Rape (1)
Rape (1)
Muk Seo-ah bounced off the ground like a stone skipping across water. Battle ghost Asura, what insane strength.
Asura was the same brawler type as Muk Seo-ah. Killing it would take forever, so the right move was to ignore it and move on.
But Asura had already marked Muk Seo-ah as the top dog and wasn't letting her go. This yokai was obsessed with fighting, so talking was completely useless.
Asura let out a booming laugh.
"Blood! More power! Quench my thirst!"
Luckily, Muk Seo-ah had been flung into the crowd by Asura's body slam, using the masses to hide herself.
Asura scanned the crowd with its two blood-red eyes, but with over a hundred people milling about in chaos, it wasn't easy.
"Graaah! Where are you! Don't hide! If the blood of a warrior flows in you, fight me head-on!"
Warrior's blood, my ass. Muk Seo-ah had no time to waste on this muscle-headed yokai.
She spotted the Yao King.
The Yao King was still tied up battling two high-level yokai and couldn't open a ghost gate yet. This was her chance. She had to kill it now.
Muk Seo-ah dashed through the crowd toward the Yao King. The inside of the constabulary was already a scene from hell. Corpses of dead constables and blood-soaked exorcists littered the place.
The constables, corrupted from feasting with the Jade Rabbit, had been massacred.
As Muk Seo-ah ran through the crowd, Asura spotted her.
"Come fight me!"
Asura charged straight at Muk Seo-ah.
But a massive horde of exorcists blocked its path. In this battlefield, Muk Seo-ah's presence was negligible. No one paid attention to this no-name newbie exorcist.
But Asura was different.
It was one of the strongest high-level yokai. Every exorcist was on high alert, surrounding Asura.
"I don't care about you minnows!"
"Kill the yokai!"
Mid-level exorcists swarmed and attacked Asura.
Asura didn't dodge, bulldozing through with raw power. Any exorcist hit by its massive fists was crushed flat.
Muk Seo-ah kept her eyes flicking between Asura and the Yao King, zeroing in solely on the Yao King to close the distance.
In this battlefield, only those two yokai could shift the tide. If they could just pin them down, the exorcists' numerical superiority would win the day.
High-level yokai were too busy fighting each other to cooperate anyway, and only a handful of high-level exorcists could even get close.
In other words, this chaotic melee would likely end in a sloppy victory for the exorcists as the yokai infighted.
With her calculations done, Muk Seo-ah charged straight for the Yao King.
She didn't give a shit about Asura; kill the Yao King first and get her body back.
Asura was pulverizing exorcists with its four muscular arms.
Not only were those exorcists weak, but Asura itself was a yokai infamous as a "newbie slaughterer."
Asura was the wall of tears in this fucked-up game.
Its insane trait boosted strength and attack speed proportional to HP lost, while lifestealing half of all damage dealt—most exorcists couldn't touch it.
A beautiful woman was facing off against Asura.
A high-level exorcist? While she bought time, Muk Seo-ah nearly caught up to the Yao King.
"Yao King, you fucking bitch. Get over here. Headshot!"
"I-If I'd recovered my strength...!"
The Yao King halted its fight with the two high-level yokai and fled from Muk Seo-ah.
The two high-level yokai clung doggedly, harassing the Yao King. For the first time, Muk Seo-ah found herself rooting for yokai.
Then, as if resolving itself, the Yao King made a grand mudra.
It blasted sorcery at the two close yokai.
"Reversal Binding, Life-Death Reversal."
Black energy splashed like ink, and the Jade Rabbit and yokai storyteller died. Instant death for a moment, but they revived soon after.
They'd defended with yokai energy. The Jade Rabbit had burned too much and was coughing up blood.
"Keh, kek. Yao King, you crazy bitch...!"
"Don't call me bitch. I am your king."
The Yao King spoke sternly. It glared with terrifying eyes, and the Jade Rabbit staggered to its knees.
Having depleted its yokai energy too much, the Jade Rabbit trembled with a pallid face.
Asura: uncontrollable. Sea Dragon King: betrayed.
The cooperative storyteller was the weakest among high-level yokai. The Jade Rabbit's plan was a total bust.
From the looks of it, had the Jade Rabbit dreamed of rebelling against the Yao King?
Nah, knowing the Jade Rabbit's personality, it probably just wanted to capture the female-turned Yao King and torment her.
