The Sword Named Arbor capulus
“11:50...”
I was waiting for midnight at Yu Jae-i’s request.
With my armor on, Arca slung diagonally over one shoulder, and Saessak under my hand while I gave the little thing an absentminded tap.
Since idly waiting felt like a waste of time, I’d gathered information instead.
According to the intel Assistant Manager Lee had sent over, Yu Jae-i’s father had disappeared when she was young.
He had vanished all at once one day, and all sorts of rumors had followed in his wake.
Some said he’d abandoned his family and run off.
Some said he’d been recognized for his blacksmithing skill and taken on a classified government commission.
Some said he’d caught the eye of an underworld guild and been kidnapped.
“...”
She, like me, had grown up alone.
No. She’d been even more alone than I had.
I had Do-hee and Tae-cheon. She had truly been on her own.
And yet she had built a blacksmith shop that ranked among the top hundred in Korea all by herself.
Could I have done that?
Probably not.
I’d spent far more of my life with Do-hee and Tae-cheon than I had alone.
I also read through the information Assistant Manager Lee had sent me about Crowd.
Not that it really counted as information.
[I'm sorry, Team Leader.]
[I couldn't uncover Crowd with my level of access.]
[I'm sure it's a guild operating in the underworld, but it felt like all the information was sealed off.]
So it was too much to ask after all?
No matter how impressive Assistant Manager Lee’s information network was, she was still just a guild member.
It seemed she couldn’t dig up information on an underworld guild after all.
I was about to send a message telling her not to worry about it when another one came through.
[If it's urgent, I think I might be able to push myself a little.]
I knew exactly what she meant by “push myself a little.”
She meant poking around in places she wasn’t supposed to, trying to dig up information beyond her level.
That might draw the attention of Crowd, an underworld guild, and that was not something I needed.
I had other places to get information from.
[...Sorry.]
For some reason, she seemed a lot more deflated than usual.
I sent back a message telling her that I really was fine and not to worry about it.
Honestly, that was why I’d already asked Chairman Woo Chan-sung for information too.
I’d only asked Assistant Manager Lee as a stopgap, on the off chance.
I’d told Chairman Woo to contact me by midnight if he found anything, so he ought to be calling any minute now.
My smartphone vibrated in my hand.
The name Woo Chan-sung lit up on the screen.
“Yes, this is Baek Do-woon.”
- Hm? Have you stopped pretending to be Ji-on?
“...Just tell me the information.”
- Hm. Well, the thing is...
Why was he dragging out the end of the sentence like that? That never boded well.
Could it be...
“What is it? You didn’t find anything?”
- No, don’t be absurd. I’m only saying this because I’m concerned for you. Crowd is a terrorist organization.
“A terrorist organization?”
- Yes. An A-rank one at that. They’ve done all manner of barbaric things in the shadows.
If they were A-rank, that meant they’d been committing acts of terror all over the world.
One question immediately came to mind.
Why would people operating on a global scale come looking for Yu Jae-i?
For guys like that, it shouldn’t have been hard to find a more obedient blacksmith who was even better than she was.
Was there some reason it had to be her?
- Given the sort of people they are, tracking them down was no easy matter.
“You didn’t find them?”
- No, why are you being so negative?
“Me? Was I?”
- ...We got lucky. They were seen last night in Mapo-gu, dragging a blacksmith somewhere. We found a location that looks like their hideout.
Yu Jae-i.
A blacksmith in Mapo-gu could only mean her.
But dragging her? Hadn’t she gone with them willingly?
- I’ll send the hideout location by courier.
“What? No, I don’t have time for that. Just text me the—”
- Then good luck. And give my regards to the blacksmith.
With that, Chairman Woo hung up.
Honestly, what was this old man thinking, sending information by courier like we were in the Joseon era?
He could have just texted it.
“Tch...”
I clicked my tongue and checked the time.
The 11:59 on my screen had just flipped to 12:00.
It was midnight, but Yu Jae-i still hadn’t returned.
Time to start the job.
I slipped the smartphone into my armor and stood, swinging Arca onto my back.
That was when the sliding door rattled open.
“Ji-on, I’ve kept you waiting—”
“...”
The one who came through the door was Woo Yeon-hoo.
When he met my eyes, he shut his mouth.
