The Island Is the Monster
And with that, we arrived at the moving island.
No—really.
We rowed up like it was any old ferry crossing and moored without a hitch.
"It's all a bit anticlimactic, oh... hohohoho. Right?"
Hayeon, who had stubbornly kept her mouth shut until this very moment, suddenly came out with that amid a flurry of theatrical laughter.
I gave some manner of reply, but what even was that? Was the noblewoman's laugh in fashion these days? I stole a glance back at Hayeon, only to find her gauging the other students' reactions instead of mine. Clearly, no answer would be forthcoming.
I was still turning that over as I tied the boat off along the shore when Seoa crept up beside me and whispered:
"Master, what is this?!"
"What now."
"Wait—we could just come up like this?! What on earth has the Namhae Branch been doing for half a year?!"
"Seoa, what time do you think it is?"
"Oh."
Seoa let out a quiet, deflated gasp.
And that was precisely the point. It was six in the morning—an hour better described as dawn. How was any civil servant supposed to know about a shimmer that only revealed itself at this hour? They'd had half a year, sure, but flip it around and that was a mere six months. Nobody clocks in early because someone reported a mirage at six in the morning—least of all when there wasn't another open gate anywhere nearby. The report Seoa had passed along just yesterday said as much, in fact. "No anomalies in the gates across the Namhae area. High probability of a simple mirage"—or words to that effect. A sound judgment, all things considered. The outcome simply hadn't bothered to cooperate.
"Still, who knew it'd be this easy? Why did no one ever think of this before?"
"Beats me. Superstition, maybe?"
"Superstition?"
"It's a common one, no? Don't go near islands you don't know."
"Hmmm~"
Seoa hummed a thoroughly skeptical note through her nose, but a shrug soon followed.
Then again, she couldn't exactly argue. It was this simple—so why had not one person in all that time thought to set foot on this island? That was what Seoa had asked, but there was a very real mercy in the fact that nobody ever had. Because if they had... nine times out of ten, they'd have died.
Take this island's environment, for one. I drew a slow breath and swept my gaze around us. Compared to the harbor, the mana here was dense to the point of excess—and laced through it, that foul stench only monsters carried.
"This island's already been occupied by monsters."
"Aigoo, you brat."
Smack!! My palm cracked across the back of Seoa's head, cutting short her affectedly grave muttering.
"Ow!! Master, seriously, again?!"
"That's my line, you pyro. You're giving me an ulcer, honestly."
"What?! Why now?!"
"It's not on the level of 'occupied.' This island is the monster."
"...What?"
I had, to be fair, seen some of it coming. Along the southern coast, the legend of the moving island almost always pointed to a promised land—a Peach Blossom Spring, a paradise no one could ever reach no matter how far they walked. Which was why, from the moment I heard this one was drifting steadily toward land, the moving-island legend had been squarely off my list of suspects. But then, what was an island doing the exact opposite—closing in on the shore? For better or worse, Korea happened to have a legend that fit the bill perfectly.
"Guisusan—the Turtle-Head Mountain. Never heard of it?"
"Guisusan..."
Just what the name said: a mountain wearing a turtle's head. One of the most infamous A-Rank monsters in all of South Korea. A divine beast said to have surfaced in the East Sea in the age of King Sinmun of Silla, and the creature famed as the source of the Manpasikjeok—the treasured flute enshrined among Silla's legendary Three Wonders and Eight Anomalies. Its defining trait was sheer, monumental scale: an overwhelming bulk recorded as having drifted in from the East Sea like an entire mountain on the tide. In short, the island under our feet right now was, in and of itself, a single monster.
"Blegh."
"First time? Going up against a monster this size?"
"Of course it is! It's not exactly an everyday occurrence!"
"Good. Give it your best, then."
"Huh?"
At my out-of-nowhere remark, Seoa made a deflated little sound, staring at me in open disbelief. I meant every word.
I had no intention of joining this subjugation.
"Wait—Master!!"
"What? It works out perfectly. Where else are you going to find an opportunity like this?"
