The Demonic Realm
Seo Yu-ri's mouth hung half-open, frozen mid-word.
Dohyeon narrowed his eyes slightly.
It had been barely three days since he'd told them not to pretend to know him in front of other people.
Yu-ri glanced around at the other students, then began muttering to herself. "Sh-shall we... get going soon?"
The woman standing beside her tilted her head. It was an entirely reasonable thing to say, so why was she stammering? But the two students didn't press further. One of them simply didn't seem to care in the first place, and the other was too busy fidgeting with the red binding cords wrapped tightly around her wrists.
Dohyeon, acting as if nothing had happened, readjusted the pack on his back. "Right. Time to head out."
A man who had been lying to the side dozing rose without ceremony and strolled over. "I'm Kim Ju-hyeok, the graduate student instructor in charge of leading and evaluating your group this time. Before we begin the evaluation, state your names."
Deep dark circles shadowed both his eyes, and his voice carried no energy whatsoever. He yawned and fished a crumpled roster out of his pocket.
So he's a student instructor.
This was exactly why Dohyeon, despite his interest in Taoist magic, had never considered enrolling at the academy. Astonishingly, in this world, graduating from the Seodang required joining one of the seven academies and racking up a sufficient record of research achievements in a laboratory. You couldn't graduate without both your supervising instructor's endorsement and a completed thesis.
Just look at those dark circles.
That wasn't the face of someone who'd merely slept badly. Word was that writing a thesis here didn't mean simply running spell experiments in a lab — you had to personally venture into a Demonic Realm to procure spirit stones and materials for your research.
Me, I'd just hole up in the lab and be done with it.
"You. First."
Kim Ju-hyeok pointed at the woman standing farthest to the left, roster still in hand. The woman with neatly tied black hair stepped forward.
"Kwon Na-yeong."
"...The Andong Kwon clan?"
A flicker of strength crept into that otherwise limp voice. He raised his head to look at her and spotted the jade pendant at her breast, engraved with the character for 'Kwon.'
The Andong Kwon clan. One of the four great Taoist families in Korea. They had produced countless master Taoists since the Goryeo dynasty, and even now managed the Demonic Realms and seal-sites scattered across the nation — a name prestigious enough that the family crest alone commanded different treatment at Daehan Seodang.
"Yes."
"Oho."
For the first time, Kim Ju-hyeok looked at her face properly as he began reading her entry on the roster. Then his gaze stopped.
"Congenital detachment of the spiritual organ... maximum storage capacity capped at 1st Rank, huh."
The brief revival of his interest drained away just as quickly. He'd been half-considering courting her favor to pull her into his own lab if she impressed him — a pointless thought now.
"Ah, so you're that one."
He shifted his gaze aside with supreme indifference. Na-yeong's expression didn't change. She had always been treated this way; it was far too late in life for it to wound her now.
Dohyeon stole a careful look at her. The spiritual organ was the vessel through which a spellcaster generated and stored spiritual energy. Proper adaptive training in childhood could develop its potential, and as one grew, the organ's size and density were tempered alongside one's mastery of Taoist arts. But word around campus was that for some reason, the walls of her organ had grown thin. She could neither build density nor expand its capacity, and even a 1st-tier spell cost her visible effort.
Born into a great Taoist house yet unable to wield its magic properly, she was treated within her own family as the child they'd written off.
A spiritual reserve on par with the odd-jobs laborers, huh.
Viewed one way, once you accounted for her growth ceiling, she was actually worse off than a laborer.
"Next."
The woman with the red binding cords wound around her wrists stepped forward. "I am Kurahashi Shion."
Her white-and-red garments and the paper dolls dangling at her waist explained her origins well enough on their own.
"Hm. Looks like they swept up every leftover straggler for this group."
Kim Ju-hyeok heaved a long sigh and lifted his head. "You're Seo Yu-ri, right?"
"...Yes."
"Tch. And here I was hoping at least one of you was worth recruiting for a lab. Let's just get moving."
It would be no exaggeration to say these three were the most famous students at the entire Seodang. A student bearing the Andong Kwon name but lacking the spiritual energy to match it. A student of Japan's greatest onmyoji clan, yet unable to control her shikigami. A student overflowing with talent but blessed with neither family backing nor spiritual reserves. What's more, for their own separate reasons, none of them could be carelessly expelled. He must have been hoping at least one of them was talent worth claiming for a laboratory — but not a trace of that hope remained on his face now.
"You've all done plenty of practical evaluations by now, so I'll skip the explanation. Take it easy and come back safe."
"Yes, sir..."
Yu-ri answered with a gloomy face, while Na-yeong and Shion listened in silence.
"Everyone, board this."
Kim Ju-hyeok gestured at a transport construct. It took the shape of a car without wheels, and at a glance, the underside seemed to be densely inscribed with spell-formations that bled a bluish glow.
