Root

The Master of the Ruby Magic Tower had sharp, cutting eyes and wore either a blank expression or a faint scowl nearly all the time, which made her look permanently angry at something. And the longer one looked at Hong Yeon-hwa, the more she resembled that Tower Master.

For that reason, when Hong Yeon-hwa planted herself at the front of the classroom radiating a combative aura, the onlookers couldn't help leaping to the conclusion that she had come looking for a fight with someone.

"Hey, hey—isn't she here to challenge someone to a duel?"

"Really? With who?"

"Song Cheon-hye, obviously."

"Whoa, is it finally happening?"

"A big match, for real?"

And nine times out of ten, that someone would be Song Cheon-hye, the rival most often named as Hong Yeon-hwa's match.

As if to answer their speculation, Song Cheon-hye rose without a word from her seat and began walking slowly toward the door. As the distance between the two of them shrank, the tension in the room climbed to its peak.

"A duel...?"

"Is she going to challenge her...?"

But contrary to every expectation, the two simply exchanged a light nod of acknowledgment and passed each other by.

Then who on earth had she come to see? Curious stares converged on her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from every side.

Perhaps the flood of attention was starting to grate on her, because Hong Yeon-hwa's eyes flashed dangerously as she spat out a single line.

"Enjoying the show?"

…….

The menace rolling off her made it feel as though she would burn out the eyeballs of anyone who kept staring. In an instant the students' gazes scattered to the four winds, and everyone hurried their steps along.

Hong Yeon-hwa kept flashing glares at every corner of the room until the attention on her thinned out, then quietly folded her arms and leaned back against the wall. Even this was a perfect mirror of the Ruby Magic Tower Master.

"She really is just like her."

"……?"

Whether my muttering had reached her or not, Seo Ye-in—who had been dead asleep until that very moment—lifted her head in a slow, drowsy motion. She tilted her head at me, followed my gaze out of the classroom to find Hong Yeon-hwa, then tilted her head at me again.

Clack.

And when she reached into her inventory to draw her magic pistol, I hurriedly stopped her.

"No. She's not here to fight. Put the gun away."

"Then a duel?"

"Not a duel either."

It was true that most of the visitors who had come looking for me lately carried less-than-honorable intentions. Gwak Ji-cheol and Jeong Su-ji had been scheming to drag me half by force into the Emerald clubroom, while the Emerald and Great Nature clubs had shown up with negotiation—and a duel challenge—on the agenda. Hong Yeon-hwa, on the other hand, had almost certainly come with genuinely good intentions. She had zero thought of fighting. Not even a sliver.

So I had Seo Ye-in tuck the pistol back away and sent her on ahead, then walked over to Hong Yeon-hwa and asked.

"Oh. What."

"Uh, hi."

The fiery aura died out in an instant, replaced by something almost docile. Her voice, too, had shrunk to roughly half the volume it had carried when she'd snapped 'Enjoying the show?' not a minute before.

"I, um... had something to give you... so I came..."

I glanced around. I had a rough idea why she'd come, but the front of a classroom was a poor place for a conversation. Even after Hong Yeon-hwa had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠glared them off once, plenty of eyes were still sneaking furtive peeks.

"Let's talk on the way."

"Okay."

We would be attending the mentoring session together anyway, so I set off for the Dungeon Hall with Hong Yeon-hwa in tow.

The whole walk, Hong Yeon-hwa kept stealing sideways glances at me. For someone merely trying to read my mood, the frequency of the side-eye was remarkably high. I figured she was hunting for the right moment to bring something up, so for the time being I pretended not to notice.

At last, apparently having ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠steeled herself, she took a small, deep breath and opened her mouth.

"Um... hey, so..."

"Yeah. You said you had something for me."

"Right. The club president asked me to pass this along..."

The 'club president' in question was not her sister Hong Ye-hwa, but the president of the Blacksmith Club. And the 'this' he wanted delivered to me consisted of one long box and one small one.

