A Night Outing (1)

Honestly. What was with all the shouting?

"What is it?"

Bihyung rubbed his ringing ear, his face perfectly blank. Still—that man had a pair of lungs on him.

"H-how did you use that!?"

The professor bellowed again, without a thought for the volume of his own voice.

"You... you already knew that technique?"

"What are you saying? If I'd known it, wouldn't I have used it long before now?"

"Th-that's true, but..."

The professor looked thoroughly rattled.

"...That technique just now. I told you earlier—I'm the only one in Korea who can use it."

"I heard Tuseonnyeo used it as well."

"The talk was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that she might be able to. I never said she could."

She was a woman of whom people said there was no rival, not in the Martial and not in the Combative. He had simply assumed that if she learned the technique, she would be more than capable of using it. Yes. If she learned it.

"You used it without learning a thing, didn't you? What in the world is going on here?"

He had explained the principle simply enough, but the subtlety dwelling inside it was of an exceedingly high order—something even the martial artists of the jianghu, men and women who lived and breathed the martial path, would not easily grasp. And yet he had copied it in a single stroke? Even talent that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠appeared once in a thousand years could not make that possible.

A bloodline?

The thought flickered through him for an instant.

...No.

The professor shook his head at once. A merebloodline had no business trespassing on a sublimity that held the whole of a person's life. Bloodlines might look omnipotent, like outright cheat techniques, but the professor's view was no different from what he had already told the students. Only the starting line changed. The destination was equal for everyone. What could climb higher was one's own endless contemplation, and one's own effort.

"You look frustrated enough to burst. How about you explain it properly and put me out of my misery, hm?"

By the time the professor's voice had nearly turned into a plea, Bihyung was scratching his cheek in awkwardness. Well... he'd simply seen it, and somehow grafted it on. How am I supposed to explain this?

The conclusion, at least, was simple. It had been possible. Once he unpacked, to a certain degree, the mechanism of the bloodline—Mimicry—and the effects that came with it—

"What in the..."

The professor's jaw dropped as if it might come clean off.

Well. Mimicry is plenty of a cheat bloodline in its own right. The low grade was something of a flaw, but that was a matter of growing into it over time. It simply could not be compared with the other bloodlines of the same grade that Bihyung knew.

But that was not why the professor was aghast.

"You... what kind of talent is that, exactly?"

"Pardon?"

Why was his talent suddenly the subject?

"What do you mean?"

Bihyung wore the look of a man who had heard something he very much should not have, and the professor let out a heavy sigh.

"You weren't even aware of it, were you."

"Could you explain it so I can actually understand?"

"That Mimicry just now. Anyway—you said the bloodline's mechanism makes you see an opponent's technique and understand it, yes? Honestly, I can't make sense of it myself, but still."

"Yes."

"You idiot. That's where it comes from. Your talent."

Bihyung only tilted his head again, and a chill suddenly crawled up the professor's spine.

He doesn't realize. What kind of brat is this...

Bihyung's ability was to force understanding. And then to mimic it. But this altogether too charming top student had not stopped at mere mimicry.

"To put it grandly, that is the realm of creation. The domain of the grandmasters—the ones who make things."

And—

"What you just did came very close to that. People of high Rank pull that sort of stunt now and then, of course, but you aren't one of them, are you?"

Close combat, martial arts, spellcraft, and the rest. His understanding of all of it was lacking.

"And yet you got that close on talent alone. That's what I mean when I say it's insane."

The professor tapped his own temple with a forefinger.

"Anyway, that strike just now was made by your talent, not by a bloodline. So take some pride in it, feel a little guilty for stealing it from me, and if you're sorry, you can give up the spirit pi—"

"A master's grace is vast as the heavens."

Bihyung hastily offered a clumsy fist-and-palm salute and bowed from the waist, and the professor clicked his tongue.

"Tch. Quick enough when it comes to slick talk."

Haa. He sighed and sighed, scrubbed at the back of his head, and then spoke to Bihyung.

"That bloodline. Use it often, if you can."

"...Yes?"

"Spellcraft, techniques, all manner of things. Look at them. Understand them."

Given Bihyung's talent, the wise course was to use it often and raise his understanding. The grasp he built of countless things would, in turn, bring a boy with a grandmaster's gift into fuller bloom.

