Poison and Company (4)
The old crone shuffled forward with slow, deliberate steps, heading deeper into the forest. Her face was a mass of thick, grotesque wrinkles, like parched earth split open by a long drought. With each unhurried stride, she called out to her “babies” in the heart of the woods. Her voice echoed through the trees, and soon a rustling sound answered from the underbrush.
Out came the spiders. Black bodies striped with yellow—venomous arachnids. What made them truly special was their size. Each one was enormous, several times larger than a grown human.
“Eat up, my darlings.”
The crone let out a creepy little cackle and, with one hand, grabbed the carcasses of dead pigs from the cart she’d been dragging. She hurled them toward the spiders with the other.
Crunch.
The spiders tore into the pigs with a single bite, ripping the corpses apart with razor-sharp fangs.
“Good children. Eat well.”
The old woman watched with obvious satisfaction. By now, countless spiders had gathered around her, and she tossed them the pig carcasses one by one, feeding her grotesque brood.
“…Giant spiders the size of humans… Watching beasts look down on people like this makes me want to vomit.”
A half-torn pig carcass—its head already missing—thudded to the ground. The sight was so repulsive it made my stomach turn. I spoke with my back to the crone.
“Still, if you watch them long enough, they’re rather cute, aren’t they, Vice Leader?”
The old woman paid my words no mind and continued throwing food to the massive spiders. That was just how she was. I hadn’t expected her to stop anyway. As repulsive as she looked, she was half-monster herself and could serve as a formidable weapon when needed.
“…What’s that big one over there?”
Tired of the nauseating scene, I scanned the surroundings and spotted something enormous in the distance. Unlike the others, it was pure black, its entire body encased in a shell as hard as steel. And it was even larger than the rest.
“Who might you be referring to? As I said, all my children are quite large…”
She trailed off, so I pointed directly at it.
“That one. The black one.”
She craned her neck to see where my finger was pointing, then let out a soft “Ahhh” and smiled wickedly.
“Ah, you must mean Heukmyeong.”
Black and dark. A brutally straightforward name.
“A precious child. The most precious of them all.”
Her voice trembled slightly, as if she were deeply moved, and she began to explain.
“Can you see that belly?”
She bent her already nearly ninety-degree hunched back even further and pointed at the creature’s abdomen. Curious, I leaned forward as well.
“A human…?”
A face twisted in what looked like an eternal scream was embedded in its belly, shriveled and grotesque. It was unlike anything I’d seen on the other spiders.
The crone beamed with pride.
“That’s right. It’s a human face.”
A giant spider with a human face on its abdomen—the Inmyeonjiju. A complete monster, the king of all spiders, possessing an unimaginably potent venom. It was not only rare but vicious, ferocious, and so powerful that even most Transcendent Realm experts couldn’t tame it.
“You actually managed to bring back an Inmyeonjiju—a savage monster, not even a spirit beast—and raise it here.”
I hadn’t known any were still alive in the Central Plains. I certainly hadn’t expected to find one living in a place like this.
“It’s not that vicious. If you soothe and coax it properly, it listens very well. It’s no different from a human baby.”
The Inmyeonjiju bent its leg joints, lowering its massive body to match the old woman’s height. She stroked its face as if it were the most adorable thing in the world.
“What kind of baby throws a tantrum and sends people straight to the afterlife?”
When I pointed that out sharply, the crone cackled and replied with shameless innocence.
“Hehe… Well, that’s true enough.”
She spun around, patted the Inmyeonjiju on the head, and said,
“You’ve eaten, so off you go now. That’s enough.”
The creature let out a shrill cry, straightened its legs, and retreated to its original spot in the distance. Everywhere its eight legs touched, the ground corroded and melted from its poison. The sight was deeply unsettling.
“You can actually communicate with these bizarre things—including the Inmyeonjiju. Akshin Papa, now that I think about it, you seem quite useful. Could I learn to do it too?”
