Twenty-Four Poison Branches 6
“Are you all right, Hwa-eun?”
“It’s just a graze. Once the bleeding stops, I’ll put on some wound salve. Don’t worry, So-ryong.”
Hwa-eun, still clutching a cloth over the back of her hand, answered as if telling me there was nothing to fret about. Wondering whether she was only saying that so she wouldn’t worry me, I took her wrist to check the wound myself.
“Let me look for a moment.”
“So… So-ryong.”
Even though we had been sleeping side by side for days because of Sister Seol, Hwa-eun still seemed a little shy at having her wrist held. Carefully peeling back the cloth, I found exactly what she had described—a light graze across the back of her hand.
“Hmm. We’re lucky it’s only this.”
“I told you so…”
The bleeding had almost stopped, just as she said, so I gave her an awkward smile and then checked whether any of the others had been hurt.
“You lot okay? Any injuries?”
-Tseut!
-Gukku!
-Kishit!
They answered my question with vigorous energy. Among our little family only Hwa-eun had been hurt, yet there were quite a few other casualties, so off to the side Grandfather, the Myriad Poisons Divine Lord, was tending the wounded.
“Ghhhk…”
“The broken arm’s been set. We’ll brace it with wood.”
“Forgive me, Supreme Patriarch. I’ve shown you a wretched sight.”
“Forgive you for what? You didn’t fail to dodge an attack—who could have known the stones would fly like that? Just rest and recover.”
“Thank you.”
One of the Tang Clan warriors had taken a massive bouncing stone and broken his arm; a Beast Palace warrior had suffered a deep gash in the leg and was completely out of the fight. Turning toward Grandfather’s voice, I saw the wounded of every size and severity caring for one another’s injuries.
Sister Seol, having finished checking on the Beast Palace men, walked over to us with an expression of pure disbelief.
“I never imagined it would be that strong… The Tang Clan called it the head of the Twenty-Four Poison Branches, and now I see why. Ryong, is Hwa-eun all right?”
“Yes, Sister Seol. It’s only a graze.”
Our first attempt on the Flying Divine Snake had been timed for the moment it dove into the water after Hwa-ri. The gorge was long, yet only three places were deep enough for Hwa-ri to survive; we had staked out one of them and waited. The plan’s core was simple: stretch a net of jungle vines and Yo-hwa’s silk across the water so the creature could not surface, then wear it down until we could take it. We had expected the vines to tear—they were only meant to stop it for an instant—while the real trap was the silk net. What we never imagined was that the thing would simply fly skyward with the weighted net still draped over its body.
Most flying creatures cannot take off once tangled in a net, so we had assumed the same here. Its flight mechanism, however, felt utterly different—almost like a superpower.
“Damn it! It can still fly like that?!”
“It just took off with the net still on!”
For a moment we thought it was fleeing into the sky; instead it slammed straight back into the ground.
-Kwaang!
The massive body—well over six meters—crashed down, and stone shards sprayed in every direction. I could have dodged the creature’s charge itself, but the flying debris was another matter entirely. Even the Tang Clan warriors, long accustomed to swift hidden weapons, had never faced rock fragments that shattered and ricocheted at such speed. After the third impact Grandfather ordered the main force to pull back at once.
“Everyone, fall back!”
From the third crash onward the veterans managed to dodge beyond the flying stones, yet the first two collisions had already shattered our formation and produced too many wounded. Catching the creature in that state was clearly impossible. Killing it outright—or accepting a certain number of casualties—might still have been within Grandfather’s power. But suffering losses just to capture it would reverse every priority. Venomous creatures could help the Tang Clan, yet we could not lose precious Tang warriors for the sake of a hobby.
Once the wounded had been treated, Grandfather came over to us, his voice laced with self-reproach.
“After watching it for several days we grew careless and under-prepared. Looking back at the Azure-Spotted Centipede swarm, even the lesser ones were that strong—of course the peak of the superior rank demanded far more caution.”
My head nodded of its own accord. Seeing my agreement, he turned the question on me.
