One Worse Than a Fiend (2)
—BOOM!
The mana flooding the space detonated. What began at the edge of a blade swelled until the entire chamber thundered with a colossal blast.
Hah. Now that is black magic.
It was one of the spells Marbas had taught me — the last one I'd learned, and somehow the first I'd actually used. A modified corpse-explosion technique: instead of detonating a corpse saturated with Black Mana, it detonated a monster already brimming with the stuff. The target still had to be motionless for the spell to take, and I still needed Marbas's help, but if I could open a fight with a hit this big, the trade was more than worth it.
The floor caved in, revealing a vast underground chamber. The sight that met my eyes was spectacular. Monsters packed the cavern wall to wall, jammed so tightly they seemed glued together — and a few of them were already twitching, trying to rise.
"I'd better hurry."
That single casting had drained roughly eighty percent of my mana. Even with Marbas assisting, the cost had been that steep. Had I attempted it alone, I would have collapsed from mana exhaustion before the real work even began.
With that thought, I leapt down into the cavern. Most of the monsters had died in the blast, but the survivors still thrashing about needed to be finished off quickly — better to prevent any accidents before they started.
Every monster that twitched or gave off even a whisper of presence met my blade without exception. And every one that fell was promptly drained of Black Mana by Miho, who trotted diligently along behind me.
In time, the last of them was dead. Miho had absorbed every last drop of Black Mana as well.
I'd originally planned to process these monsters for my own use…
But Miho had sucked them dry, leaving the corpses in terrible condition. Ah, well. Keep raising her like this and who knew — she might even grow extra tails someday.
I stood gazing at the mountain of monster corpses heaped across the vast chamber. There were beasts the size of elephants with great horns jutting from their brows; creatures covered head to toe in spikes as though clad in thorned armor; long-jawed things that looked like crocodiles. The variety alone was staggering. Seen all together, it was a genuine spectacle. Had the explosion not wiped out most of them, the fight would have been far uglier than I'd expected — even as corpses, more than a few of these things still radiated a formidable presence.
I erased what traces I could and prepared to descend the mountain. Bag on my back, sword in hand.
"All right. Let's go."
No need for a thorough cleanup. Miho had already drunk every scrap of residual Black Mana, almost no one ventured this deep into the mountains, and whatever mana traces remained could be tidied up easily enough.
Ah — since I'm already up here, I might as well take something valuable home.
I pulled a rat doll from my bag. The moment the little plush met the open air, it gave a tiny, contented shiver, as if the breeze felt wonderful.
"Where are you, vengeful souls who died upon this mountain — wronged spirits who perished in injustice? Where are you?"
I murmured the words into the doll, loading my voice with Black Mana. The rat plush trembled violently — then began to tug toward a particular direction.
"Ah. So that's where you are."
I walked the way the doll pulled, continuing the chant.
"Fiends of malice, spirits of venom — come forth. Come to me."
The doll shook harder still, the pull growing stronger.
"Fiends who drowned. Fiends who lost their footing and fell. Come to me."
Before long the rat doll was glowing with a faint, ominous light, leaking an unwholesome aura. The air around us seemed to drop in temperature, and several presences prickled at the edge of my senses.
Got you.
Fiends, drawn to the luminous doll, came into view. Creatures that should have been beguiling and harming people were themselves beguiled — fluttering toward the plush like moths to a flame. Fine by me.
"Come. Come. Come quickly. Devour this rat, take its strength, and grow powerful enough to kill."
⟨ Spirit Lure ⟩
Mana laced every word, and the fiends drifted closer to the doll.
I—was—pushed—off—the—cliff—path—and—died—
and—today—I—pushed—another—person—off—the—cliff—path—and—killed—them——
"There are quite a lot of them."
A black mage had supposedly passed through here only a few days ago — so how were there this many spirits left? What were black mages, after all, if not people constantly starving for sacrificial material? In the old days you could make someone disappear and no one would ever know, which made life easy for their kind. But in an era where supernatural abilities had gone public, the black mage's domain had become a red ocean choked with competitors. Between black mages and shamans sweeping up every usable spirit, almost no ghosts remained in Korea at all — so finding this many near the Academy's mountain was deeply strange.
[It seems they were deliberately stationed to protect the monsters.]
