The Library (3)
He barely managed to get through the mouth of the cave.
"...Bihyung. Put me down. I'll fight with you."
Mina had felt them coming too, and her hand clenched tight around the Divine Beast Fan. Bihyung did not set her down.
"No. If we meet them head-on right now, we don't stand a chance."
"...Huh? Then what are you planning to do?"
Her confusion was fair. Standing still like this was no different from waiting to die. Bihyung, though, had already foreseen even this.
Since I came to this world, has a single thing ever gone the way I expected?
Every kind of unfair nerf, the outbreak of butterfly effects, the singularity of being half-yokai — all of it had beaten a thoroughness to the bone into him.
"You saw me pull only about ten books earlier, right?"
"Yeah. But why?"
He had definitely said he was taking the forbidden books to create a cultivation method. So why bring that up now? In that instant, Mina caught the smile on Bihyung's face.
"Truth is, eight volumes are more than enough to obtain the cultivation method."
Tales of immortal cultivation, Daoist scriptures, and books that had anything to do with pictures — that was all it took. Even so, Bihyung had deliberately slipped other books in among them, and added their contents to this world.
"The Encyclopedia of Anomalies is there to grant them the attribute of anomaly."
If the opponent was an anomaly, an exorcist could exorcise it. That was the common sense of this world.
"In other words, even against cultivators, our arts will land."
"Then all the more we should—"
"But the gap in raw specs is far too wide."
They wielded power on par with the Middle Ranks — far too much for a 2nd Rank like him and a 1st Rank like Mina. So he would wait, and buy time.
The protagonist doesn't hide his power. Until that part of the story takes hold.
Bihyung hauled Mina onto his back and ran for the end of the cave. The only path twisted like a serpent's burrow, and it climbed so high he had to throw his head all the way back before the top came into view. He ran the length of it, and at last the cavern at the cave's end opened before them.
"Here. We buy time."
He set Mina down and clenched his fist.
"Mina. Give me a buff."
"...Okay. Got it!"
The Divine Beast Fan swept the air, and a current of Fire-attribute energy rode the wind in and coiled around Bihyung's body. He felt it move, took it in place of yokai power, and made it his Roots.
A fierce stomp slammed down. Rotation wound through his hardened body, and his clenched fist tore along the arc of Spectral War Qi. Boom — crack! One strike. A single swing shattered the cavern wall and brought the entrance crashing down.
"...Haah."
This would hold them for a little while.
They're cultivators, but they won't be able to do a thing about the energy steeped into this cavern.
This was the place a dragon had ascended. Of course its energy remained.
When those cultivators attacked, they were mice set before a cat.
And yet Bihyung had been able to break the cavern wall because of the Encyclopedia of Anomalies. By defining the space itself as an anomaly, he had made both arts and his own physical force, as an exorcist, valid inside it.
Good thing I tested this method in the game beforehand.
In truth, he had taken a strategy written by a veteran and refined it himself. So long as the eight foundational books were present, he could obtain the cultivation method no matter what else he added — and depending on which books he added, killing the cultivators yielded gains beyond the method alone.
The moment will come. Just hold until then.
Bihyung turned his head. Mina seemed to have spent everything on the Divine Beast Fan; she sat there gasping.
No wonder.
Twice when they entered the library, and once just now. She had already called on the fan three times. An endgame-grade weapon spent a great deal of energy buffing someone else, and only her remarkable control had kept that cost to a minimum.
Even so, this is the limit.
She couldn't operate the Divine Beast Fan any further. Force her primal qi now, and she might even brush her Innate True Qi and come away with a permanent injury.
When are they coming?
Thud. Thud. THOOM!
A violent impact shuddered through the entrance he had sealed. Stone steeped in a dragon's energy was holding the cultivators' attacks at bay, but not for long. Impatience crawled up his spine.
Hurry up and get here already!
Had that frustrated, simmering anger of his somehow carried? The change began behind him.
"...Huh?"
Mina's startled voice struck the cavern wall and echoed. Bihyung paid it no mind. All of his focus went to the energy changing inside her.
It's here!
Mina's eyes flew wide.
"This... w-why all of a sudden..."
"It's the effect of the second forbidden book I put in."
A smile touched his mouth.
"A classic of the munchkin stories."
But even an ordinary munchkin novel was still a forbidden book. By nature, such a volume showed its reader a dream of ideal strength, then drank their life until they withered away, drunk on it. Having seen that, Bihyung had fixed on something slightly different.
If I use this while obtaining the cultivation method, couldn't I go around crushing cultivators — and whatever else gets in the way?
Namely, the setting of the genre called munchkin.
Add this forbidden book, and in this world I can wield the power of a High Rank exorcist.
That was why he had been able to bring Mina, and why he had been watching for the moment to strike back at the cultivators.
"Good."
Energy welled up inside his own body as well, full to bursting. In the lower dantian, power vast as a sea began to settle.
...Huh? My yokai power is rising with it?
That was news. Well, it didn't matter.
So long as I don't use it, Mina won't notice.
And even if she did, he could brazen it out as the forbidden book's effect. Bihyung put yokai power out of his mind and clenched both fists.
KRAAANG!
He slammed them together, and a roar like thunder rolled through the cavern. From that simple act alone, the rubble sealing the entrance burst into powder and scattered.
Yes. This is it!
"...Bihyung."
He could feel her trembling. She rose slowly, steadying her breath, the Divine Beast Fan gripped tight.
"Those things — they're all anomalies, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then... there's nothing to hold back for, is there?"
"Obviously not."
At his grin the trembling finally stopped, and Mina let out a long, heavy breath. Resolve hardened in her wide eyes as she spread the fan.
