Succession (2)

To ordinary ears, it was nothing but an eerie sound. To Bihyung, it came through clear as voices, every word distinct.

A Gamtu? Close to mine, but it feels like something else.

Small wonder. The dokkaebi were chattering away while wearing their Gamtu, and voices like that never touched the material world. All they left behind was a residue of energy, and that residue was what soured the air.

Dokkaebi.

Bihyung looked up at the ones jabbering in empty air.

The sight of them shimmying their hips was frankly hard to look at. Even so, in outward shape alone they were closer to dokkaebi than Eodugi had ever been.

Ragged clothes that barely covered them, and a single horn on the brow.

Blue spiritual flame clung to the air around their bodies besides. Roll head over heels while looking at them, and you'd still come up with dokkaebi.

In that instant, the one standing in the middle of the three cocked his head.

At the question, Eodugi flared.

"Why, those worthless scraps...! They fail to recognize our lord, and they dare act above themselves!"

It's fine. I was the one keeping my presence hidden.

Bihyung had the Gamtu on, and with it he was concealing that he was half-yokai. To their eyes, he would be nothing but a young human.

"Feel like showing yourselves sometime soon?"

His gaze caught them exactly, and his voice had addressed them outright. The dokkaebi could hide no longer.

Smoke burst in the empty air as if fireworks had gone off, and the dokkaebi came down through it to plant their feet on the ground. Big ones. Each of them had to be pushing seven feet.

"Little one. How did you know us?"

"Yeah. We'd gone invisible with our Gamtu, see."

"A strange one, this. Among exorcists you sometimes get those who carry odd blood. Is this one of them?"

From their words, Bihyung understood one thing.

Not every Gamtu is the same, then.

Well. His was EX-rank. If just anyone could step into the spirit realm with one, that would have been a scam in its own right. Curiosity settled, he decided to answer theirs as well.

Blue flame roared up across his brow and forged itself into a horn. Presence poured from it. No—caliber.

"......!"

"......!!!"

The moment they felt him, the dokkaebi dropped to their knees and flattened themselves against the ground before they knew what they were doing.

"W-we greet you, Lord..."

"G-greetings...!"

Only after they were already flat did they understand that they were offering a full prostration. It had not been their heads that ordered it. Their bodies had answered from the realm of instinct.

Bihyung looked down at them in silence, then eased his caliber down, little by little.

"Rise."

"Y-yes, sir!"

At his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠command the three dokkaebi shot to their feet as one. The fiendish, murderous looks from a moment ago were gone.

Faces still as wide and mean as a washbasin, though.

They loosened their expressions and forced smiles meant to look as harmless as they could manage.

No. Still vicious, thanks.

"Calm down. I didn't come here to harm you."

"Sit easy."

Only after he said it, and dropped onto the dirt himself, did the three dokkaebi read the room and ease gingerly down onto their knees.

"Um... might we ask your honored name?"

"Bihyung. Shin Bihyung."

"Ah! Lord Bihyung. Forgive us for failing to recognize you."

Failing to recognize me? What's there to recognize? I've never made a name for myself as a yokai.

Their social play is lethal, I'll give them that.

Quick on the uptake, these ones. Maybe it was because the only dokkaebi he had known was Eodugi—loyal, and not much like a yokai at all. Their reaction was strange, and funny.

Should I needle them a little more?

The thought occurred, but he was short on time, so he meant to stick to the point.

"You ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠three. Want to join my Baekgwi Yahaeng?"

He looked them over. Unlike Eodugi when they had first met, these three had form. That meant their caliber was at least around Eodugi's level.

"My lord! My caliber is a little higher than theirs, I'll have you know!"

Eodugi flared and stamped his feet inside the shadow.

Yeah, yeah. You've gotten a lot stronger too, I'll admit.

Eodugi, whose caliber had once felt like less than dust, had taken a name from him, had his nature filled in, and somewhere along the way become a proper yokai in his own right.

If this job ends well, I could put them under Eodugi and it'd be fine.

While Bihyung was thinking it, the three dokkaebi glanced at one another for a bare instant, then flung themselves flat.

"W-we're sorry, Lord."

"We cannot enter your Baekgwi."

"...What?"

And what was that supposed to mean? He asked why, and what came out of their mouths was a shock all on its own.

"We already serve a Boss of our own."

Boss.

The word rang in him, and not lightly.

Don't tell me these guys...

They already belong to a Baekgwi Yahaeng?

Which would mean the one they call Boss is here too?

He put the question to them at once.

"Yes. Our Boss is Lord Dueogsi."

A yokai's name he knew very well.

Dueogsi?

The yokai that had come to mind when Bihyung first chose dokkaebi for his half-yokai nature. Not a dokkaebi himself, but a being who ruled them. Even among Korean yokai, he was one of the named.

Classified as a plague-ghost, that one.

