105. Romantic Dreams and Romance
105. Romantic Dreams and Romance
I was gleeful when I heard that a surprise gift had arrived for the old examiner I had such a bad history with, but when I heard it was a bunker buster, my mind went blank too.
The Tax Collection Bureau.
Those people aren't natural disasters—they're just bunker busters.
A typhoon at least leaves you safe if you get into a bunker, but those people, if you get into a bunker, they'll collect the bunker itself.
The memory of tax collectors coming for unpaid taxes when I'd only recently become John and knew nothing about taxes or income was still vivid.
I'd been in the middle of the ocean, and hadn't they come bursting out of the sea?
Even the Duke found dealing with them exhausting and became a model taxpayer, so I couldn't even think about putting up resistance either.
- Thank you for faithfully paying your taxes.
At the time, after collecting the taxes, they went back into the sea with a polite word of thanks.
Seeing that sight, I was able to confirm that my own madness was fake.
In any case, Pia's response was a little excessive.
The other side had thrown a jab, and we had answered with a bunker buster.
I briefly considered whether I should at least apologize to the old man, then decided to just let it go.
This wasn't some teabagging stunt. Wasn't it a bit much to reduce the place to ruins with a bunker buster and only apologize afterward?
It wasn't as if apologizing would make them like me, our first meeting had been awful, and we'd already gone too far to turn back. Wouldn't remaining cold and distant be better for both sides?
So I decided to leave it alone.
What matters now is Part 3.
Since we filmed Part 2 before even one semester had passed, if we wanted to, it looked like we could film Part 3 within this year.
There were two options.
One was to start filming Part 3 right away.
The other was to rest a bit and film during winter break.
And the result of the vote was
"Figures."
They wanted to start filming the very next day.
The actors had seen how cool Colson's death was in Part 2 and were clamoring for me to film scenes like that for them as soon as possible.
For reference, in this vote, the props team opposed it, suggesting we rest a bit.
But the filming team and actor team had overwhelming numbers, so their opposition was ignored.
In my previous life, I had heard that props teams received the worst treatment in the film industry, and apparently changing worlds hadn't changed much.
Me?
I didn't particularly need a rest.
If anything, that was great. Every moment of making a film was fun.
Every moment of filming a movie is enjoyable.
Just then, Part 3 was my turn to appear, so I'd been itching to get back.
The theme of Part 3 was paternal love, and it was a chapter showing the paternal love between the protagonist and the character I was playing.
The role I was playing was Ras.
He was a prisoner who broke out together with Morse when Morse escaped from prison.
At first, because Ras had escaped from the same floor as Morse, Liam assumed he was a vicious criminal. It was later revealed that Ras was actually a righteous Hero who had opposed Morse.
Morse had framed him and gotten him imprisoned. When Morse was later incarcerated, Ras took the cell next door under a self-imposed mission to watch him for life.
The moment he heard Morse had escaped, his sense of responsibility drove him to break out as well—a man obsessed with justice.
Liam sympathized with Ras's tragedy, and Ras sympathized with Liam's wounds.
As the film progressed, the relationship between the two, which had begun from pity, transformed into a friendship that overcame their age difference.
But something obstructed their friendship, and this time it was not Morse but the law itself.
Ras's false accusation still hadn't been cleared.
The content of Part 3 would depict the journey to clear that false charge.
In the process, they would learn that Liam's mother was Ras's older sister, and the two's friendship would develop into familial love.
At the end of the film, Ras would declare himself Liam's godfather, closing the story on the theme of paternal love.
However, what mattered was something else.
Apart from the fact that I had to act well as Ras, Ras's action scenes numbered a whole 'three.'
The first was when Ras broke out of prison.
The second was when Liam first encountered him and they fought due to a misunderstanding.
The third was during the final battle, when the two fought back-to-back together.
And I had already conceptualized these three scenes last time, and was now getting approval from Nikolai.
And the result was...
"All three are out."
"Ah, why."
"First, the first one: cut the prison explosion. It isn’t even necessary."
"Tch."
"And the second one. Heavy machine gun bayonet technique... what kind of insane idea is this?"
I immediately demonstrated the second scene Nikolai had mentioned as a sample.
Swung the unloaded heavy machine gun around like a halberd, spun it around my body like nunchaku, then finished with a thrust.
Nikolai, who had been watching me with an expression of utter disbelief, opened his mouth.
"Yeah. It is kind of cool, I admit. But you haven't forgotten this is an academy piece, right?"
"Anyway, Liam's also going to be using a halberd. We can just say he picked up the halberd after watching Ras's bayonet technique, right?"
"...Fine. The second one is approved. But the last one, the third, is a no."
"Wouldn’t that be excessive?"
At my objection, Nikolai took a deep breath, then let out a shout.
"No. Originally, it's the scene where Jace defeats the ghoul horde with holy magic! So why in the hell is a minigun popping out!!"
"In America, they have this saying. Might makes light."
Overwhelming firepower is indistinguishable from holy magic.
That is also recorded in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty.
However, Nikolai, perhaps forgetting his Korean roots, did not agree with my assertion.
