Chapter 23 — The Sorcerer And The Cursed Mask (4)

“I shall not forgive you.”

For the first time in a very long while, Shin Hweein was furious with Geum Moa.

And yet who else was there to blame. It was his own fault, for forgetting that this woman, however devoted she might always be to him, was a yokai at her root all the same.

Knowing that fact did not, of course, make him any less able to be angry with her.

— But, young master, I was simply so curious to see what you would look like as a woman.

“And you did it knowing perfectly well what would come of it.”

— Well, of course. Ushi-gozen was a female-bodied yokai, after all.

When he thought back over the chain of events up to the moment he had put on the mask, it seemed to him that any number of other choices had been open to him.

Extricating himself from the situation would have been difficult, of course, but at the very least he could have come through it without taking the curse upon himself the way he had.

Instead, caught up in the discovery that he now had a means to fall back on if things went wrong, he had not even put up a proper struggle. Worse, he had walked beautifully into Geum Moa’s leading and chosen the easy road.

He could not help thinking that his present condition was the price for his own complacent judgment, that perhaps it was a just punishment handed down by Heaven.

— But it isn’t all bad, this state, is it? It made for fine motivation, I should think.

“You have a fine way with words.”

What rankled was that, exactly as Geum Moa said, even he himself could not deny this state was not bad.

It was not that Shin Hweein had ever harbored any desire to become a woman. Rather, in putting on the Ushi-gozen mask and being reborn as a new existence distinct from Shin Hweein, every last one of the curses that had weighed down on his life until now, temporary or not, had been wiped utterly away.

Loosen his grip on his spiritual power even a little, and the countless curses that used to writhe across his whole body at once and torment him. Gone.

The right leg that had always been a fetter on him, that had never once let him move as he wished. Gone.

His body, in this moment, was lighter and more brimming with strength than it had ever been at any point in his life.

‘I had no idea a sound body could feel this good. Then again, I have never once had a sound body.’

But even so, he must not grow content with this state and wish to hold on to it.

The figure he now wore was only borrowed from Ushi-gozen; in his entirety, this was not himself.

If he grew too attached to the present condition, if he refused to go back, he might find himself unable ever again to bear his own original name.

‘So, just as Moa says, it is enough that this serve as a piece of motivation. …And in any case, my essence is, beyond denial, that of a man.’

— Hurry, change him back, change him back!

Meanwhile Flame-tail, more worked up over the loss of Shin Hweein’s true form than Shin Hweein himself, was leaping about in a fury.

Geum Moa, who had brought this whole disaster about, kept herself out of sight still, whether from fear of being scolded or out of some other circumstance, so there was no one on whom Flame-tail could properly vent his anger.

“That mask, my lord. Does it not come off?”

So asked Leon, who had returned after collecting the other two Rank-Two ability-users, the Rank-One whose body had burned utterly away and vanished aside.

“No. Now that I have stormed about a fair bit, it ought to come off well enough. Only—”

The trouble was…

When Shin Hweein lifted the Ushi-gozen mask away, Leon flinched.

He looked very nearly to be forcing back the exclamation that had risen to his lips.

“You haven’t… changed back.”
“Yes. I am already bound by the ju.”

— Uuugh… give my master back, you fox-of-flame—!

Seeing Shin Hweein’s face turned into that of a woman, Flame-tail raged all the harder, leaping about; but no amount of his raging was going to set that face back the way it had been.

Geum Moa was not, of course, the sort to lead him deliberately into a trap from which he could not return.

Shin Hweein, now bound up in a karmic tie with the Ushi-gozen mask, had his own guess as to how he might be restored to his proper form.

“Absolve the curse, then. What becomes of the mask in that case, I cannot say, but in any event I cannot go on living out the rest of my life as I am.”

— Then absolve it, hurry!

Flame-tail was making a great fuss when in truth he had only taken a curse and been put, temporarily, into a shape unlike his usual one; and to him Shin Hweein had to deliver a deeply regrettable piece of news.