"Come on. I'll give you the spirit pill."

He turned to go as he spoke, and his eyes trembled, fine and sharp. The wall of the training hall, split clean in half. He looked at it, sighed once more—and then, before long, laughed as if the air had cleared.

"Why's the wall like that? Did a bombardment come flying in out of nowhere?"

That was it. The professor had chosen to deny reality.

He followed the professor and received the spirit pill in private, then stopped by the administration office to report that a training-hall wall had been half destroyed... and got to watch the professor catch absolute hell for it.

After that, they left the half-ruined hall behind, and Mina's spar with the professor began. Bihyung sat in the stands and watched at his leisure, until he felt the wooden case that had come to rest against his chest.

It'll be a good elixir. It wasn't simply that he trusted the professor. The presence seeping from the case was remarkably dense. Bihyung opened it at once and looked at the unusual spirit pill inside.

This is... a spirit pill? No. The shape was a little wrong for anything one would call a spirit pill. What filled the wooden case to the brim was a jelly, clear as water.

This is a twenty-first-century exorcist? Had the martial world adapted to the twenty-first century this naturally? Bihyung lifted the case and turned ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it this way and that, wondering if some hidden trick was built into it—and in that moment, a sound transmission reached him from the professor, who still had leisure to spare even while facing Mina.

Dao-Buddha Flourishing Water and Flame-Blood Dawn Herb. Both were names Bihyung was hearing for the first time. Judging by the scale of the energy he felt from the elixir, they did not seem like things one could come by easily. A promise was a promise, and still it was astonishing that the professor could set an elixir like this down in front of him without so much as a blink.

The more I see of him, the more remarkable he gets.

Even so, the man showed no sign of meaning him harm, so Bihyung swallowed the elixir with gratitude held in the act.

It slid down. The jelly-like mouthfeel passed his throat, traveled the esophagus, and entered his stomach—and before long it melted like liquid, sending its energy out through his organs.

...Huh.

Through the organs and into bone, into ligament, into muscle, and back into the blood. The energy circulating thus finally sought out his meridians and roused his entire body to fullness.

And in that instant, the effect of the Gluttony Pill he had taken before activated of its own accord. The energy coursing his meridians suddenly caught with a low rush of flame. Only then did Bihyung understand. Dao-Buddha Flourishing Water and Flame-Blood Dawn Herb were elixirs that had been holding yang energy.

They didn't know who might end up eating it, so they refined the energy and cut back the strength of the yang.

No yang energy had been perceptible in the spirit pill itself. But the Gluttony Pill he had taken seized the yang of its principal ingredients—Dao-Buddha Flourishing Water and Flame-Blood Dawn Herb—by the hair and dragged it back out. The energy of Unyielding Yang rode his meridians, ranging through him, and at last settled in his lower dantian.

Thoom! As if the earth itself had given a fierce shudder, Bihyung's body jolted once. There was no pain. If anything, it felt clean.

Because it's Unyielding Yang, there's no need to refine it and fold it into the Great Yang. It seeps in on its own, as if it had always been this way.

Just as water below cannot climb to become the water above, the Great Yang Bihyung had built with painstaking devotion could not be defied—not even by the energy of Unyielding Yang. That flame, heavy and fierce, gradually quieted, and Bihyung's Great Yang had grown fully twice what it had been before he took the elixir. A satisfied smile played at his lips.

So this is what it feels like for a dantian to be packed full. His lower belly hadn't actually stuck out, and yet there was a weight to it. He could go days without eating and never feel hungry.

The yokai power in the yokai pill must have been stirred by the Great Yang—it's drawing in the natural energy around it.

Leave it as it was, or hunt anomalies, and the balance would right itself on its own. If one pulled ahead, the other waited. If one fell behind, he set his teeth and gave chase. That was the present state of Bihyung's lower dantian.

"You finished?"

Bihyung lifted his head, and there were Mina and the professor.

"What kind of focus is that? We couldn't even get a word in. Just stood here playing bodyguard."

"When did your spar with Mina end?"

"Mm. About thirty minutes ago?"

Which meant the two of them had been standing guard over him ever since. He offered his thanks for a kindness he hadn't expected. Mina shook her head, and the professor, looking faintly embarrassed, scratched his cheek and changed the subject.

