Chapter 38

Chapter 38

The alley with the wall sculpture was on relatively high ground.

With an Awakened person's eyesight, I could clearly see the enormous monster.

And Eom Seok-hwan struggling against it.

Even from this distance, the battle was steadily turning against him.

Standing in front of the sculpture and watching Eom Seok-hwan fight the wyvern in the distance made cold sweat run down my back.

Even the sparks created whenever his weapon struck the monster's hide were appearing less and less often.

Eom Seok-hwan... he's exhausted.

Even if he was considered nearly S-Class, fighting while protecting the village was bound to be difficult.

I placed my hand on the sculpture.

It only needed a little more refinement before it was complete.

But right now, it could be destroyed at any moment.

If this continues, both Eom Seok-hwan and the village will be in danger.

So I made my decision.

I pulled my tools from my pocket.

Clang! Clang!

The sound of chisel and hammer striking stone.

It was a sound I could never get tired of hearing.

Yet today, I couldn't hear it at all.

Just a little more.

Just a little more....

Eom Seok-hwan.

Hold on just a little longer.

The last part remaining was Grandfather's isolated house.

With superhuman concentration, I shaped the image of Grandfather's home.

The wooden porch where he must have lain down.

The yard where he'd set up his easel and worked.

The front gate countless people must have passed through.

At last, the sculpture was finished.

Without thinking, I gently stroked the part depicting Grandfather's house.

"May the lives of the villagers, Grandfather's memories, and... the traces he left behind all remain safe."

With that wish in my heart, I shouted.

"Pygmalion!!"

Crack!

Brilliant light illuminated the dark sky.

The sword flashed again and again.

One of the wyvern's horns was badly cut, and a deep wound had been carved into its side.

"Haa... Hah... Hah, huff!"

But that was all.

Damn it.

If only this were inside a Gate.

If this were inside a Gate, where he didn't have to care what got destroyed around him, Eom Seok-hwan wouldn't have struggled this badly.

The fact that he'd come without armor and had to protect his body was one problem.

Having no support beside him was another.

But even taking all that into account, his pride still hurt.

Even so...

He had to endure.

There were too many people behind him who trusted only him.

Eom Seok-hwan swallowed the metallic taste of blood and made up his mind.

Even if it means getting impaled, I'll stop it!

Without that much resolve, he wouldn't last until Glory Guild arrived.

"Come on! I'm Eom Seok-hwan, captain of Yeonwoo Guild's Raid Team Two!"

Yeonwoo Guild had its pride!

Just before Eom Seok-hwan's body collided with the wyvern once again...

Fweee!

A small sound rang out.

Then light spread across the night, pushing back the darkness.

The light fell directly between Eom Seok-hwan and the wyvern, who had been facing each other at the edge of the village.

As if declaring,

This is where our territory begins.

"Kieeeek!"

The wyvern charging toward Eom Seok-hwan touched the light and screamed in pain.

Steam even began rising from its skin as though it had been scorched by fire.

Without realizing it, Eom Seok-hwan let his shoulders drop and released a huge breath.

Goosebumps raced down his back.

Instinctively, he understood what had happened.

"Do Hwa-in, you bastard...!"

He couldn't hold back his grin.

He had clenched his teeth so hard throughout the battle that his gums were stained red, yet he couldn't even feel the pain.

"Hahahaha! You're the best!"

He simply shouted his praise toward the S-Class production-type Hunter who had to be somewhere inside the village.

"Haha...."

[Eumgil Village (C+)]

[The residents of Eumgil Village wish for one another's safety.]

[Created by Do Hwa-in.]

[!WARNING! A "Small Story" has seeped into the item!
→ A unique characteristic has been created!

*When a resident of Eumgil Village wishes for the village's safety, a special protective barrier is generated.

Barrier Effects: Disease Prevention, Monster Repulsion]

I hadn't expected a Story to seep into it.

Was it because all the wishes people had made while touching the sculpture had ultimately been wishes for one another?

[A "Small Story" is being contained within the item!]

Their shared wish had formed a Small Story centered around the community known as Eumgil Village, evolving the item.

I raised my head and looked at the barrier beautifully illuminating the night sky.

Its winding, rippling haze spread like something from a dream.

Before I knew it, both the monster's cries and the Gate alarm had fallen silent.

"...Did the wall sculpture just become a shield item?"

I turned.

The village headman was standing there with a blank expression.

He'd even thrown off his hat because it was getting in the way as he stared up at the sky.

"I'm a production-type Hunter."

I gave him a grin.

Slowly, a smile began spreading across his face too.

The village headman laughed through his tears, rubbing at his face roughly.

"Thank you. Really... thank you so much."

Neigh...!

"Woof! Woof!"

