Editor 66

The Queen’s Garden (3)

A few hours later.

[—Remaining Time / Time Limit:

19:17:03 / 24:00:00]

Kleio, sluggish as he woke, and Arthur, still bright-eyed, headed toward the inner garden.

Even after sleeping, Kleio still felt stiff and sore. He frowned as he stared at the back of Arthur’s head leading the way.

‘Ugh. By the time you get to the , even the righteous protagonist has a surprisingly dark side.’

He hadn’t expected Arthur to have already formed a private army and consolidated all his forces. Maybe even their very first meeting in the dining hall hadn’t been a coincidence.

Of course, the so-called “mother’s prophecy” was probably the author’s device to force a magician into Arthur’s party.

Or it was an emergency patch to give the protagonist—who had already learned the story’s details—some plausible internal consistency.

Either way, the more he heard about Arthur’s childhood, the more of a mess it seemed.

‘His mother was assassinated, he saw visions, grew up under threat from his brothers, and yet he seems to have a decent personality for someone who went through all that. Aslan and Melchior have gone much further off the rails than in previous drafts, so Arthur probably has that side to him as well.’

It was all the author’s fault for revising the manuscript to its limits without being able to handle it.

‘There’s a time when you need to let go and finish any kind of manuscript, but the moment passed.’

But the story had already reached chapter 2.

Whether the protagonist had a twisted heart or a bit of a violent streak inside, that was none of Kleio’s concern.

His role was to help Arthur become king, not to judge his character.

‘Whether it’s a black cat or a white cat, as long as it brings back the crown, it’s fine.’

At this point, Kleio wrapped up his thoughts on Arthur with his own black-cat/white-cat theory.

.

.

.

The two walked along the garden path, searching for the greenhouse.

The sprawling garden was a beautiful yet bizarre space.

On both sides of the path, flowers from different seasons bloomed all at once. Occasionally, wooden benches or iron arches were left broken.

“It’s clearly a garden shaped by people, but all the sculptures and ornaments are decayed, and there’s not a soul around. It’s strange.”

Maybe because he was a sharp swordsman, Arthur seemed to sense the space’s oddness itself.

“That’s why it’s a ‘remembered space,’ right?”

Kleio also felt a sense of déjà vu. There was no way he’d been here, but it felt uncannily familiar.

Night still lingered, but the fog cleared a bit, widening their view. Beyond the purple mist, a pagoda in an East Asian style came into sight.

Everything in the garden and its decorations was Western, so why…? Kleio stopped in his tracks.

‘This…!’

Using “Perception” to focus on the pagoda, Kleio soon realized what it was.

A ten-story pagoda, red beneath the eaves and built from wood.

“Promise’s” “Memory” started spinning, pointlessly vivid. The manuscript he’d read at the end of last year popped up clearly in his mind.

Professor Kim Young-hwan, who had been an exchange professor at King’s College, had suddenly become obsessed with English gardens and made a fuss about publishing a garden travel book.

Because of that, Kleio had been forced to review the draft, and he’d seen that ten-story pagoda.

Once he noticed the resemblance, the shape of the vast garden winding around the river and the landscape’s design all fit together in his mind.

‘No matter how you look at it, this is Kew Gardens…!’

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. That’s probably why the dungeon was called “The Queen’s Garden.”

‘Wow, can you really write this carelessly?!’

was an old-school, traditional fantasy. The writing was decent, the structure wasn’t bad.

He’d even revised the manuscript nine times, so Kleio thought the author was pretty meticulous—but it turned out the setting was just slapped together.

‘These days, a lot of fantasy grabs settings from anywhere and fuses them, but that author sent me all these long-winded emails as if he was writing a world classic, and this is what I get.’

The first time he reviewed the manuscript, he focused on the story, not the details or proper nouns.

Once he started thinking about it, all sorts of questions came up.

‘Even the author’s nickname. Musa is the original name of the Muses.’

“Promise’s” “Memory” gave Kleio a memory surpassing his teenage years. Thanks to that, lines from the abridged Greek mythology he’d read in his elementary school library came flooding back.

‘The missing goddess’s name is Mnemosyne, and her nine daughters were the Muses. Terpsichore, who gave her name to the relic, is the Muse of dance and choral song, and the lyre appears in her iconography. There’s even Muse lore in this world.’

Mnemosyne wasn’t a high-ranking deity in mythology, but in this world she was worshipped almost as a chief god.

Yet, even by the end of part one of , there was no mention of Zeus, Poseidon, or any major gods, so it wasn’t strictly based on Greek mythology either.

