He Shou Wu
The woman's face was no longer bewitching. She wore the fierce look of a tiger with its prey laid out before it.
Yellow lines lashed back and forth above her head. In truth, I had known what she was from the moment we met.
According to the Joseon Record of Strange Beings, a human devoured by a tiger becomes an evil spirit called a changgwi. A changgwi coaxes people close and offers them up as the tiger's food. The woman in front of me was one of them.
"So you already knew who I was...! You dare mock me...!"
The café, so neat a moment ago, had turned into a dark, clammy cave—a tiger's den. From the stone cairns I had seen on the way up, dark crimson blood dripped in a steady patter. I had used Teleport earlier and needed to save every bit of strength I could, so I decided to leave this one to Kkaebi.
"A changgwi, of all things, knowing who I am and still running your mouth?"
"Who do you think? A dumbass who walked into a tiger's den on his own two feet without knowing his place..."
In the next instant the Dokkaebi Club shot forward.
Whoooosh!
It punched straight through the woman's mouth.
Crunch.
"Ghk..."
Blood poured from her mouth, and she collapsed where she stood.
Thud.
The woman on the ground twitched a few times, then went still. She seemed to be dead. Where she had fallen, there was only a small blue stone.
The Dokkaebi Club returned to my hand, thoroughly pleased with itself. Kkaebi sneered like a thug putting on a show.
"Go on. Say something else. Huh?"
"Whoa. What are you? That was incredible."
At the praise, Kkaebi seemed delighted. A lively, bouncing vibration ran through the club in my hand.
"A changgwi? Please. A few thousand of them could rush me and it still wouldn't amount to anything. Ahem!"
For all that bluster, though, a sudden drowsiness seemed to be crashing over him.
"Hrrrm... I'm kinda sleepy... Gonna sleep... Khhhrrrrk...!"
Affecting the world directly, the way he just had, clearly took a great deal of power. The sound of Kkaebi snoring rang on and on in my ear.
That suited me fine. Fighting on my own would build experience, and I had no complaint about that. I pocketed the blue stone and took up the Dokkaebi Club—my second wand.
It seated itself in my palm with a soft, satisfying click. I could feel the blue lines inside my body and the wand answering each other.
My first wand, the branch I had picked up before this, had felt like an immigration counter: passport out, interview and all. The second felt as free as pressing a fingerprint and walking straight through.
"Hm. Is that a weird comparison? But that's exactly what it was."
It was then that an immensely heavy presence pressed down on me.
Very quiet footsteps drew near—the sound of something picking its way carefully across the snow. Even so, it could not hide the yellow lines snapping and spitting like sparks. Thousands of them burst at once, static electricity gone wild.
Crackle—crackle! Crackle-crackle-crackle!
It was a knot of yellow lines on a wholly different scale from the Hungry Ghost King. In the dark of the cave, two yellow eyes blinked.
"You dare... kill my changgwi..."
A tiger. The one I had seen at the zoo as a child had been shockingly huge, far bigger than I expected. The tiger coming toward me now was easily two or three times the size of even that.
Step by soft step, it closed the distance and stopped in front of me.
"You..."
The tiger tilted its fearsome head.
"What are you... something... alien..."
Its eyes were fixed on the tip of my wand. I was gathering blue lines there, ready to fire at any moment. One shot. If I missed this one, I might actually die.
"Will you... become my changgwi... alien thing... That sensation... I rather like it..."
The tiger's jaws gaped wide. The fangs on either side glinted, menacing.
Sorry, but I came here to dig up seolryeongcho. And I had a feeling tiger extract would make a fine tonic for it. I don't know where the nerve came from. With my left hand, I crooked a finger.
"Here, kitty. Come and get me."
It happened in a true instant. The tiger lunged and swung a forepaw, meaning to take my head clean off.
Whoosh!
The shock of displaced air was so enormous it felt as if my skull had gone flying into the distance. If the paw had connected, that is. But I was no longer there. Having missed me, the tiger whipped its head from side to side, voice rattled.
"What...! H-how...!"
I was on the tiger's back. A long Teleport drank blue lines by the handful, but climbing onto a tiger right in front of me cost only a few. I had been secretly loosing a blue mist at it since well before it arrived. From the wand trained on the back of its skull, a blue line fired.
Fwoosh!
A thick blue line punched straight through the back of the tiger's head. It couldn't even scream. It toppled onto its side.
Kuuuung!
