Chapter 99: The Gumiho and the Dark Fox (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 99: The Gumiho and the Dark Fox (3)
Two foxes danced, weaving through the sky and across the land. They clashed in a melee of fluid, fox-like movements, spells of sorcery flying between them as each sought the slightest opening.
Between them, they had a total of nine tails.
One of them possessed the lion’s share, but the total was nine nonetheless.
The battle unfolded with the eight-tailed Gumiho, wreathed in golden flames, focused entirely on the attack, while Heukbi parried her every blow.
Heukbi’s defensive stance was not a sign of weakness. It was a direct result of her power.
The Silver Eye.
The eye that reverses fate.
Simply by gazing upon a target, she could reverse all manner of things.
A wise king into a tyrant.
A hero into a fallen champion.
An apostle of justice into an avatar of vengeance.
It could reverse not only fate, but also position, weight, speed, emotion, relationships… and even life and death. The list of what she could invert was endless.
Its motif was the mirror.
By reversing an enemy's attack, she unified offense and defense, freeing her from the need to attack at all.
Heukbi’s style of combat was the very antithesis of the Gumiho’s impatient nature.
“Such a pain, every time I see it.”
The Gumiho searched the threads of fate for a single, meaningful strike. But with a glance from Heukbi’s Silver Eye, the once-meaningful attack became meaningless.
The misfortune that was to befall Heukbi was transformed into good fortune.
In a high-level exchange of blows, a single meaningless move could lead to an irreversible, fatal wound.
But she was the Gumiho.
She had sparred with Heukbi countless times and already knew how to counter her.
The Gumiho peered into the threads of fate. At a fork in destiny, she mimicked the movements of another version of herself.
She sharpened her claws and slashed vertically.
A torrent of slashing flames, shaped like claws, rushed toward Heukbi.
Heukbi’s Silver Eye flashed.
She reversed its fate.
Raising her hand like a blade, she bisected the fiery slash.
CRACK!
The Gumiho’s attack was nullified.
Now that fate had been reversed, misfortune was meant to strike the Gumiho.
Sizzle.
“Hmph?”
But the lingering embers that had yet to disperse rained down on Heukbi instead.
Heukbi frowned.
She hadn’t been careless, nor had she made a mistake.
She was no fool.
It was a cataclysm that transcended the mortal realm. A trick of fate, like a roll of God's dice.
It wasn’t difficult to realize that the Gumiho had orchestrated this little trick.
“You wanted some misfortune? You should have said so sooner~”
If the Dark Fox was going to reverse fate, all the Gumiho had to do was throw good fortune at her.
If Heukbi reversed it without knowing, she would be the one saddled with misfortune.
The Gumiho was mixing fortune and misfortune into her attacks, a clever blend of feints and real strikes.
Which was the real move, and which was the feint?
If she couldn't see through the fox's prank, even Heukbi would find her use of the Silver Eye severely restricted.
“A novel idea, but if you overuse your power, Lady Gumiho, you won’t escape unscathed either.”
If the Gumiho threw good fortune at her and Heukbi didn’t react, it would only benefit Heukbi. The Gumiho’s power would become worse than useless.
“I don’t care. To overcome the Mandate of Heaven, you have to take risks, don’t you?”
“You’re as reckless as ever…” Heukbi murmured, a bitter expression on her face as if recalling a distant memory.
The real battle of wits between the two cunning foxes began.
Heukbi carefully chose whether to reverse the fortune or misfortune the Gumiho created. Sometimes, misfortune would cling to the Gumiho; other times, the goddess of luck would smile upon Heukbi.
The Gumiho’s reckless manipulation of fate continued, heedless of the damage she herself might suffer.
As the powers of the Solar Eye and the Silver Eye clashed again and again, fate twisted, reversed, and became a tangled mess.
The pristine threads of destiny had long since vanished.
“Doesn’t this remind you of the old days? We fought like this almost every day.”
“I have never once desired to spar. From the very beginning until now, it was you, Lady Gumiho, who forced these spars upon me.”
“Is that so? Well, you never liked fighting, even back then. That’s why you’ve never beaten me.”
They had sparred thousands of times.
And every single time, the Gumiho had won.
It was true in the past.
And it would be true now.
Fwoosh!
The Gumiho suddenly split in two.
One clone rushed toward Heukbi while the other leaped back, preparing to cast a spell.
A ball of fox fire bloomed above the Gumiho’s head.
It swelled in an instant, growing large enough to obliterate the entire area.
Heukbi’s silver pupils darted about.
A clone. One of them is fake.
It was impossible to distinguish them by sight or by aura.
A fifty-fifty choice.
She had to rely on her instincts to determine which was the feint and which was the real attack.
A wide-area attack using the clone as bait?
Or was she using that psychology against me?
Her deliberation was brief.
Heukbi created a black dagger from fox fire.
She ignored the Gumiho charging at her.
She hurled the dagger at the one preparing the spell.
The Gumiho tilted her head, easily dodging the dagger.
The moment the dagger zipped past her…
Flash!
The Silver Eye gleamed.
Position Reversal.
Heukbi and the dagger swapped places.
In an instant, she was behind the Gumiho.
If I don’t know which one to get…
I’ll just get them both.
Heukbi brought her hands together as if in prayer.
Then she thrust them out, palms facing away from her.
A black fox born from her hands lunged at the Gumiho. It simultaneously pounced on the other Gumiho, which had been falling toward the ground to attack Heukbi.
BOOM!
Dust and dirt flew into the air.
Heukbi narrowed her eyes, staring into the cloud of dust.
Which one was real, and which was fake?
It didn’t matter, but one couldn’t help but be curious.