“Unfortunately, the Indulgence is utterly empty.”

— Wha—…

To be precise, in cutting down the Inugami he had piled up a fair quantity of karma, but absolving the curse the Rank-One ability-user had flung at him as he refused to die quietly at the last had spent all of it away.

“Throughout the fight he had only swung his sword about, so I let my guard down, never realizing he was a sorcerer. I should have ended it more swiftly. But watching him handle a blade, I thought I might learn even a little from him, and so I matched myself against him. …Or perhaps it was simply that, my body being light, I was too elated for my own good.”

What was more, it had been a thing of no meaning whatsoever.

The moment Shin Hweein turned back the curse the man flung at him, the man’s spiritual power was already being drawn off to another, and he could not seize it for himself. In compensation, though, he had taken in its entirety the original ability the man himself had possessed.

That ability was the one called blade-resonance, the power that made one adept at handling bladed weapons.

A power that strengthened every kind of edged weapon, settled it easily into the hand, and even strengthened the body itself when one took such a blade in hand; among special abilities, it was one of the finest going.

Some called peculiar special abilities of this kind a “combat-trait.”

Since it was a trait for the deft handling of edged weapons, one might say the man had been a swordsman.

“Truly, your swordplay is keener than it was a moment ago, my lord. I had thought a sorcerer could not handle a special ability. Was that not so?”
“To be precise, it is that an esper cannot handle sorcery. Their spiritual power is altered completely into a peculiar form, you see. In my case, into the vast spiritual power I already bear, spiritual power processed into another form has merely been folded. In point of fact, the powers I bear that could be called special abilities are by now hardly one or two.”

Answering Leon’s admiring question lightly, Shin Hweein swung the sword through the air a few more times, and each time the arc the blade traced grew finer, until admiration rose in him too, despite himself.

The sword he now handled was fashioned, of course, from the horn of a Gyuki, and to resonate too deeply with it could be dangerous; but while he wielded the force of Ushi-gozen, an oni greater still than the Gyuki, there was no danger in it at all.

Which was to say the ability had only grown better suited to him while he wore the Ushi-gozen mask.

‘A preposterously fine ability. Inquire deeply enough into this one alone and one might in time reach the very top. I cannot quite say I am grateful to the enemy for casting a curse at me… but I have, beyond doubt, reaped an unexpected and great harvest.’

What was absurd, however, was that the man’s ability had remained, from its first awakening, in exactly the same state, without the slightest development upon it.

Which was to say he had known only how to use the power as it had first been given to him; not even once had he made the effort to develop it on his own.

The feel of it was much like that of the people who handled the powers the Honwondorae chief had sown about him.

They merely exercised, without any filter, the power obtained by offering up a sacrifice; in the process, the wielder’s own conviction or will regarding the power was never brought to bear.

Naturally the man, even with the power he had gained by joining Honwondorae, had only crammed it crudely into his sword and swung; so that while the aura he gave off was Rank-One, his actual ability fell well short of it.

“Though for all that, he was no easy opponent for me to face.”

— Wasn’t he? Wasn’t it inevitable, that you had to wear the mask?

“Moa, hold your tongue.”

There exist things that, though one cannot help acknowledging them, must nonetheless be denied.

Shin Hweein let out a sigh and sheathed the katana, hooking it at his waist.

On Moa’s advice, he had asked Duduri, no, the staff, to fashion not only the hilt but the sheath as well from peach-tree wood; and just as on the staff, peach blossoms had bloomed all along the length of the sheath. It was a pretty thing.

…When he had had it made he had not given it much thought, but looking at it now, even the sheath seemed to suit a woman, and quite suddenly his mood soured.

— And that one? What are you going to do with it?

“Ah, this.”

At Flame-tail’s words, pointing to the sword in his remaining hand, Shin Hweein lifted it up to show.

It was the severed half of the obsidian blade the enemy had hurled at him.

