The Tiger's Song [5]
Smack! Smack!
-AAAAAAAARGH!
-KYAAAAAAAH!
The cheerful crack of the iron whip rang out across the courtyard of the Hupung Hall. Unlike the lively music that had filled the grounds during the ritual earlier, the sound was monotonous — but monotony, after all, has a charm all its own.
Still, that much charm fell two percent short of satisfying me.
"No, no! That's not the sound!"
Smack! Smack!
-KYAAAAAAAH!
-STOOOOP IIIIT!
"No! I said that's not it!"
Smack! Smack!
-IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS!
-STOP STOP STOP STOP!
"I said no! That's not the one!"
Faster! Harder!
With everything I had, until I heard the sound I was looking for!
SPLAT! SPLAT!
-I'LL TALK I'LL TALK I'LL TALK I'LL TALK!
-SPARE ME AND I'LL SPILL IT, SPARE ME AND I'LL TELL YOU EVERYTHING!
"!!"
Finally!
My dedication had borne fruit.
"Now that's more like it."
I nodded in satisfaction and looked down at the Chang-gwi trembling inside the Soul-Sundering Formation. From everything I'd experienced, an unsalvaged soul degraded in proportion to the lingering regrets it carried and the time it had spent drifting through this world. By that measure, the Chang-gwi were the worst cases I had ever encountered — the regret of dying unjustly to a tiger, and the malice of trying to resolve it by hunting a replacement victim. Obviously there'd be nothing left of their sanity.
But they say extreme devotion works miracles — and extreme devotion [whipping] performed a miracle!
I crouched down to eye level with the two miraculously reformed Chang-gwi and asked, "Who's scarier — the tiger, or me?"
-You're scarier! You're way scarier! I'll talk, I swear! I'll tell you everything, miss!
-Spare this old man! Spare me! I'll tell you everything, I will!
"Now we're communicating. From this point on, you answer every question within three seconds. Okay?"
-I'll answer! Just please, no more whip, young lady, I beg you!
-Whatever the gentleman asks, I'll answer!
"First question. Are you actually Chang-gwi?"
-Yes! Yes!
-We are! We are!
"Second question. Where's the tiger you're attached to?"
-Hoseungbong! On Hoseungbong Peak!
-Hoseungbong Peak! It's on Hoseungbong!
"Hoseungbong?"
I turned to Min-seo and Momo. "You two heard of it?"
"No, not at all."
"First time I've heard that name too, Teacher."
I was a Seoul native myself, born and raised, over twenty years in this city, and even I had never heard of a Hoseungbong.
Which meant...
Smack!
"You little shits trying to feed me a lie—!"
-AAAAH! IT'S NOT A LIE! IT'S NOT A LIE! Hoseungbong is a place only the qualified can enter!
-That's right! That's right! It's the tiger's domain, untouchable by ordinary humans!
Were they talking about an Inner Space?
"...Then how do I get to this Hoseungbong?"
-Just pass beneath Jungseungmun Gate!
-If you're qualified, you can enter!
Jungseungmun was one of the five great gates of the Bukhansan Fortress Wall, the most ornate of them all, crowned with a pavilion on top. I remembered passing through it on a middle school field trip to the fortress.
"I see..."
-W-we told you everything, so... we'll just...
-Y-you'll let us go now, right...?
"Nope."
I pulled out the gourd I'd brought along with the iron whip in my breast pocket. I called it a gourd, but that was only the shape — the material wasn't lacquer but silver, specifically sterling silver. Since ancient times, Daoists had used gourds as portable prisons for capturing and sealing evil beings. This Bokrok — Fortune and Prosperity — was likewise shaped from sterling silver, with a Soul-Sundering Formation engraved inside: a custom-made prison of my own design. Alchemy fused with artifice, you might say — a collab between Western metallurgy and Eastern refinement.
"Come, come, into the gourd with you. You two were born for this, after all."
-No no no!
-Don't don't!
The Chang-gwi resisted, but they were no match for Bokrok's pull.
-AAAAAAAAAAARGH!
-GUAAAAAAAH!
In the end, both of them were sucked inside.
Pop!
I sealed the lid so they couldn't come back out, and that was that.
"Whoa... Teacher, when did you even make that?"
"Whipped it up in my spare time. No big deal."
