Chapter 102: Solar Eclipse (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 102: Solar Eclipse (1)
There are generally two types of Heaven Defiers.
There are those who resist an unjust fate and set out on a perilous journey.
And then there are those who, unable to accept their destiny yet too afraid to resist, choose the easy path.
The former might be a hero written of in the annals of history; the latter, a coward like the Fallen Monk.
A hero.
The term doesn't just refer to those who stand on the front lines of battle.
Just as the mischievous boy next door can be a hero to a girl in a remote mountain village, it doesn't have to be something grand.
So, where did Karami belong?
At the very least, he didn't seem to be the latter, which, by process of elimination, placed him closer to the former.
It wasn't a great shock. Heukbi, being no ordinary fox herself, had lived a long time and had occasionally witnessed those called heroes.
And yet, she couldn't help but be surprised.
It wasn't that Karami was walking the path of a Heaven Defier that surprised her.
"Were you the guest? The one who awakened the gumiho."
"Awakened? I'd say she found me first."
Karami affirmed with a gentle smile that reached his eyes, as if it were nothing to hide.
The one who had awakened the gumiho and raised her to an eight-tailed fox was none other than him. That was the reason for Heukbi's surprise.
"So you did not come to see this one merely to have your fortune told."
"It wasn't the main reason, but it was a secondary one. Think of it as me enjoying a hobby while taking care of business."
Heukbi's archaic way of speaking, referring to herself as 'this one,' was something rarely seen on modern-day Earth.
If Karami had to describe his conversation with her, it felt like talking to a voice actor who was obsessively committed to their character—cosplay included.
From the moment he met Heukbi, Karami's heart had been pounding with excitement.
Of course, for Heukbi, it was a different story. Her assessment of him had been upgraded from an unremarkable man to a dangerous individual on par with, or perhaps even exceeding, the gumiho.
If she had a scouter to measure his danger level, it would have shattered.
"Fate is not something that can be changed as easily as flipping one's palm. The same goes for fortunes."
Karami's fortune was not his alone. It included all who were bound to him. Naturally, the gumiho was among them.
"But didn't I just change the fortune?"
"You are merely forcing the issue."
"Then a natural disaster should have stopped me. The wind should have blown it away, or the card should have torn before I could change it. Why get a man's hopes up only to shoot him down now?"
"Such absurd logic..."
"Anyway, I'm going with this, so you'll just have to accept it."
What kind of unreasonable man is this? Is this what it meant to be the man who drew the Ox card? She didn't know whether to call it steadfast or as stubborn as a three-year-old.
It would have been better if he had just angrily demanded she reverse his fate. Then she could have simply thrown him out by force.
But since he was trying to change the fortune with his own hands, Heukbi was at a loss for words.
Just being around him was mentally exhausting.
She had to get rid of him as quickly as possible.
"You seem to have come for the gumiho, but unfortunately, she is not here."
"Is that so?"
"Yes."
Heukbi spoke with a flat tone and impassive eyes. Even as Karami stared at her intently, she remained as steady as someone with a clear conscience telling the truth, without the slightest tremor.
"I see. If she's not here, then it can't be helped."
Karami obediently rose from his seat. He picked up the three cards he had drawn and showed them to Heukbi.
"Can I take these as a souvenir?"
"Do as you please. While you're at it, why don't you take them all?"
"Oh, really? Woohoo~"
Karami didn't hesitate.
Humming a tune, he gathered all twelve cards.
"Well then, I'll be on my way."
"Yes, please, by all means, go."
Heukbi followed behind to see Karami out.
It was almost as if she were shooing away an animal from the Lunar Shrine.
Once outside, Karami glanced around.
His head tilted as if searching for something.
"Around here?"
Karami took a red orb from a pouch and was about to toss it.
Snatch!
Heukbi, who had been following with demure steps, suddenly accelerated and roughly snatched Karami's wrist. The orb clattered to the ground.
Squeeze.
"Ugh."