“So what now? So-ryong, do you have any good ideas?”
After the first failed attempt he clearly wanted the opinion of an expert. Yet what we needed right now was not the expert’s knowledge I already possessed. This creature was nothing like any living thing I had ever known; every scrap of specialized lore I carried was useless against it. A different approach was required.
“Give me a moment to think.”
I have to think beyond every bit of common sense I’ve ever held, don’t I? A creature that flew, that plunged like a missile, that sprayed shrapnel in every direction—none of the animals from my previous life could do any of that. Something new was needed.
“Hmm…”
While I sank into thought at Grandfather’s question, my mind snagged on a single idea.
We have to catch an unknown creature we’ve never even attempted before… The only pattern we’ve seen so far is rising into the air and then slamming down… Pattern? Wait. Thinking about it, this feels exactly like raiding a brand-new boss in a game.
The more I turned it over, the more it resembled a raid on a newly introduced boss. And if this was a boss raid, there was only one thing for us to do.
I pulled myself out of the thought and spoke to Grandfather.
“It seems we need to analyze the creature far more carefully.”
“Analyze? Divide and separate? What do you mean by that?”
The word was unfamiliar in this era; an explanation was required.
“We need to observe exactly how it behaves in a fight, how its attacks are structured—that sort of thing. Once we understand the principle and the way it moves, we can counter it.”
“Hmm. Know the enemy and know yourself, is that it?”
“That’s part of it, but for example—today it took off with the net still wrapped around its body, didn’t it?”
“It did.”
“We need to figure out how something like that is even possible. We also need to spot any habits it shows when it attacks, whether there’s a fixed sequence, how best to dodge… all of that.”
“It sounds much like the mindset one must hold in a life-or-death duel.”
“Yes. So first we learn everything we can about it—starting with how it flies.”
What we needed was pattern analysis. I had just proposed treating the Flying Divine Snake like a game boss and mapping its raid patterns when Grandfather spoke as though he already knew why it could fly.
“Ah, about that flying—there is something I suspect.”
“Suspect? What is it, Grandfather?”
Hwa-eun immediately pressed him. Grandfather answered with a doubtful look.
“I wonder if it might be Qi-Riding Ascent…”
“Qi-Riding Ascent?”
“Elder, do you mean Qi-Riding Ascent?!”
“Qi-Riding Ascent!”
“Qi-Riding Ascent?!”
The name that left Grandfather’s mouth made everyone start. He nodded and explained.
“When the creature rose, I clearly felt a flow of qi around it. And it lifted itself without any bodily motion at all. That is the only explanation. Nothing else can account for what we saw.”
I looked to Hwa-eun for an answer as to why everyone was so shocked. She nodded and explained for my sake.
“Qi-Riding Ascent is… well, one of the light-body arts, though I’m not even sure it should be called that. Ordinary light-body techniques send qi into the muscles and legs the instant the foot touches ground so you leap farther and higher, right?”
“That’s right.”
The light-body art I had learned was exactly like that—timing an inner-energy impact to a rhythm-game beat.
“But Qi-Riding Ascent is different. It uses the inner energy of the entire body to lift yourself with nothing but qi. The simplest way to put it is: you take hold of your own collar with your own inner energy and hoist yourself into the sky.”
“That’s absurd…”
“Which is why you cannot perform it without an absolutely enormous amount of inner energy.”
Her description was of standing perfectly still, materializing one’s inner energy, then grabbing one’s own scruff with that energy and rising. Even a martial-arts child like me could grasp how monstrous that was, so I asked in a startled voice.
“Then that thing possesses an enormous amount of inner energy?”
Grandfather, Sister Seol, and Hwa-eun all shook their heads and answered at once.
“No. Not inner energy—an inner elixir, So-ryong.”
“Not inner energy. An inner elixir.”
“It has an inner elixir, Ryong.”
“An inner elixir?”
An inner elixir—the same sort of qi-rich treasure that had been inside the mother Azure-Spotted Centipede and that Hwa-eun had swallowed, advancing her martial skill by leaps and bounds.
