked so easily.
She seemed thrown off by my calm response.
And in the gap created by her fluster.
I didn't miss it, reinforcing my body and charging at her.
The moment she tried to manifest a new spell to block my approach, I activated Instant Acceleration.
Time seemed to slow in an instant, and her movements looked sluggish.
True to form as someone who mainly used support and manifestation magic, I could spot openings all over her body.
She immediately manifested new fiery rings to bind me.
But with my body sped up by Instant Acceleration, dodging the rings was a breeze.
Whoosh!