"That does seem right."
Marbas was correct — a black mage had almost certainly planted them on purpose, probably to keep the hidden monster cache from being discovered. That aside…
I waited until the slowly approaching fiends had drawn close enough to the doll. Then I triggered the spell bound into it.
The rat plush blazed with fierce light, wrapping every fiend in its radiance.
"Grrr… I can't take it, Robin."
Helpless inside the light, every last fiend was sucked into the doll. Fiends were useful enough — but the constant muttering was unbearable.
Back when I'd studied black magic in the training grounds, Marbas had explained them to me from a book. When a person dies clinging to lingering attachment or resentment, a ghost remains — the flesh gone to the afterlife while the soul is left behind, warped and stranded in the living world. A ghost is nothing more than a degraded soul. It does no harm to the living.
A fiend is different. A fiend is a ghost that has nurtured its grudge into power, or one that died already drowning in monumental hatred. Fiends can harm humans directly — luring them into drowning, making them fall from high places, possessing dolls to inflict physical damage. For all that menace, though, they are rare. Even a mountain this size would hold fewer than ten. The conditions for becoming a fiend are simply not easy to meet.
And yet fiends are so useful in black magic and shamanic arts that practitioners burn through them constantly, leaving black mages and shamans alike howling about the shortage. High demand, scarce supply. The word "fiend" carries such an ugly image that you can't even buy them on public sites or in open shops, so most black mages and shamans go hunting for them in person. When even that falls short, the truly vicious ones kidnap people and manufacture fiends themselves.
But creating a fiend by hand is ethically… well. You have to kill someone while filling them with overwhelming hatred. Complete psychopaths. How can one human being do that to another?
In any case, the fiends drawn into the rat doll offered no resistance and were sealed inside. They would never escape on their own. If one of them ever broke free of a spell cast by a contractor bound to Marbas, that creature would be a great evil indeed.
I kept roaming the mountain afterward, searching for more fiends, but only managed to pick up a handful of ordinary ghosts. So I simply bought a few more dolls at a mart and headed home.
The moment I walked through the door, I pulled a rat doll from my bag, settled into a spot in the living room, and picked up a rabbit plush.
Hmm… this one for security, maybe.
I extracted one ghost from the rat doll.
"From this day forward, you will be the dog that guards me."
I stuffed the ghost straight into the rabbit plush.
"Observe your surroundings carefully. If a stranger approaches, keep watch."
I laid my hand on the sealed rabbit doll and recited the incantation. Perfect. This rabbit plush was now a surveillance camera for the house — a black mage's excellent strategy of using a ghost as CCTV to boost monitoring efficiency. A security feed I could access inside my own head, if you will.
I held the rabbit doll and focused. I was looking at the plush, but what filled my vision was an image of myself.
"Excellent."
The experiment was a success. Just as that villain had once used dolls as familiars, I had tried embedding a soul into a plush and commanding it through black magic — and fortunately, it worked.
"No reason to stop at one. I should make a few more."
Bombs this time, perhaps. I took a doll smaller than the rabbit, sealed a ghost inside, inscribed a modified corpse-explosion spell onto it, and breathed my Black Mana in. The ghost and the Black Mana would serve as the medium, turning it into a fine little bomb. I installed these ghost-bombs throughout the house. If an intruder ever came, I'd need a way to subdue them.
Should I put a fiend in one, too…?
My eyes landed on a human-shaped doll. A good idea struck me.
"You are my bodyguard. When I am in danger, you will bravely take up a blade and strike down my enemies."
—I can't take it, Robin……
I sealed the fiend into the human doll and set it on the wall of the room where my daggers hung. This one would become a combat operative fighting on my behalf. It reminded me of a certain orange-haired doll that killed people with a knife. The intimidation factor alone would be absolute. A human doll that fought with a blade — terrifying just to imagine.
[Thou hast grown quite proficient in black magic.]
See? Even Marbas was praising my skill.
"Come now, it's all thanks to your excellent teaching, Lord Marbas! Hahaha!"
[Muhahaha! Thou speakest the truth!]
Marbas and I laughed together for a while.
"Kyeng."
Miho voiced her displeasure somewhere in the middle, but neither Marbas nor I paid her any mind.