Slaying the Jigwi (2)
"Wh-what is that NOISE?!"
The bike rolled over the shattered vehicle barrier and onto the road leading out of the military base.
But my nerves were entirely consumed by the sound of the exhaust. There was nothing I could do about it. The noise the bike made was just so, so loud.
'What do you think!! Amazing, right?! That's because I come with a tuned exhaust, baby!!'
"That is NOT what I meant!!"
At this level of racket, wouldn't the Bulgasal catch on to us?
Almost as if the universe had heard my thought, a heavy thudding echoed from behind us.
KrrrOOOAR!
What followed was the roar of the Bulgasal. In the side mirror, I could even see it leaping over the hill after us.
So much for stealth — we'd fully drawn what you'd call "aggro."
'Kyaaaaah! It's chasing us!! It's chasing us!!'
"That's YOUR fault! Oh, seriously!!"
If it was going to be like this, I should never have taken your handle and just bolted on my own! At least then I could've slipped away quietly!
I'd been so dazzled by the speed the bike could hit that the exhaust noise never once crossed my mind. That was my fatal mistake.
'I should've been suspicious the moment I saw the flashy paint job……!'
But how much could a kid not even twenty years old really know about motorcycles?
In my previous life, I'd had zero interest in bikes to begin with. I mean, come on — when your entire existence was confined to a hospital room, what good was caring about motorcycles or sedans? "If the side mirror is folded out, a car door might open" was the absolute peak of my automotive knowledge!
'Although, it was flashy paint, but it wasn't movie-grade flashy……!'
Besides, the bike I was riding now wasn't one of those sleek, beefy machines you always saw in films.
The front end looked like it belonged on a bicycle, and the whole body was slim. The paint job was nothing more than glossy black with a few English letters scrawled on in bright colors.
To a layman's eye, it looked like it wouldn't be loud at all! I genuinely felt wronged!
'……Forget it. What's done is done!'
The throttle was already in my grip.
I hunched my upper body low to cut down wind resistance as much as I could, sweeping my gaze over the road ahead. What I saw was a surface in terrible shape for riding at top speed.
Jolt! THUD!
Every time we ran over a pothole or clipped a loose stone, the whole frame shuddered violently. Each impact made my hips and lower back feel like they were being pulverized, but I had no choice but to endure it.
The side mirror showed the Bulgasal chasing us like something out of its mind.
'Insane! Insane! How much iron have you been shoving into this thing?!'
Worse yet, the thing wasn't falling behind. If anything, it felt like it was gaining on us. Meaning the Bulgasal's speed was no joke even against this bike's.
'If I push us to top speed, maybe……!'
The problem was the road. The surface was such a mess that even a seasoned rider wouldn't have dared to open up the throttle here.
Jolt! Even dodging the potholes, the bike bucked and lurched again and again — proof enough of that. This was no place where even an unlicensed rider like me could comfortably pick up speed.
BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG!
But the threat bearing down on me from behind was just as undeniably real.
Trapped between the two, my brain scrambled desperately for an answer.
"Bike-ssi, you're compensating at maximum right now, right?!"
If I couldn't win with speed, what else was there?
My head, which had been busy steering around obstacles, finally wrestled something resembling an answer out of the road ahead.
'Huh? What was that? Compensating?'
"Your riding skill!"
'Oh, ohhh!!!'
Object-type phantoms had one particular trait: they granted their user a basic grasp of how to operate them, plus a measure of proficiency.
It was thanks to this that I'd started the bike so smoothly despite never having ridden one, and manipulated the clutch without fumbling. Without it, I'd probably have been caught ages ago — or still be sitting in that parking lot, groaning over the ignition.
"I'm counting on you!!"
So what about cornering skill — something no beginner could ever hope for?
The 'Yahui' from before age sixteen hadn't been some delinquent tearing around on a bike, so I wouldn't get much help from any lingering muscle memory…… but what if the proficiency the phantom provided combined with my natural sense of balance?
