The Chamber Head's Black Crate
Even after Dang Gyu-young had vanished from view, I found myself tilting my head for a good while afterward.
What was it again that was supposed to happen on Monday? The first thing that came to mind was, naturally...
'Mentoring?'
...which was patently absurd. The president of the Thief Club, running mentoring sessions? That tedious chore? It was about as plausible as Gwak Seung-jae and Song Cheon-hye holding hands to knock over a bank.
Then again, nothing else came to mind either. I turned the problem over again and again before finally deciding.
'I'll just let it be.'
Whatever she had lined up for Monday, I'd simply take it like a good sport. It wasn't as if Dang Gyu-young was laying a trap out of malice, so nothing serious would come of it.
Weekend afternoon. I summoned Go Hyeon-woo and Seo Ye-in.
Go Hyeon-woo had only just finished his treatment at the infirmary and agreed to come straight over. Seo Ye-in, meanwhile, answered only after I had sent several messages.
Judging by the stickers, she had only just woken up—at this hour, with the sun sitting at its peak. I resolved to help Seo Ye-in come to her senses that much faster.
The photos I attached showed the various snacks I'd picked up at the Black Snake Chamber's market street while buying the spicy-sweet jerky—candied sweets, dried fruits, and the like.
The old lure-with-goodies gambit. A resounding success. Still, it would be quite a while before she actually showed up.
"Brother Kim."
Go Hyeon-woo, by contrast, truly did arrive in no time.
I had decided to hold the main business until all three of us were together, and while I waited, there was something I wanted to discuss with Go Hyeon-woo separately. The topic was, of course, the Black Snake Chamber—his three-move exchange with White Snake above all.
Go Hyeon-woo heaved a sigh.
"A truly fearsome master, that one. We traded a mere three moves, and barely surviving them was the most I could manage."
The first move had overwhelmed him purely through the gulf in martial skill. Despite striking first, and despite unleashing Rapid Torrent—a technique worthy of being called one of his trump cards—Poison Viper Guard had dismantled it in a single motion. There was no excuse to be had.
The second exchange, he said, had ended with only the most trivial of damage, owing to Clear Stream—his supreme technique—combined with an enlightenment that had chanced to brush past him.
Frankly, it was an absurd thing to hear.
"You gained an enlightenment there?"
Granted, I had lent him the Bodhidharma Statue precisely so that he might glean something from studying it—but that was meant to come after we cleared the dungeon. To think he'd recalled a glance stolen before we even entered the Black Snake Chamber and put it to use on the spot.
Go Hyeon-woo seemed to find it no less absurd himself, swallowing a wry laugh.
"I never expected it either. When I first crossed blades with Senior White Snake, I judged my fortune poor—yet in the end it yielded an enlightenment. Perhaps luck was not so unkind after all."
"Worked out, so it's fine. Keep putting time into studying the Bodhidharma Statue."
"That is my intent."
"So, the last one?"
The most important part was the third and final exchange—the very thing I was most curious about.
"White Snake must have used something stronger than her first two moves."
"Indeed. Poison Viper Guard and Poison Viper Assault I recognized at a glance, but the final technique was wholly unfamiliar."
Hearing how Go Hyeon-woo went on to describe it, I knew at once which technique it had to be.
"I take it it was White Imugi Ascending the Heavens."
"White Imugi Ascending the Heavens... Just so—it was as though I beheld a colossal white imugi."
It was a technique that ranked among White Snake's top three—the kind she would never draw out unless truly serious. And apparently she had spent it on a mere three-move duel. No doubt she'd been provoked by the move Go Hyeon-woo had unveiled in their second exchange.
"So how did you stop it? I doubt you used Clear Stream again."
"Hmm..."
Go Hyeon-woo lapsed into thought, visibly wrestling with whether to confide in me. But he soon let out a sigh and opened his mouth.
"It is a matter I am ashamed to tell. Yet if it is you, Brother Kim, you have earned the right to hear the whole of it."
The instant White Imugi Ascending the Heavens came flying at him, Go Hyeon-woo had known: no matter what he tried, he could never stop it on his own strength alone. His choices were two—use Clear Stream and die, or borrow another's power. He chose the latter.
"First, I employed a technique called Following Stream."
