Chapter 119: After the Work is Done (1)
Ten days had passed since the conversation with Edith Lock.
During that time, Oliver had spent five days at the multipurpose facility, Sapphire, tasked with guarding Jane.
Though, to be honest, it wasn’t so much guarding as it was simply taking a break.
After the talk with Edith, Jane had shut herself in her room and hadn’t stepped out, while the actual duties of protection had been entirely handled by Pinkman.
In the meantime, Edith had also disappeared without a word, leaving Oliver with little to do.
So, he spent his time reading books or newspapers, or practicing his personal black magic.
While passing time like this, on the final day of his guard duty, Edith appeared with a lawyer, formally presenting Jane with documents transferring part of her assets.
Oliver stayed by Jane’s side only during that moment.
She signed with a very cold attitude, and with that, the mission was complete.
For something that had nearly killed him twice in a day, it felt anticlimactic, but Oliver had no complaints.
In fact, he couldn’t have been more pleased. Though it had been a bit boring, wasn’t it better for things to end peacefully?
Thanks to that, Oliver was able to return home safely and continue his black magic practice...
Crackle—!
“—Ouch.”
Oliver winced in pain, shaking his hand.
A sensation like his bones were aching.
At the moment, he was practicing mixing emotions, life force, and magical power, but it wasn’t going well.
While blending emotions with life force was a bit annoying but not particularly difficult, adding magical power to the mix was an entirely different story.
Completely different.
In the fight with Duncan, Oliver had thought the failure was due to the urgency of combat, but upon trying again now, he realized it wasn’t the case.
Mixing emotions, magical power, and life force was exceedingly difficult.
The best he could manage was blending them in tiny amounts, like grains of rice, and forcing them together. That was the current limit.
Despite the challenge, Oliver felt both frustration and a strange sense of excitement at this first significant obstacle.
It might sound odd, but he didn’t mind things not going as planned. In fact, it was enjoyable.
The joy of encountering something new and strange.
He couldn’t even imagine the sense of accomplishment he would feel if he overcame this hurdle.
Perhaps it would be as thrilling as when he first met Joseph and learned how to manipulate emotions.
“…Still, one thing is clear. What Puppet was hiding so carefully, using so many devices, wasn’t without reason… I suddenly feel sorry for him.”
Oliver spoke sincerely.
No matter how dire the situation had been, using that artificial soul so recklessly felt wrong.
He couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty toward Puppet.
Creating an artificial soul of that size surely required tremendous effort.
“Should I apologize later?”
Oliver muttered to himself as he took an empty notebook from the bookshelf and began sketching something.
He was drawing the devices and structures he had seen that day for creating the artificial soul.
Although he didn’t remember them perfectly, the general shapes and configurations came to mind.
Among them, Oliver recognized a few.
None of them were cheap, and all combined, the cost would easily surpass billions.
They were tools he couldn’t even dream of owning at the moment, but Oliver sketched them from memory anyway, just in case he needed them later.
Creeeak…
Just as he was finishing the drawing, an odd noise came from one corner of the lab.
It wasn’t the sound of a person or an animal, but rather, it came from the test tube on the table in the corner of the lab. More precisely, from Child, who was still recovering inside the tube.
Hearing the sound, Oliver walked over.
He checked Child’s condition.
“Is something wrong?”
At Oliver’s question, the Children squeaked, indicating they were hungry.
Without delay, Oliver extracted life force and emotions from the test tube, then brought out another container.
It was an iron container, resembling a milk jug, but instead of milk, it held a transparent, liquefied fuel.
Its official name was Hearthstone Liquefied Fuel (HLF or LF for short), a new technology developed by liquefying magic stones instead of cutting them, improving convenience and versatility in their use.
Oliver held his hand over the liquid and focused his attention.
Shhhhaaaa—!
With a sound, transparent magical power gathered in Oliver’s hand.
The first time he’d extracted it during his fight with Duncan, it had seemed amazing and impressive, but now it felt much more familiar.
Oliver tore off tiny pieces of emotion, life force, and magical power, trying to mix them together again.
Crackle—! Crackle—!
The backlash caused some pain, but he forced them together bit by bit. At this, the Children began to squeal with excitement.
The Children would eat anything—emotion, life force, magical power—but they especially loved artificial souls, created by mixing all three.
Since they had helped him a lot and gone through their own struggles, Oliver endured the hassle and mixed the energy for them, one by one.
