King in the Mountain
"Tell me—do you know the concept called the King in the Mountain?"
"...You mean the King in the Mountain?"
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Those were the kinds of truths that came pouring out one after another—the sort that, had they been submitted to a newspaper, would have run under headlines like those for days on end.
Yet for all that, Tiamat—the very heart of the matter—kept speaking in that same flat, unhurried tone. Thanks to her, I too was forced to steady myself, despite the dizziness brought on by the torrent of revelations spilling out nonstop.
So then—what exactly was this "King in the Mountain" that Tiamat had just put a name to? In a word, something resembling a savior legend.
There were heroes fated to deliver a people or a nation—the so-called supermen who ride in on white horses.
But.
A savior grievously wounded by a traitor's hand, or by the blunder of an ally. In time, they leave the mortal world behind to tend to those wounds—leaving with them a promise: that when the hour of their return came at last, healed of every hurt, this time they would truly save their homeland.
In our country, you might call it the legend of the infant general Uturi.
And.
"The true nature of the event you people call the Great Cataclysm is not so very different."
"...What?"
That was Tiamat's verdict.
"Surely you are not unaware? That among the Kings in the Mountain, there exist those of a rather different breed."
She meant it literally. In short, the root of every King in the Mountain legend is the longing for a better world to come.
The world we live in now is not heaven. All the more, then, do people yearn for salvation.
The day the white-horsed superman would finally arrive. A legend that mirrors the wishes of the common folk, who dreamed that when that day came, they too would be saved and set foot in heaven. The King in the Mountain is the very embodiment of that hope.
And therefore.
The world is also home to no small number of King in the Mountain legends that carry a warning instead. Let us make a good world—a world fit to welcome the savior when he comes again. For should the savior depart this earth once more, the world shall fall into the clutches of evil...
Warnings shaped in exactly that mold.
Typhon, mentioned only moments ago, was no different. The Extra-standard monster said to have touched off the First Great Cataclysm followed the same pattern.
Typhon, king of monsters, fated to one day throw off the lid of hell and descend upon the earth. To keep him in check, the gods of Olympus capped the mouth of hell with Mount Etna—then went so far as to establish Hephaestus's forge there as well. All of it to pin down the Typhon who would someday rise again.
O you who dwell under the protection of Zeus, king of the gods—never strip the lid from Mount Etna.
For should Typhon be loosed, the earth shall become hell once more!
In other words, you might call it the European cousin of the sack man—the old bogeyman who carries off naughty children in his bag.
However.
"Hmm? So that is how humans see it. How very intriguing."
"What?"
"But consider the matter in reverse. Do you not now know the truth of this world?"
Whether it was something that truly warranted a phrase as colossal as "the truth of the world," I honestly couldn't say. Even so, I could follow where she was going.
Exactly—those legends were, above all else, the perspective of present-day humanity. In other words, the mythological point of view.
But then—in a world where myth actually existed, what would Typhon's King in the Mountain legend mean?
"A prophecy."
"Correct."
Someday, in the far future, Typhon will be loosed upon the surface. When that hour comes, neither Mount Etna nor Hephaestus's forge will be able to do their job any longer. And the fact that Typhon is now trying to descend to the surface means, in a word, the defeat of the gods of Olympus.
It was also the reason the Constellations could not offer sweeping aid at present. Contrary to what countless hunters had assumed, there was a very concrete reason the Constellations never descended in person to sweep the monsters away.
Not out of respect for humanity's autonomy, nor because they pitied humanity but simply couldn't be bothered to step in. No—it was because every last one of them had already been beaten to death by Typhon.
If that was the case, then I could more or less guess why the Constellations dispensing revelations to humanity were all famous deities. To put it crudely: how could the likes of Laomedia, fifty-eighth of the Nereids, possibly survive against Typhon?
It wasn't that the famous deities were the ones chiefly making contact—it was that, once you set aside deities of that caliber, everyone else was dead. And judging by how Tiamat herself had been driven out with nothing to her name, the same presumably held true beyond Greek myth as well.
"Aren't these bastards just plain con artists?"
All those airs of dignity and refinement—and the whole time, they'd been wiped out ages ago, fighting a proxy war ever since through the very species that worshipped them. The Constellation bastards really did all deserve to die.
Which was why, in the face of Typhon's revival, the first to descend had been the deity of justice. Astraea.
The goddess of stars and justice handed down in Greco-Roman myth. Daughter of Zeus, king of the gods—and the goddess who, when the rest of the divine host left the earth sickened by humanity's depravity, stayed behind until the very last to guard mankind.
At the same time, she was the one who in the end could not endure that depravity either, and departed beyond the constellations like all the rest. And—the virgin of the stars who promised to return the day humanity, having reclaimed its justice, had need of her once more.
