Chapter 25 — The Association Still Pays Its Dues (2)
Lee Jun stared at the brat in front of him… no, the old woman… no, whatever—this dwarf.
Freyia's fluffy hair billowed as she dove onto the sofa. Anyone watching would have assumed she was in her own bedroom back home.
"So what brings you here? No, more importantly, if you were looking for me, why come to the Association?"
"You told me to drop by whenever I pleased! When I went to your place, they said you were stopping by the Association for a bit. So here I am!"
"It's been barely any time since you got permission. Already?"
"You're the one who said come by anytime!"
That was how their comic back-and-forth went… unfolding in the Hunter Association's chairman's office. Which raised an obvious question: what was the owner of this room doing in the meantime?
"……."
Ding-a-ling—
Sluuuurp—
"Not done yet, hair-loss friend?"
"……."
He was making coffee.
And besides—hair-loss friend?
That was… an absolutely flawless way to address him.
"Once Freya leaves… you're staying behind."
"Venting anger is prohibited. Just say it to my face."
"You're the one who keeps calling me bald!"
"Nay. Even these eyes can see it. It'll all fall out in droves before long."
"See? It's the destiny of baldness."
"You, I…!"
Go Seok-gu couldn't argue with Freya's words, so he took his frustration out on Lee Jun instead. But that was the end of it. Freya had seen it—so now all that remained was to mourn the sad future awaiting him. There was no one alive who didn't know the accuracy of her gaze.
"Well, it'll be fine. Medical science is advancing so fast these days. Couldn't the magic craftsmen develop a hair-loss treatment too?"
"Yes, yes, exactly! So hurry and pay a subsidy to the Union at once. We shall research it verrry thoroughly."
Somehow Freya had gotten genuinely invested in this whole affair. Wait, hold on. She really just came here to play? All the way here?
"……."
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Nothing."
Just as Lee Jun was eyeing Freya with a puzzled look, Go Seok-gu set a coffee cup down in front of her and took a seat.
"…Ahem. Coffee's ready."
He, too, seemed awkward around Freya. That was only natural—being as comfortable with her as Lee Jun was the strange behavior here. Freya was a dwarf over two hundred years old. Feeling a certain pressure in dealing with her was the sane response.
"So… there wasn't actually a particular reason you came here, was there…?"
"Hmm? A reason? Ah, right—there was something I needed to deliver, so I came while I was at it."
Swish—
Freyia handed one object each to Lee Jun and Go Seok-gu.
"What's this? A business card?"
A rectangular slab the exact size of a calling card. The material clearly wasn't paper, but it did look like a business card at first glance. The only problem being that not a single character was written on it.
"Blow mana into the top corner there."
"Which side is the top?"
"Direction doesn't matter. Just as you're holding it, the upper side is fine."
Go Seok-gu followed Freya's instructions, channeling mana into the upper edge of the black card. And Lee Jun, who couldn't handle mana himself, pulled something from his Pocket. A small syringe, its interior filled with a faintly bluish gas. A mana ampoule developed by Freya—still in the prototype stage, and Lee Jun had received several samples for field testing.
"Ah yes, that thing. Is it useful?"
"Definitely handy for any gimmick that requires injecting mana. Though I'm probably the only one who'd ever use it, no?"
"I intend to commercialize it. Magic engineering was never designed with the mana-less in mind. Having something like this on hand should quiet the complaints from ordinary folks at least a little."
"Not a bad idea."
Fwoooosh—
Lee Jun pressed the ampoule's nozzle against the upper edge of the card and pushed the plunger. Unlike an ordinary syringe, this mana ampoule had no needle. Pressing the plunger activated the circuitry at the nozzle, expelling the mana inside outward. Because of how extracted mana behaved—absorbed on contact with anything untreated—this simple mechanism was more than sufficient.
"There, that should do it. Now what happens?"
"Wait patiently. It will change presently."
And before the words had even finished leaving her mouth, the card transformed.
Shhhrrrrrrk—
"Wh-what is that?"
"…It's a Logic Cube, isn't it."
The card, reshaped into a perfect cube, split into dozens of pieces that scattered through the air. And between each piece and the next ran a powerful connection. Even Lee Jun, who couldn't sense mana, could tell that these links had been processed mana-wise.
Freyia spoke to the two of them as they stared at the Logic Cube.
"Well? Think you can solve it?"
"A Logic Cube just takes time—anyone can manage one. But what is this?"
"Something confiscated from a few of our Union members recently. Doesn't it spark your interest?"
"You've certainly brought something worth being interested in."
"Kyahahaha! Well, the thing is, even I haven't solved it yet. It's a Logic Cube with a time limit, and they've imbued the mana with repulsion, so no one else can touch the pieces. Apparently there's a bespoke solution method."
Repulsion, was it. Meaning that touching the pieces in the wrong order would blow the entire configuration apart. It had been designed to react to the mana that every awakened person carried by default.
"Most hunters won't be able to solve it, then."
"Exactly. That's why I brought it. This method doesn't apply to you."
Right—this was the blind spot of the repulsion setup. Those with no mana to speak of, people like Lee Jun, were completely unaffected by this cube's interference gimmick.
"Pretty devious. Gimmicks to block the awakened, a lock to block the unawakened."
"And besides, anyone who isn't a hunter wouldn't even know how to approach this cube. It was originally a gate gimmick, after all."
