WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Occult World’s Coveted Blacksmith ◈
Chapter 34: Try Using This
──────
When asked what he spent astronomical amounts of money on, Noh Jin-hyeok always gave the same answer.
“Buying good things.”
Morning sunlight streamed through a living room as large as a swimming pool. In its center, Noh Jin-hyeok finished his final set and set down the barbell.
“Whew.”
A soft, dry towel landed on the back of his sweat-soaked neck.
“The old man clearly told you not to overdo it. You only came back a few days ago.”
The secretary had thrown the towel.
Holding a tablet, the secretary shot him a sharp sideways glance.
“Take it easy with the workouts. You’re not a bear.”
“Oh, is my secretary worried about me now?”
“I’m saying your schedule is getting backed up.”
“Cold as ever.”
Noh Jin-hyeok stepped closer and lightly pulled the secretary in by the waist.
“...Weren’t you lonely, working all by yourself?”
“...”
The secretary smacked his hand away.
It was a push, but there was no real dislike behind it.
“You smell like sweat. Go wash up.”
“Want to wash together?”
The secretary lightly blocked his chest with the tablet.
“...Your schedule is getting backed up.”
When the secretary narrowed their eyes at him, Noh Jin-hyeok snickered and raised both hands.
Their little push and pull always stopped around there.
He knew that if he pressed any further, the tablet would actually come flying at him.
After showering, Noh Jin-hyeok flopped onto the sofa.
Then he picked up a small box resting on the side table.
Inside was a necklace.
A moonlike blue Spirit Stone was set in its center.
“Ah... I really bought this one well.”
Noh Jin-hyeok fondly ran his fingers over it.
This one had been pure luck.
Not long ago, he had been buried in an ancient ruin in the middle of the desert for a job commissioned by Dubai royalty.
It was surrounded by layers upon layers of Barriers that perfectly repelled not only radio signals, but even sorcery-based communication.
It was one of the so-called Isolation Zones, places completely cut off from the outside world that were common enough in this line of work.
Once someone stepped inside, there was no way to send even a single message out until the job was done.
That was why, before leaving the country, he had given his secretary a blank check and issued strict instructions.
“If a truly good listing comes up while I’m gone, buy it first. No questions asked.”
It was an order worthy of the Emperor, who would take full responsibility for whatever came afterward.
The secretary, blessed with sharp Spirit Sight and uncanny instincts, had faithfully carried out that order.
When he finally returned outside the Barrier, he found an unbelievable treasure already in his possession.
“...It’d be a shame not to show this off.”
Still lying on the sofa, Noh Jin-hyeok raised his phone.
“Hey, Secretary. Come over and film this for me.”
“...What are you trying to do this time?”
The secretary sighed, but obediently walked over and took the phone.
Once the camera app opened, Noh Jin-hyeok held up the necklace and grinned at the lens.
* * *
[Breaking] Noh Jin-hyeok really did buy that necklace.
It just showed up on his account.
└ Wow, it really is Noh Jin-hyeok.
└ If Noh Jin-hyeok bought it... isn’t that the end of it? It’s not like that guy’s a fool.
└ Come on, he’s famous for collecting weird stuff. Maybe he just bought it because it was interesting?
└ For real, we still don’t know.
People were still uncertain.
They were stirred up by the fact that Noh Jin-hyeok had bought it, but they could not bring themselves to believe it.
The mood from only a few days ago, when everyone had called it staged and fake, had not faded yet.
Then another video was uploaded to Noh Jin-hyeok’s account.
This one was fairly long.
“Look, everyone. Here’s why this thing is so damn amazing.”
Noh Jin-hyeok held up the necklace on screen.
The Spirit Stone in his hand was dull and dark, without a trace of light.
“This Spirit Stone. Like this.”
He placed a hand over the Spirit Stone.
The dull Spirit Stone slowly began to take on a blue glow.
The palm-sized stone filled with deeper, clearer light by the second.
“Fill it up like this.”
Noh Jin-hyeok rose from his seat and slowly extended a hand toward the spacious yard beyond the floor-to-ceiling window.
“In one shot.”
He pressed his thumb and middle finger together.
Then, as naturally as if delivering a light forehead flick, he snapped his fingers.
Snap!
At the same moment as that faint sound.
Kwoooooong!
The screen burst into white light.
The camera jolted violently amid an ear-splitting roar.
When the light faded and the pale dust cleared, a towering old tree that had stood in the middle of the yard was crumbling apart, roots and all, after turning into a black mass of charcoal.
