The Blood Fiend and the Starlight Festival
"…For those reasons, some have suggested that our Aegis Guild suspend this year's Starlight Festival alone and devote ourselves entirely to resolving the matter for the time being."
"Resolve the matter?"
"The investigation into that Named monster that appeared at the regional-type gate the other day is still at a standstill, for one thing. And with this string of exsanguination deaths… there are concerns as to whether the nighttime festivities ought not to be curtailed."
"………."
The hunter Namgung Yerin stood at rigid attention in the guildmaster's office, delivering her report with a taut expression.
It was a vast chamber hung with the crest of the Radiant Shield. As if to mirror its owner's love of ostentation, every ornament caught the light and glittered hard enough to sting the eye wherever her gaze happened to wander.
This was the guildmaster's office. And beyond a desk as flamboyant as anything out of a fantasy novel sat a man with his fingers laced together. His two eyes sparkled in the shape of a blazing cosmos, as though they had drunk in the starlight of the night sky itself, and long golden hair—gleaming more lustrously than gold—spilled down over his shoulders. No one who saw him could have mistaken him for Korean.
The guildmaster of Aegis. Hero of the Stars—or Hero of Light. The man who, at the age of a high schooler, had tumbled into another world and returned with the story that, as its Hero, he had vanquished the Demon King and saved that world…
The Returnee, Cain Brave.
…Nngh.
Namgung Yerin groaned inwardly. Her tension did not come from the fact that she stood alone with her guildmaster, a man who dwelt in heights far above her own. Well—that was one reason, admittedly, but setting that aside, she knew exactly what manner of person Cain Brave was. It was impossible not to be tense.
'Returnees… are all, more or less, out of their minds….'
She was deeply afraid of this situation, in which there was no telling what sudden mental acceleration he might pull at any moment…!
Clank.
A heavy, iron-against-iron sound. Cain, who wore his thick full plate even inside his own office and heard reports fully armed, opened his mouth with ponderous weight.
"The Starlight Festival will not be suspended."
"But… Guildmaster."
"Would you have us bow to the terror of some outside foe and turn our backs on the fervent hopes of the myriad souls who even now wait desperately for their guardian's aid? Stand up straight and square those shoulders, Namgung Yerin!"
"Y-yes, si—wait, what?"
The Hero's eyes flashed like comets stitching their way across the cosmos, venting ferocious light.
"I, Cain Brave, and our Aegis are the shield that guards the people—an impregnable rampart! To soothe the hearts of those cowed by fear of the enemy beyond is, likewise, the plain duty of a guardian!"
"I-I must have misheard you?"
"I said stand tall, Namgung Yerin! You are the Chief Organizer of the fifth Starlight Festival, appointed by my own hand! So long as the will of humanity shines brilliantly, there is no cause to yield to terror. Namgung Yerin—recall your duty!"
"Y-ye-ye-EES, sir…!"
Namgung Yerin thought to herself that if the pay hadn't been so good, she would have quit any guild with a boss like this long ago…!
'No, hold on—since when does it make any sense for someone who isn't even an officer to be on a festival's supreme organizing committee?!'
The hunter Namgung Yerin belonged to what you might call the "in-between generation." Her younger sister, Namgung Yurin, had been no older than seven when the very first gate opened—gates had arrived at an age when the concept of society was only beginning to take shape in her mind, making her part of the new generation that accepted the post-gate world as simply the way things were. The old generation, meanwhile, understood the concept of gates in their heads, yet the common sense of the before-times still gripped a corner of their minds.
Namgung Yerin's age bracket retained a measure of old-generation common sense while taking to the new world as quickly as the young did. Because she could, to a degree, reconcile the two sides… when the guildmaster parachuted her straight into the festival's organizing staff, she had been ecstatic to the point of losing her reason. Only now could she grasp the meaning in the sorrowful gazes of her seniors, who had watched her giddily celebrate "working directly under the guildmaster" and "a golden opportunity for advancement"…!
"Guildmaster, even I don't think canceling the festival is on the table. But this string of exsanguination deaths is about to become a major social issue in its own right. If a victim were to appear at the festival itself, I fear we would be unable to escape the condemnation."
"So you are saying measures must be taken."
"Yes, exactly! I've compiled the various opinions on the matter right here, so if you would just—"
"Unnecessary."
"I'm sorry?"
"On the day of the Starlight Festival, I myself shall stand in watch and vigil. So long as human will stands among us, there is no ground on which any filthy evil may set foot in this festival of Cain Brave!"
No, that isn't the problem here…!
