Chapter 92 : Chapter 92
Chapter 92
We headed to Seoul’s District 26.
That is, the three of us: Lee Eunho, Gwon Chihun, and me.
Do Minyeong and Cha Yeri ultimately moved toward Saint Sienna Magic School.
It was not that I persuaded them.
For some reason, they said first that they would go together.
I tried to take advantage of that atmosphere and send Gwon Chihun toward the ward, but Do Minyeong and Cha Yeri vehemently objected and left Gwon Chihun with me.
It was the sort of situation that might have bruised Gwon Chihun’s pride, but he had been visibly excited from earlier until now at the mere fact that we were going to the arena.
“I am a regular there, you know? I even got familiar with the big guy who works as the doorman. Normally, the arena is the kind of place where anyone goes, rich or poor, but students are an exception. Their entry is restricted. Still, with my face, I can cover it to some extent.”
Listening to Gwon Chihun chatter on in delight, I suddenly regretted not using the money from selling MA6 to buy a car.
He had talked without pause even while we were moving by tram.
Ever since leaving Hero Prep, Lee Eunho had maintained his default “benevolent smile,” but strangely, he did not look at Gwon Chihun even once.
Of course, it was not as though he bore any ill will.
He likely just wanted to pretend, until we reached our destination, that the two of them were not traveling together.
In any case, after arriving in District 26, we reached the sign with no letters on it.
“This is the place. The business itself is illegal, so the sign looks like that. I am saying this because you probably do not know much about this world, but the popularity of arenas in Seoul is beyond imagination. If they have fighters, it is fair to say they run almost twenty-four hours a day.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Anyway, do not bump shoulders with the big guys. If you are unlucky, you might get noticed by the Psychic Mafia.”
“…….”
I truly hoped he would recognize that what stood before him was a probationary investigator of the Special Affairs Division and the greatest talent in the 4th Scholastic District.
Lee Eunho and I judged there was no need to respond and entered the doorway ahead of Gwon Chihun.
“Hey, come with me!”
As he said, students could not enter.
That was why we had changed into plain clothes, and fortunately, we passed the doorman without any problems.
As a bonus, the doorman did not even recognize Gwon Chihun.
The arena had a structure so spacious that it was hard to believe it was an underground facility.
Its capacity was roughly a thousand people.
The stage was large enough for close-quarters combat without issue, and monitors that cast light without blind spots were broadcasting a heated match even in the middle of the day.
—Now! It is a decisive victory for the champion, Snowman! What astonishing skill!
“Waaaaaah!”
“Damn it! How many consecutive wins is that already? He should lose by now!”
“Hey! Snowman only loses when he clocks out!”
The atmosphere created by the announcer and the audience could only be described as pouring down.
Whether it was a torrential downpour, hail from some bizarre weather anomaly, or cold water thrown into hot oil, it was faster to read someone’s lips than to hear their voice.
I shouted to Lee Eunho and Gwon Chihun.
“Let us split up and look for him first!”
“I will go over there!”
“I am going to watch the match, so you two handle it yourselves!”
We moved as though swimming through the packed crowd.
With a face as striking as Choi Suhyuk’s, it would be stranger not to find him, but even after nearly twenty minutes of wandering, we had gained nothing.
“Could he be disguised!”
“Probably!”
“Then where did Gwon Chihun go!”
“He was heading closer to the ring earlier!”
Lee Eunho searched for the back of Gwon Chihun’s head and shifted his gaze toward the ring.
After scanning for about a minute, he suddenly tapped my shoulder once and pointed sharply toward the arena floor.
“I found him! Senior Choi Suhyuk!”
His finger pointed precisely at a fighter in the ring.
According to the monitors, the fighter’s name was Snowman.
A suspicious figure hiding his face beneath a hood even deeper than the Phantom Thief’s cloak I used.
Still, he caught on quickly.
As though I had only just realized it, I nodded exaggeratedly.
“But how do we make contact with him!”
“Let us wait for now!”
“How long are we supposed to wait! Arenas run on win streaks by default! Until he loses, the champion does not come down from the ring!”
Lee Eunho watched Snowman, who was still in the middle of a match.
He had only observed their exchange for a brief moment, yet he immediately realized Snowman was not going to lose.
“Damn it, what do we do!”
“What do you mean, what do we do! We pull him down from the ring!”
“How, exactly!”
The method Lee Eunho used in the original work to make Choi Suhyuk come down from the ring.
This time, I touched his shoulder.
Then I pointed toward the reception desk near the entrance.
“We defeat him.”
“What! Who!”
“You.”
“……?”
Sure enough, Lee Eunho looked momentarily bewildered.
I took him outside the arena.
Only after we reached the landing of the stairwell leading up to the surface did we continue speaking.
“Are you seriously telling me to enter a match right now?”
“Yes. It is the best option.”
“Sorry, but I did not train to use my power like this. I thought you understood at least that much.”
“Is this the time to argue about pride? Besides, you do not have to go up with your bare face. Put on a mask and make up some tacky alias.”
Lee Eunho exhaled with a disdainful look.
“Fine. But I am a magician. The arena matches are strictly close combat, using only melee weapons or martial techniques. Are you telling me to go up there barehanded?”
“Senior Choi Suhyuk is a shooter too. He is using pistols and fighting with gun-bayonet techniques.”
Choi Suhyuk—no, Snowman—was overwhelming his opponent without firing a single shot, wielding two pistols as though they were close-combat weapons.
It felt closer to using something like tonfas, and unless one was an active Hunter, it would be difficult to face a top-tier cadet from Hero Prep.
“Wait, then you could go up instead. You use a sword.”
“I did not bring one.”
“Then go up with any metal pipe.”
