The Beginning of the Dokkaebi
The scene before his eyes.
What was he supposed to call it?
The royal presence?
That was the first name that came to mind. But all around him ruffians were throwing a feast like some drunken revel, and figures lay sprawled where the liquor had dropped them. Could he really pin a word meant for a king's own presence onto a place like this?
Even so.
Bihyung turned his head and looked straight ahead once more.
A vast throne. A golden dragon was carved in relief along the armrests, and the back that rose behind them had been sculpted into a dokkaebi with its mouth gaping wide. Anyone who saw it would have thought the same thing: Ah. Someone absurdly great sits there.
They called him the Dokkaebi King.
A being who reigned over countless dokkaebi, their king in truth. Of course, nothing Bihyung had heard of dokkaebi so far had been especially flattering, so he held no particular hopes for their king either.
In fantasy terms, a goblin lord?
The drunks sprawled even here, before a king's throne, did more than enough to drag those hopes down.
In that moment—
"His Majesty arrives—!"
A booming voice rang out, and the great gates, like the entrance to a palace, swung open. At once the figures who had been lying about scrambled up and struck their drums and gongs again.
Thump, clap.
Thump, clap-clap!
As if the feast until now had only just begun, a lively rhythm teased at his ears. Through that raucous festival a single presence walked in with steady steps and sat upon the throne.
"Yes. You are the kinsman who would succeed my bloodline... hm?"
Bihyung's eyes met the Dokkaebi King's.
Fwoosh!
The moment Bihyung summoned his gamtu, his presence flooded the dokkaebi palace in an instant. An overwhelming rank—the very peak of possibility a dokkaebi could climb. The presence of that half-yokai pressed down upon the throne hall.
"Ah, um..."
The Dokkaebi King felt it in his bones. Something had gone wrong. Badly wrong.
"Th-then... would you care to switch seats first?"
Seated on the throne and looking down, Bihyung found the Dokkaebi King on his knees, head bowed to the floor.
That—that dragon robe is going to be covered in dust.
"...Why did you ask to switch seats?"
From the moment he met Eodugi, and then the being called Lee Miho, Bihyung had taken to speaking down to yokai of lesser rank than himself. He had to. The pride of a presence engraved in his blood demanded it, and he had come to believe that a higher being speaking up to them would only do them harm.
Even so, he could not bring himself to drop his speech with the one before him. A beard thick from chin to sideburns, a face squared off like a block, and old wrinkles that showed the years—how was he supposed to spit casual words at that? Which was why this whole situation sat so uncomfortably on him.
I showed my presence to wrap this up quickly, and now it feels like I've only tangled things worse.
The Dokkaebi King had frozen, watching Bihyung's mood and nothing else. There was no progress to speak of.
"Haa..."
When Bihyung sighed, every dokkaebi gathered in the hall flinched. No—more precisely, only the Dokkaebi King himself trembled.
"Those ones. Are they something like clones you made?"
"Ah, yes... To speak precisely, they are not a high art on the level of true clones. It is merely... a little of the power a dokkaebi possesses, drawn out?"
"Please speak comfortably."
"I—I am comfortable like this."
"No... haa. Yes. Do as you find comfortable, then."
Bihyung gave up and decided to say only what he had come to say.
"The bloodstone that was there. I was told your club was inside it. So why am I here?"
He looked around. He could see, because he wore the gamtu. This place was not the material world, but something called the spirit realm.
In other words, an illusion that does not truly exist. Or a single moment of memory.
The Dokkaebi King before his eyes looked alive, but he was not. He was nothing more than history already dead—an old past, and nothing else.
"I... I meant to test whether you were qualified, and then have you inherit my club together with the seat of Dokkaebi King. That is why I called you here, but..."
"Then did I pass?"
"What? Ah—no, what are you saying!? Pass? How would I dare put one such as you to a test?"
"Even so, if I am to inherit your club and that seat, I have to satisfy what you want, don't I?"
The lingering will the Dokkaebi King had left tilted its head at Bihyung's words.
"...Why do you wish for my club? One so exalted as you must surely possess a far finer club already."
Hoo.
Where was he even supposed to begin?
Why does it feel like I have to explain that I'm a half-yokai to every yokai I meet?
He wasn't going to end up explaining it to an exorcist, too, was he?
...Please. Absolutely not.
Bihyung shoved the rising unease aside and laid out his circumstances. Something about himself. Something about being a half-yokai. The conclusion: he could not wield a club.
