The Occult World’s Coveted Blacksmith - Chapter 36

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Occult World’s Coveted Blacksmith ◈

Chapter 36: What’s Weakening?

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I lightly shook the gourd bottle in my hand.

‘Hmm. It went in nicely.’

That was a relief.

I’d hurriedly shaped it yesterday, so the finish was a little rough, but it seemed to be working properly.

A faint vibration came from within, as if the Cursed spirit inside the gourd bottle were struggling.

This was kind of fun.

It even felt a little like fishing.

I raised my head.

Then...

“...?”

The auditorium was silent as a grave.

The students and the woman standing at the front were all staring at the gourd bottle in my hand.

They must have been badly startled by the Cursed spirit’s sudden escape.

“H-How did you just...?”

The woman who’d told us not to come in, probably a teaching assistant, stared at me blankly.

How did I do what?

Wasn’t this a Sealing Studies class?

Had she never seen a gourd bottle before?

The guide beside me spoke up.

“Ahaha... This is Master Do. We came to see Professor Gu, but where is the professor right now...?”

“Eek!”

Someone among the students suddenly let out a short scream.

Startled by their own outburst, they quickly covered their mouth with both hands.

That set the students whispering among themselves.

“...Who did they say he is?”

“Master Do, apparently?”

“Huh? Seriously?”

“Who? Who is that?”

“You know, that Eul-tier artisan. Do Emperor, the one everyone was making such a fuss about...!”

“Holy shit. He’s ridiculously handsome.”

“That’s Do Emperor...?”

I knew people on Goblin Fire were always going on about Do Emperor this and Do Emperor that, but hearing it right in front of me was awkward.

It was embarrassing enough to give me goosebumps.

Before the students’ murmuring could die down...

Creeeak.

The auditorium doors opened behind us, and someone rushed in.

A man in a black suit with slicked-back hair and glasses. He had a somewhat decadent air about him.

“P-Professor Gu!”

The teaching assistant ran over to him.

The professor kept scanning the auditorium.

“Did anything happen? I could’ve sworn the seal was broken...”

His words trailed off.

“...?”

The man looked around the auditorium with a bewildered expression.

So that was Professor Gu.

He must have sensed the Cursed spirit breaking free on his way here.

But the thing that had escaped was already inside my gourd bottle.

“Ms. Si-yeon, what... happened here?”

He looked at the teaching assistant as he asked.

The assistant stammered out an explanation.

During practice, the binding rope had broken, and the Cursed spirit used for training had escaped. Then I had sealed it away.

“...You sealed it? Master Do did?”

He glanced at the guide before looking at me.

The guide hurriedly stepped in to introduce me.

“This is Master Do, who accepted this commission and came here.”

The professor looked surprised for a moment, then held out his hand to me.

“...My greetings are late. I’m Gu Do-gyeom, a professor of Sealing Studies at Korea Sorcery University.”

“Ah, yes.”

I lightly shook his hand.

Even during the handshake, Gu Do-gyeom still looked dazed.

“...But did you truly seal the Heuksan Ghost yourself?”

“Yes. I happened to have just made one.”

I held up the gourd bottle in my hand.

“...Then who weakened it?”

Gu Do-gyeom turned toward the teaching assistant and the guide.

But both of them repeatedly shook their heads.

“Surely... did you do it yourself, Master?”

Weakening?

Was there some procedure like that?

This was the first sealing implement I’d ever made, so there was no way I could know about rituals or steps like that.

‘All I had to do was seal it. Why would there be procedures?’

“...No. I didn’t do anything like that.”

“...What?”

Gu Do-gyeom’s eyes widened behind his glasses.

“W-What do you mean...? Are you saying you simply sealed the Heuksan Ghost without weakening it first?”

“...I suppose so.”

I tilted my head, wondering what the problem was, but Gu Do-gyeom’s expression grew stranger by the second.

He looked like he’d seen something terribly wrong.

“Ha...”

He stared at me silently for a long time before seeming to collect himself.

“...For now, shall we go to my laboratory?”

* * *

As I followed the professor toward his laboratory, I discreetly took out my phone.

‘What’s a Heuksan Ghost, and what’s weakening?’

The Heuksan Ghost was obviously the name of a Cursed spirit.

It wasn’t that I’d never looked into them, but there were so many kinds of Cursed spirits that I couldn’t memorize every last one.

I vaguely remembered seeing a post on Goblin Fire that roughly sorted Cursed spirits by type.

The moment I opened the Goblin Fire app to look up some information...

A title on the main banner caught my eye.

[HOT] I heard Do Emperor just showed up at Sorcery University?

‘...What’s this?’

└ No bullshit.

└ It’s real. Check the Sorcery University tab.

Absentmindedly, I clicked the Sorcery University tab.

[HOT] Do Emperor just showed up at school!

└ 68 comments

[Live] Something just went wrong during Sealing Studies practice. Damn.

└ A Grade-2 Cursed spirit almost escaped. Apparently, the binding rope broke.

└ Whoa, that was almost bad. So what happened?

└ Do Emperor handled it.

└ ??? Why is Do Emperor here all of a sudden?

└ No idea. Guess he came for a commission.

└ It wasn’t even weakened, and he just stuffed it into a gourd bottle?

└ Crazy. How is that even possible?

└ Because he’s Do Emperor.

└ The one and only Do Emperor.

‘Hmm.’

The response wasn’t bad.

Absentmindedly clicking the next popular post, I froze.

[HOT] Breaking News) Do Emperor Is Seriously Hot.

└ Cut the crap. No way.

└ It’s true. He looked really young too. He was seriously handsome.

└ Damn, what doesn’t he have?

