Chapter 355

Overall, there was nothing wrong with what she had said.

The man sitting on the sofa rested his chin on one hand, lost in thought. With Jung Haseong remaining silent, Seo Esther continued speaking without interruption.

“Honestly, I always found it comfortable that Hunter Kim Giryeo was such a quiet person.”

“......”

“Not oversharing is attractive when you’re still strangers, but once you actually want to grow closer to someone, that kind of silence becomes incredibly difficult to deal with.”

Her tone was light, but it was difficult to remain truly composed when a powerful and dependable figure she had unconsciously come to rely on was facing trouble.

Esther took a sip of coffee to moisten her dry mouth.

“But, well... anyway.”

Then, in the subdued atmosphere, she guided the conversation onward.

“Unless an Elixir appears, I doubt there’s any realistic way to reverse this situation.”

“Ah. An Elixir.”

“Along with reorganizing the guild, we should prepare ourselves mentally as well.”

Clink.

The soft sound of a coffee cup touching the table echoed through the room.

“He hasn’t been in the spotlight for very long, but his achievements have been so extraordinary that his standing is disproportionately high compared to the length of his career.”

“Of course.”

“People even joke that he occupies a position almost comparable to a second Jung Haseong. So if Giryeo-ssi withdraws from active duty, South Korea’s international standing is bound to change in all sorts of ways.”

As a citizen of this country—and as someone who had bought shares in the parent company of the Hanshin Guild near their peak—Esther naturally had reason to care about how other nations viewed South Korea.

Still, rather than dwelling on the inevitable losses ahead, she decided to focus firmly on strengthening what remained.

“And when a high-difficulty Gate appears—one dangerous enough that even S-ranks can barely survive inside—naturally, he’ll be the first person everyone thinks of.”

Jung Haseong nodded firmly.

“But we can’t rely on that hunter’s help anymore.”

“I know. How could I live with myself if I kept burdening someone who’s already ill?”

“From now on, the two of us will have to work hard enough to prevent Gate disasters ourselves.”

If this had not been the age of the Dungeon Shock, these two people in their mid-to-late twenties—still young enough to be considered newcomers to society—would have been making an admirable declaration of complete independence right here.

For a moment, the mood lightened.

But the source of unease hanging beneath the entire conversation had not disappeared.

“Anyway, we’ve spent all this time worrying in such a gloomy atmosphere, but the person thinking about it the most is probably Hunter Kim Giryeo himself, isn’t he?”

Seo Esther turned a wistful gaze toward the window.

Without the [Dragon’s Eye] or some other surveillance item, there was no way for her to know what someone else was doing simply because she sat high above the city in a skyscraper.

In the end, the Awakeners gathered here had no choice but to speculate.

“That’s true. If I were in Hunter Kim Giryeo’s position, I’d probably be overwhelmed with worries.”

“Hmm.”

“And because his abilities are so exceptional, I suppose it’s inevitable that he has a somewhat controlling personality.”

“Controlling?”

“You can see it in what happened with Kang Changho. Honestly, if I had that level of ability, I probably wouldn’t trust other hunters either.”

“Well... that’s true.”

“So I suppose that’s why, even after sending someone else to handle a task, he still ends up entering the dungeon himself to supervise everything...”

The two remained on the top floor of the Korean Magic Tower, talking for quite some time.

They rubbed their temples and furrowed their brows.

The conversation itself was casual enough, but the worries behind it ran deep.

Meanwhile, what was the alien they were so concerned about doing at that exact moment?

Around the time a bird crossed the distant city skyline—

“How many meters long should a private swimming pool be?”

Alphauri, whose self-portrait took the form of green slime, was pondering an entirely different problem.

Securing a place to live.

Apparently, even marine creatures were not exempt from that particular dilemma of life.

.

.

.

[Sender: Kang Changho]

[Memo: Settlement]

[Amount: 40,000,000,000]

And a few hours later—

“Even though I’m an Alphauri, I could almost cry.”

