The Blue Light Fox and the Six-Tailed Command
There are people who sometimes deliberately ignore even the clearest facts visible to the naked eye. Confirmation bias. Those who selectively accept only what they want to believe usually fall into that trap.
Force Arts user Lee Ha-neul firmly believed she was someone with an open mind. Unlike people shackled by confirmation bias, she was prepared to accept even the most shocking truths with humility.
Yet for some reason, right now Lee Ha-neul kept doubting and doubting the scene unfolding before her eyes. She was acting exactly like one of those foolish people who stubbornly deny the obvious.
Was her mind failing because she had lost too much blood? Or was the sight before her simply too unreal? The answer was both.
She was on the verge of death from severe blood loss, her thoughts fractured and unreliable. Even for someone like her, who wielded the mysterious power of Force, the battle between the two fox yokai was utterly surreal.
The blue-light fox spirit struck first. She twisted her entire body, expanding her size. Soon she had grown as tall as a four-story building. Muttering incomprehensible words, she opened her massive maw with a wet, gaping sound.
From that maw surged blades forged of pure yokai energy, hurtling straight toward a girl who looked no older than ten.
The girl’s face was familiar to Lee Ha-neul. She had encountered her once on the mid-slope of Jirisan before meeting the blue-light fox spirit. In fact, the last image that had flashed through Ha-neul’s mind as she prepared to die was that very girl with white hair and fox ears.
Watching the girl’s body get torn to shreds and tossed carelessly to the ground, Lee Ha-neul’s heart drowned in pure despair. Why did she feel this way? They had only spoken once. The girl was a yokai, not even human. Even Ha-neul herself could not explain the crushing grief that gripped her.
To make matters worse, the guilt of failing to save the fox-eared girl caused Lee Ha-neul to lose her grip on the Force she had been holding. Every last ounce of hope vanished.
All she could do now was wait for death in empty resignation.
That was when it happened.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Strange sounds came from where the girl had fallen. Lee Ha-neul doubted her own eyes. The ten-year-old girl she knew had vanished. In her place stood a beautiful young woman who appeared to be in her late teens or early twenties.
What stood out most was not three tails, but six.
Crackle. Crackle. Crrrrackle.
Intense yokai energy erupted from the six-tailed woman, rivaling even the monstrous blue-light fox spirit. Lee Ha-neul was not yet skilled enough to sense yokai clearly, yet even she could see the overwhelming power radiating from both fox yokai.
Her vision began to fade. As consciousness slipped away, Lee Ha-neul gazed at the six-tailed woman and thought that the mystical aura and unique presence somehow resembled the girl she had known.
Huh.
I stared at my body in disbelief, turning this way and that. All my wounds had completely healed.
The blue-light fox spirit’s voice rang out, thick with shock. “S-six tails…? Even the favored concubine Dalki only managed to release five after a full century, yet at that young age… how…!”
I brushed the tattered remains of my clothes and walked toward the blue-light fox spirit. Instinctively, I understood. With six tails revealed, I could issue a Command to her.
Things might resolve more easily than I expected.
To deliver the command, I needed to get close. I approached without any guard.
Naturally, she simply stared at me with eyes full of reverence and fear. She never once attacked.
When I finally stood right in front of her, I spoke.
“Head to the ground.”
“Graaaaaaaaah!”
“Head to the ground.”
“How dare you mock this lady? This lady shall resist fate! The shackles of destiny cannot be twisted so easily, so a trial of this magnitude…”
“I said head to the ground!”
Foxfire — Curtain of Flames
A barrier of foxfire that completely blocked the incoming attack with almost no yokai expenditure.
Boom!
She slammed her head into the earth hard enough to crater the ground. To a fox yokai like her, words spoken by someone with six tails carried the weight of a king’s absolute decree. Resistance was impossible even if she desired it.
“What humiliation is this…! Not even the king of Yuldo could handle this lady so easily…!”
“Even if one can defy fate, escaping the Girdle is impossible after all…!”
“How tragic. That I am a fox yokai, that you were born in this era, that I was nothing more than a common beast… it is all so bitterly tragic…!”
