The Terms of Our Deal
"Where did you get that information?"
Neria's voice had gone cold enough to startle even herself. The mask she kept in place at all times had been shattered so easily by Lee Seohyun.
…Fine. If he knows about the Gold Crow's existence, there's no reason to keep up the act.
The thought that Seohyun might simply be testing her crossed her mind for a moment, but the words that had come out of that man's mouth were far too absurd for an ordinary person to have stumbled onto by chance.
The Gold Crow.
A legendary monster that had drowned itself in greed, endlessly hungering for knowledge and devouring countless lives — the Oh family's dirty secret.
Even within the family, setting the elders aside, the only people who knew of the Gold Crow's existence were those of the direct Corvus line.
And the fact that Neria intended to seal it was known only to a handful of people she trusted among them.
A leak of internal secrets from a family that specialized in information? The idea was laughable.
When it came to intelligence, the Ohsung Group was the one everyone else deferred to, no matter where you looked.
Which meant he had learned of it through some special channel…
She thought back to the way he had looked after waking — the brief flash of bewilderment, and then the steady composure he had maintained ever since, serious yet never losing his ease.
Just how much did he know, and how far did that knowledge go?
Neria suppressed the urge to grab him by the collar right then and there, and waited for his answer.
"Hey, Neria. What matters to you right now isn't how I found this out, is it?"
"…What are you trying to say?"
"I'm saying we cooperate. I'll help you seal the Gold Crow — and in exchange, you grant my demands along the way."
Lee Seohyun's body overflowed with mana, yet he could not use a single scrap of it.
That was a fact Neria had confirmed herself, by pouring her own mana into him.
His public identity was thoroughly ordinary as well. At this stage — before he had even properly enrolled at Manryeong Academy — if she borrowed the Ohsung Group's power to bury the information, erasing this man from the world would be trivial.
His life and death rested entirely in her hands. And yet, where on earth was that composure coming from?
"And what exactly am I supposed to trust you—"
"Ah, you really overthink everything. You already know, don't you? The only thing that can serve as a medium to imprison the Gold Crow is my body."
Neria met Seohyun's confident gaze for a moment.
It galled her, but every word he said was true.
From the day she had learned of the Gold Crow's existence years ago, Neria had been gathering information on it in secret.
Once she realized there was no way to kill it, she had begun searching for a medium capable of sealing it — and the results had remained meager.
The Gold Crow's mana capacity was something no mere object could withstand.
Even if she succeeded in containing it, the vessel could not be allowed to radiate mana.
Somewhere in the labyrinths, such an artifact might exist — but Neria did not have that kind of time.
I never even considered it, because a person whose mana doesn't circulate simply shouldn't exist.
And then this man had appeared — perfectly suited to become the medium for the seal.
Did he even understand what it meant to become the Gold Crow's vessel?
As a direct descendant of the Oh family and a member of the Ohsung Group, she had met countless people. She had worn countless masks and read countless minds. And yet from Lee Seohyun's face, she could read nothing at all.
"I won't pretend I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart. I'm not the volunteering type. This is a transaction. Easier for you that way too, right?"
Why was it?
Just looking at this man, she kept getting more and more irritated.
"…Do people tell you you're insufferable a lot?"
Seohyun simply grinned at her words.
"So? What's your answer?"
She could refuse his proposal, keep him locked up, and use him purely as a sealing medium.
But how had he known information that only a tiny fraction of the Oh family was privy to?
From his Special Admission Student entry into Manryeong Academy to an intelligence network that surpassed even the Ohsung Group — the number of places capable of that could be counted on one hand.
And someone with that kind of backing could not simply be dismissed as a man who couldn't use mana.
Lee Seohyun clearly had far more hidden capital than he was showing. What demands would someone like that set as the price of cooperation?
Neria wondered whether she could even meet his terms at her level — but the answer that would leave her mouth was already decided.
"…Haa. Fine. We'll cooperate. On the condition that your demands stay within what I can grant. And we're drawing up a contract."
A contract.
An Oh family contract was not some document of printed text with mere legal force.
It was written with a quill fashioned from a crow beastfolk's own feather, steeped in mana.
Should either party break the terms, the clauses could exert direct binding force upon the offender.
It was not something to enter into lightly.
And yet Seohyun, hearing that a contract would be drawn up, smiled as if the contract itself were of no concern to him at all.
"Well then, deal's done. How about we drop the chains and the illusion magic first and talk properly? This whole pressure-interview vibe really isn't my style."
Neria sighed inwardly.
…So he noticed from the start. Just how much does he actually know?
She had held the initiative at the beginning — and somewhere along the way, control of the conversation had been completely taken from her.
