Gi, the Opening

"Huh?"

A notification had surfaced out of nowhere. Bihyung tilted his head at it.

"The hell is this?"

What was actually happening? All I did was lend her an achievement. That was supposed to be the end of it.

If Lore was anything like a class change, he had wanted Mina to advance into a hidden class — not one of the stories already littered everywhere, but the sort of kid who cut her own road. And this result filled what he had hoped for completely. A hundred percent. No. Two hundred.

And yet.

Isn't this way too fast?

No. He had wanted her able to stack a Lore of her own. Why was the thing suddenly sprouting like the sky was falling?

Ha. Please. Even bamboo would be slower than this.

Bamboo was supposed to be the fastest-growing living thing there was, and Mina was reducing even that pace to something utterly ordinary.

Four tails. She grew another.

The incomplete tail surged upward, and before long it had been fully wrought into a fourth. With that, she was 4th Rank. Talent alone had carried her to the same place he stood.

Taking Mina into the Baekgwi really was a god-tier play.

Mina Coin had punched clean through the ceiling!

Whatever it is, it's a good thing.

So why wasn't she opening her eyes?

Mina's transformation had finished. The Lore named Fox Progenitor was slowly locking into its frame, and her tails had grown to four. Wasn't it about time she woke?

The moment the question took hold—

Insufficient?

It was not a hard thing to understand. Her Lore was written nowhere else. It was a story she alone was setting down, and it would have been stranger if the frame had been perfect from the first.

But.

Then what happens to Mina?

Did this mean the sprouting of her Lore was simply canceled?

Worst case...

Her very kind might be in danger. Mina's race was half-yokai, and of the demon-fox line at that. If the tower newly raised with that Lore at its head began to shake, what became of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the foundation packed beneath it?

Just as doubt and worry tangled together, the answer printed itself on the empty air.

The countless forking paths she had seen at each crossroads. Examples of possibilities that might once have sprouted. The frame of the Lore Mina had achieved — the Fox Progenitor — was taking them in, drinking down their fragments.

...The same as me?

He had absorbed the fragments of the Fiery Eyes and Golden Pupils and kept them remembered within his presence, so that someday he might add them to the eyes he would make. Mina was doing the same — against every Lore of the demon fox.

At last the frame set.

With that message, Mina opened both eyes.

Flash!

A flare of eye-light spread in an instant. From Lilith, who had been watching her, a hollow laugh slipped free.

"Ha... Even across the immeasurable years this lady has walked among yokai, this is a thing beyond understanding."

Bihyung startled at that.

"It's that serious?"

The pinnacle of yokai, one who had achieved myth, was handing down a verdict like that. Mina. Just what level was her talent, exactly?

Lilith smiled softly and said nothing.

Her innate aptitude was exceptional. That much was certain. But if one asked whether it reached the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, she could answer without hesitation: no.

That monkey's inborn gifts were absurd to begin with.

What one was born carrying was simply different. It could truly be called a talent of the heaven beyond heaven. The young child called Mina, standing before her eyes, showed no gift so incomprehensible as that.

But.

It felt as though something had shifted in the realm of what is acquired.

In aptitude, too, she was certainly a child who could touch the sky. Left to herself, she had the talent to reach the domain of Transcendent Shedding someday. That, however, was a matter of the future. Lilith had never expected her to shatter her constraints this quickly and pioneer a Lore of her own.

And surely that child's power went into it.

Lilith's eyes moved from Mina to Bihyung. The others seemed not to have felt it, but a yokai who had once achieved myth perceived it clearly. Something that had been felt from that boy had connected to the child called Mina.

After that, she tuned yin and yang, and pioneered her own Lore.

It had been, quite literally, an act of the inconceivable — or of Gwoeryeok Nansin itself.

All at once, Lilith realized the corner of her mouth was twitching.

...Heh. The new chief this lady has found is a rather amusing child.

She was looking forward to it. A Lore achieved by a child who held such specialness — and whatever might lie behind that myth. It seemed she would not be bored for quite some time.

Around the time Mina fully forged her Lore and opened her eyes, a flood of messages began to chime before Bihyung as well.

A host of messages. No — a banquet of EX. For a split second, Bihyung's soul simply left him.

...Why are there so many?

