Chapter 130 - Grimoire Harem (1)
10 min read ·
Maybe it was because I'd burned through so much mana in the dream-world battle with Gremory, followed by summoning Paimon.
I was so exhausted after dinner that I fell asleep right away, and when I opened my eyes....
".........."
It was already late lunchtime the next day.
After a simple lunch of toast, a fried egg, and salad, I went out to the Cathedral garden to clear the fog from my head.
Ellie was out there with the kids, hanging blankets in the sun to dry.
I spotted Min-hee clutching Ellie's habit with her tiny hands, looking dejected and on the verge of tears.
"Uuu...."
"Haha, it's okay."
Ellie smiled gently and stroked Min-hee's head.
I could pretty much guess what had happened. Min-hee must've wet the bed.
The weather was chilly, but warm sunlight poured down as I stared blankly at the scene.
".........."
"Yo-han, you're awake!"
Our eyes met, and Ellie came over with a bright greeting.
"I'll get something ready for you to eat right away. Just give me a moment."
"I already ate some of the bread in the kitchen. I'm fine."
Something occurred to me as I spoke, so I asked Ellie.
"By the way, where's Soo-ah?"
Normally around this time, she'd be shuffling out of bed to eat something that passed for both breakfast and lunch, or coming to bother me because she was bored.
But she hadn't been in the living room, nor was she out in the garden with Ellie.
"Oh, Soo-ah said she was going to visit her family home for a bit, so she left this morning. Apparently, her father was worried because she hasn't been coming home lately."
'Her family home? ...Oh, Soo-ah's house.'
I was puzzled for a moment before it clicked.
Right. Regardless of the fact that she'd practically moved into the Cathedral and even made herself a room here, Soo-ah was still a perfectly respectable chaebol heiress with a perfectly good home of her own.
...Well, her relationship with her dad was complicated.
From Soo-ah's perspective, she probably didn't feel like that place was truly her home.
"Soo-ah tried to tell you this morning, but you were asleep, so she said she sent you a message."
At Ellie's words, I pulled out my phone and found a message Soo-ah had sent that morning.
[I'm going back to my parents' place! If you get lonely, call me!] [TL: Soo-ah uses a term normally used by a married woman for her own parents' home.]
One eye narrowed slightly.
'Your "parents' place", my ass....'
Whatever. I was still a little tired, so I decided to head back to my room and spend the afternoon taking it easy.
I didn't feel like just lying there staring into space, though, so I opened my laptop to see if anything new had turned up on [Mephisto Market].
So I opened Mephisto Market.
A frantic-looking new post was sitting right at the top.
[Author: Dress]
[Title: Hurryhurryhurry! What do I do about this!?]
'What's this?'
Dress wasn't normally the kind of wizard who posted anything particularly weird, so I clicked it out of idle curiosity.
".........?"
Then I blinked twice.
The post had a photo of a pumpkin patch, and Dress must have snapped it in a hurry because one hand and the edge of some lace had made it into the frame.
More importantly, a tiny red-bearded figure in green clothes was caught in an animal trap, looking ready to cry.
'Is that a gnome?'
As I stared in confusion.
Cute snickering came from behind me.
"Puhaha~ What a stupid leprechaun, gnome!"
"Puhihi~ A leprechaun's the only fairy dumb enough to get caught in a stupid trap like that, gnome!"
Two gnomes pointed at the picture on my laptop and burst out laughing.
Meanwhile, behind them, another gnome had fallen over after getting the hem of its clothes sucked into the robot vacuum Soo-ah had bought because she said my room was too bare, and was now tearfully asking for help.
Whirrr-.
"Waaah~ Grizzly! Guys! Help me, gnome!"
"Gyaa?"
Grizzly looked down at the scene and tilted its head.
...Anyway, I asked the two gnomes.
"Is the fairy race in this picture called a leprechaun?"
"That's right, gnome! It's a fairy that lives in Ireland, gnome! It has nothing to do with gnomes at all, gnome!"
