Swedish, Chinese, Peninsular, Modern, and a Witch (1)
The Flame Witch has arrived.
The sand humanoid before her exploded as though the burning sword had detonated inside it. Sand sprayed everywhere, but Thirin remained completely unbothered. The mask kept every grain from flying into her mouth. Her mask addiction had, quite unexpectedly, freed her from the terrors of fine dust.
Thirin stared at the flaming blade and muttered to herself.
“Flame Witch…”
Normally, when she gave herself titles, she went with “Saint.” She was sick to death of the word “witch.” Sick of others calling her that, sick of the system messages that kept popping up out of nowhere with the title attached. But this once, witch it was. Because…
“That is so fucking cool. Flame Witch.”
The Flame Witch was just too badass. By comparison, Flame Saint sounded lame as hell. Thirin gave a solemn nod.
“Flame Witch, descending. Maximum coolness.”
She lowered the sword and turned her attention inward. Her lower abdomen felt hot. Or rather, pleasantly warm. A comforting heat was spreading through her entire body. The sensation of something warm flowing along her veins. If Thirin had known anything about wuxia she might have thought of terms like dantian and qi circulation, but sadly those concepts were completely foreign to her.
“This is fascinating…”
She murmured while gazing at the still-burning sword. The flame that had flowed in from her fingertips continued to blaze atop the blade. Strangely, it didn’t feel hot at all. If anything, she felt a strange sense of unity, as though it had become part of her.
“!”
Something moved at the edge of her vision. When she turned her head, the corpses of the priests she had sliced apart earlier were crumbling into sand one by one. No, not just crumbling. The bodies that had been sprawled across the floor were disintegrating into grains of sand and collapsing. And those grains were gathering like iron filings drawn to a magnet, beginning to writhe and twist.
-Srrrrrk.
The sand rose up and soon formed faint human shapes. The five corpses had become five sand soldiers, slowly advancing toward Thirin.
At the sight, Thirin let out a small snort of laughter.
“Sure enough, it’d feel incomplete without a phase two.”
Watching this absurd sand-zombie apocalypse, she hurled mockery at the sand ghost.
“But usually you do the physical attacks first and save the mental attacks for the final phase, don’t you? The classic pattern is to beat the shit out of them first, shake their mind, then move on to coaxing and threats. Mental attacks are supposed to be the ultimate move, right?”
......
The sand ghost offered no reply. Thirin’s eyes suddenly sparkled as if she had realized something.
“Aha. You wanted to skip the fight too, huh?”
She sounded genuinely impressed.
“Wow… you’re pretty smart.”
Thirin was truly impressed.
“You’re fucking smart, Sand Ghost. I’ll give you real credit for that. Starting the fight with your ultimate move? I thought that kind of high-efficiency gameplay was exclusive to modern people. I figured I was the only one who knew that trick in this fantasy land, but you went and did it too. Very progressive.”
“Krrraaaagh!”
Before her admiration could even finish, one of the sand soldiers roared and charged. In its hand was a crude sword shaped from sand.
-Slice.
Thirin lightly swung her blade and cut the thing in half at the waist. But the bisected sand soldier reformed without so much as a scream.
-Slice! Thud!
No matter how many times she cut it, the result was the same. The sand simply scattered and gathered again. It was meaningless.
“......”
Thirin suddenly felt a sense of dissonance. While lightly dodging the charging sand soldiers, she muttered toward empty air.
“This is weird. Something’s off.”
She paused mid-fight and spoke to the air again.
“Hey, Sand Ghost. You’re supposed to be the god of time, right?”
......
The god of sand gave no answer, but Thirin kept talking.
“Kyaak!”
The sand soldiers were getting angry in the ghost’s place, which was more than enough to keep her reaction dopamine flowing.
“If you’re the god of time, couldn’t you just make me die of old age? If that doesn’t work, you could at least rust my sword.”
“Kyaaaak!”
“So why can’t you do that? Why are you going through all this annoying hassle to kill me? There’s no need to summon these sand idiots. Why are you doing something this tedious?”
“Kraaaaaagh!”
As if answering her monologue, the sand soldiers charged even more fiercely. Thirin dodged their attacks with ease and continued.
“That wolf-stalker guy said it. The higher the divinity, the more abstract the authority. Yet here you are, just playing around with sand. It’s super weird.”
The wolf-man had come back to life, the temple door had returned, and those priests had revived too. It clearly had power over time.
‘But it can’t do that to me.’
Then there was only one answer.
“You. You can only exercise your authority on things related to you, can’t you? Because they made a contract with you, or because they’re your believers. That’s why you tried to tempt me with all that talk about ‘becoming one’ or whatever.”
......
