Chapter 21 — The Deceiver And The Deceived (1)

From the outside the Other Realm looked for all the world like an amusement park, but its true nature was a factory.
Yokai reeking of foul yokai aura lurked on every side.
Each one had been bound down to the last by a sorcerous array that spread across the whole of the Other Realm, and from every quarter they howled.

The creatures fed on the impure feelings flowing in from the park above and churned out yokai aura, but every drop of that aura was being siphoned off into the array and gathered at a single point deep within the Other Realm.

“There. He’s in!”
“Strengthen the sorcery, throw a barrier around him! First we put a safety on it so the thing can’t run wild!”

The array did more than that, of course.
It also let them convert the enormous yokai aura stored inside it into sorcery-power, and wield that power as their own.
This was why the sorcerers of the Seo House went to any length to drag an opponent as formidable as a Rank Four yokai into the Other Realm.
No matter how badly the creature outmatched them, once it was inside, the power of the array could overcome it.

— These madmen actually were collecting yokai! Right beneath an amusement park!

Watching it all unfold, Ham Seoyeon was so dumbfounded she could only stand there with her mouth hanging open.

— How is this even possible? In the very heart of the Capital, no less! Has nobody else known about it?
— Even if they did, what of it? It’s the work of a member of the Three Capital Houses. Who could stop it?
— Then somebody has to, whoever it is! What about the Shin House, or the Yun House? The Royal House?
— You knew the answer even as you asked. It only means those three houses are the only ones you need worry about.

At Shin Hweein’s cool words, Ham Seoyeon’s shoulders sagged.

— That’s… mm. You may be right.

For one thing, how often would any of those three houses ever wander into an amusement park?
And if they did come, they would never come hidden, so the Seo House could simply make its preparations before they arrived.
Reinforce the array-craft, or hide the yokai away for a time… and if you could freely command the yokai aura within, then even if your opponent were the head of the Shin House himself, there were ways to deceive him.
That, after all, was the very specialty of the Seo House. They were born deceivers of others, were they not.

— And there’s one thing you’re misunderstanding, Seoyeon.

Recalling the sensation of passing through into the Other Realm, Shin Hweein spoke to her.

— A particular lock has been set on this place, so that none who cannot wield Seo House sorcery may enter. As security goes, it is about as perfect as one could ask for.
— Then how did we get in?

To the rebuttal he had fully expected, Shin Hweein silently pointed at himself.
The gesture was so absurd that Ham Seoyeon snorted in spite of herself, and yet it was the simple truth, no lie in it.

To be exact, only someone who possessed the array-craft-line sorcery unique to those with Seo blood in their veins could pass through the underside of the amusement park, and the same held for crossing over into the Other Realm.
Had Shin Hweein not extorted the direct-line talent for himself, he too would have been forced to withdraw with nothing more than an uneasy prickle at the back of his neck.
Taking the matter instead to the Yun House or the Cathedral and setting them in motion was out of the question.
There was no evidence decisive enough to move them, and even if they did cooperate, the Seo House would more than likely finish the job and bury every trace before they ever arrived.

— That yokai. It keeps looking at us.
— No, not us. The creature is looking at me, and me alone. Its eyes have not left me for a moment.

Indeed, Balbal’s killing intent had been fixed on Shin Hweein from start to finish.
Geum Moa’s stealth sorcery cloaked them both, so Balbal could not even have registered Ham Seoyeon’s presence to begin with.
As for how it had picked Shin Hweein out so swiftly, that was simply because the creature was one of the many yokai who had laid a curse on him.
The foul, hideous, yet by comparison to the others thin cord of fate that joined the two of them was something Shin Hweein could perceive clearly as well.

Those tied to me by curses more often than not have circumstances behind them. But this one is bound to me out of nothing but pure resentment and malice. It might even be the owner of that ominous voice that reached me before, during the rite to summon Ushi-gozen.

What manner of resentment did the creature carry, that it had left behind a curse running on for centuries, and that the moment it caught his trail it had come to kill him in person?
Had Shin Hweein not shown himself here today, what then?
He could not be certain, but in hunting him down, would the creature not have wrought still greater harm?

Just then, as if on cue, the creature’s voice came into his ear again.

— Humans do amusing things, don’t they? From thousands of years ago to now, not one of them has changed. Wouldn’t you agree?

Once it was clear the voice could be heard by him alone, Shin Hweein did not deign to answer.

— Ignoring me? Aye, you may have no memory of me. But unfortunately for you, I am the one who survived, and grew strong like this…! Before you can take back all that you were, I have come in person to kill you, and tear the throat from your neck—!

The creature went on transmitting its intent to Shin Hweein alone in that low, growling voice, while its body in fact staggered like a man deep in drink, lurching along as the sorcerers led it.
Then, as if jolted back to its senses, it would halt and loose a hideous shriek, and the sorcerers, never recognizing the performance for what it was, would take fright each time and pile yet more mental sorceries onto it, layer upon layer.

Those men are finished. Fitting, for fools who went rampaging without even grasping the name of the country they live in.

