WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Occult World’s Coveted Blacksmith ◈
Chapter 83: The Jiangshi Debuts First
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As class was nearly over, I decided to start with the simplest option.
“Can’t we just use animal corpses?”
Kang Ha-na, who was wiping the board, answered over her shoulder without much interest.
“Mm. No.”
“Why not?”
“CEO Noh says it’s bad for the company image.”
Ah.
The Occult Management Bureau did ban sorcery that used corpses.
But apparently, animal corpses were still something of a gray area.
They had not outright banned them.
Still, jiangshi sorcery itself had a reputation that sat right at the bottom of the Occult World.
“Think about it, little brother.”
Kang Ha-na dusted the chalk from her hands and turned to me.
“You’re about to debut and be introduced as one of the company’s star sorcerers, right? Try walking around with some dog whose guts are hanging out, and nobody knows where you got it.”
“...”
“Do you think you’d gain any fans?”
Fair point.
CEO Noh’s goal was to raise star sorcerers and expand his influence in the Occult World.
If she went into battle using foul-smelling animal carcasses she had raised, the company’s image would hit rock bottom in no time.
“...And besides.”
Kang Ha-na shrugged.
“Honestly, I don’t want to keep something that smells like rot beside me anymore.”
‘...’
Hmm.
I see.
Then that really did leave only one answer.
* * *
After class, I returned to the workshop.
And I had made progress.
I figured out why the Talisman I made last time had not worked!
‘Red disperses, black gathers.’
In other words, the pigment color had to change depending on the Talisman’s effect.
Now that I knew the principle, maybe I could make and sell some insanely good Talismans too.
But more importantly!
I had already been looking for a Ritual Implement I could make with Giant Ink Squid Ink.
And now, the perfect material had practically rolled right up to me.
Anyway, nice!
What I was going to make this time was...
A universal brush pen that could turn anything into a Talisman!
In short, the All-Things Talisman Brush Pen!
Apparently, the Ultimate Art called All Things Jiangshi consumed an enormous amount of Spiritual Power.
Gwaehwangji, ink, brushes.
Even though Kang Ha-na was already using only the finest materials money could buy, the effect only lasted around fifteen seconds.
And every sheet of disposable Gwaehwangji was incredibly expensive.
In other words, the Spiritual Power contained in the Talismans Kang Ha-na used was nearly the maximum current talisman practitioners could manage.
Ah, the finest stationery set and the finest Gwaehwangji?
Weren’t those just ordinary products that happened to be born before Giant Ink Squid Ink came along?
That was right!
If the Talisman duration was too short, I just had to pack in more Spiritual Power!
My idea was that using activated Giant Ink Squid Ink as pigment would greatly increase the duration.
But there was another problem.
I dipped my pinky into a bottle of ink.
‘Ttut, ttut-tut~’
As Spiritual Power spread through the ink, it activated again and took on a blue glow.
Then I started a stopwatch and waited.
“...”
One minute.
The blue light faded, and the ink returned to normal.
After activation, the ink maintained its Spiritual Power absorption effect for around one minute.
If it was not used within that time, it simply became ordinary ink again.
I had already memorized the pattern, so I could activate it whenever I wanted.
But it probably wouldn’t be easy for other people.
In short, I couldn’t prepare activated ink in advance and hand it out.
That meant I needed a Ritual Implement that could activate the ink immediately whenever its user wanted.
And that was how I came up with this brush pen!
* * *
But there was a problem.
How exactly was I supposed to make a brush?
I might be a blacksmith, but I didn’t think I had ever made one before.
I mean, nobody had ever come to a forge asking for a brush.
At times like this...
My gaze fell on Apprentice’s Diary, displayed among the books on one side of the workbench.
Ways to apply Talismans to Ritual Implements.
Naturally, I had looked there first, but nothing came up.
The pages after that hadn’t opened since last time. There was probably some condition required to unlock the next page...
But I had no idea what it was.
How to make a sorcery brush.
Hmm.
There was probably nothing, right?
Then, for some reason, I felt an intense pull.
This feeling, which I hadn’t felt in a while...
Could it be?
Could it really be?
I carefully took out the book.
I placed my hand on its leather cover.
“Diary, diary, do you happen to know how to make a brush?”
“...”
Of course, there was no answer.
