The sword had felt so heavy while it was inside the box, but the moment he picked it up, it became as light as a feather.
WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH—
What was more, a peculiar energy he had not even noticed at the abandoned school earlier now stimulated every nerve in his body.
He must have been too tense to feel it then.
He recalled the swordsmanship moves he had studied while designing skills for Eastern-style swordsman characters, such as ninjas and samurai, in video games, and tried imitating them.
To his astonishment, he could perform every movement he envisioned with ease.
There was one catch, however. The moment he put the sword down, his body returned to normal, and he could do nothing of the sort.
He was back to the miserable physical condition of a programmer who spent all day sitting in front of a computer.
“Wow. What's going on here? How does this work? I can't exactly take it apart to find out... can I?”
Tae-woo continued swinging the sword in fascination before sliding it back into its sheath.
By the time he finished, he was drenched in sweat. As soon as he returned to his room, he began thinking about how to make use of the Ghost-Observing Blade and the Blood-Counting Dagger.
He did not know what had caused the phenomenon he had just experienced, but it seemed to offer him a way to cut down ghosts regardless of his physical stamina.
There was still a problem, though.
If he held the Ghost-Observing Blade to fight ghosts, he would not have a free hand for both a flashlight and a camera.
“I won't have enough hands to record anything... And filming the abandoned school is the whole point. Besides, I don't even know whether ghosts show up on camera.”
As Tae-woo muttered to himself, Seung-hoon, who was standing nearby, spoke up.
“You don't necessarily have to hold the camera and flashlight in your hands.”
“Ah... that's true.”
Tae-woo murmured and turned toward the shelves.
An astonishing variety of next-generation IT devices was displayed there.
'Right. If I use smart glasses or a body camera, both hands will be free. That'll make swinging a weapon much easier.'
It was the obvious solution.
Tae-woo immediately took a pair of smart glasses from the shelf and connected them to his computer.
He loaded their firmware and began customizing it.
At the same time, he reviewed the few brief clips he had filmed earlier.
The footage clearly included the moment when the ghost had appeared beneath his feet, but its shape was indistinct.
What mattered was that the camera had captured something, however vague.
In other words, ghosts could affect a camera.
They did not appear as clearly as living people, but the footage had definitely recorded strange disturbances, including ripples in the image.
“But if the thing I filmed really was a ghost, how did it lock its position in the Earth's coordinate system?”
Indulging in the sort of ridiculous thought that anyone with a science background might have had at least once, he continued examining the footage.
In any case, if he could use this equipment, he should be able to record what kinds of ghosts he encountered inside the abandoned school.
“Let's do this. Damn it.”
He opened the firmware development program and began modifying the firmware installed on the smart glasses.
Nobody had told him to do it. In effect, he was undertaking this extra work of his own accord, all for the sake of filming the abandoned school.
After several hours of customizing the firmware, he put on the smart glasses.
Various UI elements appeared, and real-time recording began.
He wanted to find out how ghosts would appear through the glasses.
But this house, like Gwihon Trading's headquarters, was what one might call a ghost-free zone. To test the glasses, he would have to take them outside.
Tae-woo went out into the street wearing them.
WHISSSSH—
Once outside, he could clearly see the ghosts again.
There was a ghost walking along with blood pouring from its head, another whose face was deathly pale, and even one hanging upside down from a traffic light, swinging back and forth like a child on a swing!
They were plainly visible to Tae-woo, but he had no idea whether the smart glasses were recording them.
The only way to find out was to film everything and check afterward.
HALT—
Just then, the ghost walking past with blood streaming from its head stopped and turned toward Tae-woo.
*“Huh? Hey, looks like this one can see me.”*
At the ghost's words, roughly a third of the people walking along the street stopped dead in their tracks.
Then they all turned their gazes on Tae-woo, smiling in a way that sent chills down his spine.
A full third of the people walking along the street were ghosts.
That was how many ghosts were wandering around out there.
But for someone who had lived with spirit sight his entire life, this was nothing he had not experienced many times before.
“Uh, no. I can't see you. Can't see you at all.”
Tae-woo waved his hands dismissively, turned around, and ran back into the house.
What mattered right now was not seeing ghosts but finding out whether the smart glasses could record them.
He immediately played the footage from the smart glasses on his computer.
“Wait a minute... Something's strange here.”
He had discovered an unusual phenomenon.
At first, the footage showed only ordinary living people.
But the moment Tae-woo became conscious of the ghosts, they began appearing in the recording.
Take the ghost whose head had been bleeding just moments ago.
When Tae-woo first saw it with his own eyes, the camera on the smart glasses did not capture it.
But the moment it stopped walking and turned its head toward him, it appeared clearly on camera.
Its image was remarkably sharp. Even its voice had been recorded.
To figure out how that was possible, he examined the firmware logic again.
There was nothing unusual in the code, however.
He spent a long time studying the source code but still could not determine the cause.
Then, all at once, his gaze shifted to the Ghost Observation Record lying on one side of his desk.
[Just as the living turn around when someone looks at them or calls their name, the dead also release their energy more strongly when someone recognizes their presence. Thus, when a shaman, priest, or another person possessing strong spiritual power approaches, the dead likewise emit a powerful energy. That is why those of us who can see ghosts have a duty to guide wandering departed spirits to the afterlife.]
