Flame
The envoy of the Heavenly Emperor arrived two months after Gu Sam's death, in the spring, just as the seasons began to turn.
A rare sight unfolded at Pamagok. Crowds gathering was nothing new — it happened every time a wagon convoy hauling fresh criminals reached the station. But never once in the pass's history had the people been decked out in splendid finery rather than ragged, vermin-ridden patches.
Exotic delicacies, raucous music, and a train of tribute goods came along with them.
And above all, the truly important thing was a single letter bearing the imperial seal — an edict bestowed upon me directly by the Heavenly Emperor.
"To Yuhyeon, Border Guard Commander of Pamagok, Third Pass of the Tianyu Empire's frontier, and sole younger brother of the late Border Guard Commander Jang Mu, who fell in glorious battle against the Yashin."
"Upon barren soil you preserved your army, honing your soldiers without harm to the people, and at the last struck off with your own hand the head of Kuchar, Grand Chieftain of the Siseom tribe, presenting it in tribute to the Heavenly Emperor."
"While the court still debated the expedition, you had already brought it to its end. This is no merit of a single pass, but a merit of the nation entire."
"Therefore Yuhyeon is named Grand Marshal of Military Affairs, charged with the command of the Thirteen Passes."
"In all dealings with the barbarians beyond the Central Plains, may you continue to decide with righteousness, as you have until this day."
And so I, who had once gripped a spear beneath the pass as a nameless penal conscript, now found myself appointed a Great General of the Tianyu Empire.
It was my fifteenth year in this world.
Honestly? I didn't think I'd done anything all that remarkable. At most, ten percent belonged to my subordinates' efforts. A good eighty percent was purely my own craft.
I decided to hand the remaining ten percent to Jang Mu, the great man who had set this whole story in motion. Without his sacrifice, the me standing here today wouldn't exist. Probably.
"Your servant Yuhyeon humbly accepts the command."
"Ooooh...!"
Refusing would have made me a lunatic, so I accepted on the spot. Thunderous applause rang in my ears. Even as I waved to the crowd during the modest procession that followed the ceremony, however, an entirely different thought was drifting through my head.
I half expected a status window to pop up telling me I'd reached an ending.
Well, of course it wouldn't. I had seen, with my own two eyes, proof that other dimensions actually existed.
Monsters bursting out of empty air hadn't exactly come as a shock — what I hadn't known was that this place was connected directly to Earth.
For one thing, it wasn't the homeland I remembered. Orcs, goblins, basilisks — those were things I'd only ever encountered in fiction. They had never existed in reality.
Still, what mattered was the possibility. Or to put it another way — hope. If things could cross over from there to here, then couldn't the reverse be done as well?
Even if it was a different world, one without family or friends — if I, a modern man, could make it back to the modern world, I'd be happier than I could ever have been accepting a Great General's seat I never even wanted.
There was just one problem.
If I go back... what happens to this place?
For a long, long time, Pamagok had been a land steeped in despair. Between sheer, knife-cut cliffs swarmed monsters beyond all measure, and the barbarians would saunter over whenever boredom struck, dragging the people off into slavery.
Nearly every resident had been forcibly relocated there as a convicted criminal, and even the soldiers — the ones with the strength left to swing a spear — died off by the day. Among all the great walls stretching along the vast frontier, this was the place everyone dreaded most.
I changed that. I taught the art of the spear to prisoners who had been treated as little more than arrow fodder, and by the day of the enthronement, they could stand proud and be called a true army of the Empire.
Threats still lurked on every side, granted — but for the first time, hope was beginning to take root here and there. And if I, the one at the center of it all, vanished, these people would simply slide back into their old lives, worse off than slaves.
"Enough. No gulping down the kimchi soup before it's even served."
I decided to think positively. All I'd glimpsed was a possibility; I didn't know the first thing about any actual method.
Was this too an effect of Adaptation? Even worries dark enough to bury me alive — my Battle Qi apparently judged them a threat, because the moment they crossed some threshold, they'd calm in an instant.
For now, my duty as Great General came first. Shaking off the turmoil, I set out on my usual patrol — and that was when my newest responsibility came trotting up to me.
"Aaaah! Lord Great General!!"
It was Bunhee, Border Guard Commander of the 11th Pass.
Now that I was a Great General, managing the pass commanders beneath me was a vital part of the job. Which meant that after Gu Sam's death, I had hardly left the cronies who'd run with him to their own devices.
Leaving five — five! — commander posts empty at once would have torn a gaping hole in security, so I'd culled roughly half of them, sorting through the crimes each had committed in their own jurisdiction and dismissing the worst offenders to comfortable sinecures far away.
Of those who remained, I'd roughed up two under the pretext of teaching them Battle Qi and kept Yeonri's crows watching them around the clock. The last one, though — her, I hadn't punished at all.
The reason was simple: unlike the rest of Gu Sam's crowd, Bunhee had given us fair warning before coming, and she hadn't come to trample our farmland. Her purpose in visiting Pamagok was...
"The fields have grown so weedy already, haven't they?"
"They have."
