Filial Piety
Filial Piety
The first round ended more blandly than expected.
The five fighters were all sucked straight into the Fat Can I'd designated as the focal point.
We trapped them inside Mirkella's shadow, all bunched up together like a ball, and then Kim Ha-yoon punched neat little holes through them with ice.
And once the shadows receded, what lay revealed was a gruesome heap of corpses.
Warriors pierced through by ice and killed in an instant.
Luckily, however, one had survived.
"Wow, he lived through that?"
Of course, no one could pretend he was in good shape, but somehow he still clung faintly to life.
Yeah, blood was gushing freely, but he was still breathing, so you could say he was alive.
"Dear husband, I shall handle this one from here."
"Huh? What are you planning?"
"Is it not obvious? A victor ought to claim spoils. And for us, spoils mean entertainment."
Angelica said this with a crooked smirk spreading across her face.
I knew that smile all too well.
Whenever some dark, mischievous notion took root in her mind, she smiled just like that.
"Now, first, let us remove the limbs. Without arms and legs, he will be unable to resist."
"Won't he die before that?"
I figured he'd bleed out long before the show could begin.
"It is fine. I will use my psychokinesis to stem the flow of blood beforehand."
Angelica drew a large machete from her waist.
It was an item crafted using Jeong Ji-min's trait, with a bonus property that kept it from rusting.
Still... I didn't realize she could use psychokinesis to stop bleeding.
"Hm. Is that so? Well, let's see you do it, then."
Snorting confidently as if to say leave it to me, Angelica strode over.
True to her boast, she cleanly sliced off his arms and legs.
Crunch. The cross-sections were a bit rough, but in the end, she managed to sculpt him into a limbless, wobbly figure without killing him.
"Good. The bleeding has stopped. Now we simply wait for him to open his eyes."
"When is he going to wake up?"
Watching this, Mirkella's expression betrayed a hint of disgust.
"Who knows. Well, if it comes to it, it would not be the worst thing for my husband to simply finish him off. It seems the spectator response has already been stirred up."
Indeed, the stands had erupted in a mix of screams and cheers.
The ones despairing had probably bet their money on these fighters.
"..."
Unexpectedly, the old man did not interfere.
Even though this was a clear breach of respect for the opponent, he merely glanced over before looking away.
His attention seemed to be directed elsewhere.
Specifically, toward the spire.
At the red-haired woman standing atop it.
"Elder, you've been staring over there for a while now. Is something bothering you?"
"Who can say... maybe it is, maybe it isn't."
Cryptic talk, as always.
But I wasn't all that interested, so I turned my attention away from the old man and faced the limbless fighter again.
His wounds were so severe it would be no surprise if he dropped dead right then.
But Angelica's power had barely tethered him to life.
'Might as well send him off now.'
We'd put on enough of a show. There was no reason to let him live any longer.
I twirled my crowbar around and then snatched it firmly into my grip.
And I swung.
The blunt end drove into his abdomen, and at that very moment, by some cruel twist of fate, his eyes flew open.
His dimly opened lids stared straight at me. I clicked my tongue as if in pity.
Poor bastard.
If he'd died outright, he wouldn't have had the time to feel any pain.
But contrary to my expectations, he smiled.
"Whoa, what a ruthless bunch. He's actually laughing as he dies?"
"This is outside my calculations. I would have preferred to see him suffer a bit more."
He seemed to accept his death calmly, with a faint smile.
That's what I thought, anyway. But then, without warning, flames erupted from his entire body.
"Huh? Hey! Hey! Angelica! Get back! This bastard just burst into flames!"
"Nngh...? What now?!"
After a brief moment of alarm, Angelica calmly created distance.
She grabbed hold of me and threw herself back to a safe range.
We tumbled across the ground, scrambled to our feet, and hastily reformed our formation.
Mirkella at the front, me and Angelica at the center, Kim Ha-yoon and the old man at the rear.
"Is this his last desperate struggle? Everyone stay alert. No telling what this guy might pull."
I didn't think a limbless lump could do much more, but there was no harm in being cautious.
Besides, the moment my crowbar had touched him, it was already over.
The flames would die down before long, and we'd walk away with the victory without a hitch.
We kept our wary eyes locked on him for a long while.
Then suddenly, the old man let out a sigh.
"That is enough. Even without us delivering the final blow, the 'Fire Seed' has awakened. Judgment will soon follow."
"Huh? What do you mean by—"
I was about to ask what kind of nonsense he was spouting.
