Born of Heaven's Night
Unknown
The girl wreathed in bluish light darted forward and threw herself over the crumpled form of Yi Yeonjo, shielding him with her own body. Then, hissing like a serpent, she bared her gaze at the monster.
Geuseundae rumbled with something like pleasure at the sight. "A fine special meal. Excellent. I'll raise her well before I eat her."
Instinct was screaming inside the girl. Can't win. That thing can't be beaten. Run.
But Lee Yeon-ju thought through her haze of confusion: I can't run even if I can't win. I have to protect Yeonjo. That thing ate Nabi. Poor Nabi. And Yeonjo—it'll eat Yeonjo too. No. Not my little brother. Never.
Geuseundae strode closer. Lee Yeon-ju's eyes went wide and she bared her teeth, but the yokai paid her threat no mind at all. It simply reached down and seized the limp boy's ankle.
"Special meal later. This one first. First. Hungry."
Chwak!
With the smoke-formed cat ears atop her head flattened sideways, Lee Yeon-ju sprang into the air. Just as the Myodusa had done, she opened her jaws wide and bit down on Geuseundae's wrist with all her strength.
Inside her mouth, blue energy sprouted like a serpent's fangs and bore down on the yokai's skin—yet not so much as a scratch opened on its wrinkled hide.
"Hungry, hungry……"
Ignoring her entirely, Geuseundae rumbled to itself and yanked Yi Yeonjo's ankle toward its own body.
"Uwaaaaagh!"
In that instant, the boy who had been lying limp shot upright and drove the thing in his hand straight down into the monster's eye with a scream.
"……!"
A jagged shard of ceramic buried itself deep in the eye socket.
For the first time, Geuseundae flinched.
Yi Yeonjo had been knocked breathless when he was flung into the rice cauldron and had blacked out briefly—but he had come to almost immediately. He had simply stayed down, playing dead, rummaging between the cauldrons until he found a shard of a broken dish, closing his fist around it quietly and waiting for an opening.
The boy stared up at the yokai, chest heaving until his shoulders shook. Did it work?
Grurruk.
Geuseundae, which had paused only a heartbeat, rolled its throat and hoisted Yi Yeonjo upside down by the ankle.
"Ugh!"
Dangling the boy in the air, the monster thrust its furnace-like eye, still pierced by the ceramic shard, right up into his face.
"Little wretch, so vicious. Vicious."
The ever-composed Geuseundae seethed with rage. Killing intent boiled up from it.
"How dare you. How dare. I'll kill you!"
Startled by that killing intent, Lee Yeon-ju tore her mouth away from its arm and flung her whole body onto it, hanging on with everything she had.
Still dangling the girl from one arm, Geuseundae swung the arm that clutched the boy's ankle. To smash the boy it held against the floor and kill him.
"Aaaaagh!"
"Kyaaaagh!"
Letting out a cry like a wild beast, Lee Yeon-ju hurled herself flat against the ground, trying to catch her brother as he swung down. Her one and only thought was that she could not let him crack his skull open on the bare floor and die.
"……?"
She had screwed her eyes shut bracing for the impact—but feeling nothing, she cracked one eye open in confusion.
A length of translucent jade-green cloth, extending from somewhere unseen, had coiled itself around the descending arm and was holding it fast.
"Wh-what?"
The moment the yokai turned in bewilderment, pitch-black darkness pried through the gap in the door and poured in like fog.
And with that darkness, a black blade seeped through—and carved upward along Geuseundae's elbow, from below.
Flesh that in ordinary circumstances would have been shrouded in shadow and beyond any blade's reach parted beneath the black sword as soft as tofu, and fell away.
The severed shadow scattered like seaweed in a wave, and the massive forearm dropped to the floor. The boy it had been holding was caught by the jade cloth, which set him down on the ground with painstaking care.
"Kraaaaaagh!"
Only then did Geuseundae shriek. Black blood geysered from the stump of its elbow in a waterfall as it went berserk with pain.
As the hulking yokai rampaged at the doorway, the door tore loose with its frame and half the earthen wall came crashing down. Dust clouds bloomed, and the shadows that had filled the corridor flooded into the room like water pouring through a gashed hull.
