WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ The Occult World’s Coveted Blacksmith ◈

Chapter 38: Professor, Would You Like to Try?

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Gu Do-gyeom couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Whoooosh.

How many had that been already?

Another Cursed spirit was sucked into that palm-sized gourd bottle.

"Where to next?"

"Ah, yes! Th-this way."

Gu Do-gyeom took off running ahead again.

A rope covered in empty gourd bottles hung over his shoulder.

He had grabbed an armful from the Sealing Vault in case of an emergency.

Yet he hadn't used a single one.

He hadn't had the chance.

All he had done was lead the way when asked.

The moment they arrived, Do-hyeon sucked them all in first.

Originally, Gu Do-gyeom had planned to move around and seal the Cursed spirits while the other professors held them down.

It had been the president's order.

If they exterminated every spirit they saw, the school would suffer considerable losses.

Every one of those spirits had either been entrusted to the school by an outside party or acquired with great difficulty for research.

In other words, they were all school property.

Still, the situation was so urgent that he had expected they would have no choice but to perform Exorcism on at least a few.

Whoooosh.

Another one.

Not a single spirit had been lost so far.

"P-Professor Gu! Who in the world is that person?!"

Another professor holding down a Cursed spirit shouted.

"......"

Gu Do-gyeom could only laugh helplessly instead of answering.

He, too, had long since been reduced to nothing more than a guide.

After clearing another area, the two headed toward the dormitories, where a Cursed spirit had been spotted.

"Aah!"

A scream rang out.

There was a broad lake along the way to the dormitories.

At its center, a female student was flailing desperately in the water.

"What do we do?! Hey, someone!"

The other students couldn't bring themselves to enter the water and could only stamp their feet on the shore.

There was something beneath the surface.

A bluish shadow had grabbed the drowning student's ankle and was slowly dragging her into the depths.

"......Damn it."

Gu Do-gyeom hurriedly took out his phone.

The screen showed a group chat where the professors were sharing updates in real time.

The locations of the escaped Cursed spirits had all been marked, but the lake wasn't on the list.

"......There was a Water Ghost here?"

Of all things.

Those things hid all their cursed power underwater, making them difficult to detect.

The problem was that sealing a Water Ghost required a dedicated Ritual Implement. The Sealing Studies Hall was too far away to return to now.

Yet if they performed Exorcism, the spirit was already dragging the student deeper into the lake.

If they attacked carelessly, the student might get caught up in it.

As Gu Do-gyeom stood there unable to act, Do-hyeon spoke beside him.

"Professor. Could you give me an empty gourd bottle?"

Do-hyeon held out his hand.

"......?"

'A normal gourd bottle can't catch a Water Ghost...'

Even so, he untied one gourd bottle from the rope over his shoulder and handed it over.

After everything Do-hyeon had shown him, his hand moved before he even realized it.

Do-hyeon took it and placed his other hand against the gourd bottle.

Blue Spiritual Power gathered at his fingertips.

Crackle.

Tiny sparks began scattering across the gourd bottle's surface.

Something was being engraved wherever his fingertips passed, burning red into the material.

It was a Spell Formula inscription.

"......"

Gu Do-gyeom doubted his own eyes.

'Is he engraving a Spell Formula with his bare hands?'

And at that speed?

He couldn't believe it.

While he stared blankly, Do-hyeon finished the inscription and immediately pulled out the stopper.

Then he pointed the mouth of the gourd bottle toward the lake.

Whoooosh.

The black mass in the water, along with a stream of water, was sucked into the gourd bottle.

Brrrrr. Brrrrr.

The gourd bottle shook violently in his hand.

Once the Water Ghost was sealed, the students hesitating by the shore finally rushed into the water.

"Hey! Pull her up!"

"I've got her!"

Fortunately, it wasn't too deep, so they quickly pulled the drowning student out.

"Cough, cough...!"

The student spat out a mouthful of water and gasped for breath.

"Th-thank you... Thank you..."

Once she recovered her senses, she kept bowing.

