The Dokkaebi Bat
You are a dokkaebi born bearing the most exalted rank.
The race called dokkaebi will have its legends hereafter rewritten by the path you walk.
Forge a tale of the dokkaebi that will endure for ages.
The old Inheritance had been made new, and a derivative story filled his sight.
Forge the dokkaebi's story. That means I'm meant to decide the image people will see whenever they think of the race from now on.
It was difficult. And yet some part of him liked this story far too much. An incomplete race. If not one thing about them had been fixed, didn't that mean an endless road still lay open ahead?
Choosing the dokkaebi was the right call. Dragons were strong, but people already knew far too much about them. A serpent becomes an imugi, a lesser dragon, and from there ascends as a true dragon—and that whole sequence was already defined. Put another way, they're trapped inside a frame. Even if he lifted the ceiling on a race like that, he doubted the peak would have stood very high.
Dokkaebi were different. Because nothing is set, so much will change according to how I define them. And that change would return to him as power of his own. This derivative story was the first step.
Bihyung looked upon the lingering will of the Dokkaebi King and asked.
"The dokkaebi I brought to heel said his club possesses the ability to store. Is that correct?"
"It is."
"Then the clubs in the old tales—the ones swung to make gold, or to bestow grain—were simply drawing back out what had already been stored?"
"Correct."
Listening to the Dokkaebi King's answer, Bihyung turned it over. At its base, what a club can hold is objects. Something like a game inventory? Put a thing in, store it, and take it back out. That, it seemed, was the most basic use of a Dokkaebi Bat.
"Then how did the King's club differ?"
"Mine was limited to the inanimate, but its capacity was far greater than an ordinary club's."
"Inanimate?"
"Yes. So long as it held no life, it could be anything at all."
An ordinary Dokkaebi Bat had a limit to its capacity, and what it could hold varied wildly from one dokkaebi to the next. Among them, the Dokkaebi King's club was bound by the restriction of the lifeless—and in exchange, it ignored the limits of capacity altogether.
Bihyung listened, then asked one thing more.
"Then could things like spells be stored in the club as well?"
"...Regrettably, that was impossible. Energy, in the end, is an extension of life."
Spiritual power, yokai power—all of it was energy piled up by going on living. How could such energy fail to carry life with it? The answer left Bihyung faintly puzzled.
"Dueogsi clearly meant to draw the curse coiled through my body out through a club. How could that even be possible?"
To that, the Dokkaebi King's reply came back perfectly calm.
"It seems he intended to kill himself once, and then bring himself back."
"...I'm sorry?"
Kill himself and then what?
"Kill yourself and then resurrect—is that even possible?"
When Bihyung's face made plain that he did not understand, the Dokkaebi King hastened to explain.
"To speak precisely, he meant to concentrate the curse in the heart, stop it once, and trick the curse into believing he had died."
A curse, after all, only shows its power so long as its target lives. If the target dies, the curse stops as well.
"Treat the body as inanimate after that, and draw the heart itself out through my club, and escaping the curse would not have been unreasonable."
The casual answer struck Bihyung with a clean, cold shock.
"...You're speaking of ripping out a heart as if it were nothing?"
Remembering that Bihyung was only half-yokai, the Dokkaebi King offered a thin smile—not mockery, only the recollection of how far their points of view stood apart.
"A yokai's lifeline is tough. Even if part of the body is severed, pour yokai power into it with care and it regenerates. That is the basic common sense of yokai."
And Dueogsi had been a yokai of renown across the peninsula.
"Even should the heart be torn out, so long as one acts at once, one does not die. That is why, in a fight between great yokai, a confirmed kill means nothing less than ripping out the opponent's yokai core. Or crushing the head."
What in the world. Was this a yokai, or a cockroach? I knew they didn't die easily, but their regeneration is that good? Even Bihyung had never heard of it. Of course he hadn't. In the game, land a hit on a vital spot and a critical popped, and they stopped breathing just fine. ...Were the ones I saw in the game simply not that high a tier? No way. Even those things took at least mid-tier to bring down. ...Probably not. There has to be some restriction.
While Bihyung was desperately telling himself so, the Dokkaebi King's lingering will went on.
"As I just said, there is a workaround—artificially halting the energy so the club may take it in. Short of that, my club cannot hold energy such as spells."
So saying, the Dokkaebi King seized empty air in one hand and shook his arm hard.
