Magic Engineering Workshop
The moment I told Dang Gyu-young I wanted to meet the Magic Engineering Club's president, she made the introduction for me. Back came a message before long: he was far too busy to spare time meeting anywhere else, so would I please come to the workshop myself.
Fair enough, for the Magic Engineering Club.
When the Emerald Magic Tower crowd had summoned me over, I'd given Gwak Ji-cheol one solid punch and sent him home — but that was because they were perfectly capable of walking over themselves and had instead come at me with imperious, high-handed demands. Had their attitude been even remotely courteous, I'd have played the gracious loser and gone along.
The Magic Engineering Club, by contrast, was genuinely run off its feet. A crafting club lived forever beneath an avalanche of commissions, and with the semester just begun, the orders had to be stacking up sky-high. All things considered, this was a trip I ought to make myself.
I finished off the last of my iced tea and set out at an unhurried amble. Somewhere along the way, my thoughts began to wander.
The groundwork was laid.
[Blessing of the West Wind] for a bonus to wind magic. [Wind Force] to put real physical force behind it. From here on, the plan was to keep layering on more wind spells and traits, one after another.
Which meant the time had come.
Time to get a weapon.
I couldn't very well keep clubbing things with the [Staff of Earth], a glorified stick in all but name. Just as shoes granted bonuses to movement-type skills, a weapon granted bonuses befitting its wielder's class — and more often than not, what a weapon offered outweighed every other slot combined. So where did one acquire such a weapon?
Make it, of course.
And if I was making one, it would be endgame-grade. I intended to mobilize every hidden piece I knew of and craft a weapon worthy of an EX-rank reincarnation quest. Naturally, with a grade like that, no high-tier masterpiece could be conjured in a single sitting. Hence the plan:
Modular.
Like snapping together a puzzle, I would complete it stage by stage. And as the opening move of that long, long project, I was now bound for the Magic Engineering Workshop.
Workshop 1 was several times busier than it had been on the first day of the semester. Members darted about as though their shoes were on fire, and blue light flashed without a single moment's pause. I had barely taken up a silent post by the door when a senior came out to meet me.
"First-year? What do you want?"
"I'd like to see the president. Tell him Kim Ho is here — he'll know who I mean."
"Yeah? Hold on a sec."
The senior disappeared inside, and a short while later a different man emerged. No prize for guessing: the Magic Engineering Club president. He had the look of an office worker ground down by years of overtime, and he radiated the harried air of a man perpetually chased by a deadline.
I opened my mouth to greet him, and he cut me off halfway.
"Hello, I'm—"
"Bong Jaeseok. You're Kim Ho, right? They say you finished the 10x10x10 cube? We'll talk inside. Follow me."
Rat-tat-tat — he emptied his words like a machine gun. Impatient fellow, isn't he. As though time itself were hunting him down with a knife, he hustled me along at a fleeing pace.
Our destination: Workshop 4. It was as hushed as it had been on my last visit — until Bong Jaeseok shattered that silence by flinging the door wide open. A third-year senior working alone inside flinched and spun around. I knew that face, too. Bong Jaeseok pointed at the doorway.
"Out."
"……"
Without a word, the senior vacated his seat. Even between fellow third-years, the president's authority carried that much weight. Bong Jaeseok watched the man's retreating back with a sour look, then spoke.
"He's the one who paid for trading off club assets without a care."
The place I'd unearthed the 10x10x10 cube blueprint was among the junk heaped in Workshop 4. Junk or not, though, the authority to dispose of it belonged to the club president alone — and the senior who had just left had traded it away for a single 1,000-point material. He'd done the math and concluded I could never possibly complete the cube; what he hadn't counted on was me pulling off the impossible. He'd crowed over fleecing a freshman, then gotten burned for it. A shame, truly.
Bong Jaeseok rattled off another burst.
"Technically I could take it back, seeing as it was traded without my consent, but I don't feel the need. I hate stirring up pointless drama. Nobody but you could've built it anyway. One good look is all I want."
In other words: so long as he could dissect the finished [Life Cube] and walk away having learned something, that was plenty — and he'd reward me for nothing more than showing it. A sensible proposal, with profit on both sides.
Unfortunately, though.
"I don't have it anymore."
"Already handed it off? To who? Don't tell me the Thief Club?"
"The Nature Club."
It had become Park Nari's kitty house, you see. It had probably collected a good few dozen new scratch marks by now.
Disappointment dyed Bong Jaeseok's face in an instant. He shoved back his chair and shot to his feet.
"Tch. Wasted a trip. I'm out."
"Senior."
I reeled him back in just as he made to bolt.
"What?"
"Come now — would I really come calling empty-handed? I'm not that lacking in manners."
"...Huh. Now that you mention it. So what'd you bring? Show me."
"By all means."
When I handed over the many-times-folded slip of paper, Bong Jaeseok took it and unfolded it: a scrap torn from the corner of an enormous sheet. The original had been so large that even a single corner made for a decently sized piece. Bong Jaeseok studied the scrap from its edge, and his face stiffened little by little. Before long he slammed the paper down onto the table with a bang and, nose nearly pressed to it, lost himself in it completely.
