Banya
"But I truly cannot remember, you know?"
"Is there anything that comes back? From before you ended up here, I mean."
"Memories from before I arrived in this place... Ah—"
Banya's eyes went round, as if something had just surfaced.
"There were children."
"Children? You mean your kids?"
"Hehe. Not my children by blood, but children I cared for as though they were. Tara, was it? You can think of them as similar to the child the Gumiho took in."
"Hmm—"
If they were anything like Tara, then Banya had probably taken in foxes whose years had run out and remade them as spirit beasts. At the rank of an Eight-Tailed Fox she was a half-god in all but name — it would hardly have been a difficult feat.
As Choco turned that over, Banya rested a hand against her cheek and sighed.
"I'm worried. I vanished so suddenly — they must be terribly confused. I do hope they're all right..."
"They'll be fine. Spirit beasts reborn with an Eight-Tailed Fox's spiritual power? There's no way they wouldn't be."
"That's true, but... they're only forty or fifty years old. Still just kits. I can't help but worry."
"...This might come out of nowhere, but how old are you, exactly?"
Banya seemed to give the question genuine thought, then began folding her fingers one by one. When one hand wasn't enough she used the other, until only her last pinky remained. Even that seemed uncertain — she folded it halfway, unfolded it, folded it again — and at last spoke in a bright, untroubled voice.
"At the very least, I'd say I've lived about nine hundred years?"
"N-nine hundred years?"
"Does that sound impossibly far away?"
"Of course it does. Nine hundred years? That's a number I've never even thought about."
Human lifespans had grown longer, true enough, but people still typically died around a hundred. By a simple count, nine hundred years was enough time to live nine entire lives.
Watching Choco speak with such weary disbelief, Banya smiled as though she found it adorable.
"Hehe. But you'll have to get used to it, too. For a fox who possesses a Fox Bead, lifespan might as well not exist."
"Lifespan doesn't exist...?"
"We who call ourselves cultivators may wear physical bodies, but our true nature is no different from that of a soul."
"A body, but essentially a soul... isn't that just another way of saying you're a living ghost?"
Banya shook her head.
"We're nothing like those lowly things called ghosts. A spirit deity, perhaps — that would be the better word. The Fox Bead is a divine relic. Simply possessing one transforms the owner's flesh into something spiritual. It forges a vessel for becoming a god."
"A vessel for becoming a god...?"
"It reshapes the essence of one's being to suit the environment of the heavens. Of course, for a young cultivator like you, that's a distant and difficult tale. Even though you hold a Fox Bead, you don't yet understand it fully."
Banya stretched out a slender finger and poked Choco squarely in the forehead.
"Excuse me for a moment."
"Excuse you for wha— hyaah?!"
Before she could finish the sentence, she felt Banya's finger slide straight into her forehead. Choco shrieked, her whole body convulsing. It didn't hurt, but a bizarre, nameless sensation twisted through her of its own accord. Whether her eyes bulged or her limbs writhed, Banya paid it no mind whatsoever.
"If one succeeds in transforming their existence into something almost perfectly celestial, interfering with another being is no difficult matter at all."
"Okay, I get it, so pull your finger out— hngh..."
"Do you understand now?"
Understand, my ass.
The instant the finger withdrew, every ounce of strength drained from Choco's body. She collapsed onto the floor in a twitching heap. Banya looked down at the wreckage she herself had caused and laughed softly.
"This isn't an experience other cultivators get to have, you know. The sensation of having your existence interfered with will surely be of help to you."
"...I don't know what kind of help that's supposed to be, but can I punch you just once right now?"
"If you can manage it, be my guest."
Even at that teasing invitation, all Choco could do was tremble. She couldn't move. She couldn't put any strength into her limbs at all — it looked as though she'd be stuck lying there, face-down, for quite a while. Banya had known that perfectly well when she said it.
What kind of humiliation was this? Choco let out a long sigh and, with great effort, rolled onto her back to stare up at the pure white sky.
Gazing quietly upward, she found herself wondering how things were going outside. She remembered up to the moment Yeon had come toward her, after she'd been gasping from the backlash of breaking the kobold mage's spell.
Thinking about it now, she should have told them about the arrows inscribed with the Array of Spirit Breaking instead of passing out on the spot. She'd gone through so much trouble making those things, and they hadn't even been used. If everything had gone according to plan, they would have cleared the boss by now with time to spare. That was what stung. They'd come so far, only to fall one step short.
She even wondered whether, since she was going to overdraw her spiritual power anyway, she should have spent it killing the mage instead of blocking the spell.
But a spell that's already been cast doesn't vanish just because the caster dies. I didn't have a choice.
That had been the right call in the end. Even if she'd killed the mage, if she'd blacked out and Ho-jin's party had been wiped, that would have been a failure all the same. Still, she couldn't help the regret that lingered. Choco thought of the staff the kobold mage had been holding.
The Array of Sealing, was it? She had no idea who the staff's original owner had been, or why a cultivator would have gone so far as to seal the thing — but it had caught her interest. Items like this almost always led to a chain quest that unlocked their full potential. A staff that could turn a single kobold into a fully fledged mage and buff an entire horde just by being held — if its true power ever awakened, it would become an extraordinarily dangerous weapon.