"Hup."
I leapt clear, but my legs gave out and I went tumbling. Still, I was lucky not to have been pinned under the tiger. Get crushed beneath a body that size and something was definitely going to break.
I ended up filthy with dust from head to toe. Even so, I felt good. I glanced sideways and met the tiger's unfocused eyes. It was dead on the spot.
From my bag I set down the steel box I had obtained before. I had already put that enormous Hungry Ghost King in there. However big this one was, a tiger ought to fit just fine.
Things that leaked blue lines couldn't go in, no matter how small. Things that leaked yellow lines, though, seemed to slide in without trouble, no matter how large.
With a clunk, I shoved the tiger's forepaw into the open box. The beast, big as a house, was sucked into the steel box crawling with blue lines.
Whirrrrrl.
The box shut again with a clack.
"Whew."
I got up carefully and brushed the dust from my clothes. While I was at it, I caught blue lines glittering in a corner of the cave.
"Huh?"
I walked slowly after them. The cave was simply drenched in blue. So many lines tangled together that it felt as if I had walked into the sea. In the corner, scattered everywhere, were things that looked like the seolryeongcho the Sokcho guide had told me about.
"One, two, three..."
I stopped counting. At this rate I would be up all night. I pulled a hand hoe from my bag at once and set to digging, hard, at whatever these seolryeongcho-or-something were. I didn't know what they were, but with blue lines surging like waves, they had to be spiritual herbs.
Hack. Hack. Hack...!
At first it felt like a countryside volunteer day, and I didn't mind it. The longer it went, the less that held. I was trying not to damage the roots, and my back began to ache while my legs started to shake.
"Huff."
Hack. Hack. Hack...!
A line of sweat ran down my spine. My whole body was so stiff I thought I might cry. A mage, it turned out, was definitely built for office work.
I came out of the tiger's den. The stone cairn had collapsed at some point. It must have been a tiger-grave—the mound of stones raised over people the beast had killed and eaten.
I quietly bowed my head for a moment, then sat down beside it. From my bag I took out a few of the herbs I had dug up in the den. In the daylight the roots were thick and oddly cute, shaped something like sweet potatoes. An ordinary person would have needed to check them for poison. I knew a much more convenient method.
Shwoooop!
A blue line shot straight up. No poison, nothing of the sort—an excellent spiritual herb. Saliva pooled in my mouth on its own. At this level, it had to be worth a hundred ginseng roots, easy.
I brushed the dirt off with my hand, popped one into my mouth, and chewed. It was certainly bigger and thicker than ginseng, and getting through it took some work. Crunch. Crunch-crunch-crunch...
Heat began to gather in my stomach. I had never had a reaction like this.
"Uh— uh...!"
My insides boiled and churned as if there were lava in there. Then, all at once, a cold as vicious as the Arctic flooded my gut. Pain, cool relief, heat—my stomach thrashed however it pleased.
"Ugh..."
Just then Kkaebi, awake again at some point, must have seen the spiritual herb in my bag. He clicked his tongue.
"Huh? Don't tell me you ate that raw. I already had you pegged as a lunatic when you didn't even flinch in front of a changgwi, but... you really are insane, aren't you? I like you."
"Ugh... ugh... Wh-what even is that thing..."
I honestly rolled across the ground. The ground was nothing but stones from the broken cairn, and the sharp edges stabbed me all over. It hurt.
"You don't know He Shou Wu? He Shou Wu. Judging by the size, it's only about a hundred years old. Even so, an ordinary human eats it and it's instant death. Instant death. You're supposed to purify it a little first, you know?"
He Shou Wu? Wait. One of the elixirs I remembered from martial arts novels was thousand-year He Shou Wu. It wasn't a thousand years, but a hundred years of age still meant it was the good stuff.
"Uuuugh..."
That was one thing. This was another. It really was as loud in my stomach as if a war had broken out.
Pudududududu!
As time passed, the racket gradually died down. The stomachache that had been hurting like mad slowly faded with it.
"Hah... hah..."
I drew deep breaths and carefully pushed myself upright. I was caked in dirt, and my hair was soaked through with sweat. I looked like a beggar.
"Every joint in my body is screaming..."
Then, at last, the blue lines in my stomach—lines that had been rampaging like a battlefield—began to rise, slow and unhurried. They took their place beside the two lines at my heart. There was a soft, sliding sensation. The blue lines numbered three now, far thicker and larger than before.