Run. Right Now!
In the affairs of the world, there are times when something comes for you that simply cannot be avoided.
No matter how you twist and contort your whole body trying to slip away, some things cling like a yandere stalker. We have a name for those. We call it a grudge. The personal kind.
Yeah. The grudge was back.
"Why does this only ever happen to me!?"
Bihyung clutched his head.
No—he had cleared the anomaly, and the exit had been working perfectly, just like in the game. So it was supposed to let him out, wasn't it?
"What is it this time?"
This half-yokai constitution of his, alive and breathing like some butterfly effect, had gone and spawned yet another variable.
"Fine. Let's see your face."
Bihyung ground his teeth and glared around him, every line of him set on smashing whatever variable came and forcing his way out.
In that instant—
Shaaaa....
A sound like waves along a shore rose up, and smoke billowed around him, thick as sea fog.
This...
Bihyung had seen this scene before.
The yokai's nature.
The Death Line, the subway route with no final stop. The dream he had seen on the day he digested that thing. The sight was identical.
Hah. Figures.
He had more or less guessed. The thing that kept shattering his calculations and manufacturing variables had always been that root—the half-yokai itself. And back then, too, he had only seen it in a dream. What he stood in now was a world inside a book, swallowed down by an anomaly, but it was still a space that was not reality, the same as any dream.
So what is it this time.
He was just steadying himself when—
Thud—
Thud—
Thud!
From beyond the fog came the sound of enormous footsteps.
...What?
The ground rang from a mere footfall. As if some vast giant, without even meaning to, were shaking the axis of the earth, that enormity traveled up through the ground and into him.
This is on a completely different scale from the first time I saw it.
Then, when the thing's shadow fell across the fog, a darkness rose beyond the hazy gloom that seemed to touch the sky itself.
"......"
Bihyung lifted his head and looked up.
Shaaa.
There was a colossal dokkaebi, parting the mist as if it had wrapped the fog around itself for clothing.
"What is it this time."
But Bihyung's face, unlike before, held no fear. Perhaps because he had already looked upon a dragon as vast as a mountain range. His heart had sunk into a quiet calm.
"......"
The dokkaebi that emerged from the fog glanced at Bihyung for the briefest moment, then turned its head.
A world of white ground. A landscape the fog wrought of yokai power had failed to cover completely. It stared at that landscape for a while—
and seized it.
With a brutal hand, it tore the landscape away.
Riiip!
The white background came away in its grip and split, like flesh ripped by force from a living thing. The dokkaebi gazed blankly at the white fluid running like blood, grinned once, and put it in its mouth.
Gulp!
Displeasure rose across the thing's lips, as if whatever it had swallowed were somehow not enough.
Bihyung learned the cause from the system.
A chime rang.
A portion of the anomaly, Index of Forbidden Books, has been digested.
Not the whole of it. Only a portion. So that's why it isn't satisfied.
Converting into yokai power.
He could feel his yokai dantian swelling in real time. What had pooled like a shadow at the floor of his lower dantian now heaved like a black sea, dragging the anomaly—the Index of Forbidden Books—down into the depths.
Thump!
His heart beat. Blood that was half human, and half yokai. The larger the yokai dantian grew, the faster that heartbeat came, and the greater its echo—as if his very existence were a prison, too cramped to bear. The nature of the half-yokai was swelling its presence, demanding to be let out.
A hollow laugh tugged at Bihyung's mouth.
"Ha. Really. You're me too, aren't you?"
Strength gathered in the eyes fixed on the dokkaebi.
"You know my situation perfectly well. If anyone finds out I'm a half-yokai, I'm in danger."
"......"
"So why are you trying to get us killed on purpose? Hm?"
"......"
The dokkaebi, as if it knew nothing of any such circumstances, simply looked down at Bihyung in silence.
Bihyung let out a heavy sigh and scratched hard at the back of his head.
"Unbelievable. You don't understand a word. I might as well be reading scripture to a cow."
Tsk.
The moment he clicked his tongue—
Whoooosh—!
The colossal dokkaebi opened its mouth wide and hunched its body, as if to swallow him whole. It meant to seize control of his flesh by force.