"Stop talking nonsense and change it! You should be satisfied I approved the heavy machine gun bayonet technique! And this is an important scene."
"Yeah, yeah."
In the end, we agreed that for the last scene, Liam would handle the gunblade and halberd shotgun, and I would handle the heavy machine gun.
Anyway, both were the same in that they swung lumps of iron around and pulled the trigger from time to time, so it was a scene where Liam learned a lot from Ras.
For reference, instead of the minigun, the heavy machine gun quick-draw was approved.
It was swinging the machine gun while holding down the trigger like a quick-draw technique, and if we packed it full of tracer rounds and brought it down, we could expect an effect like swinging a giant sword of light.
At this level, the Michael inside me would be satisfied too.
After all this action went on, near the finale, both were scheduled to run out of ammunition and be cornered.
Then, when Ras fell into danger, at that timing, Liam would awaken his inner holiness and use a special holy magic.
Divine Power was no different from a miracle in a setting without Sanctuaries.
Not only Ras but the academy professors would witness this Divine Power and realize that Liam was the child of prophecy destined to defeat Morse...
That was the plot of Chapter 3.
However, there was a sense that ending it just like that was a bit of a letdown.
So I put forward an idea about Liam's holy magic.
"Instead of Divine Magic, how about a holy grenade? Rictus’s sacred—"
"No."
I decided to just be satisfied with the bayonet technique.
*
Two months passed.
Over those two months, there was one lesson I learned. You know what it is?
That if a person periodically does some crazy shit, no one messes with them.
Once we'd planted one bunker buster on the examiner who messed with our studio, some rumor must have spread in the film industry, because really, absolutely nobody messed with us.
Thanks to that, unlike last year, we finished filming smoothly without any~ interference events at all.
There was an accident where, because I couldn't get the rate of fire I wanted, I modified the heavy machine gun's bolt and the muzzle made a chainsaw noise as it chewed through half a building, but anyway, filming went smoothly.
Did I get yelled at, you ask?
I didn't get yelled at.
Instead, the result looked even cooler, so the whole thing was written off as an accident.
If you asked how cool it was, you could tell from the reactions of the male students majoring in spearmanship in the Hero Department today, a week after the film had aired.
- "A hand grenade?"
- "Yes. A holy grenade."
- "Is that really holy?"
- "It has a cross on it."
- "That doesn’t make it holy!"
Lately, more than half of the conversations heard from the smithy on the island were of this kind.
As I said, it had started with me going berserk.
It wasn't only the rate of fire that changed when I replaced the gun's bolt.
The temperature of the barrel changed too.
Of course, this being another world where people put flame enchants on swords and swing them around, just because the barrel's temperature rose didn't mean the firearm would break.
But that only meant it wouldn't break—not that the barrel wasn't hot.
When I made the heavy machine gun roar like Hitler's buzz saw, it was only natural for the barrel to become hot enough for even me to find painful.
The moment I flinched from the barrel's heat and pulled my hand away, Ailey, who had been watching, joked.
- If you swung a heated barrel like a spear, wouldn't that be a flame enchantment? ... Sorry if that wasn't funny.
Ailey's joke was adopted on the spot.
From then on, everything from the action scenes to the weapons underwent a sweeping overhaul.
First, we redesigned the weapon—from a structure meant to cool heat to one that generated as much heat as possible and trapped it in the spearhead.
And we changed the action scene so that, from start to finish, they never took their finger off the trigger in order to heat the spearhead.
They turned the ceaseless stream of bullets from the muzzle into a spear-blade and swung them at each other,
sometimes the blades clashed and sparks flew, and even while locking blades they kept their fingers on the trigger, using the recoil itself as propulsion—after all that,
By the time both weapons had literally caught fire, Jace and I had filled the set with gunpowder smoke over the course of a brief five-minute fight scene.
When the two of us came to our senses, the set building was already in ruins and the surroundings were thick with soot.
But the battle scene that came out of it was a masterpiece that would satisfy even the Michael inside me, leaving him no choice but to ascend to nirvana.
Think about it.
Cold weapons? Romantic ideal.
Conventional firearms? Romantic ideal.
Every man has probably agonized between those two weapons at least once.
But you combined the two?
And on top of that, holding the trigger makes the weapon overheat and get stronger?
The outcome of romance + romance + romance was already decided.
[Er... Son. Could you get me one of those too?]
The fact that my father, who never used a gauntlet because he found it cumbersome, contacted me says it all.
He didn't know if he'd use it in actual combat, but he wanted to try it at least once.
So I had one made for him right away.
A custom piece that Ailey and I designed and built together.
I made him a romance-packed gauntlet that fired shotgun pellets with every punch and trapped the heat to grow hotter and hotter, exactly as he wanted, and he absolutely loved it.
"Thank you, dear."
"Don't mention it, Father."
"You're family now."
It was enough to change how my father addressed Ailey after receiving the gift.
I thought the old man was making a fool of himself with age and considered stopping him, but the person he called "dear" looked oddly pleased, so I let it go.