Yokai motives weren't her business.
What cooperation between yokai bundled up in pure malice? Expecting that just got you betrayed. Shouldn't have hoped for teamwork from the start.
Muk Seo-ah tsked at the Jade Rabbit's foolishness and swung her axe.
"Urk."
The Yao King ducked sharply, dodging the axe.
She glared at Muk Seo-ah and spat venom.
But it was a voice only for the two of them.
It was easy to see why the Yao King whispered: getting wrecked by Mukmyeong once was embarrassing as hell.
Muk Seo-ah didn't want to advertise her own gender-swap either, so she replied in a voice only the Yao King could hear.
"Mukmyeong, Mukmyeong, Mukmyeong. You always ruin everything for me! It's all your fault I'm stuck in this body! I hate you, my lifelong arch-nemesis!"
"Pot calling the kettle black!"
Muk Seo-ah kept hacking with the axe, while the Yao King dodged and fired sorcery.
No matter how much sorcery it shot, it didn't faze Muk Seo-ah.
Its power was still too weak.
It needed to absorb more.
Finally, instead of attacking Muk Seo-ah, the Yao King punched a hole in the barrier enveloping the constabulary. It clapped its hands, opening a ghost gate in the barrier's crack.
Reversal Binding, Up-Down Reversal. The Yao King's gravity inverted, launching it into the sky.
Muk Seo-ah missed grabbing it by a hair.
"Running away again."
"It's not running. The day my power is full, you're dead!"
Muk Seo-ah tried to repel the Yao King's ghost gate with Cheonaeyuseon, but the Yao King sensed something off and shifted the gate's position to evade.
Cheonaeyuseon couldn't block the escape itself.
The Yao King's level was precariously equal to Cheonaeyuseon, diluting its reality-warping effect.
But when the Yao King tried sorcery on Muk Seo-ah, Cheonaeyuseon strongly repelled it, rendering it ineffective.
'Is it that the deeper the connection to Mukmyeong himself, the less it works...?'
Even the Yao King couldn't grasp the principle.
It didn't realize Muk Seo-ah's rejection level was the trigger for Cheonaeyuseon's activation. Each of the Yao King's bindings was a killing blow, so Cheonaeyuseon repelled them hardest.
A near-omnipotent spell, but annoyingly vague.
Cheonaeyuseon was sorcery even the Yao King had never seen the likes of.
No matter how it racked its brain, it couldn't figure out how to counter Mukmyeong's power.
"I curse you, Mukmyeong. Next time we meet, you're dead."
The Yao King's voice echoed in Muk Seo-ah's head.
It had transmitted via sorcery.
"No next time. I'll kill you for sure."
Muk Seo-ah shot back. They glared at each other, growling and muttering incantations.
That was when it happened.
"You think you can turn me into this and just leave?! Yao King! You bastard—no, you bitch—are coming with me!"
The nearly collapsed storyteller yelled.
Storyteller yokai. Weak even among high-level yokai. Half its shell was shattered.
It had barely blocked the Yao King's life-death reversal, its face melted down to the bone.
The Jade Rabbit was trembling on two legs, barely standing, but the storyteller's state was indescribable.
Just enduring the Yao King's lethal strike had wrecked its body.
Enraged, it opened the book in its hand.
Letters leaped from the book, spraying everywhere.
The Yao King tried to block, but too focused on Muk Seo-ah, its reaction was slow.
The letters ensnared the Yao King. A barrier. Before it fully trapped the Yao King, it cast sorcery.
"Deal with this yourself, Mukmyeong...!"
The barrier shifted to Muk Seo-ah.
Muk Seo-ah invoked Cheonaeyuseon, shattering the Yao King's friend-foe reversal binding.
The barrier shifted back to the Yao King. But for some reason, the part wrapped around Muk Seo-ah's body didn't vanish.
As a result, the barrier split in two.
Both the Yao King and Muk Seo-ah were ensnared.
"You're really fucking annoying. Counterattacking in that gap."
"Yao King, passing me a bomb in that split second? Can't handle it alone, huh."
Trapped in the barrier.
Vision darkened to pitch black.
Muk Seo-ah thought about beating the shit out of the Yao King and quietly gripped her axe, waiting.
For some reason, Cheonaeyuseon hadn't repelled this binding, but a barrier from a weak high-level yokai like the storyteller wouldn't be a real threat.
Then came the sound of a rhino charging.