‘If you were going to use a Greek setting, the city should be named Athens or something, not Rundaine.’

Kleio thought,

‘He really made up the setting with no foundation.’

For all the trouble he’d caused by dragging even the editor into the story, the underlying setting was just a careless mash-up.

‘I’m not asking for the Silmarillion, but if you’re going to make someone put their life into refining your story, shouldn’t the background be a little more solid…?’

Plenty of writers have suffered because of their manuscripts, but being forced to run around because of a story you didn’t even write didn’t inspire kind words.

Of course, “Jeongjin” himself wasn’t the kind of editor who could turn a mediocre work into a masterpiece, so he felt a bit bad blaming only the author.

He was nothing like those with the mission to discover, encourage, and publish great works—just another ordinary office worker.

‘Devoting your life to refining a made-up story… that should be the job of someone with more passion than me… hmm.’

Of course, “Jeongjin” did possess one virtue an editor should have.

Not loving the manuscript too much.

‘Not only did I not love it, I was totally cold about it. Editing is just endless hard labor.’

Lost in all sorts of thoughts as he walked, he suddenly found himself under the shadow of leafless trees lining the path.

That’s when it happened.

Flutter.

A single, delicate cherry blossom petal brushed Kleio’s nose.

Where the flower passed, a fine cut, like from a razor, appeared.

Touching his nose, Kleio found bright red blood on his thumb.

With “Perception” still on, he sensed the air’s ominous turbulence. Arthur also stopped and drew his sword.

Fsssss.

From the winter trees on both sides of the path, buds sprouted all at once. Black branches burst into double cherry blossoms with frightening force.

The fluttering petals multiplied rapidly. The wave of petals rising into the night was strangely captivating.

At the same time, the dungeon’s internal message appeared.

[Fragment of Cherry Blossom

?Classification: Monster

?Level: 5]

It was a monster.

Arthur, too, must have seen the message, as he raised his fighting spirit.

Clang!

Clatterrrrr!

Even sharp sword energy couldn’t drive away all the fine petals.

“Ugh.”

Arthur forgot to reinforce his body, and Kleio missed his chance to cast a shield.

The exposed skin of both boys was instantly covered in shallow, long cuts.

Kleio, belatedly activating the shield, grabbed Arthur by the collar and pulled him into the circle. He shrank the circle to a diameter of three meters and wrapped it thickly with ether.

It hadn’t even been a few seconds since the petals began to fall, but their clothes were already tattered and soaked with blood.

Swooooosh—

Outside the shield, the swirling petals whipped up a white vortex.

It looked beautiful at a glance, but if they’d stayed in the middle of it, their whole bodies would have been shredded.

The Fragment of Cherry Blossom was also a collective entity. The only way to destroy it was to eliminate the one tree with leaves.

“Arthur, did you find the tree with leaves?”

“Looks like the one at the far right end of the path.”

Kleio, with “Perception” on, also saw a tree with a faint green glow.

The storm of razor-sharp petals filling the street looked to be several hundred meters across.

‘But this… it’s too big. And why is the level so high? It was supposed to be level 3!’

Kleio didn’t show it for fear of shaking Arthur’s confidence, but cold sweat ran down his back.

‘In the original manuscript, the petals just drifted sparsely… At level 5, this thing could kill someone.’

Just a few seconds, and the white and pink mass blocked all vision.

If the circle had been bigger, maybe they could have done something, but as a level 4, Kleio’s circle was only 20 meters in diameter.

‘The boss monster is too far away. You’d need to be a level 7 magician to get it inside the circle.’

With the magic barrier up, they couldn’t move. To make a movable shield, he’d have to use a magestone.

Kleio gripped the fragment of Varg’s mica in his pocket.

‘In the previous manuscript, Zebedi engraved [Defense][Enhance] magic circles on this mica, and Isiel infused it with ether to make a temporary shield.’

There were two ways to use a magestone outside a circle.

First: Inscribe a single magic circle on the magestone to activate that magic. It’s weak, but you can reuse the magestone.

Second: Use the magestone itself as the medium for a magic formation. You can activate a powerful compound spell, but the magestone is destroyed.

‘Last time, I used the second method. But if you cast a formation into it and then charge it with ether later, the efficiency is only half. Since I’m the one using it, a single piece of mica can achieve the same effect as before.’

He hated to waste the hard-won Varg’s mica, but he couldn’t let the protagonist die, so Kleio worked his brain.

