Chapter 7 — An Audience With The Vampires (5)

Borne up by the priest’s unexpected showing, the party advanced reasonably well.

But however effective his prayers, all they could drive off were the lowest-rank vampires.
The deeper they pressed into the Other Realm, the higher the grade of the foes that appeared here and there, and against those the prayers managed only to weaken them somewhat, no more.

“Sister! You must fight! To fight for humankind is penance and atonement both! Don’t stand frozen there, move!”
“I-, if you’re going to put it that way, then you take the front, Father—! Kyaaaak! Y-, young master! Do something about this, please!”

The burden was bearing down on the sorcerers at the front line, and so the priest rounded on Do Yumi, who until now had held her breath and tucked herself as far back into the formation as she could.

With the sorcerers’ formation thinning around her, Do Yumi felt the threat closing in.
She shrieked and shrieked and called for the young master Taeju, and astonishingly, that alone was enough.
He answered her willingly, loosing pure spiritual power that swept the nearby vampires away.

‘Truly, a docile and good-natured little thing.’

If he could do this much even now, what would it be once Do Yumi properly trained her divine power and held the naerimgut to formally enshrine the young master Taeju?
Whatever else, it would be a tier no candidate here could touch.

Only, perhaps, for the sake of building real combat experience, Do Yumi should have gone with Ham Seoyeon rather than trailing after the priest.

— Uncle.

Was it because he had been thinking about the young master Taeju? A child’s voice reached his ear.
By instinct, Shin Hweein began to turn Rahulta toward it, then caught himself just in time as he placed the voice as the young master Taeju’s.
Come to think of it, both Geum Moa and Flame-tail were still glued to him in concealment as his guard, so not even the Other Realm’s master could hope to ambush him.

“You’ve grown skilled. But, uncle, is it?”

— Auntie said it would be fine to call you uncle. …Aren’t you my uncle?

The young master Taeju was not showing himself, only sending his voice, yet the tremor in it carried his feeling across vividly.

Spirit or not, there was something about a child calling him uncle outright that gave him pause.
All the same, it was better than mister or big bro, and before long he gave a soft snort of a laugh and nodded.

“Yes. Uncle it is.”

— Wa!

A child abandoned by his mother from inside the womb, clinging for ten years to nothing but his aunt, who even so had fretted after the mother who threw him away and after his little brother. That was what this one was.

What fault could there be in a child who only scoured the world for one more thread linking him to another soul?
It was the guardian, not the child, who deserved the punishment.

“Let us speak more once everything has ended.”

— Mm, no. Before then, it’ll fall apart.

He had meant to soothe the invisible little thing and send him back to Do Yumi’s side, but the words that came now were of a different cast.

Shin Hweein froze, and the young master Taeju’s disjointed voice ran on.

— Uncle’s separated from him. I want to help uncle, but auntie’s in danger, so I can’t go.

“…And?”

— Uncle bleeds a lot. They said just hiding wasn’t enough.

“Just hiding, isn’t enough…. Hiding? Me?”

By the time Shin Hweein had turned that over and lifted his head, the young master Taeju’s presence was already fading.

— I have to rest. Until then, look after auntie.

“…Yes. My thanks to you.”

The young master Taeju has the power to divine a person’s fate.
But when is reading another’s fate ever an easy thing?
All the more for him, a child who has only ever wielded his power on instinct, to have managed an art this advanced for the very first time. Small wonder he would be spent.

Shin Hweein turned to look at Do Yumi, and sure enough, her own strength had gone out of her too.
She had sunk down where she stood without knowing why, and he clicked his tongue.
Then he stretched his staff out toward her.

— Even so, will you be all right, young master?
— I do not know.

The voice was Geum Moa’s, who this time too would have been eavesdropping on his exchange with the young master Taeju, and Shin Hweein answered her calmly.

— But Taeju’s words have shown me something. I have always spoken of freedom on my lips, yet for the whole of this examination I have done nothing but drape my body in a shell and hide inside it, spouting nonsense about concealing who I am, about not standing out. That is the truth.
— But that was what was needed, wasn’t it?
— Of course it was. But if a thing is not to be done perfectly, better not to do it at all. In the end I could not escape Lt. General Yun’s interest either, and as for Arong’s particular gift, to eyes that know what to look for, it shows. Yet I went on with my head buried in the dirt, miming concealment. The only thing that matters is that I not be uncovered as Shin Hweein, and that is not a thing I can control.