“Yeah, it makes sense now. So that illusion you showed me was just an application of showing mirages in the desert? Because you have authority over sand?”
Thirin cackled.
“You’re not actually the god of time, are you? Well, not completely false. Some of the authority remains. Then……”
......
“Then you’re basically the leftover scraps of a god?”
-Ding!
Understanding of others has increased!
Raise your understanding to acquire Enlightenment (Simdeuk)!
Thirin couldn’t hold back her explosive laughter.
“Pffft!”
System-certified ‘other (person).’ This thing wasn’t a god at all. Its rank had fallen to something barely above human level—a leftover scrap. Thirin clutched her stomach and howled with laughter. This thing was literally a lowly ghost.
“Pffft, what? What was that? ‘Just do nothing’? ‘In the end there is no distinction’? No way, you were talking so grandly earlier—pffft.”
Tears streamed down her face as she laughed.
“You acted so high and mighty, pretending you’d reached some grand realization about the end of all things, but now you’re doing something completely different? Why are you trying to catch me by using these idiots? You’re struggling pretty hard too, Sand Ghost. Since you’re going to disappear anyway, why are you doing this?”
“Kyaaaaaaaagh!”
The sand soldiers attacked wildly in rage, but Thirin dodged with leisure and didn’t stop mocking.
“God of time my ass. You’re just a desert ghost! No, not even a desert ghost. A thing that sucks the blood of children—and does it while they’re asleep!”
Thirin’s eyes sparkled as a truly inspired phrase came to mind.
“Lord of the Tsetse Flies! Yes, you’re the Tsetse Fly King! To think I’d get to see the Lord of the Flies here! Nice to meet you!”
Lord of the Flies. Who would have thought she’d witness the great classic of her homeland in a place like this? Thirin was deeply moved.
She spun her sword in circles and shouted as if teasing an old friend.
“When I get back I’ll have to stop by the Pantheon right away. I need to spread a very interesting rumor about how a desert ghost became the Lord of the Tsetse Flies.”
“Kyaaaaaaaaaagh!”
“What? The gods of the Pantheon are pathetic things that abandoned their divinity? But here you are playing in the sand. How much do you think they’ll laugh when they hear this story? They’re definitely going to lose their shit laughing. They’ll laugh until their stomachs burst.”
Thirin giggled.
“By then you’ll have a new divine title. Destroyer of the Gods’ Bellybuttons! Turns out you weren’t a sandbag but a laugh bag.”
“Kyaaaaagh!”
“Still better than Lord of the Tsetse Flies, right? At least this way you get your revenge on the gods. Wish granted!”
Finally the sand ghost could endure no more and exploded in fury.
Thirin beamed.
In the K-peninsula, curses were the ultimate form of praise—something like “I pay my respects to your teabagging.” Praise from a god itself. Thirin felt like her brain might explode from the dopamine rush.
“Did that get to you? After all that arrogant gaslighting, a few simple words were enough to set you off. As expected, a ghost is still a ghost.”
The number of sand soldiers increased, and their movements changed. They no longer charged mindlessly. Instead they surged toward her like one massive wave.
“Hmph.”
Thirin scoffed. It was true that cutting the sand soldiers only scattered them for a moment before they reformed. However…
“I am the incredibly cool Flame Witch.”
If physical attacks didn’t work, she simply had to make them work. Thirin concentrated the flame drawn from her dantian to an extreme degree at the tip of her sword. The blazing red flame stopped emitting light and instead began devouring every ray of light around it. The flame gradually turned dark red, then transformed into pitch-black fire that swallowed all color.
The secret of ‘Point’ was to gather all power into a single spot. Then the flame must do the same.
Thirin pierced straight through the heart of the first sand soldier charging at her.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”
The moment the sword made contact, the condensed heat burned the sand. No—it melted it. The sand soldier transformed into a bizarre lump of black glass and hardened in that exact shape. There was no regeneration. The grotesque glass statue simply collapsed to the floor and shattered into pieces.
Infusing the principles of Samadhi True Fire into the 'Point,' a single strike is unleashed.
The will shot toward the sun finally engraves a single point upon its face.
It is the black spot of pitch darkness that swallows even light itself.
Thirin spoke in a smooth, relaxed tone.
“This is called the Swedish Snowman Slaughter Sword—Svenska Snögubbe-slaktaren. You can’t kill snow, but you can kill a snowman. I got the idea from the similarity between snow and sand.”
Since Thirin was terrible at forming relationships with others, she could be considered Swedish. Therefore she could use Swedish martial arts. And so Shooting Trace Black Point had become the Svenska Snögubbe-slaktaren. A name that would no doubt give the Murim Alliance leader a massive headache, seeing as it treated point-spear techniques like its mortal enemy.