Chapter 81: The Gumiho’s Trial (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 81: The Gumiho’s Trial (1)
“Where are you taking my master?”
A chilling voice that seemed to freeze the very air.
As if a god had descended, Rin floated in the air with her magic, looking down upon the ground. The members of the Fox Clan, who had been singing of their freedom, faltered in unison.
“The Calamity Fox?! H-how did you find us?”
The elder frantically checked the barrier, but it was still functioning normally. The confusion talismans placed on the trees were also intact.
The elder couldn't even begin to guess what kind of magic Rin had used to find them.
Rin, reading the thoughts on his bewildered face, spoke as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Rin is Master's slave. Did you really think I wouldn't know where he is?”
For anyone who could handle magic, sorcery, or any mystic power above a certain level, reverse-tracking the shackles to find Karami's location was a trivial task.
Above all, the soul shackles were a skill that not even Mirabelle could break once they were placed. There was no way it could be blocked by the paltry magic of a mere old three-tailed fox.
“Hand over my master.”
Ever since her near-death experience with the Blood Wolfman, Rin's obsession with Karami had skyrocketed.
And now, the Fox Clan, whom she already disliked, had kidnapped that very same Karami. There was no way she would let it slide.
One of the Fox Clan, knowing this better than anyone, pressed his sharpened nails against Karami's neck.
“D-don't move! One wrong move and I'll pierce this human's throat!”
“…”
“Now, get lost, Calamity Fox!”
The fox beastkin backed away slowly, wary of Rin. Something grabbed the arm that was threatening Karami.
He glanced down and saw a tree branch wrapped around his arm. It was a withered tree spirit, a Gomokgwi. The Gomokgwi had extended its branch to seize the fox beastkin.
Before he could shake it off, the Gomokgwi twisted his arm and broke it.
Crack.
“Aaaaaargh!”
The fox beastkin screamed in pain and collapsed. The terrified members of the Fox Clan were too stunned to react.
Because at some point, the yokai of White Cloud Valley had surrounded them.
Yet, they posed no threat to Rin. It was as if the yokai were submitting to her.
The law of the jungle.
The strong prey on the weak.
Yokai are simple.
They obey those stronger than themselves.
If they had obeyed the Ghost Bear, who had been the strongest in White Cloud Valley, it was only natural for them to now obey Rin, who had overwhelmed him.
“W-wait a minute!”
The Fox Clan realized their predicament.
There would be no leniency.
A merciless slaughter began.
Dokkaebi fire burned the Fox Clan, and the Gomokgwi snapped their bones at every joint, folding them neatly like origami.
A giant bird yokai, a Goejo, dove from the sky, snatched two members of the Fox Clan in its talons, and flew off somewhere.
It was utter pandemonium.
“Please, save me! You're her master, right?! Tell her to stop!”
A quick-witted fox beastkin begged Karami for her life. Karami smiled and politely pushed away the woman clinging to him.
“Rin, we need to keep the elder alive. Only he knows the location of the shrine.”
“Okay. I understand. I'll let him live.”
The meaning behind her words was simple, and the color drained from the faces of the Fox Clan members who overheard their conversation.
That day, a new chorus of ghostly wails was added to White Cloud Valley.
*
Back at the fox den.
Three had returned.
One was Rin. Her hair was a bit disheveled and dusty, but she looked much the same as when she had left.
Another was Karami. He was also fine, with only the marks from the vines on his wrists.
The last was the fox elder. His gait was clumsy, for his three tails had been reduced to one. The other two had been plucked out and burned away.
As a born three-tailed fox, he might be able to regrow them by absorbing spiritual power, but his life, not his tails, was what he needed to worry about.
All the other members of the Fox Clan had become food for the yokai. He was now the only one left from this den.
And even he might not be around for much longer.
The two of them had the limping elder lead the way. They passed through the empty village and stopped in a corner. The elder chanted an incantation, and the ground rippled, revealing a hidden staircase leading down.
The darkness below was so thick you couldn't see an inch in front of you. It had clearly been abandoned for a long time; the air was stuffy with dust and smelled musty.
Rin conjured a fox fire to serve as a light and continued inside.
It was a maze, with spells cast at every turn. If the spells weren't dispelled, one would be trapped in hallucinations and left to rot in the underground for eternity.
Only the elder knew how to dispel them. It was no exaggeration to say this was the only reason he was still alive.
