NOVEL WEB Chapter 26
Jinseong used teleportation one after the other to move to Seoul. Then he found a suitable three-way intersection near an elementary school, threw his created Jeoong down, and recited an invocation.
“As Cheoyong, who caught the Evil Spirit, advances along the thousand-mile path, the Evil fades away and fortune arrives.”
As soon as he finished the spell, he hid in an alley, waiting for Jeoong to break apart.
“Huh?”
“Hey! This is weird!”
“Don’t touch it! Is it some kind of cursed doll?”
“Yep~ Not a cursed doll~ It’s your bad luck that’s cursed~”
“No way~ If you touch it, you’ll get cursed~”
Just then, as school was letting out, kids spilled out everywhere, and due to Jeoong’s appearance, curious elementary school students quickly gathered and created a scene. The children shouted different theories, calling it a cursed doll or a discarded magic item, each putting forth their noisy opinions.
“Kids, what are you… Oh my?”
“Oh my, I haven’t seen this in a while.”
Hearing the commotion, two people came out from the school— a mid-thirties teacher and a janitor. The teacher was shocked at the sight of the doll and tried to disperse the children, while the janitor, in contrast, walked over to Jeoong with great interest to examine it closely.
“Let’s see, it’s dressed… and has coins. Wow, people these days still do this kind of thing.”
“Sir! What are you doing in such a dangerous manner?”
“Oh dear, Mr. Kim, that’s not it. This is Jeoong, Jeoong!”
The janitor’s story, starting from “In my childhood~”, continued for quite a while. He said he used to see such things often, and how he’d break Jeoong, take the coins to buy ice pops, and even give a stick to a taffy seller in exchange for taffy, only to get beat up for it.
The teacher, looking exasperated, interrupted him as his tales kept coming out like an unending stream.
“So, basically, it’s safe?”
“Oh, of course! It’s all for good fortune. If the kids break it at the intersection, good fortune will come. And then they can share the coins.”
“Haa…”
The teacher sighed, glancing at the kids staring intently at Jeoong, clearly itching to touch it.
“Alright, kids, you heard me? It’s not dangerous, so go ahead and play with it as you wish, and take any coins sticking out.”
“Yes!”
The children enthusiastically dragged Jeoong to the playground and began kicking and throwing it around. Because of this, Jeoong quickly fell apart and couldn’t maintain its shape anymore.
“I’m taking this 500 won!”
“I was going to take it first! Then I’m taking 100 won!”
“Uh… this seems like a toy coin….”
Once they had scattered with the three coins, only then did Jinseong come out from the alley.
“The child who took the last silver coin will have fortune stay with them. Truly a great thing indeed.”
The silver coin alone was worth about 70,000 won. Plus, it was a silver coin infused with the power of purifying souls from vertical caves. If brought to someone with a discerning eye, it could fetch at least a two-digit sum, and potentially even three digits.
Jinseong walked over to the broken Jeoong, pulled out the tape recorder he had prepared, and placed it on the remnants of straw.
“That which was one transcends space and time to resonate with the heart. Here, where the heart thumps in place of the heart and speaks in place of the tongue, may Jeoong’s spirit return.”
As if carried by the flowing winds, the remnants of what remained of the broken Jeoong, mere ‘leftovers’, naturally gathered towards the tape recorder. The power was nothing significant, barely meaningful but…
“One must squeeze until the very end for efficiency in such matters.”
Jinseong worked diligently to maximize the spell’s effect. He placed the tape recorder over the remnants of Jeoong and turned it on.
“—Inchanbokseong, the gathering of human blessings, may the seven treasures bring forth auspiciousness, gathering to lead to great fortune—-”
Listening to the song of Cheoyong flowing from the tape recorder, he used teleportation again.
Creak.
The destination: the mansion.
* * *
Upon arriving at the mansion, Jinseong quickly changed his clothes and took a bath. This was both to rid himself of defilements as per the ritual cleansing and to eliminate the odors clinging to his body.
“Being smelly is unclean. Therefore, unclean things hold odors.”
The source of the smell was the evil spirits that had crowded around him in the vertical cave. Strong evil spirits typically carry foul odors. Having been exposed to阴气 and humidity for years while harboring resentment in the dark vertical cave with no light, they accumulated a scent resembling decaying meat.
