The Sea Dragon Starts a Power Struggle
"Hwaaah, how long has it even been since I set foot in a neighborhood where actual people live?"
With a long, drawn-out moan, the fox divine beast stretched her arms and legs out and gave her six tails a little shiver as she became the first to stride into Muchang.
And as for that Hari—
"You ended up bringing her after all."
Namgung Lin watched her with a thoroughly unimpressed look. Clearly, bringing Hari along still sat wrong with her.
I'd already come clean with Hari about us both being Murim Gallery users, but Namgung Lin only had a near-certainty that Hari was SixTails—she'd never actually heard Hari admit it herself. And whatever her reasons, the six tails hanging off Hari's back were a pretty clear advertisement that this was a creature who'd made a habit of eating people.
"She says she's from Gangnam, but still—handing a hopae out under my name to a fox divine beast who's probably eaten hundreds of people is a little much."
"Then why are you going this far for me?"
"It's different from Young Lady Hae. Young Lady Hae may not have been tangled up with humans for long, but that one is just a beast who eats humans on sight. How am I supposed to put my name on a guarantee for something that might bolt off in any direction?"
I was the only one who knew both of their identities, so I had to play lubricant and keep things from grinding. The more people I could trust, the better—and once I got a hopae into Hari's hands and somehow rehabilitated her, she'd be an incredibly solid ally. Sticking close to both her and Namgung Lin would put me on a completely different level of security.
"If you're that nervous, just give her a hopae with conditions attached."
"Conditions? Like what?"
"Use her as a hunting dog. Foxes are canids anyway—the picture even fits."
"A hunting dog?"
Blood Sect cultists made for high-nutrition livers and hearts as far as a fox divine beast was concerned. The Murim Alliance already treated the Blood Sect as its primary enemy, and if Namgung Lin's prediction was right, they'd be redeploying people to the Janggang to sweep for cultists. So if we dangled a hopae as a clear carrot for delivering solid results—
"It'll kind of work itself out, won't it?"
"Mmm… true. It's about the only way to throw her a bone for helping us without staking my entire reputation on her."
"Right? A recommendation puts way less pressure on you than a full guarantee."
"Yes. She came to us first asking for a hopae, so offering her a chance in the form of a recommendation shouldn't get much pushback. Thank you, Young Lady Hae. That settled my thinking right away."
"Don't mention it."
I shrugged it off like it was nothing. We still had to walk through the hopae issuance process, so I kept trailing after Namgung Lin—until something I'd completely forgotten slammed back into me.
"Ah. Right."
"What is it?"
"Money!"
I'd blanked on it entirely. There was something else I was supposed to collect besides a hopae.
"Aigoo, seriously. Do you think I'm going to fleece you or something? Don't worry about it. Once we find you a place to stay, I'll make sure you get what's coming to you."
"Ah… yeah, fair."
Even if I took the money now, I had nowhere to put it but my sleeves, and it wouldn't all fit anyway. I made her promise not to forget about paying me, and then—
"Listen, Investigator."
"Yes?"
"My junior and I will be at the inn greasing our insides a bit and shaking off the travel fatigue. We're getting hungry, and there's nothing we can do for the hopae business."
"I could write you a letter of recommendation, but honestly, given the Wudang Sect's position, we can't just hand those out freely either."
"Ah, it's fine, it's fine. If I just write a proper guarantee, Young Lady Hae's side will be sorted immediately. The fox lady over there… I'm still deciding what to do with her."
"In that case, we'll head in first. We'll be staying at the Wind Cloud Inn in Muchang until we leave, so send word if you need us for anything."
The senior and junior Wudang Taoists excused themselves to rest and withdrew.
And once the Wudang brothers were gone—
"Alright then. Time to settle some outstanding accounts. Murim Alliance, here we come."
Hari sidled up more aggressively and started getting handsy, even throwing an arm around my shoulders like she owned the place.
"You seem to have forgotten something. I'm not the one writing your recommendation letter and handing you a hopae. The one you need to impress is Lin, not me."
"Come on, once they're making one for you, tacking me on isn't exactly hard work, is it? An Alliance investigator willing to hand a hopae to a horned lizard like you has to be a pretty enlightened divine-beast advocate. What's one more on top?"
That smug attitude of hers was genuinely irritating. It wasn't that I thought she was wrong, exactly—it was that self-satisfied look. The absolute conviction that everything would go exactly the way she planned. I desperately wanted to smash it.
And that little wish of mine—
"I'm only guaranteeing Young Lady Hae."
"Oh, please. I heard the whole thing. Right up until you were seeing the Wudang Taoists off, you were still on the fence about whether to guarantee me or not. You were going to do it in the end, weren't you?"
"I was deciding whether to write a recommendation, not a guarantee. A guarantee was never on the table."
"What…?"
Namgung Lin delivered it without missing a beat.
Aww, you little brat.
Now that was a face worth looking at.
In the end, even Namgung Lin couldn't bring herself to throw Hari out cold when she was already so sure Hari was SixTails. But that conversation had driven one point home with perfect clarity.
"You can see plain as day that the number of people you've killed is more than you could count on all your fingers and toes, and you still thought I'd stake everything I have on guaranteeing you? How naive."
"I—that's not—"
"What can I do? It's not like I can rip all your tails off at this point."
From here on out, you do what I say. If I just refuse to write that recommendation, what exactly can you do about it?
