Chapter 42
System: Saessak advises Baek Do-woon, the Manager, to smash the box lock with a pebble.
To follow the advice, I took a pebble out of my magic pouch.
So far, nothing had ever gone wrong when I listened to Saessak’s advice.
Sure, there were times it told me to toss dirt in a crowd’s face or throw a pebble somewhere completely inappropriate for the situation.
But Saessak always gave me advice for my own good.
This time would be no different.
The flustered people kept darting their eyes between me and the pebble in my hand.
“A pebble?”
“Why a pebble?”
I understood why they were confused.
They probably wondered why I’d suddenly pulled one out.
Honestly, if Saessak hadn’t told me to, I wouldn’t have thought to use it either.
Heh. How should I put this?
Their confusion was only going to get worse from here.
I swung the pebble down hard against the lock.
Like a primitive man cracking open a beast’s skull.
Clang!
“Aah!”
“D-Do-woon? What are you doing!”
The sound of me smashing the lock was buried under the uproar of the people losing their minds.
Ignoring them, I looked down at the pebble in my hand.
With a sharp crack, it split cleanly in two.
The half that was no longer in my hand dropped to the floor with a soft thud.
Saessak says one or two tries won’t be enough and advises me to keep going.
I took a second pebble out of my magic pouch.
I still had six left.
Ammunition was plenty.
Just as I raised my arm again to smash the lock, Shim Yoon-jin grabbed my wrist.
When I looked over, she was staring wide-eyed and shaking her head hard.
“No! Are you trying to destroy everything inside?”
“No, I just plan to break the lock.”
“Don’t say ridiculous things!”
“You don’t know until you try!”
I shook off Shim Yoon-jin’s hand, which had let its guard down for a second, and brought the pebble down again.
Clang!
The sound of the impact and Shim Yoon-jin’s shriek rang out together.
This time, too, the lock was fine, and only the pebble split in half.
Saessak had said it wouldn’t work with one or two hits.
I just had to keep trying.
Shim Yoon-jin had let out a sigh of relief, but when I pulled out another pebble, she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Why do these keep coming out!”
Then she clamped both hands around my wrist and shouted to Woo Yeon-hoo and Kim Ji-yeon.
“What are you doing, unnie? Stop him!”
“Ah, uh, uh!”
Kim Ji-yeon, who’d been trapped in the swamp of her own confusion, seemed to decide to help Shim Yoon-jin.
She reached out to snatch the pebble from my hand.
She ended up grabbing my hand instead because I twisted my wrist out of the way, but still.
With two A-class hunters holding my wrist, my hand wouldn’t move.
Even when I pushed down with all my strength, their force sent my arm back up.
They were archers and a mage, but they were absurdly strong.
While we stayed locked in place, I looked at Woo Yeon-hoo.
If he joined in now, there’d be no chance of me smashing the lock with the pebble.
Fortunately, he was rubbing his chin, lost in thought.
“Hold on. Both of you, stop.”
“What? But...!”
Woo Yeon-hoo waved a hand gently at the protesting Shim Yoon-jin, telling her to calm down.
At that soft pressing motion downward, Shim Yoon-jin let out a breath.
Then she and Kim Ji-yeon both let go of my wrist at the same time.
When he had finished thinking, he looked straight at me.
“Do-woon, do you have a plan?”
Nope. I don’t have one at all.
I’m only doing this because Saessak told me to.
“Yes, something like that. It’s a little hard to explain.”
“Hmm....”
At my answer, Woo Yeon-hoo sank back into thought.
Shim Yoon-jin walked up in front of him and said he needed to stop me.
This was my chance.
…….
…….
The moment I raised the hand holding the pebble high, Kim Ji-yeon crouched down.
From her posture, it looked like she was ready to tackle me if I tried to hit the lock.
You’re an archer. Why are you thinking about tackling me?
Anyone watching would think you were a wrestler.
As I slowly lowered my hand, she straightened back up instead.
Whoosh.
