Fabre in Sacheon’s Tang

I added some background music upon arriving at the cabin to liven up the mood.

“Dugeu-dugeu-dugeu-dugeu... Kung-jjak-jjak! Kung-jjak-jjak!”

Since I hadn’t checked the gacha result yet, I needed to set the mood with some BGM.

People don’t realize this, but ninety percent of the atmosphere in a video is the background music.

Whether it’s building tension or creating a mysterious vibe, the auditory effect matters more than the visuals—so of course I added music.

Right now, I desperately needed both tension and mystery.

‘No. Not yet.’

I was about to lift the cloth as the music played but then pulled it back down. The timing didn’t feel right.

The most important thing in gacha is timing.

The outcome can completely change depending on timing.

And right now, I had a strong feeling—this wasn’t it.

If there were viewers watching what I was doing right now, they’d probably say this:

“Isn’t the spirit beast inside already predetermined?”

“This bastard Fabre is talking nonsense again.”

“How can the result change depending on timing?”

Yeah, you could say that—but in quantum mechanics, there’s a concept like that.

It’s called Schrоdinger’s cat.

Schrоdinger’s cat is one of my favorite theories, a thought experiment proposed by physicist Erwin Schrоdinger.

You place a cat in a sealed box along with a radioactive substance, poison, and a Geiger counter. If the substance decays, the poison is released and the cat dies. If it doesn’t, the cat lives. Until you open the box, you don’t know if the cat is alive or dead.

That’s the idea behind Schrоdinger’s cat.

Until you observe it, the cat is in a superposition of both dead and alive.

The spirit beast inside this cage was in the same state.

Until I looked inside, I didn’t know what it was.

‘Or not. I’m no physicist, anyway. But still, with no offering to give, all I can rely on is timing? In that case...’

I looked around, trying to line up the right timing for the gacha pull.

Normally, you’re supposed to offer something to the gacha gods, but here, I had nothing to give.

And by “offering,” I don’t mean some creepy human sacrifice—just tossing in the trash rolls beforehand.

Say you’re pulling from a 10% chance gacha. That means one in ten attempts should succeed.

So if you throw away nine duds as offerings and then try on the tenth? The theory goes that your odds will rise.

Keep feeding failures until the success you actually want—just superstition, really.

Because probabilities don’t stack—they reset with every attempt.

Still, superstition was better than nothing at this point. But with no fodder pulls to offer, I had to rely on the second method: using an omen as a timing marker.

That means attempting the gacha when a good sign appears—someone suddenly smiles, an insect takes flight, a certain event unfolds before your eyes.

And if the opposite happens, you hold off.

Like if a bird suddenly flies off right before you pull—don’t do it.

Because it’s literally a “bird.” A bad omen.

‘Anything interesting going to happen?’

I was waiting for some kind of clear event to occur around me.

That’s when I spotted Princess and Gun Hye-rin staring each other down.

‘What’s this? A staring contest? Don’t tell me Gun Hye-rin’s actually picking a fight with the Princess?’

Being from the Demonic Cult, Gun Hye-rin tended to treat weaklings with contempt—seemed like she was doing the same to the Princess.

But this wasn’t the time to scold her. I’d lecture her later for sure.

That’s when I saw the Princess’s expression suddenly shift to surprise.

A moment later, it deepened—more confusion, more flustered.

‘Wait... are they communicating through sound transmission?’

It looked like they were speaking to each other using sound transmission, and judging by the Princess’s changing expression, Gun Hye-rin was saying something unexpected.

‘That’s it!’

I decided to use their interaction as my omen.

I was curious about their conversation, but since I couldn’t eavesdrop on their transmission, I could only use their reactions as the gacha signal.

I couldn’t stare openly, so I peeked from the corner of my eye. The Princess’s expression was changing by the second.

Flustered, then relieved, then flustered again, then baffled.

What kind of conversation were they having?

Was it really okay for a royal to make that many faces in public?

I almost forgot this was about gacha—my curiosity over their conversation was getting the better of me. Then Gun Hye-rin displayed her martial art that turned her hand pitch black.

And right after that, she gazed lazily between the Princess’s legs.

‘Seriously, what the hell are they talking about?’

If Gun Hye-rin were a man, it would’ve looked completely inappropriate.

At that moment, the Princess squeezed her knees together and her face turned bright red.

‘This is it!’

Most of my spirit beasts were female.

When there’s strong feminine energy in the air, that’s the moment to pull.

I had a hunch that /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ pulling with overflowing yin energy would bring a jackpot.

“Now revealing! Please, not a furry one!”

With a shout, I slowly pulled back the cloth.

‘Please! Pleaseee! Pleaaaseee!’

I silently begged with all my heart as I lifted the cloth.

Something caught my eye in the cabin light.

“Huh?”

It was dim, so I couldn’t make out the full shape—but the first thing I saw was the sleek body.

Smooth, completely hairless.

‘Nice! No fur!’

I felt immediate relief.

No fur meant I was halfway to a win.

No fur meant it wasn’t a mammal.

Which meant there was a high chance it was exactly the kind of creature I wanted.

“Good! No fur! Very good!”

Just as I laughed, morning sunlight streamed into the cabin, and I finally saw its full color.

It was white.

My heart dropped.

A white, furless body—could it be... the one I already had? The White-Shell Pangolin?

“No!”

Sure, the White-Shell Pangolins didn’t have fur, but they were still mammals.

Absolutely not—my heart screamed it couldn’t be. I already had two of them.

That’s when the creature’s full form came into view.

A smooth, hairless body.

