Chapter 97: The Gumiho and the Dark Fox (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 97: The Gumiho and the Dark Fox (1)
After a pleasant stroll, it was time to part ways.
It wasn't until they were near the castle that Hilde was allowed back on her own two feet. She brushed the dust from her knees and palms.
But she couldn't return just yet. The collar around her neck was an ordinary leash, but it was enchanted so she couldn't remove it herself without Karami's permission.
There was only one way to take it off.
“Take it off. Now.”
Hilde glared at Karami, her eyes blazing. Her gaze was sharp enough to tear him to shreds.
But Karami was unfazed. After all, he knew that as long as the soul shackles were in place, the idea of him dying at her hands was nothing more than Hilde's delusion, a futile wish.
He gave a detestable, eye-crinkling smile and wagged a finger.
“No, no. I believe I taught you to use polite language when asking your master for something, didn't I?”
“This bastard…!”
Hilde ground her teeth hard enough to crack them, her fists trembling. She'd never used honorifics even with the king and queen, and now she had to use them for a mere human…!
“If you really don't want to, you don't have to. You'll just have to enter the castle like that. Your subjects will be quite surprised.”
Karami shrugged.
Hilde, trembling with all her might, bit her lip and hesitated for a long while before finally, painstakingly, opening her mouth.
“T-take… it off…”
“Hmm, that was a bit short, wasn't it~?”
“Take… take it off… please…”
“What was that? I can't hear you, you're too quiet.”
“Take it off, you son of a bitch!”
“Hmm.”
How dare she curse at her master.
To properly discipline a slave, he shouldn't let this slide, but Karami was a generous man.
Besides, she was so humiliated that tears were welling in the corners of her eyes. If he teased her any further, she might just bite her tongue off and die.
He decided to let it go, just this once. Karami reached out and unfastened Hilde's leash with a simple flick. The same leash Hilde couldn't remove no matter how hard she tried came off with absurd ease.
“Here you go.”
Karami placed the leash in Hilde's hand. Hilde scowled at the leash, the very sight of which made her blood boil.
“What, why are you giving this to me?”
“Keep it safe, and give it to me when I ask to go for a walk later. Or, if you want to go for a walk, Princess, you can give it to me first.”
“This bastard, really!”
Hilde tried to throw the leash at Karami's face, but her hand refused to move past a certain point, as if she were physically incapable of harming him in any way.
Left with no choice, Hilde had to take the leash.
*
“Oh, you have returned, Princess.”
In the corridor of the royal castle.
A maid, greeting the princess on her late return before dawn, bowed deeply.
Hilde was infamous throughout the castle for being a tyrant. She tormented the servants when she was bored and resorted to violence when she was in a bad mood. As a result, everyone tried to avoid her if possible.
Today, she seemed to be in a particularly foul mood. It was clear that anyone who crossed her path would meet a terrible fate.
Why did it have to be today…
The maid on duty trembled subtly. She prayed desperately to get through this unscathed.
Hilde glanced down at the back of the bowing maid's head with a chilling glare. A cold silence descended, but then Hilde simply walked past her and entered her room.
Thud. The sound of a door closing echoed.
…?
Could she be pretending to have gone in, just waiting? The moment I lift my head, a fist might come flying. That’s something Hilde would definitely do.
The maid kept her head bowed for several minutes after the door closed. But when nothing happened, she darted her eyes around to check her surroundings.
Only after confirming that no one was there did she slowly raise her head. Hilde was nowhere to be seen in the corridor. Just in case, she looked up at the ceiling, but it was empty too.
What was that?
Well, all's well that ends well. It was a huge relief that she had passed by safely. Still, she thought she’d seen something like a leash in Hilde’s hand.
No need to think too deeply about it.
She must have been dragging some innocent person around by the neck. The maid was certain of it.
*
The princess's bedchambers in the royal castle.
Hilde returned, feeling exceptionally weary. Her steps were listless, as if she were in a daze. In her hand, she clutched the leash tightly. A precious memento filled with memories of her new master…
“FUUUUCK!”
CRACK!
Hilde hurled the leash. Imbued with her full strength, it gouged a large gash in the wall before clattering to the floor.
Hilde’s shoulders heaved as she seethed.
An indescribable rage and humiliation surged within her.
It wasn't enough that she had been helplessly defeated by the Gumiho; she had also been bound by the shackles of subjugation to some insignificant human.
A warrior of her caliber should have been able to suppress the coercive power of a mere command with sheer force, yet she couldn't move an inch.
Because of that, she had crawled on the floor like a pet.
A lowly man had patted her head.
The Princess of Vestia.
The Lioness of Vestia.
“I, HILDE BRIGITTA LIONESS!!!”
Hilde let out a thunderous lion's roar.
The mere force of her shout shattered furniture and trinkets into pieces.
But it did nothing to quell her anger.
Unless she tore that man's limbs from his body.
Unless she ripped that smug mouth of his apart, her fury would not be sated.
To do that, she first had to do something about these shackles.
Unfortunately, while Hilde was supremely confident in her fighting abilities, she was a complete novice when it came to magic. Still, with the help of the court mages, a simple slave trader's magic like this could surely be dismantled with ease.
Once the shackles were gone, she would use every means at her disposal to deal with that man…!
BANG!
Hilde kicked the door.
The entire door was blown clean off its hinges.
“Eek!”
The maid outside shrieked in terror.
