Maestig Village
“All you need to do is tell me how it felt after receiving the blessing through this child’s soul.”
“Yes, Master.”
“During the blessing process your body may lose some freedom of movement, so don’t be alarmed.”
“Yes, Master.”
Seeing her master speak at such length made Isilite wonder whether the effect might be dangerous, yet she trusted Hwanin all the same.
“We begin. Irat, will you lend your strength to this big sister?”
「……Yes.」
The gentle tone Hwanin used toward the little girl struck Isilite as strangely pleasing—then the child overlapped with her, and she felt someone enter her body.
It was not an unpleasant sensation. Her limbs grew languid, as though strength itself had become easier to channel.
Had Isilite been from Earth, she might have likened it to athletic taping.
“…….”
“…….”
“Isilite.”
“Yes?”
“If you can move, try moving.”
Move? Obeying Hwanin’s command, Isilite performed a few stretching motions right in front of him.
“Any abnormalities in the body?”
“Uh…… everything feels incredibly easy to move. And my nose is amazing now. I can smell every little thing.”
Irat was a child of the dog-kin. So this was the keen sense of smell of the dog-kin race.
“Physical ability?”
At Hwanin’s question Isilite started toward her greatsword—only for the carpet beneath her feet to shoot backward. She skidded and crashed down with a loud thud.
“……?!”
Mortified at making a fool of herself before her master, she put strength into her arms to rise—and this time her body launched upward, the back of her head smacking the ceiling.
“?!?!”
Thud. Watching Isilite flail on the floor, Hwanin offered advice.
“Your perception can’t keep up with the sudden increase in strength. Move slowly.”
“Y-yes, Master.”
Even rising carefully, her body kept wanting to spring away on its own. While Isilite was still flustered, Hwanin gave another order.
“Irat, try walking.”
“Wha—? M-my body is moving by itself……?”
Isilite panicked as her limbs acted without her consent. She had lost control of her own body.
Then came the physical tests.
“Whoa?!”
Outside, Isilite soared more than fifteen meters on a standing jump and flailed in shock. Hwanin narrowed his eyes at the deep footprints left in the earth.
Leg power, muscular strength, and stamina had all roughly tripled.
A mid-low-grade soul orb gave about 1.4 to 1.5 times, and a lowest-grade spirit orb around 1.15……
Triple meant mid-grade—perhaps even mid-high.
“That’s enough. Irat, can you leave that body?”
The moment Hwanin finished speaking, Irat’s soul slipped free of Isilite even though the possession time remained.
“Ah…….”
Feeling the power drain away, Isilite wore a thoroughly regretful expression.
No pain, it seems.
Different from the result two days ago with the robber’s soul.
The soul orb Irat had become was ash-gray. Did the presence or absence of pain depend on the color of the soul orb? Or was it after-effects from a human possessing a non-human beast form?
Hwanin mulled it over inwardly, then set the regret aside and ended the test.
He wanted to experiment with possession once more, but he had to restrain himself. Exhausting his energy with successive possessions might force a soul into premature salvation.
“Now it is my turn to keep the promise.”
To fulfill it, he traveled with the girl’s soul to her childhood home.
The closer they drew, the more a tearful expression spread across the girl’s face.
Knock-knock-knock.
“Is anyone home?”
[Who is it?]
When a black-furred dog-kin man opened the door, tears finally welled in her eyes.
“Hm? Ah—Soul Master! What brings you at this late hour……?”
The man’s words trailed off as Hwanin stepped aside and the girl stood in his place.
“I-Iret……? Is that you, Iret……?”
「Daddy…….」
“Iret!!”
Leaving the reunion of father and daughter—sundered by death—behind him, Hwanin withdrew a short distance with a sniffling Isilite and watched the pair weep freely.
Beside him, Isilite sniffled as she watched the scene.
“Master…… did you deliberately arrange this so Iret could stay with her father a little longer?”
Aside from Iret, the other twelve souls had all been adults or the elderly. The emotions lingering in those souls were regret and faint greed.
There was no telling how such souls might change once given a body. But Iret had wished for only one thing.