Ha. Unbelievable.
The enormous mouth closed in by the second, like a massive black hole striding straight toward him. Even so, Bihyung did not give ground. On the contrary, he folded his arms and glared at the dokkaebi with open irritation.
"Do I still look like that same guy who was scared stiff of you back then?"
No.
He had changed.
"Colorless Painting."
The cultivation method engraved in his lower dantian. There, he paints.
I paint the image of demon-subdual.
How to paint it.
Convenient. It's right in front of me.
The dokkaebi looming in, vast beyond measure. To pin a thing like that, he needed something greater still.
And since I've already gained a bloodline that commands yang energy, why not put that to use too?
He set the sun into his mind's eye.
In the upper reach of the lower dantian, which until now had been nothing but void, a sphere took form—small, yet burning with a fierce light.
Fwoosh—!
Over the shadow pooled beneath the lower dantian, the heat of the sun gathered. Feeling it, Bihyung raised his hand.
And—
"Stop."
He drove it straight down.
KUUUNG!
With a tremendous boom, the mouth that had been about to swallow him slammed into the ground. With him mere inches away.
Looking at the thing that could not so much as twitch, Bihyung crouched and peered into its eyes.
"Whatever else is true, you are me, and I am you. Like it or not, we're fated to live together."
Light flared in Bihyung's eyes. Not the cold ghost-fire he had shown before as a half-yokai, but a blaze as fierce as the sun.
"So let's not fight if we can help it. Understood?"
Perhaps because, in sheer momentum, Bihyung no longer yielded an inch. The dokkaebi's form, vast enough to touch the sky, began to shrink. Like a great mountain, and then like a boulder, until at last it was roughly Bihyung's own size. Shrinking and shrinking again, the thing finally became dust and vanished.
And so Bihyung surpassed his limit once more.
Will it come?
The spectrum his Dokkaebi Bet carried as it expanded.
Limit.
Last time, simply glaring without giving ground had granted him a great boon—Not a Drop Spilled. This time he had gone beyond refusing to yield. He had driven the thing into the earth.
A chime rang.
"There!"
As expected, a system message rose before his eyes.
Confirmed: the strengthened nature of the yokai has been suppressed.
Acknowledged. You have surpassed your limit. You have won the Dokkaebi Bet against yourself!
Reward will be granted!
Bihyung found himself rather looking forward to whatever reward might arrive. But the message that actually rose before his eyes was this.
Confirmed: representative of the Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts.
Subordinates under your command: one.
The nature comes to rest upon the entity named Eodugi.
"Nature?"
Just as Bihyung voiced his confusion—
"Ah, my lord!"
Eodugi burst up through the shadow without warning.
Nothing about him looked different, though.
"I— I— I......"
"Hey. Calm down and talk. You're not even finishing a sentence."
Soothing Eodugi, who could barely contain his shock, Bihyung asked about the reward the little one must have received.
"What's this nature?"
"As for that... I don't know the fine details myself, but I've become able to use a strange ability, I have!"
"A strange ability?"
"Information just—wham!—slammed into my head, it did! They say if I'm regarded with awe, I get bigger, they do!"
...Wait.
Gets bigger if he receives awe? The wording's different, but that's exactly...
Eoduksini?
There was definitely a yokai like that, wasn't there? The one that grows if you fear it, and shrinks if you ignore it?
...This power didn't settle on him because of the name, did it?
When he had named Eodugi, he hadn't been thinking about Eoduksini or anything of the sort.
I only called him that because his fur was black.
If you set him beside a dog, he would have been Blackie and nothing more. Bihyung looked at Eodugi with an expression half troubled, half incredulous.
"Er... congratulations."
"Thank you, my lord!"
"So what exactly are you supposed to use that ability for?"
"Uh..."
"Uh?"
"Well... ehehe. Truth is, I don't really know, I don't!"
Eodugi tumbled over and over, the very picture of awkwardness.
Then why were you that happy?
"Well, obviously, my lord—if I get stronger, I thought I might be able to look after you even better, I did!"
The heart of it, at least, was admirable. Bihyung swallowed a sigh and was about to praise him when—
"Right. Thank y—"
A chime rang. The system alert sounded again.
