Chapter 6 — The Sorcerer Qualification Exam (3)

“Morning, Sis — quick on your feet today, as ever.”

Geum Moa let out a small sigh as she watched Sister Barbara wave at her, her face plastered all over with drowsiness.
It was a small wonder how, every single morning, the woman still somehow managed to keep her habit immaculate.

“Sister, you look sleepy again today. Were you drinking again last night?”
“The truth is, I’m a vampire too, you see. If I don’t drink the blessed blood of our Lord Jesus for so much as a single day, I can’t get to sleep.”
“However little I know of Catholic teaching, I’m at least quite certain that is a lie.”

Ordinary wine became the blood of Jesus only at the moment the priest consecrated the cup during the Liturgy of the Eucharist within Mass.
Quaffing wine, or indeed whatever else, every single day and dressing it up as the blood of Jesus was nothing more than the standard excuse of drunkards of Sister Barbara’s stripe.

“Anyway, it really does look like Zone 3, doesn’t it? Like Zone 2 is still feeling out the ground, careful, kind of cautious.”

The nun changed the subject without the slightest pretense and stuck an electronic vape between her lips.
Geum Moa studied the picture she made for a moment, found her wanting, and could only nod.

“Foolish of them. However lightly the Capital may treat anything that happens in Zone 3, if the vampire pack swarms it on a grand scale, in the end it will draw out the Royal House, or the Three Capital Houses.”
“Maybe they’re just underestimating us? Honestly, even I had Korea a little down on my list till I went inside Zone 0 myself.”

The nun scratched her belly, brought up a yawn, and pulled a tablet from her habit to open a map.
On a map laid out across the whole of Seoul, she set aside the innermost Zone 0 and Zone 1 and combed through Zone 2 with care.
Most points on it were already crossed off with X marks.

The X meant: checked, and not a vampire gathering-spot or hideout.
For the few days Shin Hweein had been pouring himself into his studies, Geum Moa and Sister Barbara had together been combing Zone 2 inch by inch, hunting down vampires and exterminating them.

“Yep, it’s Zone 3 for sure. The big-shot one’s probably over there too…. After the first day, you didn’t run into a high-grade vampire even once, right?”
“No. All of them were of the lowest grade. Disposable stock, mass-produced for scouting and stalling.”

The blood of such creatures was so poor in quality that even tracking the upper line through them was difficult, and even when one did manage to follow the trail, one came up empty at the end.
By now the enemy had recognized that they could be tracked, and was plainly setting out to drain the two of them of their strength on purpose.

“Why don’t we just tidy up Zone 2 to a reasonable degree and leave it be? Sooner or later, the — what were they, the Eight Pure-Blood Houses? — those kids’ll come out and clean it up themselves, won’t they? I think I may have overdone it a little, my blood got boiling the second I heard ‘vampire.’ How about we two call it here, hm? Come on, let’s go drink toge—”
“That won’t do. Before the Eight Pure-Blood Houses make a move, the young master may yet become a target.”
“That young master of yours — what, does he give off some kind of pheromone that lures vampires in? …Also, what have you been staring at all this while?”

Sister Barbara sneaked a glance at the phone in Geum Moa’s one hand and tilted her head.
The thing on the phone screen was a live feed.

People were walking with cautious gaps between them across a still, brown plain, eyeing their surroundings.
But it was the sky overhead, dyed a deep purple, and the faintly white things wheeling beneath it, that made the picture sinister.

“Looks just like the Specter Realm, but there’s no way you could shoot a video inside the Specter Realm, so that’s not it.”
“It is the Specter Realm. Live, too.”
“Eh?”

Sister Barbara’s mouth dropped open in astonishment, and Geum Moa answered her with a sidelong glance.

“What’s there to act surprised about? The Vatican must have at least some means of taking pictures inside the Specter Realm.”
“They do, sure, but it’s a priceless sacred relic. Outside of a really big incident, they won’t even loan it out.”

It was difficult enough to photograph a sorcerer, who possesses spiritual power; ordinary photography in the Specter Realm, which seethes with all kinds of yokai aura, was simply not possible.
But where it was a matter of power, more power could press it flat by force, and the Vatican likewise possessed photographic instruments crafted from saints’ relics, which they used to record critical evidence and to capture traces of heresy and apostasy.
Even so, when it came to moving video, that was a story all its own.
So far as Sister Barbara knew, Aeshin had been the first.

Sensing her question, Geum Moa explained in a flat, emotionless tone.