In short, the relationship between the blue-light fox spirit and me was one of perfect superior and subordinate. King and vassal. Master and servant bound by a vow of absolute obedience.
It was fortunate. Manifesting six tails placed an enormous burden on me. If she had managed to resist my command, it would have been extremely troublesome.
I asked her the main question. “You were in the middle of explaining earlier. Tell me the second method to absorb yokai energy. Everything you know, exactly as you know it.”
“Grrrrrrrr…”
“Hurry.”
“Ugh… The second method is recorded in the Divine Records of the Supreme One…!”
“I’m not playing twenty questions here. I don’t even know what that book is. Recite its contents word for word.”
“Grrrk… That… this lady does not know…! This lady was born a lowly wild fox… and lacked the qualification to read it…!”
“Then where can I obtain this Divine Records of the Supreme One?”
“It is now impossible to obtain even if one seeks it…!”
“What?”
“The Divine Records of the Supreme One was written by the benevolent personality of the demigod Dueoksini. It once spread widely across the world… but now that the goblins have been eradicated by the shaman warriors and the king of Yuldo, there is no way to acquire it in this era… This is everything this lady knows…!”
“Fuck, is that supposed to be an answer—”
“Kaaaaaaaaaah!”
The coercive force binding her finally loosened. The blue-light fox spirit opened her maw toward me once more.
“How dare you toy with this lady!”
She fired another barrage of yokai blades. It was a sudden ambush, but the situation had changed completely from before. When I had only three tails I couldn’t even react to those blades. Now, however, I could block the yokai’s attack with almost no expenditure of energy.
I moved nimbly to close the distance again, but the blue-light fox spirit refused to let me approach. Every time I drew near, she released a powerful burst of yokai energy to repel me. It was an inefficient, brute-force method, yet her yokai showed no sign of diminishing. She had devoured the livers of countless humans, after all. She had more than enough to spare.
She truly was a cunning five-hundred-year-old fox yokai. Sitting there like a stone with that building-sized body and only launching minor attacks might have seemed frustrating, but she had clearly realized that refusing to close the distance and forcing a war of attrition left me with no viable options.
And then, to make things worse—
“Huff… huff… huff…”
My own yokai began running dangerously low in the drawn-out battle. I had started with far too little to begin with. There was no way a five-hundred-year-old fox yokai would miss the change.
“The vessel… the vessel is on the verge of shattering!”
“…”
“Kahahahahahaha! Vessel of Dalki, are you already exhausted?”
“Shut up!”
She flinched at my Command, but only once. She showed no sign of submission. On the contrary, sensing her impending victory, she lifted her massive head high and began hurling verbal curses at me, each word dripping with killing intent.
“Vessel of Dalki—no, my lord.”
“This lady humbly informs you that she shall devour your liver.”
“Each of those detestable tails—”
“Slowly.”
“I shall chew them.”
“And savor every bite.”
“Afterward, this lady shall tear off your head and hang it at the six crossroads.”
“The common people will hurl stones at their former lord’s severed head.”
“A lord humiliated by lowly mortals—”
“Will never find happiness, even in the afterlife.”
“Huff… huff… You fucking bitch. You’re cursing me so thoroughly I don’t even know where to put myself.”
In the end, exactly as she intended, I began wringing out the last dregs of my yokai energy. There was no other choice left. Running would only lead to death by depletion anyway. Fighting her was my only remaining option.
“Ugh…”
“Dry heaving? A classic symptom of a yokai whose energy has run dry.”
“With this, fate has been twisted, and a new Girdle begins to turn…!”
No. No. No, no, no, no.
I wasn’t dry-heaving because my yokai was depleted. It was because the thought of what I was about to do made me unable to forgive myself. It felt so repulsive that I could barely stand it. That was why my stomach was turning.
There was truly no other way now.
It looked like I would have to kill that yokai.
I had thought we might be able to communicate. I had even hoped I could change her heart with Command.
In the end, I was nothing but a hypocrite suffering from good-person syndrome.
For the first time in my life, I resolved to kill a sentient being.
The determination to take another’s life was so disgusting it made me want to vomit.