"It was real... it was real... To think there's a lunatic out there who actually pulled this off..."
Just what was this scrap of paper, that it scrambled Bong Jaeseok's brains so thoroughly?
A blueprint.
The thousand tiny cubes that composed the 10x10x10 — I had meticulously recorded the placement of every last one. Which is to say, anyone who followed that blueprint faithfully could reproduce the [Life Cube] from scratch.
In theory, anyway.
The build would devour staggering amounts of material and manpower, plus no less than a full semester, but sorting that out was their problem to manage. What mattered was that, on paper, it could be done.
"...!?"
Bong Jaeseok, deep in his trance, froze mid-motion. The blueprint had been reading beautifully — right up until it simply ended, torn off partway through. The portion I'd handed over amounted to less than ten percent of the whole.
Wearing the expression of a man whose sky had just caved in, Bong Jaeseok turned to me.
"The rest... you have it? You have it, right? Tell me you have it. Quickly."
Flat-out madness had taken root in his eyes. Say that was all there was, and he looked ready to bury a body.
"Of course I have it. Perfectly safe."
I produced a second slip of paper, folded neat and thick. Large, too — easy enough to guess what unfurling it would reveal. Naturally, I had no intention of handing it over for nothing. He'd had his free sample; from here on out, everything came with a price tag.
"...!"
Bong Jaeseok caught my drift at once. Whether from the time crunch, his born-in impatience, or both, he dove straight into bargaining.
"No time, so let's skip the push-and-pull song and dance and wrap this up. Just name it. What do you want?"
"Permission to use the Workshop 1 equipment."
Workshop 1's facilities existed solely for the first-string members of the Magic Engineering Club. Authorizing an outsider like me to use them ranked among the president's weightiest powers. I'd braced for real deliberation, for offers volleying back and forth — but Bong Jaeseok answered without five seconds' thought.
"We need it during the day. Midnight to dawn. How's that?"
"Works for me."
"Call. Hand over the rest of the blueprint."
What a refreshingly decisive man. He unfolded the blueprint I passed him, fitted it against the scrap he already had, and confirmed the two matched perfectly. Joy flooded in.
"Ahhh...!"
He folded the blueprint with exaggerated care and tucked it away like a family heirloom. Then he held out a hand to me.
"Student ID. Let me see it."
"Here."
I fished it out, and Bong Jaeseok copied down a few key details.
"I'm registering you for free access. Don't cause trouble. I said past midnight, but if it's crowded, clear out; if it's empty, before midnight's fine too. You can read a room, can't you?"
"Yes, senior."
"Great. I'm off."
Bong Jaeseok sprang up and ambled out the door — then abruptly hurried back to me, as though something had just surfaced in his memory.
"Oh, right — you're unaffiliated, aren't you. How about joining our club?"
He added, nodding at the blueprint tucked against his chest.
"Honestly, this is thesis material. You could write it up and submit it as-is. Building the 10x10x10 yourself is impressive enough on its own. You're more than qualified. No — overqualified."
"I appreciate the offer, but I'll have to decline."
"Dang Gyu-young called dibs first, that it? Set on the Thief Club? Or worried I'd hold a grudge? I'll smooth all of that over. I may not look it, but I carry real weight around here."
"It's nothing like that. I simply have no intention of attaching myself to any one group."
"...Fine, have it your way. If you ever change your mind, say the word anytime."
Seeing that my resolve was firm, Bong Jaeseok didn't press further. He turned to go without a trace of regret — then,
"Ah, one more thing."
Whatever it was, he'd remembered it on his way out; he came back and jerked his chin at the junk piled in one corner of Workshop 4.
"If you're building something else out of that, take it with you. In exchange, draw up the blueprint like you did this time. Then I won't say a word."
"Thank you."
"Now I'm really, really, really leaving. Keep at it."
"Yes, senior. Take care."
Thanks to Bong Jaeseok coming out of this in a remarkably agreeable mood, I'd walked away with a great deal. With Workshop 1 access secured, any future gear that called for magic engineering, I could now handle with my own two hands. The [Crafting VIP Ticket] I could spend on other crafts — smithing, tailoring, jewelcraft.
Better still, being allowed to haul off Workshop 4's junk was an unexpected windfall. There would be no more jackpots on the scale of the [Life Cube], but there was still plenty worth salvaging. I'd simply drop by whenever I found a spare moment.
For the rest of the conquest week, I drilled [Wind Force] without pause. I flung the iron training dummies every which way with ruthless abandon, but C-rank never came; I ended the week perched precariously at the very tail end of D-rank. A clean rank-up would have been nice, but class was calling.
♩♪♬♪
True to form, Lee Sudok appeared a short while after the bell. Not one student in Class 3 was out of their seat; every last one of them sat rigid, breath held. They had all learned the lesson that so long as you didn't rub him the wrong way over the small things, his classes ran surprisingly smooth.
Today, though, Lee Sudok walked in carrying — of all things — a thick bundle of A4-sized paper.
"Catch."
And without ceremony, he hurled the whole lot into the air.
— Flutter-flutter-flutter!
The A4 sheets scattered every which way — then settled with uncanny precision, exactly one page landing before each student.
Mentoring Application Form
[46] The Support Ate It All