“The Royal House of Aeshin Korea possesses an exceptional authority for ignoring and rejecting all manner of goeryeok-nansin (the strange, the violent, the chaotic, the divine). Short of a truly mighty yokai appearing, even shooting video inside the Specter Realm is something they can pull off without much trouble.”
“Wow…. That’s really pretty incredible. Oh, but they’ve got the people’s faces blurred. Who are these guys?”
“They’re the candidates sitting today’s written examinations for State Sorcerer Rank Three and Rank Four.”
“…The written exam?”
“It was supposed to be written, but for some reason it’s been turned into the practical.”

Geum Moa ground her teeth a little as she said it.
She had seen the young master making this and that preparation and inwardly thought how, after all, he was still rather a child; she had not in the least suspected those very worries of hers were about to come true.

The examiner walking at the head of the group wore a sullen face, most likely a person of the Yun House, and brazen as you like, he was the only one with no blurring at all, his face left exposed without disguise.
Looking at that shameless mug, Geum Moa felt she could have cursed him to death where he stood at that very moment.

“A practical exam… all right, fine for Rank Three, but to throw Rank-Four hopefuls headfirst into a Specter Realm drill, that is pretty bold. And live-streaming it on top of that. Did that fellow set this up? Won’t he catch hell for it?”
“Practical-exam live feed is something of a tradition for the State-Awakened qualification exams of Aeshin, so that’ll be fine…. And as for that man, he’s one of the core figures of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses, and he holds a high government post. Far from being called to account, he may even be praised for a fresh and admirable new approach.”
“And by ‘high government post,’ you mean what, exactly?”
“Military. A three-star, no less. Just why a man holding so high a post is acting as examiner is more than I can fathom.”
“Ah.”

Inside the Specter Realm, moving as a large group was very nearly impossible.
The only ones permitted any real freedom of exploration there were those bearing the Gatekeeper’s Brand.
Anyone else, unless they banded together in small elite parties and kept verifying each other’s safety from moment to moment, would soon be caught up in the warping of the space and split apart.

However impressive a person of the Yun House might be, he could not possibly keep tabs on the lot of them….
The thought had barely crossed her mind when, sure enough, fully half of the rear of the party simply vanished.

“Ha….”
“Oh, I don’t know much about the Specter Realm, could you give me the commentary? What just happened there?”
“There is nothing more foolish than to demand an explanation for every single thing that takes place inside the Specter Realm. …Still, the short of it is: the yokai have spirited away whichever ones looked the most pliable, into their own territory. Before long the yokai will fall upon those who are left, too.”

The truth was, Geum Moa had no interest in the ones who remained.
A person of the Yun House was still on this side, after all; and more importantly, Shin Hweein was among those who had just vanished.
Of course, with the Gatekeeper’s Brand, Shin Hweein could get himself out of the Specter Realm by his own strength if it came to that, but that would be tantamount to announcing to the whole world that he was a man of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses.

“Yun-bastard, if anything happens to the young master, I will find you, and I will tear you apart with my own hands…!”
“Oh? The screen split in half.”
“What?”

She looked back at the screen at Sister Barbara’s words, and sure enough, it had split into two halves, each showing the candidates who had ended up in different places.
It surely could not be that the examiner had divided them on purpose, but it was certain that cameras had been placed on the rear group from the start.

“Don’t tell me the young master…has been found out.”
“I picked up a little something from Lucas. The real identity of this ‘young master’ is a secret, you said? Some high-up sort, I take it?”
“If the young master’s identity is exposed, that is entirely my fault. In that case, using just a little of my true power to help him would not be a breach of the Three-Year Pact…. Even the young master wouldn’t get angry over that, would he…?”
“She isn’t listening.”

And then the very thing she had foreseen happened.
A swarm of low spirits fell upon both halves of the divided candidates.

The Yun-House examiner had deliberately damped down his own presence and was watching with folded arms, so on either side the candidates had to deal with the low spirits with nothing but their own strength.
Anyone who hesitated and dithered in the face of sudden real combat, taking even a single hit from a low spirit, had already as good as failed.

The saving grace was that Rank-Three candidates had been mixed in among them.
When those took the lead and began to fight, the Rank-Four candidates also regained their composure and somehow managed to bring sorcery to bear against the swarming low spirits.

Shin Hweein’s goal had been to scrape by with a Rank-Four pass somehow, so he blended in among the others as suited him and was felling low spirits with nothing more than basic flame-shots.

“Oh, who’s this guy? His face is super plain, but his sorcery is pretty strong, no? And he’s just throwing fire-balls around like he’s casting a basic attack in a video game…. Huh? Isn’t this a lot like what you do, Sis?”
“You’ve got a good eye.”