A tedious, pedantic stretch of time passed, and the Dokkaebi King's lingering will gaped so wide his jaw looked ready to fall off.
"Y-you possess a presence like that... and you say you are a half-yokai?"
"Yes. Is something wrong with that?"
"Ah, no... I was merely startled. Startled..."
Dokkaebi were not a renowned race. They had nothing to do with myth, nor had they ever reigned over others as some distant terror among yokai. Neither one thing nor the other. A race of exactly that degree.
"That is precisely what a dokkaebi is. A race with nothing fixed. A race that was never complete."
At those words, Bihyung's eyes went unbidden to the Dokkaebi King's form.
...Come to think of it, the Dokkaebi King has no horns.
The three dokkaebi who had served under Dueogsi had horns upon their heads.
And now that I think of it, Eodugi doesn't either?
He had simply assumed it was because Eodugi was a low-tier dokkaebi. But by Eodugi's own account, his rank sat a little higher than Dueogsi's subordinates.
If their forms still differ even then, that is strange.
Bihyung absently felt his own brow. The half-horn there was nothing more than the gamtu turned over his head. He could not call it a trait of his body.
The lingering will the Dokkaebi King had left looked at him and smiled bitterly.
"It seems something has occurred to you."
"Yes. There are differences in the dokkaebi's forms."
"What sort of differences?"
"That is what it means to be an incomplete race."
Because nothing was fixed, both their forms and the traits of the race itself differed from generation to generation, according to the age.
"Some dokkaebi have horns. That one is a form in which a little of the tradition left by the oni of that island country—the old Japanese raiders—has mixed in."
Some dokkaebi had only a single eye. Some, disgustingly, had far too many.
"That is the sort of race they are. These things called dokkaebi."
With the bitter smile of the Dokkaebi King's lingering will, a self-mocking voice rang in Bihyung's ear, as if to prove the point.
"Which is why you must not take my club."
"...Why does the story turn that way?"
"My club cannot keep pace with your rank. It may even fix a limit upon you."
Limit was a word used often, in many places, but in the end it was used for only one thing: the upper bound one could reach.
"Yes. Such an upper bound exists. But if you, wielding my club, were to decide, Ah, so a dokkaebi club feels about like this! and set that upper bound yourself—what then?"
It meant that even though he could in truth go further, he would seal the ceiling with his own hand.
"Exalted dokkaebi. The dokkaebi are, by nature, a half-made race in which nothing is clear."
Because they were such a race, even the bloodlines handed down among them often bore abilities that differed from one another.
"And among such dokkaebi, you were born at the very peak of possibility. The rule of what a dokkaebi is, which one such as you will make, will become a precedent—and upon that foundation, dokkaebi will be defined."
For his own club to be of help to such a being would have been a joy beyond measure. And yet—
"I do not wish to soil your possibility with my clumsy club."
Bihyung could not hide his dismay.
"But I need that club right now."
"What? Why..."
Bihyung launched into another tedious, pedantic explanation, this time of Dueogsi. The Dokkaebi King's expression creased, if only a little.
"Dueogsi. You mean to save that rebel spirit?"
He had been a yokai who ruled dokkaebi and bent them to obedience. It was understandable that the Dokkaebi King, representative of their kind, would dislike him.
But—
When we only talked, he didn't seem all that bad.
The way he thought of the subordinates under him. The way he kept trying to stand, even while he was being beaten down. Dueogsi had left a fairly decent impression on Bihyung.
"Yes. I'm going to try saving him once, at least."
Save him, and if it truly wasn't right, deal with it then. Wouldn't that be enough?
Bind him with the committee chair's barrier, and pour firepower into the opening... He doesn't seem beyond catching.
And Bihyung had a trump card of his own. Before he let the fellow live, he meant to lay a constraint on him with a Dokkaebi Bet.
If I take the greatest thing he has, he'll stay docile until he can get it back. Won't he?
Or not. Then he'd just cut the problem away.
"So I'll be taking your club."
At Bihyung's declaration, the lingering will the Dokkaebi King had left brooded, and at last offered a single way forward.
"Then, while you have the chance, how about bringing your own true club into bloom?"
With those words, the derivative story changed.
You possess a rank far too exalted to succeed the king.
Therefore, the existing derivative story, Succession, is deleted.
A new derivative story, The Beginning of the Dokkaebi, germinates.
The Dokkaebi King's lingering will smiled brightly.
"Not a sorry club like that one of mine. Your own club—the beginning of the dokkaebi, which will be carried far and wide by word of mouth from this day on."
Bihyung's heart pounded, hard.