I figured I had nothing to lose and hooked my finger over the page.
Shff.
‘...Huh?’
It turned?
[The Fifty-Third Day.
Master said that wielding sorcery at a forge wasn’t limited to engraving Spell Formulas into iron. Gwaehwangji for Talismans was merely a vessel for Spiritual Power, so why should that vessel be limited to paper?
Therefore, Master told me to first make a brush with my own hands.]
‘This was in here?’
It hadn’t shown me before. So why now?
The only thing that had changed since then was...
‘...That I had decided to make a brush.’
Well, I didn’t know the exact reason.
But the following pages contained several days’ worth of instructions on making brushes.
All right. Let’s do this.
* * *
First, the brush tip.
The best brush hairs were weasel tail hair or rat whiskers.
Of course, not just any weasel.
It had to come from a weasel spirit beast to provide the best Spiritual Power transmission.
Weasel spirit beast tail hair?
It looked like it would be incredibly difficult to get.
“Ji-an-emon~”
But after asking Ji-an, I got it easily.
I loosened the hairs and picked out the damaged ones, rubbed them in ash to remove the oil, then combed them straight.
I stood stiff hairs in the middle to form the core and wrapped the outside with softer hairs.
I rolled them into a cone, bound them tight with thread, and finished by searing them with a soldering iron.
After wetting it with water, the tip gathered into a sharp point.
Good. The tip passed.
Next was the body.
For the shaft, I chose Black Bamboo.
Straight-jointed, hollow black bamboo.
Scritch, scritch.
I smoothed the outside with sandpaper and used a long awl to pierce through the blocked joints, turning it into a tube.
I set the tip I had made earlier into one end and fixed it with hide glue.
Done.
A traditional handmade brush, complete!
...But.
I was making a brush pen, so I added a few more steps.
I pushed a cartridge filled with Giant Ink Squid Ink into the hollow shaft.
Between the tip and the cartridge, I placed a thin guide wick.
That way, capillary action would draw the ink through the wick and into the tip.
Done.
It worked well.
Now then.
Bzzzt.
I engraved a Spell Formula into the input section of the handle.
A conversion Spell Formula that changed the caster’s Spiritual Power wavelength into the Giant Ink Squid’s wavelength!
Then, all they had to do was send Spiritual Power through it, and the ink cartridge inside the brush pen would activate.
Why make it a brush pen?
Because it was easier to carry around, obviously. Who was going to open an ink bottle and dip a brush every time?
And what if someone suddenly needed to draw something during a fight?
And the key point was this!
Gwaehwangji was a vessel for Spiritual Power!
Which meant that if the ink itself became the vessel, paper wouldn’t be necessary at all!
Hmm. Now that I thought about it, I felt like the book had said something similar.
In other words, I could use this to draw a Talisman directly onto whatever I wanted to attach one to.
‘Let’s see...’
The test subject would be the drawer in my workbench. You’re it.
Swipe. Swish.
I drew a small chain pattern across the front of the drawer in ink.
Then, in the center, I wrote a single character.
Seal (封)
And with the final stroke, I pressed Imprinted Intent into it.
‘This drawer will never open.’
Hummm.
The ink marks seeped into the drawer’s surface.
There. The Sealing Talisman was complete.
Now this drawer wouldn’t open.
‘...Did it really work?’
I grabbed the handle and pulled.
Rattle. Rattle.
“...Oh.”
It didn’t budge.
It worked.
It applied directly without any paper.
Damn. It really worked.
This dopamine rush was insane.
There was nothing quite like the thrill of making something I had imagined.
Now that the Ritual Implement was complete...
Shall I go see my customer?
* * *
Knock, knock.
Kang Ha-na looked up at the sound.
Master Do stepped through the crack in the door.
“Oh? There isn’t class today.”
As he approached, he immediately held out his palm.
“What’s this?”
A brush rested on it.
“You asked me to help with your debut, didn’t you?”
It looked like he had stayed up all night. The excitement hadn’t yet faded from his face.
Kang Ha-na took the brush and thought,
‘He calls himself a blacksmith, so how did he make a brush too?’
Honestly, she didn’t expect much.
The brush, Gwaehwangji, and ink she currently used were already the finest money could buy.
No matter how good a brush was, it would only make Spiritual Power transmission a little smoother.