'Huh? Uhhh—hm?? Wait, wait! Even if I compensate, the best I can give you is—!'
Proficiency isn't handed over as knowledge — it arrives as instinct. Just like the physical senses the original 'Yahui' had trained into his body were never directly bequeathed to my mind.
So I held only the image I wanted in my head and relaxed my hands completely.
As if it had only been waiting for that, my hands moved on their own. The throttle eased off, dropping our speed just a touch.
At the same moment, the handlebars snapped sharply to the side.
SCREEEECH!
The wheels and frame that had been tearing down the ruined road tilted clean over. With the fields on my left and the forest rolling toward the mountains on my right, my body and the bike slid smoothly sideways to the right.
The uneven earth and flying gravel tore at the fabric along my arms and legs.
'Whoa whoa whoa whoa! Isn't that way too reckless?!?!'
Just before the bike could tip over, my arm slammed against the ground on pure reflex. The rebound swung the bike back upright, and we found our balance again.
ROAAAR! Alongside the skid marks, our lost speed came rushing back. Every time the speedometer climbed, the exhaust howled like something possessed.
And yet the sound didn't feel as deafening as before. My heartbeat had grown so thunderous, pounding so loudly against my eardrums, that the exhaust noise seemed almost quiet by comparison.
Thud-thud-thud-thud. It felt like my heart had swollen all the way up to my throat. Even the hand that had scraped and dragged along the ground didn't hurt right now.
KrrrOOOAR!
By then, we were a good few dozen meters past the curve. The Bulgasal reappeared in the side mirror.
I'd wondered if it might just smash straight through the trees to cut across the forest, but thankfully it had stuck to the road — probably because the woods sloping up toward the mountains were just steep enough to be inconvenient.
KrruuuOOONG!
In the little mirror I watched it fail to carry its momentum through the turn and skid out completely. That bought us time, and the gap it had closed reset right back to zero.
'No way, no no no no! You actually pulled that off? Hey, HEY. You said you've never ridden a bike! Never ridden one!!'
"Which is what I've been telling you!"
By that point, the road had improved a little.
I pushed our speed a bit higher. The speedometer climbed to 60 km/h. At this rate, I might actually shake the Bulgasal.
'That doesn't even make sense! Look, I'm helping you as much as I can, but what you just did is beyond—'
"Is there a problem?!"
'No, it's not that there's a problem— wait, YOU'RE the reason?!?!'
"What on earth is it then?! What's the problem NOW?! Just tell me!!"
Between dragging the Bulgasal behind me and filming my own high-speed chase scene, my brain already felt ready to burst. My very first time on a motorcycle, and there was apparently so much more to keep track of than I'd imagined.
And now a new problem on top of that? Just hearing it made my sense of injustice swell double. That was why I'd snapped at him so sharply.
'No, no, if I had to put it one way, it's not really a problem! It's just — your talent is INSANE!'
Then something rose up into my view — a swell of asphalt like a hill, or a launching ramp.
Swerving around the edge wasn't an option; the drop between the road and everything that wasn't road was too great. One side was the fields, sunk deep and soft. The other was forest — worse, a retaining wall had been built up along it. There was no way around.
In that instant, my instincts made the same choice: speed up.
'Hey, would you consider making a contract with me?!'
ROAAAR!
The bike hit a splintered slab of asphalt like a plank and leapt. And since the broken piece of road simply ended in midair, we sailed through the open air for a moment for good measure.
'No, please, PLEASE do it! Huh?! Huh?!?!'
Rather than answer what had all but become a desperate plea, I pulled my body forward and doubled over as far as I could.
With the weight above shifting, the front wheel naturally dipped lower than the rear.
Thud. The front wheel wobbled as it landed, spreading the impact through the bike and my whole body. Thump. The rear wheel settled solidly onto the ground right after.
