The Necromancer
Two days ago, everyone saw the news of what happened on Shinyongsan Artisan Street. A criminal known as the “Summoner” reappeared after ten years and launched a terror attack targeting Ttanttani. The monsters he summoned caused severe property damage, but fortunately there were no casualties. Every Gate Keeper fought with their lives on the line to minimize the damage. Among them, the most outstanding performance came from Gate Keeper Lee Jungmin. Let’s hear his story.
Q. I understand this is your first time appearing before the public. Could you give us a greeting?
- Hello. I’m Gate Keeper Lee Jungmin of the GGC Crew. It’s a pleasure to meet you all like this.
Q. You’re rising as the hero of Shinyongsan Street. There are many reports that thanks to you, Gate Keeper Lee Jungmin, there were no casualties. How does that feel?
- The title of “hero” is pretty embarrassing. Anyone who had been in that position would have done the same. I was just lucky. The real heroes are the Gate Keepers who stopped the monsters right there and the citizens who evacuated calmly. I just added a little spoonful of help.
Q. I heard you’re an F-class Gate Keeper. When did you become one?
- It’s been about half a year since I awakened as a Gate Keeper. I’ve been focusing only on training, so I never had time to renew my license. I plan to visit the Association soon to update it. Looking at my stats, I’m roughly at C-class level now.
Q. C-class in half a year—that’s an astonishing growth rate. Even so, there’s a huge gap between that and an A-class monster like an Orc Chief. How did you face it?
- All I can say is that I got lucky. All I did was pour mana into the Ttanttani, and it reacted with the mana and grew to the size you saw in the footage. Swinging it quickly was the entirety of what I did. I don’t even know why the mana and Ttanttani reacted that way. That part will need more research. If the opportunity arises, I’d like to collaborate with the Shinyongsan Crew.
Q. You poured mana into it? As far as I know, no Gate Keeper can move mana directly. Have you awakened a special ability?
- I possess an ability called “magic.” I am a mage.
Q. Magic? The Gate Keeper registration information provided by the Association lists your awakened ability as “Fireball Generation.”
- At the time, I could only generate fireballs. I thought that was the end of it. But as my proficiency rose, the things I could do increased. Now I can handle not only fire but ice as well, and I can move mana directly. I can also use various other useful spells—things like Silence or making someone slip.
Q. Magic is an ability Gate Keepers around the world have long envied. How does it feel to possess such a power?
- Honestly, it still doesn’t feel real. There’s no precedent, so I have no sense of what I can do with my ability or what I should do. Right now I’m just training hard to get used to it. Someday I hope I can use my ability to help people and contribute to society.
Q. Finally, if there’s anything you’d like to say, please go ahead.
- Countless people besides me worked to stop this terror attack, so it feels shameful that only I’m in the spotlight. Please remember and support not only the Gate Keepers but also the firefighters, police officers, paramedics—everyone around us who worked to stop and clean up after this attack.
Reporter Kang Guin [email protected]
Copyright © Hankook Ilbo. Unauthorized reproduction and redistribution prohibited.
I was in a news article!
Even seeing it with my own eyes, it was hard to believe. It was incredibly, incredibly surreal.
“Found any interesting comments?” the Chief sitting next to me asked.
“No… wait?”
The comment section looked completely different from a few minutes ago. Earlier it had been nothing but praise—“Well done,” “Magic? That’s insane!,” “Handsome guy”—but now every single comment was tearing into me.
There was only one reason for the hate: the photo attached to a comment. It was a secretly taken shot of me on Artisan Street, with Keira standing arm-in-arm beside me. Her face was blurred so you couldn’t identify her, but just from her figure and aura you could tell she was extraordinary. The one-line caption the poster left made a huge difference too.
And under that, the replies poured in one after another.
Praise poured in from men and women alike. My lips curled up without me realizing it. There were plenty of digs at me too, but the compliments for Keira felt even better.
Still… was this okay?
“Hmm… I’ll contact them and have the photo taken down for now. Even with her face covered, being next to you, Jungmin, makes her identifiable. As for a lawsuit if you want one… that won’t work.”
“Yeah…”
Legal issues aside, Keira wasn’t Korean. She wasn’t a foreigner either. She couldn’t receive any kind of legal protection.
“It’s fine. Looking at it the other way, there’s no personal info to leak. Mine’s already out there and nothing can be done about it.”
Gate Keepers were public figures of a sort, so lawsuits over this kind of thing got thrown out. Extreme cases were different, but this level was just cute.
Knock knock.
“May we come in?”
A voice came from outside. The Chief straightened his clothes and looked at me. I fixed my posture as well and nodded.
“Yes, come in.”
