It Descends
It had been the night before.
"It reminds me of a passage from Sugungga," Go Gyumin had said.
"Sugungga, sir?"
"Sugungga... you know, the Tale of the Rabbit. The old folk story where the rabbit gets dragged off to the Dragon King's palace and cleverly escapes before they can carve out its liver."
"Oh, oh, I know that one. The Rabbit and the Turtle. I read it in a storybook when I was little."
The Jade Emperor fallen ill. The turtle who came ashore to fetch medicine. The rabbit who nearly lost its liver.
Jang Siwoon clapped her hands as the memory came back to her.
"There's a passage in that epic that closely resembles our quest."
"Really?!"
"And there's an extremely famous painting where that beast appears alongside a magpie."
Ah. Only then did it click for certain, and I nodded toward Go Gyumin.
The beast that had been nagging at the edges of my memory ever since he'd first mentioned a passage from Sugungga now stood out sharp and unmistakable in my mind.
Go Gyumin curled the corners of his mouth upward into a wicked-looking grin.
"Let's make that beast come down."
"Now then, it's time for the beast that will crush that creature to come down."
Back in the present.
Go Gyumin grinned with confidence, saying the exact same words he'd spoken the night before.
The beast we predicted yesterday and the beast the fake Jangsanbeom tried to erase—they're one and the same.
Now was the time to put that certainty to work and strike down the Jangsanbeom.
Flash—
Go Gyumin snapped open his fan, drew in an enormous breath, and swelled his belly.
He planted his strength in his core and bellowed toward the Jangsanbeom.
It was the very passage from Sugungga he had explained to us the night before.
"Look there, mouth hanging open, clumsy and stumbling—tui-tui-tui, is that not the hosaengwon?"
Chirp-chirp-chirp—
The moment Go Gyumin let that husky voice fly, birds cried out from beyond the cave.
The ground shuddered, and the ceiling slowly split open, letting sunlight pour inside.
"Aaargh!!"
"Mr. Go, it's working! Keep going!"
As Go Gyumin sang, the Jangsanbeom twisted its body and howled in anguish.
When the Jangsanbeom's fur bristled, white powder scattered in every direction.
The painting—it's emerging!
Ink bloomed across the face of Go Gyumin's fan, and a picture began to take shape.
Unmistakably, the very painting the Painter had been trying to create.
"Khh... you fools. Your deduction is wrong."
"Ignore him, Mr. Go!!"
"I am the tiger. A tiger of the eight provinces, demon or no. Though I drape myself in a white hide, my roots are those of a tiger. Above all, the word beom—tiger—is written at the end of my very name."
The Jangsanbeom let out a blood-chilling cackle.
He pretended it wasn't so, but the Jangsanbeom's words had taken their toll—Go Gyumin's fan was turning white again, reverting to what it had been.
The sun—!
The sky was shifting into a deep, heavy orange.
Soon this sunset would sink away, and the dark of night would fall.
Seizing that moment as its chance, the Jangsanbeom bewitched us with even greater relish.
"I am the tiger, the tiger. Strike me down, and you can never defeat the Skeleton Monster."
"Don't listen to that crap!!"
Jang Siwoon flung open the Leaflet's tool window.
Swish—
Name: Muzzle Bell — The Bell That Closes the Mouth.
Description: Rings but once! Count out sixty seconds, and the mouth opens again.
◈ Rings but once!
◈ Count out sixty seconds, and the mouth opens again.
Jang Siwoon swung the rod with the bell affixed to it with all her might, and a single crystalline chime rang out.
Ding—
"...!"
The Jangsanbeom clamped its mouth shut and its two eyeballs rolled wildly.
The bell's power had truly rendered the Jangsanbeom voiceless.
Now we had sixty seconds to finish that thing off.
"Heo-ho, I call him forth—from the layered mountains deep—aaargh...!!"
"Mr. Go!"
This time the Jangsanbeom lunged straight at Go Gyumin.
Just like yesterday, it was trying to pin him down.
A monster that bewitches with hallucinations and illusions launching physical attacks too? That's just cheating!!
"Jisan!"
Jang Siwoon threw her whole body at the Jangsanbeom with everything she had.
The Jangsanbeom wavered slightly for an instant, and I leapt forward, dagger clenched in my hand.
My dagger hand trembled violently. Why on earth had this blade come to me?
Crunch—!
I squeezed my eyes shut and drove the dagger into the Jangsanbeom's foot, pressing it down hard.
The Jangsanbeom twisted its body, unable to even scream.
I'd driven it in as hard as I could, yet not a single drop of blood fell from the Jangsanbeom.