Confirmed: a set measure of growth in a member of the Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts.
The ability of the unique story, Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts, opens.
What?
│ Boss
Bihyung immediately examined the entry called Boss in detail.
│ You are the master of a hundred ghosts, and the one who represents them.
│ You may drape the yokai under your command.
Drape? Eodugi?
Bihyung turned his head and looked down at him.
That tiny thing?
Eodugi, about the size of a cat, was so small he could barely loop around a neck.
Drape him? How? Am I supposed to grab him, stretch him out, and wear him?
He was turning the problem over when—
"Ooh! My lord! Something—something's happening, it is!"
And what, exactly, is something?
"Mind explaining it so I can actually understand?"
"I think there's more I can do now, my lord!"
Eodugi's sparkling eyes turned toward him.
"It may be presumptuous of me, but... may I combine with you, my lord?"
Combine.
From east to west, and across every age there has ever been, there is not a man alive who would fail to fall for that word.
"Do it. Right now."
The instant Bihyung's permission fell, Eodugi's body shot upward. It was not a simple leap. His body stretched long, like cheese pulled thin, then surged up and blanketed Bihyung entirely.
A dusky gloom. And yet, feeling that strangely warm darkness—
Step—
Bihyung walked out.
Flash!
And the figure that emerged was somewhat different from before.
"What is this?"
His overall appearance had not changed. But around him, a black shadow shimmered like heat haze. The change born of draping Eodugi.
...I can feel it. The power Eodugi holds.
A dokkaebi born from an old object. The essence of that power lay in making objects grow. And with the nature gained this time laid over it, the ability had advanced.
When he receives awe, the limit of the ability expands. So that's what growing meant?
As a test, Bihyung took up the demon blade he had planted in the ground.
Shring.
The well-honed edge cut the wind and scattered a dark crimson light through the empty air. But in a fleeting instant—
Vmmm—
Eodugi's ability climbed the demon blade and, true to his name, turned the steel pitch-black.
Bihyung realized the blade now carried a far stronger output than before.
...I don't even need to appraise it to know how much stronger it's gotten.
Because, riding Eodugi's ability, a whisper from the demon blade had reached him.
If it was a mid-tier weapon before, now it's about upper-mid-tier.
Tremendous power. And the true face of Eodugi's ability did not end there.
Its durability is repairing itself on its own.
The demon blade, which had been gnawing away at its own life, had its chipped edge restored, and the cracked places gleamed like new. Bihyung gripped it with a glad heart.
"This is incredible."
He hadn't expected much. And yet an ability like this had fallen into his hands. It was the same rush he had felt back in the orphanage days—on Christmas, when the director left a gift by the pillow of a boy who didn't even know what Santa was.
"I can't even feel your yokai power, Eodugi."
"Yessir! Right now it's the same as if I've stepped inside your yokai dantian, my lord. That special nature of yours seems to be taking effect, it does!"
"Good. I'm counting on you from here on out!"
"Only give the order, my lord!"
Bihyung broke into a wide grin and raised the demon blade overhead. It was about time to leave this space.
I know how to swing it.
Because the demon blade's whisper had reached him.
"You swing a sword like absolute shit. You're locking way too much strength into your shoulder."
He took the feedback and swung. For the arc of a beginner who had held a sword for only a few days, the flash that sheared the air was far too clean, and—
Slash!
The blade, dyed black, cut the void and little by little hid that sight away. A way out of the anomaly's domain had opened.
"Let's go."
He drew the draped Eodugi back into himself and threw his body into the split.
In a single instant, the view changed. The landscape of white ground erased itself, giving way, little by little, to a library sunk in silence.
"Mmph! Mmph!"
In silence.
"Mmmph!"
Why wasn't it silent?
The question still in him, Bihyung turned his head toward the sound.
Mina was bound in something like rope, glaring his way with her eyes blown wide. A moment later she chewed the rope clenched in her mouth down to shreds and forced it apart.
"Ptah! Bihyung!"
Her shout hauled his mind back to the present.
"Run! Right now!"
It seemed that, in the brief while he had been in there, something had happened.