I looked back at the tiny red-bearded fairy in the picture.
'Hmmm~ So it's basically the Irish regional form of a gnome?'
[Leprechaun – A small fairy native to Ireland with red hair and a red beard. It loves sweets, shoes, and gold. It is skilled at repairing and making shoes and has a hobby of collecting gold in pots. It has no particular connection to gnomes.]
I looked back at Dress's post.
[Dress – I heard something in my pumpkin patch, so I came out to check. What is this thing? Does it bite? It's crying like crazy. What am I supposed to do?]
ㄴ[Two-HeadedSnake – That's a leprechaun. It's a fairy that lives in Ireland. Do you live in Ireland? They're not really the kind of fairy that harms humans, so just think of it like finding a raccoon.]
ㄴ[Dress – I don't live in Ireland... How the hell did it even get in here....]
[TyrantKaiser – Pretty hand. You a woman?]
ㄴ[Two-HeadedSnake – A woman...? Why are you looking for women on Mephisto Market? Trying to get a date?]
ㄴ[TyrantKaiser – No, I mean... when some fucking shitpost gets posted, I can say, "Women use Mephisto Market too! Don't post crap like this!" ...That's all.]
[WheelchairMaster – Hmmm~ That casual little "by the way, I'm a woman" move is a bit much~.]
ㄴ[Dress – That's not what I was doing!]
[ILovePrettyBoys – If you don't live in Ireland... maybe it was a fairy the Ghost Merchant poached, and it escaped, ran away, then got caught in your trap?]
ㄴ[Dress – Ghost Merchant?]
ㄴ[ILovePrettyBoys – The owner of the Grimoire <Heptameron>. Ghost Merchant is just his nickname, though. He poaches not only ghosts but fairies and mystical creatures too, keeping some as his own Familiars and selling others off to wizard families or schools.]
After reading through the comments, I left a reply on Dress's increasingly bewildered post.
I'd only dealt with Dress through Mephi-chan, but Dress was the wizard who'd made the magic-artifact gloves I was currently using, the ones inscribed with a Magic Circle.
'...Well, it's close enough to a gnome.'
[Gyges – Try giving it some candy or cookies.]
ㄴ[Dress – Cookies?]
A little while later, Dress sent me a private message.
[Dress – It calmed down, but... what do I do about this?]
When I clicked the message, it redirected me to a new post Dress had made.
[Dress – It looked hungry, so I gave it some pumpkin pie I'd made... and now it brought its friends over.]
In the new photo attached to the post, a whole group of leprechauns had huddled together, eyeing the pumpkin pie warily while still showing obvious interest.
".........."
...Well, I decided to ignore that. Dress could figure out the rest.
Then I noticed a new post by Yoannis, "ILovePrettyBoys", so I decided to check it.
Most of his posts were shitposts about cross-dressing pretty boys, but there was always a chance he'd let something useful slip about his whereabouts.
[Author: ILovePrettyGirls]
[Title: How to Treat Women Like Flowers]
[If they're pretty, pluck them. When they wilt, throw them away.]
My mouth fell open at the sheer absurdity of the post.
[NymphEnthusiast – What an absolute fucking bastard! Go crawl off and die!!]
ㄴ[TyrantKaiser – Wow... I've never seen NymphEnthusiast this angry before. ILovePrettyBoys, you're seriously screwed now.]
ㄴ[Two-HeadedSnake – An army of a million nymphs is gonna beat the crap out of you!]
[WheelchairMaster – Looking at this now, I guess the whole "I love pretty boys" thing was just an act too~.]
[FreeTheGrandMaster – It was a lie? Was I the only one who meant it...? I can't forgive you, can't forgive youcan'tforgiveyoucan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan't.]
...Still, something felt off for a post supposedly written by Yoannis.
[ILovePrettyBoys – No, what the fuck! What is this!? Everybody, get a grip! Look at the username carefully! It's not "ILovePrettyBoys", it's "ILovePrettyGirls"! I didn't write this!]
