The Necromancer
“No. I was just going to rest a bit.”
“That’s a shame. Ugh—I was hoping we could work out together, haah, and get to know each other better.”
Every time Park Sena brought her open arms together, her massive breasts bounced heavily. Those were breasts that defied Korean standards. They looked even bigger than Elena’s. A little overwhelming, honestly—but that only made it harder to look away.
How does a person even end up like that?
“Ahem. There’ll be time for that eventually. We’ve got plenty of it.”
“True. It’s been a while since I’ve had free time like this. Hup, haah… Just working out is fine too.”
I could see a bead of sweat slip straight into her exposed navel. Her copper-toned skin radiated raw, healthy vitality. Attractive in a completely different way from Woo Suyeon.
“You’ve been busy until now, I take it. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of you before…”
“I’m not that famous. Not even as famous as your girlfriend, Jungmin.”
At those words, my eyes—which had been roaming over various parts of Park Sena’s body—snapped up to her face. She was smiling meaningfully.
“When is your girlfriend going to visit sometime?”
“The bait operation is too dangerous for that.”
“I see. That must make things hard for you, Jungmin. Hoo…”
My gaze drifted back to Park Sena’s chest and thighs. Inevitable male instinct. I was painfully aware of why she was working out in the middle of a conversation. I couldn’t focus on the talk at all.
“It’s nothing. You have to know how to endure for the sake of something bigger. Well then, I’ll be going.”
“Alright. Get some rest.”
Park Sena winked at me. Blatant right to the end. There was no way not to notice.
Thud.
“Keira, you there?”
“I’m here.”
A voice came from empty air. Expanding my senses in that direction, I felt Keira and Elena sitting on the bed and a chair.
“I’m not sure about Suyeon, but Park Sena is confirmed. That woman is dead set on seducing me.”
“Figures.”
“Park Sena is working out in the training room right now, practically naked. Nowhere to put my eyes.”
“Then she might’ve followed you to this room.”
“She really did. She’s right outside the door.”
What?
I hadn’t sensed her at all. I considered using magic, but it felt a little risky. Elena had said Park Sena’s senses were sharp. That was why the two of them hadn’t approached her closely.
“Come a little closer. I’ll shrink the range of the Silence magic.”
Keira must have already been using magic. She turned on the TV for cover. Now the TV sound would leak out past the door.
“That woman is a real spy.”
“Just like the captain said.”
Captain Nari had said the real target of this operation wasn’t the Summoner—it was me. Or maybe Keira. Given how she’d floated the topic of Keira earlier, it was safest to assume both.
“The first mage is pretty charming, after all. By the way, that white-haired girl is really nothing?”
“Suyeon’s just pure white. She doesn’t know a thing.”
“It’s been weird from earlier—what is Suyeon, exactly?”
Uh-oh…?
Had I messed something up? Why was cold sweat suddenly running down my spine?
“Ah, well, we decided to do the whole oppa-and-little-sister thing.”
“…From where I’m standing, that white-haired girl seems more dangerous.”
“I think so too. She’s exactly Jungmin’s type.”
Keira and Elena were still under invisibility magic. I couldn’t see their eyes, but I could feel them glaring at me.
“Hey, what about me? Suyeon didn’t do anything.”
“It’s obvious without looking. You fell for that ‘Jungmin oppa’ line hook, line, and sinker.”
“Exactly. Just looking at the way you usually look at Soyeon is enough.”
Why is Soyeon suddenly coming up here?
Keira was one thing, but Elena chiming in from the side was just as bad. And because I couldn’t see either of their faces, it was even scarier.
Are they serious? Or joking?
“I think she needs a little disciplining. Elena, you don’t mind if I go first, right?”
“Of course, Keira. Please punish him so he never does something like that again.”
“What did I even do—mmph.”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. Someone had covered my mouth. Judging by the body, it was Keira.
“Slurp, haah.”
The invisibility dropped, and Keira appeared—blue hair, cheeks flushed. Elena was nowhere in sight. Park Sena was waiting outside… well, Elena would handle it. She was S-rank too.
“Jungmin, thinking about something else again?”
“Huh? No.”
“If I do this, will you focus on me? Jungmin oppa?”
Twitch.
“Works every time, huh? Oppa? How about today we—kyaah!”
I didn’t care anymore. I was just going to follow my heart. I pushed Keira down onto the bed and unleashed every bit of lust I’d been holding back all morning.
“Hah—Jungmin oppa! There, haugh…!”
[Hello! Today we’ve come to meet the world’s first mage! Lately he’s even more famous under the name “Hero”! Shall we find out how our hero is living these days? Let’s go!]
With the reporter’s high-energy delivery, the interior of the house was revealed. Then Lee Jungmin appeared and greeted the camera.
[Hello. I’m Keeper Lee Jungmin.]
Throb. Throb.
The right shoulder where his arm had been torn off began to ache. All because of that calm face. That face dragged up the humiliating memories of that day.
The Summoner hurled the glass he was holding straight at the TV.
Crash.
The glass shattered, shards flying in every direction. But that wasn’t nearly enough to erase the rage.
“Damn it…”
The Summoner wanted nothing more than to storm into that house right now and twist that peaceful expression into despair. But he couldn’t go—not when he knew full well it was a trap. Broadcasting the house itself was an open invitation. Filming the surrounding scenery with a drone was basically telling him to use that to find the location. Walking in anyway would make him a complete idiot.