The village animals that had fled seemed to sense that it was safe again.

One by one, they began returning.

Against the glittering sky in the distance, I could also see Chaeri flying back.

"Dad!"

The village headman jerked in surprise and began looking around the sky.

That led to an entire round of introductions for Chaeri.

The village quickly returned to normal.

The only troublesome moment came when the Glory Guild members who had chased the monster here recognized me and loudly greeted me.

Other than that, it almost felt as though the Gate alarm had never happened.

Of course, the way people treated me and Eom Seok-hwan changed completely.

I had created the <Eumgil Village> item.

And Eom Seok-hwan had single-handedly held back the enormous monster until the item activated.

Before, we had simply been the grandson of someone they knew and the grandson's friend who looked good at hard labor.

Now we were practically treated as the village's saviors.

Thanks to that, it became much easier to ask Mr. Oh Gi-deok, his wife, and Ms. Lee Yeong-a the questions I'd been holding back.

Things had grown much bigger than my original plan of simply showing them that, unlike Father, I'd had a good relationship with Grandfather.

Ms. Lee Yeong-a spoke first.

"It must've been a few months ago."

Was it really the Association?

"Late at night, this incredibly flashy car came into the village. The engine was so loud I woke up thinking it was thunder."

"..."

"And that thunderous noise started climbing up toward the hill where the painter's house is. The first thing I thought was, There's nobody who should be visiting that house. It must be a thief."

"...Who was it?"

"A man who looked very wealthy. He was wearing a suit even though he'd come all the way out to a rural village like this."

"Did he come out of Grandfather's house carrying a painting?"

I interrupted her in my impatience.

She looked surprised for a moment before answering.

"Oh my. How did you know? Even when we called him a thief, he shouted that he was there on official business. Said if we interfered, we'd get thrown in jail for obstructing official duties."

"..."

"We couldn't stop him. Even though I knew there was no reason for a government official to storm the house of some ordinary painter...."

Silence settled over the room.

I was busy organizing my thoughts.

The others simply watched me.

Then Ms. Lee Yeong-a suddenly grabbed my hand.

"If I'd known the painter's grandson would come looking for him like this, I would've tried harder to stop that man. I would've taken better care of the house too."

"Excuse me?"

Her eyes glistened as she explained.

She'd been hurt when Grandfather left while saying he would never return to the village.

Because of that hurt, she'd deliberately ignored the abandoned house.

And now she regretted it.

"I'm sorry. I kept telling myself it was an ownerless house, ownerless paintings. I didn't know pretending not to care would come back as regret like this."

"No. You still ran over immediately when something happened. You did the same when we first arrived. If you hadn't gone there that night, I wouldn't even know who took the painting."

"Thank you for saying that.... Thank you...."

"But that painting... was it unframed? Did it have a river in it?"

"Yes! Do you know the painting? Did you come all the way here looking for it...?"

"No. That's not why I came."

For a moment, I felt confused.

The fact that the Association had forcibly taken the work wasn't particularly surprising.

But there was still something I couldn't understand.

A posthumous work meant the final piece an artist created before death.

Grandfather had moved up to Seoul not long after my brother was born.

And after that, he'd never returned to the provinces.

It wasn't as though he'd stopped painting after moving to Seoul either.

I could still vividly remember watching him lower his brush onto canvas.

"Why do you look like that?"

Eom Seok-hwan, who had been sitting quietly beside me, leaned over and asked.

He kept glancing toward the adults sitting in front of us, as though telling me not to hold back if I had another question.

"Is there something else you're wondering about?"

"Ah.... Well, I was wondering why that painting was in this village."

"The painting?"

"It was Grandfather's posthumous work."

"Gasp!"

Ms. Lee Yeong-a covered her mouth in shock.

Mr. Oh Gi-deok and his wife, who had been peeling fruit beside him, reacted the same way.

I quickly reassured the adults, whose eyebrows immediately drooped with worry.

"I already recovered the painting, so it's fine. It's just that I didn't even know Grandfather had a posthumous work. And then I learned it had been here.... As far as I know, Grandfather never came back to the countryside before he died."

"..."

"Do you know anything about that?"

"Well. Other than that rude man in the suit...."

"Oh! Come to think of it, a long time ago, some people who said they were the painter's students came to the village a few times."

"Students?"

Grandfather had students?

"I'm not completely certain. It was decades ago."

"...No. That's already very helpful."

The moment I heard that Grandfather had students, I had a feeling that was the direction I needed to investigate.

I wasn't merely tracing the past anymore.

It was time to actively dig for information.

I excused myself for a moment and stepped into the yard.

Chaeri, who had been playing with the horse near the stable, immediately looked over.

As I walked toward her, I sent a scheduled email to the professor who had supervised me back in university.