A blue dorsal mane.

I’d never seen anything like it.

It sat in the center of the cage with sleepy eyes, blinking slowly.

“Gyaaaaah!”

I couldn’t help but let out a cry of wonder.

The one I’d drawn this time was a brand-new species.

A spirit newt.

Neither a duplicate nor a dud—this was great fortune.

‘Gacha success!’

***

A newt is a type of amphibian belonging to the family Salamandridae, specifically the Pleurodelinae subfamily.

It’s similar to a salamander but with clear differences.

Salamanders mostly live on land, with only a few being aquatic—whereas newts are mostly aquatic or semi-aquatic.

They have webbed feet, and their tails are shaped like paddles, making them excellent swimmers.

Some of them also have crests on their backs, and the one currently in the cage had just such a crest.

“A Great Crested Newt? Triturus cristatus? So they exist here in the Central Plains too.”

“Great Crested Newt?”

“A what kind of newt?”

Gun Hye-rin and the Princess had walked over at some point and were asking questions.

I pointed to the creature and explained:

“A newt with a comb-like dorsal crest like this is called a Great Crested Newt.”

The term “Great Crested Newt” refers to newts with a prominent dorsal crest. As of now, nine species have been discovered worldwide.

They develop fancy crests along their backs and tails during breeding season.

They’re every aquatic amphibian keeper’s dream.

And with good reason—there’s a dinosaur called Spinosaurus that had a fin on its back. This guy looks a lot like it.

People love lizards because they remind them of tiny dinosaurs. That’s why this species is insanely popular.

“Is this one a male?”

The crest typically develops in breeding-season males.

Of course, since this was a spirit beast, I couldn’t be certain—but the odds were it was male. Then Cho stepped closer to the cage and shook her head.

— Tsrururu. 『She’s a girl, Daddy.』

“Really?”

— Tsrut. 『Yup. And she’s still very young.』

Normally, only male newts grow crests during breeding season, so I assumed it was a male—but I guess, as a spirit beast, she had a crest by default. That was perfect.

It meant I’d get to admire her breeding-season beauty all the time.

Happy about that, I decided to check her age next.

“Hey? Hey there? Can you speak?”

I tried talking to her to see if she could respond, but she just kept dozing off.

I turned to the side and asked,

“How young are we talking?”

— Kishishi. 『I think she’s about Dong’s age.』

“Really?”

The one who answered instead of Cho was Yo-hwa.

If she was around Dong’s age, then she was barely a year old at most.

She must’ve been captured at a very young age. As I stared at her, my expression grew serious.

“But... is she sick? Did the palace give her some sedatives to make her easier to transport? Why is she so sleepy?”

I was speaking pretty loudly, and there were other spirit beasts and people around, yet she just sat there, dozing off, blinking at her surroundings before nodding off again.

Normally, she’d be scared or baring her teeth—so I wondered if the royal palace had drugged her, worried she’d go wild in transport.

In this era, I wasn’t entirely sure, but usually when transporting animals, they use sedatives.

Maybe not for reptiles or amphibians like the ones I raise, but for cats or dogs, sedation’s pretty common—they might pee or poop themselves during travel. Sedatives help avoid that.

So I wondered if the palace had drugged her for convenience.

As I peered into the cage, Yo-hwa said,

— Kishi. 『I think she’s just sleeping?』

— Tsrururu. Tsrut. 『Yeah, doesn’t feel like she was drugged. Hey, hey, what’s your name?』

Cho tapped lightly on the cage and tried to ask her name, but the newt only blinked sleepily, then closed her eyes again.

Definitely super drowsy.

Even if she was Dong’s age, depending on the species, she might be even younger. I decided she was probably just a baby and needed sleep.

But then another thought struck me—was she this sleepy because she was outside of water?

“Should I just let her sleep? But wait... shouldn’t she be in water?”

Newts are semi-aquatic, so they can live outside water—but most tend to prefer aquatic environments.

That’s what made me wonder if being out of water was the issue.

Suddenly, her tiny foot caught my eye.

“Huh. No webbing? Maybe she’s more adapted to living on land?”

Newts and salamanders belong to the same family.

They also look very similar.

So the criteria used to distinguish them involve multiple traits, but one of the most important is whether or not they have webbed feet.

If there’s webbing, it’s a newt. If not, it’s a salamander. And this little one didn’t have any webbing.

As I examined her closely, Gun Hye-rin’s question came from the side.

“But So-ryong, what’s her name? Not the species—her spirit beast name. Is she one of the Twenty-Four Poison Branch?”

“Hmm. I’m not entirely sure, but there is a newt spirit beast in the Twenty-Four Poison Branch.”

“What’s it called?”

“Bakwon.”

A spirit beast that occupies the ‘Hail’ position in the Cloud-Rain-Snow-Hail group of the Twenty-Four Poison Branch.

The name Bakwon literally means Hail Newt.

She didn’t quite match the illustration, so I’d need to take a closer look to confirm if she was really Bakwon.

Watching her doze off, I found myself sincerely hoping she was the Hail Newt of the Twenty-Four Poison Branch.

‘Cloud’ was Ranghyang, the Red Cloud Black Millipede.

‘Rain’ was Cheonhae, the Seven-Colored Sea Wraith Jellyfish.

‘Snow’ was Sunbaek, the White-Shell Pangolin, and her baby Baekbaek.

And ‘Hail’ would be this one—Bakwon, the Hail Newt.

Which meant my Cloud-Rain-Snow-Hail lineup was finally complete.

This gacha wasn’t just a success.

It was a jackpot.