Chapter 71
Chapter 71
[Mage Basic Skill :: Mana Control is activating!]
“Urgh…”
In the White Night guild leader’s office, Min Jaeyoon sweated while red mana streamed from his fingertips. The office was full of red mana.
Each ribbon of mana held a portion of water in midair. It was a perfect circle, as if someone had filled a wineglass with water, then whisked the glass away and left only the shape.
[Constellation, King of Wisdom and Demons pointed to the far left!]
At his Constellation’s advice, he looked to the far left. The shape of that water started to distort. He adjusted his mana. With a hum, the mana restored the leftmost globe to a circle again.
A bead of sweat dripped from his chin with a soft plink.
“Hm, you held up to twelve after all. Well done, Jaeyoon! It looks like you did your homework.”
Tap, tap. The woman with long white hair circling him, White Night’s guild leader Baek Jangmi, smiled brightly. Thinking at last that it might be over, Min Jaeyoon beamed.
“Then, shall we add just one more?”
“N-No… I can’t!! Guild Leader!! Please don’t!!”
“Nah, you can do it~ You got this, Jaeyoon~”
Seeing his face, Baek Jangmi picked up one more wineglass. Min Jaeyoon’s expression froze as she filled it with water and floated it up to the ceiling. Red mana wrapped around it.
“Wait, no!! I mean it!! Nngh…!”
Ssshaa, in the end the barely stable leftmost sphere lost its mana first, the water lost its shape, and it crashed to the floor.
Sighing at the suddenly soaked office, Min Jaeyoon grabbed the mop standing beside him, a motion he knew too well. Baek Jangmi laughed at the sight.
“Jaeyoon, you know this assignment is a fail, right?”
“Hey, I still hit the twelve you asked for, Guild Leader. That counts!”
At the word fail, Min Jaeyoon pouted as he wielded the mop and looked up at Baek Jangmi. She chuckled at him.
“My, I clearly said I might add one more on top, didn’t I?”
Min Jaeyoon pushed the mop across the floor and grimaced.
[Constellation, King of Wisdom and Demons cackled, saying our Jaeyoon just met his natural enemy.]
‘Ugh…’
A few weeks had passed since he joined White Night on a quick track. What he had learned was that, despite her casual words and manner, White Night’s guild leader ran things like Sparta.
He had never met an adult immune to his cuteness. During the interview, she had critiqued him like a judge on an idol survival show, saying, “Your fundamentals are very lacking,” then right after he joined, she kept calling him to her office and dumping explosive amounts of homework with a smile.
He had hardly slept since joining. Every night after work he practiced mana control drills, chugging Awakener stamina tonics.
“What am I going to do with you~ This is the basic mana control practice mages do right after Awakening. Yet you still have not completed it…”
“I-I still improved a lot! I could not even keep ten in the air last week. Right!”
Seeing his sparkling eyes that begged for at least a little praise for working so hard, Baek Jangmi smiled and crushed his hope.
“I told you before, didn’t I? Jaeyoon. You have a lot of bad habits. You self-studied without basic Awakener training, so your mana mileage is terrible. Most mages your age can keep fifteen up even without a big mana tank like yours.”
“Ughhh. Okay…”
“Understand? Your class is summoner, so evenly distributing mana is especially important. If you release several demons at once and the supplied mana varies between them, it gets dangerous.”
“Understood…”
He sniffled under her renewed scolding. He had thought that once he became a Hunter, he would pull off cool feats, but instead he spent every day relearning everything from scratch and getting an earful.
If not for his naturally positive, easygoing attitude, he could not have endured the hard training.
His grandfather and his Constellation both laughed that you had to spend your twenties suffering to have an easy thirties, but the past few weeks he felt like Cinderella.
“Still~ I will admit you worked hard. Dropping bad habits is tough, and you are doing well, Jaeyoon.”
At that drought-breaking bit of praise, Min Jaeyoon jerked his head up, then pouted again. Baek Jangmi held several invitations in her hand.
“Guild Leader, you are praising me to send me on an errand again, right?”
“Oh, did I get caught?”
Heh heh, Baek Jangmi laughed. The moment she learned he had a demon he could use for transport, she started asking him for this and that. She handed him three sealed envelopes.
“The black envelope with the yellow seal goes to the Sanctuary office, the white envelope with the blue seal goes to the Wargod Owls.”
“What about the red seal?”
“That one is yours.”
“Mine? Can I open it now?”
Baek Jangmi nodded. Rip. He broke the seal and read the letter inside, a neat cursive script.
[Before we know it, the year is drawing to a close. We hope you are wrapping up a turbulent year well.
To welcome the coming New Year and to honor your efforts, we cordially invite all Hunters to “Hunter’s Night.”
Date: December 23, 20XX
Venue: XX Convention Center
Honored guests, please grace us with your presence and brighten the occasion.]
After scanning the letter, Min Jaeyoon snapped his head up, cheeks flushed.
“Hunter’s Night?!”
