Surviving as a Sorcerer in Seoul - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: The World of Sorcery Is Complicated (1)

TL: DDTL

The moment the door of the billiards hall opened, the Silver Bell started ringing like it had lost its mind. A clamorous metallic din, like dozens of brass bowls being hurled onto the floor all at once.

Heo Do flung aside the cue he’d been using for practice shots and came scrambling over in a panic.

For the Silver Bell to react with a fit like this…

It meant the spiritual power of whoever had just walked in was no ordinary level.

Heo Do was the first to speak.

“Principles of Sorcery?”

“……Yes.”

The person standing before him cut a suspicious figure, cap pulled down low and a mask on top of that.

‘Great, another oddball sorcerer’s crawled in.’

Heo Do clicked his tongue inwardly.

Sorcerers above a certain rank each tended to possess their own peculiar inner world.

If someone asked him to name quirky upper-rank sorcerers right then, he could rattle them off until he’d run out of fingers and toes both.

And among that bunch, bad-news types like this one weren’t exactly rare.

‘Judging by the way the Silver Bell is freaking out, this guy’s clearly B-rank. But who the hell is he?’

Heo Do quieted the Silver Bell while keeping an eye on the man’s demeanor.

‘There’s hardly a B-rank sorcerer I don’t know. Or is this one that just got promoted? No, if that were the case, word of a new rookie would’ve been all over this scene already.’

For a big shot like this to willingly take a Rank-7 job that paid only a few million won…

He had to be a nasty piece of work, no question.

Could be a pervert who got his kicks out of slaughtering low-grade Demons. Or maybe an attention-seeker who enjoyed showing off his skill level in front of people.

One question led to another.

‘He’s weirdly quiet, though.’

But the vibe was a little different from the usual scumbags who deliberately picked out only low-grade jobs.

Those types usually reeked of arrogance or swagger, but this man showed none of that.

Actually, was this person even a man?

Could just as easily be a woman with a solid build, couldn’t it?

With the mask and cap, it was hard enough to make out his face, let alone his voice.

In any case, the guy just stood there with his mouth shut, staring, and that was all the more unnerving.

Every time his gaze flicked over to Heo Do…

‘Son of a bitch. What a vicious look in those eyes.’

The glint coming from beneath the brim of the cap was no joke.

A-rank sorcerers could supposedly kill ordinary people with a glare alone.

Surely this guy wasn’t A-rank.

If a type like that ever showed up, the Supernatural Management Bureau would be on full alert with all hell breaking loose.

That kind of situation was usually on par with a regional-scale disaster.

No way someone like that would turn up just to swat around petty low-grade Demons.

‘The more I look, the more puzzled I get.’

But what could he do?

Better to think positive.

So what if someone brought out an ox-slaughtering blade for a chicken? As long as the chicken got killed properly, no harm done, right?

Actually, the lower failure rate was a plus.

What gave him a real headache was when some middling sorcerer tried to get cute and ended up devoured by a Demon. The costs of disposing of the body and keeping mouths shut piled up fast.

Just get the job done. Just the job.

Heo Do guided the man to the construction site and even threw up a Barrier in case of any mishaps.

Once the preparations were more or less complete…

The man produced a Talisman.

“Burn.”

That one short word was enough.

It wasn’t quite a deep bass, but the voice was unmistakably a man’s.

Still, the question of gender wasn’t what mattered here.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Along with a tremendous roar, a fierce column of flame erupted and engulfed the entire space.

“……!”

Heo Do screwed his eyes shut and opened them again.

The sight before him left him speechless.

The Demons evaporated in an instant without so much as a scream. Black ash flurried down like snow, and even that melted away in the heat, leaving nothing behind to find.

‘Crazy bastard.’

Heo Do was now certain.

This guy. No doubt about it, he was B-rank.

At the very least, he was a top-tier C-rank Sorcerer or better.

There was no other way he could have pulled off Sorcery that monstrous.

And the Talisman the man had just taken out, Heo Do had caught a glimpse of it.

It was a Karmic Fire Talisman, one of the most basic Sorceries of the Phenomenon System.

To think that a mere Karmic Fire Talisman could produce that kind of power.

This was, what, like an 8th-circle archmage putting his full strength behind a 1st-circle Fireball spell.

Crash! Clang!

The exterior windows of the construction site couldn’t withstand the heat and all blew out at once.

The ceiling tex tiles melted and sagged like taffy, and the cement floor was scorched black.

Heo Do’s brow furrowed.

‘Aw, fuck.’

Irritation welled up.

He asked the guy to kill Demons, not torch the whole damn building.