Not once in that sequence did I feel the fear of tipping over. The bike tore off down a road worse than a gravel bed again.
'Let's contract, contract with meee!'
"Too distracting — talk later!"
'Oh, okay, okay…….'
Talent this, contract that — it didn't sound like bad news, whatever it was, so I shelved it for now.
What mattered at this moment was deciding my response after landing, based on the route ahead that I'd scouted while airborne.
Careful not to bite my tongue as we jolted along, I kept checking the side mirror.
The distance we should've opened up while accelerating had, ridiculously, stayed almost exactly the same as before. The monster was entirely to blame.
Roaring like its eyes had rolled back in its head, it closed in far faster than I'd imagined possible.
'Damn it, I have to shake it somehow……!'
If this had been downtown, losing it would've actually been easier — plenty of cover to break line of sight. Maybe the Bulgasal would even have given up on us amid all that iron.
"Hey, by any chance, do you know where the nearest town is—"
Then, far across the fields, toward the direction of the looming mountains, I spotted things that I couldn't decide whether to call pale or black. They lay along the route connected to the road I was riding.
'Huh? What was that? Town?'
Buildings? Were those buildings?
And if those really were buildings, was that cluster of dots a village? Could you even call it a village?
Just as my head was getting tangled up in all this, I had the distinct feeling those dots were closing in awfully fast. A shallow impression, not yet anything I could turn into a conclusion.
'See, driving was entirely my partner's job back then, so my geography knowledge is pretty—'
KrrrEEEAAARG!
Another roar thundered out. At first I thought the Bulgasal had howled again, but on second listen, something was different.
The cry was subtly different — and this roar was coming not from behind, but from ahead.
'That sound…… just now…….'
And beneath that roar, unmistakably, there was…….
'What now?! There's another one IN FRONT?!'
I yanked my train of thought back onto the rails before it could veer off into a side alley.
Should I stop? No — stopping in this situation amounted to choosing to be caught and killed by the Bulgasal.
Then turn off? But the nearest fork in the road was at least 200 meters away. The roar had come from much farther off than that — but if whatever made it was running toward me, that distance would shrink in a heartbeat. I couldn't afford to relax.
Crash-crash-crash-BOOM!
Then, as if to spare me the trouble of deciding, something burst out of the forest along the right side of the road. Four seconds after the roar first sounded.
'Kyaah! Ahead! Ahead!'
Whatever had come charging out of the woods was roughly a hundred meters from me.
Which gave me just enough time to work out what it was and how to respond. Just enough — not plenty.
"……!"
Kreung.
The thing I'd examined in those split seconds had the silhouette of a tiger and green fur. The horn jutting from its head and the fin-like wings growing along its shoulders struck me as especially bizarre.
'Run.' A voice overlapping the creature's cry made my head swim.
ROAAAAR!
It had spotted me — yet with an indifferent gaze, it simply gave way. For a moment, all my effort to run along the roadside and avoid a collision felt somewhat wasted.
'A Hogukgomo…….'
But it hadn't been completely pointless, either. At the very least, I'd gained a new piece of information: the thing might not be my enemy.
Maybe it had been certain of that even before it stepped aside for me.
'No wait — was it Hogurokmo, not Hogukgomo?'
Hogurokmo (Tiger-like Body, Green Fur). A beast of legend resembling a tiger, but with green fur, a horn, and wingless wings.
It never appeared in the main story or the fanbook, but back when I was deep in my searches for Eastern folklore creatures, I'd fallen in love with its design and remembered it to this day.
As I passed the Hogurokmo, my eyes flicked to the side mirror.
On its surface, the green tiger stood with its back to me, waiting for the Bulgasal. Judging by size alone, it looked like the Hogurokmo would be sent flying in a single blow.
'Whoa whoa whoa whoa! Ahead! Ahead, again!'
But before the Hogurokmo and the Bulgasal could collide, the bike called out to me.