As I'd said, Guisusan was an A-Rank monster—and an A-Rank label, put another way, also meant it had its deficiencies next to other A-Rank monsters. In Guisusan's case, the single overwhelming attribute was the colossal mass produced by that gargantuan body. Everything else was a weakness. From the very beginning, Guisusan had never been built for combat; the legend itself said as much, in the record of how it vanished the moment the bamboo on its back—the material of the Manpasikjeok—was harvested. It simply lacked any real means of attack.
Given its habit of trying to come ashore, failing to stop it in advance would invite nothing but an unspeakable catastrophe. A lone hunter would be hard-pressed to stall Guisusan's advance—but then, Guisusan would never move to intercept hunters first, either. Instead, it cultivated an entirely separate ecosystem across its back, a presence so vast you'd mistake it for a genuine mountain. Layer on the extraordinary circumstances of the Cataclysm, add Guisusan's own mana to the mix, and predicting what manner of disaster would follow took no great effort. Which was why, during the Cataclysm, its threat level had been judged less by the creature itself and more by the kinds of monsters that had nested on its back.
...Mana packed far too dense. A perfect haven for monsters shoved out of their gates by numbers that had swelled beyond all reason even as the gates expanded—or for those whose gates had closed, stranding them with nowhere to return. Put plainly, Guisusan was a dungeon in the truest sense of the word: another great nest, raised by monsters that had taken root in reality. In a single phrase, an aircraft carrier for monsters.
This case would surely be no different. A Guisusan that had lingered since the Cataclysm had, by some turn of fate, woken up—and the yoho coiled atop its back had stirred into motion along with it. Or perhaps they'd only arrived after it woke. Either way, it was a genuinely fine opportunity. The settled monsters were yoho-class; in other words, barring a mistake of spectacular proportions, there was nowhere for trouble to rear its head. The students would walk away with the priceless experience of clearing a dungeon, and it would do Seoa a world of good besides.
"Or what, are you planning to keep running to me with questions?"
"Urk."
"If you're going to be a teacher, you need to think about how you're actually going to teach these kids. You can't hide behind the rookie-teacher excuse forever."
"Ngh, fine. I get it, I get it! Honestly, would it kill you to say things nicely for once..."
To Seoa, of course, this was a bolt from the blue—but it wasn't wrong. I might have trained Seoa before, but from where she stood, this would feel like learning by slamming headfirst into bare earth, over and over. Some things only come into view once you're the one standing at the front of a class, responsible for the students yourself.
Besides, Seoa's skill level was its own problem—a fact made plain the moment she admitted she'd never fought a monster of this size. Hunters of the post-Cataclysm generation ran comparatively weaker. In truth, Seoa's ability was A+ Rank in name; judged against the standards of the Cataclysm itself, it sat closer to A-Rank. It couldn't be helped. Under international standards, the measure of a hunter's rank came down, above all else, to pure ability. Using Seoa as the example: a hunter who could subjugate an A-Rank monster one-on-one earned the A-Rank rating. From there, a minus was appended only when a favorable matchup or plain luck had done the heavy lifting. Conversely, handle an A-Rank monster with practiced ease, and you'd earn the plus.
That said, with the Cataclysm officially over, the calculus had inevitably shifted. These days, the closest a hunter came to facing a monster was inspecting a gate under Association management. Association backing with zero personal risk. Intel on tap. And, as Seoa herself had mentioned, a dedicated operator assigned by her guild. Under those conditions, skills had no choice but to dull. Even among A+ Rank hunters, one who had survived the Cataclysm and one who had only ever taken down pre-designated targets after exhaustive preparation—no matter how you stacked them, the former's practical combat power came out on top.
Which was exactly why I wanted Seoa racking up experience. For the sake of survival. Against the Cataclysms still to come, naturally—and against those lunatics who'd stop at nothing, too.
"Well, you'll manage just fine. That's exactly why I'm leaving it to you."
"Ugh, fiiine. Then I guess I have no choice~"
"Easy..."
"Hm? What was that?"
"Nothing. Just that Guisusan pays decently, so give it your all. If it gets too hairy, I'll step in."