So long as his transformation art holds, so long as his Gatekeeper’s Brand goes unseen, no one can prove him to be Shin Hweein.

So what if he draws a little notice?
So what if Lt. General Yun comes to take a liking to him?

He is, at this very moment, no more than Shin Hae, a free fourth-rank candidate!

It was somewhat awkward to admit on his own lips, but there was a further reason he had held himself to passive self-defense, a thought he carried about the other examinees.
As he had said earlier to Ham Seoyeon, they were, in the end, people who had come to sit the trial of their own will.

If so, was it not arrogance to interfere with them more than necessary? Ought he not let them, too, pay for their own choices themselves? So he had thought.

But looking back, that was the arrogant thought.

‘Ham Seoyeon is not even an examinee. She came here with a purpose plainly her own, and yet she willingly stepped forward to protect them. She did not even offer a reason. She simply wished to do it. That is her goodness, her sŏnsŏng, her good-nature.’

So what, then, of Shin Hweein’s nature?
Right or wrong aside, what is it that he, at this moment, most wants to do?

Lie low until the vampire Lord’s deputy comes to root him out, and meet him in a slightly more advantageous posture?
While the examinees who came here with him, examinees in whose arrival Shin Hweein quite clearly had a hand, get cut down one by one, for no better reason than that they came of their own wanting?

“…That, surely, won’t do.”

The truth was, he too had wanted to act as Ham Seoyeon had.
All this talk of the examination was nothing but an excuse to make things easier on himself.

He had finally grasped why he could not let Ham Seoyeon’s behavior pass without comment.
He had envied her, bitterly, for being able, unlike himself, to follow her own heart without agonizing over it first.

When in truth there was nothing standing in the way of his own action, nothing at all!

— I had the gall to weigh the worth of human lives. Every one of them here is a precious life, and I was convincing myself that standing by was permissible, for no better reason than that they were sorcerers like me.
— It’s not that young master was thinking wrongly. They all came here because they wanted to. They’re grown people, taking responsibility for their own choices.
— Yes. And what of it. If they’re going to have their pride wounded, let them blame the weakness in themselves.
— Well, that’s true enough.

Shin Hweein does not wish these people dead.
Thanks to a single word from the young master Taeju, he could at last be honest with himself.

In any case, the danger would be the same either way.
If the destination was identical, then he wished, at the very least, to choose the road there by his own will.

“Fire-blood, the art of Sabarye (the blazing-flame hungry ghost)!”

— Kyuiiiii!

At his gesture, the barrier that until now had kept close around him, guarding him, devouring vampires who drew near, abruptly swelled in bulk and reshaped itself into a sizeable four-legged beast.

It vented fierce flame from its whole body, and just as the name Shin Hweein had called it implied, the thing was the spitting image of Sabarye, the blazing-flame hungry ghost: one of the thirty-six classes of hungry ghost set out in the Buddhist scripture Saddharma-smṛty-upasthāna Sūtra¹.
The Shin House’s arts borrow only the hungry ghost’s character, endlessly devouring and yet starved, forever coveting more to eat, and its formidable traits. Nothing more.
But the sight of the hungry ghost roaring as it tore across the battlefield was very nearly a scene out of a hell-painting.

“Don’t tell me, is that an aguidoh hungry ghost?! There’s even a sorcery that handles ghosts from hell?!”
“You fool, it’ll only be the name borrowed. More to the point, is he really…”
“That man, for the life of me, why is he sitting a fourth-rank exam?”

For all that it bore the name of a hungry ghost from hell, the flame the thing spewed kept perfectly the holy character of Shin Hweein’s own fire, and so was extraordinarily effective against the vampires.
As hungry as it was, so swift. Wingless though it was, it surged like a loosed arrow, hunting the enemy down to scorch and crush them.
And, as before, what it absorbed of their blood and flesh swelled its bulk.

— Kyuaaaaaa!

“Stand up.”
“A-, ah, ah…”

After Sabarye’s charge had swept off the vampires and beasts in its path.
Shin Hweein reached Do Yumi, still slumped with the strength gone from her legs, and pulled her upright in time.

“W-, why.”
“It is unsightly, you, sprawled there.”
“Unsightly?! How dare you of all people—!”
“You’re spent because Taeju has been exerting his power. Stay glued to the priest’s side until your strength returns. Whatever anyone says, do not let go of the priest’s sleeve.”
“Ugh…!”

