Chapter 77
When I got to Jae-i's Blacksmith, it was broad daylight.
I’d slept in, and the day had slipped away on me.
Do-hee had already gone to work, so I grabbed a quick meal by myself and came straight to the smithy.
“Huh?”
On the way over, after parking the car, I noticed a man I didn’t recognize.
He was dressed in a black suit like some office worker, but he was out there warming up.
He stretched both arms out, bent and straightened his legs, then repeated the motion a few times before suddenly breaking into a full sprint.
“…What is he doing?”
The man ran with everything he had, and before long he was already at the end of the alley.
He shrank down to a speck, then turned left and kept going without slowing at all.
If he was going to run that seriously, he should have prepared properly in the first place.
What was the point of coming out in a suit?
“What a strange guy.”
Shaking my head, I opened the sliding door to Jae-i's Blacksmith and went inside.
The moment I stepped in, I felt a heavy presence pressing down on my shoulders.
“Ah, hello…?”
“Welcome to Jae-i's Blacksmith….”
Kim Ji-yeon and Sim Yoon-jin greeted me without even looking up.
Their voices were limp and drawling, as if they were bored out of their minds.
I’d wondered what that weight on my shoulders was supposed to be, and seeing them like that, I understood immediately.
The source of that pressure was boredom.
I closed the door and looked at their faces.
They both looked like they had no idea why they were even here.
“Hmm….”
I could understand why they were so restless.
They were A-class Hunters, and instead of being out in a gate, they’d been stuck inside a smithy doing nothing. Anyone would suffer.
Even professional bodyguards went through separate training just to learn how not to feel bored while on the job.
Since these two hadn’t received that kind of training, it was only natural that they were miserable and listless.
If the Crowd bastards had actually attacked, things might have been different.
But they hadn’t come near Yu Jae-i even once since their guy died.
Not a peep. Nothing.
I supposed it was time to let them go.
“Welcome ba-… you’re here?”
Yu Jae-i came out from the back after opening the door.
Her face brightened the moment she saw me.
That bright expression told me she’d been as bored as the other two.
If she hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have let it show like that.
“Yeah. You’ve been doing okay?”
I walked toward her as I asked.
As soon as I did, her eyes flicked sideways.
Kim Ji-yeon and Sim Yoon-jin were draped over the counter and a chair like people trying to become one with them.
It was a pretty funny sight, but their expressions were so heartbreakingly dead that I couldn’t laugh at all.
If I kept them at Jae-i's Blacksmith much longer, they really might fuse with the counter or chair.
“What do you think?”
“Well, it looks like you’ve been doing extremely well.”
“You want to die?”
Yu Jae-i glared at me, lifting a hand like she wanted to smack me.
We were a little too far apart for her to actually reach me, though.
Her raised arm dropped again.
She hadn’t wanted bodyguards in the first place.
She’d only accepted them because of the Crowd bastards.
No choice. It was time to make a real decision.
So I made one right away.
“Yu Jae-i.”
“Yeah?”
“Come live with me.”
“…Out of nowhere?”
The World Tree young sprout is sending excitement!
Excitement?
What the hell kind of excitement was that out of nowhere?
“…Ah.”
It didn’t take long for me to realize why Saessak was reacting like that.
I’d misspoken.
What I meant to say wasn’t some marriage proposal or anything like that.
I wanted to say that I’d protect her from the Crowd bastards, so we should stay together for a while.
But….
“You insane bastard!”
“W-what, what, what! Do-woon, are you crazy right now?”
“Who the hell proposes like that?”
“No way. That can’t possibly be happening!”
Kim Ji-yeon and Sim Yoon-jin shouted in total misunderstanding.
It was my fault for wording it badly, so I couldn’t exactly blame them.
No wonder even Saessak said it was excited.
I looked over at Yu Jae-i, worried that she’d misunderstood too.
She met my gaze, expressionless, and shook her head.