“See that? It all pours out in one go. Hahaha!”
Noh Jin-hyeok’s mischievous face suddenly filled the screen.
The Spirit Stone in the necklace he held had lost its light and was now completely empty.
“What do you think? Awesome, right?”
The video ended there.
[Holy crap...!]
[LOL]
[What the hell was that?]
[He just straight-up vaporized a whole tree??]
The moment the video went up, Goblin Fire exploded with reactions.
└ Ah, the Emperor really is on another level.
└ Wow, one finger flick and the tree turns into charcoal. Does that even make sense?
└ I think he got even stronger while he was away. Did he take some spiritual medicine or something?
└ “That guy”? Call him the Emperor.
At first, comments marveling at the absurd destructive power poured in.
└ No matter how special-grade he is, does that make sense? It’s obviously thanks to the Spirit Stone.
└ It’s that powerful??? How expensive was the Spirit Stone they put in there to get that output?
└ So it really was Eul-tier??? No wonder it was expensive.
└ That Spirit Stone alone must cost hundreds of millions, and he just burned through it. What a guy, lol.
└ What a waste of a Spirit Stone. It must’ve shattered after putting out that much power.
Normally, once a Spirit Stone released everything inside it, it crumbled into a handful of dust.
Especially after producing that much power.
So everyone assumed that billion-won item could not be used again until its Spirit Stone was replaced.
But amid all the chaos, someone suddenly noticed something strange.
└ You idiots, the power isn’t the important part right now!!! Watch the video again, you clueless bastards!!
└ ???
└ The Spirit Stone didn’t break at the end. And didn’t he say he filled it up earlier? It started glowing when he touched it.
└ ...Huh?
└ Holy shit, wait. Does that mean he charged it before using it??? The Spirit Stone isn’t single-use??? What the hell????
The public opinion that had spent days calling it staged and fake flipped in an instant.
The Emperor had proven with his own hands that the item was unbelievably real.
And before people could even process that shock.
[Breaking] LOL, the other two are up for auction too.
Karmafire Dagger.
Lightning Bow.
Bidding opened simultaneously for the remaining two Ritual Implements on the same auction site.
└ LOL
└ The Do Emperor’s grand plan is insane, lol.
└ Let’s goooo~
└ I’m throwing in my entire fortune!!!
* * *
An emergency meeting was convened.
The atmosphere was completely different from the relaxed monthly meeting before.
The leaders of the Four Great Houses gathered one by one, their faces grim.
“...That bastard is already back?”
The old man at the head of the table asked again as if he could not believe it.
“Wasn’t he supposed to be stuck in an isolated zone in Dubai until the end of the year? How did someone completely cut off from the outside world buy this thing?”
“Well...”
The retainer who had compiled the information lowered their head, sweating profusely.
“We cannot make sense of it either...”
“...Hah.”
Of all people, it had to be Noh Jin-hyeok.
He was one of the few uncontrollable figures in the Occult World, beyond the reach of the families.
Someone like that had suddenly bought the item and publicly proven its power. There was no way to clean up the mess.
“Then what are we supposed to do now?! You said we could just wait until interest died down and the price fell, then pick it up cheap!”
“How could anyone have known?! Who would have thought that bastard would snatch it up first!”
“That’s why I said we should have acted sooner!”
Voices rose around the room.
Then an elder cut in with a trembling voice.
“...Wait. Wait. That isn’t the problem here. Did you all watch the video properly?”
“That blue Spirit Stone embedded in the Ritual Implement. It can be charged again? What kind of absurd nonsense is that?”
The room fell silent.
Ritual Implements with Spirit Stones embedded in them had always been common.
But those were items that used high-quality Spirit Stones to briefly increase Spiritual Power output or add certain effects.
They were used by replacing the Spirit Stones once they ran out.
Spirit Stones were meant to be bought already filled, used, and discarded.
“Is that... truly possible?”
The elders’ gazes all turned in one direction.
To Han Ye-rin, deputy head of Cheonhwa Hall.
She was the most knowledgeable person in the room when it came to the structure of Ritual Implements and Spell Formulas.
“...”
Han Ye-rin could not answer immediately.
If the question was whether it was theoretically possible, it was not completely impossible.
The moment a Spirit Stone cracked, all the Spiritual Power within it leaked out.
So if one could inscribe a reverse channel that reached the core directly without damaging the vessel in the slightest, and without disrupting the countless currents of Spiritual Power flowing outward...
Then yes, it was not an impossible technique.
