The Exchange Day
“Everyone, keep up!”
“You’ve all worked hard!”
“Next Bishop-nim! Fight on!”
“She’s the Saintess! She’s literally the Saintess!”
“Oh! Our Saintess!”
Seeing the Seong-un cultists bowing repeatedly before her, Lee Dam waved back with a casual grin.
She’d been surprised by the sheer number of them, and some looked more like ordinary followers than actual mages.
This had to be via space magic from somewhere outside, yet here they were in the flesh.
‘Whatever, doesn’t matter.’
She really wasn’t all that interested anyway.
“Keep serving us faithfully from now on. Keep praying hard, one small prayer at a time.”
That way, instead of that mom who looked like she was just rolling Astraziel around, she’d finally turn into a goddamn cool robot.
“Yes! Understood!”
“Keep up!”
“Saintess is the best!”
Finally, Bishop Camael approached, bowed low, and offered his hand.
In it was the Black Sun Rosary, the sacred relic symbolizing the dark sun.
“It’s an extremely precious item. I hope the Saintess will accept it.”
‘Looks like I’m already the Saintess now.’
They’d asked her to be Bishop earlier, and now she’d been naturally promoted to Saintess without a single protest.
Lee Dam hadn’t refused. The mana radiating from the Rosary itself was striking, and having it nearby made her Dark God Authority feel even more potent.
“Yeah, let’s do this.”
“Yes! Understood!”
Her bold, almost company-president attitude made the Seong-un people bow even lower.
Lee Dam rode the magic circle back to the 111th floor with Noman.
“Huff, Young Dam is incredibly—”
“Young Dam? I’m your friend!”
“…”
“Even when I go to the bathroom and come out, the person changes, but damn, I’m your friend?”
“P-Please Saintess!”
“Yeah, start calling me properly. You don’t want to get slapped, right?”
She’d been annoyed before by Noman acting all superior like he was a senior in the Seong-un cult.
Lee Dam figured he’d caught the hint and nodded in satisfaction.
Noman looked a bit displeased, but since he had nothing to say, he bowed slightly.
“Um, Saintess. Then what do you plan to do from now on? Are you going to use the Authority to create fire?”
“I was thinking about it.”
A tattoo stretched from her right arm across her cheek, revealing itself once more.
The black flames formed at her fingertips were under her control, yet they felt utterly foreign.
Unlike regular magic, this was borrowing power, so…
It was clearly capable of producing effects that her own strength couldn’t touch.
The problem was that the Authority left too many obvious traces.
“This is black fire. They’ll spot the fake right away. If they figure out I’m using the Authority, we’re screwed.”
“…Y-Yes.”
“But you’re suggesting this to me? What the hell are you thinking, you bald bastard?”
“Huh?”
Lee Dam frowned at Noman’s blank stare.
“Eh? Huh? You want me to walk into a magic circle and tell them I’m bragging about you?”
“N-No!”
Noman immediately slammed his head against the floor.
With so few hairs left on his head, the tension was palpable.
Lee Dam looked down at him and sighed.
“Just matching the temperature should be fine. It needs to look natural. Hmm… wait, let me think.”
Lee Dam sat on Noman’s back, crossed her legs, and watched him tremble as if he was about to punch her any second.
‘Fucking bitch!’
Noman gritted his teeth and swore he’d kill her somehow, but after ten years trapped in the “apprentice” title without so much as a glance from a woman, the feeling of a woman’s ass on his back was strangely…
‘Huff.’
It actually gave him something to hold onto.
* * *
“Got nothing to say.”
Sweating profusely in front of the massive blast furnace, Chiron, the Tower Master of the Fire Magic Tower.
Behind him stood a line of other Fire Magic Tower mages.
He was here because Lee Dam had called him.
Beldora had come along too, but she was currently sulking in his lab.
Chiron approached Lee Dam with a disheveled head of hair.
“What the hell, Dam. I was fighting with everything I had and this ruins the vibe.”
“Even if the Tower Master is naked over there, these idiots can’t make it. At best they’ll make your dick hot.”
“…”
Chiron looked indignant, but Lee Dam didn’t wait and dragged them all inside the blast furnace.
The place to create the flames.
“Ah, what the? Are we really being imprisoned here?”
“Hah, why do they make projects like this.”
“…”
“We tried, you know. We stayed up all night every single day.”
The Fire Magic Tower mages groaned behind them.
They knew they’d failed, but this punishment was way too harsh.
If they could have, they’d have torched her with the Authority right then, but Lee Dam held them back and gestured.
Inside, piles of charcoal had been stacked higher than a person’s height.
Chiron’s face darkened even further as he stared at the towering charcoal.
To the Fire Magic Tower mages, Lee Dam flicked her chin.
“Go ahead and start.”
“Young Dam, sorry, but—”
“Do it. I know you failed. But you can’t just play with this.”
“…”
“Just use it. We have to fire up the furnace somehow, right?”
“…That makes sense.”
Chiron nodded.
It was a failure, sure, but firing up the flames, even if just a little, was the right thing to do.
