Chapter 22
I was about to go after the vampire who’d vanished in the middle of my beating him senseless—
Whoosh—!
Something shot toward me from the sky at blinding speed.
"Kki-ee..! Khek!"
Thwack—!
My hand shot out on pure spinal reflex, and I caught it.
"Sodam?"
With Sodam dangling from my grip like a chicken by the neck, I tilted my head.
Well, thank God I caught him with my hand.
If I’d swung my sword instead, I might’ve turned Sodam into so-dam.
Rub-rub-rub—!
"Whoa! What the hell is wrong with you all of a sudden?"
The moment I let him go, Sodam launched into his signature head-rubbing attack, and Geom Mujin flinched in shock.
Little punk ditched his master and ran off to pair up with some other female, and now this.
"Kuaaak."
At my utterly indifferent reaction, Sodam let out a hurt cry.
He’d been worried sick, thinking his first master had died a bloody death, and this was the thanks he got.
"What? You thought I got killed by a Goema?"
Sodam nodded.
"Why would I die? Do you even know who I am?"
There was no way the Great Swordmaster, who was three times more magnificent than those other Seven Martial Stars idiots, would die that easily.
"Kuu! Kuu!"
With a deeply aggrieved look, Sodam stretched out his wings and pointed at something.
There, just where I’d been buried a moment ago, was the thorn grave.
A grave that had blown the entire area to hell and, once you got buried in it, would turn nine out of ten people into hedgehogs and kill them.
"Kuku!"
"Fair enough."
I nodded at Sodam’s protest. Anyone buried in a place like that would obviously assume I was dead.
I understood the bird’s grievance, but one thing still bothered me.
"But you and I have a spiritual bond, don’t we? Shouldn’t you be able to tell if I’m alive or dead just like that?"
Thanks to the thread of soul that even shared sight with him, I could usually tell whether Sodam was alive.
"Kkwak?"
At my pointed question, Sodam wore the expression of a pigeon that had just been smacked with a pellet.
Come to think of it, that was a thing, wasn’t it?
"Kkuhet!"
Sodam folded his wings and bonked himself on the forehead.
I was too flustered and completely forgot!
Trying to make up for his embarrassment, Sodam’s desperate little act of affection flew toward Geom Mujin’s chest—
Clang—!
—and bounced right off.
By nature, a male’s cutesy act from another male was worth less than the stones on the roadside.
Whether it’s a person, an object, or an animal, once you get something shiny and new, you spend a while seeing it through rose-colored glasses.
During that period, everything gets forgiven.
Pick your nose and you look adorable; piss and shit everywhere and somehow it’s still cute.
Geom Mujin was no different.
Before coming to Gaseoseong, I’d been wearing the same kind of rose-colored glasses over my new spiritual beast pet, but over the last few days, the expiration date on that delusion had finally run out.
Maybe that was why I could look at Sodam with a fairly rational eye now.
Invisible intimacy, a new-model drone, all that stuff had been nice and all...
So in the end, birds are just birds.
For all its so-called spiritual beast status, it had forgotten something this basic.
Maybe there was a built-in limit to how smart a beast could be, because its intelligence was about on par with a bird’s brai—
"Kwak-kwak!"
The little punk’s eyes sharpened, and he bit my hair.
That look said, You just cursed me in your head, didn’t it?
He still had a demon’s sense for that sort of thing.
"It’s a misunderstanding."
I dodged his suspicious glare as it jabbed into my cheek and changed the subject.
"Anyway, Sodam. Do you know where that Goema... no, that vampire... or whatever the hell he is now is?"
Sodam tilted his head at his master, who kept correcting himself mid-sentence, then nodded.
He said the guy was heading toward the mountain peak.
"Kuu."
Just as I was about to chase after him, Sodam spoke again.
There was something he’d forgotten to tell me.
"What is it?"
"Kuek."
"What?"
He was coming here right now?
I didn’t need to ask what was coming.
"....!"
Before long, my senses caught something.
Not one thing. Several.
"For... him...!!"
"Kraaaah!"
"Ah, damn it. That bird-brain bastard."
Apparently he’d called every one of the local thralls, because the sheer number of them was insane. I clicked my tongue at the tide of thralls swarming in.
I hadn’t even been out of the thorn grave for half a moment before Geom Mujin was buried in a wave of them, Sodam tucked under his arm.
Thoom—!
...
...
Light burst out from the grave of thralls that had buried not only Geom Mujin but the thorn pile beside him as well.
Flash—!
Somageom, blazing with the light of Pasahyeonjeong, swept the thralls away.
They couldn’t even resist the sword strike, which combined opposing qi with overwhelming technique, and were washed clean out of existence.
He calmly finished the slaughter, then sent Sodam back into the sky and said, "Sodam, guide me."
Click—
Navigation: ON.
"You little brat with no manners at all."
If what I just saw was real, this bird needed an Inui, Yeui, and Jikji escort.
* * *
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—!
After burying Geom Mujin in a mass of thorns, that thing immediately took off along the mountain ridge.
"Haa...! Haa...!"
It had tossed out all thoughts of pacing its strength and poured everything into speed, so its breathing grew ragged, but that thing kept moving.
"....!"
Then, while it was still racing forward, that thing abruptly froze.
It hadn’t stopped before because the goal came first, but this time it couldn’t help itself.
Most of the connections to the thralls it had sent after Geom Mujin were gone.
There was only one thing that meant.
That monster was still alive and well.
It had gotten lucky and caught him off guard once, but of course it couldn’t kill that monster with luck alone.
Wooooong—!
With another command ringing in its head, that thing hurried its steps.