"But you're a seasoned veteran when it comes to cracking gimmicks. Come on, hurry up and solve it. Do you have any idea how many nights of sleep I've lost wondering about this thing?"
"Yes, yes, I'll solve it without the nagging. And you've only had it a few days—what nights of sleep?"
Clack—
Grumbling under Freya's prodding, Lee Jun's hands nonetheless moved swiftly.
So the base is 48 pieces.
Bagua and bagua. All six faces were woven in eight-trigram formations, the whole divided into forty-eight pieces—a structure even more complex than the standard fifty-four-piece cube. Each piece wasn't a simple square but an odd, irregular shape.
"Gates in the Hwan Continent use noticeably fewer of these, so there are people who've never seen a structure like this at all."
"Aye, that would be me."
"Well… in this case it's even more complicated. The central core is a crossing-style sixty-four-point formation."
It was a cube of genuinely bastard difficulty, but Lee Jun worked through it one piece at a time, methodical and unhurried. With each movement of his hands, the finely divided fragments gradually revealed their original form.
"And then… this is the last piece—"
Eee—ee—ee, ee—ee—ee, ee—ee, ee—ee, eeeeeeeeeeeeeee—
"…Ugh!"
"What the—?!"
The moment the cube was completed, a shriek exploded outward, as if to shred their eardrums. No—it only seemed to explode outward.
"…What was that?"
Lee Jun heard nothing at all. He merely blinked in bewilderment at the two people beside him clutching their ears. If the effect spared only him, it was presumably delivering its shock by vibrating the mana inside their bodies or some such mechanism.
"Th-that thing—smash it, now…!"
"Just hold on a second! I'll dismantle it right now!"
Lee Jun drew a pulse device from his Pocket, intending to collapse the cube's structure and neutralize it. He had no idea what was inside it, but leave it like this any longer and there was no telling what would happen to the other two.
"I don't know what cursed bastard made this, but what a son of a bitch of a contraption!"
Kwajik—
Lee Jun connected the device to the cube at once and cranked the output to maximum. But whatever the thing was made of, not a single crack showed.
"Nnnngh…! Give it here!"
Unable to bear it any longer, Freya pulled a hammer out of subspace. The Hammer of Vanity—one of Freya's two artifacts.
"Wait! If you swing that—!"
"No, I can't wait any looonger!"
KAAAAANG!
The instant Freya's hammer struck the cube, a violent shockwave erupted, sending objects of every kind flying as if they'd detonated. And there, within that storm of mana, Lee Jun heard one voice with perfect clarity.
"You would do well to give up on this gate, Vice-Chairman."
Flutter, flutter—
Documents and files plastered flat against the walls peeled away all at once and drifted to the floor. Shards of broken glass littered the chairman's office, and furniture fragments blasted in every direction had gouged wounds into the walls on all sides. It looked exactly like the aftermath of a typhoon.
"…Hah."
Amid the wreckage, Lee Jun sat utterly still. That voice just now—it was, without a doubt, a warning letter. He had no idea who the bastard was, but one thing was clear: this business had drawn a great deal of attention.
"What the hell… who could have done something like this…."
Freyia wiped a hand down her face, thoroughly drained. Her triangular dwarven ears twitched upright, betraying her pain.
"Apparently this was meant for me all along."
"Those goddamn bastards…!"
Lee Jun considered who could have deliberately routed the cube to him. Someone brilliant in magic engineering, erudite enough to weave a rare Hwan Continent formation technique into a Logic Cube, and simultaneously holding a grudge against him—an individual or organization that would—
"…Those rotten."
One. There was one. In the previous loop, they'd started moving right around now, too. Back then they hadn't gone around operating this brazenly at this stage.
The hidden piece of the S-Class gate Lee Jun was targeting this time. In the previous loop, its owner had died five days after obtaining it. Cause of death: homicide. And the bastards who'd snatched it away—
Liberation.
The Liberators. So those bastards… had finally begun to move. Normally, the smart play would be to keep as far away from them as possible. But Lee Jun couldn't afford to let it go either.
Because the hidden piece of this gate was a skill that suited Seo Yoon perfectly. Until her multiple mana overload could be cured, it would be an enormous asset to her. And beyond that, he couldn't allow the hidden piece to fall into Liberation's hands. In the last loop, the consequences of that had been… quite grave.
If it really is the Liberators, I have to take that hidden piece back no matter what it takes.
It might even be better to keep their attention fixed on him. At least within the range where Lee Jun could intervene, at least once, they could pass through unscathed.
So Lee Jun sat quietly, gazing at the shattered cube fragments. A black cube… a black… cube.
"But… how did this thing end up with the Magic Craftsmen Union in the first place?"
In the previous loop, none of the Liberators whose identities had been confirmed had any connection to the Craftsmen's Union. Assuming it had been sown from within, that meant there were members still unrevealed—
"……."
Lee Jun looked silently toward Freya. It wasn't that he had no way to find a Liberator inside the Union. But telling her would put Freya herself in danger. Knowing her temperament, she'd go jabbing her nose into every corner of the place at once. Freya's strength was nothing to scoff at either, but that side had worse monsters among them. A method that would obviously endanger her… he had no wish to hand it over.
Lee Jun's gaze moved back and forth between Freya and Go Seok-gu, both still utterly spent. The annihilated chairman's office, the state of the two of them, and, in stark contrast, his own perfect condition—a deep wrongness settled over him.
And in the very center of that dissonance, Lee Jun thought: this business was the vanguard of something far bigger than it appeared.