Heukbi tightened her grip. Karami winced at the strength of the beastkin, which surpassed that of an ordinary woman, but he forced a smile, pretending to be fine.
"What's this? Have you grown fond of me already? Lonely now that I'm leaving? Shall I stay with you?"
"Nonsense. What were you about to do?"
"I have to take my slave with me."
"Slave...?"
"You didn't know? That the gumiho is my slave."
Not understanding what he meant, Heukbi narrowed her eyes and glared at him. Karami smiled and stared intently at a single point. It was empty space.
"You said the gumiho wasn't here. Well, you weren't exactly lying, but she's nearby."
"...How did you know?"
"Even if she's in a different space, I can feel her when she's this close."
Poof!
The orb on the ground burst, spewing red smoke.
Heukbi had no time to analyze what it was.
Another one of the Celestial Fox's magic orbs.
She didn't know what power it held.
Heukbi reversed the orb's very existence.
The orb on the ground vanished with a soft pop, along with the smoke. It was instantaneous.
"Wow, your reaction time is incredible."
"I have seen what it is. It may work once, but not twice."
"That was reversal just now, wasn't it? An ocular power using the Silver Eye."
"It seems the Celestial Fox told you that much..."
"Ah, no, that's not it. I already knew."
"A lie so easily exposed is worse than no lie at all."
"But it's true..."
The Celestial Fox would have felt wronged if she'd heard that. She truly hadn't told him anything. Karami had known everything before she even had the chance.
Naturally, there was no way for Heukbi to know that, nor would she have believed him if he'd told her.
"Even if you know of this one's abilities, nothing will change."
"Hmm, are you sure about that? It seems to have a pretty obvious flaw."
"A flaw... you say?"
Karami let out a flippant laugh and continued.
"The Silver Eye's power reverses things that exist in reality. It's not annihilation. So where do the reversed objects go?"
"That is..."
"Hmm, to a mirror world, for example?"
In that instant, Heukbi's normally languid, drooping eyes shot wide open.
A satisfying reaction. Startling a refined, noble lady like Heukbi was immensely entertaining. Unable to contain himself, Karami let out a laugh filled with a low, vulgar pleasure.
"The weakness of such a pocket dimension is that it can't withstand shocks from both inside and out. Like this."
Whizz!
An object, flying with the speed of a bullet, shot past Heukbi's side from out of nowhere. Her black hair whipped violently in the gust of wind.
It was a blue orb.
'From where?!'
Heukbi whipped her head around, staring intently in the direction the orb had come from.
It was a considerable distance from the Lunar Shrine. She detected a faint presence, one she wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't been concentrating with all her might.
"Fuck, why the hell do I have to do this bullshit?!"
The person there was Hilde, who had been waiting from afar to carry out Karami's orders.
The moment Karami's signal flare had gone off, she had thrown the orb from Yuhwa that he had given her.
The blue orb exploded right where the barrier was located.
It was an orb containing the last dregs of Yuhwa's power, a power that returned fate to its natural flow. To the gumiho and the Dark Fox, that power was anathema.
Crack.
With a shattering sound, the empty air fractured.
The space seemed on the verge of collapsing, but it only cracked, never fully breaking. It was a consequence of Yuhwa's weakened state.
Heukbi let out a small sigh of relief. Then, her eyes narrowed sharply as she glared at Karami.
"This one was careless. To let you go would bring great harm to the world."
"Didn't you just tell me to hurry up and leave? You're taking it back now?"
"That is fine. For I am the Dark Fox. What good is a fox who can reverse fate itself if she cannot take back her own words?"
"Putting on all those high-and-mighty airs, only to be so cheap... ugh."
Heukbi squeezed Karami's wrist as if to crush it, and unable to bear it, Karami collapsed to the ground.
Heukbi looked down coldly at Karami, who was now kneeling on the ground.
A man who, despite being a powerless human, possessed the extraordinary will to defy fate. She needed to nip this problem in the bud before it could blossom.
The surest way to eliminate that bud.
Her Silver Eye captured Karami's form.
The thing to be reversed was the very life he clung to.