A cruel existence that killed by crushing human heads. If a dokkaebi was the sort of being who played alongside people and now and then cast down a calamity, then with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Dueogsi the genre changed to cosmic horror. A presence you could not dare oppose. Something from beyond cognition itself. That was what they said Dueogsi was.

Folding them into the parade is a clean forfeit. I'll drop it.

In some far future, maybe. He could not swear that he was stronger than Dueogsi as he stood now, and he had no wish to pick a fight for nothing.

Still, maybe they can help me get something out of the vault.

They were the same sort who had given the chairman a technique manual as a reward, after all. He asked, and the dokkaebi brightened and nodded.

"Yes! Of course it's possible!"

"We will attend you most devotedly!"

And so the dokkaebis' escort began.

They walked a road that was bleak, and hideous. All that showed around them were branches and leaves hanging limp, and the dokkaebi flames, the only light in the dark. The deeper they pressed into the vault, the thicker the fog grew on top of it. Good grief. Even at a glance, it was the sort of air that would send ghosts into a frenzy.

Bihyung felt about ready to lose his mind for an entirely different reason.

The deeper I go, the harder the boundary to the dead starts to shake.

It meant the Academy's treasure vault was packed with yokai power.

This... isn't going to cause problems, is it?

It was a restricted zone, so perhaps not. The Academy had sealed the sector off completely; he couldn't imagine anyone else sensing it. Then again, you never knew.

If it thickens enough that whoever manages this place can feel the yokai power...

Wouldn't the Academy notice something was wrong then? And if they opened a full investigation, his own position would get rather inconvenient.

"Why does the vault look like this?"

The question slipped out of him, and the dokkaebi escorting him answered at once.

"The landscape became like this after our Boss settled here."

"Those ruin-like buildings were always that way, but at least the sun came in, and there was none of this fog."

"Oh? Then why did he settle here?"

The dokkaebi gave an awkward, sheepish laugh.

"Our Boss was wounded long ago. He came here to treat that wound."

A wound...

Something wounded Dueogsi? Who?

Dueogsi. Little about the being had been settled, but there was one thing scholars said with a single voice.

A high-grade evil spirit.

The classical form of the name meant Head-Suppressing God.

Theories run wild. That he was a god once, and fell into being a yokai. That sort of thing.

The talk came from the word sini itself, which had originally been the folk way of naming a god's station. Of course, not everything with sini in the name was high in caliber. Dueogsi, at least, had struck fear into people and left a long trail of oral tales behind him. He could not be set beside beings like a gumiho or a dragon, but no one could deny that Dueogsi, too, was a yokai of tremendous strength.

And something wounded a being like that. Who?

An exorcist, maybe? The thought occurred, but the dokkaebi shook their heads.

"Not that. He was done in by that oni over among the Japanese raiders."

"To treat the wound he took then, our Boss came to lay hands on the thing that's said to be here."

The thing?

"What, did he walk in hoping to grab some spirit pills or the like?"

The vault held all sorts of spirit pills, and they did not work on exorcists alone.

Didn't Japan's shikigami grow when they ate spirit pills and the like?

Shikigami were the signature art of the Japanese onmyoji.

As I remember it, shikigami came from beasts tainted by the anomalous.

You subjugated them, and ruled them. Shikigami like that ate spirit pills, grew, and at a certain point they evolved. Thinking of that, Dueogsi settling here made a certain amount of sense.

But contrary to Bihyung's guess, what the dokkaebi meant by the thing was something else entirely.

"Spirit pills? No. Our Boss's wound cannot be treated by the likes of spirit pills."

"Then what?"

"This."

The dokkaebi said it with a flick of his hand. Smoke poured out, and a club filled his grip.

"My lord! A Dokkaebi Bat!"

As Eodugi said, what they had summoned was the dokkaebi's own treasure from the old tales.

"A Dokkaebi Bat? Isn't that the one? You say 'Gold, come forth!' and gold pops right out. That sort of magic club."

Bihyung was about to nod. Honestly, that was as far as he knew, too. But Eodugi shook his head and denied it.

"I have heard a Dokkaebi Bat is not such a thing."

Then what is it?

"That is... I do not know the details myself, but I do remember that it stores objects!"

Only then did Bihyung understand what Dueogsi was planning.

He means to store the curse soaked into his body, using the Dokkaebi Bat.

But was that even possible?

A curse is matter you can't see. If it had stayed in the shape of a blade, I could at least understand... but it turned into a curse, didn't it?

So how was anyone supposed to find a thing you couldn't hold and couldn't see, and store it in a club? By Eodugi's account, it was an art for storing objects.

While the doubt showed on Bihyung's face, the dokkaebi looked at one another, hemmed and hawed, and dropped their voices.

"...Even if we can't, you could wield it, couldn't you, Lord?"

"Right. Then we go to our knees and beg him to save our Boss."

"The Dokkaebi King's Bat. We can't handle that one."

At their words, Bihyung's ears pricked.

The Dokkaebi King's Bat?

Well, now.

Yeah. This one I can't leave alone.

It seemed he had just decided what he was taking out of the vault.