I Am No God
The ground shook. The tremors were on a scale beyond anything that had come before, yet Shin-wol and Mu-ho remained utterly unmoved.
As they glared at each other with murderous intensity, cracks tore across the cave walls like bolts of lightning. The cavern itself seemed on the verge of collapse, its ceiling beginning to crumble in slow, ominous sheets.
Any rocks or clods of earth that fell turned to ash before they could even graze the two beings below.
While Yeo-won watched in growing unease, Shin-wol laughed as though the entire spectacle amused him.
“I had intended to end this peacefully, mindful of your position and the request from Cheon-sin.”
His words carried a note of feigned regret, yet his expression revealed nothing of the sort. If anything, he seemed slightly more alive than moments earlier.
At the sight, Mu-ho sneered with open contempt and ground his teeth.
“Peace? Don’t make me laugh. You stroll into another’s territory without bothering to suppress your power at all, and you dare speak of peace?”
Shin-wol’s eyes narrowed into thin crescents. He understood Mu-ho’s implication perfectly.
Gods, as a rule, did not move freely even within their own domains. Spiritual beings who had attained the divine authority of mountain gods were few, and each one wielded overwhelming might.
When such colossal power lingered too long in a single place, balance fractured. The backlash inevitably poured into the mortal realm in the form of what humans called disasters.
Those calamities might appear as natural catastrophes or as plagues capable of threatening humanity’s survival. For that reason, divine regulations demanded that gods suppress their power and presence whenever they stirred.
Shin-wol, especially, should have obeyed. A being of his magnitude could stop every living thing from drawing breath. Beasts would cower; plants would wither and lose their vitality.
Yet he had shattered those rules and stepped boldly into Mu-ho’s domain.
Suddenly he laughed again. Beneath the desolate sound lay a faint trace of exhaustion.
“You and Myeong-an are truly consistent. You still expect so much from me.”
“You’ve finally lost your mind, Shin-wol. Uttering the Heavenly Deity’s true name is taboo. Even you cannot escape divine punishment.”
This, too, was one of the gods’ inviolable laws. Shin-wol’s laughter ceased abruptly. He let out a sigh of pure disgust.
“I am no god.”
“……”
“Merely a gumiho without even a marble to his name.”
Mu-ho’s eyes flew wide. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly, as if he could not trust his own ears. To the stunned tiger spirit, Shin-wol drove the final nail.
“The regulations of the gods have nothing to do with me, nor do I care what becomes of humans.”
Mu-ho’s entire body jerked. His expression hardened into something that hovered between rage and fear. The situation had grown far too grave for Yeo-won to intervene; she could only roll her eyes anxiously, trapped between them.
“Do you even understand what you’re saying?”
“Of course I do.”
“That’s not what you said before. You spoke of ascending. You called it a fleeting amusement.”
“Ah. That.”
The arm with which Shin-wol held Yeo-won tightened. She let out a short, stifled groan and squirmed against the pressure.
“I have changed my mind.”
Gods had always been capricious. Eternal life bred infinite freedom, arrogance, and hedonism. Yet even among them, certain lines existed.
Power great enough to cleave mountains and dry oceans was simply too dangerous. From ancient times, strict regulations had been forged to restrain such beings.
Shin-wol had always danced across those lines at will, but Yeo-won had believed his ultimate fate was already decided.
“You’re insane. Or has living so long destroyed your ability to reason? Do you truly believe Cheon-sin will simply accept this?”
Shin-wol blinked slowly.
“Accept?”
He tilted his head with a low, mocking chuckle.
“When have I ever required anyone’s acceptance for the choices I make?”
In those eyes—dark as the hidden face of the moon—Mu-ho glimpsed an arrogance so pure it had never once been denied.
How could a mere gumiho possess such audacity?
Mu-ho already knew the answer.
Because Shin-wol was no mere gumiho.
He had already broken a taboo once and interfered with causality. The fact that Cheon-sin had forgiven him was not born solely from mercy.
Was it not strange? Even after losing his marble, Shin-wol’s power had not waned in the slightest. By all rights, the moment the marble vanished he should have fallen to the level of an ordinary seonho.
The truth lay in the origin of his strength.
Something even Cheon-sin—the supreme deity called the spiritual leader of all creation—could not do.
It was Shin-wol’s singular ability to draw power directly from the source of life itself.
Only a handful of spiritual beings knew this secret: Mu-ho, who had once served him during the days when he and Cheon-sin were little more than cubs, and one other gumiho. That was all.
It had not been deliberately hidden, yet Shin-wol’s power could instill terror in countless creatures; therefore it was spoken of only in whispers.
Seas, mountains, even light and darkness—everything could become his strength. In other words, so long as the source of life endured, his power would never truly fade.