The old woman—Akshin Papa, the Seventh Elder of the Demonic Cult, infamous throughout the Murim—was the one before me. She shook her head at my question.
“Impossible. This lies entirely in the realm of pure talent.”
With that, Akshin Papa picked up the now-empty cart from the ground and began walking slowly back the way she had come.
“Did you know I am a shaman?”
“Of course. That bizarre sorcery of yours isn’t something one can easily forget.”
She nodded at my answer, then raised one hand and slammed it into the tree right beside her. The impact split the bark, and red droplets of blood welled up from the wound.
“Shamanism is based on equivalent exchange through a medium. Almost anything can be used, but most often it’s blood—especially human blood.”
From that moment, things began to turn strange. Instead of falling to the ground as they should have, the blood droplets rose upward, flowing in reverse toward the sky.
“Anyone can use shamanic arts. Not just you, Vice Leader, but even the little children in any village at the foot of this mountain could do it if they set their minds to it.”
The blood droplets from Akshin Papa’s fingertips began to paint a picture in the air. A massive red circle. Inside it, two pentagons. Strange characters written within those pentagons. Looking closely, they resembled the character for chaos.
“How little of the medium is consumed during a ritual is pure talent—an area that cannot be overcome by any means.”
The crimson blood painting—the shamanic formation she had mentioned, the one used for equivalent exchange—suddenly turned black and vanished.
“A talent that can turn a person into a puddle of blood with just a few drops. If you’re born with that level of talent, communicating with beasts becomes perfectly natural.”
Suddenly my vision darkened and the world spun. Startled, I reflexively drew Mukrin from my waist and swung it. The trees in front of me were shredded like paper in an instant, carving out an empty clearing.
“Hehe. It was nothing special.”
Akshin Papa answered leisurely. Her tone was utterly repulsive.
“If you ever pull something like that without warning again, the next thing I cut will be your neck.”
I issued the stern warning, sheathed Mukrin, and forced down the rage boiling inside me. Only after calming the lingering fury did I speak again.
“By the way, shamanism and talking to beasts… they don’t seem related at all.”
“Isn’t that the very mystery of shamanism? Something that cannot be proven by any means? Hehe…”
Akshin Papa muttered cryptically. I thought it was some bizarre nonsense, but decided it must be similar to the martial insights or mental images of warriors and let it pass.
“It’s not just communicating with beasts. Those born with talent for shamanism are also sensitive to supernatural forces like the energy of ley lines or water veins.”
“That’s useful.”
Ley lines and water veins were places where spiritual herbs and fruits—called elixirs—grew, where spirit beasts gathered, and sometimes where thousand-year cold iron could be found in abundance.
“Which is why it’s so rare. Perhaps I am the only one in the current generation of Murim to have reached this level.”
Transcendent Realm experts were rare, but there were still around twenty of them. Yet among all the famous masters—whether righteous or demonic—she was the only shaman. That was why she could say such a thing.
Akshin Papa spoke once more.
“In truth, without this kind of talent, practical shamanism is nearly impossible. That’s why the art has gradually been forgotten and is disappearing.”
“If you have time, try dabbling in it lightly. Who knows? It might become a hidden ace up your sleeve.”
She had just claimed that without talent it was practically impossible to use in real combat, yet here she was spouting more nonsense. I sighed.
“Enough of this pointless chatter. Let’s hurry. The Cult Leader has summoned us.”
“…So you weren’t completely without talent after all.”
God, if He was fair, was indeed fair. He had given everyone at least one appropriate talent. Even if that meant placing them in an environment where it might never see the light of day, no matter how many times they were reborn.
To me and Seha, He had given talent in martial arts.
To Namgung Hye and the Zhuge siblings, intelligence.
And to Dang Heea, the talent for shamanism.
Shamanism is purely a matter of talent.
With sufficient talent, even a three-year-old child could theoretically surpass me.
…Should I try creating one more Transcendent? It feels like it might actually work.