Bari Gongju
KWA-AAAAANG—!!
“Ghk…!”
A black spear of magic punched straight through the spot where I had been standing, accompanied by a deafening blast that tore at my eardrums.
I tumbled across the floor and barely avoided a fatal wound, but searing blood welled from my shoulder where a shard had grazed me.
“You scurry well for a little rat!”
Dozens of magic orbs poured from the dark mage’s fingertips and streaked toward me through the air like guided missiles.
I clenched my teeth and yanked three Pasabu from my robes, scattering them into the air.
“Break!!”
Puh-uh-uhng—!
The talismans detonated, pure white spiritual force colliding with the miasma in a blinding flash.
That was all it achieved.
When the light cleared, the dark mage still stood there, radiating overwhelming miasma, a crooked smile on his face.
Shit… This bastard looks like some no-name NPC 27, so why is he so damn strong?
“Keh-keh-keh. Your thrashing is quite the spectacle. Wasting magic scrolls like that—your master must dote on you terribly, hmm?”
“Hah… hah… Fuck, all mouth and nothing else.”
I gasped for air and ducked behind a collapsed stone wall.
My lungs felt ready to burst, and every time I rolled, my H-cup breasts heaved and bounced like mad, draining what little stamina I had left.
I’m seriously gonna die.
My head swam. The wall of a Preacher-class opponent was far too high for a newbie who had only just transmigrated into this world.
But quitting never once crossed my mind.
Nothing stupider than dying in a boss fight because you hoarded potions. A gamer uses every last item before they go down!
Crouched behind cover, I opened the Pantheon system window in midair.
Without hesitation I hammered the shop tab.
You have purchased 1 Low-grade Swift Talisman.
You have purchased Low-grade Stamina Recovery Water.
You have purchased 100 sheets of Low-grade Yellow Spirit Paper and Mirror-face Cinnabar.
I snatched the small flask that dropped from thin air and downed it in one gulp.
A sharp, tingling energy slid down my throat, and I felt my drained stamina creep back—if only by a hair.
It was the tiniest refill imaginable, but even that was a lifeline right now.
“Alright. One more round!”
I seized the brush again and began drawing talismans like a woman possessed.
The Swift Talisman quickened not only my body but the speed of my brushwork as well.
Even back in Gangnam, fleecing rich housewives’ wallets, I had never drawn this frantically. Survival instinct has a way of shoving a human past their limits.
“You think hiding will change anything?!”
KWA-KWANG—!
The stone wall shattered like tofu under the dark mage’s miasma.
I burst through the cascading debris and hurled the finished bundle of talismans straight at his face.
“Eat this, you filthy ghost bastard!!”
It was a hybrid bomb—detonation talismans, Pasabu, even light-blocking Shade Talismans mixed in.
“Foolishness!! Do you still not understand it will not work?!”
He swept his staff and unfurled a massive shield of magic. The talismans struck it and chain-detonated at once.
Yet not even a crack appeared on his barrier.
Worse, a jet-black whip shot through the blast’s backlash and coiled around my ankle.
“Kyaaah!”
Damn it, why the hell is a girl’s scream coming out of my mouth?!
“Caught you, you little witch.”
He yanked the whip. I scraped across the floor until I dangled right in front of his face.
“Keh-heh-heh. Have you finished showing off? You surprised me, girl. To hide this much power…”
He lifted my chin with the tip of his staff and licked his lips greedily.
“I simply cannot endure it!! I will see you gasping beneath me no matter what!! Even if I have to break those lovely limbs and chain you to my bed!! Kahahaha!!”
His miasma crushed down over my entire body, swelling. Even breathing became a struggle.
Yet a hollow, foolish laugh slipped from my lips instead.
“I’d rather bite my tongue and die than get under a freak like you… you pervert bastard.”
Strange, though. In that life-or-death moment, the women who had fled earlier suddenly floated into my mind.
They must have gotten away safely, right?
As for the guards… honestly, I wasn’t counting on them.
Even if a bunch of half-naked women in robes came screaming into the night to report this, it would take the guards forever to reach this place.
Fuck. That’s just how my life goes.
Even as the thought formed, I shook my head.
No. I can’t give up.
Back when I was a sham fortune-teller in the real world, there had always been days when the luck simply refused to turn.
But we shamans call that “paying the misfortune tax.”
If I was already suffering this much and burning away the bad luck, then a windfall had to be coming next.
