A Letter of Challenge
It was a reaction I had more or less anticipated. From Beomi's point of view, the Life Cube was practically its own private villa. To put it in human terms, this was like a casual acquaintance—someone you'd only exchanged nods with—suddenly asking, "Hey, mind if I crash at your vacation home for a couple of days?"
Naturally, I had my persuasion ready to go.
"I'm not just asking to borrow it, you know. I'll be paying rent."
"...?"
Beomi lifted a paw—its fluffy cotton-swatter of a fist—then thought better of it and lowered it again. Apparently it intended to hear me out to the very end before passing judgment.
"Hasn't the villa been collecting a lot of scratches lately?"
"Mew."
"Sounds about time for a renovation, wouldn't you say?"
"Meow."
As of this moment, I was the only person who could repair the Life Cube. Fixing magitech artifacts in general was nothing special, but for Bong Jaeseok and the rest of the Magic Engineering Club, this particular cube would be more than they could stomach. They hadn't even finished mapping it out—who knew what disaster might follow if they poked around carelessly.
"Meow..."
Beomi was visibly tempted. If vacating the villa for a mere two days earned it a full, spotless renovation, that was a bargain no cat in its right mind would pass up.
It seemed just about ready to come over, so I delivered the finishing blow: a handful of the very snack it had been munching on moments before—the dried filefish specialty of the Gathering of Evildoers.
"Munch on these while you wait a few days. I'll return it looking brand-new."
"Meow."
Beomi gave a short reply and went back to tearing into the dried fish. Acceptance, in other words.
With the biggest obstacle disposed of, I turned to Park Na-ri.
"You heard it. What about you?"
"...!"
Park Na-ri could only stare, eyes gone perfectly round, as if she couldn't quite believe the scene she'd just witnessed. Apparently it had never occurred to her that anyone could actually win a negotiation with Beomi.
But under my steady gaze, she dropped her eyes sideways and managed, haltingly, "I-If Beomi's okay with it, th-then I'm okay too."
This was exactly why I'd gone to Beomi first and left Park Na-ri for later. I needed the consent of both owner and resident regardless, and if I'd asked her first, the answer would only have been something like, But we should think about Beomi too...
Ah, the butler's life. Such thankless toil.
Park Na-ri ventured a careful question. "H-How many days were you thinking of borrowing it...?"
"A day or two should be plenty. You've got no use for it this week, right?"
"Y-Yeah... the PvP assessments are all finished, so..."
It wasn't as though Park Na-ri was the dueling sort, and her magic practice had never needed the cube to begin with. Which meant she could lend it out freely until dungeon raid week.
"B-But... what do you need it for?"
"Research. And I'll be lending Senior Bong a hand while I'm at it."
None of that was a lie. Bong Jaeseok had been calling on me for help fairly often lately.
Concealing banned items was not the sort of secret that did me any good once it got out.
Unless they stumbled onto it by sheer luck, I intended to keep it under wraps. Park Na-ri herself would sooner die than break a school rule, but the same couldn't be said for every member of the Mother Nature Club. Even their president, Ha Suyeon, was a strategist type with a quietly scheming streak. Parade the thing around in broad daylight long enough and someone was bound to catch the tail—and the fallout could easily splash onto me and Dang Gyu-young.
Convinced, apparently, by the word "research," Park Na-ri drew the Life Cube from her inventory and emptied out its contents. I accepted the cube and handed over a gift set of Gathering of Evildoers specialties in return.
"Thanks. I'll return it in mint condition."
"O-Okay..."
"Meow."
Even then, Beomi was still busily demolishing its dried fish. It raised its head one last time to add a word, and it sounded for all the world like:
— I'm counting on you for that renovation.
With the cube secured, I kept busy with the day's work and waited for word. The Ban Wave had erupted without warning, so the Thief Club would need time to take stock of the situation as well.
And so, just like the day before, I supervised Seo Ye-in's training, honing my own wind magic—Wind Barrier and its cousins—on the side, until right on cue, a message came flying in.
By then Seo Ye-in's sloth battery was just about drained, so we called an end to training. "Let's stop here for today."
"Mm..."
Seo Ye-in gazed at me blankly for a moment, then tilted her head for reasons known only to her. Soon enough, though, she gave a slow little wave and started toward the dormitory. I watched her retreating back for a while before setting off for the meeting spot myself.
The terrace above the campus store. Dang Gyu-young was already seated there, drinks for two bought in advance—mine included. Hers, as always, was a syrupy latte buried under a mountain of cream. The moment I took the seat beside her, she met my eyes and smiled without a word.
"..."
"..."
"Why are you staring?"
"Just because."
Whether something was written on my face or not, she simply kept looking, grinning in slow circles, so I decided to open the conversation myself. "So what happened with Byung-cheol?"
"Ah, Byung-cheol." Dang Gyu-young's face went breezily indifferent, and she tossed the answer off in passing. "Having inflicted grievous losses upon the club, he was purged for his crimes."
"How tragic."
No wonder he'd looked so unsteady lately. So it had finally come to that. A beat later, Dang Gyu-young's expression cracked and she snorted. "Kidding. I'm not about to fly off the handle over every little thing. If something springs a hole, we just steal another one. Simple."
"Your thought process truly is built different."
"That was sarcasm just now, wasn't it?"
"A little."
Dang Gyu-young shot me a sidelong glance and brought her straw to her lips. One sip of latte later, she went on. "We do need to take some of it back."
"We're going? To the Temporary Confiscation Storage?"
"Absolutely."
"And when were you thinking?"
"Tomorrow night, probably?"
