90. The Saint's Blessing (2)

The second Mummification Disease treatment.

As his Stellar Rank rose, the life-force he’d stored up had grown along with it. Thanks to that, the treatment went smoothly…

“…or not, as it turns out.”

— Urk.

He’d guzzled so many potions that a dry retch came up. The life-force a Mummification Disease treatment ate through was staggering. There was a reason a dedicated treatment device had come along before the regression, after all. Try to cover that whole process with nothing but holy spells, and of course something was bound to go wrong.

‘At this rate I’m going to come down with potion addiction.’

‘Knock back too many in a short span and your body builds resistance to the recovery, too.’

Holy spells he could use all he liked, with no aftereffects. A potion’s healing mechanism was pharmaceutical, though, so down enough of them and the body built up immunity. It wasn’t a problem unless you drank an absurd amount. Still, considering how he’d been overdoing it lately to expand the Necropolis, it worried him.

‘I’d better look into some other way to secure life-force.’

Wouldn’t situations where he had to make up for a shortfall of spirit-power keep cropping up from here on out? No. Wield a power that ran past your Stellar Rank, and in the end a price always came due. Raising his spirit-power stat was the fundamental countermeasure, but whether by leveling up or by absorbing stats through Life Drain, it wasn’t a problem that would resolve any time soon.

‘I need to hit 4th Rank fast and take the Human-Shaped Snow Ginseng.’

For a chronic shortage of spirit-power, an elixir was the best answer. Yujin clicked his tongue and loosened the shoulders he’d held tight all through the treatment.

“Is it finished?”

“Yes. Go ahead and check for yourself that the patient’s all right.”

“Ah, aah.”

The client stumbled into the room with a groan, and Yujin’s party stepped aside to make room. Jin Seonghyeon, who’d been waiting outside, bowed his head to the two of them.

“Thank you, Saint.”

“Think nothing of it. It’s not as if I’m doing it for free.”

At the barbed edge in Yujin’s words, Jin Seonghyeon let a faint smile slip onto his face.

“That part, I expect my friend over there is well aware of, too.”

“A little later and it would’ve been dangerous, after all.”

“Had you told me sooner, I’d have put in the commission together when I asked you to see to Seryeong. I’ve gone and put you through extra trouble for nothing.”

“I take it you didn’t know there was an illness?”

“It seems they tried to handle it in-house, calling it a matter of the nation’s number-one pharmaceutical firm’s honor, and failed.”

The wife of Daehan Pharmaceutical’s representative, suffering from Mummification Disease? If word got out, it was the kind of thing that could send the company’s stock reeling.

“If Seryeong’s name hadn’t happened to come up… I wouldn’t have known either.”

“The representative of Daehan Pharmaceutical does well to keep good company.”

“Heh heh heh. The same goes for me, on that count.”

Jin Seonghyeon slipped in a sly nod toward the Madam.

Hmm.

The Madam seemed to want to keep a measured distance from Chairman Jin, but the man himself appeared to think otherwise.

‘You two can sort out your own business.’

Yujin had no wish to get involved. With the Madam it was a partnership through and through, not the sort of relationship for private feelings to enter into. Bring up anything the least bit personal and she’d be the first to hate it.

‘Even before the regression we were a strictly professional pairing.’

‘Spare me the nonsense, my lord Constellation.’

The Madam’s affability was a persona meant to hide her true heart. A mask, in other words. Yujin had seen quite a few people drawn in by the figure reflected in that mask, who flung themselves at it like moths to a flame and ruined themselves.

‘Just sit still and you’re halfway there—and yet they can’t even manage that.’

The client emerged just then, having finished her reunion with the patient. Shoving aside Kronos’s musings, the Constellation unconvinced to the last, Yujin gave a light nod of the head.

“Saint. My husband’s all right now, isn’t he?”

“Yes. The treatment’s completely done.”

When he ran through the precautions just as he had with Jin Seryeong, the middle-aged woman dabbed away the moisture welling in her eyes.

“Thank you. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay this kindness.”

“As it happens, I have one proposal for you. Spare me a little of your time.”

Yujin got straight to the heart of it.

Beside him, Jin Seonghyeon gave a great, deliberate cough. Ahem.

“He’s a young fellow, so he’s no lover of formalities. I hope you’ll understand, Chairman Jeong.”

“I’ve no intention of standing on ceremony before the one who saved us. Don’t worry.”

The leading entrepreneur who’d made Daehan Pharmaceutical the country’s number one, Jeong Sunim set aside her usual curt manner and answered with a bright, open smile.

Daehan Pharmaceutical’s representative, Jeong Sunim, stood at the 6th Rank realm. Unlike Seongcheon Enterprise’s Jin Seonghyeon, she hadn’t crossed the second great wall.

‘That doesn’t make her someone to look down on, though.’