About thirty minutes passed.
The Fire Magic Tower mages came staggering out one by one, drenched in sweat and utterly exhausted.
Behind them, the furnace glowed, and thick smoke began billowing out through the long vents.
Yet no one was happy.
“Tsk, the temperature…”
“Ugh.”
“What are we supposed to do with this?”
The Iron Magic Tower mages outside sighed in unison.
The installed thermometer showed that even after everything, it never exceeded 1,100°C.
But at that exact moment.
“Ooh?!”
“What the?!”
The thermometer suddenly spiked.
The needle shook wildly and rocketed straight to 1,600°C.
Even the Tower Masters were left stunned, mouths agape, unable to understand what was happening.
Lee Dam brushed off her hands and stepped outside.
“Ah, fuck. My robe got burned.”
She clicked her tongue at the scorched hem, checked the thermometer, and grinned.
“Eh, bro.”
“Big sister, I bet.”
Beldora teased from the side, but Lee Dam ignored her. The mixed look of confusion and disbelief on everyone’s faces spoke volumes.
Lee Dam shrugged.
“Seems like the Fire Magic Tower idiots didn’t account for the environment. We just used plain iron from our Iron Magic Tower. We designed it to conduct heat perfectly.”
“…”
Chiron stared at Lee Dam with a blank expression.
Of course.
‘I calculated everything.’
Chiron had calculated it all: the environment, internal heat, the charcoal below, the high-temperature wind magic, and even the temperature changes as the iron would melt.
So how the hell had this happened?
Doubts piled on doubts.
But then—
“Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!”
Beldora raised both hands and cheered, soon joined by the other mages who shouted and jumped for joy.
“Long live! The Fire Magic Tower is the best!”
“We believed in you!”
“Why are you apologizing after you pulled it off, you idiots!”
“You dramatic fools wanted a perfect announcement!”
But when the Iron and Fire Magic Tower mages hugged each other in celebration, Chiron finally fell silent.
It was unsettling.
Unsettling, but he decided to let it go.
After all, they’d succeeded.
Even if the method was weird, success was success, and magic didn’t always follow the textbook formula anyway.
“Hey, good work.”
The one who’d been the loudest earlier, Lee Dam, grinned and offered her hand.
Chiron stared blankly for a second, then shook her hand with a nod.
“Yeah.”
He was relieved.
The support they’d received from the Iron Magic Tower would have been devastating—enough to make the Fire Magic Tower forget about a new project for months.
If that had happened, they’d have been excluded from the Exchange Day in three months.
But with today’s success, Chiron had decided they were in a much stronger position.
‘Hmm, yeah.’
Lee Dam forced a smile in her mind.
So how exactly should she use the Authority naturally?
Then it clicked.
‘Why was I even worrying about this?’
After all, the Fire Magic Tower mages would be the ones casting the magic. Once the fire was lit, there was no need to watch it with her own eyes.
She just had to keep shoving charcoal and mana into the input slots.
If they caught on?
What was the big deal?
The one who’d lit the fire was the Fire Magic Tower anyway.
“Wahahaha! Thanks, Chiron!”
“…Hmm, yeah.”
Watching Lee Dam clap Chiron’s shoulder with a bright smile, Chiron nodded awkwardly.
* * *
Pure iron production went smoothly now that everything was prepared.
Once they’d solved the hardest part, switching in more mages fixed the rest in no time.
Even though the mages ended up crying and screaming in despair.
But if the result was good, didn’t that mean everything worked out in the end?
‘Even King Sejong replaced his servants to become a great king.’
The only difference here was that there were no citizens to rule over.
Some might question what use replacing mages even served, but Lee Dam probably wouldn’t answer.
As refined iron continued to pour out, the Iron Magic Tower’s atmosphere was unusually bright lately.
Tower Master Beldora summoned Lee Dam to her private office during this time.
Of course, Lee Dam had been glued to the massive furnace all day, so she entered Beldora’s room with soot smeared across her face.
“Ah, what is it?!”
Irritated because she was already swamped, Lee Dam asked sharply.
Beldora looked up from her documents, chuckled at the sight of her, and approached.
“Dam, the Exchange Day is only two months away. We should start preparing.”
“The Exchange Day?”
It sounded like nonsense, but Beldora explained briefly.
“Three nations will observe a three-month ceasefire. During that time, we send our envoys to the Magic Towers to receive their technology.”
“Mm?”
“Each country partners with one Tower. So out of the seven Towers, we need to be among three—”
“Partnering means they’ll provide support?”
Lee Dam’s soot-covered head spun with brilliant clarity. Her crazed blue eyes sparkled again.
Beldora smiled in approval and snapped her fingers.
“That’s right! We’re not just sitting here with endless resources, are we? The moment we partner, we’ll get support that dwarfs anything we have now—”
“Then our Knight Armor production will speed up even faster!”
“…Knight Armor, Dam.”
Beldora corrected her, but Lee Dam’s ears had long since stopped hearing.
From that moment on, her razor-sharp gaze kept turning toward one question: how could they extract the very marrow from those bastards?