Chapter 403

When I mentioned a specific plan, Seonwoo Yeon looked a little surprised. But rather than talk any further about the retirement press conference, I first brought up the immediate inconvenience.

"But you know what?"

"Yes?"

"Seonwoo Yeon, you gave up your time today to come all the way here, right? You decided that spending the weekend with an alien would be more fun than spending it alone."

"Well... that's true, but..."

After that brief preamble, the Earthling's expression quickly grew uneasy.

"Could it be that you're starting to think of me as, well... an acquaintance, Seonwoo Yeon-ssi?"

"Of course."

"Oh, me too."

Before she could become any more uncomfortable, I quickly brought up the actual subject.

"Then, since we're officially acquaintances now, how about we start speaking informally to each other from now on?"

I'd been dying to make that suggestion for ages, if only so I could speak in the shortest sentences possible.

"After all, we're the same age anyway."

"How did you know my age?"

"I saw your information in the official documents when the [Fairy Kingdom] appeared."

I rarely forget information that seems useful.

"Anyway, then... can we start speaking informally now?"

I made full use of that trait to steer the conversation, and before long, a quiet reply came from the other side.

"Uh... no. You can't."

"Aha."

A brief silence fell.

"So I can't."

Somehow, it felt as though I'd had a similar conversation before.

And it was just as that sense of déjà vu came over me.

"Oh, wait a moment. I think I may have said something that could easily be misunderstood."

Beside me, the black-haired Earthling hurriedly corrected herself. She had absolutely no intention of rejecting an alien. In fact, she was quite comfortable with our relationship and genuinely wanted to treat me as a friend.

"I'm a public official, so if I speak informally to a Hunter in public, I'll get complaints."

"What did I just hear?"

So that was the reason.

"Since I'm already out today, maybe I should buy a new notebook at the convenience store."

Then she suggested that while she herself couldn't speak informally, I was free to do so.

But if I did, every single word I spoke would probably carry the weight of a public official's effort behind it.

"Let's just forget this entire conversation ever happened..."

"I'm sorry."

"Yes. Well, at least feel free to apologize as much as you like..."

I have no use for conversations that burden my mind.

So that was that.

"I'm hungry, so let's just eat already."

"Right. But about that script you mentioned earlier..."

"That's not something that needs to be written today."

After that, I quickly arranged food for my guest through a delivery app.

For the record, the menu was chosen according to the guest's wishes.

"This is my first time ordering from this meat restaurant since moving here, but thankfully, it's delicious."

"To be honest, it's pretty hard to make yukhoe bibimbap taste bad."

But just as Seonwoo Yeon and I finished our meal.

Tiring.

A phone notification sounded somewhere.

[Seo Esther 11]

For reference, that public official was simply diligent at her job.

She had not managed her personal connections so extensively that she possessed the private phone numbers of S-rank individuals.

"Excuse me, but I'm just going to check a message quickly."

I checked the message that had arrived on my personal device.

It was an electronic message from Seo Esther, beginning with the unfamiliar salutation "Teacher."

Happily, it was filled entirely with matters concerning money.

"Wow."

"What message?"

"They say the Guild Master of the Korean Magic Tower Guild just transferred 3 billion won?"

3 billion won.

The long-awaited payment for the new tutoring fees.

"That's right! Now that I think about it, she said she'd transfer it as soon as the busy work was more or less finished."

The corners of my mouth slowly rose.

Even after accounting for all the gift taxes, a staggering 3 billion won remained.

With this, I could pay this month's installment on my hunting taxes and still have money left over—and on top of that, the distribution of the epic items had not even been settled yet.

What an incredible windfall.

"Smiling isn't exactly a bad expression. I might as well stop holding back and just show it."

"Hunter Kim Giryeo."

But this wasn't merely a matter of taking the money and relaxing.

Naturally, being a teacher came with responsibilities.

"Hunter Kim Giryeo."

"Yes?"

"You really do look much more human when you smile."

"Really?"

"I've thought this ever since we first met, but you, Hunter, show so little expression that sometimes it was a little frightening."

At the bottom of the message on my phone was an additional note from the Guild Master of the Korean Magic Tower.

I skimmed through the words, which were practically a request, while simultaneously forming a casual reply to Seonwoo Yeon's comment.

"Thank you for the kind words."

True.

Even if I had no intention of socializing with the primitives, constantly giving off a creepy impression did not seem particularly beneficial.

