Catching the Tail (2)
1.
With the money from the dungeon raid, I bought the extra reagents we needed. The bounty for clearing a low-rank dungeon like the Orc Cave was never going to make anyone rich.
Even so, hunting was essentially mercenary work with your life on the line, so a few million won was still a few million won.
"I'll go get them."
"Hm? Okay."
I left Sung-jun waiting outside, cleared my throat lightly, and fixed my expression. If I was going to pass for a doll, I needed a face as blank as possible.
"Welcome."
A mage's reagents were expensive enough that a shop like this was supposed to have dozens of magical security measures layered over everything — but put a perfect system in front of a person and they get lazy, don't they?
The shopkeeper barely glanced up when I walked in, eyes glued to his phone as he scrolled the internet. The kind of attitude that said neither of us needed to bother with the other. Fine by me. Convenient, even.
Well. I can ease up on the acting a little.
Holding a blank face for long stretches is harder than people think.
Without so much as a look in the shopkeeper's direction, I walked with crisp, measured steps and started picking out reagents. Not the real ones — sample tokens that weren't even close to the actual product. You brought those up, and the system required the shopkeeper to hand over the matching reagents under strict control.
Buying reagents like this myself was something I hadn't done in a long time. Back then I'd had a workshop that stocked every reagent that existed in the world, and I'd simply made whatever I needed there myself. Anything tedious or finicky got handled with a warp spell.
"These, please."
"Huh? What the— oh. A doll."
I finished my selection and held the samples out. The shopkeeper's face twisted into a look of pure ugh.
Truth was, it wasn't common for mages to send dolls on errands like this. Any mage who worked with reagents at all was rarely so hard up they'd begrudge the cost of a warp delivery. Even a miser knew time was worth more than the fee.
"Here."
From a triple-locked safe under heavy security, the shopkeeper checked the samples I'd brought and pulled out the matching reagents.
Except…
These are cheap junk.
The second he realized I was a doll, he'd decided to play games. That was the problem.
Worse, one of the bottles he slid across wasn't even what my sample called for — same color, same scent, completely different effect. Straight garbage.
"The quality is defective."
"A doll talking back? What kind of nonsense is that!"
Bang! The shopkeeper slammed his hand down on the counter.
Dolls, as a rule, didn't pick fights with humans. He figured a little anger would be enough to drive me out.
…Should I just crush him with magic and be done with it?
He'd tried to scam me and now he was the one throwing a fit. The sheer gall of it.
From where I stood — someone who could fire off more than a hundred spells at once without breaking a sweat — it was almost funny.
Those security wards draped all over the shop? I simply chose not to touch them. Give me three seconds and I could turn every last one of them into dead weight.
"What's going on?"
The noise must have carried outside. Sung-jun appeared in the doorway.
The moment he stepped into view — gear and all looking every bit the hunter — the shopkeeper's face froze solid, then melted almost at once into a greasy, ingratiating smile.
"Would you be the master, then?"
"That's right."
Relieved, the shopkeeper ignored me entirely and started talking straight to Sung-jun.
"No, listen! This doll can't even tell reagents apart properly and has the nerve to accuse me of scamming it!"
"Scamming?"
"Do I look like a con man to you? Look at the certificate!"
He jabbed a finger at a framed document hanging on the wall behind the register. Magical reagents were uniformly expensive, sold only through licensed shops, and that certificate was the kind of license that proved it.
The license itself was genuine — preservation magic and all — but hanging a real license on the wall had never stopped anyone from running a scam.
"That's one thing. This is another."
Sung-jun seemed to think the same. He barely spared the certificate a glance.
His eyes met mine for a moment. He nodded.
Wait. He wasn't hung up on licenses or any of that off-target physical "proof." He was trusting me?
…That felt good. Being trusted felt good.
"My doll is a specialty model. When it comes to reagents, it knows its stuff."
"Th-there are dolls like that…?"
"You've never heard of one. It's custom-made."
Sung-jun spun the lies without so much as wetting his lips.
Who was custom-made?
Just look at him. Lies rolling off his tongue like water.
I'd thought he didn't lie. I'd never seen him do it.