Now the landlord was going to pitch an absolute fucking fit and make things a pain in the ass. The guy would obviously come screaming for repair costs.

“Uh, maybe… go a little easier…?”

Before he realized it, Heo Do had blurted out the complaint.

‘Aigo. And that’s my big mouth running off again.’

Just as he sucked in a breath and tried to gauge the reaction…

At some point, his eyes locked with the man’s.

A sharp flash.

Beneath the brim of the cap, a chilling glint pierced straight through Heo Do.

‘Eep.’

The overwhelming spiritual power that rolled off him in that instant…

The moment Heo Do saw that thick, murderous glint in his eyes, his heart plummeted.

“Gah!”

Heo Do jerked back in shock and bowed his head low.

“I said something I shouldn’t have. My apologies! This loose mouth of mine!”

Smack! Smack!

He promptly started slapping his own cheeks, the sound cracking through the air.

“I failed to grasp your profound intentions! You purified the place in spectacular fashion! What are a few windows compared to that! The building owner will be thrilled! Yes, absolutely, of course he will!”

Picking a fight with lunatics like this was a losing proposition.

Even if the guy didn’t kill him, he might take off an arm or a leg.

A long time back, Heo Do had personally witnessed some deranged B-rank Sorcerer grind a friend’s head into mush, like it’d gone through a blender, all because the friend had rubbed him the wrong way.

Ever since then, he knew that kind of savagery in his bones.

“I’m sorry. Yes, I’ll keep my mouth shut from now on…….”

Cold sweat ran down Heo Do’s face as he kept bending forward at the waist.

Fortunately, the man showed no particular reaction.

Just watched him, indifferent.

Once the situation was more or less wrapped up, Heo Do hurried to pull out the shopping bag he’d prepared.

“Here, the payment as agreed. I’ve included a generous bonus on top.”

He handed over the shopping bag stuffed with a thick wad of cash.

The man took it.

And then, without even checking the contents, he turned and walked out without so much as a backward glance.

Ding-a-ling.

The door of the billiards hall shut behind him.

Heo Do couldn’t even breathe properly until the man’s presence had fully vanished.

“Hoooo…….”

His legs gave out and he slumped down.

“Fuuuuck. I almost died there.”

Collapsing into a chair, Heo Do grabbed the cola sitting on the table and brought it to his mouth.

Gulp.

“Aw, shit.”

It was flat. The carbonation had already gone out of it.

He crumpled the can irritably and tossed it aside, then pulled out his phone.

Brrring, brrring.

“Hello?”

“It’s me. Heo Do.”

Heo Do shouted into the phone, his voice strained.

“Boss, seriously, can you vet people a little better before taking them on?! You sent a B-rank Sorcerer for a job like this? Huh?! I nearly ended up with my own funeral today!”

* * *

My dazzling debut was over.

The whole experience had been so foreign…

I’d been too rattled to really say much of anything to that Heo Do guy.

Bit of a shame.

Anyway, I plopped down onto the bed in my one-room apartment and tipped the shopping bag upside down.

Flump, flump.

Stacks of 50,000 won bills came tumbling out onto the bed.

“……Huh.”

It didn’t feel real.

Five million won plus another two million tacked on, for a total of seven million won.

Was that even possible? Was making money supposed to be this easy?

Back when I was working at the company, killing myself with overtime and weekend shifts, it was more than two months’ salary.

And I’d earned it in under an hour. Frankly, it was ridiculous.

Not to mention that blaze that had erupted from my fingertips earlier.

Flames gushing out of a human body like a flamethrower. At that rate, if this was what Sorcery was generally like, wasn’t one person basically a one-man army?

“I could lose my mind.”

But what was I going to do about it?

The money in my hands was real, at least.

I flopped down on the bed spread-eagle without even changing my clothes.

I could swear there was a faint smell of smoke coming off me.

Since I’d been playing with fire, I’d better be careful not to wet the bed in my sleep.

“Hoooo.”

That aside, this whole [Principles of Sorcery] thing. Really is something else.

How do they hand out jobs and fork over this kind of money without even properly checking who someone is?

The more I thought about it, the less I got it.

The system was so slipshod that it somehow felt more complicated for it.

“I give up too.”

I let out a deep sigh and closed my eyes.

Whatever, I’d gotten paid.

I looked again at the cash strewn across the bed. My hands were shaking like crazy.

First things first, I opened a delivery app.

“……Tuna delivery?”

Couldn’t pass that up.

Normally I’d want to go to a specialty tuna restaurant and order the master’s recommended course, but too much extravagance was out of the question.

