Sweet Words, Bitter Bargain
The Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang was, by its very design, a dungeon meant to be raided early. Left alone past the opening act, it would be stripped bare by some other faction, which meant you had to run it while your specs were still relatively modest.
And so the orthodox strategy was to slip past the terracotta warriors wherever possible, while Qin Shi Huang himself was, from the start, a non-aggressive boss who simply lay still in his coffin. Last of all, apparently purely to spite anyone who came raiding, cutting the throat of the sprawled-out Qin Shi Huang brought the entire dungeon down in ruins.
In fact, I had once killed Qin Shi Huang on pure autopilot and eaten the bad ending on the spot, so this time...
"I thought as long as I left him alive, none of that would happen... fuck. So dragging him out kills him?"
Having gone to the trouble of making him blood kin, I had planned to simply keep him breathing and milk him for all he was worth, down to the bone, but that plan of mine dissolved into foam.
"My swords... my Thousand Sword Formation..."
Namgung Han slumped to the floor, muttering who knew what.
"Ah... this is genuinely absurd. Since when does a dead man get to die twice?"
I called his name in hollow despair.
"Chunsik! Chunsik!!!"
Unfortunately, nothing changed.
Munch, munch.....
Dang Giyeong, wholly indifferent to whether his own clan's Young Clan Head was mired in despair, came ambling over, munching away at a Doll Snow Ginseng he must have stashed at some point, and said to me,
"Don't grieve too deeply, my lord. Chunsik has gone to a better place."
"Du-sik....."
"Yes, young master. But you still have me, don't you?"
"And what exactly have you done to deserve hogging that all to yourself! Spit it out... spit it out, I said!"
When I snatched the Doll Snow Ginseng from his hand and ate it myself...
"Wait... I'm sorry? Wasn't that mine?"
"Go bet on it somewhere else. Your body's already back to normal, so what are you hogging it for!"
"Huh?"
"And sis, enough with the moping. Let's head back."
"My precious swords....."
Somehow I rounded up the lot, the bewildered Dang Giyeong, the fainted Dang Jihyeon, and the soul-drained Namgung Han, and made for the inn.
The moment our party returned to the inn...
"Whoa... how much is all of this worth?"
"Tell me about it. That's nearly a full year's budget right there?"
"I'd say it'll come out to more than that?"
"At this rate, might we even come away with a root of elixir?"
"Don't... get greedy over nothing and you'll bring trouble down on us."
Watching the Dang clansmen giddy as children on Christmas morning, I leaned toward Dang Giyeong and whispered.
"Let's... keep it strictly between ourselves that everything we carried out was only a fraction of what we could have taken."
"Yes....."
"The young master has turned the Dang Clan upside down!!!"
"All right, that's quite enough of that!"
After I barked them down as the mood threatened to boil over...
Before I knew it, darkness had settled over the inn, and only small candle flames cast their low light around us.
"Aw, c'mon, sis... that's pushing it a bit far."
"If you're going to mobilize a Transcendent Realm martial artist, isn't this much only fair?"
"That's because you barged onto our carriage without so much as a by-your-leave. I didn't drag you anywhere."
"Weren't you the one who brought up tomb raiding in the first place and asked whether I was interested, little brother?"
She and I were locked in a war of words over how the spoils ought to be divided.
"I mean, frankly, the map came from our side, the intel came from our side... Transcendent Realm or not, sis, we fielded three Peak Realm masters on this trip, didn't we?"
"True enough, but... that one over there is injured, no? Counting him as a full Peak Realm master is a bit of a stretch, I'd say."
"It's all an act, I keep telling you. Right, Du-sik?"
"Yes...? Yes... it's all an act."
"Little brother, calling a cracked dantian an act... you're a cruel superior, you know that?"
"It really is an act... want me to prove it?"
At her needling, which kept dragging Dang Giyeong into it for no reason, I looked off to the side and said,
"Du-sik! Somersault!"
"Du-sik! Du-sik!"
"...What manner of coercion is this. Making an injured man perform tricks..."
"See? Perfectly fine, like I said?"
"Well, in any case, I have my dignity to think of. I am, after all, the Young Clan Head of the Namgung Clan. If I go home like this, people will whisper that I was nothing but a tool."
"The Namgung are a wealthy clan, at least. Us? We can't even afford building repairs. Rain comes pouring straight inside, you know?"
"What utter nonsense! Little brother... I never took you for this kind of man."
"No, sis, I mean it. A genuinely poor clan, walls crumbling, water gushing in. We'd sooner scrape the fat off a flea."
"With everything the Dang Clan makes selling weapons, what building could possibly be falling apart! Little brother, at least keep your lies plausible..."
"Deputy Squad Leader! Back when we first set out from the Dang Clan, what state was the Clan Leader's Hall wall in?"
"Well... there was a hole so big anyone would have thought we'd added a second door."
"Sis, I'll stake my hand and my neck that the Dang Clan has at least three buildings with holes in them right now. What will you stake?"
"Very well. My hand and neck, and..."
Clack—
"I'll stake my Young Clan Head token."
"Whoa..."
At the sight, I set my own Young Clan Head token on the table as well, and someone cracked me across the back of the head.
"That's quite enough of that. Do you have any idea how important that token is, staking it around so carelessly?"
"But... she started it..."
Dang Jihyeon shrilled her rebuke at me, and I offered my excuse, but...
"Tsk... even a three-year-old from the streets would know how important the Young Clan Head token is. Does the young master simply have no sense at all?"