Namgung Yerin's reason, still comparatively intact, bellowed in full-throated protest—but at the same time, a wave of relief washed over her: at this point, no one would blame her for throwing in the towel.
'Well… fine.'
She could rest at least somewhat easy. The reason was that Cain Brave could make pronouncements with such overflowing confidence because…
…among the 1st-Generation Hunters and Returnees—those inhuman, nightmarish powerhouses whom ordinary hunters dared not oppose—the strength of the Aegis guildmaster stood endlessly close to the very summit…!
"But Guildmaster… even so, would you please at least look over what I prepared…?"
"Hmm. That, too, is the natural duty of a guardian of all people. That request, I shall graciously accept."
Only at Namgung Yerin's plea did Cain finally bend his gaze to the documents.
The serial exsanguination case. A horrific string of murders in which awakened ones of every description had been slaughtered indiscriminately—so varied were the victims that no common denominator could be found among them.
None existed. And yet, looking at the roster of the slain, it was impossible to shake the impression that their strength had been climbing "tier by tier."
Cain examined the photographs in the file—assembled from materials supplied by the government departments working in cooperation with Aegis—and smiled bitterly. As though someone had been running experiments on how to kill a human being more efficiently; the scenes of slaughter, committed by wildly various methods, remained in abundance.
And. The prime culprit who had created those scenes.
"…So they have already fastened that repulsive name upon it—the 'Blood Fiend.' Does it not fit rather well?"
A demon. The Hero's arch-nemesis. The very essence of loathsomeness itself, defiling the human will—a will that could shine more brilliantly than the stars, more radiantly than the light! Truly, a name well deserved.
'Exsanguination' meant death caused by excessive blood loss. Despite the victims having been butchered in all manner of ways, there was a reason the deaths bore that specific name. And there was a reason the victims—who shared almost nothing in common—could all be gathered into a single bundle, on the flat certainty that one lone culprit had taken them all.
Exsanguination. In the word's most elemental sense… the loss of blood.
"…There is nothing left. Not at all."
In the victims' bodies, not a single drop of blood remained.
"So the place you want us to go together… is a festival?"
"Yeah, uh-huh. It's called the Starlight Festival… I mean, yeah, the name's kind of a joke, but it's a seriously wild festival. And it just so happens the crazy bitch at my place is working on the organizer side, so… yeah… figured we'd go check it out."
Namgung Yurin tacked on, as if in excuse, it'd be kinda awkward going by myself, y'know.
The Starlight Festival. Judging by the name alone, it sounded like the sort of festival that ought to be held not in Korea but in some fantasy world. Even This Seat knew of it. It had been the talk of the internet for the better part of a month before opening day; trying not to know about it would have taken effort.
A festival of equally renowned scale, hosted every autumn by Aegis, one of the nation's foremost hunter guilds. The reason it was held in autumn, it seemed, was that the Aegis guildmaster—a returnee from an otherworld straight out of medieval fantasy—had been in the habit of celebrating the autumn harvest festival every year. And that, in turn, was precisely what made Aegis's Starlight Festival… the Starlight Festival… such a distinctive event.
A harvest festival is a celebration of gratitude for a year of farming and the crops it bore. But Aegis was no guild of farmers—it was a hunter guild. And so the Starlight Festival was… a festival, yes, but at the same time a commemorative showcase, an occasion on which the Aegis Guild unveiled to the world and boasted of its harvest: everything reaped from within the gates over the past year.
"Jjin, have you ever been, though?"
I shook my head side to side. This Seat had, after all, been back in this world for only a few months. Naturally, I knew of it solely through the internet; I had never once attended.
"You know how gates are… old farts—ahem. Honestly, adults mostly just get scared of 'em or hate 'em outright. Can't say I blame them."
"……?"
"But, like… sure, the Lake of Holy Water turned into… that, but among the things you can see through the gates… there are honestly a ton of jaw-dropping ones."
"And why does that matter…?"
"No, it's just… after going through something like that, I worried that maybe you'd decided you never wanted to go anywhere near a gate again… So I wanted to show you there are fun things too…."
Namgung Yurin stammered it out, her face going red.
So that was what she had been thinking. Ordinarily, surviving an incident like that would breed a certain wariness, if not outright fear or trauma. If anything, This Seat had been the one worrying that a seventeen-year-old child like Namgung Yurin might come to feel exactly that way.
At first, the girl had rubbed This Seat the wrong way—what with that Namgung surname and those catlike eyes. But Namgung Yurin, for all her delinquent looks… and for all the menace of her name, was truly a child of admirable heart.
And so.
"Huh…?"