"Die."
A single, concise word.
*
"...ake up!"
"Ugh..."
"I said, wake up!"
A shrill reveille blared in her eardrums, forcing the gumiho to consciousness. She sat up, clutching her throbbing head.
She was still in the world full of mirrors, the world of reversal. Heukbi was nowhere to be seen; she must have left her behind.
The gumiho was alone in this space.
But she heard another voice.
When the gumiho looked down, the mirror beneath her was also looking up. But there was a subtle difference in its movements.
As if it were a different person.
Its posture was different, as was its aura.
"You..."
"Rin called you so many times, why are you only waking up now?"
Reflected in the mirror was Rin.
The other personality dwelling in the same body had appeared on the other side of the mirror.
"What? Weren't you the one who cried yourself to sleep?"
Rin had been caught stealing her master Karami's essence, had been hurt by his harsh words, and had run away. But now, she seemed perfectly fine.
"What are you talking about? Rin was forced to wake up because of you."
"What?"
The gumiho checked her own state once more.
Was she really the one occupying the body right now?
Had the reversal caused Rin to awaken and her own personality to recede?
But the sensations felt too real for that. It was as if they both existed simultaneously, separated by the surface of the mirror.
As the gumiho stared blankly, unable to get her bearings, Rin raised her voice in frustration.
"This is no time to be spacing out. The Master is outside!"
"That guy?"
The gumiho lifted her head and stared into the air.
It was true...
Outside the barrier, she could feel his presence—or more accurately, the shackles connected to her soul were reacting. She had told him to stay away because he'd only get in the way, but he had come anyway.
Why on earth did he come?
He was completely powerless.
No matter how much she thought about it, the gumiho couldn't figure out the reason.
"We have to get out of here, now! Or the Master will be in danger!"
She was right.
There was no way the Dark Fox would leave Karami alone.
Besides that, the gumiho had no intention of staying here forever.
"It's not like I want to be here. I'm stuck because I can't get out."
The problem was that she still had no way out.
This Heaven-Defying Realm was a space created by Heukbi's power, making it difficult for the gumiho to use her own strength to its full extent, and breaking the barrier was just as hard.
Even if she did get out, it would be pointless if Heukbi simply deployed her domain again.
"You're supposed to be so amazing! A mighty gumiho! Does it make sense for you to be trapped so helplessly by something like this?"
"It only ended like this because it was me. If it were you, you'd have been dead long ago."
"You lost, so stop making excuses!"
"..."
It was true that she had lost, so the gumiho fell silent. Arguing further would only be to her own detriment.
More importantly, she needed to find a way out of here...
'If only I had my power.'
If only she had the power of the Lunar Eye, the opposite of the Solar Eye, she could shatter a space like this as easily as breathing.
The gumiho was biting her lip in frustration when it happened.
Tuk.
An orb suddenly fell from the empty air and rolled across the floor.
Pshhhh...
The orb was emitting red smoke, but its momentum was weakening, as if its power was spent.
But the gumiho could sense the faint energy within the smoke. This was an orb of the Celestial Fox.
Why did this suddenly appear?
Is Karami doing something outside?
She couldn't begin to guess what was happening.
"What's this green orb?"
Apparently, an orb had appeared on Rin's side as well.
How did that girl manage to say only the most irritating things?
She was a perfect match for the gumiho.
"What are you talking about? How is this green? Anyone can see it's red."
"Did losing mess with your eyes, too? It's green! And would you please stop treating Rin's body so carelessly? It belongs to the Master."
"Why is this your—huh?"
The gumiho, about to snap at Rin, looked down and saw the red orb. It was unmistakably red.
And on the other side of the mirror.
In the exact same position, smoke was spreading in the exact same way. But its color was green, and the orb was green as well.
It was surely the same orb, yet its color was the complete opposite.
"Reversal..."
The gumiho unconsciously mulled over the word.
A world of reversal.
The domain of the Dark Fox, where even personalities appeared inverted.
A lightbulb went off in the gumiho's head.