Bokrok had been made as practice for crafting a ritual instrument for Fey — doubling as equipment to use against the Bukhansan Maneating Tiger. Whatever you say, being prepared like this makes things easy.
Unlike Lostco or the Suicide Train, I knew exactly what anomaly I was facing and had come prepared. It didn't get more convenient than this. Truly, the Sorcerer class scales with preparation.
"Let's go, then."
"That was fast — we're at the climax already."
"I-I'm ready, Teacher!"
And so I led the two of them up Bukhansan. But an ambush I hadn't anticipated was waiting for us, and it was...
"Haah! Haah..."
"Hek! Hek! T-Teacher, slow down a little...!"
"How long have you even been walking? Why are you both gasping like that?"
"B-been a streamer all her life, how good do you think her stamina is?!"
"Awww..."
"That's a flex. Some of us aren't streamers, you know?"
In the end, I matched the pace of my two chronically exercise-deprived companions and climbed with occasional rest stops. At last, we reached our destination: Jungseungmun.
"They sure managed to build a fortress wall this long up a mountain, huh?"
"Wow... it's my first time seeing the Bukhansan Fortress!"
"Really? Min-seo, your school never did a field trip here?"
"Ever since that ruling a few years back — teacher held liable whenever a kid got hurt on a field trip or picnic — schools stopped going to places like this..."
"Oof, rough."
After some small talk to catch our breath...
"Shall we head in, then?"
"Yes!"
"Let's do it."
"Are you viewers ready out there?"
The donations were bursting with anticipation. I smiled a satisfied smile and stepped through the fortress gate.
The instant I did, the world before my eyes transformed. The mountain that had been bare and skeletal all winter, without a single flower, was now a spring mountain in full bloom.
This was Hoseungbong — the domain of the maneating tiger, master of the Chang-gwi.
And yet, how should I put it...
"This is awfully pretty for an Inner Space belonging to a man-eating tiger yokai, isn't it?"
"It really is..."
Every Inner Space I'd seen so far had been wreathed in a grotesque atmosphere that more than deserved the word "anomaly." But this place was different. Spring flowers blooming everywhere, a warm breeze, warm sunlight — qualitatively different from anything I'd experienced before.
And as if to prove the point—
-What in the world is this place?
"Whoa!"
"Fey."
Fey popped out of the water bottle Min-seo had bought to drink from during the hike. "What is it this time, appearing so suddenly?" When I'd first summoned her, she'd relentlessly stalked me, but after that whole mess we'd gradually gotten comfortable with each other, and once we promised a formal contract, she'd taken to lounging around my place more and more. When I asked what she did while waiting at home — apparently Netflix has so much to watch? Judging by our conversations alone, she was more on top of trends than I was. It did make me wonder whether a noble princess[?] — or queen[?] — of the fairy realm should be living like that, but since she came instantly whenever I called, I decided to respect the hobby.
Fey surveyed the interior of the Inner Space with an odd look in her eyes, then spoke. -For a moment I thought thee had entered the Fairy Realm, and rushed hither — but it seems I was mistaken.
"The Fairy Realm? Is this place similar to it?"
-It pales beside the Fairy Realm in every way, yet the sacred and abundant energy suffusing the air here is much the same.
"......"
Her words set my thoughts churning. This was unmistakably the stronghold of the maneating tiger yokai that the Chang-gwi had been attached to. And yet the atmosphere here resembled the Fairy Realm. It didn't add up.
"Let's run a test before we look around properly."
I led Min-seo and Momo back out through Jungseungmun. Fortunately, we made it safely out of the Inner Space. And when we crossed the gate again, we were pulled back inside.
"So the entry condition is: someone with spiritual power crosses Jungseungmun?"
Pretty flimsy security for an Inner Space.
"Alright, let's go in."
"Yes."
"I-I'll take point!"
"I'll lead. Just follow me close — and in case anything happens, both of you summon your Shikigami and fairies now."
At that, Momo brought out her Inugami and Min-seo summoned Zephyros. With mobility secured, we were about to begin the search in earnest when—
Peek.
Far off in the distance, a child poked their face out from behind a large pine tree.
-Grrrrowl.
A child imitating the tiger's cry from the tip-off report.
"You...!"
The moment I spotted the kid, the little tiger jumped in fright and whirled around to flee in a heartbeat.
"Stop right there!"
