Chapter 3: The Weight of a Covenant

“You’re experiencing some post-summoning effects,” Kim Yoon-hye began, holding a finger before his eyes and wiggling it. “How is your body? Do you feel any pain?”

Lee Doha followed her finger, his gaze shifting left and right, then opened his mouth for a quick temperature check. He managed a strained reply.

“…I don’t think so.”

“You received two blood transfusions,” Kim Yoon-hye stated. “After all the commotion you caused in every direction, your contract turned out to be quite extravagant. Did you want to be a celebrity? You probably would have done quite well.”

Her words were utterly scathing, yet her expression remained profoundly indifferent. Lee Doha had long grown accustomed to her “bored to death” look and her remarkably mismatched tone.

Kim Yoon-hye had been Lee Doha’s assigned researcher since he was eighteen. She was a prodigious genius, having entered university at nine and graduated at twelve.

Yet, even within IERA, an organization Lee Doha considered a gathering of eccentrics, Kim Yoon-hye always struck him as peculiar. Normally, he might have engaged in friendly, comedic banter with her strange way of speaking, but today, he simply wasn’t in the right state of mind.

Lee Doha began to pat down his body, as if checking that all his limbs were still firmly attached. The familiar texture of his skin and the vivid sensation of his own touch assured him this was no dream.

Only then did he finally cast his gaze around the room.

It was a hospital room with a rather large window, through which a brilliant blue sky was visible. A humidifier on a nearby table steadily puffed out steam.

With a sofa, a table, a refrigerator, and a large television, it felt more like a cozy private room than a standard hospital ward. After glancing at the IV needle embedded in his arm, Lee Doha returned his gaze to Kim Yoon-hye.

“I’ve already contacted your parents,” Kim Yoon-hye informed him. “I didn’t tell them you almost… ‘went’.”

“Went…” Lee Doha trailed off, unable to complete the thought.

“You know that a reverse summoning returns you to the exact spot you were summoned from, don’t you?” she pressed on. “It was a deserted area, but luckily, someone was passing by and reported you. If it had been just five minutes later, you would have been gone.”

She continued, “Make sure to thank them later; the hospital has their contact information.” Sensing the conversation would be lengthy, Kim Yoon-hye pulled a chair closer and sat down.

Lee Doha had a multitude of questions, yet he found himself utterly at a loss for how or where to begin. After mouthing a few silent words, he ultimately buried his face in his dry hands.

Regardless of his muffled groans, Kim Yoon-hye continued speaking.

“The media is already in an uproar, but it’s probably best not to look at it,” she continued. “Right now, there are so many reporters swarming outside that door, they look like a swarm of tadpoles released into a pond. A teeming mass of black heads, and foreign media are even worse.”

“The phones were ringing off the hook, so we unplugged them all. Apparently, it’s the first time that’s happened since the Korean branch was established. Congratulations.” Kim Yoon-hye clapped her hands together dryly.

The thought of “tadpoles” and why her metaphor was so strange quickly vanished from Lee Doha’s mind. Reporters. Foreign media.

Still burying his face in his hands, Lee Doha shivered. ‘Goodbye, my peaceful life,’ he thought, silently bidding farewell to the ordinary existence he had maintained for the past twenty-four years.

“How do they know about it already…?” Lee Doha mumbled, his voice muffled.

“Is it just your side in Oz?” Kim Yoon-hye retorted. “Do you even know who you made a contract with, Lee Doha?”

“A madman,” Lee Doha answered sharply. As his eyes rolled back, he couldn’t imagine what else but a madman would calmly babble about “saving you” in such a situation.

Kim Yoon-hye simply ignored his outburst.

“It’s Siohan Orphenos,” Kim Yoon-hye stated, her voice even. “The Emperor of the Iristyrium Empire.”

Lee Doha remained silent, a clear indication that he had no idea who that was. Kim Yoon-hye, too, fell quiet for a moment.

When Lee Doha finally lifted his head, he felt a sting of hurt. Kim Yoon-hye was regarding him with an expression that suggested she was deeply contemplating whether wasting her time on this pathetic slacker was truly worth it.

‘No,’ Lee Doha thought indignantly, ‘it’s not even my country, let alone my world. Why should I be expected to know all that?’ He felt unjustly accused.

“It’s simply a great nation, and he’s a magnificent emperor,” Kim Yoon-hye explained. “Hmm, imagine someone like a legendary general, born of a tragically deposed royal line, who then went on to rule an empire as vast and powerful as ancient Rome.”

“…What on earth is that?” Lee Doha asked, bewildered.

“You don’t even know this?” Kim Yoon-hye questioned, her brow furrowing slightly, almost on the verge of outright contempt.

“Your analogy is strange,” Lee Doha protested.

“Fine,” she conceded. “Regardless, he’s an incredibly important person.”

“He’s a madman,” Lee Doha insisted, his conviction unwavering.

‘What could such an exceptionally powerful individual possibly lack,’ Lee Doha mused, ‘that would compel him to shed his own blood and risk his life for a summoning of that nature?’

“Don’t you understand, looking at *your* summoning, Lee Doha?” Kim Yoon-hye pressed, leaning forward slightly. “An Insondable’s existence is so vast it virtually overwhelms the world itself, making summoning one with ordinary magic is utterly impossible.”

“When Ursula was summoned, many scholars staked their reputations on the belief that no more Insondables would ever be summoned. Thanks to you, their reputations are now utterly worthless.”

“You too, Kim Yoon-hye?” Lee Doha asked.