From this alone, the EX-grades Mina had gained came to four in all. Two talent-type bloodlines — Grandmaster of an Age, and Aptitude of the Hosen — plus one race. And one bloodline that touched her stats and her presence: Peerless Beauty of All Under Heaven.

A minus clung to the tail of most of them, true. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Even so, an EX grade did not stop being an EX grade just because of that.

By rank, that's past 9th Rank.

In other words, it could be called the domain of Transcendent Shedding. The proof was that Bihyung could sense the stable current of yin and yang coexisting inside her.

Yeah, this is... an absurd level.

Judged only by the grade and quality of the EX he already held, Bihyung was by no means behind. He simply had not formed them in so short a time.

A minus grade usually comes from a lack of proficiency.

Which meant that, depending on her effort, even the measure tacked onto the back of her grades could rise to the same realm ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as his. For Bihyung, it was nothing but endlessly absurd.

...No. At this point, wasn't Mina the protagonist?

Why would a kid like that get eliminated at the very start?

...Or is that why? Because the talent is this insane, she gets cut in the opening act?

No matter how deep the veterans ran, no amount of thrashing would clear a wall like that.

I thought I was done getting a stomachache over Mina's talent.

Cancel that. His stomach still hurt.

No — look at talent like that and feel nothing, and you aren't a person. You're a Buddha.

Ding!

As if to announce that it was not over, a chime rang at his ear.

...Huh?

Subordinated?

And what is that supposed to mean?

As if it had heard the question, the notifications did not end.

...Huh?

And the contents of those messages delivered him quite a shock.

...My stomach hurts over Mina's talent?

That line was canceled too.

From this day forth, he and Mina were not merely of one heart. He declared them one body!

An attack on her shall be regarded as an attack on me.

Bihyung flipped his stance at once.

Well, obviously. She was suddenly sharing three EX-grade bloodlines with him. How was his stomach supposed to hurt?

"Oh? This, too, is a curious thing."

In that moment the eyes of Lilith, who happened to be watching him, glittered. She had noticed that the presence felt from him had changed a little. No. A great deal.

"The attainment was that child's, and yet how is it that your presence, too, changes beyond all recognition?"

From what she felt, the presence she had seen in the dream had amplified still further. Added to it was an affinity for the Five Elements and the Five Greats that had swelled in an instant. The Bihyung of a moment ago and the Bihyung of now had reached a point where one might fairly call them different people.

Bihyung scratched his cheek, sheepish.

All I did to help was lend her a single achievement... Is it really all right to take this much?

First, Grandmaster of an Age. Looking at the primary attributes of the Five Elements and the Five Greats that had grown because of it, he had already been repaid for the loan, and then some.

Proficiency in the Five Greats is climbing fast.

The pace that had quickened when he devised the Five Great Concord was kicking into a harder sprint still. At this rate... could he reach full mastery in every one of them before the first year even ended?

I'll awaken the Seeker.

A story derived above the Researcher. Even the effects of the Researcher alone had struck a veteran like Bihyung as plenty broken. As for what reward the Seeker — a story higher still — might give, he could not begin to guess.

Peerless Beauty of All Under Heaven handed me the hidden stat of Allure.

The higher one's Allure, the record said, the more beautifully not only one's looks, but even the arrangement of qi and blood, of muscle and bone within the body, were refined. A rise in the stat alone could let him steadily undergo something akin to a complete rebirth of flesh and bone. Add his Heavenly Sight on top of that, and he did not dare imagine how far the effect would go.

Aptitude of the Hosen... I still don't really know what that one does.

His guess was that this, too, was a bloodline that granted further talent. He had gained a great deal.

While Bihyung was looking at Mina with that gratitude gathered in his gaze, the first person her eyes met, the moment they opened, was Bihyung as well.

"...Bihyung."

A bright smile bloomed at Mina's lips. She knew. When she had been forced to choose, she knew whose hand it was that had reached for her. And so, with thanks rising straight from the heart, she bent at the waist toward him.

"Thank you, Bihyung. Because of you, I was able to see it through safely."

Bihyung meant to wave it off.

In that instant.

Ding!

A message that was not yet finished rose before his eyes.

A Lore that would reach myth. The moment a mark was set upon that long-awaited first step.