It was only after hearing Seonwoo Yeon's opinion that I began seriously considering the need to control my facial expressions.

But the Earth native had not finished speaking yet.

"Ah, Hunter Kim Giryeo. But you shouldn't smile too often either. If you walk around grinning for no reason, you'll just look like you've lost your mind, so please keep that in mind."

"Now you're even regulating the frequency...?"

In life, moderation is always the hardest thing.

As I contemplated the problem of managing my facial expressions, I couldn't help feeling conflicted.

Still, no matter how daunting the task might seem, once I became unemployed, I figured I could at least compensate with an abundance of free time.

***

Another day passed.

I decided that when the time came for my retirement press conference, I would rely on the help of the native, Seonwoo Yeon.

And with that, we brought our meeting to an end.

However, contrary to that bold determination to prepare the interview script in advance, barely fourteen hours later, I found myself having to go out again...

"Well, at least this isn't something someone else forced on me. It's a mess I created myself, so that makes it a little better."

Something I had come across while browsing the internet recently suddenly came to mind.

The [Korean Magic Tower], one of South Korea's massive guilds.

On the surface, it was simply an ordinary nationwide hunting conglomerate steadily expanding its branches.

But according to one chilling rumor, if someone plotted the locations of their newly completed headquarters on a map, those points formed nothing less than a six-pointed star.

"No, wait—it's literally something you can verify on a map. So maybe I shouldn't even call it a baseless rumor."

Anyway, from the founding of the company to its everyday operations, Esther seemed to have engraved her strong individuality into every corner she touched.

And right now, her stubbornness and artistic sensibilities had proven immensely useful.

To put it simply, that country was dotted with countless branches of the Magic Tower.

So if I wished, I could even meet my new disciple somewhere near my own estate.

"It was originally supposed to be a shared space for all the guild members, but if the Guild Master herself shows up, things could turn out very differently..."

Esther and I ended up meeting again in the basement gym of one of the provincial branches.

"Come to think of it, going out frequently actually feels better than being holed up doing research."

Before long, a familiar sight came into view.

The young woman in her twenties who had messaged the Archmage was pacing back and forth.

[Seo Esther... But, Giryeo-ssi, the part on page 5 of the book you wrote—no matter how hard I try, I just can't do it. Could you maybe help me with just that section separately? w_w]

I recalled the message she had sent.

Although capitalism lay at the foundation of the entire arrangement, if a teacher and student ended up meeting this hastily, there could only be one subject to discuss.

Esther had run into a roadblock while studying magicology on her own and had sent out an urgent request for help.

"What did I even write on page 5...? I can't remember that much..."

A slight problem had already emerged before our very first in-person lesson.

Still, I decided I would simply work it out through conversation.

"First, let's take a look at page 1—the fundamentals you've been practicing on your own until now."

There was no time to reminisce properly.

After all, the company owner standing before me was far too busy.

So I decided to get straight to the point and focus solely on the lesson.

"Huh?"

But then an unexpected fact came to light.

Esther had already made considerable progress on her own.

"No, what? She actually managed to pull that off just by reading the text?"

Even during [Sin Classification], her control had not felt nearly this refined.

Yet this curse-wielder, who had learned sorcery solely through books, had seen her ability to manipulate mana skyrocket in just a few days.

If I compared the students I had taught so far, then in terms of sheer capacity—the raw vessel capable of containing mana—it was Jung Haseong who possessed the greatest talent.

But Esther's strength lay somewhere else entirely.

She had a gift for embodying the complete range of traits one would expect from a true magician.

"Truly, that's the kind of brilliance worthy of an S-rank!"

To elaborate further, Esther had been exposed to fantastical settings in games from an early age.

Naturally, this reduced her resistance toward supernatural concepts.

So perhaps it was inevitable that she would prove adept at manipulating magic.

"There's a real difference between a normal human who suddenly awakened overnight and a mutant who had already spent years imagining exactly how they'd use magic if they ever obtained it."

This was something I had realized from the very first time I visited the guild known as the Korean Magic Tower.

As expected, for someone calling herself a magician, a vivid imagination could only ever be an advantage.

"The results are much better than I expected."

I examined Esther's dazzling achievements and praised her without reservation.

"With skills like this, what exactly did you get stuck on? Was it the skill's phase alignment?"

"Yes, that's right. The part about closing my eyes and striking the back of my head with magic—I just don't understand the principle behind how that's supposed to work."

