God Slayer (1)

At first listen, that shout might have sounded like a child's voice — but the ancient rage packed inside it was nothing a mere child could have produced.

It was fury that could only erupt from several millennia of accumulated experience detonating all at once.

So you finally disappoint me, and in the end you cozy up to those things?!

"Silence, you worthless beast. You don't have the right to speak that name."

Damned Outer God! Your domain is your own — why do you come to Earth and run rampant?!

"Our domain is this entire universe."

"Would you like to be cast out like the Old Ones were?"

Amid the bickering match between Nyarlathotep and the old fossil in the back room, Cthugha cut in.

I had no idea who the Old Ones were, but given that they'd been driven out, the two sides clearly weren't on good terms.

No matter that you are an Outer God, you cannot escape the System's constraints! Tell me truly — do you not fear the recoil?!

"Do not speak down to me."

...!

The old fox, who had been shrieking in fury, shut her mouth at a single sentence.

...Wow.

Honestly, I couldn't help letting out an inward gasp of amazement myself.

How could a single line of speech make a person's heart lurch like that?

The pitch of the voice, the volume, the articulation — it was the product of a calculation so flawless that I couldn't even begin to comprehend it.

I had no idea how much time it would take me to reach that kind of mastery.

"Not once, in all the time since your birth, have you ever stood above me. Do not presume to speak casually with your betters."

...

With that one remark, the old fox was struck utterly speechless.

Soon, with a sensation like something being severed, her voice vanished entirely.

"..."

Iris, who had watched the whole exchange to the end, stared blankly into the air with an expression of sheer astonishment.

Her own Constellation had manifested directly in the real world, in voice.

Until now, Constellations had never once appeared in reality.

Because no one understood better than ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠they did the kind of influence a being called a "god" could exert on humans.

And so they hid within their own domains, expressing their existence through nothing but System messages.

To Iris, the old fox's voice must have struck with the force of actually seeing a ghost.

"For now, I have reclaimed every last one of your blessings."

Countless messages scrolled across my status window as she spoke to Iris, who was now nothing but an empty shell.

She had grown so weakened that even I could notice the change in her.

Thanks to her stats she would at least manage to hold on to a B rank, but I doubted she'd be able to work as a shaman again for a long while.

"Fear not. Once this matter is settled, your power shall return to you."

Nyarlathotep reassured Iris, who was clearly fretting over that fact.

At the same time, she reached her hand out toward empty air.

From her fingertips stretched out a formless energy — neither mana nor SAN Value.

That energy shot away at a speed invisible to the eye, then vanished so quickly I couldn't even guess which direction it had gone.

Iris and I gleaned that it was doing something, and we said nothing as we waited for her to speak.

About a minute passed like that.

Snap!

With the sound of something being seized, Nyarlathotep lowered her arm.

"I have found its location."

Whoosh.

And from the dark expanse, we returned home.

We'd arrived in the blink of an eye. The feel of the doormat under my feet for the first time in ages was strangely unfamiliar.

"So this is where the wretched thing was hiding."

Nyarlathotep said with a face full of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠contempt, and letters of mana began writing themselves in the air.

Once those bizarre glyphs — neither Korean nor English — had all been written, they flew into the notepad sitting on the dining table.

"Confirm it for yourself. That is where the fox dwells."

"Got it."

At her words, I walked over to the table and picked up the notepad.

"..."

It was hiding there?

These damned bastards...!

Thump. Thump. Thump.

In a gloomy underground chamber, only the sound of an inhuman being grinding its teeth echoed through the dark.

That inhuman being's appearance was, first and foremost, that of a human.

Black hair, black eyes — an ordinary human face.

Moreover, on the surface it was a woman beautiful enough to turn heads.

Only the fox ears atop her head, the nine tails behind her, and the whisker-like markings painted across her face betrayed the fact that she was no human at all.

Do you have any idea who I am...?!

A fox two thousand years old.

She had started as nothing more than a beast gnawing on corpses in graveyards, clawed her way up from the absolute bottom, and seized divinity itself.

Perhaps because she had spent so long at the very bottom, her pride had swelled far beyond what her station warranted.

Even those hailed as the greatest of all Constellations bowed their heads to her of their own accord — and screaming in Nyarlathotep's face like that had been an act born of that very pride, one that now beckoned her own death.

Ughhhh...!

Clad in her ancient hanbok, she stomped her feet in a rage.

There was nothing she could do. She wanted nothing more than to reveal herself right now and tear Iris apart — but to do that, she would have to accept her own annihilation.

Because of the System's constraints.

I must endure, for now...

SQUEEZE!

"Hyaaang?!"

At that moment, something seized her tail in a crushing grip.

