Chapter 6 — The Sorcerer Qualification Exam (4)

“A — a naty…!”
“What if these things only look ferocious and turn out to be feeble underneath?”

When Shin Hweein had disabled one of them so easily, visible relief swept across the examinees.
The battlefield, wound so tight a moment before, slackened, if only for an instant.

That was the mistake.

“Then those things too —”
“Hold, you fool —!”

— Kuwaaaah!

Had they forgotten already that examinees lay knocked flat by the creatures’ blows?
One idiot, jabbing his finger at another naty while he muttered the words “Baby Bear,” took the bear’s forepaw full across the head. It tore clean off, and a fountain of blood shot into the air.

Tch. So it’s come to this.

He had stepped forward knowing it might draw attention, precisely because he had not wanted blood spilled in this examination.
Shin Hweein closed his eyes hard and let out a quiet sigh.

The yokai had been summoned by the examiner, true; but so long as their every action couldn’t be controlled, no one could guarantee the examinees were safe.
The man who had charged in heedlessly and died was, predictably enough, a Rank Four examinee. If anything, being Rank Four meant he should have grasped his place all the more and held back. A man who threw himself in on reckless bravado would have died somewhere soon enough, this place or another.

“It isn’t Baby Bear anymore. What’s left are Mama Bear and Papa Bear! We have to finish the song, no, the spell, to the end!”
“It’ll be worlds better than fighting them as they are now. Everyone, hurry!”

Meanwhile a few Rank Three examinees, grasping what the moment demanded, were urging the others on and pushing through the children’s song in earnest.
Had there been even a handful more Rank Three examinees, no one would have died. But Rank Three examinees were far fewer than Rank Four ones to begin with, and on top of that the group had been cut in half.

— Pulling back now?

— I’ve already done too much for a mere Rank Four examinee. I’d just as soon no one noticed it was me who started the song. Still, the conceit was a simple one, so they won’t be able to trace it back to the Shin House.

To Flame-tail’s question, put to him from where the creature still kept hidden, Shin Hweein answered with the mind-speech he had learned from Geum Moa.

Any more exertion than this would only draw more unnecessary attention.
So he put on the look of a man drained, as though he had burned through far too much of his spiritual power, and slipped his body back into the throng of Rank Four examinees.

…To be precise, he had in truth burned through far too much of his spiritual power.

— What’s all this? Where did that naty you had in your arms go?
— It is not a naty.
— What nonsense is that. Don’t tell me the two sorceries collided and wiped its existence out altogether? No, but those over there…

When the chorus of children’s song carried on by the sorcerers reached its close, one of the naty had become [Mama Bear], gaunt and stripped of strength, while the other had become [Papa Bear], its flesh swollen to grotesque bulk, threatening in size but overwhelmingly slow.
Flame-tail glared sidelong at the pair and muttered.

— Those things haven’t vanished, though…
— Did I not tell you it is no longer a naty.

Steadying his breath to recoup the spiritual power he had spent on the contract, Shin Hweein answered the creature.

— From now on, call him Arong. That is his name.
— …And just when, exactly, did you go and make a contract.
— A combat yokai the military went to the trouble of fabricating, how could that not be interesting. And it changed under the influence of primal sorcery on top of that. He is worth far more than a mere naty, so I mean to raise him.

Now that their offspring [Baby Bear] had vanished, [Mama Bear] and [Papa Bear] had worked themselves into a frenzy and were rampaging.
There was no room left for talk or negotiation, and besides, those two stood out far too much. Even if he hijacked their contracts, it would surface somewhere soon enough.

Baby Bear, by contrast, had been small of build and exceedingly meek, so binding him to a contract had been easy.
In the course of using the children’s song to alter his very nature, the thread tying him to the examiner, and beyond him to the military, had thinned at a single stroke.
And in the course of contracting him with a name, that thread had been cut clean through, establishing him as his own distinct being. There was no longer any fear of him rampaging the way those two were.

After the contract was sealed, Shin Hweein had used the Shin House’s shikigami arts to emergency-extract the creature to another, safer location, and so the matter had been brought to a close as nothing less than a perfect crime.

No, not even a crime. I’ve merely subdued a yokai that came at me as an enemy and made him my shikigami.

What mattered now was the complete extermination of Mama Bear and Papa Bear.
By his guess, the naty were yokai the military handled with no small care. They would never have imagined them being defeated by Rank Three and Rank Four examinees, and so they would have meant to recover them once the examination was over.