At last, the day had arrived.

After wandering from one cheap, mold-ridden room to another, I could finally move somewhere worthy of stretching out my tentacles.

More than anything, squeezing forty billion won out of Kang Changho had made an enormous difference.

With this much money, I could buy a house not only in Seoul, but even in Monaco, a place notorious for absurdly expensive real estate.

“Ah~ Just thinking about the tedious routine ahead is making me lazy. Maybe I should teach Seo Esther remotely over video calls instead?”

Incidentally, today was a weekday.

Ordinary office workers would be heading to work around this time.

But I was a freelance hunter.

There was no office waiting for me.

I could simply lie around as much as I pleased.

“Esther seems pretty sharp. Even if I teach her carelessly, she’ll probably understand most of it. She manages that enormous guild somehow, and that already looks complicated enough.”

Gulp.

I took a sip of soda through the straw in my hand.

At that moment, an image drifted into my mind.

Me.

Floating lazily across the wide surface of my own private swimming pool, enjoying my free time.

“Hmm.”

Unfortunately, it was still only a daydream.

Even on a planet like Earth, moving once you had settled somewhere was troublesome.

That much was obvious.

“Unless you’re a hermit crab, I suppose that’s normal.”

Which meant choosing a house required careful thought.

I had more than enough money now, yet I still found myself obsessively scrolling through information.

And even though I had reincarnated into a world with such advanced internet technology...

“There are all sorts of theories here about feng shui and choosing an auspicious location. But in the end, wouldn’t the best place simply be somewhere I see for myself and actually like?”

As expected, there was an enormous difference between searching from the corner of a room and experiencing a place firsthand.

“At first, I thought I should stay somewhere familiar, like Seoul. But when I reconsidered it... there are simply too many people here. No, more importantly, why doesn’t Earth put its capital in the exact center of the country?”

From now on, I would personally explore every corner of the country and search for a house with my own eyes.

Mountains.

Fields.

Rivers.

The sea.

If I examined the geography of each region myself, surely there would be at least one place where I genuinely wanted to spend my daily life.

Apparently, people here could even buy land and build houses from scratch.

With enough money, I wasn’t limited to purchasing some finished building.

I could have a house custom-made in the Earth style.

However, the mammalian body named Kim Giryeo was, frankly, not particularly suited to extensive field inspections.

So I decided to prioritize this over the tutoring schedule I had planned with Seo Esther.

“Anyway, I’ve already finished all my homework. I have plenty of time.”

A certain archmage was now free to conduct research purely for personal interest.

Strike while the iron is hot.

The moment the idea occurred to me, I immediately stood up and began working toward my new objective.

.

.

.

This week had been an unusually peaceful one.

No Beasts had appeared from overseas.

The strange entities also seemed well-fed and perhaps taking naps—although they were not exactly life-forms designed for digestion.

Lately, there had not even been any particularly noteworthy Gates.

Thanks to that, I was able to spend my leisure time conducting some truly interesting research.

Flap.

Listen to that sound.

Flap, flap.

Even now, I still had no idea where the true limits of an archmage lay.

I had simply suffered a streak of bad luck immediately after reincarnating.

Once I actually set my mind to studying something, results came remarkably quickly.

“Earth really is convenient. Birds are everywhere.”

And what result had I achieved?

Fortunately, there was a mirror nearby that I had bought not long ago.

I turned the head of ‘this body’ toward it.

What appeared in the reflection was a hard protruding beak.

Round eyes.

A strangely colored body that looked as though it had been coated in cement.

And several other unmistakable features.

“Gruk.”

One glance was enough.

To put it plainly—

I was currently inhabiting the body of a pigeon.

“Gruuuk.”

Would a master of golem control really ignore an opportunity to test something like this?

“As expected, magic at this level works perfectly smoothly.”

Even back when I had been a powerless F-rank, I had occasionally controlled the corpses of beasts.