└ No, I feel so deprived...

“...”

I turned off the screen and stared at my reflection in the phone.

Well, that father and daughter from the apothecary really were skilled.

They were worth every penny.

When I first changed my face, I’d honestly been a little worried.

What if someone noticed that I’d changed it?

But surprisingly...

Not one person had even considered it.

As it turned out, there was a reason for that.

A technique that changed someone’s entire face wasn’t known to the world in the first place.

According to Seo Ji-an, it was a secret technique known only to that apothecary owner.

For some reason, the father and daughter kept the technique thoroughly hidden and accepted only a very limited number of customers through private referrals.

Even Seo Ji-an didn’t seem to know the exact reason.

‘...Well, it’s convenient for me.’

It was incredibly expensive, but now that I had plenty of money, I could use it as often as I wanted.

‘Ha, there really is nothing money can’t do.’

Satisfied, I put my phone back in my pocket.

“Come in.”

* * *

The laboratory was clean and orderly.

One wall was lined with jars containing what looked like preserved specimens.

Gu Do-gyeom led me to the sofa.

“Please, sit. ...Would you like some coffee?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“I see... Then let’s get straight to the point.”

He sat across from me and picked up the tablet from the table.

“Would you look at this first?”

After tapping the screen a few times, he turned it toward me.

A video was playing.

It showed a deep mountain valley.

Beyond layers of Barriers, something enormous was moving.

At first, I thought it was a large deer.

It had the form of a white beast, with antlers like a deer’s, and bluish spiritual energy billowing from its entire body like mist.

A spirit beast?

No, it looked more like one of those divine beasts I’d only seen in animation.

But then...

Roaaar!

The divine spirit was ramming itself against the Barrier with bloodshot eyes, as if it had gone mad.

It didn’t care that it was injuring itself.

Dark red blood splattered everywhere whenever it struck the Barrier.

“...This is an Isolation Zone that recently formed near Unhaksan Mountain in Gangwon Province.”

Gu Do-gyeom spoke with a grim expression.

As I watched the screen and listened to his explanation, I immediately understood the situation.

In short, the rampaging beast had originally been a benevolent local deity that had protected the residents of that region for many years.

Then one day, it had suddenly been seized by madness and become violent.

The problem was that a powerful family rooted in that area considered the guardian deity deeply sacred.

“That’s why the higher-ups want to avoid exterminating it if possible. They say it’s only temporarily possessed by something and running wild, so we should find some way to capture it and calm it down.”

They couldn’t just kill it.

According to Gu Do-gyeom, even if a high-ranking sorcerer went after it in earnest, there was no guarantee they could exterminate that thing.

Yet they were being asked not to kill a monster like that, but to capture it peacefully.

It was an unreasonable request.

“But... the problem is that we can’t contain it with existing sealing implements.”

“It must have formed a Spiritual Body.”

“...Yes. That’s right. But how did you...?”

I’d done some studying in advance yesterday after hearing that this was a commission for a sealing implement.

I still didn’t know much about sorcery.

But when I thought about it, I had made something similar in the game before.

An inventory bag!

It was the quintessential item for handling a subspace.

After going through my secret friend, Apprentice’s Diary, and studying it...

It was just as I’d suspected.

The basic Spell Formula for a sealing implement was nothing more than an inventory with a Barrier added to stop things inside from leaking out.

That was why I’d made this gourd bottle as a test last night.

Once you knew the basic principle, the form didn’t matter. It could be a jar or anything else.

‘...Well, it was pretty useful.’

It had just sucked up that Heuksan Ghost or whatever it was.

Still...

‘The problem is that objects won’t go inside.’

It happened when I made the Portable Forge Kit last time.

No matter how much I reduced its weight, it was still quite inconvenient to carry around.

So I’d tried to make an inventory...

But I failed.

I didn’t know why, but the subspace wouldn’t open.

It seemed not every theory from the game worked here.

Still, while searching through Apprentice’s Diary for information on sealing implements, I found a related passage.

Spiritual Power, Imprinted Intent, and things in the form of Vengeful spirits can be sealed. But if they grow too powerful and gain a physical body, in other words, a Spiritual Body, they can no longer be contained in an ordinary sealing implement. Master said that in such cases...

And conveniently, the solution seemed to continue on the next page.

I turned the page.

“...?”

It was blank.

The flow of the writing clearly continued, but the next page alone was completely empty.

As if someone had deliberately erased it.

Well, that was why I still hadn’t succeeded in making an inventory.

“...”

On the screen, the divine beast was still thrashing about wildly.

“...So you want me to make a Ritual Implement that can seal a monster or demon with a Spiritual Body. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Gu Do-gyeom smiled awkwardly.

“It’s embarrassing to even say this. I pride myself on being an authority in this field, but... even I have no idea how to handle it.”

“...”

“The technique for sealing Spiritual Bodies... its lineage has died out.”

He adjusted his glasses slightly.

“But the rumors about you have been so extraordinary lately. The rechargeable Spirit Stone, for one. So I thought you might have a way to solve this problem, and I submitted the commission out of desperation.”

“...”

He cautiously watched my reaction.

“...Of course, you may refuse.”

Refuse.

I looked down at the gourd bottle I’d been turning over in my hand.

A gourd bottle that sucked up Cursed spirits.

Come to think of it, this was the first time I’d made something like this.

Though sealing implements and inventories fundamentally worked on the same principle, there were differences too.

An inventory was only a bag for storing objects, but this gourd bottle had sucked in something alive and struggling.

It was quite interesting how the same subspace could be used in such different ways.

And this time, it would be a Ritual Implement that contained something with a physical body.

My heart raced.