The Birth of the Blood Cult
An overwhelming mass, as if an entire building had picked itself up and begun to move. Though its body was made of flesh, it swayed with more sheer bulk than any golem of metal.
With a deep, resonant boom, the giant bear's massive frame collapsed without any hope of holding out, and the instant it struck the ground a shockwave rippled outward. Dust bloomed like fog, and the earth heaved violently.
The blood-red heat that had punched straight through the giant bear. Such was the power of that crimson blow, and such the heat it carried, that the ground near the bear's corpse glowed scorching hot.
Stunned disbelief! Sheer awe! Forget the Ratmen. This was the tyrant of the forest, the monster before which even goblins and orcs could only turn tail and flee without the slightest chance to resist. And that tyrant of the forest had just been dethroned by a single blow from one tiny fist!
The goblins and orc riders, who until that moment had fled in mindless panic from the bear's pursuit, could no longer even think of running. They simply stared at Cheon Yujin with eyes frozen solid in shock and terror.
Savoring every one of those gazes, the crimson-eyed girl let a slender smile curl at the corner of her mouth. Dyed blood-red by the power of the Forged Blood Art, her cloak billowed open like a pair of crimson wings, and Cheon Yujin, who had been hanging high in the air, spun round and round several times before alighting squarely atop the bear's skull.
And then.
"Ow, hot! Hot hot hot! Hgyagyagyak!!!"
Tap, tap-tap-tap! Eyes bulging wide, the crimson-eyed girl was forced to tap-dance atop the bear's skull as though it were her own personal stage.
That strike had been the Forged Blood Art, the Blood Flame Realm, unleashed with her every ounce of strength, and the flame clinging to her blood had burned away the giant bear's blood in a single stroke. The heat seeping out through the bear's hide was more than capable of punching straight through the thin soles of her shoes and the delicate soles of a frail girl's feet!
"Jjijk, jjijkjjik…?"
"Jjijkjjikjjik."
The Asura Sura Dance. Long ago, it had been a dance that carried one woman's tragic fate, performed until its dancer became a single streaking star, and in any case this belonged to the same dance. The Ratmen, watching her feet move more briskly in a far more frivolous impromptu jig, tilted their heads. She was flailing about exactly like a Ratman who had accidentally set foot on ground baked hot by the sun all day long, but surely the great Hyeolma-woo-seu would never lose her composure over something as trivial as hot feet. The absence of true communication, with neither side able to understand the other's language and both forced to converse through body language alone, ended up summoning a tragedy that was, for Cheon Yujin alone, sorrowful beyond all measure.
"Jjijk, jjijk!"
"Jjijkjjik jjijkjjik jjijkjjikjjik!"
Tap, tap-tap-tap! Tap-tap!
Just as the Ratmen had once delivered their victory reports in the form of dance, the great Hyeolma-woo-seu was now expressing the joy of victory through dance as well, and so the Ratmen simply wished to follow that sacred dance. And since the dance was so delightfully merry, the Ratmen could not help but lose themselves in the joyful impromptu jig right along with her.
"Jjijkjjik jjijkjjik jjijkjjikjjik!"
"Jjiiiiik!!!"
Tap, tap-tap-tap!
In that hushed moment, with every monster and hunter watching in a daze, the only sound ringing out was the Ratmen's feet drumming against the ground. The bear's corpse, so colossal that even felled one had to crane one's head far back just to see the top of its skull, had become an altar, and she had ended up looking for all the world like a high priest of some totemic faith. And so, with a rush of heat, Cheon Yujin's face flushed redder than the blood-crimson power of the Forged Blood Art itself.
"…G-G-Gal!!!"
An embarrassment beyond humanity! It was in front of the Ratmen, after all, so she had tried to make her landing as dazzling as possible. She had even gone so far as to invoke her light-body technique for this, swallowing the dizziness to somersault through the air again and again…! And it had to be the very moment when the goblins, the orcs, and the hunters turned into bobblehead dolls were all watching, too……!
"Ughhhhhh…."