So he’d meant to send the info by courier, had he. As if there was any need for the extra fuss.
“You could’ve just texted it.”
“Do you know I waited quite a while at the hospital that day, Mr. Do-woon?”
It was the first time he’d ever called me by my real name.
Come to think of it, was this the first time we were meeting without masks on?
“If we can’t help you, we wouldn’t be able to rest easy.”
“...Don’t use me to make yourselves feel better.”
“Yes. I’ll make sure to do that from now on. I’m sorry.”
...I felt like a fool.
I was making a point of looking annoyed, and yet Woo Yeon-hoo just admitted his mistake and apologized straightaway.
It wasn’t as if he’d snapped back at me for getting angry while he’d come all this way to help. He’d offered a sincere apology.
Truly, he had a talent for driving people half-mad in the strangest way possible.
“Hoo... So? Where is it?”
“Follow me. I’ll guide you.”
He’d come here intending to go with me from the start.
Chairman Woo had probably sent his son on purpose, with that in mind.
Well, fine. Let’s just think of it as being convenient.
We were about to storm the hideout of an A-rank terrorist organization, and two people were better than one anyway.
I left the blacksmith shop with Woo Yeon-hoo.
Out front, a sedan sat parked on the curb, apparently the one he’d driven here in.
“Nice car.”
“It’s the YH-603. A vehicle our company developed in secret this year.”
I tossed out a comment to break the mood, glancing at the car parked outside the blacksmith shop.
Woo Yeon-hoo smiled faintly and proudly started listing its virtues.
To summarize, it had a state-of-the-art mana engine for silent driving, minotaur leather seats for comfort, and a wyvern-bone frame that could withstand A-rank attack magic.
As for the design, he said it blended a modern urban image with the wild appeal of a hunter, though I honestly had no idea what he meant by that.
Still, it did look sleek enough that “Nice car” came out of my mouth before I could stop it.
Woo Yeon-hoo took a key wallet from his pocket and held it out to me.
“It’s yours, Mr. Do-woon.”
“Huh? This?”
“Please tell Chae-yeon I said thank you for helping me find it.”
I don’t need this, you old bastard.
I wanted to say that, but the car was far too tempting to refuse.
Before I knew it, my hand had already taken the key wallet.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Crowd’s hideout was halfway up Mugapsan in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province.
Woo Yeon-hoo, the spear resting across his shoulder, took out a mana imaging camera and looked over the hideout.
A mana imaging camera was one that could read the flow of mana inside its lens.
It was mainly used to verify a person’s mana, so the military used it a great deal.
It could only detect mana, not a person’s maximum capacity, but it was perfect for checking where people were.
It was also useful for confirming whether a place had a barrier or shield spell active.
“There’s a shield on the building, and about fifteen people inside.”
“That’s about what we expected.”
“Is it?”
The number of the bastards who’d come to Jae-i’s Blacksmith last time was exactly around that range.
He handed the camera to me.
He wanted me to confirm exactly where the bastards were.
When I checked, there were three on the second floor, ten on the first, and three in the basement.
The one leaning against the wall in the basement was probably Yu Jae-i.
Her mana flow was cut off at the wrists, as if she had mana cuffs on.
So that was why she’d been “dragged.” It must have been because of the cuffs.
After I handed the camera back, he asked, “What should we do?”
“If it were up to me, I’d rather smash the whole hideout.”
What mattered right now wasn’t my feelings.
It was whether I could rescue Yu Jae-i safely.
If I used World Tree Swing to attack the place head-on, she might get caught in it.
“Still, it’s probably better to pull only Yu Jae-i out.”
The problem was the barrier.
If we barged in without thinking, we’d be spotted immediately.
As an A-rank hunter, Woo Yeon-hoo might have been able to cut through the shield with sword qi alone, but the person who’d set the shield would know the instant it happened.
Woo Yeon-hoo grinned and reached into his magic pouch.
“I’m glad I came along after all.”
“You’ve got a method?”
“I brought a barrier bypass device for exactly this.”
“...Why the hell do you have that?”
“Actually, it wasn’t me. Min-ju packed it. She said to take it along because it might come in handy, and it really is handy, isn’t it?”
A barrier bypass device was exactly what it sounded like: a machine that got around barriers.
It made a tiny hole in a barrier or shield and the like.