"……!"
Lee Yeon-ju's beastly instincts told her that touching that thing would mean disaster. She scrambled back on all fours, dragging her brother with her toward the rice cauldrons.
At that moment, someone entered the room, cleaving the flood of shadows in two.
Glimmering silver hair rippled behind her like a tail, absurdly out of place in the dark, dilapidated house. A translucent jade Nalgae-ot billowed about her like a celestial maiden's wings.
The silver-haired girl was faintly glowing. As she moved, the shadows recoiled from her as if in terror.
"Are you all right?"
The worried question reached her ears.
Still bristling with blue light like a cat raising its hackles, Lee Yeon-ju realized that the person approaching was someone she knew—the young Crown Princess.
"Sis, wait— wait a second, I can't breathe!"
Yi Yeonjo squirmed beneath her. Only then did the older sister, who had been pinning her brother down with her whole body, climb off him.
"Let me see. Are you hurt anywhere?"
Seruhwa swept her strangely shimmering eyes over the twins, then turned her gaze to Lee Yeon-ju.
"Lee Yeon-ju."
"……?"
Rather than answer, the girl's blue cat ears twitched upright. Seruhwa let out a small sigh.
"Calm your yokai power. If you stay like that, you really will turn into a yokai."
"Aeng?"
Yokai power? What's that supposed to be?—but before Lee Yeon-ju could voice the question, what spilled from her mouth was not human speech at all. It was the exact cry of a Myodusa.
"Iyaaaeng!"
Startled by her own voice, the girl yowled even louder and leapt straight up off the ground. Seruhwa sighed once more, her expression softening, and held out her hand.
"Come here."
A voice gentle as coaxing a child. And with it came a faint, sweet, lovely scent.
Without meaning to, Lee Yeon-ju sniffed the air and looked at Seruhwa.
"I'm here to help you. Come here."
Hair that sparkled like fish scales. Eyes that gleamed like polished beads of jade. A beautiful child, luminous as if carved from sunlight, was calling to her.
As if bewitched, Lee Yeon-ju drifted over, and Seruhwa laid her hand upon her forehead. Wrapped in that pleasant scent and cool, clean energy, the girl half-closed her eyes and let out a low, rumbling purr.
"……Sis?"
She heard her brother's voice, stricken with horror at the most bizarre sight in the world, but Lee Yeon-ju paid it no mind.
Everything felt like somebody else's problem. She just wanted to purr. Wanted to nuzzle in and beg for more, meowing, meowing……
"Huh?"
Suddenly, her mind snapped wide awake.
Lee Yeon-ju realized she was lying with her head pillowed on the thigh of the Crown Princess—who was smaller than she was—wriggling her body like a cat beneath a hardy kiwi tree.
Behind Seruhwa's relieved face, she could see her brother's, scowling down at her in disgust.
"Sis, are you actually insane?"
"Who's insane? Watch your mouth when you talk to your sister!"
Lee Yeon-ju flared up and pushed herself upright—only to realize that human words had, at some point, started coming out of her mouth again.
She turned blankly to the Crown Princess.
"Your Highness, just now, what exactly……?"
The mystical child wrapped in the Nalgae-ot answered with a smile instead of words.
"That was frightening, wasn't it? You can relax now."
At those words, the strength abruptly drained from her legs. The twins sank to the floor as if collapsing.
What an enormous relief.
With my divine power, I had safely suppressed the Myodusa's yokai power as it ran rampant through Lee Yeon-ju's body. It was worth having imbued that power with the concept of Healing.
This is exactly why it's dangerous for an ordinary person to keep a yokai at their side for too long.
However kind a yokai may be, a yokai is still a yokai. Stay near one long enough and you're imperceptibly steeped in its power, and the risk of you doing yokai-like things grows and grows.
Why else would the saying "possessed by a yokai" exist? And in the worst cases, there are those who stop being human altogether and become yokai outright.
And if someone has the aptitude of a shaman, the power accumulates inside their body—making it all the more dangerous.