Infiltrating the Temporary Confiscation Storage was a race against the clock. Drag our feet too long and the Disciplinary Committee would transfer the banned items over to the academy proper—and anything that reached the official impound vault was, for all practical purposes, lost forever. Besides, every extra day the committee got was another day to bolt its defenses down tight. The sooner we struck, the better, but we had our own preparations to make; tonight felt a touch too soon, which made tomorrow night the deadline.
It was more than reasonable, so I nodded. Then I moved on to the next critical question. "And where's the Temporary Confiscation Storage this time?"
"Take a look at this. Aren't these people a riot?" Dang Gyu-young let out a hollow laugh and showed me a few photos—captures from the security crystal orbs installed around the commercial district. In them, Disciplinary Committee members were pacing back and forth outside a certain building. And that building looked awfully familiar. A place I'd come and gone from more times than I could count while the Black Market was running. C Exchange.
"Looks like they're recycling the venue."
"Yeah, that's the look of it."
Each of the exchange buildings had once been laced with Throughwalk spells and Confusion Formations by graduate alumni. Plenty of time had passed since, so the Throughwalk spells might well have run dry—but the formations themselves had likely survived intact. And now the Disciplinary Committee meant to refurbish those formations and press them into service as security. The intent couldn't have been more blatant. They could have kept the Temporary Confiscation Storage in the Old School Building like before, far safer by any measure. Instead they'd gone out of their way to relocate it, with all the attendant hassle, to the commercial district. And they planned to turn the very tricks the Thief Club had used at the Black Market right back around on them.
"It's a challenge letter."
"They're daring us to try."
A formal request for a grudge match. Judged by results alone, this year's Black Market had been a landslide victory for the Thief Club. The two sides had been locked in a fairly even tug-of-war when the Blood Cult Elder appeared, and every last committee member had been pulled off the floor to contain the situation. After that, they'd had no choice but to stand and watch banned items change hands by the cartload—which must have been a humiliation of the highest order. Naturally, they'd spent the time since whetting their knives, then detonated the Ban Wave without warning to land a clean blow on the Thief Club. And now, by the looks of it, they meant to lure them in once more with this challenge letter and pile demerits on top of disciplinary punishment.
"It does reek a little, doesn't it."
"Yep. Reeks to high heaven."
"It's a trap no matter how you look at it."
"A completely obvious trap."
Before long, the two of us were smirking at each other.
"And yet you're still going?"
"I told you—absolutely. You're coming too, right?"
"Absolutely."
If I wanted the main quest to move along smoothly, I needed every point of spec-up I could get my hands on. For the sake of world peace, the occasional violation of school rules was simply unavoidable.
Dang Gyu-young spoke up, voice artfully casual. "So, about that... you know that thing from before? The, um, cube? Any chance I could borrow it, just for tomorrow?"
Tuck a banned item into the Life Cube, and it was guaranteed to come back out with you. For this infiltration, it was nothing short of a cheat item. The only problem was its owner: Park Na-ri. Dang Gyu-young had no real point of contact with her, which made the ask more than a little awkward. The first question in anyone's head would be, 'Why does the Thief Club president want a life-attribute item?'
I flashed a grin and set the cube on the table. "You mean this?"
"...Wait. You already borrowed it?"
"You ask, and it's done. That's just how it works with me."
At that, Dang Gyu-young leaned across the table and began ruffling my hair and kneading my cheeks with tremendous enthusiasm. "Aigoo— our Kim Ho, how did you get so clever? You're just too precious. Too precious for words."
I could sympathize with the sentiment, but I'd rather wrap up the conversation at hand first. So I angled myself subtly out of reach and asked, "So what about the rest? The cube alone won't get it done."
Loading banned items into the cube was only possible once we'd actually reached the Temporary Confiscation Storage. Get nabbed by the Disciplinary Committee before that, and the whole thing was a wash. And there was no telling what waited inside C Exchange now that the committee had occupied it. Members might be dug in and lying in wait; there might be contraptions layered on top of the Confusion Formation. That middle stretch of the job belonged to the Thief Club.
Dang Gyu-young countered with a question of her own. "First things first, Kim Ho—you can crack the formation, right?"
"Most of them."
"Figures. That makes this a whole lot more doable."
With a grizzled veteran's instincts, I could pick out the soft spots in most formations and slip right through. I'd made it past the Confusion Formation the graduates had installed at C Exchange without much trouble, so even with the committee's reinforcements, I expected much the same result. Even so, the problems still waiting to be solved piled up like a mountain range—and Dang Gyu-young curled the corners of her mouth with perfect confidence.
"This time we've got reinforcements of our own. Put that away for now."
"Yes, ma'am."
Where the Life Cube was concerned, the fewer people in the know, the better. I tucked it into my inventory, and Dang Gyu-young fired off a message to someone. They must have been waiting close by, because two third-year seniors appeared almost at once and pulled up chairs.
One was a face I recognized: Hong Ye-hwa, president of the Ruby Magic Tower. The other was a man with glasses and an intellectual air. Hong Ye-hwa greeted me with a faint smile and a wave, while the bespectacled man gave me a single once-over before asking Dang Gyu-young, "So this is that first-year?"
"Yep. That first-year."
What exactly "that first-year" was supposed to mean, I couldn't say. But judging by the way the two seniors carried themselves, word had come down through Dang Gyu-young that I'd be playing a key role. I dipped my head in a polite bow first. "A pleasure to meet you both, seniors. I'm Kim Ho."
"Right. I'm Jeong Chong-myeong."
The man returned a curt introduction of his own, and Dang Gyu-young added a footnote. "He's the president of the White Magic Club."
The White Magic Club—a superpower standing shoulder to shoulder with the Swordsmanship Club. And now its president had joined the operation to infiltrate the Temporary Confiscation Storage.
[Chapter 256: The Support Ate It All]