Chapter 174 – #38_Friendship??
#172
1.
As expected, even a creature with a monstrous form seems to have its head as a weak point.
I created a lance as long as one used in jousting and plunged it right into the middle of its brow (if you could even call it that). The monster didn’t even scream; it just twitched and died.
The moment the light disappeared from its remaining eight eyes, its flesh began to melt.
Its tar-black, glossy body almost turned into liquid and seeped into the gaps of the building debris.
Then, I saw something sparkling within the black liquid.
It was none other than the eyeballs, or rather, the crystals, that had been embedded in the mother homunculus’s body.
“Uh….! Uh! Uh!”
“Sharon! Pick them up quickly!”
Sharon, who had been clinging to Siwoo’s side, afraid that the homunculus might go on a final rampage, suddenly screamed.
Sharon frantically picked up the crystals one by one, and Siwoo quickly rushed to help recover them.
It wasn’t that they were as precious as gold nuggets; they were more valuable than gold, and Siwoo didn’t want them to disappear into the building gaps, lost forever.
He thought it was like a scene from that Spirited Away movie.
Siwoo and Sharon spent a long time frantically collecting the crystals.
It was easier said than done, and even with Siwoo using his clumsy telekinesis, their harvest after two hours was as follows:
A total of 4,091 homunculus crystals.
Total weight, according to Sharon, was 5.4kg.
The bounty they could receive by bringing them to the location point was 5.4 billion won.
“F-f-five point four billion…”
Sharon, after confirming the final count, staggered with her mouth agape.
I thought she would be jumping for joy, but the amount was so large that she seemed to have stiffened instead.
She was about to collapse, so Siwoo supported her by holding her waist.
“To earn 5.4 billion… it would take 600,000 hours of convenience store work…”
“Hey, hey, get a grip.”
“I’m going crazy, I’m so happy, what do I do…”
This alone could be considered winning the lottery, but Siwoo discovered something else.
There was a heart-shaped fragment near the homunculus’s heart.
Everything else except the crystals had melted away, but this alone maintained its shape.
While looking at Sharon, who was delirious with joy, Siwoo looked at the heart in his hand with a dubious expression.
It was only about the size of Siwoo’s fist, but it looked incredibly grotesque.
It looked like a heart specimen preserved in formalin, even if it were put in a glass case for display right now.
“Sharon, what do you think this is?”
“I, I don’t know either…. Ehe… ehehehe…. 5.4 billion… 5.4 billion…”
Sharon, as if drugged with morphine, giggled and clung to Siwoo.
It wasn’t excessive skinship, but she hugged him tightly, and her soft breasts rubbed against his arm.
“Sigh.”
Seeing her happy made Siwoo smile too.
Actually, Sharon was someone who deserved to be rewarded a little.
While he was thinking this, Sharon’s body, which had been limp like a mollusk, suddenly stiffened.
“Ah…!”
Sharon had remembered something she had forgotten until now.
It was Della.
Sharon had lost to Della and had her hunting grounds taken away.
In other words, if they stayed here like this, Della might come sauntering over and take all of today’s spoils.
“T-that can’t happen…”
Siwoo looked at Sharon with a puzzled expression as she began to tremble like a squirrel about to lose all the acorns it had gathered for winter hibernation.
“Let’s go back quickly. As fast as possible.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
Sharon realized her mistake.
If she said it was because of Della, it would expose the fact that Sharon had been seeing through Siwoo’s lies all along.
So, Sharon immediately straightened her back and acted nonchalantly.
“Ah, I’m just too tired. Let’s go home and watch a movie while eating late-night snacks.”
“You said you’d pay today, right?”
“Order whatever you want! Today, your big sister will treat you! And I also want to take a shower.”
Sharon stretched out her arms as if to show her appearance.
She was covered in soot from being scorched by fire, and covered in dust from head to toe, making her look gray.
Siwoo was the same, and they chuckled at each other’s dirty appearance.
Anyway, that was enough hard work for today.
Siwoo and Sharon turned their backs on the slowly shrinking and disappearing otherworld barrier and returned home together.
2.
On the way home, they prepared a feast.
They ordered half-and-half jokbal and makguksu from a famous jokbal restaurant, a large portion of tteokbokki because they would get tired of only eating greasy food, and a platter of tuna sashimi because they needed a refresher after eating only hot and spicy food.
Finally, they finished preparing with ice cream for dessert.
As Siwoo and Sharon sat facing each other at the table, sharing various dishes, Siwoo began to discuss the issue of distribution.
“No way, how can I take all of this by myself…”
“What does it matter? I told you, I’m satisfied just with my magic skills improving.”
Of course, Siwoo said he would give all the ownership of the crystals to Sharon.
Since he had the black card given to him by Count Jemaine, Siwoo would never have to worry about running out of money.
And Siwoo’s life philosophy was that he didn’t have a great desire for money.
“If it’s money that I can live without, it’s right for someone who needs it more to have it. What would I do with more money anyway? I’m already living comfortably.”
“But you did all the hard work… It doesn’t feel right for me to just take it like this, Siwoo… Let’s think about it again.”
“Hey, it’s okay, I’m telling you. If it weren’t for the elemental magic you taught me, I would have died today.”
This was true.