And I still didn’t have the courage to walk into a barbecue place or a sashimi joint alone.

Tuna delivery seemed about right, didn’t it?

“Yeah, let’s order.”

What’s life without a little recklessness! Order first, think later.

I dropped a hefty 120,000 won on tuna sashimi for one.

A 5,000 won delivery fee wasn’t even registering anymore. I wanted all the premium cuts too.

[Order complete.]

While waiting for delivery, I thought things over carefully.

I was probably going to keep taking jobs like this from here on out.

I didn’t want to show my face every single time.

That Heo Do guy from earlier had looked curious about my face too.

And it’d be a headache if some Demon ended up remembering my face and came back for revenge.

Seemed unlikely, but life’s unpredictable.

Walking around in a mask and cap every time would be a hassle, and I couldn’t very well go around wearing a mask like some kind of masked avenger.

“Wait, what if?”

Might there be some kind of Sorcery that could change one’s face or overall vibe?

Just in case, I logged onto the [Principles of Sorcery] site and typed in the search bar.

[Search terms: face change, disguise, sorcery.]

A post caught my eye. There it was.

|Author| Old Man Who Carves Talismans

[Title]

Basic Sorcery: A Guide to the Transformation Art

[Content]

One of the things newbies ask about most is how to launder their identity.

No complicated rituals required. Mastering even the most basic Sorcery, the Transformation Art, is more than enough.

Method:

Write the character for “change” on Spirit-Yellow Paper.

The key here is to infuse it with your spiritual power while vividly imagining the image you want to become.

Once the Talisman is complete, just carry it on your person at all times. Done.

Effects:

It’s not going to dramatically turn you into someone else. (That’s high-level Sorcery.)

What it will do is change the shape of your eyes, blur your general impression, or shift your overall vibe. If your spiritual power is truly off the charts, it can be hard to track you even via blood tests.

But that only applies to A-ranks, so you low-rank sorcerers shouldn’t even dream about it.

PS. Just having the Talisman on you drains your spiritual power, so don’t carry it longer than necessary.

“Even that much is something to be grateful for.”

That was plenty.

Just shifting the overall vibe was enough to make most people fail to recognize someone.

The question was how long the effect lasted. Well, let’s make one first and worry about that later.

I sprang straight up and headed to my desk.

I dug out the leftover Spirit-Yellow Paper and pigments. Thankfully, there was still a decent amount of each.

I picked up the brush and was about to dip it into the pigment when the explosion from earlier flashed through my mind.

“Mixing in blood would be overkill, right……?”

Remembering that monstrous firepower, a shiver of real fear ran through me.

What if I mixed blood into the Transformation Talisman and my face ended up melting off or turning into something monstrous?

Right, better play it safe and just stick to pigment.

Or wait, maybe.

“If it’s a bodily fluid, would saliva work too?”

Blood felt like too much, and pigment alone felt a bit lacking. Saliva seemed like a good middle ground, didn’t it?

Without hesitation, I hawked up a thick glob of spit and dropped it, ptooie, right onto the pigment palette.

Gross? It’s my own spit, what’s the big deal.

I swirled the saliva and pigment together with the brush. The consistency was just right.

I brought the brush down onto the Spirit-Yellow Paper.

Change.

This time I wrote each stroke carefully, picturing a tough, imposing appearance.

While I was at it, a handsome face would be nice.

After all, half the battle is just having a good face, isn’t it?

I’d heard the way people around a good-looking person treat them is on a whole different level.

Swish, swish.

“Hmm.”

Flap, flap.

The pigment dried enough. I held the Talisman up to the light.

The handwriting felt sturdier and prettier than before.

Guess people really do get better with practice. Maybe I had a knack for calligraphy.

Holding the Talisman in my hand, I muttered a loose prayer.

“Change, change…… change into a hottie.”

I shoved the Talisman into my pocket and bolted to the bathroom.

I stood in front of the mirror.

“……!”

No way.

I’d actually turned into someone else.

The person in the mirror wasn’t the Ju Gi-baek I knew.

The face looking back was pretty good-looking, with sharply upturned, narrow eyes. My originally monolid eyes now had subtle inner creases, and the bridge of my nose seemed oddly higher too.

And what was with this gaze?

It was the kind of look that seemed ready to devour the me in the mirror whole.

Why did it render even something like that?

My body even seemed to have grown somewhat.

How to put it, the distance between my eyes and the floor felt farther? Like I’d gotten a good 5cm taller.

After spending ages in the bathroom scrutinizing my face, one thought came to mind.

“Crazy. Who’s this model standing here?”

A total success.