She was the driving force that had set Daehan Pharmaceutical firmly atop the country. Without even belonging to the Alchemist job class that had appeared some five years back, she’d developed a whole string of high-performance pharmaceuticals.

‘To distribute the pill, going through Daehan Pharmaceutical is the better play.’

Seongcheon Enterprise’s specialty was alchemy as well, but they didn’t deal in medicine as a profession. Alchemy spanned several fields, and Daehan Pharmaceutical was the firm that specialized in the one concerned with medicinal materials.

“Business partner. Quit jiggling your leg already.”

“It’s just—aren’t you the one who made that legendary blue water—no, the Bacchus?”

Bacchus, the restorative commonly called the ‘blue potion,’ was a drink loved (?) not just by Hunters but by ordinary folk as well. Taking it relieved fatigue, and with no addictiveness or side effects, its renown as Daehan Pharmaceutical’s flagship product ran high.

“I used to drink a ton of it, once.”

“Don’t talk like you’ve quit now.”

“Does it show?”

“When you were making mid-grade potions you kept it on hand and drank it like water.”

Keuk. Shin Junseok let out a short groan, and Chairman Jeong Sunim gave a light laugh, as though his reaction were to her liking.

“Saint, and your companion. You said you had something to propose, yes?”

“I’d like to entrust the distribution of this pill—the Saint’s Blessing, that is—to you.”

Jeong Sunim checked the item information, and showed a reaction not much different from Jin Seonghyeon’s.

“Magnificent! To think there could be a drug this groundbreaking!”

“This fellow’s got a fair bit of talent, you see.”

“But this name, the Saint’s Blessing—do you have a follow-up series in mind as well?”

“Hm. You could see it that way, I suppose.”

Yujin didn’t bother to deny it. Beside him, Shin Junseok made a face of utter shock.

“Where’s this talk of a product series suddenly coming from? I never heard anything about that.”

“We needed a brand name to build around, didn’t we.”

The Saint’s So-and-So. Building a brand by putting ‘Saint’s’ out front, that sort of thing. What about that? The idea had come to him on the spot, sparked by Jeong Sunim’s remark, and the more he turned it over, the better it sounded.

Of course. To build a brand, you needed products bearing that name to keep rolling out steadily.

‘Ideas, I’ve got to spare.’

Before the regression, there were several recipes he’d picked up while partnering with Shin Junseok. And the knowledge dwelling in the Ring of Black Darkness was plentiful besides.

Revival Potion. Body-Strengthening Pill. Massacre Potion, and so on. Just how many products were there that he could remake into a Saint’s series?

“Business partner. We’ve got an awful lot of work ahead of us.”

“…?”

“Nothing. Just saying.”

Yujin gave Shin Junseok’s shoulder a light pat.

Let’s put in some hard graft together.
It’s not as if I’m doing this just to line my own pockets, is it?

Kronos clicked his tongue.

After that came the distribution negotiations. Chairman Jeong Sunim accommodated the Black Company as much as she possibly could.

“Since the output’s so small, it’d be best to sell it as a premium item.”

“Premium, you say?”

“We’ll supply it mainly to the top-tier Hunters our company sponsors, and let word spread gradually.”

Jeong Sunim proposed a sales strategy: offer the Saint’s Blessing to only a select few and let it build by word of mouth. The daily output of the Saint’s Blessing came to ten pills at the most generous estimate. Far too few to make a regular brand of it. The recipe was too complex to set up a production line for, the way you could with mass-produced mid-grade potions.

‘She’s definitely got a different eye for the business side.’

He’d learned something. He’d been thinking only of creating a brand and breaking open a distribution line, yet here was advice that took every factor into account: the Saint’s Blessing’s supply, the drug’s effects, all of it.

‘Down the line I really ought to scout a proper professional manager, too.’

This life was different from the one before the regression. He’d resolved to build the protective walls of an organization around himself, and to keep a strong opening hand from fizzling out into a losing one, he had a great deal to learn. He’d gotten a precious lesson on the cheap.

“All right.”

“Then I ought to give you some return for treating my husband.”

Yujin nodded, composed. Shin Junseok, by contrast, couldn’t hide his fluster.

“Just breaking open distribution for us through the premium line is plenty to be grateful for.”

“Whatever do you mean? That’s a proposal that benefits us too—that’s the only reason I accepted it.”

“That’s right. Alchemist Shin, the two matters ought to be handled separately.”

Jin Seonghyeon, who’d connected the commission in the middle, added his word as well.

Quite, quite. Just so. A chance to be supplied with a pill like the Saint’s Blessing on a regular basis? What an opportunity that was. The contract would bring tremendous profit to Daehan Pharmaceutical, too.

And so, a reward ought to be taken separately as well.

“Could I have it in Human-Shaped Snow Ginseng?”

“That’ll take a little time, I think. Perhaps… a month or so.”