Then a woman's booming voice rang out from the spire.
"Hahahahaha!!! How unsightly! Such an unsightly spectacle! But still, you have become a kindling seed! Warrior! Your life blazed brilliantly in its final moments! I, Gladiator, shall remember it! Though you failed to seize glory, you burned bright!"
Gladiator burst into laughter.
And then, the fire that had been spewing from the fighter's body shrank into a tiny ember. A flame as faint as a dying wisp drifted into the air and was sucked straight toward the spire where Gladiator stood.
As I watched this vacantly, the old man spoke in a low voice.
"To stoke a fire, one inevitably requires kindling. Gladiator grants us fighters power, and in return, she takes everything at the final moment. She harvests the Fire Seed—that is, the soul—and leads it to Valhalla."
"Hm... So you're saying that's a resource to her?"
"Indeed. She is the master of birth and extinction. That means to create anything, there must first be annihilation."
Hm... nothing in life is free, I suppose.
She may possess staggering power, but she wasn't an all-perfect being either.
The old man had called it a 'soul,' but to me, it looked no different from how we collected coins.
In fact, even though I was the one who landed the finishing strike, no notification window had popped up telling me coins had been received.
"It seems she can't collect coins through normal methods. So she goes through this whole cumbersome process instead."
"Yes, that's why I told you. She's an 'irregular,' just like our Cult Leader."
Mirkella nodded in agreement with Angelica's analysis.
It seemed Mirkella had already known this from her earlier reconnaissance.
"Hey, Mir-Mir. If you knew all this, couldn't you have clued us in a bit sooner?"
"Well... honestly, I forgot. Things have been so hectic lately... eheh."
This girl, she's basically spent too much time around Jeong Ji-min...
Every time she pulled a screw-up like this, I got the powerful urge to thump her on the head.
Just then.
Having absorbed the entire Fire Seed, Gladiator shouted in a bubbly voice.
"Therefore, the winners are~~~ the Night Flower Families!! Such an astonishing result! The power to end a match in the blink of an eye against seasoned fighters, and as outsiders no less! If they keep this momentum, they'll surely be championship contenders! Now, everyone! After a short break, we shall resume the matches!"
Looks like her personality had switched again.
This was the same bubbly tone she'd used when commentating the Survival match last time.
It was absurd, but not quite as shocking as it had been back then.
"Let's head back now and watch how the rest of the bracket plays out."
Kim Ha-yoon tugged at my sleeve while voicing her opinion.
I nodded readily.
Our part was done. Now it was time to figure out which other bastards were coming up next.
*
The waiting room we returned to was mostly empty.
Aside from two or three people, everyone else had apparently gone off to take care of some business or other.
Sure, we'd briefly swung by the camper van ourselves to grab some snacks, but could everyone really have vanished elsewhere in that short window?
It was an utterly baffling mystery.
"What's going on, where'd everyone go?"
As we were looking around with puzzled expressions, the door burst open and a familiar mother-daughter pair walked in.
"Just calm down, Mom! It's over! I said it's over!"
"No, no! I could still have done more! I'm telling you, I could have won!"
"What more could you have done?! Looking at the state you're in, what more could you possibly do?!"
A battered Park Soo-jin and a relatively fine Kim So-jin.
For whatever reason, the two were locked in a bickering tussle.
"You two fighting?"
"No. It was just... a brief argument."
It was Kim So-jin who answered.
Her mother appeared to be in a state of panic, her whole body trembling as she muttered over and over, "A hard-won opportunity like this... how could I...."
"Hm. Could you tell us what happened?"
At Angelica's question, Kim So-jin averted her eyes.
Now that I thought about it, if I recalled correctly, these two had been the next set of contenders after us... don't tell me it was already over?
For a long while, Kim So-jin maintained her silence, but as we kept watching her intently, she finally pressed her lips together and answered, as if forced.
"...We lost. Just a moment ago."
"Huh? Already? I'm pretty sure it's only been twenty minutes?"
Our match, which we'd ended in five minutes, was an exception.
According to Mirkella, the average was normally between thirty minutes and an hour, so how had these two been eliminated so quickly?
"I remember their opponents being about on the same level as them, though."
"...They were. We thought so too."
Hm. So that meant their opponents were unexpectedly strong.
One more variable to account for.
If I'd known this would happen, I'd have stayed to watch before coming back.
"What about your teammates?"
"All dead except us. Obviously."
Kim So-jin uttered a hollow sigh.
So that's how it ended, huh?