To Shin Hweein’s eye none of it had the slightest effect, yet it was sorcery all the same, and sorcery leaves an unignorable mark on caster and target alike.
The real result was that, while the sorcerers accomplished nothing, the cord between themselves and their opponent was being layered ever thicker and sturdier, so that, should Balbal choose to turn his hypnotism on them, he could seize them captive through that thickened cord without their being able to so much as resist.

— I have confirmed the truth of the Seo House. Now it’s our turn to move.
— What are you going to do?
— I am going to erase this Other Realm. With everything in it.

It was not as though Shin Hweein had merely been standing there watching Balbal since entering the Other Realm.
He had been extending his senses to their utmost, straining to grasp what was happening inside, to read what Balbal was scheming, and what lay in the minds of the sorcerers escorting it.
And just now, this very moment, he had grasped everything there was to grasp about this Other Realm.
The sorcerous array included.

— Leon.
— I’m listening. By the way, where’s that young one off to?
— He’s been left outside. We have to be ready in case Seo House reinforcements come from beyond the realm.
— Is that so.

Discovering that he had been chosen for the mission at this critical moment while Eulha had been left on sentry duty, Leon’s mood lifted visibly.
The real reason for holding Eulha back was that Eulha could link his senses to the blue bird hovering above the amusement park and keep the overall surveillance running smoothly, but Shin Hweein decided not to trouble himself with sharing that particular truth.

— That aside, Leon, there’s something I need you to do for me.
— Whatever it is, just say the word.
— I am going to inscribe a sorcery in my blood. Upon every yokai within this space.
— If it’s a matter of handling blood, I can help with that. What sorcery, exactly?
— I will only be helping them slip their bonds and go free.

The yokai bound within the Other Realm numbered seven in all.
None were Rank Six or below. Four were Rank Five, three Rank Four.
Even so, the creatures were being made to serve as generators churning out yokai aura over the long term, and the energy they produced could not be stored in their own bodies but was stripped away to the last drop by the array, so they could not bring their true strength fully to bear.
Even so, Rank Five and Rank Four, all of them loosed at once… suppressing the riot that followed would be no easy task.

— Well, then. Have you got it?

Just as he had with Ham Seoyeon, Shin Hweein had taken Leon’s hand in his and transmitted the information about the sorcery; now, checking to confirm, he asked, and Leon, nodding, gave him a curious look in return.

— Simple enough. This is really all it takes to free them?
— Trust your master.
— Hah. The bearing of my master, as ever.

Shin Hweein drew no small amount of his own blood and handed it to Leon.

— When do we do it?
Right now. There won’t likely be much time to spare.

For at this very moment, Balbal was glaring at him.

— Seoyeon.
— Mm. Leave it to me. Once the fight starts, get behind me.
— A most reassuring thing to hear, but no. There’s something else I’d like to ask of you. Something far more important than fighting.
— Eeh… what is it?
— To retrieve the very thing this Other Realm is being maintained for.

All this while, Shin Hweein had been communing with the sorcerous array beneath them, tracing where in the end the yokai aura drained from the yokai was being gathered.
The current was so enormous that following it was not particularly hard; the trouble was that, all along its path, Seo House array-craft lay draped over it in layer upon layer.

Such a trifling thing.

Analyzing and unpicking each separate array-craft in real time, Shin Hweein sent his consciousness alone flying to the innermost depths of the Other Realm, and there at last he found it, the thing guarded most securely of all, behind a barrier deeper than any other point in the array.
Dense yokai aura had clotted upon itself, over and over, until it took on substance as a single orb.
Such a thing one might fairly call a yokai-orb.

— Retrieve that for me. Knowing the kind of power it is, exceedingly dangerous, I cannot bring myself to leave it as it stands.
— But it’s a Seo House array-craft. Can I really break through it?
— Don’t worry, I’ll back you up. Nothing will stand in your way.

At Shin Hweein’s reassuring rejoinder, Ham Seoyeon shot him a sidelong look as if to say the nerve of him, and yet ended up smiling.

— Right. We should have at least that much for our trouble.
— Reward, indeed… that’s not a power for a human to use.
— But you have your shikigami!

At Ham Seoyeon’s instant retort, Shin Hweein was, in spite of himself, just a little startled.
The Seo House had raised this massive Other Realm and bled yokai dry to manufacture a crystallization of power.
However impure that power, the value of the thing was beyond measure, and yet she could hand it off to another so easily?

— I’ll be right back, then. Until I am, don’t push yourself too hard…
— …No, for the moment, would you wait in front of it? When I send the signal, the barrier will vanish for an instant. Then retrieve it at once and come straight back. Only, you must not break the yokai-orb. If yokai aura of that quantity bursts out all in one moment, you’ll be in danger.
— Set your worries down and be at ease!