"Let's head back. People will start saying I play favorites."

Watching the professor hurry his steps, a small smile touched both Mina's mouth and Bihyung's. Then the two of them fell in behind him.

A short while later, the training hall where they had originally been came into view in the distance. The moment Bihyung saw the people there, a strange sense of wrongness closed over him.

"Is this how I should do it?"

"Yes. You're doing very well."

On the surface, it was only a student with a gift for questions, and a scholar answering him kindly. And yet—what was this feeling, brushing his sixth sense so faintly?

The Gamtu.

To find the source of it, Bihyung secretly called up the Gamtu and pulled it on. It flared. And in both eyes, now opened onto the spirit plane, the flow of energy spread through the surroundings was caught entire. Bihyung's eyes flew wide.

Already?

Energy that gave off a murky, gloomy light, a little apart from the clear essence of nature. To name it precisely, it was the bewitchment of the anomaly the man had subjugated.

It's coiled through the students' bodies. Just like the game.

The anomaly that fellow had brought to heel did not show on the outside. Nor was there the slightest emission of energy. The instructors learned of the whole affair only afterward, once the situation had already blown open.

Without a half-yokai's body, I wouldn't have noticed either. Nothing more than a small sense ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of wrongness. So covert that even Bihyung, half-yokai that he was, felt only that much. Their Rank might be high, but at detecting anomalies he was surely the better of them. It made sense that the instructors hadn't caught on.

Well. Later on, they do put countermeasures in place.

Anyway. That was not what mattered now.

The villain's already trying to pull something? That's awfully hasty.

It was only the first day of regular classes. And yet the man was approaching the students and playing out the game's story exactly as written.

The bell rang, ending class.

"Hm. I think we'd best stop here for today."

At the scholar's words, the students' disappointment showed plain.

"Haha. Don't look at me like that, everyone. I'll stop by again next time."

He looked around at the students, whose faces eased at last, and slowly turned.

Hm?

Unlike the others, he met Bihyung's eyes—calm, and sunk deep.

Time passed. Evening. With every regular class finished, Bihyung returned to the dormitory and sat on the sofa.

"......"

Until then, he had said nothing at all. He had only called every member of the Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts into the dorm.

"...Bihyung? Is something wrong?"

Mina asked, taking in the gravity of his expression. In truth, she too had felt a little something off during that class. She wondered whether that was what had soured his mood.

"Mina. You felt it too?"

Just as she'd thought. This was why he looked like that.

"What's going on?"

"Looks like there's a villain."

Mina's heart dropped. A villain. Beings who stepped outside an exorcist's calling—to protect people from anomalies—and turned their blades on those people instead. The Academy taught that they were no longer human, no different from anomalies. Therefore, they were to be exorcised.

"...Don't tell me, earlier?"

"Yeah."

"What are you thinking of doing?"

That was what he was turning over now. Originally, he had meant to approach the man, confirm whether an anomaly was involved, and report him to the professors. Incident resolved. Easy for him, and the best outcome for the Academy—no casualties. But things had tangled.

I never got the chance to approach him. If I bring the others along, it already looks like he's made contact with the scholar.

There was only one reason a villain coiled an anomaly's power through a student. To tamper with their reason, to watch them, and to invite them into the laboratory.

That man's laboratory. I have to destroy it. No matter what.

Leave it be, and an accident no one could contain would follow. In point of fact, a veteran of the game who had wondered whether the laboratory might be used had left it alone—and said that at some point, it simply vanished. The vanished laboratory devoured an anomaly called the Backrooms, and devoured another called the Sinkhole, and then appeared as a monster that not even 9th Rank exorcists could put down.

The problem is, even if I report it, I won't be believed.

A man with no trace of an anomaly on him, accusing a scholar? Top student or not, the Academy would not take those words at once. And after that?

He'll shut the laboratory, or hide it.

They would probably never find it. That snowball would roll and roll, and in the end come down on his future self as a great fire. Bihyung's eyes grew complicated.

"In the end... there's no other way, is there?"

He let out a long breath, and the look of a decision settled over his face as he turned to every one of the Hundred Ghosts.

The Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts. Their number did not reach a hundred. Even so, a yokai's night outing was about to begin.