So it's finished.

The long box held the equipment I had commissioned by presenting the Crafting VIP Ticket. The small one was what I'd asked him to make separately out of the leftover materials, back when he had failed to smelt the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron and Black Mithril alloy and I had stepped in to solve the problem for him.

For now I tucked the small box into my inventory, then opened the main dish—the long one. Resting on a plush cushion lay a very short rod, a little over thirty centimeters in length. It was black through and through, holding a subtle, understated luster. At a glance it looked like nothing more than a plain metal bar, but examined closely, precision-machined joints for linking to other equipment or mounting components revealed themselves at every point.

As expected, with crafting, the materials are half the battle.

Feed Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron in as the primary material, and an A-rank product pops straight out. This was a high grade that would hold its value even beyond third year, clear through graduation. Destroying it was all but impossible, and its superb conductivity meant not a drop of mana went to waste when casting. For the moment, though, it possessed no special abilities beyond those options.

[Root] was a single component of the EX-rank weapon I was ultimately aiming for. To borrow the language of painting, it was barely one corner of the canvas. Then again, viewed from another angle, that meant its future potential was all but limitless—it did have a full four upgrade slots, after all. Fit it with a gem and it would become a wand; fit it with a blade and it would become a polearm.

Come to think of it, I decided to fill one of those slots on the spot. The moment I mounted the component I'd had the Magic Engineering Club prepare in advance—

One option had been added: Levitate Zone. A wind spell that raised updrafts to lift everything within its range off the ground. Mounted on that cheap iron rod of a base, it had been F-rank; on Root, with its far superior mana conductivity, it had leapt straight to C-rank—more than serviceable for real combat as things stood.

As I turned Root over this way and that with satisfaction, Hong Yeon-hwa asked carefully.

"...Do you like it?"

"It came out well. Better than I expected."

At my nod, a rare smile touched the corners of Hong Yeon-hwa's mouth. She had played the decisive role in melting down the ingots, and the time and effort she'd sunk into it were nothing to sneeze at, so my evident delight must have been its own reward. Thanks to that, the air between us grew far less stiff from then on.

This time I was the one to ask a question.

"What's your Aqua Flame rank?"

"I raised it. It's C-rank now."

Just as I had predicted, the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron alloy had begun melting away at speed the moment she reached C-rank.

"For rank-ups from here on out, you can keep doing much the same."

"Okay, I will. The Tower's reaction has been positive, too."

Aqua Flame was rare enough a trait that the method for raising its rank had never been widely known. The Ruby Magic Tower had therefore hesitated to dump resources in blindly, but with Hong Yeon-hwa now holding concrete results, they would surely throw their full weight behind her going forward.

Even so, Hong Yeon-hwa did not look especially hopeful. Even for the Ruby Magic Tower, high-grade materials like Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron were not so easily procured. What was more, her Aqua Flame had grown stronger with its rise in rank—materials on the level of Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron would now melt away in the blink of an eye, meaning she would need something beyond even that for a rank-up to properly count. For all these reasons, she seemed to believe such chances would not come often.

"There's no law saying rank-ups have to use materials."

"...Then what?"

Instead of answering, I tipped my chin toward what lay ahead. Our destination, the Dungeon Hall, stood right there.

"Plenty of dungeons. Plenty of monsters."

"Ah...!"

Hong Yeon-hwa let out a small cry of realization. She had profited so richly from the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron this time that her thinking had stayed buried in the materials vein.

The key to Aqua Flame's growth was steadily burning something steeped in powerful cold. So long as the target met that condition, it made no difference what it was. A dungeon set in a snowfield, say, would disgorge ice-attribute monsters in droves. She could spend an entire run beating them down, or set her sights on a powerful boss.

"There are plenty of roads besides materials and dungeons. No rush—let's talk them through one at a time."

"...! I'll talk it over with my sister, too."