Right. Looking closely, it wasn't "ILovePrettyBoys" at all, but another user's near-identical handle, "ILovePrettyGirls", off by just one letter in Korean.
Judging by the reactions, though, everyone else had already noticed and was just using the opportunity to mess with him.
I shut the laptop.
"Haa...."
In the end, I hadn't found any useful information. I'd just wasted time.
Whatever.
It was time to give Grizzly and the gnomes their snacks, so I got up.
It was a lazy afternoon on a day off, spent wasting time.
***
Inside a large, dark dockside warehouse lit by dim electric lights.
There, a man sat facing off against a wizard who was the boss of a mafia organization.
And then.
The black-haired man, wearing a vintage brown trench coat over a black suit, tapped at his phone.
[Purple~ Archive~!]
The cute electronic voice from his phone echoed through the warehouse.
".........?"
An awkward silence spread among the mobsters filling the warehouse, and the man offered a quick apology.
"Ah, sorry. There's an event going on right now."
His voice was languid, yet there was a certain force behind it.
[Sensei~ Welcome~!]
The man in the trench coat tapped the pretty-girl character greeting him, collecting affection points while running the game event as he spoke.
"Do you like gacha games where you collect pretty girls?"
The mafia boss frowned at the incomprehensible question, but the man paid him no mind.
".........."
"I happen to love them."
The man continued.
"They're fun. You get tons of cute girls who are easy on the eyes, each one has her own story, and there's even a fair bit of interaction."
"I had no idea you were into that sort of hobby. Do you collect pretty girls in real life too and toy with them?"
At the mafia boss's sarcasm, the man smiled with his eyes.
"...No. I don't have much interest in real girls. It's separate from sexual desire. It's more like the appreciation I have for beautiful works of art."
The mafia boss snorted.
"Enough bullshit. Let's get back to business, Ghost Merchant."
"...Very well."
The Ghost Merchant, Pierre, put away his phone and shrugged.
"So, to continue where we left off, you're telling me to hand over all my merchandise and get lost."
His languid yet cutting voice echoed through the warehouse.
"I understand."
"If you want to live."
Click-.
The mobsters leveled their guns at Pierre.
By then, a leather-bound Grimoire was already in Pierre's hand.
The mobsters' eyes widened in shock.
"—?!"
As though it had been standing there from the very beginning, a headless knight in black armor stood among them.
".........."
The headless knight, the Dullahan, spun and swept its one-handed sword in a wide arc.
The blade traced a circle through the air, slicing through the mobsters' torsos in a single stroke and killing them instantly.
Shrrrk-!
"Aaaaaagh!"
Though caught off guard, the remaining mobsters immediately turned their guns toward Pierre.
Whooosh-.
A gust of wind swept past, and every one of their heads dropped from their shoulders.
The mafia boss, himself a wizard, recoiled in horror.
"What the-."
He saw a figure draped in black standing amid fountains of blood and the red rain pouring down.
The figure, wrapped head to toe in black cloth and looking almost like a "ninja", pressed his palms together and spoke.
"Domo, MageSlayer desu."
A black gust blew again as he moved behind the wizard.
The wizard's head fell.
He hadn't used magic.
He had simply moved his blade that fast.
Pierre rose from his chair and addressed the corpse.
"It's only natural for a wizard with that much money to keep a skilled Breathing Technique user as a bodyguard."
He had known from the start that it was a trap. He'd walked into it on purpose to clean things up before he left.
Pierre stepped out of the dockside warehouse.
His waiting subordinates approached.
"Master, the car is ready. Where will you be heading next?"
"Seoul, South Korea."
Pierre answered without hesitation.
Originally, the place hadn't interested him much, since Shin Do-ryong had beaten every Yokai there to death.
But ever since a Wild Hunt had occurred there recently, paranormal phenomena had become much more active.
More importantly, according to information Pierre had paid a fortune for from a diviner of the Hermetic School, the place held a Grimoire capable of uncovering information on all manner of Anomalies Pierre sought and sealing them away.
The <Shanhaijing> was there.