I hurriedly tore my eyes from the mirror and scanned the road ahead. Someone was standing on it — someone who hadn't been there moments ago.
Like the Hogurokmo, he seemed to have emerged from the forest, a few dead leaves still clinging to him.
'The fire in my heart burns through this body.'
As the distance closed, his face came into focus — handsome at a glance.
Grinning, the man muttered to himself while gesturing for me to hurry past.
'That's…… not a person.'
The distance between us wasn't far, but there was no risk of collision. My habit of hugging the roadside to dodge the Hogurokmo was still carrying us wide.
And so the man and I passed each other without incident. My gaze locked onto the side mirror again.
'I have become the Bulgwishin — the spirit that does not return.'
FwooOOOOSH.
Just as a searing heat washed over my back, I saw the man in the mirror become engulfed in flames.
The Hogurokmo had already fallen back farther than the man.
Kreung!
After a single bark, the Hogurokmo began sprinting in my direction. Now the closest pursuer to the Bulgasal was the flame-wreathed man.
'Burn, burn, let it ALL burn! Burn away even this heart that yearned for its king!'
The fire consuming the man's body grew larger and larger still, until at last it spread across the entire road. The Bulgasal closing in beyond it let out a shriek-like howl.
'Wh-what is THAT now?! It's a walking fireball!'
"……A Jigwi."
If my eyes weren't deceiving me, that was a being from the reign of Queen Seondeok — someone who had adored the king so deeply that his own fire had wrapped around him, condemning him to burn for all eternity.
This one had actually appeared in the fanbook, and besides, the legend was famous enough that it would've been hard NOT to recognize.
Kreung!
By then the Hogurokmo had drawn level with the bike, and it gave me a jerk of its chin. 'Keep going.' I'd never read any lore about Hogurokmo being friendly to humans, but the creature showed not the slightest intent to attack me.
Vrrrrrooom!
'Oh! Hey, look! Look over there!'
"……People."
Moreover, the things I'd taken for "buildings?" weren't buildings at all. Every last one of them was a military vehicle.
At the sight of firepower that could actually protect me, my shoulders sagged with momentary relief.
'It was…… the mountain, then…….'
Judging by the side mirror, the Bulgasal had been completely cut off by the wall of fire. Slowing down a little, then, shouldn't cause any problems.
I eased off the speed so the military base could properly identify me. When I slowed, the Hogurokmo running alongside me slackened its pace to match.
From the moment it hadn't attacked me, I'd suspected as much — but this Hogurokmo appeared to be an individual that had contracted with a human.
'Hey, they're waving at you.'
The trucks carrying the soldiers had virtually no roof and almost no side walls.
One of the men aboard leapt to his feet and waved at me. Some prearranged signal between drivers, maybe — I couldn't make head or tail of the gestures.
'That's a signal to stop.'
Thankfully, the bike interpreted it for me. Trusting the translation, I gradually slowed further.
'……The Bulgasal won't be getting past that, at least.'
Bulgasal lore, as it happened, split into two breeds: the kind that didn't flinch at fire, and the kind that died to it. Since this one had halted its advance at the Jigwi's flames, it clearly belonged to the latter.
With the threats to my life judged gone, I let myself breathe a little easier.
That said, I didn't kill the engine. For any eventuality, I had to be ready to bolt at a second's notice.
"A civilian?"
Several dozen seconds later, the vehicles carrying the soldiers rolled past me. Not all of them, though. One stopped right in front of me.
To signal I had no intention of resisting, I raised both hands. Whether it worked or not, the soldiers held their rifles, but none were pointed at me.
"Are you a civilian…… wait, that training uniform."
"……I was taking the military academy entrance exam when I got dragged into this insane world. Please, I'm begging you — let me live."
A life-or-death fight against two lizardmen, a midwinter night spent sleeping outdoors, three skipped meals, a random venture into the Rear World, and now a chase with my life on the line.
All I wanted now, truly, was to just please rest for a while.