NOVEL NEXT Chapter 16
Chapter 16: Weapon Swap (3)
The time when Sweet Fun arrived near the office.
Kim Si-hu, who was deeply lost in thought while looking down at the floor, spoke up.
“Sigh… I think I paid too much for that dagger earlier.”
“I hesitate to say it since I bought it, but I feel the same.”
“There’s no way a dagger that can easily tear through werewolf leather costs 3.3 million won.”
Yoo Ji-han brought his hand to his left chest.
What he felt through his clothes was the dagger he had hidden away to keep from prying eyes, even without a proper scabbard.
Even though the guild had been raking in goods recently, normally he wouldn’t have made such an expenditure.
Curious, Kim Si-hu asked, “Are you really feeling magic from it?”
“It’s true. It’s strange that you can’t feel it!”
“I don’t think so… I feel like I just lost real money…”
“Then you should think of it as two months’ worth of salary gone.”
Magic was still sensed from the dagger.
However, unlike Yoo Ji-han, Kim Si-hu was unaware of it.
Soon they entered the office, placing everything they had brought onto the table.
Nam Ho-yeol’s free sword and an old dagger.
Along with a monster bundle and some miscellaneous office supplies they had purchased as extras.
“Let me check this out for a moment.”
Ping! Ping!
Kim Si-hu picked up the dagger and flicked its blade with his finger.
He then tried injecting his magic into it and pulled on both the handle and blade as if to separate them.
Yet nothing happened.
“I still can’t understand it.”
“Even if you made a bad purchase, you can still carry it as a backup weapon.”
If magic could be sensed, there must be some special effect.
Thus, they intended to use it as a weapon for emergencies.
‘…I wonder if the spirit can figure it out?’
Yoo Ji-han suddenly thought.
If it were a spirit, a magical entity itself, it might be able to sense the magic emanating from the weapon, right?
Ding!
He hesitantly summoned the Sylph.
“Sylph, take a look at this dagger for me.”
Responding to Yoo Ji-han’s request, the Sylph flew towards the dagger.
The Sylph, spinning right above the dagger, soon landed on the table.
It began to investigate by touching the handle and the blade as requested.
A short while later.
Thunk!
The Sylph, perched on the handle of the dagger, suddenly jumped up high as if leaping.
At the same time, a light emanated from the Sylph’s body, rapidly flashing from bright to dark.
“W-what is this?”
“Looks like it’s surprised?”
Even Kim Si-hu, seeing this for the first time, noticed something was amiss.
The contractor, Yoo Ji-han, could tell that the spirit’s actions were close to astonishment.
It was a scene where the spirit was expressing its emotions.
It was clear that it had detected something.
Thump, thump.
Afterwards, the Sylph continued to jump atop the dagger’s hilt.
Not just once or twice; it did this more than ten times.
“…?”
Yoo Ji-han tilted his head as he lifted the dagger.
The Sylph followed suit, tapping the same spot on the hilt over and over.
“There’s something inside here.”
“What?”
After a moment’s contemplation, he managed to pull the hilt out from the table, setting the dagger down.
Then, he struck it down with a sword made with the horn of the Angry Yak.
This would certainly break the dagger, but it was worthwhile to satisfy his growing curiosity.
Swish!
The sharp blade cleanly sliced through the hilt of the dagger, which turned out not to be as sturdy as expected.
The severed hilt dropped to the floor.
Thud!
With the impact against the floor, something popped out from the cut surface.
‘A gem?’
A round, red stone the size of a thumbnail.
It seemed to be a gem, slightly transparent inside.
So this had been hidden within the hilt.
“Whoa, damn…! What is that?!”
Kim Si-hu’s eyes widened as he gazed at the gem that had fallen to the ground.
He could definitely sense some magic emanating from it.
Moreover, it was an astonishing amount that felt surprising for not having been noticed until now!
Could this be the magic Yoo Ji-han had mentioned?
Zoom—
The Sylph, hovering in the air, dove towards the red gem.
Whoosh!
A moment later, a bright light burst forth from the Sylph as it contacted the gem.
The red hue of the gem mixed with the Sylph’s green glow, taking on a slightly yellow tint.
The two onlookers couldn’t withstand the brilliance and squinted their eyes.
Whoosh!
After a while, the light rapidly faded, and the Sylph floated back up into the air.
The gem that had fallen was reduced to gray powder.
Kim Si-hu, kneeling on one knee on the floor, picked up the powder from the gem with his fingers and rubbed it.
Then he concluded about this bizarre occurrence.
“The Sylph absorbed the gem’s magic.”
“It absorbed it? Really?”
“Not a trace left. Completely clean.”
The power of the gem had vanished entirely.
In exchange, the presence of the Sylph in the office had increased slightly.
It was clear the Sylph had absorbed the gem’s magical energy.
Yoo Ji-han asked Kim Si-hu, who was fiddling with the powder, “Do you have any idea what it might be?”
“Well… Is this from Earth? Though not precisely, I think it’s a part of a high-tier monster, or perhaps an item with magic from another world like Florun. Have you ever seen something like this during your activities?”
“Never seen anything like it.”
Kim Si-hu grabbed the hilt that had fallen to the floor.
As he examined the hole where the gem had been hidden, he slowly began to flow magic into it.
But the flow of magic did not go smoothly at all.
Realizing something, he shouted.