The trouble was that what Shin Hweein thought of as his most basic attacking sorcery had, through repeated absolutions and the appropriation of the burning bird’s authority, been transformed into something quite formidable.
And on top of that, with the speed at which his spiritual power now replenished, throwing out basic flame-shots ceaselessly no longer drained his reserves at all.

Naturally, among the Rank-Four candidates, he was the one who stood out the most; yet Shin Hweein himself, a faintly satisfied look on his face, believed he was blending perfectly into his surroundings and went on burning low spirits to ash….

“Aha, so this one’s the young master. His face is more ordinary than I expected, but he can fight all right. …Still, he’s a bit too ordinary. He’d almost have more personality if he were ugly.”
“I do not serve the young master because of his looks.”
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean it badly. You know, just — these days an Awakened needs a pretty clear-cut character to get any kind of name recognition….”
“It’s fine. My young master isn’t the sort who wishes to be recognized for that kind of thing.”

Geum Moa deliberately let Sister Barbara’s misunderstanding stand uncorrected.
The bonds piled up between him and others were already more than she could comfortably handle, frankly; she had no wish to add yet more possibilities to the pile.

In particular, Geum Moa knew perfectly well that the most dangerous sort of woman was the easygoing kind like Sister Barbara.
The sort who, by virtue of being a nun and thus seemingly cut off from any contact with men, gave the impression that you could safely introduce your man to her without fearing he’d be stolen.
Those were the truly dangerous ones.

“Ah.”

Just then the nun spotted something on the screen and let slip a small groan.
On the side where the examiner was absent, the side Shin Hweein was on, a dark-crimson bear-yokai had appeared.
Its size was preposterous, easily five meters tall, and from its maw it was disgorging a raw, unrefined, evil yokai aura.

“That thing, however I look at it, is no lower than Rank Six. Are they going to be all right?”
“Hmm. If there were only the one, they’d have been all right.”
“…Eek, even I’d have a bit of trouble with that.”

Soon enough two more bears had been added, and a total of three mid-grade yokai were advancing on the candidates.
The number of people watching the live broadcast began, from that moment, to climb.

There had always been some casualties at State-Awakened qualification exams, but flinging not just Rank-Three but Rank-Four candidates en masse into the Specter Realm and placing them in danger of being wiped out entirely was not so common a thing.

“The aura coming off them, that’s no joke either. Are we sure something really bad isn’t about to happen?”
“That isn’t going to happen. …Those things are surely monsters the examiner is controlling himself.”
“Shikigami?”
“No, something looser than that. But to the people who can’t tell the difference, they’ll be a fight nonetheless.”

Geum Moa peered intently at the screen.
Amid candidates who flailed in panic, or screamed, or bravely went out to face the things and then despaired, Shin Hweein, propped up barely on the support of his single staff, looked at the three bears and wore an expression as though he had grasped something.

But that would not do.

Young master, no. They may yet realize who you are…!

Of all the moments to send out those monsters, this one was already suspicious.
Did they, after all, suspect his identity?
If so, had the time come for her to step in?

Geum Moa was watching the broadcast and brooding deeply over the question when, at some point, she blinked.
Shin Hweein looked, for an instant, as though he had taken a small step forward.

…And then the feed was cut.

The yokai’s identity was easy enough to make out.
It was not only Shin Hweein; all around him candidates were groaning and putting a single word to their mouths.

“N-Naty…!”
“How are we supposed to beat something like that, a dokkaebi with no proper records of its slaying!”
“If it’s a dokkaebi, even talk doesn’t work on it…! Ugh, no use! Their eyes have gone completely!”

Naty.

The word for an animal-shaped dokkaebi, or for a great, dark-crimson bear.

Among the yokai handed down in Aeshin, this one was particularly famous for the obscurity of its origin; what people said of it differed from person to person, and the various books recorded it in any number of jumbled ways, so that pinning down its true form was very nearly impossible.
Yet of the various tellings, the most widely known was the one that made it a subordinate dokkaebi of the Young Master Bihyeong.
None of these, however, had any real credibility, and since stories of this dokkaebi had not even begun to be told until modern times, the likelihood that the Young Master Bihyeong and the naty were actually related was vanishingly small.

The Aeshin Bestiary of Marvels likewise treated of the naty.
What was most striking was that a man of the Shin House had appended, in a marginal note, the phrase “a yokai of empty appearance,” a phrase Shin Hweein remembered well.

And yet, meeting it face to face like this, I see at last. Indeed, truly empty. This is nothing more than a sorcery of yokai, deliberately fashioned by men. Have the other candidates… not noticed? Perhaps no one short of the Shin House, with our skill in shikigami contracts, can tell.