Maybe that was to be expected, since it was a lump of data fabricated inside the museum—
"You're not the real Jangsanbeom. You're a fake wearing a white hide."
At my words, the Jangsanbeom's body shuddered violently.
And onto the dagger's blade—the blade that cleaves the false from the true—the Jangsanbeom's reflection appeared.
The instant I grasped what it really was, the Jangsanbeom's true form revealed itself in the steel.
A skeleton, draped in a mangy white-fur pelt, chattering its teeth together.
Even the tiger's front claws were, in truth, the finger bones of a skeleton.
"The reason you could pass yourself off as the Jangsanbeom is that you are both a component of the quest the tower created—and one of its artworks."
"...!!"
"And soon, the power of your performance will run out."
The white powder scattered all around the Jangsanbeom. That fleeting voice whose timbre had shifted with every syllable, just like the Skeleton Monster's.
This creature was not the Jangsanbeom. It was the Skeleton Monster's underling—or perhaps an extension of it.
Why is it so strong...!!
The fake Jangsanbeom thrashed and squirmed, struggling to tear itself free of my blade.
In one last desperate flail, it swung its remaining leg.
Its bared claws arced toward my face.
"You disgusting bastard—get off!!"
"?!!"
Jang Siwoon placed her own hand on top of mine and pressed the dagger down, twisting it.
The blade sank in even deeper than before, and it crushed the rotted bone without mercy.
The fake Jangsanbeom's body contorted grotesquely.
The tiger deep in the layered mountains, hearing this song for the first time in its life, comes down the ridge in delight.
And at last, the picture on Go Gyumin's fan was finished, every stroke of it complete.
A Joseon folk painting of a magpie and a tiger. The Jakhodo.
"Aaargh—!!"
Whether the sixty seconds had run out or not, the fake Jangsanbeom let out a shriek.
The piercing scream nearly burst my eardrums.
In the blink between one shut eye and an opened one, the fake Jangsanbeom had dissolved entirely into powder.
All that remained was a mound of white bone dust on the ground.
"It's gone."
"...We actually pulled it off, right?"
Go Gyumin, who had barely managed to keep his song going, let out a long breath of relief.
"Ahh... how vexing. How utterly vexing."
Then, from outside the cave, the Skeleton Monster's voice rang out.
The fake Jangsanbeom was gone—but the final boss still remained.
"I-is the Skeleton Monster coming this way?"
When no house-sized beast appeared to vanquish the Skeleton Monster for us, Go Gyumin began to stammer with unease.
"?!!"
Before we could even cry out, the cave began to collapse with startling speed.
It was less that the ceiling caved in and more that... the hole piercing through it expanded rapidly, devouring the walls along with it.
The sun hung caught upon the earth. Above, darkness was slowly settling in.
What? Why isn't anything happening?!
Chirp-chirp-chirp—
Then a flock of magpies came winging in.
Countless magpies settled onto the trees and cried out as if in chorus.
And then... together, in voices clear as spring water, the magpies began to sing.
The tiger is coming down. The tiger is coming down.
A beast is coming down into the deep hollows of the pine forest.
"That's the passage from Sugungga I sang earlier."
Go Gyumin stared dumbfounded at the singing flock of magpies.
THUD-! THUD-! THUD-!
"Is that not the Skeleton Monster?"
"...No."
As the ground shook violently, Jang Siwoon looked at me with anxious eyes.
True, the earth had rumbled like this when the Skeleton Monster approached too.
But this was different.
This vibration is coming from far away—out of the forest itself.
I turned my body around and looked out over the pine forest.
The gazes of the magpies, gathered together and singing, were all fixed on the pines.
From the mountains and rivers, the beast of the eight provinces was coming down.
"It's the real tiger."
THUD-! THUD-! THUD-!
The tiger is coming down. The tiger is coming down.
A beast is coming down into the deep hollows of the pine forest.
A tiger that looked as though it had leapt straight out of a Jakhodo was descending the mountain.
Lavish stripes. An overall softness to the body's curves. Even great, round eyes. Whimsical yet delightful to behold.
It was so immense that even from far away, I could make out every detail of it swaying its tail as it came down the slope.
To see the tiger of the Jakhodo at a scale like this...
"Break my bones. Please, break my bones..."
"Only those who have seen the setting sun three times shall become bone..."
So transfixed was I by the tiger's majesty that I failed to notice the Skeleton Monster crawling toward us.
"Kim!"
At Go Gyumin's shout, I snapped back to my senses—too late.
The Skeleton Monster had already stretched out its long arm and hooked its fingers into my clothes, lifting me slightly off the ground.
Is it preparing to eat me already?!
The sun was still straddling the horizon.
And the Skeleton Monster merely held me, making no move beyond that.