Watching Ham Seoyeon’s back as, her information received, she set off at once, Shin Hweein let out a sigh.
The reason he had not put a shikigami to so dangerous a task was that for a yokai it was more dangerous still.
It might fall short of the legendary dragon-pearl, but a crystallization formed by compressing yokai aura directly was sure to enthrall any yokai alive.
A shikigami was itself a yokai, so if one came into direct contact with a yokai-orb, the danger that it would fail to resist the temptation and devour the thing whole was considerable.
Then, like a shikigami inscribed with the art of Hungry-Ghost Dominion in its final moment, it would run mad, harm its master, and meet its own death at the end of it all.

— You don’t trust me?
— You’re meant to be at my side, guarding me.
— …Aye, you know it well enough!

As always, Shin Hweein put Flame-tail down before the creature could properly nurse its grievance, donned the mask he had prepared, and, tapping the floor slowly with his staff, watched for the moment to begin.

Then, all at once.

“Right. Now, let’s get him in—”

— All of you, obey me.

“…Ah?”
“Understood.”
“Sir.”
“What is it.”
“You wish.”
“Of me?”

Balbal, having by now absorbed sorcery enough to subjugate every sorcerer present, turned it back on them in a single instant and unleashed his hypnotism.
The way the minds of the sorcerers, their reason wholly devoured by Balbal, joined into a single line and spoke one sentence in shared fragments was, in truth, skin-crawlingly grotesque.

— My lifelong enemy. Kill him! He’s right there!

“Ha—!”
“An intruder!”
“How did an intruder—?”
“But for the moment—”
“Kill him!”

In that instant Balbal’s declaration stripped the stealth-sorcery from Shin Hweein and laid his figure bare before the several dozen Seo House sorcerers.

— Now!

Shin Hweein brought his staff down hard against the floor and gave the word to every one of his allies.
The drop of blood welling from his fingertip ran down the staff in an instant and touched the sorcerous array, and the array inscribed across the entire floor of the Other Realm trembled at once and, at his will, began to reshape its very composition!

“H-he’s reshaping our sorcerous array!”
“Impossible. Could he be a direct-line member?”
“He can’t be. We’re supposed to kill him!”
“B-but if he really is of the Seo direct line…”

— Kill him, kill hiiiiiim!

Most likely a restraint had been laid on them forbidding any defiance of the Seo direct line.
But when Balbal’s command fell again on the sorcerers who, on that account, had been hesitating, the light in their eyes changed at last and they began to close in.
It was already too late.

“Th-the sorcerous array—”
“Impossible. We’ve lost control…?!”
“Reinforcements, get reinforcements—”
“With the array out of our hands, how are we supposed to call for reinforcements!”
“…Then we can’t even get out, either?”
“Kill him first, then think!”

Having lost control of the array, the sorcerers could no longer draw any power-support from it.
The strongest among them was a Rank Two, and there were not, in any case, very many of them.
Shin Hweein, having reshaped the array and made himself its master, if only for the moment, did not stand entirely without odds of winning against the lot of them.
Behind them, however, Balbal had at last revealed his true form, spread his membranous wings wide, and was bearing down on him with his mouth flung open.

“Flame-tail.”

— Yes. This is it, this is it!

There was a single thing Shin Hweein had done by commanding the yokai aura of the sorcerous array.
Without even troubling himself to convert the bulk of the aura remaining within into sorcery-power, he had pushed it straight into Flame-tail.
Flame-tail had, alongside Shin Hweein’s own growth, been gradually recovering his power and could, for the briefest of moments, exert strength beyond Rank Five, but the Flame-tail of this moment could even, dare it be said, contend with Rank Four.

— Leave it to me. I’ll grind him into the dirt.
— You’ve tamed yet another monster in the meantime…! You there. What are you doing? Kill him!

The sight of a Flame-tail clearly his equal in power set Balbal grinding his teeth and laying his hypnotism on the sorcerers again and again.
But it was just then that something came barging into the chaos.

— That, we can’t… let stand.
— Right. You lot belong with us.

“Wh-what—”

It was the yokai that had been set free by Leon’s hand.
Shin Hweein had not brainwashed them, nor asked any conversation of them, yet with the most natural ease in the world they hurled themselves at the Seo House sorcerers.

— Seo House. We’ll have our revenge on you…!
— We’ll kill the lot of you!

“The yokai have been freed!”
“N-no. We have to kill that one first… kuk—!”

The deceivers were deceived in their turn by another.
And those who had been deceived now set out, at last, on their revenge.
What an ugly thing it was, and what a beautiful one.

Shin Hweein, watching the Seo House sorcerers caught and held by the yokai freed from their prison, unable even to come near him, let out a short laugh and looked at Balbal before him.

— You. You wretched, godforsaken thing, as ever…!

“Shall we begin, then, as well.”

— But this once, this once, the victor will be me!
— A short-limbed, ugly thing like you. Who do you think you’re aiming at!

At Balbal, who came charging in with his crocodile-jaws flung wide, Flame-tail launched himself headlong, swinging his foreclaws.

We never did get to ride all the rides. But watching huge yokai meet head-on isn’t, in its own way, without its charm, is it.

So thinking, Shin Hweein gave a short laugh and threw himself onto the battlefield to lend Flame-tail his aid.