Those guys had been a pack of jackals circling these women anyway, so this was actually a convenient outcome for me.
"Who on earth did they run into to get crushed so thoroughly?"
Mirkella suddenly whispered in my ear.
Naturally, I had no way of even guessing, so I just shrugged lightly.
"Beats me. Well, at least this expands our data pool. I'll have to add another entry to the watchlist alongside Soot and the Pepero Group."
I took a step closer to Kim So-jin.
"So, what did they look like?"
"I don't know... just ordinary. The only distinguishing feature I can think of is that they carried huge scrolls on their backs."
Seemed Kim So-jin had been pretty badly shocked herself, since she spilled the details without any hesitation.
Still, her mental state was clear enough to hold a conversation.
"Honey... I'm sorry... sorry...."
By contrast, her mother, Park Soo-jin, still wasn't in her right mind.
She just sat slumped on the ground, muttering to herself like a madwoman.
"Good grief. What a sight."
Honestly, from the start, winning the tournament at their level seemed impossible.
Did they seriously think they had a shot?
"Hey, you. You seem relatively less shaken?"
"Me? Ah... I was a bit skeptical from the beginning. I was actually against entering the tournament in the first place."
"I see. So you just went along with your mother's stubbornness?"
"...Still, I am her child."
Astonishing degree of filial piety.
It was such a rare sight in this bleak modern world that I widened my eyes a little in admiration.
"I like that mindset. But if your mom keeps acting like this, it's gonna be trouble for you too, right?"
"..."
No answer came, but context being what it was, silence was as good as a yes.
So I approached the collapsed Park Soo-jin.
I quietly lowered myself and looked down at her.
"Hey, ahjumma. You want your husband back that badly?"
"Huh? Ngh...?"
"I asked if you want your husband back."
She hadn't reacted to anything else, but at the word 'husband,' she raised her gaunt face.
With eyes that were hollow and empty, she met my gaze.
"Elder. You said this tournament is team-based, right? Then logically, the number of granted wishes would also increase?"
"That is so. Well, if five people survive, then she would grant that many wishes."
"I see...."
I already knew that, but I deliberately asked in front of this woman.
To give her a sliver of hope, in my own way.
"In that case, Mir-Mir can handle the wish that matches our original commission, and the rest of us can take whatever we individually want."
"Huh? Why, why do I have to do that? There's something else I want to wish for."
"You're the one who should. That way we can carry out the commission faster, right? And wouldn't you get to go home sooner?"
"Ah... is that how it works?"
"That's exactly how it works."
Mirkella had objected without reading the room, but true to her airheaded nature, she let it slide once I gave her a half-baked explanation.
Mirkella was usually sharp, but her reasoning seemed to go haywire whenever matters related to the Order came up.
"Anyway, So-jin's mom? Let's make a deal."
"A deal...?"
"Yeah. If we win the tournament, I'll save your husband. In return, you and your daughter will have to get pregnant with my kid."
"Wha—what?! Who gives you the right—!!"
The moment I finished speaking, Kim So-jin lashed out fiercely.
But the ghost shackled by the past accepted even that.
"...Fine. If you can just save him, I'll do anything."
"A wise choice."
I wore a greasy smirk.
In my head, I was already painting a picture of carelessly dumping my load inside her right in front of the husband I'd resurrected.
Even if it was just a fake, wasn't the situation itself pretty damn arousing?
And to top it off, a buy-one-get-one-free pregnancy event with the daughter, too.
I couldn't hold back.
"Ah, no! Mom! Are you in your right mind?! How can you just accept that so easily?!"
"Daughter, you'll still help me, won't you? I'm your mother."
"Ah, th-this is just...! Ha, fuck...!"
After venting her rage, Kim So-jin ground her teeth and glared at me.
She clearly resented her mother for selling her out, but her expression said she found me, the one who'd made the offer, even more despicable.
Either way, she was a woman of profound filial devotion, no doubt about it.
"...If you break that promise, I won't let it slide."
"I don't intend to, so don't worry."
I cackled back at her, then settled into a suitable spot.
The screen was displaying the status of a match currently in progress.
[Oooh! They're strong, so strong! With only three members, the Oath of the Peach Garden team easily crushes the Wolves! Advancing to the next round is the Oath of the Peach Garden! The oath sworn beneath the peach tree has seized victory! Ah, what a fine spectacle!]
It looked like the Three Musketeers had just wrapped up their match, too.
Soon now.
Very soon.
Before long, this blasted tournament would finally be over.