“I would like to. But what if my mask slips off by bad luck? Right now I have my hat pulled low, but the moment an investigator of the Special Affairs Division shows his face in an illegal business, it will turn into pandemonium.”
“Haah, damn it.”
Lee Eunho hesitated.
But then he turned his body back toward the stairs below.
He had resigned himself to it.
I lightly pushed his back and spoke.
“If you are all right with it, may I choose your arena debut name? You are only going up this once anyway.”
“…….”
***
Do Minyeong and Cha Yeri stopped for a moment, looking up at the main gate of Saint Sienna Magic School.
“From afar, I thought it would be as extravagant as Hero Prep, but up close it seems rather plain.”
“Even if it is not extravagant, its pride is no less than Hero Prep’s. That gate itself was made by processing troll bones. I heard it took hundreds.”
Troll blood was used as an ingredient for healing potions.
For that reason, it was one of the monsters most preferred by Hunters, and because its population was small, capturing even a single troll could earn enough money that a family line would not starve for a generation.
And troll value was not limited to its blood.
Its hide was not sensitive to temperature changes, so leatherworkers often used it, and its meat was even regarded as one of the finest restorative foods.
The troll bones that formed the gate were also widely used in alchemy, so some media outlets published critical articles about Sienna’s main gate every year.
In other words, they were flaunting money on the gate.
“Cadet Cha Yeri, shall we go now? The more I look at it, the more unsettling it feels.”
“Let us.”
The two moved toward Sienna’s affiliated special ward.
Sienna possessed facilities superior to Hero Prep’s in alchemy and name-attribute magic, but the special ward now facing Do Minyeong and Cha Yeri was certainly an exception.
Unlike Sienna’s other buildings, it looked severely decrepit.
If it were not for the electricity, it would not have been strange to mistake it for an abandoned building.
Moreover, there was scarcely any sign of other students in this area.
The location was at the farthest edge of the grounds, and even the general ward affiliated with Sienna was far away from the special ward.
As if it had been deliberately isolated.
“Could Gwon Chihun have given the wrong information?”
“I do not trust that cadet either, but we still have to check.”
Most treatment among awakened beings was immediate.
Hospitalization was usually only necessary for mental problems, for installing Metalgrid, or when someone had fallen into nasty status ailments such as addiction.
“Let us go in, for now.”
Inside the first-floor lobby, past the old door, there was at least a counter with one staff member seated there.
Of course, he was absorbed in a smartphone game.
“Um, hello?”
As Cha Yeri approached the counter and greeted him, the staff member sprang up with a startled expression.
It was not that he recognized Do Minyeong and Cha Yeri, who had their hats pulled low.
He was simply surprised that unfamiliar people had come here at all.
“H-how did you get here? Did you contact a professor or someone?”
“No, that is not it. We came because we want to meet Choi Suhyuk.”
“I am sorry, but what is your relationship with Mr. Choi Suhyuk?”
“We have no relationship at all. We simply have business with him. Is he here right now?”
“…….”
It was true that Choi Suhyuk had been seen near the special ward.
But since they did not know why he had come here, Cha Yeri had offered his name as a guess—and somehow aroused the staff member’s suspicion.
“By regulation, the special ward is restricted to authorized personnel only. If you do not leave immediately, I will call the guards.”
His stance was quite firm.
However, noticing that the staff member knew Choi Suhyuk, Cha Yeri did not back down.
“Then, while we wait for the guards, may I say something impertinent?”
“Pardon?”
“Before entering the building, I saw the stone plaque listing the building’s history. The completion year was 2007, thirty-two years ago, and interestingly, the construction company’s name had been erased.”
“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
“I am saying this building is illegal.”
“……?”
“The contractor’s name has been erased, but people in this line of work can easily tell which company it was just by looking at the engraved indentations. In this case, it was the guild Clayblock, which went bankrupt in 2008.”
“You are not claiming it is illegal simply because the construction guild went bankrupt, are you?”
“Of course not. The fundamental issue is the materials used in this building.”
Cha Yeri deliberately looked around the structure as she continued.
“The scales decorating the inner walls are from lizardmen, the flooring uses spiritwood, and those cloudy-looking windows are fragments of a crystal golem, the same size as the beakers used in alchemy. All of them are legally usable construction materials, but the story changes if this is a ward where mana interference must be minimized.”
Cha Yeri looked back at the staff member.
“The reason the plaque had no contractor name is because it was built while knowing from the start that it was an illegal structure. I do not know why Sienna wanted to build a special ward like this, but Clayblock happened to be on the verge of insolvency and accepted Sienna’s conditions despite knowing it was illegal. Only to go bankrupt a year later, absurdly enough.”
“…….”
“If I file a complaint with the Bureau, the relevant departments will swarm in. The moment the truth is confirmed, Sienna will be notified. They will either rebuild it or tear it down.”
“W-what basis do you have for saying that?”
At the staff member’s question, Cha Yeri took off the hat she had been wearing.
Her face was revealed.
“Is this basis enough for you?”
“Cha-Cha Yeri…!”
The staff member recognized Cha Yeri at a glance, but in truth he was more shocked by her family than by her.
Hyeonseong was a corporation that had grown by rebuilding Seoul after it was devastated by the Great Rift.
Its parent company at the root of that legacy was Hyeonseong Construction.
Therefore, for the sole heir of the management family, construction knowledge was a basic competency.
Cha Yeri took a step closer to the staff member, who blinked several times with widened eyes.
“From the look of it, you have a rather comfortable part-time job. I would appreciate your help before you lose it.”
“That is not within my authority….”
How should one describe his expression?
Fear? Confusion? Or some other mixed emotion?
Whatever it was, the smiling curve Cha Yeri deliberately shaped at the corners of her eyes was effective pressure.
“Is Choi Suhyuk here?”