Ignoring her existence completely, Hilde stormed out to find a court mage.
It was the dead of night.
*
While Karami was on his dawn walk with Hilde, the Gumiho had remained at the Celestial Pavilion.
The Celestial Fox, Yuhwa.
The Gumiho had business with her.
This was her main objective.
Dealing with Hilde was just something she did on the side while waiting to meet Yuhwa.
The Gumiho’s eyes curved into crescents as she beckoned with a finger.
“I won’t waste words. Your power—hand it over to me.”
The power Yuhwa possessed as the Celestial Fox.
That was the Gumiho’s goal.
But she would never give it up willingly.
A fierce battle was sure to ensue.
With only seven tails, the Gumiho couldn't unleash her past strength, but the same was true for her opponent. As punishment for defying the Mandate of Heaven, Yuhwa had also been steadily weakening.
It was a fight she had a real chance of winning.
The Gumiho created a fox orb.
“If you won’t come to me, I’ll start…”
“Very well. I will give it to you.”
“I’ll st—what?”
“I said I will give it to you. The power you so desire.”
Yuhwa’s expression was impassive as she spoke.
Just as always, she leisurely sipped her steaming tea.
With Yuhwa being so compliant, it was the Gumiho who was taken aback.
Is she hiding some petty trick?
Her fur stood on end with suspicion as she glared at Yuhwa.
“What are you planning?”
“What am I planning? You wanted it, so I said I would give it. That is all.”
“You think I don't know you? There's no way you'd hand it over so easily.”
Watching the glaring Gumiho, Yuhwa chuckled softly, as if something was amusing.
The Celestial Fox was laughing out loud like that?
To the Gumiho's ears, it sounded more ominous than a banshee's wail.
“Why are you laughing?”
“How can I not laugh? To see you, who craved this power, now wary because I offer it freely. The great Gumiho, trembling at a single word.”
Yuhwa felt how much time had passed through the Gumiho’s reaction. Enough time for the Gumiho to seem like a naive child.
In a way, she also looked pitiful.
Fwoosh.
She pushed a fox orb, a swirling mix of white and blue reminiscent of the sky, toward the Gumiho. The orb floated gently toward her.
“You wondered why. This is not for you. It is for the young fox within you.”
“…What is this? Why are you being so good to her?”
It wasn't enough that you trained her, now you're giving her your power?
The Celestial Fox, to the Gumiho?
She must have gone completely mad.
“Looks like spending time with her has messed with your head. She’s a Gumiho, too. When she grows up, she’ll be just like me, a Gumiho that even the heavens fear—”
“She will not. Rin is not you. And more importantly, that child is by Rin’s side. He will not stand by and let her run wild.”
“What is it about that human that makes you trust him so much? What in the world are you plotting?”
“Plotting…”
It wasn't something so grand as to be called a plot. She simply wanted to see the fox girl, burdened by misfortune, cast off her oppression and shackles and live an ordinary life.
She simply wanted to see the illusion he once spoke of become reality.
“And who knows? Perhaps you, too, will find salvation.”
“Don't be ridiculous. I will seize my own salvation with my own hands. And she will never awaken. I'll make sure of it.”
“If you say so.”
Her nonchalant response, as if she didn't care in the least, and her somewhat relieved smile were deeply unsettling to watch.
The Gumiho forced herself to look away.
She steeled her heart so it wouldn't waver.
I am not weak.
She didn't need anyone's help.
She was the Gumiho.
The fox who twists the Mandate of Heaven.
The only thing she needed was power.
The Gumiho reached for the Celestial Fox's orb.
As she clenched her fist, cracks spiderwebbed across the orb.
CRASH!
The orb shattered, breaking into countless fragments.
A haze of white and blue shimmered and swirled in all directions.
The Gumiho inhaled it all.
The power of the Celestial Fox was drawn into the Gumiho's own fox orb.
KUUUUNG…!
The heavens trembled.
The Celestial Pavilion was a separate dimension constructed from Yuhwa's power.
Now that her power was gone, it was only natural for the space to collapse.
At the same time, it was proof that she had completely turned her back on the Mandate of Heaven.
Yuhwa's blue Heavenly Eye lost its light and grew dull, and the divine mystique imbued in her white fur dissipated.
What remained was nothing—just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill old member of the Fox Clan.
Yet even after losing all her power, the aura Yuhwa exuded remained mystical.
The sight of her, like an enlightened sage, was etched into the Gumiho's mind as an unforgettable discomfort.
*
A few days after the sky of the Celestial Pavilion collapsed and it became an ordinary merchant group building.
The Gumiho, having absorbed the Celestial Fox's power, finally grew an eighth tail.
As the influence of the Celestial Fox who protected Vestia vanished, yokai began to swarm the land. The pink fox's misfortune spread, twisting the heavenly mandate of countless living beings.
The soldiers devoted themselves to exterminating the yokai day and night, but it wasn't easy. Yokai weren't simple monsters; each possessed its own bizarre abilities.
Without knowing how to defeat them, they were difficult to kill.
Of course, thanks to the Gumiho's efforts under Karami's command, the overall damage was not severe. But this couldn't go on forever.
Knowing this, the Gumiho made a suggestion to Karami.
“Yokai have been appearing frequently lately. Just killing them as they show up won't be enough to end this.”
“So?”
“We need to pull it out by the roots.”
Now that she had absorbed the Celestial Fox's power, only one remained.
It was time to hunt the Dark Fox.