I still have one card left.
While the bastard’s eyes were fixed on my face, I stretched a hand hidden behind my back toward the system window’s [Divine Artifact] tab.
There it sat, bold as day in my class traits window—the one ability I had never once been able to use.
[Spirit Channeling].
To activate it I needed a catalyst to invite a deity, and until now I had lacked any medium.
But now I possessed the Merit I had gathered while helping those women escape.
Of course the famous martial gods were still out of reach. Their artifacts cost tens of millions—or hundreds of millions—of Merit.
Yet as if the heavens refused to let me die empty-handed, a 5,000-Merit gacha item caught my eye.
Cost: 5,000 Merit
A nameless brass mirror that forges a temporary bond with an unknown spirit. The deity that descends is determined by the user’s spiritual power and the threads of causality.
“Ah, screw it!! All or nothing!!”
You have spent 5,000 Merit to purchase the “Random Karmic Mirror.”
The cold, round surface of a brass mirror pressed into my palm behind my back.
Still bound by the magic whip, I forced my eyes wide open, wrung out the last drops of my spiritual power, and poured a scripture from my throat like a scream.
I had no idea what effect the words would have, but I prayed they would raise the odds of a war god appearing who could break this stalemate.
“Heavenly Jade Capital, Heavenly Venerable of Creation! Eighty-four thousand great divine generals!! Look down upon this pitiful, wretched mortal who calls!!”
“What gibberish are you spouting now?! Still struggling to the very—!”
“Anyone will do!! Some fair, fight-crazy spirit who can smash this bastard’s skull in!! Descend into my body this instant!!! Swiftly, by the law of command!!!”
The moment my cry ended, the brass mirror in my hand cracked with a sharp report and shattered.
WUUUUUNG————!!!
In that instant the air itself screamed, and the entire sealed temple began to quake as if seized by madness.
“W-what is this?! What is this energy…?! What trick are you pulling?!”
Sensing something was terribly wrong, the dark mage turned deathly pale, raised his staff, and hurled magic at me.
It never reached my body.
TUH-WAAAAAAAAAK———!!!!
A colossal pillar of pure white light, as if it had pierced the heavens themselves, smashed through the temple ceiling and poured straight into me.
The dark mage’s miasma evaporated like spring snow the instant it touched that overwhelming sacred radiance.
“KRAAAAAAGH!! My eyes—my eyes!!”
Within the storm of light, my consciousness was gently, absolutely enfolded by a warm power and took one step backward.
Someone else seized control of my flesh.
And so I lost consciousness.
As the pillar of light gradually faded, the dark mage’s vision finally cleared enough to take in Do-gyeong’s figure.
She stood with her spine ramrod straight, chin slightly lifted toward the heavens.
The tattered robe around her fluttered and billowed, shedding sacred radiance as though it had become a magnificent ceremonial gown.
On lips that had been drained of color now rested a smile that was leisurely, alluring, and thoroughly arrogant.
The voice that spilled from Do-gyeong’s mouth was no longer the bright voice of a woman in her twenties.
It was deep, as though it held tens of thousands of years within it, and lofty, as though it looked down upon all creation.
Even someone who knew nothing would instinctively recognize that sacred presence.
It was the aura of the goddess commonly called Bari Gongju—the foremost ancestral deity of shamans, the Mujosin who leads the dead and rules the underworld.
She turned her head with open interest and surveyed her surroundings.
Crushed beneath that overwhelming presence, the dark mage sat frozen on the floor, trembling like a rat before a great predator, as if a vibrating motor had been strapped to his body.
W-what… what is that…?! Just what in the blazes is that thing!!
His lips had gone blue.
The girl who only moments ago had been bleeding and thrashing for her life had, after one shaft of light, begun radiating a divine majesty so intense that merely looking upon it felt as though his soul would shatter.
And this miasma…
I-it surpasses even Lord Asmodeus!?
The dark mage shook his head violently.
N-no! Impossible!!
Bari Gongju’s cold eyes settled on the dark mage cowering on the floor.
“Hiiik!! Y-yes, ma’am!!”
Formal speech spilled from the dark mage’s mouth before he even realized it.
To her, who ruled the underworld, the sight of someone artificially compacting souls into fuel was a crime that would make heaven and earth cry out in outrage.
Answer wrong and he would die.
Sensing that truth instinctively, the dark mage’s eyeballs began to roll wildly in their sockets.