The silent pressure left Hari thoroughly cowed, and the sight of her shriveled up like that was genuinely refreshing. The first time I'd blocked her flames, it had felt like my hands were burning off, and those meteor-style attacks of hers had been a shock. Seeing that same Hari reduced to this made me finally understand just how massive a Murim Alliance-certified hopae was to a divine beast.
And I'm getting that hopae for free, aren't I?
Talk about a lucky break.
Anyway.
"Here, here—fill out the application forms right over there. The Murim Alliance's Divine Beast Management Bureau usually just collects dust, but look at it coming alive again."
There'd been a little tension, but we headed to the place where hopae were issued. Hari's attitude had turned remarkably obedient; she kept her mouth shut and followed along.
"This administrative bureau was established about twenty years ago under the active push of the current Alliance Leader, back when he was still the Martial Force Division Commander. The screening process is that thorough, so write carefully, alright?"
"Of course I'll write carefully. How hard can it be?"
"Got it."
Namgung Lin, radiating full chaperone-teacher energy, handed me and Hari sheets of paper and brushes for our personal details.
"Write down everything you can think of. Name, age, hair color, facial features, tails or ears—all the distinctive traits."
"Martial arts?"
"Sorcery?"
"You can leave those out. If that information leaks, it's a disaster, so just put something like 'uses martial arts' or 'practices sorcery' and leave it at that."
"Fine."
"Alright."
"Do your best, then. I'll go round up the Divine Beast Management people. Honestly, these bastards barely do any work on a normal day and they still can't even stay at their desks—what are they even—"
Once she was sure we understood, Namgung Lin muttered a stream of curses and vanished deeper into the building.
"Hey."
"What?"
"Isn't that one kind of weird? Doesn't even feel like a guy. Something's off."
"W-what are you talking about?"
"I mean, come on. With the ones who've got dicks, you can usually see their eyes drift straight to my chest and lips, so reading them is easy. But with that one, I don't get that feeling at all? Then again, the chest is way too flat to call it a woman in men's clothes, so maybe I'm just imagining it."
"N-not having a chest doesn't automatically make someone a man."
"Doesn't it, though?"
Hari shot a sidelong glance at my wide-open cleavage, tilted her head with a face that said pretty sure it does, then bit her lip with those long fangs like nothing had happened and started writing her personal information on the paper.
I casually turned my own eyes to the sheet in front of me and started moving the brush. Ever since dropping into Murim, I'd been able to understand Chinese characters like some kind of free starter perk. Writing them worked the same way—how to put it? I was writing in Hangul, but the meaning got swapped into characters on the page.
Name, species, age, hair color, the shape of the horns, the form of the tail—I wrote them down in order. It didn't take as long as I'd expected. I didn't own anything, didn't have a house; all I really had to put down was external appearance.
And not long after that—
"I'm back."
"Ah, Lin. Here."
"Yes, thank you."
"Mine too."
Along with Lin came a whole pack of reception clerks from the Divine Beast Management Bureau, all looking thoroughly chewed out and miserable. Seizing the moment, I handed over my completed sheet, and Hari passed hers over right after.
"Nice. Hae Suah, twenty-three. You've written down all the external features, and you even noted that you're at the stage of being willing to learn martial arts."
"What?"
"And what's your problem?"
"Ah, what the hell is this bullshit—"
"Excuse me?"
Hari's face suddenly twisted; she blew up and started spitting curses.
"Did you write something wrong? Name: Hari. Fox divine beast, six-tailed. Age: twenty-seven? Ah, is that the issue?"
Namgung Lin read over Hari's details and let out a little snort of laughter.
"Oh my, how do I even apologize for this? Not recognizing my eonni and speaking so casually all this time. I'll treat you properly from now on. Eonni."
A power struggle.
This was unmistakably a power struggle. The classic all-female kind—needling someone over being older, and the older woman rising to the bait.
I was staring at the bloodbath in a daze when—
"Hey, lizard. Don't you lie to me. How the hell are you twenty-three? Building that rack alone had to take a solid thirty years! You wanna die for real?"
"What are you talking about, eonni? Why would I be thirty?"
A Wudang Sect elder had personally vouched that I was twenty-three.
"That's right. Why would Hae-eonni be older than—"
"Wrong, Lin-ah."
"Huh? What?"
"Why put up a wall over a one-year difference by forcing the 'eonni'? Elder Mihyeon even told me to treat you like a peer."
"Huh? W-wait—"
And if I name-dropped Mihyeon, I could stand on equal footing with Namgung Lin, who was a year younger. Truly unbeatable logic.
Ah. So this is why people do age power struggles.
This was kind of fun.
Looking at Hari's face, flushed red to the ears, I felt like I could keep this going all day. One wrong move from her here and she wouldn't even get that recommendation letter for a divine-beast hopae—she could get thrown out on the spot.
"Anyway, Hari-eonni really does have the seniority. No wonder she's got six tails."
"I said I'll kill you. You keep this up?"
"Keep what up, eonni?"
"You little—"
There was absolutely no reason to let go of a chance to beat on her one-sidedly.
"Y-Young Lady Hae? I'll just keep calling you Young Lady Hae, if that's alright? It's what I'm used to."
"Sure. You do whatever's comfortable."
And Namgung Lin—I'd let her off the hook. Special treatment.