When the dust finally settled, there was no one there.
“Oh, Dark Fox. You’ve always been too honest for a fox.”
The Gumiho’s voice suddenly echoed, not from the ground, but from the sky.
The ball of fox fire, which had been hanging in the air like a sun despite its caster’s disappearance, seemed to shoot toward Heukbi, only to suddenly somersault and change its shape.
Shapeshifting?
Both Gumiho clones had been fakes.
The real one had been shapeshifted into the fox fire itself.
“That’s why I was so fond of you… but you betrayed my trust.”
FWOOSH!
The Gumiho unleashed her spiritual power, wrapping it around her entire body. A shimmering orange haze undulated around her. It was a raw, violent energy, as if declaring she would not allow another reversal.
It was a brute-force countermeasure.
To break through a defense, the attacker must pour in more power.
To force a reversal now, Heukbi would have to expend an even greater amount of spiritual power. And her opponent was the Gumiho. Even if she succeeded, the cost would be unimaginable.
You…
Watching the Gumiho try to overwhelm her with sheer force, Heukbi’s eyes narrowed slightly.
She was always like this.
Never satisfied with reality, always consumed by greed.
A greed that ultimately reached for the heavens themselves.
She was utterly indifferent to the misfortune her greed caused others.
Selfish and dogmatic.
A carbon copy of her past self.
I expect nothing more from her.
“The playtime is over.”
Heukbi brought her hands together.
She formed a seal.
The Silver Eye began to glow.
Just before the Gumiho’s hand could reach her.
“Heaven-Defying Realm.”
Darkness spread, blanketing the area.
The Gumiho’s hand swiped through empty air.
Heukbi’s form vanished as if it had all been a mirage.
“…What?”
The Gumiho looked around frantically.
Above, below, left, right—no matter where she looked, she saw nothing but mirrors.
She was in a space packed with countless mirrors.
Their surfaces infinitely reflected only the Gumiho.
It was truly a world of mirrors.
An illusion?
No, that wasn’t it.
Casting an illusion on a master was no easy feat. Moreover, the Gumiho herself was a yokai skilled in the art of illusion, so it was safe to assume it was next to impossible.
Besides, it felt far too real to be an illusion. When she touched the surface of a mirror, a chill ran down her spine, raising goosebumps on her skin.
“Are you surprised? I’m sure you are. This is the first time you’ve seen this, Lady Gumiho.”
Heukbi’s calm voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere.
But her form was nowhere to be seen.
CRASH!
The Gumiho shattered a mirror in front of her, but it was restored in an instant. The broken glass reversed itself, returning to its original state.
Only then did the Gumiho realize what this was.
A sub-space, much like the Celestial Fox’s own celestial realm.
A world of reversal that could even invert the Mandate of Heaven.
It was Heukbi’s own private domain, cut off from the outside world.
In here, she was a god.
No matter how powerful the Gumiho was, she could not run rampant here.
“Dark Fox, you’ve gotten much better, haven’t you? To think you could pull off a trick like this.”
“A long time has passed. While you were sleeping, Lady Gumiho, I have also grown. I am not the girl I once was. And please, do not call me Dark Fox. I have a proper name: Heukbi.”
“Pathetic. I’ve told you time and again that names are nothing but curses, shackles meant to make us servants. Are you claiming to be Heaven’s dog, just like the Celestial Fox?”
“If it guarantees my safety.”
The Gumiho clicked her tongue.
She scanned the mirrors, searching for a way out, but it wouldn’t be easy.
This was Heukbi’s home ground. Within her domain, no one but Heukbi could use their full power.
Even if she tried to break out by force, her attacks would be infinitely reversed, and she would only exhaust herself.
The surest way out was to have someone destroy the domain from the outside, or to open a pocket dimension of her own to shatter Heukbi’s mirror world. Of course, the Gumiho knew how to do that, but…
“I would advise against any foolish thoughts. In your current state, Lady Gumiho, you can never break my domain.”
Half of her power.
The Lunar Eye was with the Dark Fox.
The Solar Eye and the Lunar Eye were a pair; without one, the other could not exert its full power.
To think the Dark Fox had grown strong enough to create her own domain. It was a painful miscalculation for the Gumiho, who had forgotten the passage of time.
“Rest peacefully. I will pray that in your next life, you are born with an ordinary destiny.”
“You…”
Light began to leak from the mirrors.
Light reflected light infinitely, filling the entire space.
As the brilliance poured down and swallowed the Gumiho, her consciousness was reversed, and then it simply winked out.
*
Heukbi stared down at the Gumiho, who lay collapsed on the floor of the mirror world, her eyes sunken and stared. calm and subdued.
Creating a domain required an immense amount of power. It had to be used only when victory was certain, so she had waited for the right moment, worried that the cunning Gumiho might see it coming.
The Gumiho from Heukbi’s memories would have shattered a barrier like this with ease, but she was weaker now, a mere half of her former self.
She may have always won in the past, but not anymore. The Gumiho would never defeat her again. Never.
“Now then, shall I clean up…”
She must not kill her.
The Mandate of Heaven was for her to pay for her sins.
She would take her power, then seal her away so tightly she could never escape.
She would have to manage her personally this time, to ensure she didn’t awaken as she had before.
Just as Heukbi was about to begin her work, keeping the barrier active in case the Gumiho somehow woke up…
“Excuse me~ Is anyone here?”
A man’s voice came from outside the barrier.
His tone was endlessly flippant and frivolous.
Checking outside, she saw not a yokai, but an ordinary human loitering around the ashen remains of the shrine.
“I’ve come for a fortune-telling~”
He was a madman who wanted his fortune told at a ruined shrine.