They walked through the corridors for about thirty minutes. While Karami strolled with his hands behind his back, humming a tune, Rin's pupils trembled slightly the deeper they went.
She felt something from deep within pulling her in like a magnet.
At last, the group reached their destination. Rin sent her fox fire into the lanterns placed around the room, and they flared to life, pushing back the darkness.
What was revealed was, quite literally, a small shrine.
A stone altar.
A statue in the shape of a fox.
Behind the altar was a mural depicting a massive fox, its nine tails fluttering as it exuded a majesty that seemed to connect heaven and earth.
But what captured Rin's attention more than anything else was the golden fox orb resting on the altar. In a shrine covered entirely in dust, it alone shone with the brilliant light of the sun.
The elder spoke.
“This is the sacred ground of our Fox Clan. A shrine built by our ancestors who were trapped in White Cloud Valley.”
It was from an era when the gumiho was not just another yokai, but revered as the god of the clan. The Fox Clan of that time built this shrine to honor their god.
The golden fox orb was a crystallization of the sealed gumiho's power fragments. It was also the reason why the other yokai, fearing the gumiho's power, could not invade the fox den.
Of course, as time passed and the history of the gumiho was erased, the shrine's existence was buried along with it.
Curious, Karami reached out to touch the fox orb.
Fwoosh!
“Whoa!”
The fox orb erupted in flames. Karami yelped and snatched his hand back.
“It would be wise not to touch it carelessly. It does not permit anyone but a gumiho to approach.”
“Then how did you move it here?”
“That is…”
It wasn't in the records.
Did they all blow on it together? Or maybe they used some kind of device?
The fox elder, who was thinking seriously for a moment, snapped out of it with a “Hmph!”
“That's not important! The moment a gumiho takes this, they will begin to move in earnest to suppress it.”
“Rin, did you hear that? He says you just have to take it.”
“Yep. Heard him loud and clear.”
“When did I say that! I'm saying you won't be safe either! It would be better to be content with what you have and live in hiding…”
“That's not what I want. As her master, I want my slave to be completely liberated.”
To do that, she must take that fox orb and inherit the gumiho's power.
“It's not something you can take just because you want it. If you fail to pass the gumiho's trial, you will be devoured by it.”
“If we were going to back down now, we wouldn't have come in the first place. Rin?”
“Right.”
Rin slowly approached the fox orb and took a deep breath. Feeling as if destiny were calling to her, she carefully placed her hand on the orb.
The moment she did.
FWOOSH!
An intense flame flared up and engulfed her. Rin's body remained in the shrine, but her consciousness flowed away somewhere, like a current of water.
Her consciousness, having followed the current, arrived in a place of pitch-black darkness.
Rin looked down and checked her body. She could feel the sensation of her own touch. It was an ambiguous feeling, as if she were standing on the border between reality and illusion.
‘What am I supposed to do here?’
There was nothing but darkness.
‘What kind of trial is this supposed to be?’
The moment she tilted her head in confusion, the darkness began to fill with color.
What appeared was the familiar sight of the fox den. But the members of the Fox Clan, whom she had definitely killed, were walking around freely.
Rin's expression hardened, and she immediately conjured a fox fire and sent it flying, but it vanished without causing any damage, as if it weren't real.
‘Is this a trap? Did that crooked old fox trick me?’
‘But the power of the fox orb felt real.’
Looking at it now, she noticed the fox den was subtly different from her memory. The layout and shape of the buildings, even the fox beastkin walking around.
It felt familiar, but she couldn't quite place it.
Just as Rin was frowning in displeasure at the unresolved questions, she heard a commotion.
“Come on, children. Didn't Mommy tell you not to play with the Calamity Fox?”
A mother fox was leading her young kits away. As if pulling them away from something.
That something was Rin herself.
However, it wasn't the Rin of today, but a younger version of herself, wearing rags for clothes instead of shoes, her body covered in scratches, with only a single tail. That was the Rin of her childhood.
No. Although Rin had grown this much in only a few months, this wasn't the one-tailed fox of the recent past, but one from a long, long time ago.
Realizing this, the awkward sense of familiarity that felt like a needle pricking her brain finally made sense. This was the fox den of the distant past.
Rin could roughly guess the nature of the trial.
Liberation from the past.
That was the trial the gumiho had given her.