But Shin Hweein had stepped in midway and made off with one of the three. If only the remaining two returned, it would come to light that someone here had overwritten the contract held by the examiner, that Yun-House figure, and stolen a naty away.
However loose the sorcery binding the naty might be next to ordinary shikigami arts, the only one in Aeshin Korea capable of such a feat was, more or less, the Shin House. To leave the matter there was as good as confessing, in his own voice, that someone tied to the Shin House stood in this place.

What he had to do now, then, was cut Mama Bear and Papa Bear down cleanly and erase every trace, so that the military, or rather the examiner, would conclude that the naty altered by primal sorcery had grown unstable, and every one of them had simply been wiped out.

— Did you really have to bind a contract with a naty even at this cost?
— Arong, I told you. And the answer, of course, is yes. Had I meant to stay hidden just because it was dangerous, I would not have come to sit the sorcerer’s examination in the first place.

Shin Hweein, whose usable spiritual power had its limits, was likewise limited in the number of shikigami he could command.
Counting Flame-tail, it came to about three. And now that he had gained both of the remaining two, he couldn’t even dream of a new shikigami for some while, not unless he absolved a great many curses and widened his pool of usable spiritual power.

Knowing this, Shin Hweein wanted, wherever he could, to acquire shikigami of the greatest possible potential.
He had been favored with no small share of heaven’s luck, of course. But in the end the line-up that had come together was a flame-hound, a Thunder-Beast, and a transmuted naty.
Even with the unstinting support of the Shin House behind him, gathering shikigami of this caliber would have been impossible.

— Even so, at this rate we’re going to be in trouble.
— What?

When Shin Hweein lifted his face, he saw the naty, its bulk grown grotesque, locked in a desperate battle with the sorcerers who still had the strength to fight.
The gaunt Mama Bear, it seemed, had somehow been brought down. But Papa Bear, having traded speed for added flesh, had gained overwhelmingly in raw power and durability instead, so the sorcerers could not easily close in.

Watching this, Shin Hweein briefly entertained a thought.

Even if it does return, two of the three are as good as dead. Perhaps he’ll accept that and let it go.

But he quickly shook his head.
Rather than make a soft-headed call and come to grief, since he had already let his abilities show, it was better to perform with full thoroughness and be remembered as nothing more than an examinee whose abilities were suspiciously good.

— Right. Then I’ll go. Let’s test the strength of that bracelet you drew for me!
— That you must not do, you idiot. Did I not tell you it is the unique sorcery of my House?
— Well then why did you draw it on me at all, when you said it was to prepare for the exam?
— When there are no human eyes about, it is fine. But to use it with this many people present is too great a risk. Fighting with your own strength is enough.
— Tch.

He had grimaced at the very idea the whole time it was being drawn on him. Perhaps, after all, he had grown rather fond of it.
Disappointed though he was, Flame-tail offered no further complaint and dashed at once across the battlefield.

His spiritual power overflowed and turned to flame, so of course his stealth came undone with it. And as Shin Hweein’s spiritual power concentrated into him, his small frame swelled in an instant to the size of a great wolf.

“A flame-hound?!”
“That’s a good Rank Six, easily…!”
“Whose shikigami it is I have no idea, but now is the moment!”
“Our chance. Drive it down!”

When he had first contracted the flame-hound, the creature could put out only about Rank Seven’s worth of strength.
But after that, having absolved yet another curse and succeeded in claiming another’s spiritual power for his own and melting it down into himself, the creature could already reach Rank Six.
A flame-hound was already counted strong for its grade.
And such a creature was now charging at full speed, with one further fetter struck away.

This is going to make passing as Rank Four impossible.

By rule, it is said, an awakened should be able to face head-on a yokai whose grade is three above his own.
If one is Rank Four, one should handle yokai up to Rank Seven. If Rank Three, then Rank Six. If Rank Two, then one should stand against a Rank Five yokai without giving ground.
One need not necessarily win. One need only show no deficiency in confronting them and be able to make them withdraw. That, taken so, was the standard.

And yet here was Shin Hweein not merely facing a Rank Six yokai but commanding the creature as his shikigami.
That meant he had clearly stepped past the line, not of Rank Four, but at the very least of Rank Three.
No matter how scant his usable spiritual power might be in fact, no matter how many curses and afflictions ravaged his body, the world at large was going to see him in exactly that light.

— Kuwaaaah!

— Die!

Dodging the naty’s ponderous strike, Flame-tail darted nimbly beneath it and bit clean through one of its legs.
Along with that he poured out fire fiercely and burned the leg half away.
Belatedly the naty loosed a shriek and flailed both forepaws about, but Flame-tail had already slipped clear in an instant.

