A Night Outing (3)
Crimson blood burst from his abdomen in a violent spray.
"Guhk—!"
What he vomited from his mouth plunged straight to the floor. Rise, and fall. Caught between the two, Yu Gyeongsu's face trembled with a fear he could not hide.
"Wh-what…"
A small arm had punched clean through his gut. And yet the power coiled inside it was strong enough to rival a respectable middle rank.
"It is the Boss's command. I shall offer up your head."
The voice that followed was dry and flat. It was unmistakably a child's, and still, somehow, gooseflesh crawled up his spine.
"Hup—!"
Yu Gyeongsu stamped his foot in a panic.
A thin hum shivered through the air. This was a laboratory he had built apart from everything else—a domain where, after endless experiments upon anomalies and the long work of subjugating them, the space itself had become an anomaly. Yu Gyeongsu was master of that space now.
The sensation in Dueogsi's arm vanished. He understood at once and sharpened his senses. A little farther off, he felt a presence clutching its own abdomen.
"There you are."
His fist struck empty air. A fierce crack of displaced wind tore the distance open, and the force of the blow surged through it. Where that force landed, the ground split with a shriek of cracks and a massive hole tore itself wide. So this was what close-combat power looked like, when it could truly be called middle rank.
"Khh…"
Yu Gyeongsu staggered out of the ruin. One arm dangled as if it had been ruined; the other pressed hard against the wound in his abdomen, trying to stanch the blood. One leg limped beneath him, and his face had gone a sickly dark—the look of a man carrying internal injuries. Anyone could see it. He had lost.
"Kh… you… what in the world are you?"
Even so, the light in his eyes did not die. If anything, as he stared at Bihyung and Dueogsi, a feverish excitement broke across his face.
"An anomaly? No. There is no anomaly of that form. It even seemed to communicate with its master—to hold a conversation. A familiar…? No. Not that either."
The muttering was not meant for them. He was questioning and answering himself, scratching his scholarly itch even now.
So the man who had skulked about secretly filming people turned out to be rotten with a pervert's nature from birth.
"What are you muttering."
Dueogsi was not about to stand and watch. He kicked off the ground and shot forward in a single breath, and the place where he had stood caved in, splitting like a spider's web.
"Die already, and offer up that head."
As if he meant to seize the empty air itself, his clenched fist swelled in an instant—no longer a child's hand, but something thicker than a grown man's torso.
…The hell is that. Gear Third?
Even Bihyung had never seen this attack. He could guess well enough, though, at the might coiled inside that fist.
Dueogsi. A being like Korea's own cosmic horror, chieftain of the hundred ghosts, who had once led the weaker dokkaebi and was famed for crushing heads. His fist came down like a punishment from heaven.
The blow crashed toward Yu Gyeongsu.
…No.
More precisely, it tried to. The instant Yu Gyeongsu thrust a hand into empty air, a black curtain veiled him. It rippled—and swallowed Dueogsi's power whole. A subjugated anomaly, used as a shield.
"This… filth dares!"
At a single roar from Dueogsi, the anomaly that had blocked his fist could only shrink in on itself and vanish. By then, Yu Gyeongsu was already gone.
"…Forgive me, Boss. I let him escape."
"It's fine. Landing a critical wound is already a meaningful result."
As he had noted before, the Gwiryeong Yu Clan's specialty lay in the methods and formations used to govern subjugated anomalies. This space was their domain and, at the same time, an iron fortress raised from the man's own formations.
We got this far without a scratch and even dealt him internal injuries. That alone is a major gain.
The blow had all but run him through the abdomen. An ordinary human would have died on the spot. Unfortunately, villain or not, the opponent was a 6th Rank superhuman. This much would not kill him.
Even so, with internal injuries he can't bring out the power of his original rank. Not when his abdomen was pierced near the dantian.
Being generous, early 5th Rank. If he wrung himself dry, he might manage the middle of the 5th Rank. At that level, he could not handle Bihyung's Baekgwi Yahaeng.
"Right you are! The Eldest's Baekgwi Yahaeng has grown tremendously strong, it has!"
See? Even Eodugi was bouncing as he boasted.
"If we want enough time left to sleep, we have to catch him fast."
"Yes, Boss!"
"Understood, it is!"
"Even so, don't let your guard down. A cornered rat bites the cat."
High spirits were well and good, but he said it because he feared they might grow complacent. He needn't have worried over Mina, whose face had gone grim the moment they entered this place, or over Dueogsi, veteran of battle after battle. They carried themselves well enough on their own.
"Let's go."
Bihyung had just taken the lead when—
"Kh… you damned bastards…!"
A section of the wall cracked without warning, and Yu Gyeongsu's face bloomed across every shattered fragment.
Dream Within the Mirror? It was the power of the anomaly he and Mina had entered once before. The Academy had subjugated that anomaly, and yet Yu Gyeongsu had apparently siphoned off even the womb of its power behind their backs. Within the mirror he twisted his face like a god of slaughter and howled.
"Because of you… because of you… my great work is about to collapse!"
Even "fuck you" has its limits.
The words surged all the way to his teeth, but Bihyung bit them down. From of old, when a villain flew into a rage, you were supposed to hear him out—every word he had, and every word he didn't. You know how it is. That's when they leak something important. Just like now.