Thankfully, it didn’t seem like she’d taken it that way.
“So what you meant was this, right?”
“Huh?”
“You felt bad for these two, so you wanted to say that we should live together and you’d keep me safe. That’s what you meant, right?”
“Uh, yeah…. That’s right.”
Exactly.
That was definitely what I wanted to say.
The young sprout is sending deep disappointment!
Kim Ji-yeon and Sim Yoon-jin seemed disappointed too.
Both of them frowned at the same time, as if to say, “Who says something like that that way?”
Well, I had no excuse, so I could only give an awkward laugh.
Yu Jae-i let out a long sigh and went on.
“Do you think we can keep working?”
“Hmm….”
I didn’t know how long things would go on with the Crowd.
At the very least, it didn’t look like it would be over quickly.
The enemies I’d dealt with so far hadn’t been all that strong, so it almost felt like this could end easily, but the other side was a terrorist organization operating all over the world.
Bats, centipedes, bees….
There was no way those trash-level bastards were their core members.
The real core had probably only just begun moving.
“Jae-i, under the circumstances, I think it’d be better if you took a break.”
“Ji-yeon is right. The Crowd may not look like much, but there’s a reason they haven’t been caught until now.”
“I agree with that, but….”
Yu Jae-i glanced at me.
I could see in her face that she knew the situation was dangerous, but didn’t want to give up on work.
I understood that feeling.
I’d feel the same way.
Just because something was dangerous didn’t mean I’d give up on what I wanted to do.
Why should Yu Jae-i and I have to hold back from doing what we wanted because of those bastards?
It should be the bastards who had to hold back.
“First, we need to figure out a place.”
“Huh?”
“Somewhere you can keep doing blacksmith work.”
“Ah…!”
Since things had come to this, I’d have to think bigger.
Right now, Yu Jae-i wasn’t the only one in the Crowd’s sights.
They’d come to her for a different reason, but Hong Su-jeong wasn’t exactly safe either.
There had even been someone who came to her workshop just to greet me.
I’d need to figure out a way for Hong Su-jeong and Ji Sang-wook to live together, at the very least.
Maybe I should have Kim Jae-sik join them while I’m at it?
“In that case, fine! I’ve been feeling bad for these two this whole time anyway.”
“Then it’s settled.”
She accepted without hesitation.
It had taken a bit of a detour, but it ended up exactly where I wanted it.
Now we just had to prepare a safe place to stay, or come up with some other plan.
Honestly, if we all lived together at my place, it would solve everything.
My house was protected by all sorts of defensive magic, just like Bangju Orphanage.
If anything, it was even stronger, so it was more than enough to keep people safe.
But that meant I’d have to get permission from Do-hee, who was both my live-in companion and the lady of the house.
There was no way Do-hee would agree.
Even if she did allow it because of the seriousness of the situation, she definitely wouldn’t be happy about it.
“For now, let’s go with that.”
I turned to look at Sim Yoon-jin and Kim Ji-yeon.
A faint smile had appeared on both their faces.
“Could you two bear with it just a little longer? I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve got something ready.”
“Ah, you really didn’t have to….”
“Thank you, thank you….”
Their reactions were completely different.
That was the difference between someone who could keep up appearances and someone who couldn’t.
Sim Yoon-jin gave Kim Ji-yeon’s shoulder a light tap.
But Kim Ji-yeon didn’t care; she kept bowing her head over and over, thanking me nonstop.
Apparently it had been far harder on them than I’d expected.
“Did you come here just to say that?”
“Ah, no. I came to ask you to make some equipment.”
“Equipment?”
“Make me a shield.”
“A shield? Ah, Lee Tae-cheon.”
“Use this.”
I took a pinecone out of my inventory.
The three women all widened their eyes at the sight of it.
“Ah, that’s-”
“The pinecone he used to kill Kim Mu-yeon!”
“Hey, what are you blurting that out for?”