Having given the order in a cold voice, Shin Hweein shoved her off toward the priest, planted his staff in the direction of the other examinees fighting the vampires, and called on his other shikigami.

“You take the field as well, Flame-tail. Judging by how fierce the enemy’s onslaught has grown, a higher-rank vampire may appear before long.”

— Then all the more reason I should stay at your side. You an idiot? Besides, your spiritual power isn’t exactly heaped up to spare.

“Moa is staying behind. And as for spiritual power, do not worry.”

The truth was, Sabarye’s art, for all its power, was a sorcery that ate up a great deal of spiritual power.
But right now Arong was bearing the cost of the art on his own, and even that he was recouping in real time by cutting down enemies.
His growth might slow ever so slightly, but in an environment that poured out foes without pause like this, the thing could keep itself in action all but indefinitely.

“Brother!”

When Shin Hweein advanced to the front, Father Lucas, who had been reciting prayers as if his life depended on it, raised a glad voice.
He could hardly afford to acknowledge the priest, of course, and so ignored him.

“Don’t push yourself too soon! This is only the start!”
“Well begun is half done, they say. So I’m halfway there.”

The military sorcerer flung the words at him as he raged about the field more conspicuously than any other examinee, and Shin Hweein answered in a placid voice.

“What?”
“Then the remaining half, we all go together.”

To hell with the examination.
If his overexertion stripped the other candidates of the chance to earn points, that was the fault of their weakness, not Shin Hweein’s.
Better to score points and die than to survive, even shamefully, and try again a year on.

Something refreshing rose in his chest, and Shin Hweein gave a grin and chivvied Flame-tail once more.

“A higher specimen is incoming! Flame-tail, forward!”
“What? A higher specimen?”

— Hah, why on earth do I worry about a fellow like this—!

Arong, body swelling steadily as he devoured the vampires, was alerting him to the position of a higher-rank vampire near at hand.
Not the deputy himself, of course. More on the order of one of his immediate underlings.
If they slipped up against that one, the so-called deputy might come winging straight over.

But, what of it?
So long as he did not face the vampires’ captain himself, the man would not be satisfied.

“Weaklings spotted! Right, you lot, I’ll be wiping you out first!”

A Western woman, clad in next to nothing save a black leather underdress and a thin overcoat, appeared with bat wings spread wide.
After her, higher-rank vampires in much the same Western guise trooped out one after another. The plan, it seemed, was the same: split the group apart and crush them in a tight knot, one by one.

“What…! Should I call for support? No, but…”

Even the second-rank military sorcerer faltered at an aura on a wholly different plane from the enemies so far.
But Shin Hweein refused to give ground. He stepped forward, eyes ablaze.

“Flame-tail, Arong. Even one, we take down by our own hands.”

— Then let’s go for the weakest one. So, which?

— Kyuat!

Arong let him know.

When Shin Hweein cracked his staff against the ground with a sharp report, a thick tree-trunk surged up violently from the earth, aimed squarely at one of the higher-rank vampires racing groundward!

“You damn—!”
“Including that one, every conspicuous one first, all of them—! Whoa!”

Sister Barbara’s marksmanship, the second-rank sorcerer’s entry into the fight after he had concluded it was too soon to call for reinforcements, and the priest finally pulling a Bible from his robes.
Shin Hweein confirmed that the other vampires were each pinned down by these various powers, and let a faint smile cross his lips.

“Can you take it?”

— Of course. As if the one‘s flame couldn’t burn up one mosquito-spawn like this!

— Kyuiiit!

The vampire dodged the tree-trunk Shin Hweein steered, soared up, and from her chest poured out countless vampire-bats.
Arong sprouted flame across his whole body as if he had been waiting all along, and charged the bats, while Flame-tail flung himself up through the air, going straight for the vampire.

“For all that you remain lowly creatures of the dirt!”
“Is that so? But you, too, will be coming down to the ground soon enough.”

Shin Hweein drew a pouch from inside his robe and threw it, driving his staff into the ground once more in the same motion.
A wooden altar surged up from the earth and caught the pouch, and what spilled from its opened mouth was the same grain he had once used to summon Old Aengseol.
What differed from before was that, thanks to the spiritual power Shin Hweein had been working into it in spare moments, each grain glowed with a clear, lustrous light.

Yes.

Shin Hweein meant to make an offering.
Drawing on the unique sorcery he had wrested from Do Yuna.