Even in the midst of all that, with a pattering rush, the heavy heat pressing up into her soles forced Cheon Yujin to keep up her frivolous little steps, her face crumpling on the verge of tears.
"Noooooo…!!!"
Somehow, somehow, she had to breathe life back into this silence-drenched atmosphere…! Cheon Yujin flung herself down from the bear's head. Merely by lunging forward, stamping her feet, and flailing her arms, she sent the monsters, who ordinarily dismissed the Ratmen as nothing more than weak, pathetic prey, flinching and shrinking back in fright.
With a grin, as if a lightbulb had just flickered to life above her head, a triumphant smile spread across Cheon Yujin's lips.
"Bonjwa. No. I, your Cult Master, declare: my proud faithful of the Blood Cult."
Here, in this very place, a newly born Blood Cult. And its devoted faithful.
"Has the time not come to repay, in kind, all that has been done to you?"
The words carried no meaning across the language barrier. But the finger pointing at the dumbstruck goblins and orc riders, and the wickedly twisted smile beneath the mask, made the intent all too clear. Letius's whiskers, and the whiskers of every Ratman around him, twisted wickedly in turn, curling into the very same smile.
"Jjijk, jjijkjjik…!"
"Jjijkjjik."
With a whoosh, a hot wind rippled outward, and the Ratmen's fur dyed itself red as blood. The Ratmen of the Red Heart Clan had once worn fur black as the ashes left after a fire, but befitting their name, like hearts pounding crimson, the fur they showed the world now ran through with a vivid scarlet sheen.
Evolution, and martial arts. The Ratmen, primitive as they were, or rather precisely because they were primitive, had founded a martial art bearing the purest of natures. Just as humans of the distant past devised martial arts after watching the forms of beasts, this time it was the beast that, watching a dancing human form, heated its own blood and forged a martial art of its own. The promise of great advancement. Just as the Forged Blood Art had achieved a new evolution into the Blood Flame Realm, the Ratmen took their name from that very new realm and christened theirs the Hyeolyeomgong, the Blood Flame Art. The Red Heart Clan of before and the Red Heart Clan of now were, in truth, already different species altogether. And so their hearts pounded more fiercely than they ever had before.
"The long ages of scorn and persecution… now is the hour to repay them in full!"
"Jjijkjjik jjijkjjik jjijkjjikjjik!!!"
Just as Murim warriors formed battle formations to amplify one another's strength, the Blood Flame Art of the Murim people, or rather the Murim rats, worked on much the same principle. Passing the embers clinging to their blood from one to another, the Ratmen, dyed redder and redder, surged forward in a single instant. A billowing mist of crimson blood-qi crashed over the goblins and orc riders, and before long, screams of utter pandemonium filled the air.
"Krrrurgh!"
"Kieeeeeee!!!"
Screaming more horribly than they had when the giant bear came charging, the goblins and orcs scattered, and the moment the blood-red ratmen and Cheon Yujin dashed forward, another great march of chaos began.
If there was any difference from moments before, it was this. Unlike the food-chain diorama in which goblins had been chased by orc riders, and orc riders by the giant bear, this time an even greater incarnation of terror was the one doing the chasing.
"Ahahahah!!! Chase them, chase them!"
With a terror like that on their heels, the line between friend and foe dissolved, and orcs and goblins began fleeing in one clumped mass, as if they had been comrades all along.
Leaving behind the hunters whose joints had popped out of place and left them unable to move, Cheon Yujin and the Ratmen tore off after the fleeing monsters. By staging a scene of pandemonium, she could slyly slide past her embarrassing moment, and wiping out the hunters' stares was part of the plan, too.
While the Ratmen threw themselves into the chase, Cheon Yujin drifted silently toward Letius.
"Jjijk, jjijkjjik…?"
Letius, mid-sprint in high spirits, tensed at the sight of Cheon Yujin drawing so near. Watching him with a smile and gentle eyes, Cheon Yujin thought: Hmm, this fellow. Dress him up roughly like the rest, and no one will ever tell them apart anyway. And seeing how splendidly he has turned out, there would be no trouble at all in handing every last duty of the future over to him…!
"…Heh."
"Jjiik……?"
