Chapter 33
Chapter 33
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 33
Chapter Title: Inheritance (3)
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Ring!
As soon as he heard the goblins' story, a familiar alert popped up.
⚙ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ⚙
[Derived Story, 'Inheritance' has been created.]
📜 Inheritance 📜
Category: Derived Story. You have come into contact with information about the item left behind by the Goblin King. If he was the king of all goblins, he should rightfully pass that club on to you, the greatest of them all. Claim it.
Sin Bihyeong briefly summed up the message.
'In a word, it's telling me to become a thief.'
Stealing the club left for Huin, all under the pretext of being the greatest goblin.
Now that I look at it, he suits being a bandit more than a goblin.
'But there's something that's been bugging me since earlier.'
Sin Bihyeong gazed at the three goblins whispering among themselves.
'Isn't the Goblin Club definitely a Bloodline Ability?'
No matter how he thought about it, it was a Bloodline Ability.
He had seen its name on the Bloodline selection screen before.
'But how do you leave it behind?'
What, did he extract his blood and crystallize it or something?
Sin Bihyeong tossed out that half-joking assumption, but
"Elder! We're begging you! The Bloodstone left by the previous Goblin King. Please draw out the Goblin Club slumbering within it!"
"Just and merciful Elder! Please save our boss!"
The goblins' words, as they bowed low, confirmed that Sin Bihyeong's guess had hit the mark.
No, why is this actually real?
"...Let me ask one thing first. Why is the Goblin King's Bloodstone in the academy?"
"We don't know that either! We just followed the scent trail, and it led us here!"
Damn.
I was wondering why the academy had something like that, but no useful info.
"...Sigh. Fine. Let's go."
Sin Bihyeong let out a deep sigh and followed after the goblins.
He had to make contact with the club left by the Goblin King anyway.
Might as well get an escort out of it and get a look at this boss's face.
Just then, the three goblins cupped their hands to their mouths like megaphones and shouted.
"Boss! We're coming in!"
"Don't get pissed later that you didn't hear 'cause you were groaning in pain! Listen up good now!"
Was that really calling for their boss, or just notifying a neighborhood buddy they were coming over to hang out?
It was ridiculous.
"Here, Elder. I'll open the door."
The goblin standing in the middle swung his club.
No tidy click sound effect.
Instead—
Whoosh!
A savage whoosh cut through the air as the club sliced the wind,
Boom!
The ground cracked open, sending stone shards flying everywhere.
Atop that, demonic energy rippled and coalesced into a door.
"Come on in, Elder."
The goblins personally grabbed the door and flung the entrance wide open!
A faint, brighter light glowed there, unlike the surrounding scenery.
Through the gaps in that light, he spotted someone leaning against the wall, panting weakly with a drained expression.
'That's... the Goblin Boss?'
On the surface, he just looked like a young kid.
Aside from the disheveled hair and eyes like pools of blood,
he was the spitting image of a child.
But the aura subtly leaking from him immediately erased that notion.
'Strong.'
That one's strong.
A crushing pressure wafted off him, instinctively rooting the thought in his mind.
Mina hadn't been a half-demon for long, so her sensitivity to demonic energy was still a bit off.
-How strong is he?
'Stronger than that ancestor of yours we fought not long ago.'
Of course, it didn't mean the Goblin Boss was a yokai stronger than a fox spirit.
The one they'd fought back then was ultimately just a remnant—a "scrap" of the fox spirit left behind in Mina's blood.
'Still, the Goblin Boss is definitely strong.'
Sin Bihyeong slowly released his own presence.
Rooooar—!!
Azure flames surged and coalesced into a cap, revealing his full form that he'd kept carefully hidden in the Spirit Realm.
Crunch...!
The Goblin Boss's presence pushed back against it, but it was swept away helplessly, like trying to hold back a massive wave crashing down.
Before long, the entire room brimmed solely with Sin Bihyeong's presence.
Stagger...
The Goblin Boss forced his body upright against the wall and glared with bulging eyes.
"Who... are you."
"Me? Half-demon."
"That's not what I... My subordinates outside... what happened to them."
Ho? Check this guy out?
'Worrying about his underlings first in a situation like this?'
Better character than expected—an unexpected punch.
'I figured the Goblin Boss was just some rampaging brute of a wicked demon, but it looks like that's not entirely the case.'
All tales of yokai were written purely from a "human" perspective.
Besides, everything Sin Bihyeong knew ended with the fiction from an Earth where yokai didn't exist.
Apparently, things were a little different from what he knew.
"Your underlings let me in. Said to grab the Goblin Club from that Bloodstone there and save you a bit."
"...They did?"
Only then did the Goblin Boss seem to piece together his opponent's identity.
"No way... How can a goblin have this level of presence?"
What season was this question from again?
Sigh.
"One, I'm not a pure goblin—I'm a half-demon. Two, don't assume all goblins are inherently inferior. Take you, for instance—you can't even handle the Goblin King's club and you're just groaning over there."