"I want to burn them all, hihi."
When it came to running its penal units, the Imperial Border Guard never distinguished between crimes. Murderer or thief, they threw you into the same formation and made you fight monsters and barbarians all the same.
There was exactly one category that got special treatment, however: arsonists. Murder and theft broke out within the ranks a dozen times a day and barely mattered even if they relapsed — but fire was a grave incident. The moment anything caught flame — equipment, provisions, mountains and rivers and greenery alike — the damage spread like madness.
That was why the 11th Pass was a special posting, reserved for those convicted of arson — deliberate or accidental. The surrounding land was a bleak desert where nothing but stinging sandstorms assaulted the eyes, and both the wall and the barracks were built entirely of stone and packed earth. Every measure had been taken to strangle the risk of fire at the source.
"When I came by last harvest, it was only a small field, but it was so pretty. Every single stalk had ripe little ears of grain swelling at the tip..."
"Did you want to set it on fire?"
"Mmm, yes! Gu Sam and his friends stopped me, though — said the whole lot of us would be in danger if the wind turned..."
As befitted the leader of the Empire's arsonists, Bunhee was thoroughly, hopelessly mad about fire. Anyone who could stand before me and complain, chest puffed out in perfect earnestness, about how sad she was not to be allowed to torch our farmland, made that much plain enough.
Gu Sam had lost his head; No Chil, by report, spent his days shivering in his command tent. Yet for a woman pulling very much the same kind of stunts, I had imposed no restrictions whatsoever and even let her come play at Pamagok freely. Not because an arsonist happened to be strikingly beautiful — I needed a pass commander who looked on me with favor.
Great General or not, I still needed the support of my subordinates. I had seated Park Gyu at the 4th Pass only as a stopgap, and the majority of the commanders could hardly be said to back me yet. I needed allies.
Back then and now, Bunhee hadn't once visited Pamagok in order to ruin me. She'd just come ambling over because there looked to be more things to burn here than at home.
And one last thing mattered above all: she knew how to use Battle Qi.
"The field hands ought to be the ones working the land... so I'll give you this instead."
"Oh my — flowers?"
"Some from the enthronement ceremony were still sitting in my office. A bit wilted by now, but do as you like."
"Kyaa! Thank you! You're the best, Lord Great General!"
Hwaruk! Flame bloomed from her fingertips. The fire devoured the petals, swelled, and in moments had grown into a towering blaze bright enough to light up everything around it.
The volume of Battle Qi she unleashed in response to pure emotion was considerable. I had never taught her a thing. It was a power that had simply flowered on its own while she went about her work as a commander. With nothing else to burn, I suppose she'd been longing to set the very sand alight.
A fine asset — if only she could learn some control.
Teaching her wasn't difficult. No, the problem was that it was too easy.
Whether she was pure-hearted or simply a few candles short of a full set, she had no malice in her — and so she trusted strangers far, far too readily.
"Commander Bunhee, as it happens I was just looking for you. An oil pouch in a merchant's pack burst open, and now there's ruined cotton cloth lying about."
"There is!? Really!?"
"I'll give you a full bolt of it. In exchange, might you grant me one small favor?"
"Of course! Anything at all!"
"Then come this way for just a moment—"
"Gah! Y-Yuhyeon, sir!"
"What's this favor? Out with it — I'll grant it personally."
"N-nothing at all! My apologies!"
A peddler who'd come hawking his wares had been sweet-talking Bunhee, and the instant his eyes met mine, he bolted like a startled rabbit. I had warned the troops, thoroughly and repeatedly, never to demand anything from her in exchange — but policing outsiders was beyond me.
In truth, I would have loved to hand her management over to Yeonri, who was surgical in her dealings with men.
"If you command it, I will comply. But I am not inclined to. I dislike her."
"Dislike her? Why? Be specific."
"Her smile is too freely given. Her expression is sly. She shrieks like a little girl. She dresses without decorum. Her movements are frivolous. Her person is excessive in several places. She stands too near to others. In conclusion, she parades her charms before men without the least awareness of it — and I dislike her."
...
She checked every single box on Yeonri's list of grievances. If I'd forced the duty on her, she'd likely have died of a rage-induced illness.
"If you wish to become the only one capable of controlling Commander Bunhee, it would be correct for you to instruct her in conduct yourself."
And so the responsibility landed squarely on me.
I resolved to think of it as raising a retriever. She was high-spirited, and she'd hurl herself into a pit of fire where another dog might've dove into a pond — but at least she was obedient, and that much was the same.
I steered Bunhee along, tugging her away from every temptation that kept snagging her attention. On paper, she was at Pamagok on official business — which meant that as long as she was with me, she wasn't free of duty either.
"We're heading out on patrol, so keep your eyes on me and don't wander, Bunhee."
"Where are we going?"
"You know the Petrified Serpent that went on a rampage at the 4th Pass a while back?"
"Yes! I heard you stopped it from burning the reed fields! Are we going there?"
"No."
I'd already beaten down the lingering pull of home. But that was that, and this was this.
"We're going to where that thing was first found."
Might as well start the investigation.