To bid a final farewell to the father she loved.
Her mother had died giving birth to her. Afterward her father never remarried, raising her alone by his own strength.
Yet from birth her body had been frail; she had been confined to bed.
That weak body had suffered its first and final seizure while her father was briefly away working the fields, and she had parted from him without even a goodbye.
There were words she had desperately wanted to say to the father left alone and struggling after her death as well.
「Daddy. Thank you for giving birth to me. And thank you for raising me all this time.」
“Iret…….”
「I really wanted to tell you this. That I was happy to be born as your daughter. Daddy, I love you.」
That was why Hwanin had calculated, rationally, that Iret would not cause trouble.
He knew from experience that if he voiced such thoughts aloud, five out of ten people would look at him as though he were some inhuman monster.
Unwilling to lower Isilite’s regard for him, Hwanin stripped away seventy percent of the truth and offered only a fragment.
“I merely granted a small favor in return for the help I received.”
And Isilite, like anyone else from Earth, interpreted it in the way most convenient to herself and nodded.
He’s embarrassed and hiding it. Then I should pretend not to notice either.
Hwanin gazed blankly at the man who sobbed as he watched his daughter dissolve into faint light and scatter.
He had thought emotions were slowly taking root in him lately, but that must have been an illusion after all.
If emotions had truly arisen, he would never have made such calculations. And he would never have been able to watch a man weep like that without feeling anything.
Yet Hwanin failed to notice one thing.
The way he thought and acted these days might lack a certain human warmth, but it was still the sort of thinking and movement an ordinary person might display.
The Hwanin of old would never have used such a complicated method in the first place.
This was another world. No CCTV, no internet. He would simply have killed people by methods that left no trace, forcibly taken their souls, and used Isilite as a tool for his experiments.
“Ahem…… Soul Master.”
Seeing Iret’s father approach with reddened eyes, Hwanin ended his musings and asked,
“Have you said a sufficient farewell to your daughter?”
The man who had come to offer thanks burst into fresh tears at the question, then dropped to his knees and clasped his hands as though in prayer.
“Thank you, thank you. Truly, thank you……. For giving me time to say goodbye to Iret…… sniff. Thank you so much…… sob.”
“I lost my own parents early, so I understand the feeling.”
“Soul Master…… wail…….”
At the man’s raw grief Isilite finally covered her eyes and turned away. Hwanin reached out, patted the man’s shoulder, and said,
“For the sake of the daughter who has gone to heaven, live on with strength. Only then will Iret’s existence continue, if only in your memories.”
“Yes, yes…. I will. I will……. Truly, truly thank you…….”
Leaving the man still kneeling and bowing repeatedly, they turned back. Isilite quickly fell into step beside Hwanin, dabbing furiously at her tears with her sleeve.
Yet the tears refused to stop; she even made a strange little sound—keuing—that drew a quiet chuckle from Hwanin.
“Anyone watching would think it was your own child who left.”
“B-but still. Master, your parents…… and Iret’s father…… crying like that…… auu. keung.”
He had assumed her woman’s empathy had simply resonated with the grief of a man who had lost both wife and daughter—but perhaps he himself was the cause.
Listening to Isilite’s choked sniffling, Hwanin lifted his gaze to the night sky blanketed in the Milky Way.
If I return to Earth with this power, will I be able to see my parents?
Probably not. They had been so devoted to each other and had died on the same day; they would have left hand in hand, content.
……No. Their only son was a psychopath, so they might have stayed out of worry for him.
On top of that he had picked up a strange gold coin and vanished; they might be wandering without rest.
The thought that both of them might even have become Honjae only strengthened Hwanin’s resolve to return to his original world.
The next morning.
In the open lot beside the house, Hwanin was mercilessly hammering every weakness Isilite exposed—like thrashing a dried pufferfish—when he silently lowered his black spear.
Unable even to collapse under the continuous blows, Isilite let out a short cry the instant the assault stopped and dropped to her knees—only to spring up again less than a second later and raise her greatsword.
Then her eyes went round.
Hwanin had set his weapon down. Morning sparring still had a long way to go.