Whether I liked it or not, she went on dressing me down like some snot-nosed toddler, and I cowered as I said,
"I did it all for the Dang Clan..."
"For the Dang Clan, you staked the Young Clan Head token over a single whip? Are you in your right mind!"
"Well said. You speak nothing but sense, as ever."
"And you, Young Clan Head, have not done a single thing right either. What sort of sword clan's heir throws such a fit over one whip, spurning all those famed swords in the process!"
"Now... that's..."
"Since when was the Namgung Clan the finest whip house under heaven? If the Namgung Clan Head witnessed this scene, he would clutch the back of his neck and drop where he stood."
"Isn't that going a bit far..."
"Besides, nothing the young master said is actually wrong, is it? The map was the Green Heaven Squad Leader's work, the traps were mine, and the method for cracking the terracotta warriors, along with charming that unidentified man of the Profound Realm, was the young master's doing, no?"
"R...right?"
"Then it's settled. It's only proper that we take the whip, isn't it?"
"Wha—?"
At her sudden drift in logic, I spread both arms wide and advanced on her...
"That's our White Heaven Squad Leader for you! Come here, let me give you a hu—"
"Get lost."
The reaction was cold as ice, and the curse that came with it was not much warmer.
"I don't care! It's mine! I'm taking that whip, and that's final!!!"
Namgung Han sprawled across the floor and wailed like a brat at the store whose mother refused to buy the three-part combining robot.
"Sis, have you no dignity at all?"
"WAAAAAAHH!!!"
Trudge, trudge—
Du-sik watched the spectacle for a while, then at some point quietly slipped away, climbing the stairs as he thought:
Haah... what an entertaining bunch.
Before long he reached his own room and, sprawled across the bed, replayed what had happened earlier.
It had been shortly after they arrived at the inn, while he was enjoying a proper banquet for the first time in ages...
"Finish your meal, then follow me."
At the words Dang Muyeong dropped on him out of nowhere, he had simply answered with a nod.
Only after they had walked deep into the mountains, where no living soul passed, did the man finally speak.
"You're wondering how on earth you survived, aren't you?"
"Yes... I was most certainly dead, back then..."
At that, Dang Muyeong coiled a dark crimson aura round and round himself and spoke with a languid face.
"Well?"
The aura looked, if anything, more dangerous than the Clan Leader's own. Words failed him; he could only stare.
"Do I still look like Dang Muyeong to you?"
With that crooked smile, flaunting fangs that could not possibly belong to a human being, the sight made his hand draw the dagger from his breast before he knew it.
"Who are you!"
He bared his killing intent and demanded an answer from Dang Muyeong, who only kept smirking at him with eyes now split vertically like a beast's, but...
"Du-sik... shut your mouth."
At that single sentence his body refused to so much as twitch, and as he strained to force it to move...
"Come to think of it... who am I, you ask? I am most certainly not Dang Muyeong..."
"Hrk....."
"I am the True Ancestor, ◼◼◼◼◼. In your tongue, you might call me the king of vampires."
"How dare you... you vermin..."
Take care of Muyeong...
The words of someone long gone, binding him like shackles, rose unbidden in Dang Giyeong's mind, and he ground his teeth at the monster who had seized his master's body, but the creature went on in perfect calm.
"Now, now, don't be like that. I didn't end up in this state by choice either."
"What did you do to the young master...?"
"What do you think I did? He's dead, presumably."
The instant his body, which had not stirred no matter how he struggled, began to move again, Dang Giyeong swung the dagger at his throat.
Unfortunately, the blade halted a hair's breadth from that neck, and his own body froze solid once more...
"And you, after all, are already my blood kin..."
"Hrk.... please!"
He cursed his own flesh for its utter refusal to move and cried out in desperation, but the only part of it that would obey was its mouth.
"You see, the tragic flaw of us vampires is... we care about lineage to an absolutely obscene degree. So no matter how you struggle, if I say die, you die. A sorrowful arrangement, isn't it?"
He patted his own shoulder as he carried on.
"Don't blame me too much. Truth be told, someone simply poured me into a body that had already died of poison."
"Lies....."
"Du-sik, why would I bother lying? If this had been my true body, it could have swallowed the Central Plains whole and had room left over. Why would I seal myself into this husk and suffer like this?"
"Muyeong couldn't be dead....."
"Ha... I rifled through your memories earlier, every last one. Your life has been a wretched one."
The thing fell silent for a moment, then spoke again.
"But no matter how faithfully you keep that promise of yours, the premise itself has already collapsed. The original Dang Muyeong is dead, and now I am Dang Muyeong..."
"........."
"Still, there are things I can promise you plainly."
"........."
"Becoming the finest under heaven? Raising the Dang Clan to the head of the Five Great Clans?"
"........."
He turned, traced a slow circle around me, and said,
"Setting all that aside..."
"Then what can you promise me....."
At my question, the thing wearing Dang Muyeong's face smiled sweetly and poured out its honeyed words, for all the world like a monster luring in its prey.
"No matter what may come, I will not die."
Its eyes, fixed squarely on mine, seemed like the Bottomless Abyss itself, depths without end, but...
"I know full well how much misfortune trails in your wake... how many of the people around you you've buried..."
His words were, to me, a temptation more difficult to refuse than anything in this world.
"I will never die."
With those words his hold on my body released, and I could move again, yet I simply crumpled to the floor and asked,
"Then what is it that I must do..."
"Just as you always have... all you need to do is treat me as Dang Muyeong."
Alone in the dark room, Dang Giyeong lay with his eyes closed and murmured:
"Ha..... Mujin. Is this really the right thing to do?"