Yet merely possessing this trait did not allow just anyone to become like him. One also required a body strong enough to contain infinite power, and the mastery to wield it freely.
All these elements existed in perfect harmony within Shin-wol. That was why he stood as an overwhelming existence.
Therefore he had to become a god.
Only by ascending and submitting to powerful regulations could his strength be controlled.
Uncontrolled power would eventually corrupt.
Having followed his thoughts that far, Mu-ho suddenly froze. He stared at Shin-wol and muttered.
“Don’t tell me you’ve already…”
“Must you continue? I grow rather tired of this subject.”
The interruption had been deliberate. Mu-ho’s eyes widened impossibly further.
Why? This was not the Shin-wol he remembered. In that instant his gaze fell on the human squirming within Shin-wol’s embrace.
A human girl who could not follow their exchange and kept blinking in anxious confusion.
The descendant of the very child Cheon-sin watched with such keen interest.
Mu-ho let out a hollow laugh.
“Don’t tell me it’s because of that human?”
The moment Mu-ho’s eyes touched Yeo-won, Shin-wol’s gaze sank into depths colder than a winter sea. Yet within that chill, flames roared so fiercely they seemed capable of incinerating everything they touched.
Yeo-won drew a sharp breath and clutched his clothing with all her strength.
Even so, Shin-wol did not withdraw his terrifying stare from Mu-ho.
“Come to your senses. She is not a reincarnation—she is merely a descendant. You know this. Humans burdened with karma cannot enter the wheel of rebirth.”
His pupils narrowed to slits. The corners of his mouth twitched with the faintest tremor. When shadows began to writhe ominously at his feet, Yeo-won reflexively tightened her arms around him.
“That child is already dead—”
“No!”
What cut Mu-ho off was not Yeo-won’s cry. A razor-sharp shard of flame had streaked toward his throat.
The attack had been so silent, so relentless, that he had not sensed it until it was nearly upon him. In that instant he understood that Shin-wol truly meant to kill him.
Mu-ho’s breath stopped. The flame hovered so close he could not even swallow. Less than a centimeter remained.
The tiny margin existed only because Yeo-won had shoved Shin-wol with every ounce of her strength.
There was no possibility a mere human could move him. Yet in that fleeting moment Shin-wol had adjusted his power so the girl in his arms would not be harmed, and the flame had fallen short.
Had he not done so, the fire would have pierced Mu-ho’s throat. Without the strength to regenerate, the tiger spirit would have fallen into eternal sleep at once.
For a god, that was death.
Mu-ho’s body trembled.
“My apologies for interrupting your speech.”
Shin-wol’s face twitched as though paralyzed. He wore the most artificial smile imaginable and swept his long hair back.
“The buzzing of a fly grew tiresome. I thought severing its head would bring silence.”
A fly? While Mu-ho stood stunned, Shin-wol continued in a voice as innocent as a child’s, delivering words of pure cruelty.
“But it seems I miscalculated. Rather than cutting off its head, I should have burned it ceaselessly with hellfire. My flames do not extinguish easily, after all. They are perfectly suited for exterminating insects.”
Mu-ho shuddered with rage.
Fly. Bug. The words were aimed at him. The sheer disrespect caused something vital inside him to fracture.
He had lived five hundred and fifty years. Among the gods he was considered young, yet he was no insignificant talent.
He did not match Shin-wol’s level, but among the spiritual beings of his generation he had been the strongest. Cheon-sin herself had recognized this and bestowed upon him the position of mountain god.
Even so, Mu-ho had never allowed himself arrogance. In his youth, while serving at Shin-wol’s side, he had witnessed power so vast that his own had seemed pitiful by comparison.
Back then, the young Mu-ho had viewed Shin-wol as a being high above the clouds, almost like the heavens themselves. He had revered him with all his heart.
Yet what stood before him now?
This was no longer the noble existence he had once known.
Blinded by a mere human—the bloodline of the very person who had betrayed him—rejecting his divine duty and insulting a mountain god. If this was not the act of a vengeful demon, then what was it?
The realization that the pure, beautiful Shin-wol of those days was gone forever twisted Mu-ho’s face in anguish.
“You… you bastard. Are you truly—”
Cracks spiderwebbed beneath Mu-ho’s feet. The mountain itself trembled. A colossal whirlwind descended, and his human form began to unravel.
Yeo-won paled and frantically shook Shin-wol’s sleeve.
“Stop him! Hurry!”
“Stop what?”
“He’s furious!”
“Then killing him should quiet things down.”
The complete lack of hesitation made Yeo-won falter. Shin-wol’s fingertips turned toward Mu-ho.
He genuinely meant to kill him. She did not know how one killed a god, but she understood that something irreversible was about to occur in this place.
Why? Why go this far?
In that hair-trigger moment, Yeo-won could endure no more. She screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Please, just stop it already!”