Sin Bihyeong's heavy-hitting facts left the Goblin Boss speechless.
"So, you gonna help or not."
"...What do you want."
"Huh?"
Sin Bihyeong tilted his head.
Come to think of it, he hadn't really decided on anything specific.
'I'd just been fixated on the club left by the Goblin King.'
There wouldn't be any ownership issues with that, but if he thought of this like a game,
he had the prior claim on rewards as the first party to enter this "dungeon" in the form of the Goblin Boss's crew.
He'd been content just taking over that claim.
'Am I too game-brained?'
Sin Bihyeong lightly shoved aside his old-school gamer and gentlemanly gamer self and approached the Goblin Boss.
"What can you do for me."
In response to Sin Bihyeong's question, the Goblin Boss simply stared at him with wide-open eyes.
At last, the Goblin Boss's mouth opened.
"One hundred."
"...Huh?"
What one hundred?
You gonna talk without a subject?
"The ones you want dead—a hundred of them—I'll kill them with these hands..."
Before he could even finish, Sin Bihyeong raised his hand and smacked the guy on the head.
Crack!
"Ow!"
As the Goblin Boss clutched his head from the sudden pain,
Sin Bihyeong spoke in utter disbelief.
"Unbelievable. What do you mean, one hundred? You rotten little punk. Didn't I just say I'm a half-demon?"
Common sense: if half is yokai, what's the other half?
"A plant?"
Obviously human.
What other race would pair up with yokai to have kids? The answer's obvious just thinking about it.
"And you're offering up a hundred human heads? Nah, you're no good."
No matter if they were people he himself wanted dead—the casual way he said it was the problem.
Sin Bihyeong rolled up his sleeves and declared.
"I was gonna just let it go, but you're joining my Night Parade of One Hundred Demons."
"...What?"
The Goblin Boss involuntarily snapped his head up at those words.
Shock filled his wide-staring eyes.
"...Join the Night Parade? What kind of nonsense is that."
"You look like the type to go cause trouble wherever you end up, so I'm keeping you by my side to watch you and straighten you out."
"That's nonsense..."
Smack!
Sin Bihyeong's fist came down again, striking the Goblin Boss square on the head.
"Ow!"
The Goblin Boss clutched his head once more and rolled across the floor.
'Wh-what!? I didn't even put that much power into it, and it wasn't even that fast, but...'
Why does it hurt so much, and why can't I dodge it?
As the Goblin Boss began to feel a creeping fear of Sin Bihyeong's fist,
Sin Bihyeong read his expression and gained some confidence.
"You punk. You punk."
Sin Bihyeong squatted down properly and flicked the guy's noggin, forcing the Goblin Boss to roll across the floor every time.
A guy who could only gasp and wheeze in pain wasn't dodging anything.
"Kwaaaah!"
The Goblin Boss couldn't make sense of the situation at all.
Clearly, his opponent was weaker than him.
The bizarrely overwhelming presence was fearsome, but aside from that, he held a slight edge in every way.
If not for the wound from that Japanese oni bastard Shuten Doji, it wouldn't even be slight—he could've crushed him outright.
So why was he, the strong one, rolling on the filthy floor?
"Ack!"
"Ugh...!"
"Bone! It hit bone...!"
As the Goblin Boss tumbled this way and that, practically mopping the floor, Sin Bihyeong impassively delivered another flick to the head.
"It's a skull, so of course it's bone. What, is your skull made of cartilage? Huh?"
That drawn-out, thirty-minute session of disciplinary whacks finally ended when the guy passed out.
"Well now? Pretending to faint just to avoid more hits?"
As Sin Bihyeong muttered that and cracked his knuckles,
Eoduk let out a sigh and intervened.
-...Elder. He really did faint.
'No way this Goblin Boss blacks out from something like that?'
-...To be honest, Elder, the yang energy packed into that last flick you landed? It was terrifying.
Only then did Sin Bihyeong become aware of the yang energy gathered in his fist.
'Hmm... Huh?'
Something felt off.
I didn't put in that much power, so why was there so much yang energy?
'...No, it's not that there's a ton of yang energy.'
It's just that the "power" radiating from the yang energy felt that intense.
'An effect of the Yin-Yang Divine Form?'
He could feel the yin and yang energies racing through his body.
They were nipping at each other's tails, frantically trying to pull ahead.
'Looks like it triggers even greater power in the process.'
To use an analogy, what should normally just carry the power of 100 units ends up squeezing out more,
because the yin and yang are busy checking each other.
'In terms of ratio, about 130 or so?'
Rough explanation for now— he'd look into the details later.
'For now.'
Time to deal with that.
The wall the Goblin Boss had been leaning against.
The red glow visible there.
The Bloodstone, according to the goblins.
Time to claim the club left behind by the previous Goblin King.
"Just gotta break it?"
With that thought, Sin Bihyeong extended roots into the ground to wrap around the Bloodstone.
[Hm. Finally here.]
The space where Sin Bihyeong stood had changed slightly.
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