Tap-tap-tap—!
...
...
After racing for a single quarter hour, that thing reached its destination.
"......"
What awaited it was a cave near the summit of Mount Mui.
This was the cave where that thing had been reborn from a weak prey creature into ■■.
After finishing its first meal and fleeing in a half-dazed state, it had stumbled upon this cave by chance.
It had been a coincidence like fate itself.
Then again, unlike the countless other caves on Mount Mui, this one was special.
Wooooong—
"......"
At the summons reverberating in its mind, it entered the cave.
There was no emotion to be found in the steps or eyes of that thing as it walked with a strangely precarious gait.
Once inside, the cave was filled to the brim with the dense qi of nature.
The cave that thing had found was a dragon vein, a place where the mountain’s energies gathered into one point.
Even for a dragon vein, it was normally impossible for this much natural qi to collect here.
What had made the impossible possible was lodged deep within the dragon vein.
It was the broken sword that thing had carried with it since its flight began.
A pitch-black blade that looked as though it had been forged from the night sky itself was thrust into the heart of the dragon vein.
Wooooong—!
The black sword greedily devoured the natural qi rising through the veins of the earth.
Crack—!
Each time it did, the walls of the dragon vein split a little more, while weeds and moss rotted away.
For a mountain, natural qi was its life force.
To absorb that qi was to gnaw away at the mountain’s lifespan.
Though it had already absorbed a significant amount, the black sword was still nowhere near satisfied.
Because natural qi, overflowing with life force, was its opposite, its absorption efficiency was terrible.
As a result, the actual amount the black sword had managed to absorb was not much at all compared to what it had taken in.
At this rate, even if it absorbed every last bit of the mountain’s essence, recovering its true strength would still be a pipe dream.
So the black sword needed another means, and that means was not far away.
No, it was right beside it.
"Uuugh...."
The black sword called to the tool that could restore its power—that thing.
Compared with its raw strength, controlling a mind filled with fear and anxiety was easy.
Who would’ve thought?
The thing it had originally intended to use only as a means of escaping those suspicious experimenters had become this useful.
Had it not intervened, the thing would have died before long, but after drinking the pursuer’s blood, it had changed.
It had developed a new habit of drinking the blood of others to seize life, and that habit had scattered yin qi and death qi throughout the mountain.
As the saying goes, soot makes you black.
The yin qi and death qi stained the natural qi, and though they were opposed, they made it possible for the black sword to absorb it.
Thanks to that, it had managed to absorb a considerable amount of natural qi.
Without that, it wouldn’t have been able to absorb any of it, even inefficiently.
At this rate it might be able to recover quite a bit of power, but a variable had appeared.
Among the tool’s prey there was a monster.
It had no idea where that monster had come from, but two things were certain.
One, the monster was trying to capture its tool. Two, in its current state, there was no way it could do anything about that monster.
It had ambushed him, tried to catch him off guard, and even pushed with sheer numbers, but the monster wasn’t dead and was still coming.
If it lost the tool to that monster now, the plan would be thrown off.
Tap.
The black sword made its tool grip it.
The tool, which already had its soul seized, would not refuse the command—
"Nggh...! Ughh...!"
That thing trembled violently with the sword before it.
It looked almost like it was resisting the act of picking up the blade.
The soul that had been trying to wake, stirred by fear of Geom Mujin, was in a state where its restraints had loosened.
Sensing danger by instinct, that thing resisted the order in its head.
Wooooong—!
But when the black sword fully opened its power, the tool’s soul was crushed beneath it.
That thing resisted, but with an unstable and immature mind, it was hard to withstand that pressure.
Once again, with all emotion gone from its eyes, that thing grasped the sword hilt embedded in the ground.
At that instant, a massive flood of natural qi poured into that thing through the hilt.
Like I said before, even if it absorbed Mount Mui’s natural qi, it still wouldn’t be able to kill that monster.
It needed drastic measures.
If the efficiency was bad when it used itself, then the answer was to make something with better efficiency do the absorbing instead.
The tool, which could absorb jeonghyeol, greedily swallowed natural qi without any obstruction.
"Aaaah... AAAAAH!!"
Along with that, it screamed in agony as the tidal wave of qi crashed into it, but the absorption did not stop.
The overflowing energy created a bloody mist each time that thing exhaled.
And that wasn’t all.
Hadn’t it said? This was drastic action.
That thing clenched the arm holding the sword hilt and lifted it.
Then the black sword, coiled at the center of the dragon vein, slowly began to pull free.
Snick—
The black sword had changed in the meantime.
Where the blade had once been broken, a new blade had grown in its place.
All that time it had been absorbing natural qi, it had been temporarily repairing itself.
Wooooong—!
As the black sword resonated with that thing’s qi, the blood mist gradually began to darken.
No matter how efficient something was, everything had its limits.
It had only managed to absorb about twenty percent of the mountain’s total natural qi, but even that alone had strengthened that thing beyond comparison to before.
At this rate, it would be able to kill that unknown monster.
"......."
As it lost not only control of its mind but even command over its own body, that thing reached out toward the night sky beyond the dragon vein.
Then, with its last shred of self, it thought, Please, somebody—
"!?"
At that moment, one of the stars was approaching from afar.
And at an absolutely ferocious speed.
Moments later, a crimson slash crashed straight down over the dragon vein.
BOOM—!
The cave and the surrounding area where the dragon vein lay vanished in an explosion of dirt and dust.
"Hey, round two’s gotta start now, right?"
Geom Mujin wore not the face of a wandering swordsman, but that of the Great Swordmaster, one of the Seven Martial Stars.