In the first place, it would have been impossible to apply mass to the law of shadows without Sharon.
“It’s just too much of a burden…”
When he gave her the crystals worth a little over 100 million won that they had hunted at the department store, she was grateful and apologetic, but she still thought she could accept it.
But this was 5.4 billion.
5.4 billion.
A lump sum that could pay off one-tenth of Sharon’s total debt.
Sharon wasn’t shameless enough to just accept it as a favor.
Sharon repeatedly expressed her burden, and Siwoo kept saying it was okay and that she should just put it in her pocket.
In the end, the harmonious dispute of “you first, no, you first” ended with Sharon’s tears.
“It’s okay, what burden? No, I’m really okay. Uh-uh, don’t cry. Why are you crying?”
“…You’re a really good person… Sob… Thank you… Thank you so much…”
“Okay, okay, if you’re thankful, make me a wrap.”
“Okay… I’ll make you one…”
Sharon, while sobbing with tears of joy, made a wonderful wrap with lettuce, perilla leaves, jokbal, makguksu, and even raw garlic.
This is…
It’s a little embarrassing, but seeing Sharon so happy that she was crying made me feel good.
“Ah… Ah… Open… Sob…”
Siwoo, with his mouth full of the wrap Sharon had given him, was startled.
Sharon, who had gotten up from her seat, hugged Siwoo’s head tightly from behind.
Sharon’s soft breasts supported the back of his head like a cushion, and when he looked up slightly, Sharon’s tearful tears fell onto Siwoo’s forehead.
“Thank you, Siwoo… Really.”
It was so nice to see her smiling brightly.
3.
After the meal, Siwoo, who had roughly cleaned the table, placed the heart on the table.
The flesh, glowing with a faint red light, looked as vivid as if a living heart had just been extracted, but it had no smell or movement.
“What is this?”
At first, Siwoo naturally thought it was a relic.
Sharon had been touching the heart for a long time, but she couldn’t easily identify its nature.
“It doesn’t seem like a Gnosis egg… No, it doesn’t seem like a relic in the first place.”
Usually, homunculus relics were made in a way that their purpose could be understood at a glance.
If it was a rare potion, it was a potion; if it was an artifact, it was an artifact; if it was a Gnosis egg, it was an egg; if it was a research document, it was a document.
But this one, even after examining it closely, had no discernible purpose.
“Should we dissect it?”
“Is it okay to just cut it open like that?”
“It’s not like it’s useful on its own anyway.”
The two of them pondered, heads together.
After discussion, they decided to cut open the heart.
Siwoo extracted a very small amount of shadow and made it into a scalpel-like shape, and cut open the heart.
Unlike its appearance, it was very hard and felt more like a stone than flesh, so it took quite a bit of force to split it open.
“Uh….”
And when they split the heart in half, something appeared.
“It’s a crystal?”
It was a homunculus crystal.
And it was quite large, about 5cm in diameter.
Unlike what they had expected, it was just a crystal.
“I thought it would be something grand, but it’s nothing special.”
“………”
But Sharon, with her chin resting on her hand, held the homunculus crystal taken from the heart up to the light, examining it from various angles.
Her expression was serious.
“Why? Did you find something strange?”
“Yeah, it’s completely strange.”
“What is it?”
“Normally, when a homunculus dies, its body slowly disappears, except for the relics and crystals. We saw it today, right?”
“Right?”
Sharon put down the crystal and held up the heart, which was split in the middle.
“But this is still here. It’s not a crystal or anything.”
Siwoo, who lacked general knowledge about magic, couldn’t easily understand what Sharon was trying to say.
Sharon opened her mouth with a serious expression.
“Someone intervened.”
“Intervened?”
“Yeah, I don’t know who, but they’ve taken magical measures on this homunculus’s crystal. Since it was interfered with from the outside, it doesn’t disappear even when the homunculus dies.”
“So, you’re saying that heart was controlling the homunculus?”
“I don’t know about that. Whether it was enhanced, controlled, or something we don’t know… Looking at the crystal being encased in the heart… it’s probably a ritualistic enhancement through human sacrifice…”
Sharon began to examine the heart closely.
Siwoo, who had heard a word he couldn’t lightly dismiss, widened his eyes.
“Human sacrifice?”
“Yeah, so it seems like it’s the work of the public enemy. This is clearly a human heart.”
“I didn’t expect that at all.”
The heart, now split in half, looked grotesque.
It seemed too small for that huge monster, but damn, it was a human heart?
“But there’s no need to think too complicatedly. We can just report it when we drop off the crystals at the location point tomorrow.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, so leave the rest to me and get some rest today. You’ve been through a lot.”
Actually, Sharon was right.
They were so exhausted, both mentally and physically, that they didn’t have the energy to think about anything complicated.
Considering their performance today, they deserved to rest without complicated thoughts for one night.
It was a necessary reward.
“Are we watching a movie together again today?”
“Yeah.”
“Then, I’ll go take a shower. I want to relax in warm water.”
“Okay, what movie did you pick?”
“Today was a busy day, so I want to watch something calm. How about you?”
“Sounds good to me.”
After deciding on a movie to watch together, Sharon went into the bathroom to shower, and Siwoo lay on the sofa, sipping a cold beer.