At least it was fortunate there was the smell of blood. Had there been water pooled beneath the vertical cave, surely there would have been a Water Ghost, bringing along the stench of rotting gases that would assault the nose.
As he thought about the odor, he recalled the warrior swimming in the depths of that bare cave.
“The ghostly smell continues to linger over time. What an ordeal for the nose it must be.”
But what could he do? It had been useless.
“I wish it had just a little bit of usefulness.”
He didn’t even expect anything as precious as a hostage. At least if it had had enough value to establish a negotiating table, it would have sufficed.
‘Fools are everywhere.’
The warrior had been judged useless even in Japan, being driven out to Korea. Always causing trouble in Satsuma, he was known to hang around delinquents, harassing local residents or stirring up ruckuses to flirt with pretty girls.
Then he ended up getting into trouble while trying to woo the niece of a big benefactor of his school, the Yatadoarangkryu. Mistaking her for an attractive outsider, he approached thoughtlessly, and after being too persistent, he even got reported, causing him to completely lose favor within his school.
Once he was out of favor, he began to experience subtle bullying, and unable to endure it, he was sent to a Japanese loan shark company located in Korea.
‘If he couldn’t recognize a Power Holder, at least he should have recognized that niece’s Divine Power. Truly a foolish and weak person.’
Going back was no longer likely. The large benefactor who disturbed his peace was a Shinto religious figure in Japan, and the woman he tried to seduce was a shamaness who served a deity at a shrine. Cast aside by his school, scowled at by the Shinto religious circle, and gaining notoriety for stirring trouble, he became a target of scorn even among regular folks.
Couldn’t he have moved to another area?
Japanese people tend to be exclusive.
A young warrior moving alone to a different region wouldn’t be seen favorably, and if even the slightest gossip from Satsuma surfaced, he could easily be ostracized from the village.
Thus, the warrior had come to Korea with the intent to live there, and fortunately found common ground with the people. He opened his heart to them, seeing them as friends, and intended to live in Korea, his second homeland, but.
“Om.”
In the end, he had to pay the price for his committed sins.
If he had even the slightest semblance of esteem back where he came from.
Just a little, just a tiny bit of worth as a hostage.
If he had diligently trained and could have shared information about ‘martial arts utilizing Mana’ that Jinseong desired.
If only.
If only…
“So many ‘ifs’, yet not one applied, hence he deserves to die.”
That was all there was to it.
Yet, it was fortunate enough that he could extract useful information, and act as an assistant for the Jeoong spell, so he should be thankful he wasn’t utterly worthless.
“Having performed divination with Jeoong, Iserin is surely going to land in Japan.”
Based on the information he gathered from the warrior, Jinseong slowly organized in his mind what he needed to do when he went to Japan.
* * *
Time passed, and the day of the spinning results arrived.
“Huh? Russia?”
Iarin said cheerfully.
“Well then, I… I’m going to Russia too….”
Iserin decided on her destination, following her.
With a relieved expression, as if the burden on her heart had been lifted, Iserin stood by Iarin, and behind them, the figure of the Grimoire swayed back and forth. Observing this quietly, Jinseong pondered one question.
‘Why?’
It was not a question of whether the Jeoong spell hadn’t worked properly or why she drew Russia instead of Japan.
Fortune spells were just about bringing in blessings; they didn’t guarantee your wishes would come true. It merely opens the flow of fortune and makes happy events happen more often, so it was understandable that Japan hadn’t been selected.
However, his question lay in something more fundamental.
‘If this is how it is now, it must have been the same before my reincarnation!’
His question penetrated both the past and the future.
The marks of the Jeoong spell. And from those, the powers of fluctuation and the flow of fortune.
All of that flowed toward the east, or more precisely, avoided the East Sea!
Thinking back to things he had failed to notice before his reincarnation, it couldn’t have been a spell. If it had been, despite the size of it, even considering the difference in levels, he would have at least recognized a hint of it.
No matter how low Jinseong’s level may have been back then, it didn’t make sense for him not to know at all.
Then it must be that something non-spell-based was manipulating the situation.
‘If I was ignorant, I wouldn’t have known, but since I did, it’s been revealed.’