Curse Wraith (4)
In genre fiction, ghosts were usually immune to physical damage.
They'd happily spend all day beating people half to death, but the moment the person swung back at them, they'd start shrieking that physical attacks don't work! You need spiritual damage to touch us!
The world of the manhwa Codename: Baby had worked much the same way.
Physical force simply didn't affect soul-type interdimensional creatures or ghost-class Phantasms.
Or to be more precise, it worked only in a limited way — just as it had when I blocked the Curse Wraith as it tried to chew me apart with my Twin Dragon Sword.
Hungryyyy!!!
"Ugh!"
Which meant that whenever the thing wasn't actively attacking me, hammering away at its body a hundred times would do nothing but pass straight through.
That was the entire reason I'd been reduced to dodging one-sidedly.
Why aren't they getting here...!
Had they all died on the way over? The rear courtyard wasn't far from the dormitory — this was supposed to be a leisurely stroll where all I had to do was make it to the back gate. So why was nobody coming?
I'm not confident I can hold out much longer either!
There was exactly one reason I'd volunteered to play for time.
It was the most efficient option, and it minimized the damage.
Handing this thing over to a bunch of kids who clearly had zero combat experience seemed far worse for survival odds than simply handling it myself. Think about it — what was the point of shoving it onto someone else and running if that someone got slaughtered the instant I turned my back? If anything, fleeing just raised the odds that a bare back would catch the next attack.
The moment my back was exposed, even I couldn't guarantee my survival. That was simply how fighting worked.
Two minutes at the absolute latest — I thought they'd be here by now...!
Besides, I had a cheat-code evasion technique called Shadow Stepping, and the Twin Dragon Sword, which was hardly going to shatter against a mere Curse Wraith.
And the moment I pulled a cadet's head out from between those baby teeth, I'd gained one more certainty: this Wraith wasn't fast enough to overwhelm me. I was confident I could stall it for a few minutes, guaranteed.
So I stayed, and I volunteered for the stalling. The kids would summon backup within two or three minutes at the outside — and once backup arrived, it would no longer be my problem!
Aaaargh!!
"Hhk!"
But the reinforcements refused to show.
And this was even knowing that if nothing else, Pyo Do-hyeok at least would call for backup with everything he had. It genuinely made me want to cry.
Or... fine. Maybe something had happened over there. But what exactly could possibly be going on in a rear courtyard a mere thirty or forty meters across that would produce this much dead silence? Don't tell me you all got into a fight with each other on the way over? Is that it?
I strained to dredge up jokes like that. If I didn't, I felt like the crushing tension would swallow me whole, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Screams steeped in malevolent qi kept shredding my ears.
Aaargh! Aaaaargh!!
"Ugh..."
And when I said my ears were being shredded, I wasn't speaking in metaphor.
True to its suspected high grade, even the Wraith's scream was a form of attack. The inside of my ear — my eardrum, in other words — had genuinely torn.
Beep——
A dull ache spread through my ear before curdling into tinnitus. The world's sounds went muffled and distant.
Well, at least I'll hear fewer screams now...
Was I supposed to call that a blessing or a horror?
Part of me wanted to flee into the far side of the shadows, but even that was no longer reliable. If I lingered too long in the shadows, the Curse Wraith would turn its head toward the dormitory. Just like the ones who'd already fled — it would head straight for the direction packed with cadets who still had no way to fight back.
I told you I was hungryyyy!!!!!
That — that I could not allow. I had no intention of letting my squadmates, my friends, be exposed to danger, not even as a worst case.
I could barely hold my own against this thing. It was obvious that Kim To-eun, Lee Hoe-uk, or Sa Seo-yeon wouldn't stand a chance.
Thud-thud-thud!
Then the Curse Wraith charged at me. The problem was the form that charge took. It wasn't any pattern I'd seen so far.
Wait — it's faster—
Not an approach to bite, but a full-force body slam. Apparently it had finally learned that my Twin Dragon Sword couldn't be broken through.
I frantically activated Shadow Stepping — but perhaps as the price for that torn ear, my head spun for an instant and my reaction lagged by half a beat.
BOOM!
The moment I entered the underworld, my body launched into the air as though I'd been hit by a car, then went tumbling across the ground.