It ran for only one minute on a twelve-hour charge, and it was useless against high-grade barriers, making it the very definition of inefficient.
Even so, it was used in the sad, practical sense that if a small team needed to get through a shield they couldn’t otherwise dispel, this was what they had.
For us right now, it was the perfect tool.
“Let’s go.”
We moved quietly toward the spot closest to Yu Jae-i in the basement.
When Woo Yeon-hoo turned on the bypass device, it began operating almost silently, then quickly bored a hole large enough for a person to walk through.
We slipped through the opening and into the building.
We moved quickly through the dark interior and headed down the stairs.
Woo Yeon-hoo, who’d gone down first, came to a stop.
“Oh. It’s a straight corridor.”
As he said, the basement was just one long passage.
At the far end, two men in white masks were standing guard at a steel door.
We’d need to take those two out at the same time if we wanted to avoid alerting the others upstairs.
“Yeon-hoo, can you throw a spear?”
“Yes. I’ll take the one on the left.”
Good. I liked that confidence.
I spread three fingers and drew the longsword at my waist.
Arca on my back was too long to swing properly in such a narrow passage.
When I folded my ring finger, Woo Yeon-hoo got ready to throw his spear. When I folded my middle finger, I bent my knees to spring forward.
Finally, when I folded my index finger, he launched himself.
Watching that, I activated a skill.
Shadow Step.
In an instant, my vision went dark.
I couldn’t see anything except three holes.
The hole right in front of me was Woo Yeon-hoo’s shadow.
I moved to the hole on the right among the two farther away.
As soon as I stepped onto it, my vision cleared and I saw the white mask with a long spear punched through its head.
The other white mask started to scream, struggling to gather his wits, but—
“Shhh—!”
The spear pierced him from the back through the chest, and he died before the sound could fully leave his throat.
The bastard collapsed forward without finishing the word.
Woo Yeon-hoo rushed over with a stunned face.
He looked like he wanted to ask what kind of skill that had been.
I ignored him, swung my sword hilt down to smash the lock, and opened the door.
When I stepped inside,
Clang!
A heavy sound rang out near my ear.
I turned my head and saw Yu Jae-i punching me with her fist.
More precisely, she was punching my cheek, which had already turned into tree bark.
She must have mistaken me for one of Crowd’s men.
“Ow... that hurts...”
She shook out her hand as if she wanted to fling the pain away.
Well, at least it ended there.
Some bastard’s own hand had exploded clean off.
“Ugh, you got here fast. I thought it would take at least a week.”
“I’ve got capable friends.”
I pointed toward Woo Yeon-hoo behind me.
She gave him a brief nod in greeting while he pulled the spear out of the Crowd member’s head.
“My father?”
“...He was regretting it.”
So it had really been a lie, just to get her to come.
Yu Jae-i let out a bitter smile, looking disgusted with herself for having followed even though she knew it was a trap.
I wanted to comfort her, but getting the hell out of there took priority.
“Let’s run first.”
“Wait. I need to check one thing.”
I grabbed her wrist and started to pull her along, but she caught my wrist with her other hand and stopped me.
“What?”
“Have you tried channeling mana into Arca?”
“No. I haven’t.”
When she heard that, Yu Jae-i grinned.
What was with that uneasy smile?
“Pour in as much mana as you can right now.”
“Right now?”
“Yeah, right now.”
“...Hm. Fine, got it.”
I made the decision without thinking too long.
There had to be a reason she was telling me this.
There was no way she’d asked for no reason in this situation.
I put the longsword away and pulled Arca from my back.
As I’d already noticed the first time I held it, Arca was incredibly light, easy enough to lift with one hand.
It weighed about as much as a longsword.
I tilted the drawn blade at a forty-five-degree angle.
If I held it upright, the tip would have touched the ceiling.
Then I poured in as much mana as I could, exactly as she’d asked.
The patterns etched into the blade began to glow blue, then released a burst of mana.
And then—
“That sword’s name is Arbor capulus. Literally, it means ‘tree-made hilt.’”
The mana pouring out of the sword took on the shape of a massive blade.
It pierced straight through the ceiling, and yet it kept growing larger and larger.
In other words, according to Yu Jae-i, this greatsword the size of my body wasn’t a greatsword at all.
“What kind of sword hilt is 170 centimeters long?!”