Although it took more time and effort than expected to feed them due to their voracious appetites, it wasn’t a waste. They recovered quickly, grew rapidly, and it felt worthwhile.
Plus, he could consider it practice.
‘Still, my skills aren’t improving much.’
Oliver thought, reflecting on the stagnant progress of his attempts to mix magical power, life force, and emotions.
He had practiced dozens of times, but his skills hadn’t improved at all from the first attempt.
Considering how quickly he usually got the hang of things after one or two tries, and how he could usually master something after five attempts, this felt unusually slow.
What was more frustrating was that he didn’t even know the reason for his lack of progress.
But Oliver didn’t feel discouraged.
There were still too many things left for him to do to be disheartened by this.
Although the Children were nearly fully recovered, the corpse puppets were not. Most of them were still severely damaged.
Especially the sword-wielding puppet he had placed at the front. Its waist was so badly broken that it was practically unusable.
‘That’s not really a problem,’ Oliver thought.
After all, he had better materials at hand—Duncan.
He currently had Duncan stored in his Greedy Pouch, and he believed he could create a better corpse puppet to replace the broken swordsman.
The only issue was that Oliver had never made a corpse puppet from scratch before.
Though he felt a bit nervous, it wasn’t a major concern. He had basic knowledge from reading Glyp’s journal and Puppet’s book on the subject.
The real challenge was the cost of the materials needed to make a corpse puppet, but even that would be resolved soon once his payment came through, so it wasn’t a big deal.
The real issue was manpower.
It might sound contradictory, but Oliver wanted to work alone, yet he also needed help.
Specifically, someone or something to handle the minor cleanup tasks and assist in the production of corpse puppets.
Both Glyp’s journal and Puppet’s book mentioned that making a corpse puppet required significant physical effort, and having two or three assistants was ideal.
That made sense, considering you had to work with an entire human body laid out in front of you.
Since Oliver had no intention of taking on a disciple, he had to solve this problem with a corpse puppet.
A corpse puppet to assist with secondary tasks.
Fortunately, there was a way to achieve that.
Corpse puppets could utilize the physical abilities of the bodies they were made from, so if Oliver could find a body of a manipulator-type black magician or someone knowledgeable in medicine, he could instantly gain a high-performance assistant.
And such bodies could be acquired through the Black Market.
"They say the Black Market has everything... Should I also create another Child?"
At that moment, First, who had finished its meal, knocked against the test tube, drawing Oliver's attention.
Then it squealed, as if to say it wanted to help Oliver.
Well, that might not be a bad idea.
Given how much Child ate, maintaining more of them came with significant upkeep costs.
Carelessly increasing their numbers wasn’t exactly an economically sound decision.
“I’ll think about it.”
Oliver said as he gently rubbed the surface of the test tube, and First responded by quivering and glowing with joy.
Squeak, squeak, squeak, the other Children—Second, Third, and False—cried out in protest.
The sudden noise made Oliver raise a finger to his lips, signaling for them to quiet down.
Then, he began to organize his thoughts.
‘What else do I need to do? I should meet Joanna and ask her some questions... And since I’ve finished reading the code language book I bought from the bookstore, I need to buy the next one. Oh, and I should ask about Mari and the others to see how they’re doing.’
It was a bit funny to think about in hindsight, that he was now searching for people he had left behind so suddenly. But despite that, Oliver still wanted to know how they were doing.
From what he had seen, it looked like they had regained their composure and returned to their normal lives.
That was good news.
If he had the time, Oliver thought he might want to go visit them and see how they were doing.
Perhaps it could be as fun as the time he had run into Kent again.
Beyond that, he also had a book about demons to read from Edith.
When he thought about it, he realized there was quite a lot left for him to do.
The problem was, most of these tasks required money to accomplish.
Just as he was thinking that it was about time to receive his payment, a beeping sound rang out.
Beep—beep—beep—
It was the communication device Forest had given him. Oliver immediately answered.
“Hello? Yes, Mr. Forest… Yes, I understand, I’ll head over there right away.”
After ending the call, Oliver wiped his body with a towel.
Then he changed into a suit and set off for Forest Restaurant, where Forest was waiting.
"Thank you for coming, Mr. Dave."
Jingle. Jangle. The bell rang as the restaurant door opened. As always, Al greeted him with a smile.
“Yes, nice to see you again, Mr. Al. I came after receiving Mr. Forest’s message.”