We were in a conference room at Gate Keeper Association headquarters. The Association had said they wanted to meet me, so I came. On the surface they would probably say things similar to the interview content—just a bit more detailed. Even so, I had rushed through a written interview yesterday so the article would drop this morning because I figured I needed at least one card that could keep the Association in check. With the overly generous title of “hero” already stuck on me, getting my face known to the public would help my safety, even if only a little. Depending on how the Association responded it might all be useless, but you never knew.
“Hello. I’m Lee Jayoung, General Manager.”
“I’m Park Taeyoung, Head of the Anti-Villain Division.”
Two men entered the conference room. Lee Jayoung looked to be in his forties, Park Taeyoung in his thirties.
“Did your talk with the Association President go well?”
“Yes, it went fine.”
The first thing I had done upon arriving at the Association was meet President Kim Kang. He thanked me for stopping the Summoner and asked me to put a mage’s power to good use going forward. To the Chief he asked about the progress of the dementia treatment drug and offered well-wishes that it would go well. The President had the vibe of a friendly neighborhood uncle—but you never knew. Everything might have been my misreading. In any case, the real conversation would happen here. General Manager and Division Head—just looking at the titles, this was going to be intense.
“That’s a relief. As the President already said, allow me to thank you once more. If it hadn’t been for you, Jungmin, many people would have died.”
The General Manager bowed at the waist as he spoke, and the Division Head standing beside him bowed with him. The attitude was extremely formal. It was also extremely burdensome.
“…That’s too much praise. That’s enough—please stop.”
“Understood. We can’t make our hero feel awkward.”
My face flushed red on its own. Hero? I really couldn’t get used to that.
“Ahem. Could we move on quickly?”
“Of course. First, the Association will award a small medal. It lets you receive modest discounts at Association-affiliated businesses, and a small pension comes with it as well.”
“A medal?”
“Yes. So you’ll need to come to the Association one more time later… We originally planned to handle everything at once, but we didn’t expect you to come so soon.”
I wasn’t sure this was medal-worthy, but if they were giving it, there was no reason to refuse.
“Understood. The schedule will be set later, I assume?”
“Yes. Once our side has the award ceremony prepared, we’ll contact you separately. Second is regarding your ability, Jungmin. You revealed yourself as a mage this time—you know you need to renew your license, correct?”
“I know. I was planning to do it today before I leave.”
If I hadn’t known, I might have let it slide, but once I had declared myself a mage, the license had to be renewed. The “I was too busy to renew” excuse only worked once. Every Gate Keeper had to renew their license on a set cycle, and failure to do so meant a fine.
“Excellent. Was the ice pillar that stopped the Orc Chief a spell you cast, Jungmin? At that level, it looks like you’d be renewed at nearly B-class. You’re aware a B-class license doesn’t come out immediately, correct?”
They knew about the ice pillar? It hadn’t shown up in the footage—was there another video I didn’t know about? Or had they heard it from the Gate Keepers who were there at the time? Whatever the channel, it was clear the Association was taking a serious interest in me. And they were definitely suspicious about Keira’s existence as well.
“I know. But I’m not sure a B-class license will come out. I was in a trance at the time, so it came out above my usual level.”
“To display concentration beyond your usual level in a situation like that—impressive.”
…Why were they elevating me like this? At this point it went past feeling good and into suspicion. I had already been looking at them with suspicious eyes from the start.
“I had to concentrate if I wanted to live. Honestly, I got lucky.”
“We heard about the Ttanttani and the mana. It’s truly fortunate. If the Ttanttani and mana hadn’t reacted, a real catastrophe would have occurred. Because of that incident the Shinyongsan Crew inquired with the Association—GGC must have been contacted as well?”
The Chief answered this one himself.
“Yes, we received it too. We’ll discuss that matter with the Shinyongsan Crew.”
“Understood. We’ll leave that to them. Now we’ll get to the main point. Taeyoung will explain that part.”
Park Taeyoung, the man who had introduced himself as Head of the Anti-Villain Division.
“Thank you once again for doing our job for us.”
He began with a light nod.
“I assume you know a fair amount about the Summoner.”
“Yes, roughly.”
“Then do you also know how the Summoner treats people who interfere with him?”
“I don’t know that far. Does he come looking for them again?”
Revenge. An extremely common pattern. The previous terrorist had done the same, and the Summoner hadn’t escaped that cliché either.
“Yes, exactly. He has never once forgiven anyone who interfered with him. Even if it takes time, he always kills them. For the past ten years, the Summoner wasn’t inactive—he was out hunting down his revenge.”
“That’s…”
It was a shocking fact. That the Summoner had spent ten years chasing people, and that the Association had failed to deal with it.
“That’s why we intend to protect you, Jungmin, with everything we have. No—this time we will definitely catch the Summoner.”
“So today’s main point is asking me for help.”
It wasn’t bad news for me. Now that I was already a target, it was a problem I had to clear out no matter what. Even without the Association’s side of things, we had already been discussing various countermeasures.
“Correct. More precisely, we plan to ask you to become bait. What do you say?”
“Bait?”