Hwa-eun leapt an entire realm after eating a lesser one. If we take the inner elixir of a superior creature like this…
At the mere words “inner elixir” every eye glittered toward the gorge we had just retreated from, and voices rose one after another.
“Heh… Looks like we have one more reason we absolutely must catch it.”
“So-ryong, we have to take that thing no matter what.”
I understood why the mention of an inner elixir excited them so much, yet inner energy was something one could accumulate with time. Why carve open the belly of such a rare creature?
No. That would be too wasteful.
Still, if I refused outright I would never persuade them. The atmosphere already felt ready to demand we kill it on the spot, so I spoke carefully.
“Even so, we must capture it alive.”
“Why, child?”
“Why, So-ryong?”
“We know almost nothing about spiritual beasts, do we? If we want to learn how it forms an inner elixir, we have to keep it alive. Who knows? There might be a way to extract the elixir without killing it—and perhaps it will grow another.”
I had just suggested it might be a goose that laid golden eggs. Grandfather nodded thoughtfully.
“Then, So-ryong, what do we do now?”
The talk of the inner elixir had sidetracked us, yet the task required for pattern analysis remained the same.
When you take on a new boss, the raid formula is always the same: smash your head against it until you learn.
“To confirm every habit and every attack it has, we simply keep attempting the capture over and over.”
There was nothing special about it. A brand-new boss always demanded head-banging until the patterns were mapped.
Our twenty-first attempt on the Flying Divine Snake.
Confirm the impact pattern.
“Get clear!”
-Shaaaaaa!
-Kwaang!
The creature loosed a warning cry and slammed into the rocky ground; gravel sprayed in every direction. Everyone had already put distance between themselves and the impact zone, so they easily avoided the flying stones. The creature shook its head and prepared to rise into the air again. We could not allow that, so I immediately shouted toward Commander Gu Pae.
“Commander Gu Pae!”
At my call from beneath the rock, Commander Gu Pae charged exactly as planned. The moment he entered its striking range the creature abandoned its ascent and launched its body like a spring.
-Chwaaak!
Its body shot forward and grazed past Commander Gu Pae by a hair’s breadth.
Next comes the constricting pattern, right?
“Get out of there!”
We had stopped it from rising once, but this was the critical moment. Fail to evade quickly and it would reverse its body and coil around the person it had just brushed past. Twenty previous attempts had taught us one vital fact: it was not a venomous viper but a constrictor. It killed by crushing with its coils rather than by biting. Therefore the instant it slid past someone was the most dangerous of all. The first time we failed to realize that, Commander Gu Pae had nearly been crushed to paste.
“Poison Blood Commander!”
“Yes!”
Commander Gu Pae flung himself clear; the man I had signaled was the Poison Blood Commander. While the creature’s head still tracked Gu Pae, the Poison Blood Commander closed from behind and drove a kick into its body.
-Peok!
-Shaaaaaa!
It reversed at once. Its gaze snapped from Gu Pae to the Poison Blood Commander. Next would come Grandfather, then Hwa-eun, then Sister Seol—aggro ping-pong in a fixed rotation. I stood atop a high rock as raid leader, coordinating the entire attempt. I might have looked like a shameless spectator, yet I had no choice. Our raid party contained not a single tank, not a single healer, not a single buffer or debuffer. Nothing but pure damage dealers.
Who the hell put this party together?
It was the sort of composition that made you want to curse the raid leader—except the raid leader was me, and the responsibility was mine.
Absolutely rotten party luck.
Grandfather the Myriad Poisons Divine Lord, Hwa-eun, Commander Gu Pae and the rest of the Poison Blood Squad were all poison-damage dealers of the thief archetype; Sister Seol and the two Beast Palace commanders were hunter-type dealers who fought alongside beasts. In short, a party composed solely of paper-thin thieves and melee hunters. An eight-man party forced into extreme aggro ping-pong among pure glass-cannon dealers—walking a razor’s edge of death. That was the Flying Divine Snake raid, and that was pattern analysis.