Checking the remaining time on the hourglass standing on the nearby table, Isilite belatedly read Hwanin’s expression and looked around.
Beyond the low wooden fence, village residents watched with curious faces.
With a thunderous expression Isilite slammed her heavy iron greatsword into the ground—thud!—and bellowed in a voice that shook the air.
“Peeking at a professional’s training is a crime worthy of the stocks! And to spy on a Soul Master—do you want to die?!!”
“Eek?!”
“S-sorry!”
“Oh my……!”
The roaring reprimand sent the villagers scattering in every direction like startled alley cats.
Isilite watched them with inverted brows, then snorted and returned her eyebrows to normal—only to flinch and curl in on herself.
“Ow ow ow…….”
Why did her master’s spear never grow familiar no matter how many times she was hit?
Rubbing her especially sore side, she stole glances at Hwanin as he drank water. When he took up his spear again and approached, her face brightened and she slanted the heavy iron greatsword toward the ground.
She had tried holding it upright, spreading it wide to block, even gripping it horizontally—but the most comfortable stance for defense was this slight diagonal, hilt a little higher.
The raised blade covered a quarter of her body. Attacks aimed at the remaining three-quarters could be parried with short movements of the hilt.
Not that ‘comfortable’ means I can actually block them.
Other stances meant taking a hundred and twenty or a hundred and thirty hits out of a hundred attacks, counting the ricochets. This one at least limited it to a hundred and nineteen or a hundred and twenty-eight.
When will I ever get to attack Master?
When that day came, would she finally be a proper warrior? Heart fluttering with anticipation, Isilite widened her eyes and poured every nerve into capturing Hwanin’s attacks.
……
But something was wrong. The scenery around her had suddenly changed.
Isilite blinked at an unfamiliar ceiling, then bolted upright. Right—they had been sparring!
“You’re awake.”
“M-Master?”
“I used a mid-grade recovery potion for the moment. How does your body feel?”
Only then did she realize she was lying in the living room, and that a dull, heavy sensation lingered in her forehead and neck.
“Uh, my neck feels a little heavy—like the day after drinking too much. What…… happened?”
“You took a hit to the forehead and your head snapped far back. Damage to the cervical vertebrae. Drink the rest and apply it, then rest until you feel better.”
Catching the recovery potion Hwanin tossed her, Isilite belatedly pieced together what had occurred and grew dejected.
Right before she blacked out, she had thought Hwanin’s attack point was a little high and would pass over her head.
Of course it hadn’t. Hwanin had aimed precisely between her brows.
But with her still-clumsy combat sense she misjudged, and excitement flared—If I dodge this, I can finally counterattack for the first time!
Treating it as a once-in-a-lifetime chance that might never come again, she ducked her upper body slightly to evade perfectly and charged at Hwanin…… or so she believed. Reality was entirely different.
She had not fully cleared the spear’s trajectory, nor had it been a chance to counter.
Moreover, thinking she would never recklessly counter, Hwanin had simply lowered the tip of the black spear a fraction to match her duck—and the butt of the shaft struck her forehead dead-center. The thrusting force of the spear combined with her own forward momentum snapped her neck nearly two hundred thirty degrees backward.
To Hwanin’s eyes it looked as though her neck had been torn free with a sickening crack and she had crumpled; for an instant a chill ran down his spine.
Had he not withdrawn the black spear in time, or had Isilite put even a little more force into her neck, her cervical vertebrae would have shattered and she would have died instantly.
It was an accident born of Isilite’s reckless courage and Hwanin’s complacent assumption that she would never do something so foolish.
“…….”
Watching Isilite steal glances at him while drinking half the general mid-grade recovery potion and carefully applying the rest to her neck, Hwanin let out a long, silent breath with complicated feelings.
When he had seen her eyes rolled back and her body convulsing, his thoughts had honestly stopped for several seconds.
I’ll have to be more careful during sparring from now on.
This was his first time seriously teaching anyone, so he had never anticipated such a case.
To keep it from happening again, it would be better for him to be more careful than for Isilite.
