Chapter 5
Chapter 5
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 5
Chapter Title: Mage
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Around midnight.
Ian quickly scrolled through the community while working his part-time shift.
‘Most of it’s just shitposting.’
He’d noticed right away that the community had a vibe similar to the gallery, but for some reason, the posts felt oddly familiar. Less like a gathering of actual mages and more like a bunch of cosplayers shitposting.
The notice explained why the community had ended up like this—they’d copied the style of Korea’s most infamous one. And yeah, that one was pretty notorious.
No point in overcomplicating things with a brand-new community when mimicking the one with the biggest user base was the most efficient move. No wasted resources that way.
‘Still kinda disappointing, though.’
Ian had imagined the mage community as a refined assembly of intellectuals—scholars debating spells and proposing better paths forward, like some arcane academy. That illusion had shattered on sight.
[Mage boob-growing spell complete lol]
[Ear Bug]
(Image of a frog crossing its arms)
Come here and sit down, you little mage bitch.
How long you gonna chase these clickbait titles? Get out there, hunt some anomalies, deal with the monsters washing in.
Your daddy here’s real worried about you...
[Comments]
-StrawberryYogurtSmoothie: This dude’s fucking insane. No such spell exists.
ㄴEar Bug: Gum wad showed up? lol
ㄴStrawberryYogurtSmoothie: Shut the fuck up. Where you live?
ㄴEar Bug: (Cockroach throwing up a double peace sign)
ㄴStrawberryYogurtSmoothie: What a fucking asshole.
“This a mage community or a mage bitch fest?”
Hm. Both, apparently.
Ian sighed inwardly and checked a few more posts. Fortunately, there were some actually useful ones mixed in.
[Became a mage a week ago. But weird shit keeps happening. Like, I think I’m seeing ghosts now.]
[Rose]
(Photo of a grimoire covered in leaves)
Picked up a grimoire by chance a while back, followed the instructions, and became a mage.
But ever since, I keep getting dragged into weird stuff. Ghosts? Monsters? That kinda thing. I can see them.
Is this normal?
[Comments]
-ㅇㅇ Normal. The more you handle anomalies, the more they tangle with you.
ㄴRose: Anomalies?
ㄴThat ghost and monster shit you mentioned. All lumped under anomalies or yokai. The magic you’re using is a type of anomaly too.
ㄴRose: Oh, so basically, once you’re a mage, you’re bound to run into that stuff a lot?
ㄴ(Thumbs-up frog icon)
ㄴRose: Thanks for the info.
ㄴSurvive out there.
Tangle more with anomalies, huh...
‘Guess I’ll be running into them soon enough.’
Ian set his phone aside and stepped out for a smoke during a lull with no customers.
‘Telling someone to survive doesn’t sound too friendly.’
A drizzle was falling outside. On an already frigid winter night, the mist hung thick over the streets. No one around made it feel a bit eerie—like something could lunge out any second and it wouldn’t be weird.
“......”
Ian lit his cigarette with the lighter and inhaled deeply. He stared at the rain-slicked street, zipping his coat all the way up.
Thankfully, despite the creepy vibe, nothing showed up by the time he finished his smoke.
Ian stubbed it out, dipped it in water, and tossed it in the trash.
Ding.
He pushed open the convenience store door and headed back in. Sitting on the stool behind the counter, out of CCTV view, he pulled out the grimoire and read.
Alchemy had worked out, but his magical knowledge was still sorely lacking compared to other mages. He had to carve out time to keep studying.
Plus, this grimoire’s main focus wasn’t alchemy. Re-creation—that was its true power, right there in the title.
[If two objects have identical components but different forms, it should be possible to re-create one to match the other perfectly. This is called the authority of re-creation.]
[A power usable and comprehensible only by the grimoire’s bearer. The ability to transform a perceived ‘material’ into a different form, despite sharing the same substance.]
Put simply, a higher-level magic than alchemy.
Take iron, for example—with re-creation, you could rearrange its form however you wanted while leaving the base materials intact.
The only cost was ether. Large-scale re-creations needed prep work, but reshaping something small just burned ether.
And it worked on organic or inorganic materials alike.
If Ian used ‘human’ as material and triggered re-creation, that human’s components would stay human... but the form? Totally different. Turning someone into a movie-monster would be a breeze for him.
‘Not like I’d ever use it on a person, though.’
Still, no denying it was a hell of a power.
Re-creation basically ran on the caster’s imagination, but crafting something specific meant following the grimoire’s instructions.
Like this.
[Finger of God]
[Everything written with this finger becomes reality.]
[Materials: One prisoner’s wrist, one key that holds a god, a small piece of flesh from the Great One]
[Combine and mix all materials into a single mass. Draw a magic circle atop it, then trigger re-creation.]
Insane effect, but the materials were no joke either. A prisoner’s wrist was whatever, but a god-holding key and Great One flesh? Sounded like a nightmare to source.
The key was documented in the alchemy section. Tricky materials, but doable. The flesh, though? No clue. Didn’t even know what a Great One was.
‘World’s full of living anomalies. If even an Outer God’s book mentions the Great One, it’s way beyond me right now.’
Hell, maybe forever.
Great One screamed Cthulhu to him, and catching that? You’d need to ram it with a steam locomotive.
Ian was flipping the page with that thought when—ding—the store door swung open. He snapped the grimoire shut and stood.
“Welcome.”
He tossed out the rote greeting and turned to the customer. His eyes hardened instantly.
The customer was... big. Unnaturally big.
It looked like a gaunt woman in a pure white dress.
But her head brushed the ceiling, her neck bent sideways at an impossible length. Arms dragged on the floor, legs twisted grotesquely, trembling.
Her thigh was riddled with bullet holes—like she’d been shotgunned.
Blood dripped from her torn lips, teeth caked in gore and bone flecks, stained red.
Then.
It turned its head toward Ian. The empty sockets felt like they locked eyes with him.
Ian knew instinctively.
‘This is a yokai.’
[Aaack!]
The thought hit, and it screeched. Then whipped its long arm like a lash.
Ian didn’t hesitate—grabbed the grimoire, flipped it open.
Flutter!!
The pages turned on their own, landing on the most useful spell for this mess.
[If you encounter an anomaly, don’t panic. To a mage, it’s just prime material.]
[Alive or dead, it’s nothing but livestock to you.]
[Re-create it into something beneficial.]
The pristine grimoire scattered light. The anomaly’s lunging arm slammed into the aura and bounced back. Shattered bone and flesh bulged from its skin as Ian vaulted the counter, reaching for the arm.
“Be reborn.”
Crunch!!
The words left his mouth, and the arm imploded inward.
[Aaaack!!]
Every component crushed, tore, warped. Centered on the elbow, the reforming arm compressed like a sphere forming.
Crunch! Splorch!!
Blood sprayed everywhere amid the gruesome sounds. Screaming in agony—or whatever passed for it—the anomaly hacked off the changing arm with its other one.
Thud. The arm hit the floor as a perfect orb, gleaming bloody red. Ian stared at it a beat, then snapped his gaze up, reaching for the anomaly’s body.
[Aack!]
But he missed. It spun and bolted from the store.
Smashed straight through the unopening door and vanished into the rainy street.
“......What the hell.”
The tension from that scrap evaporated. He scratched his head at the trashed store, picked up the orb from the floor.
“......Got some alchemy material at least?”
No idea why this Eight-Foot Ghost-lookalike showed up, why it ran, or where those thigh bullet holes came from... but he’d scored anomaly-derived material.
“Hm.”
Ian pocketed the orb, muttering the most fitting line for the situation.
“Lucky me.”