Chapter 104: Gumiho
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 104: Gumiho
What is the immutable element that distinguishes one person from another?
Many things might come to mind, but a face isn't one of them.
Nothing is as easily altered as one's appearance.
A simple mask is enough to render someone unrecognizable.
On modern Earth, one could be identified by fingerprints, irises, or various forms of DNA, but this was another world.
A world where magic had advanced further than science.
Naturally, methods of identification befitting this world existed.
One was mana.
One was the soul.
And one was life force.
Of course, these things tended to scatter at the moment of death, but with a mage, various things were possible through necromancy.
Releasing lingering regrets.
Soothing a restless spirit.
However, even if the soul remained, resurrecting the dead was impossible.
Not unless there was life force—the most fundamental and essential element for constructing life.
But life force faded faster than anything else. If not dealt with immediately, resurrection was impossible, even for a high priest.
In that respect, Karami's life force had been reversed, vanishing in an instant.
Normally, resurrection should have been impossible.
But a twist of fate—no, a fox's mischief—warped even the unchangeable destiny of the dead.
"You. You have his essence, don't you?"
"Uh, yes."
An intimidated Rin answered, glancing around nervously.
Rin, who had fallen for the gumiho's sweet talk and secretly siphoned off Karami's essence, bit by bit, like a fox stealing a liver. This was the reason Karami had come to resent her, and why she had hidden herself away.
She had converted all the other essence she absorbed into power, but Karami's was an exception.
It was like a precious treasure, so she had stored it away separately, like a squirrel hoarding acorns.
"So we have the life force… Is there anything else we need?"
The moment the gumiho had deployed the solar eclipse, the outcome had been decided, so Heukbi adopted a cooperative attitude.
"We must call the soul back to the body… but if we perform the ritual recklessly, the soul will end up wandering the heavens."
Unless the soul harbored strong, lingering attachments to the mortal world, like Mirabelle's father Harold once did, it would depart for the underworld.
Karami's case was different, so his vanished soul had to be called back to his body with precision.
There were a couple of problems.
First, how to call back such a fragile soul.
Second, the place was teeming with yokai who went mad for souls. One wrong move, and the soul could be snatched during the summoning.
"That's not a problem either."
"Pardon?"
To the uncomprehending Heukbi, the gumiho materialized an image of the soul to show her.
"This is a magic more tenacious than any ordinary sorcery."
The gumiho gave a bitter smile.
Shackles that remained even though the caster was dead. Jet-black shackles were wound tightly around the soul, as if refusing to grant freedom even in death.
Since the chains of the shackles were connected to Karami's soul, pulling it here would be no trouble at all.
However, to bring the soul back, the barrier had to be released. Before that, she needed to ensure Heukbi couldn't try anything funny.
"Hand it over. The fox orb."
“……”
The core of a yokai fox. The indispensable fox orb, required to use its magic.
A fox wouldn't even give its orb to its parents or its lover…
"Not gonna hand it over? Should I just gouge your eyes out?"
The gumiho threatened her swaggeringly, like a delinquent senior shaking down a junior for money.
Heukbi reluctantly summoned her fox orb and hesitantly placed it on the gumiho's palm. The gumiho tried to take it, but Heukbi held on tight, refusing to let go.
Just as a power struggle seemed about to ensue, Rin shoved Heukbi from the side. Heukbi collapsed weakly. In the process, she lost her grip on the fox orb.
"Who do you think you are, stalling for time?"
Lying sprawled like the heroine of a tragic romance, Heukbi glanced up to see the two gumihos glaring at her with venomous eyes.
Sixteen tails in all.
Why are there so many gumihos? Isn't there another Dark Fox somewhere who would take my side?
Once this was over, she decided, she would go raise a fox in some quiet place.
Having cut off Heukbi's power, the gumiho released the barrier. Rin, leaving the resurrection entirely to the gumiho, walked inside on her own.
"All preparations are complete. Shall we begin?"
First, Karami's soul.
The gumiho pulled hard on the chain with her spiritual power.
In the place called the underworld.
One soul, which had been shuffling along in a line, was suddenly yanked away.
Just as the three-headed gatekeeper of hell was about to charge after the escaping soul, a voice commanded:
"Where do you think you're going?"
In an instant, the gumiho's spiritual power swelled.
A colossal pink gumiho, dozens of times larger than the house-sized hellhound, manifested.
As it fiercely spread its nine tails and growled, the hellhound could only whimper like a common mutt.
Overwhelmed by the gumiho's immense spiritual power that dominated all of existence, no yokai dared to touch the soul.
And so, with that extravagant escort, a tiny black soul appeared before the gumiho's eyes.
"Hello there. You've gotten so small, haven't you?"
A shabby soul, barely able to maintain its form.
It looked so fragile, as if it would be extinguished with a single puff of breath.
It was hardly different from a passing horned rabbit.
Proof of just how weak a being Karami was.
And yet, he never failed to show up in the most dangerous of places.
All for the sake of his slaves.
The gumiho knew, for she had glimpsed the hardships he'd endured through Rin's memories.
Not just for Rin, but for herself as well.
This time was no different. She'd told him not to come, that he'd only be in the way, but he had stubbornly shown up anyway. And at the most opportune moment.