Hunter’s Night, the year-end party Hunters held every year. It took place at the end of the year after the state funeral, and for that day, even guilds that squabbled laid everything down and comforted one another for the year’s toil.
Not only guilds, but people in the gate business and the press attended, and it was one of the big year-end events that aired on public TV.
“Yes. One of the Four Great Guilds hosts each year, and it is White Night’s turn.”
“I see. That sounds fun!”
Min Jaeyoon’s eyes sparkled. As someone whose MBTI started with E, a party like this was very welcome. Baek Jangmi grinned at him.
“Really?”
“Huh…?”
He already knew that smile meant she had a scheme, so he clenched the invitation with a tense face. Baek Jangmi giggled.
“You have no idea how much trouble party prep is, do you?”
“Doesn’t an event company handle it? I thought we would just review them!”
“Nah, that’s not what I’m talking about~”
Baek Jangmi chuckled and tucked her white hair behind her ear. Min Jaeyoon quickly realized that was the habit she had when she felt nervous.
So even the great Baek Jangmi could feel tense. She returned to her poker face and spoke.
“First off, just making sure all the names on that list attend is no small job.”
* * *
“I don’t want to go.”
“You have to go.”
“I said I don’t want to!!”
Meanwhile, in the Sanctuary’s office, Lude and Kang Ihyun were bickering, the invitation they had received from the guild leader in their hands.
“There will be a mountain of press cameras there too. I will faint the moment I see them, you know? Do you want me to be known nationwide as the guy who faints?!”
“They are not asking you to attend the awards ceremony. It is fine if you only stop by for a moment. Photos before the ceremony are not permitted.”
“The situation of being near reporters at all is stressful, and I hate it!”
Lude was fuming. Normally Kang Ihyun would say, “All right. If you do not like it, Lude, we call it off,” but instead he wore a troubled look and pulled a small postcard from the Hunter’s Night invitation.
“Look at this. The White Night Guild Leader called you in. She asked for all S-rank Hunters nationwide to gather. There must be something urgent. You can just meet briefly and come back.”
It contained Baek Jangmi’s earnest request, “Please assemble all S-rank Hunters nationwide.” Lude had received it too, then crumpled it and tossed it aside.
“Who does she think she is to order me around? Anyway, I don’t wanna! If she has something to say, she can come herself!”
He shouted again and shook his head. He yelled so loudly his voice rang down the corridor outside the office. He looked like a child throwing a fit.
In other words, he was so cornered he could only express himself in raw terms.
He was being asked to walk into a trauma situation of his own accord. Just imagining a sea of telephoto lenses and reporters made his insides flip, then shrivel.
“I know I look stupid. I know, but I really hate this. I do not want to talk to reporters for even a second. You saw it too. I faint right away, you know?”
“Lude…”
“I really, really can’t. You are basically telling me to walk into a slaughterhouse. I will die.”
His voice wobbled toward tears at last. Kang Ihyun remembered the scene at the school. The moment the press cameras flashed, Lude had fainted.
He had rushed to push reporters away, but they filmed Lude all the way through his faint.
“Understood. Lude, give me the invitation.”
Kang Ihyun nodded like a man who had made a big decision. When he held out his hand for Lude’s invitation with a set face, Lude misread the look and went pale.
“S-Sorry. I will try.”
“No. It is fine. There is no need to force something that’s difficult for you.”
Seeing Kang Ihyun’s expression, Lude’s attitude changed in an instant. Was he afraid Kang Ihyun might resent him? Kang Ihyun softened his face.
“W-Wait, don’t be scared! It is not that I dislike you, Lude. It is just that I am close with White Night’s Guild Leader. She is as good at smacking people’s backs as our own Guild Leader.”
When Kang Ihyun made the joke on purpose, Lude relaxed instead. He let out a small sigh and handed over the envelope.
“…I am sorry for always leaning on you.”
His hand trembled slightly. Kang Ihyun felt something besides apology in that grip, but he could not name it.
He just decided it was a relief at escaping the trauma situation and smiled again.
“No. I lean on you a lot too. Trust your partner again this time!”
“…Okay.”
Lude nodded. His oddly subdued manner, so unlike him, made Kang Ihyun curious, but if he pushed now, Lude would surely bolt, so he stuck to smiling.
“Then I will go tell the Guild Leader I will attend Hunter’s Night alone!”
“…Okay. I am sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it, mean it!”
Crushed, Lude kept repeating he was sorry, barely louder than a mosquito. Kang Ihyun reassured him over and over, patted his shoulder, and stepped out of the office.
Click. Outside the door, Kang Ihyun sighed. He could still see the Guild Leader insisting, “This time, S-ranks must attend.”
Even so, given Lude’s situation, he decided to make it work even if his back ended up red from a scolding. As he sighed, a familiar person appeared in front of him.
“Ihyun, is something wrong with Lude?”
As if he had been waiting, Hunter Min Jaewon stood in the hall, looking at him with concern.