Dohyeon boarded last, staring at the thing in genuine wonder. It never stopped being amazing, no matter how many times he saw it. A flying car — the dream of every man — and here it simply existed. When I open my café someday, I am buying one of these. Of course, owning an aerial transport construct requires a nationally certified 1st-Rank license... but that's just a matter of passing the test.
Wait — I'm not going to wake up to transforming robots next, am I?
Kim Ju-hyeok tapped the spirit stone set into the front panel with his finger, and the blue light surged brighter, spilling out of the construct.
Vrrmmm.
No wonder they look down on math and science here. There's a reason this world stopped at the steam engine.
He was still idly watching the sky drift past when, before he knew it, they had arrived, and the construct was settling onto the ground.
"Our evaluation site is Cheongrim Valley. Enter when you're ready and conduct the assessment at your own discretion."
A wide clearing sat nestled between the bamboo forest. And at its very center, unnaturally, a colossal rift had split open — like a portal leading into another world.
Kim Ju-hyeok tossed each of the three students a palm-sized wooden tag. Recognition tags, each carved with the character for 'Seven' in red.
"Clip it to your belt before you go in. It lets me track your locations. In an emergency, crush the tag and it'll function as a protective barrier for five minutes — use it at your own judgment. Of course, destroying it counts against your score."
After fastening the tags to their belts, the three gathered and began their strategy meeting. The way they launched straight into discussion without even exchanging introductions suggested this was far from the first time the three of them had been thrown together as a group.
"Wind devils and ink hounds are what mostly spawn in Cheongrim Valley, so should we go with traps and luring?" Yu-ri proposed in her bright, lively voice.
"I can lure them with my shikigami."
"What are you talking about? You can't even control your shikigami properly. Trying to fail with another zero?"
Shion had slowly stepped forward to offer her opinion, but Na-yeong — who had suffered more than once from Shion's shikigami slipping its leash and running wild — shot her down instantly. Sad to say, not one of the three was capable of subduing even a lesser shikigami.
"I only made a small mistake last time," Shion replied calmly.
"And the times before that?"
"... "
"And the times before *those*?"
Shion's mouth closed.
Shikigami were a fine art in raw power terms, exceeding even the average student's level — but Shion lost control of them the moment any time passed, and every time, the students around her had been forced to put them down instead. Whenever the three of them were grouped together, they couldn't even manage that, and it had landed them zero after zero.
The three argued back and forth heatedly, but eventually their opinions seemed to converge, and they began entering the Demonic Realm. Kim Ju-hyeok, who had been dozing off to one side, watched them go, stretched once, and followed them in. Dohyeon likewise trailed after Kim Ju-hyeok.
The moment he stepped through the rift and opened his eyes, a landscape utterly different from the forest he'd just left unfolded before him.
Blue bamboo stretched on without end. The stalks were so thick it would take two grown men spreading their arms to barely encircle one, and the canopy of leaves blanketing the sky leaked a faint cerulean glow. Whenever the wind stirred, the bamboo knocked together with a clear, ringing chime like struck metal.
Dohyeon tilted his head back and looked up. No clouds. No sun.
This place gives me the creeps every single time.
Another world, separate from Earth. If worlds like this existed in the Demonic Realms without number, then perhaps the world called Earth was nothing special at all.
"Just follow behind me and stay out of trouble."
Kim Ju-hyeok seemed unconvinced by Dohyeon's wandering gaze; he tossed out the remark, then faced forward again and began jotting the three students' movements down on a sheet of paper.
After that, things went smoothly. The three worked in concert, luring out ink hounds and taking them down three at a time, and they barely managed to snag a wind devil with a trap as well. Considering this was a Demonic Realm classified at the 2nd grade, it was an unremarkable, competent rhythm.
And then the problem: Shion was suddenly wreathed in red light and forced upright.
"Ugh...!"
Shion clutched her body and dropped to her knees. The binding cords wrapped tight around her wrists swelled taut, as if something inside her was struggling to break free.
"Kurahashi?"
Kim Ju-hyeok looked up from his evaluation sheet, drew a handful of spell constructs from his coat, and readied himself to respond.
The red binding cords snapped one strand at a time.
*Twang.*
*Tw-tw-twang.*
Of the three red lines carved across the chest of the doll at her waist, the first split open like an eye and bore down upon the other two. In that instant, an illusion washed over them — as if the entire bamboo forest itself were being crushed.
Or was that something he had *felt*?
KUGUGUGUNG!
Black spiritual energy detonated outward, and a colossal silhouette rose up behind Shion.
Golden-Furred Nine-Tails — Tamamo-no-Mae.
The Kurahashi clan's strongest and worst shikigami revealed itself. Even with only a single tail manifested, the sheer pressure rolling off it was more than mere 1st- and 2nd-Rank Taoists could bear.
"Kurahashi! You have to snap out of it!"
Kim Ju-hyeok shouted her name in desperation, but Shion had already lost consciousness — she simply stood there, radiating crimson light.
KYAOOOO!
With an earth-shaking roar, the shikigami swept out its claws, and a fissure in the shape of an enormous claw-mark tore open the ground before it.
Wh-what the hell is happening?