Following Stream—the most purely defensive technique in his repertoire, devoted entirely to letting the enemy's attack slide past. His mastery of it still lagged several steps behind Clear Stream, to the point where Clear Stream would actually have offered better defense.
And yet he had insisted on Following Stream, for one reason.
"Because only then did a sliver of leeway remain."
For all its fluid grace, Clear Stream demanded that nearly the whole of his mind be devoted to running the technique itself. Following Stream, by contrast, was easy enough to deploy that a small reserve of attention was left over while it unfolded.
Enough leeway to borrow a different kind of power.
By this point, I had a fair idea what that was.
"So you used your sect's sacred relic."
"...I did."
He had defended with Following Stream, then fixed that defense in place with the sect's sacred relic—a greatsword—turning it into a wall that stopped White Imugi Ascending the Heavens cold. Wrapped and sealed in layer upon layer of binding as it always was, I had never seen the relic with my own eyes, but I could guess what level it stood at. Even the martial arts Go Hyeon-woo had learned were enormously powerful. This was a relic passed down through his sect itself.
'S-Rank at the very least. With any fortune, even higher.'
A weapon of S-Rank or beyond would, planted like a simple shield, absorb a fair measure of even a B-Rank hidden boss's blows. Of course, a price would have been exacted for wielding it. I could also see why Go Hyeon-woo had hesitated to speak of the final exchange. He had inherited the relic, yes—but not yet earned the right to wield it. To draw the thing out merely to wriggle out of a crisis must have wounded his pride as a martial artist terribly.
"You've been through a lot. It couldn't have been easy to set it back down."
"I regret nothing. My own life was not the only one at stake—Brother Shin's, who stood beside me, hung in the balance as well. And with you trusting and waiting on me, Brother Kim, I could hardly stand on pride alone. Only..."
"Only?"
Go Hyeon-woo smiled bitterly.
"Only—having survived on the relic's aid while still lacking the qualification, I know not with what face I might greet my master. I have no face to show him."
But his despondency lasted only a breath. His expression soon firmed again, and he renewed his resolve with force.
"I must train all the more diligently from this day forward. Earning that right without delay is the only way to set my sect's honor aright."
"If anyone can do it, you can."
From there, talk turned to my own game of tag with Black Snake. An account of me scurrying hither and yon would have made for a nutrient-free story, so I centered it on the techniques Black Snake had hurled at me in his obsession to catch me.
Go Hyeon-woo was listening with rapt fascination when—
"I'm here."
Seo Ye-in had arrived, toting a bag with three iced teas. She claimed the seat beside me and asked,
"Dungeon yesterday?"
"Yeah. Bought all of this there."
Seo Ye-in began sampling the spread laid across the table one item at a time—the candied sweets, the stuffed crepes, the dried fruits. Only the spicy-sweet jerky had I set far off to the side. Remembering how she had been brutally laid low by a red spicy rice ball last time, there was nothing to gain from letting her get near it.
We all picked at this and that, chatting idly, and once the mood had warmed considerably, I finally moved on to the main business.
"Right, then—today we're cracking boxes again."
From my inventory I produced a rectangular box coated in lacquer-black.
"I have been inwardly awaiting the day you would bring this out."
Natural enough—as the man who had infiltrated all the way to the Chamber Head's inner vault to fetch the crate in the first place, its contents must have gnawed at him. All the more so given the no small hardship he had endured along the way. Gripping the lid, I said,
"We're opening it right away. No need to hold your breath just yet."
The items that emerged from the 'crate' were fixed, after all.
I flung the lid open without ceremony, and within, nestled to fit the crate's dimensions exactly, were two small boxes.
One of each. Having ransacked only the inner vault, this was the entirety of it. Measured against the main rewards for slaying the Black Snake Chamber Head and clearing the dungeon, the haul was bound to look modest.
Still—two B-Rank boxes, in the first semester of freshman year? Where else was one to find such a thing? The [Chamber Head's Ingot Box] in particular had one defining trait: whatever appeared inside was locked to the category of 'ingot.' With very high probability, a [Cold Iron Ingot] or a [Dark Iron Ingot]. Whichever went into a weapon, the result promised to be high-grade. That alone had made the Black Snake Chamber more than worth entering.