"And yet, Shin Bihyung! Seeing you, and the thing at your side, has given me much to think on! Bursting out of a shadow like that… you must have stored an anomaly inside your body, yes!?"
His expression in the mirror shifted by the second. Now rage, now a rapture as if nothing in the world could please him more. And when at last his face settled into calm, only one corner of his mouth crooked upward.
"I thank you! For you have shown me a new horizon! Ah…! An anomaly need not stop at being subjugated by a human—there was always the possibility of becoming one body!"
Uh… hmm.
It is important information. So why does this feel like it's going in a bad direction?
In the game, Yu Gyeongsu's last thrashing had been to unleash the anomalies he had researched and experimented on, sparking indiscriminate terror. Whether you put it down early, or let the incident worsen before suppressing it, shifted the story that followed a little. But as far as he remembered, this particular flow had never played out.
Goddamn it. Another change because of me.
You could say that, and you could say it wasn't. His mere existence had not changed Yu Gyeongsu. But the Baekgwi Yahaeng had met the man's scholarly fever and pointed him down a new road.
This… is bad.
A chill warning raced up his spine from his half-yokai senses, and Bihyung moved at once. He called forth the Dokkaebi Bat and shot Dueogsi a look.
One big shot. Fire it at me.
…Will you be all right?
Even if I'm not, I'll make it all right. Don't worry. Just fire.
Dueogsi read the resolve in those eyes and loosed his fist-force at once. Bihyung stored it in the bat. In the same breath he broke it down, felt the yokai power brimming through the weapon, and planted his feet.
He did not draw the Guiokdo. The point was to shatter that glass wall until not a trace remained, and a blow would serve better than a cut.
Battle-Joy Spirit
A spirit that takes pleasure in battle. Living up to its name, and all the more delighted that its master stood in peril, the Battle-Joy Spirit lent a sharper clarity to the path of the fight. Bihyung followed the trajectory it laid out and drove his fist forward.
Vast yokai power coiled around a simple punch, and once more he became a fist-gale that shook the air on every side. Struck by that sudden gale, the cracked glass wall did not merely splinter. It powdered, and scattered.
I broke all of it.
And yet—why? The powdered shards, drifting on the air, suddenly drew together and carved themselves into Yu Gyeongsu's enormous face. The man was smiling.
"I grant you the honor of joining the beginning of my great experiment!"
So saying, he bit down on a capsule that held an anomaly, and swallowed it.
"Kyaaaa—!"
A wail like a young girl's scream pealed through the chamber.
Once the capsule was swallowed, the glass shards drove themselves back into the ground, as if they had lost all worth. Yu Gyeongsu's trace was gone. Bihyung and the Baekgwi Yahaeng only stared after him. A cold silence hung in the air.
"……"
"……"
It was not his words. It was not even that he had bitten down and swallowed the anomaly's capsule. Only the young girl's crying, heard at the very end. And—
"Boss. Did you see?"
"…If you mean the girl who was crying, more than enough."
Between the walls of the capsule Yu Gyeongsu had chewed and swallowed, the soul of a young girl had been visible.
What… what in the world did that bastard make?
Even in the game, they had been noted only as anomalies born of experiment. Bihyung had never questioned them. No—he had, but not about what they were. Only a curiosity about what might happen if he kept them from being made. And now, for the first time, he learned the part he had never cared to look at. Through a truly rotten sight.
"It seems he offered living children to an anomaly to amplify its power. And the offerings were likely children of the age when they are purest—and when death leaves the deepest regret."
"…Ah."
"There was a distinct energy I felt when he swallowed the anomaly. Not what was reflected in that glass. An energy felt from far away. Judging by its scale, it was not one or two people who were sacrificed……"
Dueogsi's breath caught. For a moment he could not go on. The Boss's gaze had sunk cold, and between those blue irises the spiritual flame heaved, burning high.
He was furious. The young Boss. This supreme dokkaebi.
"Damn… I feel like absolute shit."
His head was hot. His teeth ground of their own accord, and more strength than necessary flooded both fists. From the palms his nails had sunk into, crimson blood threaded past his knuckles and wet the floor. Every one of those sensations was painfully clear. And yet, strangely, the one signal his brain was sending grew frighteningly dull.
An energy that makes even Dueogsi speak of it that way. It must be strong.
That signal—the warning bell that tolls when one's life is on the line.
Even so… a person is supposed to have a line.
He knew all sorts of villains in this world. He had prided himself on knowing their deeds, their evils, even their twisted personalities. But now he didn't know. The villain he had actually met was fouler, more twisted, and more revolting than anything he had imagined. Without meaning to, he felt as if he might retch.
Of the Dead……
The System seemed to be babbling something, but Bihyung shoved it aside with one hand.
Move.
He could roughly guess the contents. Honor the souls of the dead, or unravel the grudges they carried. Something of that sort. He knew, and still he dismissed the message. There was no grand reason.
I'm not doing it because you told me to. I'm doing it myself.
Not the System. Not the story's prompting. Because Shin Bihyung himself had chosen to.
Face set hard, he started forward. Thud. With every step he took, the footsteps of those following behind layered over his own. —Thud.
"…Let's go."
A dokkaebi's fury turned upon a single man.