Boom!
A small blast rang out, and smoke spread. Parting it, the Dokkaebi King's club revealed itself.
"Drawing the club out feels just like that. Concentrate yokai power into the blood of your forearm, then swing it through the air as if you were painting."
Right. What he needed to focus on now was not how strong the yokai were. My club. The derivative story that had just risen before him, and the acquisition of a new Blood Art.
Bihyung nodded slowly and copied exactly what the King had shown. A fierce presence gathered in his right arm all at once, as if a translucent giant's arm were being compressed and crammed by force into his own. He lifted that arm, and his palm closed on empty air.
Crack—!
A sound like glass fracturing rang from the place where he gripped the void. Bihyung paid it no mind. No—it would be truer to say his attention was somewhere else entirely. What I mean to put into my club... As if taking the first step of the dokkaebi race itself, he wanted to leave a story that stood whole even within an incomplete oral tradition. That wish goaded the desire in his heart, and the corner of Bihyung's mouth lifted, sharp and cold.
"Coming this far, I'm starting to get greedy."
The thickness of the empty air in his grip seemed to grow, if only a little. It was not an illusion. I don't expect performance right away. Instead, I'll push the possibilities out to their absolute limit.
What Bihyung held was not mere empty air. It was his club, not yet made—and the oral tradition of the dokkaebi that would endure for ages to come. Then yokai power erupted like a volcano, and Bihyung's arm swung down toward the earth as if hauling the sky along with it.
Ding!
Forming...
Calculating grade...
Growth Limit: EX
Crack—!
A sound like space itself breaking rang out, and a fissure ran through the bloodstone the Dokkaebi King had left behind. At the same moment, Bihyung's eyes, shut until now, opened.
"So it was a landscape left by a lingering will."
He watched the King's relic fall away in shards, then bent, swept the pieces up, and tucked them carefully into his backpack. Someone was watching him, puzzled.
"Bihyung! You're awake!"
"Lord! Did you seize what you desired!?"
Eodugi and Mina, who had been unable to enter that space with him. Bihyung's shadow stretched long, and two beings burst out of it.
"Bihyung!"
"Lord!"
The moment both set foot on the ground, they circled him, looking him over.
"Senior Eodugi, he doesn't look hurt anywhere, does he?"
"No, young miss! He feels perfectly hale, he does!"
"Mmm... I was really startled when he just passed out, though."
The two of them glaring as they inspected every inch of him, like drug-sniffing dogs at an airport, was frankly ridiculous.
"How long was I out?"
At his question, Mina answered at once.
"Not that long. About thirty minutes?"
"The instant you touched the bloodstone the King left behind, you lost consciousness, so this one believed you had gone to face a trial!"
Eodugi scurried up his pant leg and sparkled his eyes with oppressive enthusiasm.
"Lord! How was the King's legacy? Surely your caliber stood higher still, did it not!?"
Eodugi was a dokkaebi too, but he had never actually seen the King. He was an unlucky one, born from something ancient and then brought to heel at the Academy. Which was why he seemed bursting with curiosity over just how far the one he served surpassed the King. From the look in those eyes, Eodugi already believed Bihyung's rank stood higher than the King's.
"Who knows. Hard to say."
His standing as a race had been higher, but Bihyung had no wish to look down on the existence called the Dokkaebi King. His character, and the nature that had worried over the future of his people—he had truly been a sovereign worthy of the title of king.
"I'll tell you later. First, let's deal with that one."
Bihyung pointed at the unconscious Dueogsi. As he spoke, his fingertip tapped the empty air.
...Tok.
A sound like that rang out, and a ripple spread with it. Like a droplet falling on a still lake, concentric circles began to bloom across air that had held nothing at all. From the center of those circles, Bihyung drew out his club.
Bihyung's club was a little different from the clubs of the dokkaebi he had seen so far. It had no form. It only shimmered like smoke, lingering in his grip. But it was unmistakably a club—if one looked only at its ability.
Asim Jeojang. If it has entered my heart, then store it—whatever it may be. One of the abilities of the Dokkaebi Bat that Bihyung had forged.
The Dokkaebi Bat extracts Shuten Doji's curse from the body of the target, Dueogsi.
Stored in the club.
Decomposition, or synthesis, is possible.
Watching the messages burst up one after another, Bihyung smiled in satisfaction.
Hah! Now this is the stuff!