……!
…….
I raised my hand again as she got back up.
She was preparing to tackle at lightning speed, so there was no opening to strike the lock.
Ah, so that doesn’t work.
Seeing me and Kim Ji-yeon like that, Woo Yeon-hoo chuckled and said, “Leave it.”
“What?”
“Let Do-woon do what he intends.”
“But...!”
I took advantage of the moment Shim Yoon-jin and Kim Ji-yeon were thrown off balance and slammed the pebble into the lock.
The third pebble split in half and fell to the floor.
They wanted to stop me, but Woo Yeon-hoo’s word made that impossible.
Huh. That left me with four pebbles.
Would that be enough?
“Why does that keep coming out...?”
“No idea. Don’t ask.”
I kept pulling pebbles from the magic pouch and hammering away at the lock one after another.
The girls shook their heads as they watched me keep producing pebbles.
Only Yu Jae-i set down the leaves she’d been handling and came over beside me, studying the pebbles from different angles.
She must have realized they weren’t ordinary pebbles and was appraising them.
“Heh, this is amazing. So that’s what it was.”
Her amazed voice was swallowed by the sound of the sixth pebble breaking.
I pulled out the last, seventh pebble.
Ah, if this one broke too, I was done for.
Carrying that worry in my chest, I brought the last pebble down hard on the lock.
Clang! Crack, rattle-rattle...!
Saessak feels much better now!
Watching the lock crumble, I felt as relieved as Saessak.
“Hah!”
“W-what? How did that happen?”
Shim Yoon-jin and Kim Ji-yeon’s eyes went wide in disbelief.
Woo Yeon-hoo also looked slightly startled as he stared at me.
It was obvious he wanted to ask how I’d done it.
Instead of explaining, I just grinned.
He shook his head, smiling faintly. Then he murmured to himself, “I had a feeling that was it.”
Glad he didn’t ask for details.
I cleared away the shattered remains of the lock hanging off the box and opened it.
Woo Yeon-hoo’s group crowded around too, peering into the contents.
“This is... a potion?”
“What are these piles of scrap metal for?”
“These are magic stones... not gems.”
The box held all sorts of odds and ends.
A glass bottle filled with an unidentified purple liquid, piles of scrap metal whose purpose I had no idea about, magic stones containing murky mana, the key blueprint we’d been looking for, and more.
Saessak warns that the items give off a disgusting aura.
After that warning, I closed the box again so no one would touch the contents.
Of course, before closing it, I took out the key blueprint, which had been folded down to a quarter of its size.
Ignoring the puzzled looks from the others, I spread it open.
Sure enough, as a key blueprint should, there was a key drawn on it.
The black lines were the blueprint, the white space was just empty room.
I couldn’t make sense of what any of it meant, so I handed it to an expert.
I passed the blueprint to Yu Jae-i.
She carefully set down the pebbles, brushed her hands clean, and examined the blueprint I’d given her.
“……?”
As she studied it, she frowned.
She even tilted her head slowly, as though she couldn’t understand it.
“This is just a normal key.”
“A normal key?”
My own brow furrowed on instinct.
What do you mean, a normal key?
I’d clearly thought there had to be some reason she was the one who needed to make it.
“Did you look at it wrong?”
At Shim Yoon-jin’s question, the mood dropped.
It was a question that crossed a line.
If you ask an expert whether they looked at something wrong, they’re not going to take it well.
Woo Yeon-hoo and Kim Ji-yeon turned to look at Shim Yoon-jin in flustered silence.
…….
Yu Jae-i narrowed her eyes and glared at Shim Yoon-jin.
It was the same look I’d seen when she mistook me for Crowd.
That quiet, burning glare just before she would’ve lunged at an enemy.
I lifted a hand and covered Yu Jae-i’s eyes.
“…What are you doing?”
“Why is it supposed to be normal?”
I asked while keeping my hand in place.
Yu Jae-i stood perfectly still in that position, then answered slowly.