Anyway, thanks to this scene, people in related industries—every last one of them—were suddenly looking for Dihex.
... Somehow the definition of Dihex seemed to have shifted quite a bit from "a weapon that fires magic like a gun," but I decided to accept that the definition of a word naturally changes with the advancement of technology.
According to Leon, the military was foaming at the mouth because they had to redefine Dihex all over again.
Perhaps dreading even more overtime, my uncle, the head of the Counterintelligence Department, sent me a message.
[Are you planning to do a collaboration with a trading company for Dihex?]
To that worry-filled question, I wrote back that I absolutely would not.
He was probably having a fit because of the collab with a trading company in the John 0 gun sommelier scene.
But the thing is, even when the tide comes in, you still have to read the room before you start rowing.
John's guns were fine, but Dihex was off-limits.
In this world, ordinary guns are classed as antiques or collectibles, but Dihex is a new weapon.
Dihex had to be handled with care.
At my quick-witted response, Uncle thanked me and ended the call.
*
One day, while I was enjoying the sight of a single movie shaking the whole world for the first time in a long while, the Dean summoned me.
'Could it be the Dean too?'
Lately, even the Emperor had been asking whether I could make him a gunblade to hang on his wall, so why would the Dean be any different?
But then another possibility suddenly crossed my mind.
'No. Maybe it's because of the students right now.'
Right now, students were all seeking nothing but Dihex.
Of course, that in itself wasn't bad.
Dihex had broader versatility and a higher ceiling than conventional weapons, after all.
Its mastery curve was much steeper.
Because you had to be proficient in two or more weapons.
The problem was that the students, instead of progressing step by step, were blindly seeking Dihex.
They looked for gunlances without even knowing how to handle a spear, so their grades were a foregone conclusion.
It had become such a serious problem that some professors were worrying students would pick up bad habits.
'Could it be because of this...'
Was it a request, or a reprimand?
I made my own guesses about why the Dean had called me and grabbed the doorknob to his office.
With a nervous heart, I entered, sat on the sofa, and awaited the Dean's sentence.
And the words that came from the Dean's mouth were...
"I'd like you to be the representative for this winter's closing ceremony as well."
"...Pardon?"
"What's with that reaction? Didn't you come here expecting something like this?"
"No... well..."
Why another certificate of appreciation?
I felt uneasy accepting it without knowing the reason, so I risked being rude and simply asked.
The Dean let out a cheerful, rumbling laugh and told me the reason.
"Thanks to you, the students' motivation has gone up even more."
"Pardon?"
"The number of students wishing to pursue double majors has increased. Thanks to that, even professors of unpopular subjects are pleased."
The reason was utterly absurd.
Because Dihex required proficiency in multiple weapons, double majoring had become a trend.
In the process, if a previously unpopular subject helped with handling Dihex, students would flock to take it.
Lately, inquiries about opening a dedicated course for Dihex were pouring in to the point that students' enthusiasm for lectures was through the roof.
The fact that they could wield a romantic weapon with their own hands had set their motivation ablaze.
Faced with the Dean's business, which was utterly remote from what I had imagined, I buried every excuse I had prepared deep in my chest.
Instead, I immediately switched to humble mode.
"Thank you. It's all thanks to my colleagues."
The Dean mentioned that this time they had specially prepared certificates for the entire production crew, and the conversation wrapped up on a warm note.
... Or so it seemed.
It would have been fine if the Dean hadn't cracked a joke right when I thought the talk was over.
"Just out of curiosity, is there an open role in the film? Seeing the youngsters' passion has gotten this old man excited."
"Pardon?"
While I was still confused about whether that remark was a joke or serious, he burst into a hearty laugh and waved his hand.
"With a reaction like that, how am I supposed to tease you? It was a joke. Did I really sound that serious?"
"Haha. If you were to join us, I was only wondering what kind of character to assign you. With your acting skills, a half-baked role wouldn't do at all."
"I appreciate the thought, at least. You're still treating me like an active actor, after all."
While I wore a dry smile, the Dean assured me that it really was a joke and wrapped things up.
After that, my meeting with the Dean genuinely ended.
I left the Dean's office and headed toward the club room.
On the way, I replayed the conversation with the Dean.
The more I thought about it, the faster my initially slow pace became, until it turned into a sprint.
Before long, the club room door was right in front of me.
BANG!
The moment I arrived, I flung open the break room door and scanned the members inside.
Fortunately, the person I was looking for was there.
I grabbed Carlos, who was staring at the entrance with a startled expression, and asked.
"You. You said you're a fan of Agion Karambelt, right?"
"Huh? Yeah. Why all of a sudden?"
"Give me a little of your time."
Before I even heard Carlos's answer, I hoisted him up and headed to my office.
I dumped him on the office sofa and practically threw myself into the seat opposite him.
And staring straight into his eyes, which were still darting around because he hadn't grasped the situation, I gave him an order.
"Everything about Agion Karambelt. Tell me. Debut, prime, filmography, retirement. Everything you know."
No matter how I thought about it, the Dean's last words—
- "Just out of curiosity, is there an open role in the film?"
That was no joke.