"Kgh."
So the impact you take right before you slip in carries over instead of vanishing. Huh.
I gained a piece of knowledge that was useful, but that I really could have done without learning right now. My arm throbbed.
Master...
Oh no...
Having a shield didn't mean the force of an attack simply evaporated.
And the Twin Dragon Sword wasn't even a proper shield to begin with. Narrow surface area, no curves or slopes to speak of — which meant none of the impact got distributed. It all came straight through.
That was why the collision with the Wraith transmitted itself undiluted into my arm. It didn't feel broken, but I was certain something had cracked in there. It hurt that much.
...Maybe I should just stay put in here?
I'd jumped in too hastily to catch my breath properly, but lung capacity was the one thing I'd trained intensively right after acquiring Shadow Stepping. Without moving a muscle, I could hold out another twenty or thirty seconds. Long enough that there was a decent chance the Wraith would wander off on its own.
But...
And then what? It was a foregone conclusion where the Wraith would head once it took its eyes off me, wasn't it?
I already knew how this ended if I didn't move.
Us...
Difficult...
What about simply drawing the Twin Dragon Sword instead? It wasn't as though I'd never considered it.
But could I actually wield the drawn sword properly? Could I truly swing that violent power and precisely intercept the Wraith — and land the hit without clipping the dormitory building or anything else behind it?
Let's keep the Twin Dragon Sword as the last resort. The risk of missing is way too high.
Collateral damage wasn't the only problem, either. There was also the small matter of how the last single swing had left me retching on the ground for over ten minutes.
If my attack glanced off, I'd have to face the Wraith in a state where even walking was a struggle. No — I couldn't afford to use it carelessly.
But seriously, WHY is nobody coming!!
I watched the coordinates of the land of the living and my own position in the underworld fail to intersect. The Wraith seemed to be deliberating over where I would pop out next.
The ghost with the bamboo tube dangling behind it like a tail rapped the cylinder hard, hard, hard against the ground. Honestly, it was a horror game in everything but name.
Horror media got banned nationwide so my tolerance is already nonexistent — hold on. The bamboo tube?
The Wraith's true nature was a ghost — a soul-type entity — so landing a direct hit on it was beyond me.
But the bamboo tube it carried? Wasn't that a physical object with actual form? In that case, shouldn't I be able to strike it regardless of whether the Wraith was attacking or not?
Even if hitting the tube doesn't damage the Wraith itself...
At the very least, I could change its physical location. Say — like when the Wraith had gone flying, tube and all, out of that cadet's hands earlier.
If it doesn't work, I just duck back down here. No harm done.
If it failed, I lost nothing; if it worked, I'd gain one more route for buying time. I threw myself straight into testing the hypothesis.
The instant my body burst back into reality, I swung the bundled Twin Dragon Sword with everything I had. Startled by my sudden emergence, the Wraith couldn't react in time.
CRACK!
Like a puck clipped by a hockey stick, the bamboo tube went skidding away in a flat, whipping arc — flying clear in the opposite direction from the dormitory. The Wraith inside it went with it.
It worked...!
My prediction had hit dead-on: the Curse Wraith existed bound to the tube's physical location. A shallow rush of elation flooded through me.
If this works, holding out longer isn't out of the question!
This was an attack the Wraith would struggle to counter even after learning from it. In other words, the game of tag could stretch on. The odds that I could hold out until an instructor arrived had just gone up.
My eyes tracked the flying Wraith relentlessly.
"...Krlgh."
Then, for a moment — a thin, briny taste of blood abruptly filled my mouth.
"Kgh."
Unable to endure the thick, heavy sensation striking the back of my throat, I heaved out a deep breath.
Splat. The pale-yellow packed dirt of the walking path — tamped down so hard just to make strolling pleasant — bloomed with stains of red. Not a huge amount, but by no means a trickle either.
"Hh..."
Worse, the color of the blood soaking into the ground was not good. Even under the dim lighting, it was the kind of hue that made an instinct whisper, wait, that color is wrong.
And it was at that point that I finally registered the critical fact I'd overlooked.
For starters — the Curse Wraith was no ordinary ghost. It was a vengeful spirit created for the express purpose of cursing.