"Oh, come on—you can't say all that and then take it back!! You'd better hold onto that worry nice and tight!!"
Delighted beyond all reason, Seoa went flouncing off as she said it.
Before long, I felt glances flicking my way in time with whatever Seoa was hollering. I gave those kids a perfunctory wave—but only for a moment. Then, careful not to be caught by our girls, who were off dividing up roles among themselves, I quietly slipped out of sight.
...It wasn't as if I'd lied. Seoa was the one who'd accepted the commission, not me, and it was equally true that she had to be the one at the center of seeing it through. But that wasn't the whole of it.
I moved at an unhurried pace, and with every step, the banked fog tried to coil around my body. Deeply unpleasant.
Fox Rain. I hadn't told Seoa, but this fog was fox illusion, plain and simple—the drizzle yoho were said to summon to bury their own footsteps whenever they moved. The heavy mist that reportedly blanketed the island each time Guisusan stirred would have been mana scattered by the yoho perched on its back. Should I call it the foxes moving, or the foxes moving carried upon Guisusan?
So it holds even while riding the thing. I appended a line to the activation conditions for Fox Rain that I'd been filing away in my head.
In any case, Guisusan had been observed off Namhae for a good half year now. Rather than swallow the strained assumption that not a single soul had ever thought to climb it before we came along, the illusion explanation was simply more sensible. Even factoring in superstition, the same held. Half a year was half a year—plenty of time.
Factoring all that in, the chain of events I'd reconstructed was almost insultingly simple. One day, Guisusan opened its eyes. The yoho that had settled on its back accordingly sprang into action. They veiled Guisusan's movements in Fox Rain and buried their stronghold from sight. The finished product was the rumor of an island that moved through seas of pristine white fog.
Working from that base, the yoho who had blended seamlessly into the local scene eventually made their move. They seized the Namhae Branch and stopped the Association's eyes and ears. The yoho who made their procession out of Guisusan raised strongholds on the mainland. Six whole months. Over half a year, the foxes had brought Namhae to heel.
Which is to say, the heart of this mirage incident was never a question of whether the rumor's source was Guisusan or a simple trick of light. It had been a good three years, officially, since the Second Great Cataclysm ended. This was an invasion of Namhae by a horde of yoho. And that was why I was standing here.
I had every confidence I could kill the foxes. But what if I went around poking at their nests? What would the yoho do then? They might stand and fight once, maybe twice. But after three or four sound thrashings, they'd start avoiding me on instinct. The worst possible ending. Unlike creatures who could simply lie low for a spell and resurface at their leisure, I was working against a deadline called 'school break.' Which made this Guisusan operation, in effect, a lightning raid.
No guesswork required—the foxes ashore would be climbing the walls. Who on earth had landed on Guisusan straight through the Fox Rain? What had become of the compatriots sworn to keep the island hidden? In truth, monster illusions simply didn't work on me—but from where they stood, panic was the only sane response.
Had they been seasoned soldiers, they'd have dispatched a vanguard to Guisusan—their homeland, such as it was. But. They were beasts.
Besides, if this commission really was what I suspected—a yoho landing operation staged from Guisusan—then the boss is on Guisusan. That, too, would explain why the yoho pack I'd fought before had no leader to speak of. Send the advance party first; come ashore once Namhae was fully in hand. Simple as that.
And the call that the landbound yoho—cut off from their leader's orders, running in circles—would make next was plain as day. They'd try to come home en masse. After all, Ye-eun and I had thoroughly flipped one of the vanguard's strongholds just yesterday. ...And with the Fox Rain pierced, the pack might already have taken losses.
In which case, they'd commit the pack's full strength. Crush the invader flat, then return to the fold. For a pack of beasts that was no army, it was the rational conclusion. It was also precisely what I was banking on.
I had no intention of tediously stomping on fox tails one at a time. Letting even a single one slip away was further from my mind still. One sweep, total annihilation. The only reason I'd come here was for exactly that.
With a sharp ring of steel, I raised my weapon.