Pat, pat.
My palm swept down over the crown of Namgung Yurin's head, drumming gently on the black roots showing through the bleach.
"………."
Look—yes, I had been so moved by her admirable heart that I'd found myself patting her head without thinking. But the sight of Namgung Yurin suddenly ducking her head and hunching up in perfect meekness stirred a nameless sense of dread….
"A-anyway! The Starlight Festival… there's SO much to see! I heard it from the crazy bitch at my place—she says this year's gonna be even crazier!"
Seeing This Seat's expression change, Namgung Yurin shouted in desperation.
The Starlight Festival—the Aegis Guild's harvest festival. The harvest reaped from within the gates was not limited to things like the remains of monsters. Resources of every kind, flora and fauna, food, civilizations, even phenomena… true to their nature as passages linking other worlds, the gates overflowed with things far beyond what anyone armed with a modern person's ordinary point of view could imagine. Even Murim, which could be called relatively similar to this world, had harbored a wide variety of inexplicable phenomena beyond mere martial arts.
If one were pressed to put a fine point on it…
'The Blood Demon Art, too…'
…was a martial art that was not merely a martial art. Even Murim, which at least resembled ancient China closely enough that its civilization and culture diverged only by a matter of time, had known uncanny arts of every strange variety and demon-beasts that defied explanation by physical law. And above all—when This Seat recalled Cheonhyeol Geumbak, Murim's worst forbidden ground, where the Blood Demon Art had been sealed…
a chill shot up my spine. Even for This Seat, there was no keeping that cold from coiling up my back. The gate beneath Unhak Jinin's Baduk Parlor that connected to Cheonhyeol Geumbak… I had shoved at it impulsively back then, and it had refused to open. For that, I remain sincerely grateful. For Cheonhyeol Geumbak was a hell that existed across countless dimensions and other worlds—or, no… it was an unfathomable demon realm, worse than any such hell.
"So… y'know, wanna come look around it with me? I've been every single year since the very first one, so I know all the absolute-best spots… and since the lunatic at my place is on the organizing side, I can even pull a few strings…."
She was mumbling the tails off her sentences, plainly desperate not to look as desperate as she was. Well… a truly admirable child was pleading this earnestly. Surely there was no harm in humoring her for a day.
When This Seat nodded, an even richer bloom of color rose in Namgung Yurin's already flushed face.
"That said… I doubt it will prove all that enjoyable."
"Eep."
She had stumbled through no shortage of absurd situations of late, but This Seat is no child. The Peerless Demon of All Heaven and Earth—the Heavenly Demon, that dastardly bastard—had gone and transcended to the heavens above. The technical term for this, of course, is that he has "gone off to America."
Which is to say, This Seat—now the one and true Peerless Demon of All Heaven and Earth, the Blood Demon—was a body that had experienced every banquet and festival under the sun. Blood Heaven Castle had even held an annual Blood Demon Festival in praise of This Seat, the sole being ever to dominate the Blood Demon Art and attain its ultimate extreme. That one was, frankly, mortifying, but.
Such was the depth of rich, heady experience This Seat had amassed—experience ordinary people could not so much as imagine. However grand the scale, This Seat was ages past the age of squealing and giggling over a mere festival.
"Well… This Seat's sensibilities have withered far too dry to be thrilled by the likes of a festival, Namgung Yurin."
And then.
The day of the Starlight Festival. Beneath a procession of lanterns swaying like a river of starlight across the darkened heavens, This Seat popped an enormous candy shaped like a ringed planet—Saturn with its halo—past my lips, and with a fizzy, tangy burst—
FWAAAAAASH—!
"Ooooh…!"
Star-shaped particles came spewing madly from my mouth, and a light as dazzling as the lanterns themselves began pouring from my entire body! All This Seat had done was eat a single piece of candy, and this grotesque a phenomenon had followed. Even channeling body-shielding qi—dumping in a monstrous overabundance of true qi—would barely suffice to make one's whole frame radiate light like this…!
And the taste of this candy… it was not merely sweet. It was as if a universe had detonated on my tongue—planet grinding against planet until, at last, everything was dragged down into the black hole of my stomach…! A flavor that could not exist in this world, one for which no description but that could hope to serve. Such revolutionary taste—This Seat had never known it in Murim, nor in all the months since returning home!
"Hwaah, hwaaaaAAAAH…!!!"
Slurp-slurp-slurp!
Schllluuuurp!!!
Mid-lick, This Seat turned my head at the gaze I felt from right beside me. It was Namgung Yurin.
"………."
"………."
In any case, This Seat was not excited.