Watching him now, though — it wasn't that he couldn't. He simply chose not to. Lies of this caliber, he could handle just fine.
"So stop playing games and hand over the real ones."
"Y-you…!"
The shopkeeper started to protest, then cut a sidelong glance at the cameras trained squarely on the register and the safe, and let out a long sigh. Installed for security, no doubt — which meant they'd also been recording every little trick he'd tried to pull.
"I… made a mistake."
"I know you did."
Sung-jun cut him off like he couldn't be bothered. He carried himself as if nothing the man still had to say was worth hearing, and shut every word down before it could land.
He was usually so easygoing with people. This time was different.
Then again — however warm Sung-jun could be with ordinary folk, he turned ruthlessly cold the moment someone set themselves against him.
The shopkeeper hadn't gone as far as open hostility, but smiling sweetly at a man who'd already tried to cheat you only got you treated like a mark.
"H-here they are."
"Grab them."
"Yes."
Still playing the doll, I took the reagents from him. Had Sung-jun let a little killing intent slip without me noticing? The shopkeeper was pouring cold sweat as he handed them over.
Looking at how fragile he was, I almost couldn't believe he'd had the nerve to try anything in the first place. How does someone that spineless decide to run a scam?
"Got everything?"
"Mm."
The second we stepped outside, I nodded at Sung-jun's question.
After that, nothing else happened. We made it home without incident. No tails, either — the thing I'd been half-expecting.
A long enough tail gets caught, though.
According to Sung-jun, the "Maou" was running a guild. A guild stacked with high-powered hunters could throw around influence on par with a major corporation. Next time we went out, a proper tail might well be waiting.
Whatever.
The curse ends tonight either way.
2.
Once we got home, I told Sung-jun to rest for a bit and started on a meal. The Orc Cave raid hadn't been long, and we'd eaten properly during it without letting our stamina drop, so nothing elaborate was needed.
More than that — after a raid, meat soup was the ironclad rule among hunters. A broth so rich it bordered on greasy, meat simmered down until the whole body warmed through. The proper way to close out a day, or so they said.
Perfect.
The meat soup was done.
And so was the method for going after the Incubus. It had pulled so many little stunts that catching its tail had been easy.
"Been a while, hasn't it?"
"Yeah."
Meat soup might have been the rule, but high-rank hunters tended to skip it. Too much money, too little reason to bother with something that plain. They only broke out the soup and jerky when a dungeon kept them inside for days on end.
"Thanks for the food."
"Mm."
I filled a spoon, lifted it, and swallowed. I'd deliberately cranked the heat with magic until the soup was at a rolling boil; the deep, concentrated taste of meat broth bloomed across my tongue.
We traded a little idle small talk. The meal was over in no time.
"Nngh…"
Sung-jun swayed where he sat, then toppled sideways onto the couch and was out cold.
"……The drug worked well."
I'd taken the antidote in advance, so it hadn't touched me. The sleeping draught had gone into the soup.
Obviously. Sung-jun had to be asleep before I could go after the Incubus.
I lifted him with magic and laid him out on the magic circle I'd prepared ahead of time.
I scattered the reagents I'd readied, then drank what I needed to drink.
You must have felt like a king, strutting around in there.
The circle flared with light.
It swallowed Sung-jun, swallowed the room, and in an instant flooded my vision as well.
"You've had a rough time of it, hiding like a rat all this while."
The Incubus's true form took shape.
Not the borrowed face of Sung-jun it had been wearing. Not that at all.
A classic "demon."
Hideous hair matted over its whole body, and a head that wasn't human in the slightest — a sheep's head.
"Look at you."
I huffed a short laugh and mocked it. Without someone else's face to wear, it was nothing but a disgusting sheep.
A demon that lived by borrowing other people's shapes. The description fit perfectly.
"Y-you little bitch!"
"Bitch? ……Well. You're not wrong."
I was in a woman's body right now, after all.
But did that really matter?
I raised a finger and pointed straight at it.
"Then die by that bitch's hand."
Fwoooom!
A spear of blue light shot from my fingertip and punched clean through its torso.