A yokai, as a rule, gains its strength by being talked about on many lips.
This naty was a yokai conjured up from the very root by men who deliberately spread tales of it about.

Of course, had it ended there, the thing would only have made the already chaotic Specter Realm yet more chaotic; but they had gone the extra step, adding the rumour that the naty had been a subordinate of the Young Master Bihyeong, so that the creature might be brought under their command.
This sorcery had most likely been put together over a very long time by some great power that meant business, and the great power in question, seen now, was almost certainly the Aeshin military.

Then how to proceed. Were I to bend the Shin shikigami arts to it, scattering these things would be a simple matter. Yet doing so would amount to disclosing my identity. …Truly, am I caught? Geum Moa, this — leaving it as is…

Had it been overreach, to trust in nothing but Geum Moa’s transformation art and try to operate so openly in broad daylight?
Would it not have been better, after all, simply to ask Father Lucas for the favour and grow his footing abroad?
Or should he, even from this point, do precisely that?

While his brooding deepened, the naty pack was slowly drawing in tighter.

Rank-Three candidates, convinced just now that they were the rising star sorcerers of the day, came forward one after another to try their hand at sorcery, only to be smashed to the ground by the bears’ enormous forepaws and lie there without rising.
Watching this, Shin Hweein judged that simply staying still, or running, would not serve any better.

“…Wait.”

The Shin shikigami arts could not be used.
With other half-thought-out attacking sorceries he could not match these creatures; even if Flame-tail performed splendidly, the best of it would be taking down a single one.
What was more, the things were linked to the Yun-House examiner; even if one charged at them with brute force alone, there was every chance they would be supplied with spiritual power from him and grow stronger still.

Then what of primal sorcery?

Against a monster with a true body, it was too feeble to bite….
But against a monster that men had manufactured by talking it into being, something passed down through the long generations of human telling could likewise be brought to bear.
A primal sorcery that, by being spoken among many people for a very long time in a single shared form, had won itself strength.

And that, precisely, was a song.

“Three bears live together in one house —”

In the end, Shin Hweein began to sing.
In his heart he was firmly convinced that he was now wielding sorcery, and so his voice came out gravely and solemnly; his expression, too, was set in stone.
But what was flowing out of his mouth was a children’s song, perfect in pitch and time.

“What?”
“What song is that — a song?”
“Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Baby Bear —”

He even went so far as to point out, with his very own finger, which of the three naty was Papa, which was Mama, and which was Baby, instructing each in turn, Shin Hweein, carrying on his “primal incantation.”
To see a man, before great bears that could trample him to death, perform something so absurd as singing a children’s song, one might be forgiven for thinking he had been driven out of his wits by fear.

And indeed, most of the candidates were glaring at him; but a few caught his intent.

“Pa pa Bear is [chubby]”
“Ma ma Bear is [slender]”
“Ba by Bear is [oh so very sweet]”

And then, at last, the solemn children’s-song chorus of the newest sorcerers began.
Whether the examiner had let out three naty with this very thing in mind, or not, there was no way to know, and, in the end, there was no need to know.

“Hey, hey! What in the world are you all doing —!”
“Quiet, and sing along! Pour in as much spiritual power as you can!”

Like a hymn sung in steady, sober tone at a funeral, the chorus of the children’s song slowly swelled, filling the place around them with a soft, ambient spiritual power.
The three naty knit their brows and charged at the singing people; but those who had been prepared in advance, every one of them, leapt aside and avoided it.
The only one who could not move was Shin Hweein, whose body did not allow it.

“Pa pa Bear is [chubby]”
“You — over there!”
“Ma ma Bear is [slender]”

Amid people who sang frantically while dodging, missing the beat in their flight, Shin Hweein, who calmly and without moving recited the song like a man chanting a spell, might well have stood out altogether too much.
But that, too, could not last for ever.

There was one enormous bear that found him especially galling, and came barreling down on him in a straight line.
Shin Hweein lifted his face to meet it, ready at any instant, of course, to call up the Fire-blood, and raising one finger, he pointed at the bear and sang out with full voice.

“[Ba by Bear] is [oh so very sweet]”

As though that children’s song could do it any serious harm.
The bear did not slacken its pace; it dove at Shin Hweein with the ferocity of a thing meaning to crush him to paste.

And then.

“Shoulders up, shoulders up, well done now —”

— Kyaaung…!

Just as Shin Hweein finished the song, or rather the spell, he splendidly caught the creature charging into his chest.
It was a baby bear that was being far, far too endearing in its little antics.