It was one of the passages in the Ghost Observation Record.
If the book was right, then when Tae-woo, who could see the dead, acknowledged them, their spiritual energy grew stronger.
If that increase in energy was what allowed the camera to capture them, then the phenomenon made a certain amount of sense.
Of course, from an engineering standpoint, he still could not understand it at all.
“Fine. I don't know why it works, but let's say I can record them.”
After thinking for a moment, he looked at the Ghost-Observing Blade.
Whenever Tae-woo held that sword, he felt his physical abilities improve.
That effectively made it his primary weapon.
Which meant he needed to be able to tell exactly where it was and whether he had it with him while working in the field.
“Is there some way to connect the Ghost-Observing Blade and the Blood-Counting Dagger to these smart glasses, too?”
As he considered the problem, he suddenly remembered a recently released VR device.
With modern VR devices that used controllers, the exact positions of the controllers appeared on the VR display.
The device detected the radio signals emitted by the controllers and used them to determine their locations.
If he used that module, he could make the smart glasses recognize the Ghost-Observing Blade and the Blood-Counting Dagger.
“Let's give it a try.”
He took the latest VR device from the shelf.
Then he immediately began taking it apart.
Next, he disassembled the smart glasses and started combining their components.
He did not stop there. He removed the modules from the VR controllers and attached them to the sword guards of the Ghost-Observing Blade and the Blood-Counting Dagger.
* * *
Several days later.
Tae-woo put on the completed smart glasses.
When he pressed the button on the frame, several messages appeared, followed by a flash of red light at one edge of his vision.
The glasses were detecting the locations of the Ghost-Observing Blade and the Blood-Counting Dagger and showing him which direction to look.
Their detection range was approximately twenty meters.
As long as the weapons were within that range, the glasses immediately displayed their locations.
Tae-woo approached the red markers and picked up the Ghost-Observing Blade and the Blood-Counting Dagger.
When he held the two weapons, the sensors activated and their status appeared on the smart glasses.
[Primary Weapon - Ghost-Observing Blade (Equipped)]
[Secondary Weapon - Blood-Counting Dagger (Equipped)]
The information was clearly displayed along the bottom of his view.
It was a success.
Using the same method, he attached a module to a flashlight that charged through a USB-C cable.
A flashlight was essential when moving through dark places, and he decided it would be useful to check its remaining battery level through the smart glasses' interface.
He also configured a smartwatch to display his pulse information on the glasses.
As he worked through these features, he named the entire set of functions “Ghost Sensor” and entered the name into the UI.
It was a habit he had developed as a programmer: always give a project or program a clearly defined name.
With everything finished, Tae-woo conducted a final inspection and smiled in satisfaction.
Now all that remained was to make sure the glasses recorded footage the way he wanted.
Wearing a determined expression, he gathered his equipment and prepared to leave.
“You're going back to that abandoned school, aren't you? But are you going at this hour of the night?” Seung-hoon asked.
Tae-woo looked out the window and realized that it was already dark outside.
He had become so absorbed in his work that he had not even noticed the time passing or night falling.
“Uh... oh. They told me to go and film it at night.”
“I'll drive you there.”
Seung-hoon immediately moved to get ready.
“No, no, that's all right!”
“Not at all. Of course I should take you. I'm your personal chauffeur, Young Master.”
Tae-woo felt guilty about making Seung-hoon drive so late, but Seung-hoon smiled brightly and began preparing to leave.
In the end, the two of them set out for the abandoned school together.
“All right, then.”
They headed straight for the garage.
It was Tae-woo's first time entering the garage since moving into the house.
Luxury sedans and sports cars were parked inside.
Seung-hoon took a car key from the wall and opened the rear door of a luxury sedan.
Once Tae-woo was seated, he got behind the wheel and immediately entered their destination into the navigation system.
“We'll be leaving now.”
VROOOOM—
The car pulled out of the garage and headed toward the expressway.
* * *
Back to the present.
And so Tae-woo had arrived at the abandoned school beneath the dark night sky, equipped with his smart glasses, the Ghost-Observing Blade, and the Blood-Counting Dagger.
More than the fact that the ghosts he had just cut down had vanished without a trace, he was amazed by how he had managed to cut them down in the first place.
He had severed the head of the ghost charging at him from the left with a single stroke. Then, without even looking back, he had thrown his dagger behind him and destroyed another ghost.
He had acted entirely on instinct, yet his sword had cut through the first ghost's neck with astonishing precision, and his dagger had struck the second ghost squarely between the eyes without the slightest deviation.
Tae-woo quietly looked down at the Ghost-Observing Blade and recalled swinging it in the open space at home.
There was no doubt about it. Whenever he held this sword, his physical abilities seemed to improve dramatically.
He picked up the Blood-Counting Dagger lying on the ground nearby and fastened it to his waist again.
Then, leaving Seung-hoon behind to pull the metal sign out of the car's front window, he stepped through the school gate.
WHOOOOSH— WHOOOOOOOSH—
A cold wind brushed the back of his neck, and the weeds stretching out before him began to sway, slowly and faintly.