And this, precisely, was why I had called Seo Ye-in over. Sliding the [Chamber Head's Ingot Box] toward her, I asked,
"Want to open it?"
"Yeah."
It had happened only once, true—but Seo Ye-in had once worked the miracle of pulling a B-Rank cushion out of a D-Rank random box. That had seeded a small hypothesis in my mind: what if, just maybe, Seo Ye-in possessed a luck-related trait? It was not outside the realm of possibility. She might pull something beyond expectations from this ingot box as well.
"..."
Even with the B-Rank box before her, Seo Ye-in wore the same unbothered air as if regarding any ordinary box off the street. If anything, Go Hyeon-woo and I, the spectators, were the tense ones. She stared blankly down at the ingot box for a moment, then slowly, languidly, opened it.
By that point I was already shielding both my eyes. If my hunch was right, another flash bomb was about to detonate, and my eyesight was precious.
Right on cue—
KWAHAAAA—AAAH—!
A riot of five-colored brilliance erupted from the ingot box as if it had exploded, and in an instant it swallowed the entire room.
"Oooh."
With every direction bleached white and nothing visible at all, Go Hyeon-woo's gasp of awe drifted through the glare. I said nothing aloud, but inwardly I was reeling.
'It actually works.'
Even braced for it, I was still stunned. The hypothesis that Seo Ye-in held a luck-related trait had just put on real weight.
I kept my eyes covered for a long while, and the light gradually guttered out. And there, inside the ingot box, a hefty hunk of metal sat radiating presence.
'Jackpot.'
Cold Iron, our original target, was already a superb metal—and something even better had come out.
"Young Lady Seo's fortune is a marvel, truly. Such a sight is rare enough to witness even once; never did I dream I would see it twice."
"No kidding. How is her luck this absurd?"
Go Hyeon-woo and I sang her praises in one voice, but Seo Ye-in seemed neither surprised nor delighted. Instead, she turned the question back on me.
"Did it help?"
"Yeah. Helped a lot."
"Then it's fine."
Hers was the attitude of one for whom whether it had helped me mattered more than the treasure itself. In that case, might as well ride the momentum and settle the rest quickly. Casually handing over the [Black Snake Chamber Random Box (B)], I asked,
"This one too?"
"Yeah."
This time again, Seo Ye-in accepted the B-Rank random box as if receiving a pencil or an eraser, then tore it open without so much as a warning.
FLASH—!
Golden light burst forth, though it fell somewhat short of the flash-bomb standard. In proportion, the rank of the dropped item ran a fair bit lower as well.
Hundred-Year Polygonum Multiflorum was a rather fine elixir. And there were four roots of it. For a drop out of a B-Rank random box, it counted as a middling pull.
"Four roots, so let's split these. One each."
For one thing, the moment the Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron appeared, our goal had been surpassed by a wide margin. For another, taking the same type of elixir in duplicate halved its effects. Growing together was simply the better long-term investment for everyone. Weighing all of these tangled reasons, I judged that sharing beat gorging alone.
"I shall not refuse, then. Gratefully received."
Go Hyeon-woo, eternally starved for elixirs, snapped up a root and tucked it away in his breast, and Seo Ye-in likewise accepted one, carefully stowing it in her inventory. That left one root over even after my share—I could pass it on to someone else, and if no rightful owner turned up, I'd simply take it myself and settle for halved effects.
Seo Ye-in then gazed at me steadily, as though asking whether there were any more random boxes for her to open; I shook my head gently left and right to say there were not. At that, she gave a small nod of her own and rejoined Go Hyeon-woo in their snack expedition.
Leaving Seo Ye-in to her reachings here and there, I sank briefly into thought.
'She does seem to have some kind of trait...'
A jackpot on the ingot box; a middling pull on the random box. In a case like this, rather than flatly concluding she had no trait at all, the sounder bet was that some activation condition or restriction was at work. A cooldown on the trait's trigger, say, or a cap on her total 'luck quota.'
'No need to rush it.'
I could always have her try again when the opportunity arose.
"...! ...!"
"I set that aside on purpose, and you still hunt it down and eat it? You can't even handle spicy food."
"...!"
In the moment my attention had strayed, Seo Ye-in had gotten her hands on the spicy-sweet jerky.