Thududududu—!

Thududu!

Even as he pondered, golden sparks flashed outside the shield. The petals battered the wall with the sound of a torrential downpour.

Arthur, looking from his own state to Kleio’s and back, rubbed his chin in admiration.

“This is no joke.”

“A dungeon’s a dungeon. Nothing’s a joke here!”

“Now it finally feels like something real showed up.”

“Not for nothing did the Cruel knights die like dogs.”

“Good thing we came prepared. I hope Isiel and Chel are alright.”

“They got the gauntlets, so they should be fine.”

That was truly Zebedi’s wisdom.

‘If we hadn’t had defensive magic tools, we’d be minced meat.’

You never know how much the setting might change. Kleio resolved to stay on high alert from now on.

The growing storm of petals pressed against the shield as if to break it.

Even his fond memories of cherry blossoms in Jinhae now seemed likely to be overwritten by fear.

Arthur, calmly watching the outside, said,

“My [Enhance] won’t cut it here, and the sword alone can’t handle this.”

“Yeah, it won’t.”

“Then, as we planned before coming in?”

“Right. I’ll make a shield, so you go take out the leader.”

“If you drop the shield, we’ll be shredded. It’s hard to go back, too. How are you going to do it?”

“I’ll use double magic activation.”

Double magic activation.

While one magic circle is active, you load a completely separate magic circle anew.

“That’s not possible at level 4…”

“It is, so don’t worry.”

Hearing Kleio’s curt reply, Arthur’s eyes sparkled, out of place for the situation.

He seemed excited to see a new spell. He really didn’t know what tension was.

“Wow! I’ve only heard about this!”

Double activation was a technique from the last chapter of the second volume of the magic manual. The principle wasn’t difficult; in theory, you could use it from level 4.

But in practice, it was usually only used by magicians level 6 or above, because the amount of ether needed was enormous.

Double activation consumed three times as much ether as normal magic.

Of course, this wasn’t an obstacle for Kleio.

While reinforcing the outer [Defense] magic to block the petals, Kleio prepared the double activation.

He placed a piece of Varg’s mica on his hand and, as if covering it with a lid, summoned palm-sized [Defense] and [Enhance] magic circles over it.

The magestone responded easily, glowing golden.

‘This won’t work with just any old incantation.’

With a shallow sigh, Kleio finally used an incantation he’d been reluctant to use.

“[He is my rock, my shield, the horn of my salvation, my high tower, my refuge!]1)”

It was an incantation he’d learned because the only books allowed at boot camp were “Good Thoughts” and the Bible.

And boot camp is as close to purgatory as you can get.

Volunteering for the navy at his mother’s request—who knew nothing of pleading—had been a mistake. For water-averse “Jeongjin,” naval boot camp was especially hellish.

‘Every time I use this incantation, I have to revisit the darkest period of my life.’

Regardless of Kleio’s feelings, the powerful second spell activated with a brilliant light.

The magic circle expanded to the size of a shield big enough to hide a person, its transparent surface shimmering like mother-of-pearl.

Even Arthur, who rarely lost focus, was distracted from the petals battering the outer barrier by the mica shield.

“Double activation… I guess you said you could do it because you really could.”

“Stop talking. Go take down the boss with this. Duration’s five minutes, so if you get confused, check the ‘remembered space’ clock.”

“Understood.”

Shield in hand, Arthur left Kleio’s circle without hesitation. He shot into the storm of petals like an arrow.

As soon as he left the circle, brilliant gold swirled from the shield and the mica crumbled away.

Tuttuttutututututut!

Tuttuttutut!

Fragments and shield clashed with a tremendous noise. Arthur didn’t falter, heading straight for the boss monster.

It was incredible ether, incredible skill.

‘Good, good. The protagonist’s name isn’t wasted.’

Arms crossed, Kleio slumped under the barrier, which now sounded like beans roasting.

He’d succeeded in double activation, something he’d only seen in theory, but he didn’t feel very happy.

Kleio’s attitude toward magic was always consistent.

If he could avoid using it, he wouldn’t.

No matter how much the author wanted to add a magician to Arthur’s party, Arthur had claimed the throne just fine in the previous draft without one.

He was already running around fixing the story and barely managing to serve as an airbag to keep the protagonist alive; he had no intention of doing any more extra work.

‘Whew, playing a live-action Prince Maker isn’t easy. I can’t train them as I want, and if they die, it’s game over.’

1) ‘King James Bible,’ ‘2 Samuel,’ adapted.