Cheonhwa Hall had attempted it countless times.
Yet every single attempt had ended in failure.
The Spiritual Power used to inscribe a Spell Formula into a Spirit Stone had to be thinner than a spider’s web.
At the same time, that single strand had to carry exactly enough density to counter the pressure pushing out from within.
The force pushing outward and the force piercing inward.
The instant that delicate balance shifted by even a hair’s breadth, the Spirit Stone could not endure the pressure inside and crumbled apart.
Maintaining that minute density of Spiritual Power without the slightest tremor was already beyond the limits of human concentration.
‘...Who could make something like this?’
The instant that thought reached her, something flashed through Han Ye-rin’s mind.
‘...Wait.’
She slowly raised her head.
“...The other two items that person put up for the Hundred Flowers Festival.”
“...?”
“They also... have Spirit Stones embedded in them, do they not?”
The room froze.
“...D-Don’t tell me.”
“Those too, all of them...?”
Han Ye-rin quietly closed her eyes.
Perhaps they had already passed the point where this could be stopped.
The Emperor had shown the entire world that those items were real.
Now people would throw themselves at the chance to obtain them.
If so, there was only one answer.
Han Ye-rin slowly opened her mouth.
“...We need to buy them first.”
“...W-What?”
“Even now. At least the remaining two. Before they fall into other hands, and Cheonhwa Hall... no, the Four Great Houses become a laughingstock.”
“...”
“It would be better for us to buy them and quietly bury the matter.”
Silence fell.
It hurt their pride, but she was not wrong.
The water had already been spilled.
They had to stop it from spreading any further.
At that moment.
Bang!
The meeting room doors flew open.
“W-We have a problem!”
“...What is it now?!”
A retainer rushed in, face deathly pale, and shouted.
“J-Just now... the Karmafire Dagger was won!”
“...What?”
“Someone... just swept it up at the Buy Now price!”
“Damn it...!”
* * *
Over on Goblin Fire, another bizarre scene was unfolding.
[Anonymous] I can’t say where, but I work at a workshop run by one of the Four Great Houses.
The old bastards at the top are lining up to place secret bids for those things right now.
They squeeze us day and night for scraps because we aren’t from the main house, but they can casually burn billions on things like that. This is fucking disgusting.
└ LOL, seriously?
└ No way, for real?? Didn’t they tell everyone not to buy them?
└ Ah, hahaha. I stopped you from buying them because I wanted them for myself~
└ Those family bastards are pathetic!
Perhaps that insider’s revelation was the spark.
[Honestly, Let’s Be Real]
Author: ExorcismIsAllAboutGear
The higher-ups keep telling us not to buy them.
I’m buying one anyway.
It’s a public auction. If I buy it secretly, how will they know who I am?
└ Hey, I recognize that username. Aren’t you a Grade-1 sorcerer?
└ Same here. I was born into one of the Four Great Houses, so I feel a little bad, but I can’t hold back this time either.
└ Won’t you be in huge trouble if you get caught?
└ The people telling us not to buy them are secretly bidding first. Why should I care what they think? Lol.
Once control broke down, no one even pretended to watch their step anymore.
After all, it had been completely exposed that the same higher-ups telling everyone not to buy were trying to buy them first.
The bids soared higher and higher.
As they raised the prices against one another, their enormous wealth and greed tangling together, the auction server finally could not endure it and crashed again.
* * *
“What do you mean, you couldn’t get it?!”
At the emergency meeting that reconvened, an elder’s roar echoed through the room.
“Didn’t I tell you to buy up at least the last remaining item somehow?! Why not?!”
“Well... the auction site has been repeatedly crashing for days because of the flood of traffic...”
The retainer continued the report, drenched in sweat.
“So many people from both Houses and non-House backgrounds rushed in... The traffic reached the level of a DDoS attack, so even our people could not get onto the site properly.”
“...”
“We also sent people directly to Gyeongseong Auction to try contacting them offline, but...”
The retainer moistened dry lips.
“By the time we confirmed it, even the bow had already been sold.”
“...Who did it go to?”
“Gyeongseong Auction said they could not reveal that under any circumstances...”
“Pathetic fools!”
Bang!
Someone slammed a hand against the table.
“To begin with, how did word get out that we were trying to buy them? Whose mouth leaked it?!”
The old men’s faces reddened at the fact that they had become a public laughingstock because they could not keep their own people in line.
“...”
Han Ye-rin only watched the scene in silence.
What use was finding the culprit now?