Naturally enough. She had played the part of the Blood Cult's master, of a deity made manifest, but she had absolutely no intention of actually living out her days inside the gate alongside the Ratmen…! Cheon Yujin, the Blood Demon. Ever since returning home, a life without fried food and online Go had been a life without oxygen. If she let herself get swept any further by the mood and went completely off the rails, then no matter how she turned it over in her head, she could see only one future: eating prison slop behind bars and begging her little sister Se-ah for fried chicken during visiting hours…!
Besides, even a Cult Master was not obliged to tend to the faithful from start to finish like a nursemaid hovering over a newborn, was she? Children grew up stronger when they were allowed to run wild outside, after all…! And this way, she was not truly breaking the vow she herself had declared! She would merely be absent from the premises. A Cult Master was a Cult Master all the same!
In other words, Cult Master meant a position from which one could dump absolutely everything onto those below…! That was the very reason she had come all this way, beyond the reach of the hunters' eyes. And since Cheon Yujin had fitted her mind with a truly flawless excuse for fleeing responsibility, she could strip off the cloak and mask that shrouded her without a moment's hesitation.
"Jjijk……?!"
"You there."
Their words could not bridge the gap, so she could not call his name, but that hardly mattered. Even without knowing a name, one could always forge a title to call by. And so the Cult Master of the Blood Cult bestowed a new name upon her first disciple.
"You. Shall be the Blood Rat Corps Commander."
With a soft sweep, the ink-black helmet covering Letius's face settled into place. To Cheon Yujin it had been a mask; to the Ratman, it was a true helmet. And then, last of all, the cloak still laced with lingering traces of crimson blood-qi draped itself around Letius's entire frame. Armaments once offered up to a god. Those same armaments, now transformed into divine relics, were bestowed upon Letius, and Cheon Yujin smiled in satisfaction.
He was a touch on the large side, granted, but so long as the blood-red afterglow of the Blood Flame Art wafted naturally from his whole body, then when the Aegis hunters, the only humans they had ever crossed paths with, laid eyes on him again, telling him apart would surely be no easy feat…!
Cheon Yujin smiled in satisfaction, but
"Jjiik…."
he understood, with painful clarity, exactly what this meant. War Chief Letius. No, the Blood Rat Corps Commander of the Blood Cult felt both his eyes dim and glisten.
At that moment, with a light thump, Cheon Yujin dealt him a soft blow to the chest. A fist steeped in warmth.
"I leave what comes after to you."
With a light bound, she was gone, nothing left but a retreating back. The Blood Rat Corps Commander stroked the faint warmth still lingering in his wind-tossed cloak as he gazed after that back, long and wordless. She had slipped away without so much as a stir. His kin, knowing nothing, were off reveling in their merry chase, and he alone had been left to see the god's departing back upon its way.
"Jjijk, jjijkjjik."
Cheon Yujin had simply meant to smash all responsibility to pieces and slip away. From where Letius stood, however, gods were beings who descended briefly to the earth before returning once more to the heavens. He could not help but feel sorrow at the departure of the great one who had rewritten his race's fate, and yet there was none of the despair that had once swallowed him.
The sun sank slowly, and a sunset bled into the west where the god had departed. He gazed straight into the sky beginning to glow with vivid red.
Thump, thump-thump!
"Hyeolma-woo-seu…!"
Stammering, clumsily imitating the tongue of humans, he called out that revered name. He was the Blood Rat Corps Commander who had already once leapt up from the earth toward the heavens, and so he knew that someday he would climb there again, this time with every last one of his kin, and dance alongside Hyeolma-woo-seu.
"Jjijk, jjijkjjik… a…gain…!"
The new ruler of the regional-type gate known as the Alios Eastern Great Forest. The Ratmen, beginning to evolve into a species entirely unlike their former selves, the first faithful of the Blood Cult. The god, in departing, had left Letius a divine relic, and had left a measure of encouragement upon his heart as well. He resolved to forge the strength to meet their god again one day. And unknown even to the Cult Master, Cheon Yujin herself, a true Blood Cult began to stir within the Great Forest.