That was why, when she was the first to reveal herself before the Great Cataclysm that had finally begun, humanity said of her:
A goddess like the stars. A god descended into darkness like a boundless, endless sea, to lead humanity through it. In a word—a Constellation.
That was precisely why humanity had come to call the gods Constellations.
"The true nature of the gates, the truth behind the Great Cataclysm... I had a feeling that would be your next question, knowing you."
It had certainly helped. And at the same time, I understood. Why had Tiamat kept silent about all of this until now?
And it was not a question that began and ended with me. The truth behind the gates and the Cataclysm—something the chairman of the Korean Hunter Association, the President, and any number of others must have demanded at one time or another. Yet in all this time, I had never once heard that the most closely guarded knowledge of the myths entwined with monsters had come to light.
And. Now that I had heard everything, I could be certain of one thing.
"Prophecy."
This was not the kind of thing you could go around blurting out. The entire body of knowledge needed to explain the situation—that Constellations and monsters were, in truth, one and the same. And on top of that, the reason the Great Cataclysm had happened at all. Either one would do nothing, the instant it surfaced, but accelerate the chaos gripping society. Much like the very existence of Tiamat, a goddess descended upon the earth.
The leadership of every nation would doubtless be beside themselves. The Cataclysm happened because it was always going to happen? Because it was written in prophecy? No one would be able to swallow that. Human beings are, after all, creatures who go searching for a reason behind every tragedy that befalls them.
Expecting them to accept that the tragedy which stole family from three in ten South Koreans simply "happened"—that it was "prophesied"? That is precisely the sort of talk that gets you branded a shadow power and driven from office.
"The Great Cataclysm."
...Extra-standard monsters. Monsters sworn to return one day and scour the surface clean. The sire and progenitor of all monsters. Beasts that would drown this earth in ruin. No wonder the monsters followed them.
To their spawn, an Extra-standard monster was never merely some stronger predator. A colossal mass of raw power, destined to unleash a Great Cataclysm and pave the way for the invasion of the surface. Literally—a king of monsters, prophesied since time immemorial to lead them and drive humanity to the edge of the cliff. So that was what an Extra-standard monster was.
Which meant.
"Then the child you cherish so dearly must be much the same, I take it."
As though she had reached straight into my head, Tiamat put her finger squarely on my thoughts.
Yes. The purpose of that group—even Hayeon, the person directly involved, had answered "I don't know" when asked. And at the same time, the reason Hayeon was needed for that group's stated goal: the summoning of an Extra-standard monster. If all of it amounted to nothing more than a prophecy made long ago, then given enough time, it could be investigated.
Beings whose legends—or prophecies—of the mountain seclusion had survived. And among them, if I centered the search on legends that would allow a summoning ritual to work in this country...
"Hm? Is that not simply because there are no Constellations in South Korea?"
Summoning rituals weren't nearly that simple a thing, you dumbass.
Not that her point was entirely without merit. According to Tiamat, the Great Cataclysm was a fact prophesied in the distant age of myth. If a folk Constellation native to Korea existed who knew of it, there was no way they would have failed to expose those bastards' plan. Which must be exactly why they had chosen South Korea as their ritual ground.
That said. Summoning magic, at its core, revolves around the bond with the target. A spell that reaches beyond the laws of this world to drag a target here and now is, for that very reason, inherently unstable. In other words: the caster, and the magic circle. Beyond those, something more is needed to bind the summoned target to the present world.
It is the same reason catalysts are prepared—things like the target's fur, a horn or claw. Ground with ties to the target. Objects with ties to the target. Either one can serve as the weight that pins the target to this world.
Which meant one thing.
"The Extra-standard monster they intend to summon is very likely connected to this country."
To put it bluntly: summoning Yuseongsin in the Republic of South Africa, versus summoning her in South Korea. And even if not quite on South Korea's level, the difficulty in China or Japan could hardly be identical.
The problem, though, was that no likely candidate came to mind at the moment...
But that much couldn't be helped. Because our country's most representative King in the Mountain legend is the infant general Uturi.
Fuck. The infant general Uturi—rising from the land of the dead in a suit of bean armor, flapping his wings to wipe out humanity.
It would certainly be an unforgettable sight, but somehow I doubted that was the one. The infant general Uturi was never a King in the Mountain who came to punish mankind.
Besides—and I feel a little cheap saying this—next to Typhon, the man isn't even in the same weight class. Honestly, if it came down to the infant general Uturi, I figured I could probably take him. Then again, he wasn't a monster to begin with.
"Well then, narrow down your candidates in just that fashion. Someone like you should manage it easily enough."
"...Huh?"
At that point in my thinking, I abruptly raised my head. And watching me do it, Tiamat was wearing a strange, bitter smile.
An indefinable sense of wrongness. An atmosphere that made it impossible to press her on the awkwardness I'd caught in what Tiamat had just said. And so I, too, could do nothing for the moment but hold my tongue, quietly nursing that odd dissonance.