Gu Do-gyeom could only stare blankly at the scene, no, at the gourd bottle in Do-hyeon's hand.

"......What in the world?"

Do-hyeon, on the other hand, was pleased with himself.

'I tried applying what I saw in the Sealing Vault earlier.'

He was satisfied.

A Water Ghost carried the energy of water.

So it had to be caught with the earth attribute.

'As expected, it works.'

Of course, it would have been better if the material itself had the right properties. Still, in an emergency, he could simply add the circuit like this.

This was fun. Really fun.

The corner of his mouth curled upward.

Gu Do-gyeom finally couldn't hold back any longer.

"How did you do that just now?"

The thing he had handed over had definitely been an ordinary Sealing Gourd.

"Ah, I just applied the structure I saw earlier."

The craftsman began explaining, apparently with no intention of hiding his method.

But every word from his mouth was hard to believe.

Gu Do-gyeom knew that a sealing implement for Water Ghosts was made by building a frame from peach wood, covering it with clay, and firing it.

Naturally, he knew the principle behind it as well.

He had become a professor after earning a reputation through his research into Sealing Studies.

The Five Elements overcoming cycle, where peach wood suppressed yin energy and the power of earth bound the energy of water.

But.

'...He read the Spell Formula engraved into the material?'

The fact that clay's microscopic lattice structure created such an effect had only been discovered recently and hadn't even been publicly announced yet.

Even then, it was an innate property of the material, too minuscule to be seen. Engraving it by hand was impossible in the first place.

So even if one understood the principle, one could only fire clay and borrow the material's properties.

Yet that man had engraved it directly onto a gourd bottle, on the spot, with his bare hands.

Only then did Gu Do-gyeom truly realize it.

Just how absurd a person he was facing.

'...Is this what an Eul-tier artisan is like?'

* * *

Two Cursed spirits were wandering around the open area in front of the dormitories.

They noticed their presence and began creeping closer.

Whoosh.

Do-hyeon sucked in the one that charged in first.

He gave the gourd bottle a light shake.

Brrrrr.

'Hm. It's almost at capacity.'

He had crammed in every circuit he knew, including the one that expanded the subspace used to make the inventory and the one that improved suction efficiency.

He had also chosen the highest-quality gourd bottle he had lying around the workshop.

For something made as a test, he had put a fair amount of effort into it.

Still, it had its limits.

Just as an inventory had slot and weight limits, this gourd bottle had a fixed total amount of cursed power it could contain.

'If I put in one or two more, it'll be full.'

Was this how a fisherman felt looking at a full net?

Seeing the gourd bottle packed with Cursed spirits filled him with satisfaction.

Then he felt someone staring at him.

When he turned his head, Professor Gu was watching him intently.

Anyone could see that he wanted to try it himself.

As it happened, there was still one left behind them.

It had been charging over, saw its companion get sealed, and was now hesitating in panic.

"Professor, would you like to try?"

"R-really? Is that all right?!"

Professor Gu answered at once, as if he had been waiting for it.

He really had wanted to try from the start.

"Just pour Spiritual Power into it as you normally would."

Gu Do-gyeom accepted the gourd bottle with trembling hands.

He was an authority in Sealing Studies.

He had handled sealing implements for nearly twenty years.

A single gourd bottle like this should be nothing.

Thinking that, he poured Spiritual Power into it as he always did.

Then.

Swoooosh.

'...Huh?'

His Spiritual Power was drawn in smoothly.

A sealing implement was a Ritual Implement that took in a spirit's entire cursed power, so it normally required a considerable amount of Spiritual Power.

Since Weakening wasn't even needed here, it should have required even more.

Yet less than half of his usual Spiritual Power had been consumed.

Whoooosh.

The spirit wandering in the distance was sucked into the gourd bottle.

Brrrrr. Brrrrr.

The sensation of the gourd bottle thrashing in his hand.

'This feeling...'

At that moment, Gu Do-gyeom remembered something he had long forgotten.

It was during graduate school.

His advisor had dragged him along to go fishing at dawn.