How it had come about he could not quite say, but it had ended up fashioned with a hilt of blood into a dagger whose blade ran a little over one cheok (about thirty centimeters); looking at it now, it had absorbed not only Shin Hweein’s blood but the blood of its former master as well, and had set so firmly that there was no separating the blade from the hilt.

“It has become a sorcerous implement in its own right.”

— Isn’t that dangerous?

“It is not. The handlers of obsidian as a sorcerous implement were the sorcerers of the Aztec civilization, and… whether the man had the blood of those people running in him I cannot say, but against all expectation it has come into harmony with me. So long as I temper the aura as I use it, it will do.”

What was more, the dagger held within itself an aura that, for an obsidian piece, was extraordinarily hard and uncanny; perhaps, he thought, it had originally been fashioned by the overseer of Honwondorae.

If that were so, then was the man a being something close to a god of the Aztec civilization?

…No, that could not be.

Just as the cult had ensnared the Catholic Church’s faithful through warped doctrine, so too it must merely have used clever words and clever objects to ensnare the man whose veins ran with Mexican blood, and exploited him.

“In that case, I should like to recover the other half as well. Have you got it?”
“I have not. I, too, was hoping to take possession of that man’s corpse, and tried to find at least some trace of it; but it had vanished cleanly away. It seems that, along with him, the other half was offered up to the cult’s master.”

So Leon answered, as if he had been waiting for the question.

When a master dies, the implements granted to him are recovered along with his soul, perhaps.

It was not so much that he had narrowly lost half as that he had been lucky to salvage half.

“Why, then, did the half here not vanish along with the rest, my lord?”
“Because my blood is on it. The cult’s master cannot perceive it.”
“Aha…?”

Looking as though that explanation alone had not quite satisfied him, Leon tilted his head; but Shin Hweein did not elaborate any further.

Shin Hweein swung the obsidian dagger a few times to shake off the traces of the fight, cleaned it neatly, then put it away into his subspace storage and lifted his head.

“Neuldam?”

— He’s just about finished now, by the look of it. Though all the deputies are dead anyway.

“Tsk…”

The rain that had kept falling was finally beginning to ease.

The thunder that had rung deafeningly through the dark clouds was, too, growing weaker little by little; he could feel that the resistance of the one who had lost all his believers and lost control of his Other Realm was reaching its limit.

When the thunder ceased and his presence vanished entirely, the Other-Realm shift would unwind in its turn…

“But before that.”

Wearing a bitter expression, Shin Hweein pulled the Ushi-gozen mask back over his head.

“I had better gather up the corpses of the believers strewn out beyond.”

When Shin Hweein stepped outside, the surveillance net had, of course, collapsed.

As the Other Realm formed, every believer in the vicinity must have been pulled into it all at once.

So then, what were his all-important companions doing? Why, they were locked in combat nearby.

Perhaps because Shin Hweein had been inside the Other Realm, they had been engaged outside it altogether, and at a distance great enough that the noise of the fight carried even out here; trading blows, by the sound of it, with no little flash.

“Eulha.”

“No, well, my lord seemed busy and worn out, and I figured there was no point fretting at you over nothing—”

Eulha, who darted out before Shin Hweein’s eyes as though he had been waiting for the call, wore a sheepish expression as he made his excuse.

It seemed the boy had not concealed it out of malice; nor was the party in any particularly dire situation.

For one thing, among them was Yun Jubaek, newly raised to Rank One this time; and this not being an Other Realm steeped in Honwondorae’s aura, the believers’ momentum was not greatly amplified. What was more, with the onmyoji joining in, the fight ran about even, unlike Shin Hweein’s own, which had been a near thing without the mask. The onmyoji could hardly be expected to stand and watch a battle break out in the heart of Gyeongdo.

“How about it. Shall I move you over right now?”

Right now?

At those words, Shin Hweein checked over his present state.

Heated though the fight had been, his clothes were intact.

