Succession (3)

As he listened to the dokkaebis' tale, a familiar chime rose in front of him.

Bihyung boiled the message down to a single line. In short, they're telling me to become a thief. Under the fine title of greatest dokkaebi, he was to steal the club left for those who came after. The more he turned it over, the better robber seemed to fit him than dokkaebi.

Still, something's been bothering me.

He looked at the three dokkaebis muttering among themselves. The Dokkaebi Bat was definitely a bloodline, wasn't it? No matter how he worked it, it was a bloodline. He had seen that very name among the bloodline choices before. So how do you leave a thing like that behind? What, had someone drawn the blood and crystallized it?

He had meant it as a joke. The dokkaebis, however, threw themselves flat and proved the guess right.

"Lord! We beg of you! The Bloodstone left by the Dokkaebi King of old—please draw forth the Dokkaebi Bat sleeping within it!"

"O fair and merciful Lord! We implore you, save our boss!"

Wait. Why is that actually real?

"...First, one question. Why is the Dokkaebi King's Bloodstone at the Academy?"

"That, we do not know either! We merely followed the scent, traced the trail, and this is where it led!"

Damn it. He had wondered why the Academy would be holding something like that, and they were no help at all.

"...Haa. Fine. Let's go."

Sighing hard, Bihyung fell in behind them. He had to make contact with the club the Dokkaebi King had left behind regardless. Since he was going anyway, he might as well take the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠escort—and get a look at this Dueogsi's face while he was at it.

Just then the three dokkaebis cupped their hands to their mouths like horns and bellowed.

"Boss! We are coming in!"

"Do not groan about the pain afterward and sulk that you never heard us! Listen well, this very moment!"

Was that a summons for their boss, or a neighbor announcing he was dropping by to play? It was absurd.

"Now then, Lord. We shall open the door."

The dokkaebi standing in the middle swung his club. There was no cheerful little tok of a sound effect. What came instead was a vicious rip of air as the club split the wind, and then the ground itself split, shards of stone scattering. Yokai power surged up through the wreckage, and a door took shape.

"Now, Lord. Please, enter."

They took hold of the door themselves and flung the entrance wide. A light a little brighter than the world around it glimmered there, and through the gap someone could be seen slumped against the wall, gasping, his face drained of strength.

That's... Dueogsi?

On the outside he looked nothing more than a child. Wild, tangled hair, eyes red as blood—set those aside, and he was a little boy through and through. The presence leaking off him, quiet and unbidden, wiped that thought away at once.

Strong. That one was strong. An oppressive weight heavy enough to settle into the unconscious rolled off him in waves. Mina had not been a half-yokai for long, so her sense for an opponent's yokai power still lagged a little behind.

"How strong?"

Stronger than that ancestor of yours we fought not long ago. That did not mean Dueogsi was a stronger yokai than a nine-tailed fox. The one they had fought then was only an Imiho—born of Mina's blood, nothing more than the dregs of a nine-tailed fox left inside her. Even so, Dueogsi being strong is certain.

Bihyung slowly let his presence out.

The blue fire gathered with a roar and became a dokkaebi's cap, and the whole of him—kept hidden tight within the spirit realm—stood revealed. Dueogsi's presence tried to push back. It was like a man trying to hold off a crashing wave, and it was driven aside without recourse. At last, when the presence filling the room belonged to Bihyung alone—

A stagger. Back braced to the wall, Dueogsi forced himself upright and glared.

"What... are you."

"Me? A half-yokai."

"That is not what I asked. My subordinates outside... what became of them."

Oh? Look at this. In a situation like this, he's worrying about his people before himself? Better character than he had expected—an unexpected hit. I thought Dueogsi was nothing but a violent evil spirit who lived on cruelty. Is the real thing a little different? Every story about yokai had been written from a human point of view. And everything Bihyung knew was only the fiction of an Earth where yokai did not exist. It seemed a little different from what he thought he knew.

"Your subordinates let me in. Take the Dokkaebi Bat out of that Bloodstone, they said, and save you while I'm at it."

"...They did?"

Only then could Dueogsi begin to guess what he was facing.

"Impossible... How does a dokkaebi have a caliber like this?"

What season was that question on now? Sigh.

"First. I'm not a complete dokkaebi. I'm a half-yokai. Second. Don't assume a dokkaebi is automatically inferior. Right now even you can't do a thing with the Dokkaebi King's club. You're just groaning over it, aren't you?"

The blunt weight of the facts left Dueogsi with nothing to say.