"Come fight me! I still crave blood!"
Asura broke through the exorcists' encirclement, barreling straight for Muk Seo-ah.
Asura, which hunted only the strong, had chosen Muk Seo-ah over the Yao King. That fact crushed the Yao King's pride.
Before the barrier fully closed, Muk Seo-ah had caught the Yao King's eye and smirked.
"Asura wants to fight me."
"Hmph, that brute yokai's judgment? Zero credibility. I'll wait on the other side of the barrier."
The storyteller's barrier draped like a curtain, blocking vision.
The Yao King had reacted late to the barrier.
Muk Seo-ah was trapped because Cheonaeyuseon malfunctioned.
==================================
The barrier itself wasn't a threat.
The problem was they couldn't escape. Even the Yao King couldn't.
"Hmph, that worm burned his life for desperate sorcery. Won't hold me long."
The Yao King muttered.
High-level yokai storyteller had gone for mutual destruction. Burning his remaining life. He'd already ruined his body tanking the Yao King's lethal strikes anyway. A few hours at most before death.
This barrier wouldn't last long either.
A desperate mutual destruction that only stalled for time. Against Muk Seo-ah and the Yao King, the storyteller was outclassed.
Muk Seo-ah swung at the Yao King's smug head.
"Eek...!"
The Yao King rolled back, flailing comically to dodge.
But Muk Seo-ah's hand was empty—no axe. She frowned.
"Huh, where'd it go."
"Ah, aha. This is the storyteller's Street Tale Theater! You're done, Mukmyeong! No weapons allowed here!"
Street Tale Theater. Muk Seo-ah knew the spell.
It created a virtual world.
Inside, everyone was assigned roles, and anything "out of character" was excluded.
Fail to escape within the time limit, and you'd become an eternal puppet slave in the "story."
The storyteller had turned hordes into puppets with this binding alone.
Muk Seo-ah looked around: dry-faced people everywhere. Real humans once, now dolls repeating roles in the storyteller's theater.
Frozen with blank expressions.
Then background music flowed from somewhere, and they moved naturally, like real people.
Crowds of people around.
All women. In a grand, spacious chamber like a palace room, women in white clothes stood with hands clasped neatly.
Every one a beauty.
Now she noticed: Muk Seo-ah and the Yao King wore white outfits too.
Oak floor. High ceiling. Not like a palace room—it was a real palace interior.
A fake space conjured by sorcery, of course.
"Without your axe, you're no match for me, Mukmyeong!"
The Yao King yelled fiercely, forming a mudra. But nothing happened.
Even if just a stall, the storyteller's desperate mutual destruction properly isolated the two powerhouses in space.
Linger too long in the barrier and become a "puppet"—soul devoured.
In other words, conditional instant death.
The storyteller, already a dead man walking, had thrown a final mutual destruction at the Yao King.
Of course, he'd have to survive outside until then. Caster dies, binding breaks.
Anyway, the Yao King couldn't use sorcery here either.
"Hmph, an unarmed exorcist is nothing...!"
The Yao King charged.
Muk Seo-ah checked Cheonaeyuseon. Suppressed hard by the Street Tale Theater, but it could still activate if shit hit the fan.
No problem then. Cheonaeyuseon would handle her safety.
Even without it, Muk Seo-ah's stamina could tank any attack.
As Muk Seo-ah moved to smack the Yao King, a shrill voice tore from the front of the palace chamber.
"Stop, stop! You new concubines, where do you get off clawing at each other? Your faces and bodies belong to the prince from this moment. Don't you get it?"
A middle-aged woman in silk robes, head loaded with massive ornaments, barked imperiously.
Aimed at Muk Seo-ah and the Yao King. The other women frowned lightly at the brawling pair, like they'd spotted trash.
"Stop it right now—!"
Her head ornaments shook with every shout.
Concubine? Prince?
Muk Seo-ah twisted her lips.
"Ah, you fucking storyteller asshole... Out of all the stories in that book, you picked this shit?"
Cursing made an hourglass appear over Muk Seo-ah's head. A clump of sand trickled down.
Out-of-character action shaved off time limit.
"You bitch! As the prince's concubine, watch your mouth. Your behavior is all his face, isn't it?"
Street Tale Theater. Time limit: 3 days.
Fail to escape, become eternal role forever, soul eaten.
Muk Seo-ah's role... concubine to a spoiled prince.