The tail had always been the weakest point of any gumiho. As a wave of pleasure rose from the very tip of her soul, a moan spilled from her lips.

Wh-what—who's there?!

The fox whipped around in a panic — but there was absolutely nothing around her.

"..."

An inexplicable unease crawling over her, she swallowed hard.

Do you know what the tallest mountain on the Korean Peninsula is?

Ten times ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠out of ten, you'd say Mount Baekdu.

But that was the story before the age of awakeners.

The tallest mountain in Korea today wasn't Baekdu — it was this one.

Mount Cheonmyeol.

I don't know the exact details, but broadly speaking, it was a monster that emerged from an S-rank gate of the past called The Overwhelmed.

Let me say that again. A monster.

More precisely, you could call it the corpse of a monster.

True to its name, The Overwhelmed spawned monsters themed around things buried underground — and at the very end, an enormous mountain that towered over even Baekdu itself burst out as the boss.

After a brutal battle that cost the lives of every S-rank hunter in existence and hundreds of A-rank hunters, it was barely subjugated — but its sheer size meant the corpse could never be disposed of.

So instead, they decided to milk it as a tourist attraction, and the monster's remains simply became known as "Mount Cheonmyeol."

It was only possible because, aside from the small fact that the thing had once walked and breathed, it was an utterly ordinary mountain — mushrooms grew on it, trees took root in it, the works.

And at the same time...

It's also where the Old Fox of the Back Mountain currently lives.

As I climbed the mountain, I swallowed hard.

Only you and that girl may go near this place. If a supreme divinity such as myself draws close, the beast will sense it.

According to Nyarlathotep, only Iris and I were to climb this mountain.

In other words, the two of us alone had to hunt down a Constellation.

Worry not. You have now become able to draw forth the full power of 'Avatar of Chaos,' if only once.

Even so, I wasn't all that worried.

Because she had endured something called the System's recoil — whatever that meant — and forcibly forced my power to bloom.

Granted, it cost Nyarlathotep her limbs in the process, but Cthugha's help had restored them.

Honestly, when her limbs vanished, it had felt like my heart was being torn in two.

Thanks to my SAN Value having grown, the number of avatars I could manifest had increased considerably.

I could perfectly bring forth the power of exactly one of them.

The Wailer and Struggler...

That was the avatar I'd manifested during the Cthugha incident.

Even with its power restricted, it had toyed with a horde of believers with ease.

But it wasn't the right tool for this time.

It's comparatively weak.

Certainly strong enough — but the power it had shown me was extremely limited in scope.

Stretch out its tentacles, devour the enemy. That was about the extent of it.

So this time I needed an avatar with a broader arsenal.

I had no idea what that would be, though...

"Here, huh?"

After slipping past the official trail of Mount Cheonmyeol and walking for about an hour, a flat clearing appeared — indistinguishable from the terrain all around it.

But a Constellation was hiding in this very spot.

Meaning the Old Fox of the Back Mountain lived here.

"So she really was an old fossil in the back room."

The place where that thing resided was underground.

For all her talk of devouring entire universes, in truth she'd been sulking in a basement burrow, whining and squealing the whole time.

"Iris. Do you understand now? This is the true face of the Constellation you once served..."

"...Yes."

Iris stared down at the ground, her face contorted with fury.

"It's so disgusting I can't even bear to look at it with my eyes open."

Pfft.

Her expression pulled a short laugh out of me, and I spoke to her.

"Step back, please. It's dangerous. I'm not strong enough to promise you'll come out of this alive."

"Y-yes, understood."

Iris scurried away at my words.

Once I'd confirmed she was roughly a hundred meters clear, I placed my hand on the ground.

And in that instant —

BOOM!

I poured in my SAN Value.

Rumble-rumble-rumble!

The earth began to shake, and something shot up out of the underground.

Y-you wretches! How did you learn this place's location!

What burst from the earth was a gumiho dressed in hanbok.

She's a woman?

I was momentarily stunned by her appearance — she looked exactly like what you'd get if you sketched out a "beautiful fox-girl beastfolk" — but I quickly collected myself and thought.

Which avatar should I become...?

Black Pharaoh.

A being whose very name was ominous.

Now that you have seen my true form, you shall not leave here aliv—?

Crunch, crunch.

My muscle tissue rearranged itself at will.

The color of my skin bleached bone-pale.

A staff encrusted with gems materialized in each of my hands.

The sky lost its light at the sight of me, veiled its face in clouds, and wept with thunder and lightning.

Fear crawled across the Old Fox of the Back Mountain's face.

"Good."

So this was the avatar's true power.

"Have you prepared your last words?"

Drunk on the surging power, I passed down the sentence of death — and smiled, wide and sharp.