Killing is easy; teaching is several times harder, he thought as he told Isilite to rest in her room. Then, to clear his head, he stepped outside for some air.
Whoooosh—
Climbing the highest of the hills that barred the southern edge of the village, a strong wind wrapped around his body and swept past.
The fierce wind that seemed ready to blow away even the grime of worldly thoughts, and the highland vista that stretched clear for dozens of kilometers, both suited Hwanin’s heart perfectly.
Krrhuung~.
Emergency Food, who had followed him out, also seemed to enjoy the strong wind; he rode the currents, soaring through the sky and humming to himself.
I’ll spend the day here.
The soul energy he had expended on salvations yesterday had recovered to seventy percent. With the weather so mild, lingering here should bring it to eighty.
Lying back on the grass as soft as wool, the scents of grass and earth rose even stronger.
Closing his eyes, he felt exactly as though he were buried in nature itself.
In that state Hwanin sank into thought.
I need to recruit a soul that is good-natured, friendly toward us, and bound to the world by strong lingering attachments…… but is that even possible?
A temporary cooperative framework could be built, yet no matter how he considered it, long-term recruitment seemed impossible.
Giving up nearly triple physical enhancement is a shame, though.
He still could not judge whether it was safe to summon a mid-grade soul. Yet performing possession with a good soul yielded physical enhancement close to that level.
If he laid a curse with such a soul, how much physical weakening would apply?
In underground labyrinths where walls blocked the view, safe advance scouting would be possible; in open labyrinths, flying surveillance of the surroundings would be feasible. The utility was beyond words.
But there’s no method.
He had considered dozens of approaches, yet none appealed.
Every one of those dozens of methods involved harming the soul.
Approaching people, buttering them up with every sweet word to raise favorability, then arranging an accidental death without their knowledge and turning them into souls.
Approaching someone who desperately desired something—like Isilite—granting that wish, then killing them without their realizing it to create a dependent soul.
Loading them with heavy debt so they would repay it after death as a soul. Coaxing a soul until it became blindly obedient and then using it…… and so on.
Having vaguely sensed that gods existed in this world, he had no desire to commit acts that would harm souls.
No choice.
It was not a problem haste would solve. If he continued traveling steadily through villages, towns, and cities performing salvations, he would eventually encounter at least one soul that met the conditions.
Just as he was thinking that—
“……it! If…… then! ……what?!”
“……but ha…… soul…… even if……!”
Several raised voices drifted raw into Hwanin’s ears from afar.
Strange. Those voices aren’t undergoing the translation phenomenon.
In his travels so far Hwanin had seen only one written script, yet he had heard three languages.
A language similar to Arabic used by the Lucran tribe. A language similar to French used by the Pleu Ielkata. A language that seemed a mix of Chinese and Japanese used by Baek Ryeogang during labyrinth exploration.
Was this phenomenon he called translation something that occurred within a certain distance regardless of race?
And that was why multiple languages existed?
If the translation phenomenon is widely known, that might be the case.
While he pondered, the voices grew clearer and the translation phenomenon took hold.
“Stop acting like a coward already! What if that thing is a magical beast?!”
“Damn it, seriously. Sis, please! That green Kue is definitely the one the Soul Master brought!”
“I saw it too! But that Kue was wearing fancy armor! This bird isn’t!”
“You think it wears armored plate all day long?! Ahhh, seriously—after awakening your strength just got ridiculously high! Bro! You say something too!”
“Selfie. If that Kue really is the Soul Master’s pet bird, you’re making a huge mistake right now.”
“I think what you two are saying is right. Still, as the village watch, don’t you think we have to check anything that might threaten the village, no matter how minor?”
The man who had been dragged along by the waist, fuming, finally let go and grumbled.
“I don’t know. If there’s a problem, it’s on you, Sis! You take responsibility!”
“If it’s as you say, I’ll kneel and beg the Soul Master’s forgiveness if I have to…… so…….”
Listening to the man and woman’s conversation, Hwanin rose from the grass. His eyes met those of a rabbit-eared woman climbing the slope of the hill, and two centaur-kin men whose lower halves were horses.
All three pairs of eyes went round.