Hong Yeon-hwa's face flushed with excitement. She said she would discuss it, but the deal was as good as closed. She would never refuse. Whatever she paid me in return for nurturing Aqua Flame, it would come cheaper than hunting down materials to top Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron. From here on, I could keep up a steady exchange of trade with the Ruby Magic Tower and maintain a friendly relationship on my own terms.

Kerruk?

The goblin flailed its limbs. Its body hung a handspan above the ground, and the goblins around it were in much the same predicament.

The effect of Levitate Zone. It raised updrafts across its range and lifted everything within them. The wind's strength was nothing remarkable—the crucial part was that it never stopped. When I nudged the floating creatures with a light push of Wind Force, they went sailing off into the distance with almost laughable ease.

Grrruk...

The Beheader Goblin held out a little longer, but the outcome was much the same. It had been charging at me for some time now, cleaver swinging wildly, only to slam headlong into the wind and mark time in place, helpless. When I gave Root a lazy flick in its direction—

Whiii—

wind converged from all four directions and pinned the creature where it stood, unable to so much as twitch. Little by little, its stance skewed sideways with the spinning vortex.

As I repeated the wind magic in much the same pattern, a notification scrolled out at the edge of my vision.

Got it.

Days of spinning up countless whirlwinds and hurling goblins every which way had at last borne fruit in the form of a new skill.

Dang Gyu-young had been perched near the goddess statue, sunk in idle thought, but she felt the airflow thicken all of a sudden and turned her head my way.

"What, you've already got it?"

"Yep."

"No way. In three days? That didn't strike me as an easy skill."

"You just focus and put in the work."

"...You know, sometimes you really do rub me the wrong way."

To be fair, it was wind magic that demanded ceaseless control of the flow, and the structure of weaving a vortex was intricate enough that the learning curve was genuinely steep. But my control had long since left seasoned-veteran territory for fossil country, and Twister was a road I had walked any number of times. Pile on the generous mentoring bonus I was enjoying, and three days was hardly a feat at all.

"So what does this skill actually do?"

"See for yourself."

"Hey, don't you dare use it on m—"

Whiii—!

I cast Twister with unmistakable deliberation. The whirlwind wrapped itself around Dang Gyu-young and moved to lock down her movements.

"Ack!! You absolute—!"

Perhaps the ugly memories of the sticker PvP assessment came flooding back, because she recoiled in horror—then became one with the shadow at her feet and sank into the ground, only to erupt upward again behind my back. Both hands shot out, seized my cheeks, and gave them a long, slow pull.

"I told you. No. Wind. Magic."

"M'sorry—"

When I apologized with the laughter barely held in, Dang Gyu-young puffed up in a sulk and peered into my face. Before long her expression crumbled into grudging defeat; she tugged my cheeks up and down a few more times, gently, and let go.

"Lately you come crawling up every chance you get. I swear, one of these days I'm just gonna rip those cheeks right off."

"Then why do you keep grabbing them?"

"Because they're soft and satisfying to pull. Why?"

Her brazen honesty left me with nothing to say.

Dang Gyu-young cracked the exit halfway open and asked,

"Anyway, we're done now, right? Can I go?"

"Not done. I still have a rank to raise."

"Ugh, fine, fine. Do whatever you want, our dear junior!"

Shaking her head, Dang Gyu-young settled back down beside the goddess statue, and—

Whiii—!

I drew the goblins into a Twister-made vortex and penned them inside. Trapped within, they spun violently, like laundry churning in a washing machine. I watched the green laundry go around and thought: new equipment acquired, new skill learned.

Time to rework my traits, then.

Priest—the trait registered in my second slot. It had served me well through mana training, but now that my [Core] had climbed to C-rank, overwriting it with something else would be the more efficient play. Still, overwriting it right this second felt like a small waste; there remained one more place to squeeze value out of it.

I dropped my gaze to my feet.

About time to head down again.

To the underground floors.