It might even turn out to be Named Equipment.
Named Equipment — weapons of which only a single one existed in the entire game. Plenty of people called them overpowered, but Arina, the company behind Al Fantasia, accepted every other criticism while refusing to budge on that one. They never even issued a statement, just sat in stubborn silence until some players got fed up and left. The majority of users, though, didn't mind. The method of obtaining Named pieces was purely luck. Being high-level didn't guarantee you'd find one, and even a low-level player could stumble across one if fortune smiled.
There was the player who'd fallen into the ocean, wandered into a dungeon, and come out with one. The player who'd been walking along, thought a hole in a tree looked suspicious, stuck a hand in, and pulled one out. The player who'd tripped over a rock that turned out to be a Named piece buried in the dirt. Put that way, it almost sounded as if Named Equipment were lying around everywhere you stepped. In reality, fewer than thirty people in the entire Al Fantasia player base possessed one.
My weapon was Named Equipment, too.
Choco pictured a greatsword that stood a good foot taller than her current body and clicked her tongue. There was no way she could lift it now. Even back then she'd maxed out her Strength stat and borrowed the item's own power just to swing the thing.
As she drifted through those old memories, Banya's words from a moment ago came back to her.
"Banya. You said there were children waiting for you, right?"
"You're going to pass along news of me? How kind of you."
"...I haven't said anything yet."
"Oh? So you won't tell them?"
"That's... not what I meant..."
It wasn't, but somehow she'd been completely outmaneuvered. Choco pulled a sour face, and Banya smiled.
"I'm only teasing. If you deliver news to the children, I'll be sure to repay you."
"Don't bother. I wasn't doing it for a reward in the first place."
"Hehe. How sweet you are."
"So where are your children, then?"
"Have you heard of a place called the Ulder Kingdom?"
"The Ulder Kingdom?"
Choco tilted her head at the unfamiliar name. She didn't have Al Fantasia's entire lore memorized, but she'd been playing long enough, and she remembered every region she'd ever visited. She knew most place names. Ulder Kingdom, though, was one she'd never heard.
"Where is that?"
"A human nation in the western part of the continent. A vast mountain range encircles the country like a wall splitting the land, so there wasn't much travel between them and other humans — but it was a peaceful place, all the same."
"You lived among humans?"
"I was the guardian deity of the Ulder Kingdom, after all."
Guardian deity. Choco blinked at the unexpected words.
"Are cultivators even allowed to do that?"
"There was never any restriction against involving oneself with the mortal world. If I may say so — not every cultivator trains for the sake of becoming a god."
"They don't cultivate to become gods...?"
"They wear the title of cultivator, but each of them harbors their own desires."
"And I am no different," Banya added.
"Do you happen to know what happens when one ascends to godhood?"
"Well... I've never actually thought about it."
Honestly, the vague idea of becoming a Gumiho had only ever been about whether she might return to her original body. She'd never once considered what would actually happen if she became a Gumiho and rose to a divine seat.
"If someone becomes a Gumiho and ascends to the heavens, the current Gumiho will cease to exist. And that divine seat will pass to the newly born Gumiho."
"Cease to exist? Why?"
"Because that is the law of this world. A cruel law that decrees every god must exist as one, and only one."
"But if that's true, then why does the Gumiho—"
"—give other foxes the chance to become a god? Is that what you were going to say?"
Banya had finished the sentence for her. Choco nodded heavily. Of course she wasn't fond of the Gumiho — the one she suspected of turning her into this. But it wasn't as if she truly hated her, either. Hearing that she would simply cease to exist left an uneasy feeling in Choco's chest.
Whether or not she understood what Choco was feeling, Banya whispered.
"The Gumiho... she regrets."
"Regrets...? What does she regret?"
"No one knows except the Gumiho herself. She has never told a soul. Unless I were to become a Gumiho and ascend to the heavens—"
She stopped there, then smiled as if a delightful idea had just occurred to her.
"Or perhaps you could go and ask her yourself? Why she regrets so deeply."
"Me? Wouldn't it be faster for you to become a god, Banya...?"
Unlike Choco, who was merely a Two-Tailed Fox, Banya was an Eight-Tailed Fox. Of course she would become a Gumiho far sooner. But Banya shook her head as if to say that wasn't so.
"I no longer have that chance. It's something only you can do."
"You don't have a chance? What is that supposed to mean?"
"I can't say any more than that. Now then — it's time for you to wake up."
Before Choco could get a word out, her body lifted into the air. She was leaving the soul room, returning to consciousness. She reached out, trying to shout something, but she couldn't resist a mind that had already begun to wake.
"Until next time."
Banya waved her hand in a gentle flutter. Nestled in her arms, Choco could see the figure of a sleeping man. That was the last thing she saw before the world went dark.
And when she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Ho-jin's bewildered face.
"I thought she was a person — she's a monster?"
"Do not compare me to mindless things like monsters, human."
Tara snarled the words.