Retire 236
by Cristae236 Jewel Rune (2)
“So, how do you check a rune?”
Hong Seok-young was as excited as a child with a new toy. I adjusted my magic watch as I answered.
“There’s a comparison program. If I run it…”
“You said there’s a rune database, right? The runes you’ve shared so far—did you pull those from there, too?”
“Not all of them.”
I shrugged.
“There are some runes that every Hunter has to learn as a basic skill.”
“Ah. The concealment rune?”
“Yes. The ones that are used so often, you end up memorizing them whether you want to or not.”
There were runes considered essential for Hunters, like the magic concealment rune and various support runes. The Academy selected and taught those separately, and the Association checked them every time a license was renewed. Even the Management Bureau held quarterly rune exams at Yu Ji-eun’s request.
That’s how indispensable runes had become in modern dungeon strategies. Still, the first rune I announced through Daseon wasn’t one of those essentials. I’d gone to great lengths to select only ambiguous runes whose true effects were uncertain.
Of course, the runes I taught the kids at the demonstration school were the ones used most frequently.
Hmm. Back then, I only taught the mage students… but with the commercial use of magic pens in mind, I’d have to teach the others as well.
For now, I’d set the deadline for distributing the magic pens to before the kids graduated—or maybe I should factor in the rune lessons, too…
“Hee-jae, you shouldn’t drift off into your own thoughts in front of people.”
“Oh. Sorry… I was just thinking I might need to revise the curriculum.”
“Because of the runes?”
“Since we have the magic pens, I thought it might be good to teach runes even to the non-mage kids.”
“Oh ho… Then why not just take an afternoon period and teach them right away?”
Hong Seok-young, who probably understood the importance of runes better than anyone, immediately picked up on my suggestion.
Of course, I’d always planned to add rune classes eventually. The real problem was—
“What about the magic pens?”
“Just teach them first and figure it out later.”
“The kids aren’t stupid… If I teach them runes they can’t use, they’ll definitely ask questions.”
“Just tell them they’ll be able to use them soon.”
I raised my eyebrows. Wasn’t that a bit reckless?
Hong Seok-young didn’t seem particularly concerned.
“It’s not like they’re going into a dungeon right away. Besides, they’re not the type to go blabbing about it.”
“Isn’t it just that they have no one to tell?”
“That too… If you’re really worried, well, just warn this Hunter.”
“Ah.”
I nodded.
We might be using Imi-seon as we pleased, but strictly speaking, she was an external force. If we trusted her blindly, we might end up having to deal with the Association as well.
The Association wasn’t a den of villains like the Ark, but it wasn’t a charity, either. Depending on political or economic interests, they’d take sides, and as Hunters, we sometimes had no choice but to go along.
“If word gets to the Association because of the Ark incident, things could get complicated.”
“Honestly, that’s unavoidable now that the runes have been made public.”
“That’s true, but…”
“You’re sure the runes you revealed weren’t Michel’s?”
Just in case, I’d only selected runes with clear origins. There were mages like Kim Chae-min who used runes they’d picked up here and there, so I’d excluded runes made by mages. If they’d been using them before they were officially registered, that would be a problem.
The only Michel rune I’d revealed was a support rune.
I glanced at the runes Hope had drawn, organizing my thoughts.
“The problem with the magic pen is that it might leak to the Association through this Hunter, right?”
“If you’re fine with it, it doesn’t matter if the Association finds out, but it’ll bring trouble.”
“Then what if we give this Hunter exclusive rights to the magic pen?”
“Hm?”
“File a patent or whatever and transfer the sales rights. I don’t know much about that, so you’d have to handle the negotiations.”
“Why do you think I’d know about that?”
“Because there aren’t many people who could scam Hong Seok-young?”
Hong Seok-young looked between the runes Hope had drawn, my face, and the magic watch, then nodded.
“It might work with Imi-seon from Daseon, not the Association’s Korean branch chief. If not, we could talk to Elder Da-yeon.”
“That’s why you have to know people in power.”
Hong Seok-young snorted, as if to say, “Look who’s talking.”
What’s that supposed to mean? If anything, it’s because I’m me that I can say this. There were plenty of hassles being Hong Seok-young’s adopted son, but honestly, there were a lot of perks, too.
…Yeah. Let’s be honest. It was worth putting up with the hassles for those perks.
“I’ve known this Hunter a long time—she’s got a business mind, you could say… Maybe it’s just her family background. If we get her and Da-yeon on board, we can keep things from leaking through other Hunters.”
“That’s why you need a unified identity.”
“Are you really the one to say that?”
Hong Seok-young clicked his tongue and shook his head, as if I was hopeless.
“So, are you going to add ‘genius of magical engineering’ to your identity as Hong Seok-young’s son, Woo Hee-jae?”
“The only thing accurate there is my name.”
I fiddled with the magic watch. Where was the rune scan function again…? I squinted at the unfamiliar interface and pulled up the help menu. This is why you have to use these things regularly.