Before I knew it, I was chasing after them. But this kid was impossibly fast!
Whoosh!
Learning the True Immortal Fire-Regulation Method had pushed my physical abilities up another level. At full power, I could now run 100 meters in three to four seconds. That was faster than a car on the highway. Granted, sprinting at that speed exhausted me quickly, but still — superhuman velocity.
And even at full power, I couldn't catch that brat.
Whoosh!
The little tiger ran less like a runner and more like someone riding the wind. Realizing brute speed was getting me nowhere, I issued orders to Min-seo and Momo. "Min-seo, Momo — I'll drive it toward you. Take the long way around and cut it off!"
"Yes!"
"Understood!"
Momo on her Inugami and Min-seo riding Zephyros's wind peeled off in a wide arc. In terms of sustained speed over distance, they were actually faster than me — quadrupedal gait or not.
I deliberately played tag with the little tiger, herding it so the two could cut it off. And just as planned, the moment they blocked its path—
"Grrrrrowl!"
Fwoom!
The little tiger, sneering at the two of them, leapt sky-high and sailed clean over their heads.
"What—!?"
"Holy crap!"
A leap of at least ten meters, easily. The kid drifted gracefully past Min-seo and Momo's gaping mouths and vanished.
"...Well, that's a headache."
I'd faced countless anomalies, but this was a first. Then again, it made sense — how many anomalies start by fleeing from humans?
"W-what do we do now?"
"It noticed our flanking maneuver, which means it's pretty sharp..."
"Well, man-eating beasts are usually the smart, cautious ones."
And the maneating tiger was famously clever even among them.
"Take Nepal, for example — there was a man-eating tiger that became infamous for devouring an absurd number of people. A beast called the Champawat."
The Champawat was a Bengal tiger, named for the Champawat region of Nepal where it mostly operated. It had devoured over four hundred people — and to this day it still holds the Guinness World Record as the deadliest animal to humans in history. And how cunning was this Champawat? It hunted exclusively women and children, and it avoided the smell of iron with supernatural caution.
"Whoa... how did anyone catch a beast like that, Teacher?"
"Once the damage got too severe, the government deployed the Nepalese army and Gurkha mercenaries."
"Well, if the army got involved, they must have caught it quickly, right?"
I shook my head at Momo's assumption. "No — the Champawat evaded even that and escaped safely across the border into the Kumaon region of India."
"N-no way..."
"You're telling me an entire nation's army was deployed and it still couldn't be caught?"
"That's how smart it was."
"Then even in the place it fled to..."
"Yep. It kept eating people."
The Champawat's massacre continued in India. India threw every method it had at capturing the beast, but the death toll kept climbing — all the way to 436.
"The fact that you say 'all the way to 436' means... someone finally hunted it down at that point?"
"Sharp guess. Nailed it."
I nodded at Momo's keen observation. The one who hunted down the Champawat — responsible for catastrophic loss of human life — was Jim Corbett, who would later be called the death-god of man-eating beasts. After several failed attempts, Corbett mobilized hundreds of local villagers for a beat, coated his own body in mud and animal dung to completely mask his scent, and meticulously calculated every escape route the Champawat might take before lying in ambush. That was how the hunt finally succeeded.
"Wow, this Jim Corbett guy was incredible..."
"He was. Most of the worst man-eating beasts on record died at this man's hands."
The problem was that the maneating tiger of Bukhansan I was about to hunt was an even greater monster than the Champawat. No — however you sliced it, the Champawat had ultimately been nothing more than a clever beast, while this thing was a yokai beyond beasthood. An anomaly. A supernatural man-eating tiger — the final boss of tiger calamities, through and through.
Blindly chasing it down wouldn't cut it. So what should I do?
"The classical way, obviously."
I pulled Post-it Talismans from my pocket. The only difference from usual was the sheer quantity — and the fact that every single one of them was the same type.
Samyeokgubu — the Three-Eyed Dog Talisman.
A talisman carrying the power of the three-eyed hound, believed to ward off tiger calamities.
"How many of those do you have?"
"Teacher, don't tell me...?"
Oh, I would.
Hey, you think you're faster than me? Oh yeah? Well, guess what — I'll just weave a net of talismans and turn those fancy legs of yours into decoration~
"When things get tricky, overwhelming them with numbers is the easiest answer."
This, right here, was the Kim Corbett-style hunting method.