"Right now... even a basic art should hit with incredible force."
"You caught that exactly."
He was right. Power on par with the High Ranks was not merely the energy that had entered the body. It lifted the very potential of the techniques one had learned to a High Rank level — just like his own Path of the Apex.
Nothing but a dream that vanishes the moment we step outside. Even so, proficiency can be raised past the brim. That was the extra gain.
Only the proficiency of basic arts, sure... but maxing the basic art of every single attribute? That chains straight into a hidden piece.
"Want to go first?"
He yielded her the opening, and she nodded.
"Thanks."
"There are plenty of anomalies."
Every cultivator in this world was an anomaly. He didn't feel particularly stingy about it.
"Okay."
Mina nodded and swung the Divine Beast Fan. A fan simply cutting empty air — and yet the wind born at its tip had already taken on an Earth art, and flew as if a massive boulder had been hurled.
Crunch!
In a single instant, the heads of the three cultivators who had chased them were crushed flat. Even so, close to twenty remained.
"Next — this."
She folded the fan and pointed at the ground. Even as it fell, tracing a graceful straight line, there was wind. Then countless plants burst from the cave floor and became a prison around the cultivators. Enormous vines bound them and stole their freedom, and thorns that surged up without warning tore into their hides. Each time they did, the creatures' forms began to empty out — no longer human, but anomaly.
"Demons... you bastards..."
Their voices frayed and broke, until nothing remained but a crackle, like a ruined speaker.
Crunch!
Mina spread the fan again, and the vines drew together as one, crushing every anomaly to death.
"Whoa."
Bihyung clapped.
What ridiculous talent. All that changed was that her energy grew, and the ceiling on her arts rose.
And yet she handled those arts as if they had always been her own. It struck him again. If he himself had never been a variable, the greatest talent in the academy would have been Mina.
That was the principle of mutual overcoming just now, wasn't it? I never taught her that. I never even showed her.
Mutual overcoming was the opposite of mutual generation. When one unleashed arts of opposing nature, the secret was to pour still more energy into one side and devour the art that had come before.
Do that, and the art manifests while keeping the traits of whatever it swallowed.
The vines she had just shown were exactly that. At its root it was a Wood art, whose whole meaning was growth. And yet the force that crushed the anomalies was, no matter how he looked at it, the solidity of Earth.
Put it simply: feed Wood energy into a Fire art, and you can make a flame that will not go out.
Until the firewood burned away — or until one spent still more energy to shake it off — that blaze would never die.
Usually overcoming is easier than generation, but...
That was true of seasoned exorcists. For a mere first-year at the academy, it was a genuinely difficult technique.
She really is incredible.
Mina stock. All-time high — broken.
"Haah. This isn't easy."
Mina slowly steadied the breath rushing in on her and looked at him.
"Bihyung! How was I just now?"
She came running over, feet pattering.
Ding!
A notification chimed. Not Bihyung's system.
"Huh?"
Mina drew her phone from her pocket and checked it. A moment later, shock spread across her face.
"B-Bihyung. It says I've almost reached 2nd Rank!?"
"Really?"
Astonishing. Regular classes hadn't even started, and she was already closing in on 2nd Rank.
Among the ones who enroll at Yeongwol, the relatively less talented take about a year.
Those with talent, by contrast, usually rose in roughly three months.
That's pure talent. She took a sudden flood of energy and bent it to her will, and put a crack in the wall called 2nd Rank.
He had meant to help her grow. This blew straight past anything he had expected.
So what? It's a good thing!
Bihyung broke into a wide grin. His future party member was getting stronger — how was he supposed to not smile?
"Congratulations!"
"Mmm... but I haven't actually gone up yet. Ehehe!"
She said it while scratching her head, and still a smile she couldn't hide played at her lips.
...With this, I've taken one more step closer to Bihyung's side, haven't I?
Until now it had felt as if he had simply leapt far off down a distant road. Standing before the wall of 2nd Rank, she could finally feel how far ahead of her he had been walking.
The moment we get out, I break through!
Mina burned that resolve bright from deep inside.
Then maybe it's time I checked my own techniques.
The sight of her had stirred him, and he wanted to properly handle Roots and Spectral War Qi right this moment.
The Path of the Apex. Thanks to that derivative story, Spectral War Qi's limit rose by one Rank as well.
Until now he hadn't been able to draw all of that power out. The yokai power he possessed had been a mere speck, nowhere near enough to bear it. Not anymore.
He would draw out every last bit of energy and confirm the limit. Perhaps he might even see the wall beyond it. Burning with that resolve, Bihyung started to rise—
—Crack.
He had been about to stand. And yet, though he couldn't tell why, a strange sound seemed to have come out of empty air.
"What?"
Frozen in an awkward half-rise, he looked up into the void. The ceiling was high, and there wasn't a single fissure anywhere around it. Then what on earth had that sound been?
He was staring into the empty air in puzzlement when it came.
Crrrack—!
Suddenly it was not the ceiling but the void itself that began to split, and then space shattered and fell like broken glass. A massive fissure. Its interior was black as the cosmos. And yet the wider that broken space grew, the more he understood how wrong that judgment had been.
...A pupil.
What he had taken for blackness was simply the pupil of a living thing. By the time the fissure had widened across a space the size of a baseball stadium, the creature's head was barely visible.
It was a dragon.
It felt as if a voice were laid straight into his mind, the way a system would. The thing never once opened its mouth. It only watched him in silence — and this went past goosebumps. It felt as if his very soul were creaking.
That thing...
The instinct of a half-yokai screamed it.
That's no anomaly made here.
What stood before his eyes was a true yokai.