But after my second awakening, both the precision and power of my control had increased dramatically.

By transferring my consciousness into the pigeon’s body, I could draw magical energy through it.

That meant I could not only perform simple spells, but also generate tremendous physical force through the body itself.

“To put it simply... if a Bird Strike happens now, the building isn’t the one that wins.”

“It’s me...”

Flap, flap.

I moved the wings attached to this body again.

The texture and responsiveness were completely different from anything I had experienced before.

“Impressive!”

When I was F-rank, controlling a corpse had felt like forcibly pulling the limbs of a puppet.

But now?

Now I could manipulate the body almost as naturally as if it were my own.

And just look at these marvelous biological features.

Swish, swish.

I moved the pigeon’s body from side to side.

What fascinated me most was the way these birds kept their heads almost perfectly stable, like a gimbal with built-in image stabilization.

Apparently, an Earth pigeon’s cerebellum continuously adjusted its orientation in real time...

“Overall, the body is light, and it comes with features like this too.”

I manipulated the pigeon’s vocal cords and quickly forced out a sentence.

“No matter how I think about it, pigeons are still better than humans, aren’t they?”

The sentence ended with a rough rattle from the throat.

“What advantages do humans even have? Brain volume? Apart from that, what physical superiority is there...? These creatures can develop herniated discs just from carrying their own body weight while walking...”

But those minor complaints could wait.

There were still several variables in this experiment that needed to be tested.

“In the past, even inside the same dungeon, there were so many restrictions that maintaining control was precarious.”

Maximum duration.

Maximum distance.

I needed to confirm whether the spell behaved as my calculations predicted.

According to theory, even if I sent this pigeon all the way to the far end of Jeju Island, the connection should remain intact.

But theory and reality were often different.

So—

“Alright. Shall we get going?”

From now on, I intended to take a long journey around the Korean Peninsula.

There were two objectives.

First, to search for somewhere to settle after retirement.

Second, to test the stability of my golem-control connection over long distances.

But this foreign realm where my body had taken root was rather large.

If I leisurely explored every region, the journey could easily last several weeks.

“I came to Korea and unexpectedly ended up liking the food culture so much that I never modified this body to the point where eating became unnecessary.”

And humans tended to deteriorate physically if they went several weeks without food.

Which meant I needed some way to maintain the host body’s condition.

I could divide my vision into two separate fields—one for the bird and one for the human body—but that would interfere with observation.

And repeatedly releasing control of the pigeon every few hours just to move the main body around would be troublesome as well.

“I hope the house-hunting trip doesn’t get interrupted halfway through. It’s been a while. I’d really like to focus on nothing but flying.”

Therefore, after considerable thought, I decided to use another method.

“Hey. Can you hear me?”

“......”

Of course, I still did not fully understand human beings.

In golem research, however, there were generally two ways to determine a construct’s actions.

One was delicate direct control, where the caster dictated every movement from beginning to end.

The other was much rougher.

You simply engraved broad behavioral instructions and allowed the construct to act within them.

This time, I chose the latter.

“If you can hear me, answer.”

“Yes.”

In other words, I scraped together every remaining fragment of memory and soul left inside Kim Giryeo’s body and used them to construct a system.

Inside that now-empty shell, I installed something like a macro programmed to imitate the routines Kim Giryeo had followed while alive.

As time passed, it would eat.

Drink water.

Maintain basic hygiene.

To the natives of this planet, those probably sounded like simple behaviors.

For an alien like me, however, directly programming them from scratch was surprisingly difficult.

On Alphauri, constructing algorithms from stored memories like this had been common practice.

The problem was that the original owner of this body had possessed rather unstable life-maintenance habits in several respects.

“The first rule is definitely engraved properly, right?”

“Under absolutely no circumstances are you allowed to perform any action that could damage that body.”

That should be enough.

With those safeguards in place, the automation ought to function without any serious problems.