This time, Kim Ji-yeon gave Sim Yoon-jin’s shoulder a light smack.
Sim Yoon-jin didn’t care in the slightest.
By then, the three women had shaken off their bored, half-dead expressions completely.
I stepped up to the counter and inspected the pinecone from every angle.
Yu Jae-i tapped it a few times, the way someone might test a watermelon.
“Oh, it’s harder than I thought.”
At that, the other two women looked at me.
They seemed to be asking whether they could touch it too.
It wasn’t like it would wear down just from touching it, so I nodded and gave them permission.
They immediately started tapping and feeling it for themselves.
They even tried pushing it a little, but it didn’t budge at all.
Yu Jae-i was the first of the three to look away from the pinecone.
“Did you have Su-jeong appraise it?”
“Yeah. I’m on my way back from getting it appraised.”
She pointed at the pinecone with her thumb.
I nodded and told her what the appraisal had said.
“She said it’s got an outer shell as hard as the shell of a Gyusu Mountain.”
“Whoa, that hard? Lee Tae-cheon, you’ve got a good friend.”
“Wait a second!”
Sim Yoon-jin, who had been examining the pinecone, suddenly cut in.
Yu Jae-i and I both turned to look at her.
Her eyes showed clear confusion.
“What did you just say, Do-woon? This pinecone is as hard as what?”
“The shell of a Gyusu Mountain.”
“Uh, that’s just an expression, right?”
“No. Su-jeong doesn’t usually talk like that. If she said it, then that’s what it is.”
“Th-!”
Sim Yoon-jin’s voice shot up so high it cracked.
She cleared her throat and tried again.
She must have been seriously rattled.
It really would be strange not to be rattled standing in front of something on the level of a Gyusu Mountain shell.
Only someone like Yu Jae-i, who’d already seen plenty of the materials I brought in, could stay calm.
“Then sell it to us!”
“To us?”
“Ah, not us-us.”
“I know. You mean sell it to Ildae Group, right?”
“Yes!”
Sell it to Ildae Group, huh.
Actually, I only needed the part for the shield.
I hadn’t decided what to do with the rest yet.
Selling it wasn’t a bad option.
A material as hard as a Gyusu Mountain shell.
It would probably be worth at least the price of a building.
“If I’m going to sell it, I’ll use about a third of it for myself. Is that okay?”
“Of course it is.”
“Then I’m willing to sell it.”
“Nice! Hmm, for something about this size… 100 billion won should do it. What do you think?”
What came out of Sim Yoon-jin’s mouth wasn’t the value of an ordinary building.
It was the price of a building on Gangnam-daero in Seoul.
One hundred billion won wasn’t some dog’s name; I nearly got the hiccups from the shock.
It was cheaper than the value of a Gyusu Mountain shell, but the shell itself was probably only roughly comparable in hardness, not size. Normally, a Gyusu Mountain shell had about twice the surface area of this pinecone.
“…Can I ask one thing?”
“Yes, ask anything!”
“Can you actually pay that much?”
“Heh, of course.”
Sim Yoon-jin smiled with confidence.
It was a proud, self-assured smile.
“I’m not the one paying. Big brother Yeon-hoo is.”
“…….”
Well, of course he was.
What I’d really wanted to know was whether they could just throw around numbers like that on their own.
As she’d said, the money would come from Woo Yeon-hoo.
I turned slightly and looked at Kim Ji-yeon.
She seemed to notice the question in my eyes and gave me a small nod.
Meaning yes, they could afford it.
All right, then. What would they say if I pushed a little further?
“I think my mind might change if you show me a professional appraisal certificate.”
“What? You’re saying 100 billion isn’t enough?”
“That’s right.”
Sim Yoon-jin and Kim Ji-yeon both widened their eyes.
They were reacting because they had no idea this thing was actually the pinecone of the former World Tree.
It wasn’t just hard.
“150 billion.”
That was about right.