“Yes, I was informed as well. I’ve been waiting for you for that very reason. Mr. Forest is currently with Miss Coco, and I’ll take you to them right away.”
“That’s great to hear.”
Oliver replied.
Usually, there was a bit of a wait, but in this case, he was glad he wouldn’t have to wait long. He couldn’t be more eager to receive his payment as soon as possible.
As they walked through the restaurant on the way to the office, Oliver sensed several gazes upon him, along with the emotion of curiosity.
He reflexively turned his head, and from various corners of the restaurant, he caught glimpses of muscular men, tough-looking women, middle-aged gentlemen in suits, and even a student wearing glasses—all pretending to avert their eyes as he looked in their direction.
As Oliver resumed walking, he overheard a hushed conversation behind him.
"Is that guy the one? From the Contaminated Zone?"
"Yeah, they say he survived a fight with Puppet."
“Are you sure? Wasn’t that a fake Puppet?”
“No, it wasn’t. One of the survivors is my brother-in-law, and he said the zombie army wasn’t just a mindless horde; they moved like an organized force.”
"I also heard he took down both Northland’s plunderer Hero and Hilton of the Hoffman family... with corpse puppets, no less."
"Corpse puppets?! Then, could the rumors be..."
"Shh, watch what you say. Just because someone uses corpse puppets doesn’t mean they’re related to that group. Don’t start causing trouble in someone else’s business."
Oliver felt an unfamiliar sensation prickling at the back of his neck. It wasn’t exactly pleasant.
"Is something wrong, Mr. Dave?"
Oliver stopped and turned toward Al.
"Ah, it just feels like everyone is whispering about me."
"It may seem forward of me to say this, but you’re not wrong."
"Not wrong? Why now?"
"The events in the Contaminated Zone have started to spread by word of mouth."
Ah... come to think of it, he had heard that the city had tried to keep it quiet, but word was bound to get out eventually.
He had dismissed it at the time, but he hadn’t expected the rumors to spread so quickly. Maybe the stares he had felt since stepping out into the streets were because of that.
"But isn’t it strange? It’s been a while since the incident in the Contaminated Zone."
"Word seems to have resurfaced recently, likely because of the rumors that you defeated Duncan."
“Is defeating Duncan such a big deal?”
Oliver asked.
Duncan was indeed strong, but Oliver hadn’t thought he was famous enough to warrant such attention.
Al provided a smooth explanation.
"Duncan retired over twenty years ago, so younger folks might not recognize him, but for those who’ve been around a while, his name is well remembered. He was known for his prominent activities even as a Pinkman... To see such a veteran lose to a Fixer who debuted less than a year ago—it’s no wonder people are shocked. And that, in turn, has brought renewed attention to the Contaminated Zone incident."
“I see…”
Oliver responded, not quite sure what else to say.
He absentmindedly fingered the filgaret in his pocket.
It had been made from Duncan’s emotions. As soon as the work was over, Oliver had gotten to it.
There was so much that he could barely compress it into two filgarets.
Considering that, it wasn’t strange at all.
Given how Duncan had radiated emotions as beautiful as Joseph’s, it made sense that he had garnered such fame in the past.
The only question was whether that fame would serve Oliver well.
While it might help increase his value as a Fixer, people’s attention was a different matter altogether.
Just then, Al handed Oliver a notebook.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a notebook I kept, documenting my duties as a server here, along with some daily anecdotes, restaurant slang, and jokes. You once asked me to teach you about the work of a restaurant employee, remember?”
“Ah…”
Oliver recalled the time he had lied to the old man at the bookstore, claiming to be a restaurant employee. To cover that lie, he had asked Al to teach him about the job.
The problem was, after making the request, he hadn’t followed through by coming to learn.
Oliver apologized.
“I’m sorry about that…”
“No need. I’m actually grateful to you for working so hard as a Fixer. Thanks to your efforts, the boss is starting to regain his old reputation.”
“His old reputation?”
“Oh… Please forget I said that. It’s not my place to speak of such things. Anyway, I’m giving you this as thanks for all your hard work. There’s no need to feel either grateful or guilty about it.”
Al spoke kindly, but even so, Oliver felt both thankful and a little guilty.
He had asked to be taught but hadn’t properly followed up, and now he had caused Al extra trouble.
“…Thank you.”
“Think nothing of it. Now, shall I lead you the rest of the way?”