[To scan a rune, you must draw it with a magic pen. Activation is not necessary, but since the magic watch reads the mana pattern…]
I didn’t need to know all the unnecessary theory. I’d told them to include a simple manual, but it was full of chatter.
“Even if we handle this Hunter, you can’t just say your magic pen fell out of the sky. How are you going to explain suddenly finding a breakthrough in magical engineering?”
Where had I put the magic pen after using it last time…?
Among the rune effects Hope had described, there wasn’t anything that would explode or cause a sudden accident… Not that I expected any of these runes to be drawn accurately anyway.
Paper—I should have brought some paper. Maybe there’s some here.
“I’m not a genius of magical engineering, but our guild has one, doesn’t it?”
“Dr. Gamble?”
I got up and rummaged through the storeroom. Fortunately, I found some crumpled paper in a cabinet shoved into a corner. It was old, cheap paper, but as long as it was paper, it would do.
“Wasn’t it this Hunter who first recognized Dr. Gamble’s genius?”
“This Hunter might be convinced, but… Gamble isn’t stupid. If a magic pen suddenly comes out under his name, he’ll find it suspicious.”
“Then we’ll have to blame the Ark.”
“The Ark?”
Hong Seok-young stroked his chin, looking intrigued.
“Let’s just say I stole a prototype when escaping from the lab.”
“Would he buy that?”
“The Ark’s a mess inside. Even if one lab went rogue, it wouldn’t be surprising.”
I carefully copied the rune onto the paper. Once it went into the database, it would automatically pull up similar runes. Since Hope’s runes weren’t precise anyway, a rough sketch would suffice.
As I said before, as long as I didn’t draw multiple runes on the same sheet, there shouldn’t be any problems. Even if I destroyed a rune immediately, residual mana could cause unexpected effects.
It took longer, but safety came first.
“If that doesn’t work, we’ll say it was the research of a kind-hearted mage exploited by the Ark’s forced labor. If I show Gamble a primitive magic pen used in emergencies instead of a finished product, he’ll figure out the principle himself.”
I scanned the copied rune. Even if it took time, I’d do them one by one. They didn’t need to be activated, but it couldn’t hurt to be careful.
“A primitive magic pen?”
“Just a stick about this long, a mana stone, and… well, with those, you can make one. It’s for when the magic pen breaks. It doesn’t correct runes like a magic pen, so you have to draw them perfectly, but that’s basic Hunter training.”
“Hmm. That’ll do, then.”
“Sorry?”
“We’ll use that for the kids’ lessons and launder the origin through Gamble.”
“Ah. That works.”
Except for the very beginning, when I learned runes from my father, I’d never used a makeshift magic pen, so I hadn’t really thought about it, but that would be best.
I nodded.
Ding.
Just then, a notification popped up—the comparison for the first rune was complete.
Let’s see.
“By the way, Hee-jae.”
“Yes?”
“The kind-hearted Ark mage you’ve been selling out all this time—the one who died an untimely death—was Noah Michel, wasn’t it?”
“……”
“I thought so.”
“…He did publish a lot of useful things.”
“Who’s complaining?”
Hong Seok-young smiled with an irritating grin.
I did my best to ignore him and checked the results.
Hong Seok-young sidled up next to me.
“Hm? So this is how it comes up. Is that why you said it didn’t have to be exact?”
“Yes.”
I enlarged the window. The results were much clearer now.
[Rune Search Results]
[89% match]
[34% match]
[21% match]
There was no need to bother with matches below 50%.
With an 89% match, it was almost certainly this one. I zoomed in on the 89% match.
……
It was a rune I didn’t recognize. According to Hope’s notes, it had the effect of maintaining water at 70 degrees Celsius.
What kind of half-baked effect was that? If it kept water at 100 degrees, it would be more useful.
The rune registered in the magic watch with an 89% match had exactly the same effect. More precisely, it maintained the temperature of an object at 70 degrees.
[Main use: Good for heating the contents of a cup.]
…What is this?
There was actually a rune like this?
Frowning, I glared at the rune and checked the developer. Did Noah Michel really make something like this?
I didn’t have every single rune Michel had ever made memorized, but I was pretty sure he’d never published anything this… questionable.
But the name that appeared on the magic watch was completely unexpected.
[Sam Bloom]
“…Hmph.”
Hong Seok-young let out a heavy sigh beside me.
Of the more than twenty runes, there weren’t many directly attributed to Noah Michel.
Which meant, there were some.
[28% match]
[22% match]
[35% match]
Three runes.
The match rates weren’t high, but not so low as to be meaningless. The important thing was that Michel’s runes had appeared at all.
But what really caught my attention was something else.
“They’re not registered under Noah Michel’s name, but they’re all mages.”
“And all European.”
“More than half are French mages.”
“Maybe…”
Hong Seok-young must have thought of the same thing I did.
I looked over the names of the twelve mages. Excluding the late Sam Bloom, there were eleven.
To my surprise, there were names I recognized. To put it politely, they were followers; to the American mages who disliked them, they were derided as fanatics.
Mages belonging to the Nantes Magic Society, led by Noah Michel.