“Attack it before it recovers! Now!”
“Hu-aaaaagh!”

With the naty‘s mobility half sealed, the sorcerers took courage, judged this their moment, and poured sorceries upon it without restraint.
The naty, much excited, twisted its body about wildly, and each time it did a preposterous force ranged out and rent the space around it. Yet a force, however great, was meaningless when it didn’t connect.
Even so, the half-formed sorceries caught in that turbulence were snuffed out before they so much as touched its body, so it wasn’t as though the flailing amounted to nothing at all.

“Hey? It’s trying to retreat!”
“Thank goodness. Honestly, I thought we weren’t going to take it down…”

And there it was, the very situation Shin Hweein had foreseen.
Whether the creature had decided on its own that there was simply no breaking these opponents, or whether the examiner, reading the situation, was trying to recall it, the naty had begun to back away, step by sneaking step.
If it returned to the examiner as it was, the fact would come out, that it had not had its sorcery severed even after being transmuted, that even rendered unstable it had not simply vanished, and that was the worst possible outcome for Shin Hweein.

These pitiful examinees, however, were sidling back as well, taking it that if there was no need to fight on, then so much the better.
He could now say with certainty that, while Rank Four passes there might be, no one in this place could pass the Rank Three examination.

Steeling himself, Shin Hweein parted his lips and put mind-speech to use once more.

— It can’t be helped. Flame-tail, charge.
— You saw it yourself. Burning through the one leg drained me of quite a bit, didn’t it? That one over there, it’s only the senseless bulk and defense that have gone up.

To Flame-tail’s grumbling, Shin Hweein agreed.
It had been all very well that they’d dispatched two of the naty so easily through the primal sorcery of a children’s song. But Papa Bear, in a sense, had been upgraded.
Still, had he not changed the things so, then strong and fast as they were, the naty would have flattened them all. There had been no choice.

— Even so, it is all right. I shall lend you my strength. Fear nothing and charge.
— Without giving away your true status, you mean?
— Yes, no fear of that. …Though it does mean passing as an ordinary Rank Four sorcerer becomes out of the question.

That much he had given up on a fair while ago, so it scarcely mattered.

— Tsk. So be it.

Grumbling as always, but heeding Shin Hweein’s word in the end, Flame-tail, sensing the resolve in him, charged once again at the back of the naty that dragged its feet in flight.

“That I would be fire is only that I might guard my country.”

The sorcery he wielded was not the Shin House’s unique sorcery but the fire-class sorcery he had learned from Geum Moa, Flame-Made-Flesh.
Only, handled as it was, it would end merely in Shin Hweein himself being made one with fire. To go beyond that and lend strength to his shikigami, a deeper incantation was required.
To dare alter, by his own discretion, an incantation he had not yet even mastered, were his mother to see it she would faint on the spot. But Shin Hweein had a certain confidence of his own.
And no wonder, for on Flame-tail at this moment there lay, alongside the shikigami contract, an incantation inscribed in his own dense blood as well.

“Bring forth the seal of the contract bound in blood as a flame of guarding! Flame-Made-Flesh, the art of Jigui’s Heart-Fire!”

The instant the incantation took hold, the body that blazed up was not Shin Hweein’s but Flame-tail’s.
The flame of Flame-Made-Flesh, meant to be made manifest through his own body as its medium, took as its medium instead the incantation inscribed upon Flame-tail’s ankle, and blazed up in its place. In that instant a composite incantation flared forth, the Shin House’s unique sorcery joined by Geum Moa’s sorcery, and further by the vampires’ blood-curse on top of that.

— Ku-hwaaagh!

To an outside eye it would simply look as though the flame-hound had stirred up a preposterously fierce fire.
Had someone who handled the Shin House’s unique sorcery been watching right at Flame-tail’s nose, perhaps they might have caught the trace of unique sorcery within. But of course no such thing happened.

— Hah!

Flame-tail rammed straight into the naty, and ran clean through it.
When Flame-tail landed, shook the flames clinging to his body off, and looked back, there was nothing left to see but the naty burning up so fiercely that not a trace of it would remain, vanishing away.

Hm.

Shin Hweein, feeling the eyes that came pouring at him from every direction on account of the incantation he had just chanted, lowered his head in a small nod.

This is well and thoroughly ruined.

Even so, he had kept hidden the fact that he was the youngest son of the Shin House, so he made up his mind to count even that as a stroke of fortune.
If he did not, at the very least, think of it that way, his insides would burn with regret beyond what he could bear.