"So. You want help, or not."

"...What do you want in return?"

"Hm?"

Bihyung tilted his head. Now that he thought about it, he had never actually decided what he wanted. I was only thinking about the club the Dokkaebi King left behind. It probably had no owner, but if he framed this like a game, the Dueogsi raid party that had entered the dungeon first held the right to claim the reward. He had been content simply to receive that ownership from them. Am I too deep in gamer-brain?

He lightly set aside the image of a properly seasoned veteran and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a gentleman player, and stepped in close.

"What can you do for me."

Dueogsi only kept his eyes open and looked at him. At last his mouth opened.

"A hundred."

"...Huh?"

A hundred what? Planning to talk without a subject?

"Those you wish to kill—a hundred of them, I will slay with my own hands..."

Before the sentence could finish, Bihyung raised a hand and cracked him across the head.

Smack!

"Agh!"

Dueogsi clutched his skull in both hands against the sudden pain, and Bihyung spoke as if he could not believe what he had heard.

"Unbelievable. A hundred what? You rotten bastard. Didn't I just say, with my own mouth, that I'm a half-yokai?"

Common sense. If half of you is yokai, what is the other half?

"A plant?"

Obviously human. Think for one second about what other race could pair with a yokai and have a child, and the answer was already there.

"And you're offering me the heads of a hundred humans? You're hopeless."

Even if they were people he himself wanted dead, the fact that words like that could just fall out of the boy's mouth stuck in his throat. Bihyung rolled up his sleeves and declared it.

"...What?"

Dueogsi's head jerked up before he knew it. Shock lay bare in his wide eyes.

"...Join the Night Parade? What nonsense is that."

"You look like you'll cause trouble wherever you go. So I'm keeping you beside me, watching you, and straightening you out."

"Nonsense..."

Whack!

Bihyung's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fist came down again and slammed into his head.

"Agh!"

Dueogsi clutched his skull once more and rolled across the floor. Wh-what!? He clearly didn't put much strength into it, and it wasn't even that fast... Why did it hurt this much, and why couldn't he dodge?

As fear of that fist began to take ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠root, Bihyung read the look on his face and found his confidence.

"You little— you little—"

He dropped into a proper squat and cracked the boy across the skull, and every time he did, Dueogsi had no choice but to roll. How was someone who could only gasp from the pain supposed to get out of the way?

"Gyaaaah!"

Dueogsi simply could not understand what was happening. The opponent was clearly weaker than he was. That monstrous caliber was frightening, yes, but set it aside and he held a slight edge in every other respect. Even that edge would not have been slight at all, if not for the wound dealt him by the Japanese oni, Shuten Doji. He could have crushed this one outright. So why, with strength like that, was he rolling in the dirt?

"Aagh!"

"Guh...!"

"Bone! You hit bone...!"

While Dueogsi tumbled this way and that, mopping the floor with himself, Bihyung wore a perfectly blank face and drove another flick straight down.

"It's a skull, so of course it's bone. Or is your skull made of cartilage? Hm?"

And so the rod of discipline, lasting a full thirty minutes, ended together with the boy's collapse into unconsciousness.

"Well, well. Now you're even pretending to faint so you won't get hit?"

The moment he muttered it and cracked his knuckles loose, Eodugi sighed and stopped him.

"...Lord. He truly has fainted."

What kind of Dueogsi passes out from getting hit like this?

"...To speak truly, the yang energy bound up in that flick you just dealt was dreadful enough to chill me to the bone!"

Only then did Bihyung notice the yang energy gathered in his own grip.

Hmm... huh? Something was off. He had not put nearly this much strength into it, so why was there so much yang energy? ...No. It isn't that a lot of yang energy went into it. The force that energy gave off was simply fierce enough to feel that way. An effect of Yin-Yang Incarnation?

He felt the race of yin and yang running through his body. Each chased the other's tail, and each thrashed to shake the other off. Looks like an even greater force kicks in during that process. Put simply, if you poured in a hundred measures of energy, you ought to get only that much power back. Yin and yang, checking each other, wrung out more than that. As a ratio, about a hundred and thirty? That was the rough version. The details could wait.

For now. Deal with that first.

The wall Dueogsi had been leaning against. The red light there. What the dokkaebis had called the Bloodstone. Time to claim the club left by the previous Dokkaebi King.

"Do I just break it?"

He thought it, drove his Roots down into the ground, and wrapped the Bloodstone—and in that instant—

The place where Bihyung stood had changed, if only a little.