By the time they tried to act, everything was already over.
During the days when the site repeatedly crashed and came back up, the items had long since all been sold amid the chaos.
In the middle of it all, Han Ye-rin silently chewed on her thumbnail.
It was a childhood habit that surfaced whenever she faced a problem she could not solve.
She had thought she had broken it long ago, yet it had returned without her realizing.
* * *
“Bwahahahaha! Everyone’s losing their minds! They’re all losing their minds!”
Noh Jin-hyeok sat on the sofa with his legs crossed, laughing cheerfully as he scrolled through his phone.
They had been his secretary for several years now.
They had seen all kinds of strange behavior from him, but today was particularly unusual.
“...You seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“It’s fun. Mocking those family bastards is my favorite thing in the world.”
Still chuckling, Noh Jin-hyeok snapped his fingers as if he had just remembered something.
“Oh, right. Secretary. Make sure you deliver that necklace to them like I told you.”
“...Understood.”
As the secretary moved to take the case, Noh Jin-hyeok stopped them.
“Oh, wait. Before you deliver it.”
He picked up the necklace again.
“...?”
He stepped closer and placed the necklace around the secretary’s neck.
“I tried filling it with Spiritual Power yesterday. No matter how much I poured in, it just kept taking more. Filling it completely took quite a while.”
Lightly smoothing their collar, he grinned.
“Try using this.”
“...Pardon? Me?”
The secretary stared uncertainly down at the necklace around their neck.
“My secretary is damn good at work.”
Noh Jin-hyeok gave a teasing smile.
“But your Spiritual Power is tiny. You can barely qualify as Grade 4, right?”
“...Boss.”
The secretary shot him a glare.
He was poking at something that already bothered them.
The secretary knew better than anyone that their natural vessel was small.
No matter how much they trained, it never seemed to grow.
“What’s the point of feeling wronged? You were born that way. Well, thanks to that, I get to keep someone like you by my side and work you hard.”
Noh Jin-hyeok pointed at the necklace.
“Just draw on what’s inside as if you were releasing a Suppression Talisman.”
“...What exactly are you telling me to do with this?”
“Light up a goblin fire in that open part of the yard. Ah, do it over by the pond.”
The secretary let out a deep sigh.
A goblin fire was among the most basic fire-attribute Spell Formulas.
With the secretary’s own Spiritual Power, even lighting a small flame was difficult.
Having a Spirit Stone would not make things all that different.
The power released from a Spirit Stone was like fireworks that exploded once and were done.
Its flow was unruly, and its output could not be controlled.
If it could be controlled at will, everyone would carry handfuls of Spirit Stones around.
Spirit Stones were emergency tools, nothing more.
So even at best, most of that rough power would surely fizzle out at the fingertips without even forming a Spell Formula.
Perhaps a flame the size of a candle would become about as big as a campfire.
What was he trying to tease the secretary with this time?
Still, it was an order from the boss.
The secretary extended a hand toward the pond with an indifferent expression.
As though releasing a Suppression Talisman, the secretary drew out a very small amount of Spiritual Power as usual.
Whoosh!
A small spark formed at their fingertips.
It was no bigger than a candle flame.
‘Just as expected.’
Just as the secretary was about to think that.
“...Huh?”
That small spark swelled out of control in an instant.
Kwoooooooooosh!
It became a massive pillar of fire that seemed to tear through the sky and swallowed the air whole.
“...H-Huh?!”
The secretary doubted their eyes.
It was a flame they had never once imagined being able to handle in their entire life.
Yet the wild, enormous Spiritual Power flowing from their fingertips was being controlled with astonishing perfection.
As if it had been Spiritual Power cultivated within them from the beginning.
Sssssss!
When the immense steam cleared, the enormous artificial pond that had rippled in the center of the yard had dried up completely, exposing its ugly bottom without a single drop of water left.
“...”
The secretary looked back and forth between their hand and the necklace hanging from their neck.
Their fingertips were still trembling.
They had simply drawn it out and released it once.
Yet that alone had so easily crossed a wall they had thought they could never reach, no matter how hard they struggled for the rest of their life.
“...Hah.”
Behind the stunned secretary, Noh Jin-hyeok gave a hollow laugh and picked up his outerwear.
“Secretary. Make sure you deliver that.”
“...Pardon? Boss, where are you going?”
“I need to go out for a bit.”
“At this hour? Where on earth are you going...!”
Noh Jin-hyeok grinned.
“To meet someone.”
Footnotes:
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