His body shape, however, had altered so drastically that some places clung tight and others hung loose; the silhouette was not a good one. The trousers he managed, with the belt cinched a notch or two further; but the shirt, he had to admit, looked rather unsightly.

“Moa, have we anything for me to throw on?”

— It is fine as it is. One might even call it perfect.

Well. There was little to demand of the one who had landed him in this state to begin with.

If anything, going in still wearing the clothes was the easier way to prove to the party that this was Shin Hweein; so, surrendering everything, Shin Hweein said to Eulha:

“Let us go.”

“Hee-hee, understood!”

In the next instant, when Eulha snapped his fingers, Shin Hweein stood revealed in the middle of the battlefield.

Among the believers on this side were two Rank-One ability-users and a still greater number of Rank-Two; but those facing them were no easy opponents either, and the fight had been dragging on inconclusively.

Indeed, right up until the moment before Shin Hweein joined the fray, the believers had seemed focused on defense and evasion, eyeing only an opening to retreat.

In all likelihood, their role had been to make a commotion and pin the party down, buying time for the certain capture of Shin Hweein.

“Wha…”
“That person…? No, is she even a person?”
“Where on earth did she—”
“Hoh.”

Whether overawed by Shin Hweein, who had stepped forth boldly into the center of things, friend and foe alike had frozen in place.

Either side now had a prime chance to strike back; instead they stood there with their mouths gaping foolishly at him, which had, granted, been part of his intention, but it was nearly absurd.

‘The enemy, of course… do not recognize me.’

That his clothes were the same came to nothing more than a shirt and a pair of black cotton trousers; at present he had no staff with him, wore a different mask, and on top of all that had become a woman.

Unless the overseer of Honwondorae himself were to point him out, there was no way for them to recognize him, and as it happened, that one was in a state where he absolutely could not do so.

“W-what?! Out of nowhere a Big Sis with an impossible body—! Gukh!”

In the midst of it, breaking the silence and the first to move was, of course, Makoto, of whom there was nothing worth salvaging save for his ability.

After Shin Hweein had kicked Makoto down, Makoto having delivered, without so much as the slightest deviation, exactly the line he had foreseen, he stepped forward to meet the Rank-One ability-user from the Honwondorae side, who had hurried up to him quickly, perhaps under the mistaken impression that Shin Hweein was on their side.

“I had heard nothing from him about it. When were you dispatched to this—”

And the moment the man stepped within reach, swiftly, Shin Hweein drew the blade and cut.

The drawing-cut iaijutsu that the warriors of Hwa-guk are said to have trained in has its drawbacks; the speed is slow, the force reduced. But for all that, it is an art with sufficient practical use in real combat, and for one reason alone.

It lets one strike in surprise, at a moment the enemy could not have anticipated in the slightest.

“Gukh!”

Truly, with the startling reflexes one would expect of a Rank-One ability-user, the man at least managed to avoid losing his life outright; but he was already gravely wounded.

What was more, gashed deeply at one hand, his chest, and the nape of his neck all in the same moment, unable to respond at once, he drew hurriedly back; and just before he could throw up a defensive barrier, at the additional black arc that traced through the air, his head, in the end, flew clear away.

“That woman—!”
“It’s an enemy, attack!”

However well the surprise had landed, the sight of a Rank-One ability-user toppling without putting up any proper resistance, his head severed, sent a thrill of fear running through the entire enemy line.

‘It was my first time using the drawing-cut, but it went well enough.’

If he had carved up a Rank-One ability-user, he had perhaps more than earned back the value of the kick he had given Makoto; so thinking, Shin Hweein flicked the blade through the air and turned.

“I shall lend a hand. Let us finish this first, and speak after.”
“Many thanks, Sister!”
“…”

Glaring once at Father Lucas, who, though he had recognized his soul perfectly well, had nonetheless gone to the trouble of phrasing it that way, Shin Hweein gripped the sword at the ready and charged at the enemy.