Ghosts bearing grudges were dangerous enough as it was, but this thing had been born from the very beginning as a spirit meant to curse other people.
Furthermore, curses typically took no physical form. That was precisely what made them terrifying — and precisely what made them lethal.
...Anyone the Wraith invades suffers head pains and stomach pains, right?
In other words, it was a disease. The Curse Wraith made its victims sick.
And it was a sickness that would never heal until the Wraith itself was reclaimed.
Grave danger.
Gravely ill.
But I had no power to seal the Curse Wraith. Fleeing into the underworld wouldn't cure this affliction either.
If an instructor came, then sure, they could haul me off to a hospital and treat me somehow...
Draw us.
Take us in hand.
Would instructors who hadn't come for all this time arrive in the next few dozen seconds? And even if they did — would I still be alive by then?
From the very moment I recognized the truth, I could feel my whole body rotting away from the inside. That was the kind of vicious curse this was.
Slay the Curse Wraith.
When the source is severed...
the curse shall fade as well.
And the plague shall be washed away.
There was only one way.
You must cut it down.
Cut it down where it stands.
So what if I wasn't supposed to draw the Twin Dragon Sword without permission? The penalty for breaking that restriction was something I could only suffer through if I was alive to receive it.
...It's time, isn't it.
I could see the Wraith, flung far away, recovering its balance. The ground beside the walking path sloped gently, so it would likely take the thing a little longer to close the distance to me.
"Twin Dragon Sword."
Watching it come, I called upon my final bastion. As if it had been waiting, the sword tore its seal to shreds.
So this time, you grant me your service.
Last time, I'd swung the White Fang, hadn't I.
It wasn't intentional, but this time the Black Fang landed in my hand. I couldn't swing both at once, so grabbing whichever came first had meant grabbing the Black Fang.
One of my hands closed around the hilt wrapped in black leather; the other stripped away the scabbard.
It was not easy. Rotting flesh and cracked bone hurt with an exquisitely irritating persistence. My vision abruptly flushed red too — it seemed even the blood vessels in my eyes had burst.
Tap-tap, tatatatat. The Curse Wraith began its charge toward me.
We shall meet your expectations.
But when I had taken my pre-swing stance with the Black Fang in hand — when the distance between the Wraith and me had narrowed to about fifteen meters —
One swing, and all is scoured away.
my reason asked me one final question.
Was this truly right? Was this genuinely the only way?
Let blood flood the mountains and rivers—
Was releasing this enormous power — this savage, utterly untamable dragon — out into the open the only way to use the Twin Dragon Sword?
"No."
A provisional contract was still a contract. And if so, then this power, too, was something I ought to be able to control.
"I never said you could do that."
I didn't want to die. But I also refused to spend my whole life being pushed around by the Twin Dragon Sword's power.
This was my life.
I would decide it, and I would choose it.
"So just hold still."
The first time is hard; the second time, not so much.
I forcibly endured the power surging inside the Black Fang without letting a single drop of it out. I'd managed that much for one or two seconds last time, so it wasn't difficult — just grueling.
"The swinging is my job."
But I didn't stop there. I went one step further.
Beyond merely gripping and holding down a force so violent that endurance itself was agony, I dragged it — all of it — deep into my hand.
...Haha! Hahahahahaha!!
Had I seized a storm? Or caught a tsunami in my fist?
Golden flames crawled along my hand and arm and spread across my whole body.
Meanwhile, the distance to the Wraith was now five meters. It moved by crawling on its arms, slow until it built up momentum. Two seconds left, by the clock.
That spirit of yours — it is more than worthy to be master of this Black Fang!
Every fiber of me wanted to vent this violent power outward right now. I wanted relief, God knew I did. But I gritted my teeth and held.
The Twin Dragon Sword was a Phantasm that had contracted with me. Its power was my power, and its strength was mine to command.
Devour it greedily! Wield it as you please! Bend our will to yours and swing us wherever you desire!
My own power had no right to harm me.
It is for this that we were forged as tools!
In an instant, the storm went still. No — from this moment on, I was the storm.
The black dragon settled into my body.
Hungryyy!!
And the moment the Curse Wraith reached the very tip of my nose —
Black fangs split it in two.