Kim Yoon-hye merely snorted, offering no verbal reply.

“Anyway, since you’ve made a contract with such an extraordinary person, everyone who isn’t living as leisurely as you, Lee Doha, couldn’t possibly *not* know about it,” Kim Yoon-hye explained. “Of course, you, too, are an Insondable, making you extraordinary, but you’ve certainly tried to live an ordinary life until now.”

“This contract has turned not only Oz but also South Korea completely upside down, so you can abandon any thoughts of living a quiet life from now on. International relations are also being shaken.”

She paused, then continued, “The stock price of Energen right now… let’s not go into detail. If we delve too deep, there will be an endless list of things to discuss. Just stay here for now. Your parents also said they’re coming up.”

‘He understood, with a sinking certainty, that his life was utterly and irrevocably screwed,’ he thought. The painstakingly ordinary existence he had cultivated until now had suddenly veered off in a completely different direction.

As Kim Yoon-hye had suggested, the complicated talk about Energen and stock prices—the full extent of how much more tumultuous his life would become—was something he didn’t even want to bring up.

“Right… So what exactly was that red summoning circle, Kim Yoon-hye, that put me in this kind of situation? I never even agreed to be summoned, but I was just sucked in like a flushing toilet.”

“A Covenant,” Kim Yoon-hye answered swiftly, as if she had been waiting for the question, and Lee Doha’s brow furrowed. He knew the word ‘Covenant’ itself, but he had never heard of such a contract between a summoner and a specialist.

An ominous premonition instantly settled over him. What was even worse, Kim Yoon-hye, who had until now worn an expression that clearly stated, ‘I’m going to die of annoyance if I have to explain every trivial detail,’ suddenly began to sparkle with excitement. That was a truly bad sign.

“There are only a few lines of records left about Covenants,” she began, leaning forward slightly. “There are no actual cases, so nothing has been properly researched. You, Lee Doha, are the first case.”

Lee Doha grunted, a noncommittal sound.

“Whether a specialist responds to a summoning is entirely up to them, isn’t it? A specialist can readily answer the call and rush over, or like you, Lee Doha, they can just ignore it with a ‘do whatever you want’ attitude.”

She continued, “It’s rare for someone to refuse a summoning over thirty times, but then again, it’s also rare for someone to summon thirty times. So, I guess you two were destined.”

“You must have that much audacity to even attempt a Covenant, it seems.” Kim Yoon-hye’s eyes sparkled, yet her tone remained calm. However, her increasingly rough choice of words clearly betrayed her unadulterated excitement.

‘So, what is this Covenant?’ Lee Doha wondered, waiting patiently. Although he had certainly slacked off during mandatory education, either sleeping or playing phone games, he genuinely had never heard the term ‘Covenant’ before.

“I still don’t know exactly how a Covenant differs from a regular contract,” Kim Yoon-hye admitted. “That’s something you, Lee Doha, will probably teach us over time. Perhaps it was a method devised by someone who, in dire circumstances, absolutely had to force a contract, even if it meant disregarding the specialist’s will.”

She added, “Someone so desperate, or standing at the edge of a cliff with nowhere left to retreat. Those are the times when a person has to stake their life.”

Instead of completely disregarding the specialist’s will to summon and contract, which was ordinarily entirely up to them, and forcibly dragging them into the summoning circle, the summoner had to stake their own life on that choice. That was why the summoning circle, unlike the usual blue, glowed crimson.

It had to be drawn with the summoner’s own blood.

If the forcibly summoned specialist then decided to save the summoner, and a contract was necessary to wield their power anyway, the contract would be established. However, if, despite being drawn in by such powerful will, the specialist still refused the contract, the summoner would simply die.

“But couldn’t they just call a healer?” Lee Doha offered, a suggestion he considered quite reasonable. However, Kim Yoon-hye glared at him with chilling eyes. She truly *glared*.

“Don’t you know that before and after a summoning, the summoner’s magic and the specialist’s abilities are so intertwined that other powers can’t interfere?” she snapped. “Didn’t you watch cartoons when you were a kid? Did you ever see anyone attack during a transformation sequence?”

Lee Doha obediently shook his head at her harsh tone. Instead, he asked politely,

“If the specialist dies trying to save the summoner, wouldn’t that just be back to square one, Kim Yoon-hye?”

This question, at least, earned him no reprimand. Lee Doha, who felt increasingly useless and foolish in front of Kim Yoon-hye—a genius renowned enough to be assigned to an Insondable like him at only nineteen, even in a place like IERA, which gathered only geniuses and eccentrics—unconsciously felt relieved. There was not a shred of self-reflection that he had, as she’d implied, taken his mandatory education for granted. Kim Yoon-hye propped her chin in her hand, thinking for a moment, then spoke.

“You didn’t have any injuries, but you were short on blood because you gave your own, right?”

“I had no other blood to give. I’m from Oz, and I don’t even know if we have blood types. Anyway, he was about to die, so it was a low-risk, high-reward situation. So, it seems he survived, then?”

Kim Yoon-hye gave a perfunctory nod.

“A Covenant… perhaps it’s something like that. A life for a life. To save one life, another life must be used… and with the contract already initiated, and synchronization begun, you even have to share blood. Is that why it’s called a Covenant? You know, in ancient China, they used to share blood during a sworn brotherhood ritual. It later changed to alcohol, but originally, it was blood. That’s what I mean.”

“What?”

“It’s about uniting hearts, combining strength, and… dying on the same day, at the same time.”

“…What the hell are you talking about?”