“The tail of a Nepha, the heart of a Lavaphysis, and a Striga brooch.”
Nepha was a scorpion monster that lived in the desert.
Lavaphysis was a giant fish that lived in lava.
And a Striga was a witch who had become undead.
None of them were monsters that appeared in gates in Korea.
Nepha was from Mongolia, Lavaphysis from the United States, and Striga... Norway, maybe?
“What about them?”
“They’re high-end materials that most blacksmiths can’t even work with, man.”
“But?”
“It’s not like I have to be the one to handle them. If you look at the blueprint, you’ll understand-”
“I don’t understand even when I look.”
“Ah, right. Hmm, any blacksmith who knows how to infuse mana into materials could make it. I said it was a normal key because it doesn’t have to be me making it, that’s all.”
“I see....”
Nodding, I lifted my hand away from Yu Jae-i’s eyes.
The intense light in her gaze had disappeared, and she was back to her usual bored expression.
Woo Yeon-hoo and Kim Ji-yeon both let out sighs of relief.
Shim Yoon-jin looked bewildered, apparently still not understanding what she’d done wrong.
Even A-class hunters were still kids at heart, I guess.
“I thought I’d finally figure out the reason, but now I’m more lost than before.”
“We’ll have to dig deeper. By the way, would it be all right if we took the blueprint and the items in the box to investigate them?”
At Woo Yeon-hoo’s question, Yu Jae-i, still holding the blueprint, looked at me.
She was asking for my opinion.
Pretending to hesitate, I glanced at Kim Ji-yeon and Shim Yoon-jin.
“Have you two eaten yet?”
“…Pardon?”
The two of them were flustered by the abrupt question and asked back.
Smiling, I waited for an answer.
“No. Not yet.”
It wasn’t the two of them who answered, but Woo Yeon-hoo.
He must have figured out why I’d asked.
Good.
I pointed toward the front of the blacksmith shop and said, “Then why don’t you go eat? I’ll keep watch here in the meantime.”
“Would that be all right?”
“Yes.”
Woo Yeon-hoo and I smiled faintly at each other.
Then he led the two people who still didn’t understand what was going on out of the blacksmith shop.
Once the sliding door closed, Yu Jae-i asked, “So I’m still going to need protection, right?”
I’d honestly thought things would be settled once we learned the key’s identity.
But even after seeing the blueprint, we still couldn’t figure out why Crowd was targeting her.
In the end, since we still didn’t know the reason, she was going to need protection for the time being.
“It’s for your sake, so just put up with it.”
“Ugh, it doesn’t even have to be me, so why are they making this about me!”
Yu Jae-i angrily messed up her hair.
Then she crouched down and started picking up the pebbles that had fallen to the floor.
I helped her gather the broken fragments too.
“But why did you send those people away?”
“I wanted to ask you something.”
“Huh? Do those people not know you carry World Tree items around?”
“There’s no need to go around bragging about it, is there?”
At that, she nodded as if admitting I had a point.
We tossed the pebbles and fragments into the magic pouch as they were.
As she examined one of the smaller pebbles, she said, “If you think about it, this is just a normal pebble.”
“Is it?”
“The point is that it’s a pebble filled with World Tree energy. That’s why you were able to do what you just did.”
She went on explaining the pebbles.
“Because it contains the World Tree’s mana, it can attack magic itself. If the pebble had been a little bigger, it probably could’ve broken a shield spell too.”
“A pebble that can smash shield spells....”
If a pebble could do that much, what would happen if a boulder held the World Tree’s mana?
Just thinking about what I might do with that made me feel faint.
Saessak says that if the Manager wants, it can send over a boulder right now.
Huh? No, that’s not necessary, Saessak.
Even if I had something that outrageous, I wouldn’t have any use for it right now.
Saessak begins sending the boulder.
3, 2....
What? No, wait-
Saessak says it was a joke.
...Saessak?
Don’t tell me you’ve hit puberty just because one leaf grew?