What would have happened if he hadn't come? What would have happened if he had been there in the past?
She didn't know.
A soft, budding feeling swelled from deep within her chest.
She didn't know whose emotion it was. Her own? Or Rin's?
The gumiho couldn't identify it, for in all her eons of existence, she had never felt anything like it.
She supposed she could ask Karami what it was after she brought him back to life.
The gumiho drew out the essence of Karami she had been holding within her and returned it to its rightful place. Rin had only nibbled away at it little by little, so while the amount wasn't large, it was enough for resurrection.
Likewise, she carefully placed the soul back into the body.
All the groundwork was finished. All that remained was the final step.
"Dark Fox."
Heukbi captured Karami's corpse within her Silver Eye.
To reverse the fate of the dead was forbidden territory.
And normally, it would not have been reversed.
Because tracing a path precisely from death back to one's original life is nigh impossible.
But here, there was his soul, his body, his life force, and the bond of master and slave that not even death could sever.
At the very end of a path split into billions of branches, the life of the man named Karami shone, and all other paths vanished, leaving only a single line.
End to end. A clear point of symmetry.
The conditions for reversal were met.
Heukbi reversed death.
There was no spectacular effect, no burst of light.
Just silence. Like sunlight pouring through dark clouds.
A faint light flickered in Karami's vacant pupils.
Staring blankly at the sky, Karami blinked slowly, like someone just waking from a deep sleep.
Focus began to return to his hazy pupils.
The first thing Karami saw upon his return from the underworld was the gumiho, smiling as she gazed down at him.
"Hello, Master. Sleep well?"
"Well… so-so."
"How did it feel to become a soul and embark on a journey of freedom?"
"I was just about to get to heaven, so it's a little disappointing."
Was this really the reaction of someone who had just died and come back to life?
The gumiho let out a hollow laugh at his utter shamelessness.
"Heaven? Don't be ridiculous. You're guaranteed a spot in hell. For raising a gumiho."
"Isn't it absurd to go to hell just for raising a gumiho?"
"The world has always been absurd. What, do you regret it?"
"If I got to raise the prettiest gumiho in the world, then hell is a price I'm willing to pay."
"How do you always manage to say such pretty things? It makes me want to just eat you up."
She could almost understand why Rin had siphoned off Karami's essence.
This man was a monster. A monster even greater than a gumiho who plays with the hearts of women.
He was wagging a non-existent tail.
Getting eaten by women was all his own karma. He had it coming.
While exchanging idle banter with the gumiho, Karami soon spotted Heukbi.
She furtively avoided his gaze.
Her hesitant demeanor showed she'd been thoroughly beaten.
It meant the gumiho had won.
"Looks like things worked out well."
"In the end, yes. Thanks to someone who didn't even fear death and sacrificed himself."
"For my slaves, something like that is nothing."
That was a lie.
In truth, Karami hadn't expected to actually die.
His plan had only been to provoke Heukbi and get the Celestial Fox's orb inside.
Who would've thought she'd suddenly sentence me to death?
He'd thought that even if Heukbi used force, he'd just get beaten up a bit. Instead, he got a completely random, instant-death cheat on the level of "be split in half and die."
As he recalled, his last words had been something like, "Wha—?"
It happened so suddenly that he didn't even feel himself die.
It just felt like he'd fallen asleep and woken up.
And Karami realized one important thing.
When you die, it's really the end.
He'd speculated that since this was a game transmigration, dying might be like logging out and returning to reality, but that was a pipe dream. When you died, that was it.
It seemed he'd have to be more careful from now on.
Karami propped himself up on his arms, struggling to sit up. He looked quite unsteady, as if his strength was failing him, so the gumiho supported his back.
"Don't push yourself. You're still very low on essence."
Her attitude was incredibly gentle.
Her gaze was also soft, like she was looking at a former lover, and tinged with bitterness.
What's with her now?
A sudden change in attitude.
Well, it was better than her looking like she wanted to kill him. He'd welcome her looking on him favorably anytime. As long as she didn't literally eat him.
More important than that, however, was settling matters.
"If everything's over, it's about time we settled the accounts, right?"
The gumiho's purpose in seeking out the Dark Fox was to reclaim the power of the Lunar Eye she had taken. And in addition, the power of the Dark Fox herself.
Reclaiming the gumiho's power required an immense amount of spiritual power, but absorbing the power of a yokai on the level of a Dark Fox would make it instantaneous.
Heukbi's fox orb was already in the gumiho's hand, so there was no reason to hesitate.
The final step toward her long-cherished wish.
The gumiho shattered the black fox orb.
CRACK!
As the fox orb shattered, the power of the Dark Fox and the Lunar Eye burst forth. It was all absorbed by the gumiho.
The gumiho's fox orb had been half-occupied by a golden color. On the opposite side, an indigo hue, the color of the evening sky, seeped in.
The sky, the sun and moon, and now the darkness. The powers of the three yokai foxes were finally gathered in one place.
FWOOSH!
A brilliant aura of light erupted from the gumiho.
A pillar of pink light shot up to the sky.
From among her dancing tails, a new pink tail shot out.
The tails swayed this way and that.
It was the gumiho's ninth tail, which had finally appeared.