“…But I will, no matter what…”
The Summoner had no intention of sitting still forever. If he had, he never would have scattered those crude videos everywhere.
“More than that—why isn’t that bitch showing up? She pissed me off even more than that bastard…”
Something was off. Among the videos the Summoner had spread, there had been footage of the blue-haired bitch using magic—yet none of it had made it onto the broadcast.
“Whatever. Fine… She’ll show up eventually. Eventually…”
He was good at waiting. Waiting was what he had done for the past ten years.
Throb. Throb.
“Goddamn it! Bring more booze! Booze!”
But this wait was going to be the hardest of his life. The wound he’d taken was that deep.
Somewhere in Sageum-ri, Cheorwon County.
On the TV screen, the scene of Lee Jungmin receiving Mjolnir played out.
“Oh-ho?”
The Necromancer thought it would be perfect for stealing Adamantium. Better to take it from an individual than from an organization. Sometimes an individual was actually harder to rob—but not this time. That individual was clearly a weaker demon than the Necromancer himself.
“Oh-ho?”
Watching the house scenery the drone was filming, the Necromancer let out another sound of admiration. With that much information, it was practically an open invitation to come find them. No need to even bother asking the mana.
“…A trap?”
The Necromancer realized immediately that it was a trap. He also realized it wasn’t a trap aimed at him. To stop him, that level of preparation wouldn’t be enough.
“Then I’ll just enjoy the meal.”
If he obtained that much Adamantium, there would be no one left in this world who could stop him. There was no reason to hesitate.
A week had passed since we moved into the new house. A lot had happened in that week, and I’d been genuinely busy. For one thing, I’d appeared on broadcasts twice. Once for the bait interview at this house, and once at a studio for a talk show.
A Keeper on a talk show? It might sound odd, but popular Keepers were basically celebrities, so it wasn’t strange. That just meant my popularity was that high. First mage, hero who stopped the Shinyongsan disaster, the first named villain’s rival in ten years—there were plenty of reasons to be popular.
But the biggest factor of all was the award ceremony video Shinyongsan had released. Just the fact that they were handing over a Ttanttani hammer estimated at ten billion won was guaranteed to make worldwide headlines, and the video quality more than matched the hype. It included the ruined Shinyongsan streets after the Summoner’s attack, parts of the fighting, the giant hammer, the orc chief, and the award ceremony itself. There must have been CCTV everywhere—everyone who had been there was in the video except Keira.
Watching it, I looked like some world-saving hero. The raw expressions of the Shinyongsan Crew members who had stood with me that day played a big part. They genuinely seemed to revere me. Or rather—staring at me like that while their own crew captain was right there… what were they thinking?
The video went up on YouTube. Within a week the views had broken a hundred million, and the comments hit around a hundred thousand in every language. I went to sleep and woke up a global celebrity. At the very least, anyone who knew about Ttanttani now knew my name. And more than half the people on Earth knew about Ttanttani. It was the hardest, lightest, and most expensive metal in the world, after all.
Love calls from every kind of broadcast were only natural. I’d carefully picked just one of them, and several more appearances were already scheduled. Comments were still pouring in in real time.
What finally pulled me out of the flood of comments was the freshest voice I’d heard lately.
“Oppa, what are you doing?”
“Watching the video.”
“Is it that one?”
“Yeah. They made it really well. Classic Shinyongsan Crew.”
“It’s nothing special. It only turned out that way because you did something that amazing, Oppa.”
How did she even manage to make every word sound so pretty? Was that what it looked like to grow up loved?
“I just swung Mjolnir once and that was it. You saw it too. How strong it is.”
“It was definitely pretty crude, yeah.”
During a previous experiment, I’d set the hammer down a little late. Just a tiny bit late, and the hammer had absorbed energy like mad, going past pink into blood-red. I’d dropped it the moment I saw it trying to grow like last time, but just the energy spreading outward had half-destroyed the measuring equipment. So the gear we had now was what we’d brought back from Shinyongsan. It had only arrived last night, and Suyeon had been calibrating it until this morning. I’d been waiting for her to finish.
“Everything’s set up now, so just stand right here.”
“Is there even a point to keeping this up?”
For the record, Suyeon still hadn’t discovered sexual desire. Maybe that was only natural. Sexual desire was something only those who possessed it could detect. There was no way a machine could notice something even Gate monsters couldn’t sense.
“Not yet. Experiments and measurements usually run in the hundreds. We’ve only done it about four times, so it’s way too early to get disappointed. But just in case Oppa finds this boring, I prepared this.”
Suyeon handed me a silver rod. It was far lighter than it looked, which surprised me. I knew what it was immediately.
“This is…”
“That’s right. Ttanttani. I asked the crew to spare some leftover pieces. The hammer’s a bit too aggressive, after all. We need to experiment with other forms too.”
The hammer was aggressive, huh. I was a little curious myself—how would it react to other Ttanttani?
…Though at some point I’d gotten used to calling it Ttanttani too. I was even thinking in Ttanttani now. It was all over the place, especially in the YouTube videos, so it had stuck to my tongue.
No. Adamantium is better!