“That’s fine.”

There was no rush. Reaching 4th Rank, the condition for taking the Human-Shaped Snow Ginseng, would take time anyway.

‘Once I’m back in the borderlands, I’d better throw myself into monster hunting.’

Fafnir’s Stellar Rank had climbed to 5th Rank. And Song Myeongseok, the prodigy who bore the Heavenly Bone trait, had joined the army of the dead too. Together they made a fighting force that could hunt even in the deeper reaches of the borderlands.

4th Rank? I’ll be there in no time.

Yujin licked his lips with a swipe of his tongue.

A small island had risen up somewhere in the East Sea. Only a few days had passed since visitors descended on the landmass that had surfaced in the aftermath of the Erosion Phenomenon.

“What an utter mess.”

A woman with her hair dyed red clicked her tongue. Leather armor clung tight to her body, and with every step she took, the several fifty-centimeter daggers hung at her waist swayed from side to side.

“My apologies, Big Sis. To make you come all the way out to a place like this.”

“So you’ve got a conscience after all? Surprised you even know how to say something like that.”

— Snap—pop!

When the swelling bubble of gum burst, the Seagulls members who’d come out to clean up the situation flinched and read the woman’s mood.

This was Kim Mijeong, the Rakshasa Guild’s outside director and head of operations. Infamous in the mercenary trade, she was known to pick and choose her commissions on the strength of her singular free-spiritedness.

“Goddamn it. If it weren’t for the debt I’d never set foot on a tacky little desert island like this.”

The Hunter serving as her guide trembled all over. Her cruel hand was such that you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the Busan underworld who didn’t know it.

“And the strong moss?”

“Untouched, Big Sis.”

“Good for you. As it happens the higher-ups were pitching a fit about not letting the supply get cut off.”

“There aren’t any laborers, though.”

“You moron. Do you not have hands? Feet?”

Kim Mijeong’s eyes curved like a full moon, the pupils glistening with bloodlust. Her right hand, which had drifted to her waist, twitched as though it would draw a dagger at any second.

“Hey. What are you doing! Hurry up and get into your diving suits!”

The Seagulls boss, gone white as a sheet, drove on the underlings he’d had tidying up.

“You. You’re no fun.”

Kim Mijeong muttered in a flat, deflated voice as though bored, and shifted her gaze. Traces of battle lay scattered here and there along the shore.

“Search shuttle. Go look for clues.”

“A fair stretch of time’s passed since the fight broke out. Whether anything will turn up…”

“If it doesn’t, then it’s bye-bye to your life too, Mister Shuttle.”

The Rakshasa Guild Hunter swallowed a scream, then rearranged his mana.

Memory of Land.

Translated literally, it meant the memory of the earth: magic that summoned the spirits dwelling in a given area to confirm what had taken place there in the past. It looked similar to Yujin’s holy spell Memento, but the two weren’t the same. Memento wasn’t limited to land as its target, and its readings weren’t erased either; on the other hand, it couldn’t survey a wide range. Each had its trade-offs.

“What do you see?”

“So much time’s passed that I can only make out silhouettes.”

“What I see is your lifeline running short.”

“…The one who got off the boat reached out their right hand, and something wielding twin swords popped right out. That’s all of it.”

“Ah. Yes. That’s the answer I wanted.”

Kim Mijeong smirked. Her eyes chased swiftly over the traces of battle.

“So the one with the twin swords used Aura to cut down the Seagulls guy. But the trace just popped right out, you said?”

“Th-that’s right.”

The magic-line Hunter broke out in a cold sweat. She’d grasped the situation in more detail than the magic that read the earth’s memory had. That she could deduce this much from a rough look at the marks carved into the ground meant her skill, at least, was the genuine article.

‘But why drag me out here!’

With his life hanging by a thread, he couldn’t even protest. The magic-line Hunter wanted to cry.

“Ha. Thanks to you I’m leaving here knowing one thing, at least.”

“And what’s that?”

“The one with the twin swords. It’s a summon.”

Magic that replayed the earth’s memory. And the scars of battle. Reason through both elements together, and the answer that came out was simple.

“A summon that handles two swords. I’ll find it in no time, won’t I?”

The Rakshasa Guild couldn’t let this incident slide and move on. Sit on their hands, and it was the sort of matter that could even disrupt their control of the Busan underworld. They had to show, beyond all doubt, what happened to anyone who carelessly touched the guild’s turf.

“And the head office is nagging me to wreck one more guy anyway, so I’d best get it handled fast.”

Arahan, the guild that stood behind the Rakshasa, had handed Kim Mijeong orders to investigate one particular Hunter and, given the chance, eliminate him.

The driving force behind the recent clearing of the double gate was none other than Yujin.

Kim Mijeong cackled away, with no idea that the figure named in the Arahan Guild’s directive and the person who’d broken into the deserted island were one and the same.