By the time daybreak came, he had spent the entire night unable to sleep and was barely staying awake with hollow eyes.

Then he caught his first trophy fish.

The heavy pull on the rod had been unforgettable.

He had become deeply obsessed with fishing afterward, but strangely enough, he had never felt the same thrill as he did on that first day.

Yet the sensation in his hand now surpassed even that.

Brrrrr.

The vibrations of the Cursed spirit being sucked in like a vacuum cleaner tingled up through his palm.

"......Aah."

An exclamation escaped him without his realizing it.

His hand trembled.

'...This is a trophy catch.'

Nearly twenty years of working with sealing implements.

In all that time, he had never felt anything like this.

'Is this the thrill of sealing...?'

Maybe he had only just performed a proper sealing for the first time.

As Gu Do-gyeom lost himself in that electrifying sensation,

"Professor?"

"...Y-yes?!"

"You need to close it now."

"......Ah. R-right."

Gu Do-gyeom snapped back to his senses and firmly pushed the stopper back in.

Tap.

The violently shaking gourd bottle became still as if it had all been a lie.

Do-hyeon then held out his hand.

He wanted it back.

But Gu Do-gyeom couldn't bring himself to let go.

Was it because the feeling in his hand had been so vivid?

'...I don't want to give it back.'

He felt like a child about to have a toy taken away.

His grip on the gourd bottle tightened slightly.

* * *

I took the gourd bottle back from Professor Gu.

Heh heh heh.

It was obvious he didn't know what to do with himself after feeling that thrill.

How was it? The pull was incredible, wasn't it?

Of course it was. Who do you think made it?

Bzzzt.

Professor Gu's phone rang.

His expression stiffened slightly as he checked the screen.

"......Master."

He lowered his phone as he spoke.

"It seems there's one last spirit remaining."

Professor Gu brought over an old scooter from somewhere.

"Get on. It's a little far."

Vrooom.

The scooter raced toward the edge of campus.

They rode for a while, and just as they neared their destination,

"......That's..."

Up ahead.

A figure draped in something like black rags floated in the air.

A pale white face showed through the rags.

Its mouth, split all the way to its ears, twisted into a grotesque smile.

It clung to a student and was sucking something out.

A grayish-white substance was slowly flowing from the student's body.

"It appears to be a Soul Stealer."

A Soul Stealer.

Come to think of it, I had briefly read about one on Goblin Fire.

A Western Cursed spirit that devoured the souls of the living whole.

Before the scooter even came to a stop, I jumped off first.

But when I got closer, there was another person beside it.

A woman sat on the ground as though her soul had left her body.

A pale yellow soul was halfway out of her body.

That soul had wrapped both arms tightly around the student's soul as it was being sucked into the creature.

A bizarre tug-of-war. She had pulled her own soul from her body and desperately clung to the student's soul to keep it from being taken.

I recognized her face.

The assistant from the Sealing Studies practice grounds. Her name was Si-yeon, wasn't it?

If we had been any later, she and the student would have both been devoured whole.

Either way, separating that thing from them came first.

"Professor Gu."

"......Understood."

The moment I spoke, Professor Gu pulled an old bamboo flute from his sleeve, put it to his lips, and blew a long note.

Wheeeeeee.

Spiritual Power carried by the sound waves lashed violently at the Soul Stealer.

[Kieeeek!]

The instant it flinched and lost its grip on the student's soul,

I was already right in front of it, pulling the stopper from the gourd bottle.

Whoooosh!

The Soul Stealer was sucked in whole with a fierce whirlpool.

With the pulling force gone, the male student's grayish-white soul, which had been halfway out, slid back into his body.

"Gasp!"

The pale yellow soul holding onto it also returned to the woman's body.

"H-hey, student! Wake up!"

Si-yeon hurriedly crawled over and shook the limp student's shoulders.

Fortunately, he was breathing faintly.

Only then did she seem to lose all strength and collapse where she was.

That assistant's Spell Formula, the one that pulled her soul out of her body.

'...That's it.'

I grinned.

It looked like I had already found the method.

Footnotes:

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