I asked whether they knew anything about Master Painter Do Jae-hwan.

Or whether they knew someone who had known him.

"Phew...."

How many of Grandfather's works existed that I knew nothing about?

Afterward, I listened to the adults tell stories about Grandfather and Father.

My attention had briefly become fixated on Grandfather's missing works.

But the original purpose of this journey was still to create sculptures for the exhibition that might help me reach my parents.

For around ten years after Grandfather first moved into the village, Father apparently visited every now and then.

Just often enough that people would nearly forget him before he appeared again.

"He always came at the worst possible times. Watching from the side, it almost felt like heaven was playing a prank, deliberately trying to keep the two of them apart."

Apparently, Father always visited when Grandfather was deeply absorbed in a piece.

"He never came when the painter was wandering around the village poking his nose into everyone's business. He always came right when the man said inspiration had struck and locked himself inside his house."

At that point, Ms. Lee Yeong-a suddenly interrupted Mr. Oh Gi-deok and took Father's side.

"The painter was pretty harsh too. His son came all the way from that distant city just to see his father. Even from my perspective, he treated him so coldly...."

"Ahem. Yeah, it was a little much."

"Once, the young sculptor's father even brought a painting he'd made himself."

Father painted something?

I couldn't imagine it at all.

"His own father was a painter, wasn't he? He probably thought he could communicate through a painting if nothing else. He was trying, in his own way."

"Ah...."

Grandfather was also the one who had taught me as a child that artists spoke through their works.

So I thought I understood why Father had brought a painting.

I was planning to make a sculpture to communicate with him myself.

"But honestly, it was terrible."

"Excuse me?"

"I caught a glimpse when your father walked past me. It looked like something an elementary-school kid had scribbled."

"..."

F-Father....

"Maybe even the painter couldn't feel anything from it. Or maybe it simply wasn't good enough to catch his eye, so he barely looked at it."

"..."

"Whenever art was involved, the painter could become frighteningly strict."

For a moment, I remembered the Grandfather in my memories.

Always gentle.

Sitting my younger self on his lap and teaching me how to draw one step at a time.

And when I eventually said I wanted to sculpt instead of paint, he'd supported that too.

The adult who had told me that was perfectly fine.

But listening to the people in front of me, it almost felt like they were describing another person entirely.

They clearly cared about Grandfather.

Yet whenever they spoke about stories involving Father, their evaluation of Grandfather was subtly cold.

He sounded like an immature father who couldn't understand his son's feelings.

So Father didn't just study art.

He actually painted too.

I'd barely believed it when my brother first told me Father had studied art.

I felt exactly the same now.

"...Around when was that?"

"We'd just started middle school, so... about thirty years ago?"

That meant Father had started traveling back and forth to this village to see Grandfather when he was around my current age.

After listening for a long time, I went outside again.

I didn't feel like I could simply lie down and sleep.

"Hey. Not sleeping?"

"I can't."

Eom Seok-hwan, who I'd thought had already gone to bed, sat beside me.

He retrieved the <Replica of Mad Dragon Rubera's Scale Sword> from the back of the car and began carefully wiping it with a dry cloth.

"That's an item. Doesn't it stay fine even if you don't clean it?"

"What are you talking about? You made it and you still don't understand items? Items are still objects. They wear down and get old."

"They do?"

The <Gerbera Bouquet> I'd made first was still blooming as vividly as ever.

I remembered the bouquet hanging upside down in one corner of my workshop.

It always looked as fresh as though it had bloomed that morning.

"And even if it didn't wear down, the more care you put into a weapon, the more familiar it becomes in your hands. Then when you're in real danger, the weapon helps you."

"It's not an ego sword...."

"You've never felt that way while making your sculptures? Like the more care you put into one, the more alive it becomes?"

Of course I had.

The village wall sculpture that had become an item only recently was proof.

Once the villagers' care joined mine, hadn't it become something far greater than I'd originally imagined?

"Nothing to say now, right?"

"...Yeah."

We both laughed at the same time.

Even that small laugh made me feel better.

But apparently Eom Seok-hwan still had something he wanted to say.

"I think people are the same."

"Huh?"

"If you want a relationship not to break, you have to put care into it too."

"But Father...."

Without thinking, I almost asked whether Father's efforts hadn't been pointless.

Even though I knew there was no reason to argue with Eom Seok-hwan about it.

But instead, he answered as though he'd been waiting for that question.

"In the end, your father did see results, didn't he? You said your grandfather eventually changed and moved to the city with your father."

"...That's true."

"And watching you... you seem to think the grandfather you remember and the grandfather these villagers remember are different people."

Had he been staring at my face this entire time?

I awkwardly rubbed my cheek.

Then Eom Seok-hwan's next words struck me like a blade.