That he had gained an informational advantage over her was surprising enough on its own. Using that advantage to seize the flow of the dialogue was another matter entirely.
Seohyun rattled the chains with a clink, as if urging her to hurry up and free him.
Really…
Even if things went sideways, he was not someone she wanted as an enemy.
The interrogation room's illusion fell away, revealing the room I had snuck a look at last night.
Neria's workshop — personal information on various people pinned up all over the place.
"Ugh. Finally, I can breathe."
I stretched my arms high overhead, and my whole body shuddered and trembled.
It had only been a short while, but being bound to a hard chair and unable to move had nearly dredged up some unpleasant memories — less stifling than simply bad.
Neria climbed down from the desk and looked up at me with a sulky expression.
She had been completely blank-faced until a moment ago, but she seemed to have recovered her footing already.
"How did you notice the illusion magic cast on the room?"
"Hmm…. That's a secret."
It wasn't as if I had truly seen through her illusion magic.
It was closer to a half-guess. There had been a few clues, though.
First was the faint lavender scent lingering in the room. In a world full of beastfolk with keen noses, perfume was hardly a common commodity.
An artificial fragrance that stabbed at someone's nose was more likely to cause discomfort than anything else — poison, really, for someone in her position who met so many people. In fact, the novel had described her as never wearing perfume during public appearances.
The next clue was the way Neria's illusion magic had been described in the novel.
To sink a target deep into an illusion, she needed a medium suited to the situation.
Neria had substituted perfume laced with her own mana for that medium.
The thick lavender scent that had clung to her since last night was itself a contingency trap, when you thought about it.
Last was the depth of my sleep and Neria's personality.
No matter how deeply I had been sleeping, there was no way I wouldn't have woken while being moved all the way to an interrogation room and bound in chains.
And given her nature, she would never have risked exposing me to other members of the family. Any investigation into me would have been handled strictly through the few people she considered her own limbs.
Well — I had various grounds for the guess, but in the end it came down to instinct.
Not that I could exactly say I'd half-guessed it out loud.
Yun Hasol doesn't even get caught by illusion magic. Is it because mana piles up in my body?
An unfair world.
Here I was, stuck without even a status window or any abilities, while that bastard Yun Hasol got to play protagonist and throw around telekinesis, pyrokinesis, teleportation — superpowers dressed up as magic.
Long live the protagonist. Seriously.
While I was grumbling to myself, Neria muttered beside me, sounding equally displeased.
"Hmph. Men with too many secrets aren't my type."
Yeah, I actually agree with that part.
But you're a bit much yourself.
In the original story, Neria's ideal type was a sincere relationship where both people could bare everything to each other.
And "everything" meant literally everything that made a person who they were — which meant a man had to have the courage to open even his internet search history and the precious files on his computer.
…That was a bit much to ask, honestly.
"So, are you not going to tell me your real name either?"
"Lee Seohyun is my real name."
"Don't lie. You know I've looked through everything — your SNS, your purchase history, every site you've signed up for — and you're still saying that?"
Terrifying….
But it was the truth, so what could I do?
Even if I told her I'd read a novel, sent a message to the author, and fallen into this world — and that my status window was goading me into mating with other beastfolk — I doubted Neria would take any of it at face value.
"Don't believe it if you don't want to. It doesn't matter for writing the contract anyway."
Whether the signature on the contract was an alias or a real name, what ultimately mattered was the beastfolk mana steeped in the quill.
Even if my name was fake, she had no real reason to care from her end.
"It doesn't matter, but…. Fine. Getting worked up over it just makes me look like the idiot."
Yes. Please, lose interest in me.
We were just business partners cooperating to catch the Gold Crow.
Neria clutched her head and sighed, but that was probably an act too. I wasn't falling for it at this point.
"By the way, you dropped the formal speech pretty naturally, huh?"
"…Would you want to keep using honorifics in this situation?"
"Fair point. Well — sorry about just now."
Neria said it with a peculiar little smile.
My position was that I wanted to live as long and thin as possible, picking up only the scraps.
Which was why I hadn't wanted to get involved with the story's main cast….
"So, what demands do you have for me that are worth becoming the Gold Crow's medium?"
"For now…."
Listening to her, I started running calculations in my head, recalling the novel's contents.
Thinking about the future, there was quite a lot I could get her support for — but I'd leave those for the protagonist who would be running around in my place later.
I wanted to avoid any further derailment of the original story, and if I needed something more after the contract was signed, I could always make additional demands then.
And so, after carefully thinking it through, I told her what I needed right away….
The look that crossed Neria's face when she heard my demands was pure disbelief.
…Don't look at me like that.