Now that the fire was out, the sorry state of the two children leapt out at me. Fortunately, most of it was just scrapes; nothing was badly hurt.
That could have gone very badly. Truly.
I spread healing divine power over their wounds like salve, then rose to my feet.
"Wait here for a moment."
Around the spot where the two sat slumped, I drew a formation using the Nalgae-ot as my brush and divine power as my ink—a barrier to hold back the shadows.
Now that I can wield divine power, I can lay down formations without any tools or materials at all.
When I opened the gates of the netherworld beside the Queen, I'd needed every implement imaginable. How far I've come.
The moment I finished the formation and turned to leave, the twins looked up at me anxiously.
"Wh-where are you going?"
"To help the Crown Prince."
"The Crown Prince?"
"He's fighting the Geuseundae right now. I have to hurry."
While I had been saving the children, the Crown Prince had decided to lure the Geuseundae out into the corridor. I had already explained on the way over how the Geuseundae matched up against an Eodukseoni, and how one fought it.
The ambush landed cleanly, and the luring into the corridor seemed to have gone well.
Still, anxiety gnawed at me. I needed to get there fast.
Yes, the Crown Prince—as an Eodukseoni—held the elemental advantage over the Geuseundae. But this was a battle between an inexperienced young human Eodukseoni and a mighty Geuseundae. I could not rest easy.
At my words, Yi Yeonjo echoed back at me in a dazed voice.
"Geuseundae?"
"That yokai from before. That's its name."
"Ah…… and the Crown Prince is fighting that? Isn't that dangerous?"
Yi Yeonjo went deathly pale. And Lee Yeon-ju turned ghost-white and cried out.
"Nabi!"
"Hm?"
"That monster swallowed Nabi! Nabi— Nabi was trying to protect me……!"
Lee Yeon-ju burst into tears.
The Geuseundae ate the Myodusa? No wonder I hadn't seen the creature anywhere, and no wonder the girl had been draped head to toe in Myodusa power alone.
If it swallowed her whole, Nabi might still be alive inside the Geuseundae's belly.
But I couldn't promise the Myodusa's survival, not with Yi Yeonjo's tears falling drop by drop before me. She might already be dead.
"……In any case, the two of you stay right here! If you wander off, it's dangerous!"
Having warned the children, I hurriedly stepped into the shadows.
Parting the darkness as if pushing through underbrush, I crossed over the half-collapsed wall.
Out in the corridor, I could see the shadows swirling in a vortex, streaming toward a single point.
At the end of that flow, the one-armed Geuseundae was reabsorbing the shadows it had scattered across the floor. It seemed to be using them to mend its wounds.
Where's the Crown Prince?
The little Crown Prince was standing before the colossal yokai, Dark Spirit Blade in hand, smiling.
She's unharmed.
A child grinning while holding a blade in front of a monster several times her size—she did look more than a little unhinged, but she was winning, so surely that was fine.
Geuseundae patched over its wounds with shadow and rumbled low at the boy.
"Human Eodukseoni……!"
"Yes. I am Eodukseoni."
The Crown Prince's smile vanished, as though wiped away in a single instant.
As if that were the signal, the little one's shadow—and the darkness dwelling within it—swelled up monstrous and vast, engulfing the Geuseundae's shadow completely.
"I was born of the night of Heaven. Thing spawned from shadow—do you not fear me?"
Following the boy's whisper, darkness surged up out of the shadows and climbed the Geuseundae like a spiderweb.
The shadow that had shrouded the monster's entire body ballooned outward in a desperate frenzy.
"Graaah! I fear nothing! Nothing!"
Every remaining shadow in the vicinity was sucked into the Geuseundae. Swollen into a shapeless mass like a gigantic ball of fur, it shuddered in all four limbs, straining to shake off the darkness coiled around it.
"A human Eodukseoni is nothing! Nothing at all! Dueoksini is far more fearsome! Dueoksini, more! I am not—not afraid of Eodukseoni!"
The Crown Prince gazed at the Geuseundae without a flicker of expression, and declared:
"No. You are about to be."