“Magic blocking coating! There’s a coating inside the handle! That’s why I didn’t catch on. Who would apply such a coating here…!”
Surprisingly, the hilt had a coating that blocked magic.
Yoo Ji-han sensed that from a considerable distance.
“I don’t know how I figured that out.”
“It must be thanks to your contract with the spirit. The Sylph identified the dagger after being summoned.”
Kim Si-hu speculated that the strangely obedient spirit had some effect on Yoo Ji-han’s magic.
No other reasoning came to mind.
“And maybe…”
As Kim Si-hu placed the hilt back on the table, he added, “This dagger might have been an artifact long ago, or it’s a decoy weapon created to hide this mysterious gem from the very start.”
An artifact that had lost its power over time.
Or a weapon crafted for the purpose of transporting a special gem from the beginning.
Kim Si-hu considered the dagger to be one of these.
<— The probability that this broken dagger was an artifact>
No response came back to Yoo Ji-han’s sampling.
In such cases, this skill was truly useless.
“Your Florun also contains magical material, right? That’s still intact, but the gem has turned to powder.”
“Not all magic is the same. Florun is a very special case among the materials used.”
If spirits could absorb all types of magic, the spirit masters would have long ago extracted magic from their own power and various materials to feed it to the spirits.
Perhaps it’s a matter of discerning tastes; spirits tend to rent out their magic to their contractors but rarely accept outside magic easily.
“Shall we give it a try?”
“What do you mean?”
“Spirit enhancement.”
Yoo Ji-han looked at the Sylph.
The Sylph was hovering perfectly still, waiting for his command.
“Sylph, enhance that staff for me.”
Whoosh!
As soon as he gave the order or request, green light wrapped around the staff.
It even appeared brighter than before, possibly an illusion.
And using the spirit enhancement, seconds turned into 5, 10…
Twenty seconds passed.
“Thirty seconds!”
“Wow.”
Just yesterday, the ability lasted a little over twenty seconds.
However, now even after exceeding thirty seconds, the Sylph seemed perfectly fine.
It marked yet another record-breaking achievement within a day.
Swish—
About 1 minute and 20 seconds in, Yoo Ji-han canceled the magic.
He felt he could have lasted longer, but it was wise not to overdo it immediately.
After all, he didn’t know what burden would fall on the Sylph after absorbing magic on the same day.
“The duration increased fourfold compared to yesterday!”
“It seems that gem really did have an effect.”
“To grow this quickly…”
It was widely known that a spirit’s power grows with the contractor’s physical and mental development, the length of the contract, and the experiences gained.
The practice of forcibly absorbing magic contained in an object like this was technically not documented.
‘Maybe the renowned spirit masters already knew.’
While spirit masters occasionally announce research results, what’s publicly shared is limited compared to the small number of practitioners.
With no separate opportunities for mutual exchange, developing one’s spirit is solely one’s responsibility.
The spirits of globally famous spirit masters may have grown similarly to how the Sylph was absorbing the gem now.
Kim Si-hu exclaimed excitedly.
“Did he really sell an artifact-grade piece of equipment for just 3.3 million won? Is he really an angel?”
*
In this era, the representative national administrative organization of South Korea, the Hero Department.
Due to the ongoing claims from the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Public Administration and Security that they should hold the authority to manage heroes, it eventually led to the establishment of a new organization, separate from existing ones, like those overseas.
“Ah, ah. Mic check.”
In the conference room on the third floor of the Hero Department.
A U-shaped table with a long gap in the middle was filled with several senior figures from the department.
However, not all the chairs that were prepared for the scheduled number of attendees were filled, and seats for ministers or deputy ministers remained empty here and there.
Zing—
On the large white screen that descended from the wall, a projector displayed images.
The presenter standing next to the screen confirmed that the microphone was working properly, smiled slightly, and said,
“We’ll start the meeting now.”
Barely announcing the start of the meeting, someone sitting in a chair shot their hand up high.
When the presenter pointed at them, they opened their mouth.
“I’m in a hurry for the next agenda behind this, so could you quickly go over the main issues?”
“Yes. Many are too busy to attend today. We’ll just touch on the crucial points as you mentioned. Once the meeting ends, we’ll upload the presentation materials onto the intranet, so those who want more details can check it out then.”
As the presenter operated the remote control, they flipped through several slides of the presentation.
They skipped any content that wasn’t significant.
Then, images of unknown animals and strange plants appeared on the screen.
The commonality among them was that most were unfamiliar life forms, little known to the public.
“The first agenda is the recent surge in mutations in Korea.”
“What about overseas, not Korea?”
“According to sources in Japan, China, and the U.S., the situation worldwide appears to be no different from that of Korea.”
A worldwide surge in mutations.
Someone sighed briefly in the conference room.
“I mean, it’s a headache dealing with regular monsters, but why are mutants suddenly increasing?”
“The major guilds, including Red Hole, are currently investigating this at our own research institute, but we haven’t found a clear cause yet. It will take at least two more weeks to finish the investigation of the collected specimens.”
“I’ve heard there’s one in the Rank 5 Monster Area? Was it a chicken?”
“Yes. Just a few days ago, a mutation of the Giant Monster was discovered in Bucheon’s Rank 5 MA.”
As the presenter pressed a button on the remote, a giant chicken appeared on the screen, taking up the entire view.
It was the one Yoo Ji-han had decapitated and removed its legs with a sword.