"Ah~"

After that, Esther's training proceeded without a hitch.

Surprisingly so.

All I did was offer a few verbal examples from the side, yet she handled the subsequent stages of sorcery with ease, displaying an ability that was nothing short of remarkable.

"Every disciple shows a completely different pattern... This whole teaching business might actually be starting to get fun."

Above all, I was glad that the workday I had braced myself for seemed likely to end quickly.

"But no matter how enjoyable the lessons are, I'll be quitting them soon. A bigger concern is which new television I should buy at the electronics store."

But just when everything had been going so smoothly.

"Hmm?"

I noticed something strange about the primitive shaman of Earth.

Her training results were undeniably excellent.

And I had praised her plenty, without dismissing her efforts in the slightest.

Yet for some reason, Esther had looked displeased all morning.

For certain aliens, a blank expression was only natural, but in her case, simply failing to smile was enough to put everyone beneath her on edge.

"Something about her seems different from usual..."

Then could it be that Esther had experienced something unpleasant unrelated to the lesson?

"Alright. Time to show off the primitive-human analysis skills I've been honing."

I casually asked Esther whether anything had been troubling her.

"Huh? Oh, no. Nothing you could really call a problem... it's just... nothing important..."

Esther hesitated for a moment before cautiously beginning to speak.

"I just read something this morning that annoyed me."

"Could you explain in detail?"

"Well, you see... I went online, and there was all this praise for that 'Kang Changho.'"

Kang Changho.

A name that seemed to appear everywhere.

"Anyway, I've hated this kind of thing ever since back then!"

It seemed that clearing [Castle of Sloth] had earned him a favorable reputation.

Normally, he might simply laze around, but in a crisis like this, that S-rank truly was the ultimate hidden card.

And there was more.

As Esther recalled the online comments she had read, her anger gradually intensified.

"When Jung Haseong gets caught up in controversy, people say, 'I knew he'd turn out like that someday.' But if someone like Kang Changho does something good even once, suddenly it's an 'unexpected side' of him and everyone starts viewing him differently!"

"Watch your blood pressure."

"Refusing a summons? I won't even complain about that. But Kang Changho is a convicted fan of Choi Jin—so why doesn't everyone keep condemning him forever?"

However, her rant did not end there.

She went on to complain that Kang Changho was surely evading taxes while still benefiting from Korea's clean roads, which only made him even more detestable in her eyes.

"I paid hundreds of billions... If he really is a tax evader, that bastard should be arrested immediately..."

Her arguments were certainly understandable.

But because some parts differed from my own perspective, I slowly began explaining them to Esther.

"That's why you're a curse attribute."

"Even as time passes, my emotions don't fade, and I'm especially the kind of person who can't really believe in the word 'repentance.'"

The core of a curse did not lie only in the spell itself.

It could also be said to lie in the fuel used to cast it.

"And since the subject came up, there's something I'd like to tell you in advance..."

"What is it?"

However, I'm not entirely sure whether it is alright to reveal even this truth.

"Actually, I'm not really the right teacher for you."

As I had just mentioned, [Curses] depended especially heavily on personal temperament.

In other words, they were a highly 'talent-based' form of magic.

"Honestly, curses aren't a skill that becomes significantly easier just because someone teaches you."

Therefore, nine-tenths of what I could teach Esther would consist of basic mana fundamentals.

The lesson was structured in such a way that dramatic growth like Jung Haseong's [Incarnation] was simply impossible.

That was why I needed to ask for her understanding beforehand.

"It's okay. I completely understand!"

The head of the Korean Magic Tower readily accepted the limitations without hesitation.

"Besides, in RPGs, once you reach the endgame—when your equipment is already practically perfect—even the tiniest upgrade becomes difficult. And yet you, Giryeo-ssi, are teaching me secrets that could let me improve by several stages."

"You really seem to love games."

"Are you getting better?"

"What are you suddenly asking if I'm getting better at?"

"Hahaha."

Esther continued speaking, her expression much brighter now.

"Anyway, I don't have any desire to become stronger overnight."

"Yes."

"The only thing I'm worried about is dungeon difficulty. Even during [Sin Classification], and lately too, it seems like increasingly dangerous monsters have been appearing..."

Hmm.

"Today, there were also a few articles about people in the industry and things like that. Really, wouldn't it be nice if every day, all we ever had to worry about were trivial things like this?"

Of course, I too long for such trivial peace.