The Skeleton Monster's hollow eye sockets turned toward me.
"Only those who have seen the setting sun three times shall become bone."
No human could ever defeat this creature.
Only the beast—the house-sized tiger—could do it.
THUD-!!
"The tiger has arrived."
At last, the tiger had come to sink its fangs into the Skeleton Monster's nape.
Somehow emboldened, I looked straight up at the Skeleton Monster and issued my warning.
The Skeleton Monster set me down and looked around.
"Grrrrraaaah—!"
"...?!"
Before the skull's empty sockets could even swivel backward, the tiger's jaws closed on its neck vertebrae.
CRACK-!!
"Graaaaah... my bones..."
"The attack landed for real!"
We hurriedly scrambled out of the way.
Getting swept up in a battle between a house-sized beast and a monster could very well earn us a pointless ending.
One press of that tiger's paw, and we'd be flattened into dried fish.
"Grrrraah—!"
The tiger whipped its claws ferociously, carving the Skeleton Monster's bones into pieces.
Against a foe whose strength was great but whose movements were sluggish, the tiger dismantled it with breathtaking speed.
"Ahh... the tiger... the tiger's sickle-sharp new claws are breaking me apart..."
"Come on, hurry up and finish it!!"
Both of the Skeleton Monster's arms were already shattered; only its torso and head remained.
With darkness all but settled over the sky, Go Gyumin was beside himself with worry.
"Grrrrraah—!!"
Just before the sun vanished entirely, the tiger let loose an enormous roar.
Then it threw itself atop the Skeleton Monster, bore it down, and severed its neck vertebrae completely.
CRACK-!!
The Skeleton Monster's severed head and body toppled in opposite directions.
With a THUD, dust billowed up from the ground.
The skull, rolling head over heel, squeezed out one last thin, wavering voice.
"Ahhh... at last... I become ash..."
A lament, or a word of thanks—who could say.
The Skeleton Monster murmured to itself, and then, at last, dissolved completely into powder.
It was the same end the fake Jangsanbeom had met.
By the time the white powder had scattered on the wind and vanished entirely—
the Leaflet we'd been waiting for, waiting for, finally floated up into the air.
Swish—
Aiyo, spectators, you have climbed the stone steps.
Strange beasts there were in plenty—a heap of bones besides.
But that skeleton was no ordinary skeleton, for it was a man transformed!
Once the sun has circled thrice, this life-thread shall be severed, and there is no help for it.
How could mortal strength alone bear such a thing?
One way there is, and one only.
Past the white-hided impostor, a house-sized beast shall come down.
Visitor Kim Jisan
Visitor Go Gyumin
Visitor Jang Siwoon
2nd Floor Quest.
SUCCESSFUL.
"We did it!!"
All three of us thrust our fists into the air and cheered at once.
We survived...
It had been a quest that was genuinely grueling, both physically and mentally.
All I could hope was that from here on out, things would be less punishing than this.
...Not a chance, of course. The higher we climbed, the more brutal it would get.
At least the broken components won't be turned to ash.
The Skeleton Monster had said it was finally glad to become ash—but that, too, was merely the system at work.
The powdered components would circulate and become the Skeleton Monster all over again.
Thinking of a future where the fallen became the Skeleton Monster once more, only to harm other fallen climbers, my heart didn't feel light by any means.
"Quest complete! Complete!!"
The magpies all chirped out "quest complete" in unison.
"Haa, making us do heavy labor like this from the lower floors—what are we supposed to do by the end?"
"We decided to climb, so we've got to endure it, that's all."
Go Gyumin and Jang Siwoon exchanged words. The two of them, too, looked thoroughly worn out.
Ah, come to think of it, I'd lost stamina back when I saw those illusions.
Swish—
Current Status:
■■■□□
...It hadn't been drained catastrophically, but with the 3rd floor quest ahead of us, leaving it unfilled felt like a risky middle ground.
"Should we eat the fruit?"
I crossed my arms and agonized over the Leaflet's stamina window.
Then Go Gyumin puffed out his chest beside me.
"It's everyone's call, but I barely took any damage, so I'll hold out."
"You will, sir?"
"Yeah. I got a taste of the sweet stuff, so I'm satisfied. My throat's clear as a bell."
Go Gyumin smacked his lips, savoring the memory of the fruit's sweetness.
At that, Jang Siwoon narrowed her eyes into slits and shot him a sidelong glare.
"Mr. Go, you already got to eat the free fruit back then, and now you got a fruit just like the rest of us. Isn't that unfairly tilted in your favor?"
"Eh, it wasn't anything special. Bitter, really."
"...?"
Jang Siwoon and I blinked and looked at each other.