The vessel that held Spiritual Power was still Gwaehwangji.
‘If he had made Gwaehwangji instead, I might have been excited.’
Still.
It was kind of cute that he had made something for her.
So she decided to accept it.
“Aren’t you going to explain it?”
“It’s no fun if I explain it.”
“Oh? You just dropped the polite act? Is that flirting?”
Kang Ha-na gave him a sly smile.
But she didn’t mean anything by it.
His face was her type, sure.
But her heart wasn’t soft enough for those fluttery feelings to settle in.
That, too, was just another mask she had made.
‘Still, he looks really excited.’
He was like a child bringing over a toy he had made and begging someone to play with it.
‘Fine. I’ll play along.’
Kang Ha-na smirked and reached for the inkwell.
“You can just take the cap off and use it. It’s a brush pen.”
“...A brush pen?”
This?
Kang Ha-na looked down at the brush in her hand again.
A shaft of smoothly polished Black Bamboo.
Its weight and craftsmanship were like an expensive handmade brush sold at a sorcery art supply shop.
Tap.
When she pulled off the cap, the tip was already soaked black.
‘He really makes everything.’
Kang Ha-na laid out a sheet of Gwaehwangji on the desk.
The Jiangshi Talisman was one she had drawn countless times.
She knew the strokes with her eyes closed.
Swipe.
But then.
“...!”
The moment she made the first stroke.
It was being sucked in.
The Spiritual Power at her fingertips flowed along the stroke, without end.
‘W-What is this?’
.
.
.
“...”
Clatter. Thud, thud.
The guns floating in the air and the mannequins that had been dancing all dropped to the floor at once.
...Five minutes?
Kang Ha-na stared blankly at the clock on the wall.
It made no sense.
Even when she squeezed in as much Spiritual Power as possible with the finest Gwaehwangji and ink, she could only control the mannequins for around fifteen seconds.
That was the physical limit of the vessel known as a Talisman.
But it had increased this much?
Just by changing one brush?
“What... did you make this out of?”
As she blankly stared at the brush, Do-hyeon grinned.
“You shouldn’t be surprised yet.”
“There’s something more surprising than this?”
“Try drawing directly without paper.”
“...What?”
It was absurd.
Then the Spiritual Power wouldn’t have anywhere to go.
“...”
But that confident expression.
‘...No way.’
Kang Ha-na knelt in front of one of the mannequins sprawled across the floor.
Then she drew the strokes directly onto its smooth forehead.
Swipe. Swish.
As she completed the final stroke, she gave an order almost by reflex.
Clunk.
“...!”
The mannequin stood back up.
It moved much faster than before, and its motions were incredibly smooth. More than anything, it used noticeably less Spiritual Power.
In a way, it might have been obvious. The Spell Formula had been driven directly into the object without passing through paper as an intermediary.
‘...No, wait.’
If it had been directly engraved...
The standard way to counter a jiangshi sorcerer was to remove the Jiangshi Talisman attached to the target.
If the Talisman tore or fell off during battle, control would immediately be lost.
But if it worked like this...
There was no way to physically remove it.
* * *
Meanwhile.
“...That concludes the report.”
The secretary set down the tablet after finishing the report.
Noh Jin-hyeok had been replaying a video sent over from headquarters.
It showed Kang Ha-na drawing directly onto a mannequin’s forehead without paper.
“...Really? I see.”
Very good.
“Master Do never disappoints.”
He should buy a gift on the way back.
Bzzzt. Bzzzt.
Then an urgent call came through on the secretary’s smartphone.
The secretary’s expression hardened slightly upon checking the caller.
“The Occult Management Bureau?”
“...Yes.”
The short call ended.
Without a word, the secretary held out the tablet.
Noh Jin-hyeok scanned the screen, then slowly rose from his seat.
“Will you go personally? Even if you leave now, it’ll still take a while to get there.”
Noh Jin-hyeok picked up his jacket and smiled meaningfully.
“I feel bad for Su-a, but...”
“The jiangshi should debut first.”
* * *
Bzzzzzt. Bzzzzzt.
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[Disaster Safety Alert]
A building collapsed in the Myeongjin District area at 7:24 PM today. Further collapses are possible. Nearby residents must evacuate immediately.
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Footnotes:
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