"This might be presumptuous, but maybe he changed because your father kept trying."

"..."

"Watching his son keep making an effort probably gave your grandfather a lot to think about too."

"...You bastard. That is pretty presumptuous."

"I knew it...."

"But thanks."

I stood abruptly from the wooden porch.

The stable house wasn't quite as elevated as Grandfather's home, but it was still high enough to look down across the village at an angle.

Was the moon bright?

Or were the stars?

Every alley was clearly visible.

Even at this late hour, a few people still walked here and there.

I traced the roads beneath them with my fingertip.

And imagined Father, several years younger than I was now.

Walking step by step toward Grandfather's house at the highest point in the village.

With every step, hoping his father would finally look into his heart.

That image probably wasn't much different from me during my school days.

Back then, I'd always wanted Father to look into my heart too.

When you thought about it...

Three generations of us had spent all this time missing one another.

"I'm glad I decided to prepare an exhibition."

Maybe I hadn't realized it, but perhaps I'd been a little afraid.

Judging by how clean and light one corner of my chest suddenly felt, that had probably been true.

"That's good."

After building up the atmosphere so much, Eom Seok-hwan only offered a short little agreement.

What an annoying, funny bastard.

Even back when we'd first met and become friends, he'd always had a strangely mature side to him.

I glanced at him.

He was still carefully wiping the Scale Sword.

He said items wear out eventually, right?

As this journey had reminded me, this was an age where battlefields existed everywhere.

And my friend was the kind of person who went looking for them.

I'll make his next sword too.

Not another replica like the Scale Sword.

Something on the level of the Durandal I'd made for Shin Ha-gyeon.

And this time, preferably without a modifier like Corrupted attached to it.

We loaded the paintings from Grandfather's house into the back of the vehicle.

"There are a lot."

"Yeah. I didn't expect there to be paintings inside the cupboards too."

Apparently, the man who had arrived with that thunderous engine really had taken only one painting.

There was even a mark on the wall of the innermost room where a frame had once hung.

I'd already intended to take any of Grandfather's remaining works with me.

But after seeing that empty mark, my desire to sweep up every last one became even stronger.

Someone might be able to take paintings from an ownerless house.

But they couldn't exactly rob my workshop when Hunters guarded it at all times.

"Our heroes are already leaving?"

I turned.

Villagers had gathered in little groups outside Grandfather's house.

Every face looked reluctant to say goodbye after we'd grown close.

I grinned and joked,

"I have to go back to work too."

I had more or less settled on the concept for the first piece I wanted Father to see.

It wasn't perfect.

But the suffocating blankness I'd felt before this journey was completely gone.

"Still room in the trunk? We packed some food for you...."

The gifts they brought out were varied.

Traditional sweets.

Rice cakes.

Rice.

Kimchi.

Seasoned vegetables.

Candy.

And even a large food container filled with grains and fruit, labeled in enormous letters:

[CHAERI'S]

Chaeri immediately landed on top of the container and tilted her head this way and that.

The few children in the village burst into laughter.

"I think we'll miss you a lot. You boys did quite a few things around here."

"Every time we look at that warehouse pillar or the wall in the alley, we'll think of you."

"Come visit often. You fixed this house up so nicely. You should come back and use it."

We had cleaned and repaired Grandfather's house whenever we had free time.

Now it was difficult to believe it had been that abandoned wreck we'd seen on our first day.

Leaving behind a farewell as warm and clean as bedding dried in the sun...

Vrrrm.

We set off.

When I lowered the window, the full scent of spring rushed inside.

Even people working in the fields recognized our car and waved their arms widely.

"Are we really going straight home?"

Eom Seok-hwan asked from beside me.

He was dressed exactly as he'd been when we'd first arrived at the village.

Only his face was slightly more tanned.

"For now."

"Meaning you're going to stop by home and then leave on another trip."

"Probably? This inspiration trip worked pretty well."

"Hmm."

"Why? You don't think you can come on the next one?"

"Yeah. I think it's about time I went back. You'll have to go with someone else."

"Fair. We stayed in this village for quite a while."

"That's part of it, but...."

"Yeah?"

"After fighting that wyvern, I realized I need more training."

Only then did I notice the competitive fire burning in his eyes behind his sunglasses.

"You're going back to sculpt, right?"

"Yeah. I don't think I'll feel like traveling anywhere else until I finish one piece. My head's completely full right now."

After settling our future plans, we chatted about random things.

I'd expected the car to travel smoothly along the wide, open road without stopping.

But when we finally did stop...

It wasn't because we wanted spiral potatoes.

And it wasn't because someone needed the bathroom.

"This area is predicted to experience an Eruption-Type Gate! Please take another route!"

Silver armor flashed beneath the sunlight.