Chapter 9 — The Sorcerer Who Masters The Dream (5)

‘The shikigami? No, I am not yet at the level of being able to call them forth.’

Once he had mastered dream sorcery, he would be able to summon his real-world shikigami here, and further still to summon some great yokai of which one could not even dream in waking life, calling it forth as his own ally.
But at this moment Shin Hweein was only just learning to take his first steps.

For now, never mind shikigami; he could not so much as call forth the three talismans he always kept tucked at his breast.
His staff? Not only could he not summon it, but having gone to the trouble of standing on his own two feet, he had no particular wish to call it forth either.

Then what could Shin Hweein do, without shikigami and without sorcerous implement?

Mercifully, no small amount.

— Kwoo-eh-ehk!

With a cry like a pig being slaughtered, the chalk-white monster sprang backward.
A heartbeat later, several thin, needle-long threads of blood pierced the empty air where it had stood.

They were his blood, of course, manipulated by Shin Hweein through the blood-curse.

“Bulky in body, yet unexpectedly nimble.”

Holding his index and middle fingers straight and pressed together, Shin Hweein twisted his hand, and the threads of blood hanging in midair turned at his gesture and loosed themselves once more toward the monster.
While it busied its limbs in evading them, he rose slowly into the air.

Had he not already flown about within the dream a good long while alongside the queen of the dream-demons, enjoying their secret tryst?
Though he could not yet call forth shikigami, with the authority of the dream-demon to draw upon, flying within a dream was nothing to him.

“Uncle!”
“Seonwoo.”

Taking Seonwoo in one arm as the boy threw himself sobbing against him, he soothed him and whispered.

“Now that he has shown his true form, this is our chance. With your power you can cast him out entirely.”
“Cast him out?”
“Just so. You have within you the power to divide the inside from the outside. Have you not, until now, drawn into the inside those whom you wished to protect?”
“Mm. But Uncle, you said that if I did so, then…”

Just as I thought.

There had been a reason that, since that day, he had not seen the boy properly wield the power of boundaries.
A formidable authority, strong enough to draw the maidservant into the Specter Realm and, within it, to raise a barrier to protect her besides.
It was that Seonwoo, having acted only out of the single-minded wish to protect her, had come to learn that what he had done was in truth a harm done to her, and so a hesitation had taken root in him toward wielding that power.

— Kkwi-eh-ehk!

“No. That is not so, Seonwoo.”

Drawing out further blood to halt the monster’s charge, Shin Hweein perceived that it was trying to bring forth its dream-demon’s authority, and he burned the blood and warded that off too.
Even as he bent every art at his command to govern its movements, there was no waver in his voice.

“Power is, in the end, only power. It is always those who turn it to ill ends who become the trouble. Learn the right way to use it, and you will be able to help a great many people with that power of yours.”
“Will Uncle… teach me?”
“As much as you ask of me. But you yourself will be able to judge, too.”

By now several patterns formed of blood had risen up around the dream-demon.
They were sorceries drawn out through dream sorcery, with Shin Hweein’s blood serving as ink.
It was a barrier carrying his will: since the dominion of Do Yumi’s dream was already in his own hand, he would not yield it to the creature.

— Kkwoo-ek! Kkwoo-eh-eh-eh!

The creature gave a monstrous cry, as though full of fury at the barrier of great letters that stopped up every side of it and tightened toward it by degrees, and unleashed its power.
But the barrier, doubly reinforced by the blood-curse and by dream sorcery, did not break easily and held against it.

“By my own… judgment…”
“Mistakes arise from ignorance, but you, in this moment, know what must be done. Is it not so?”
“Auntie… I must protect.”
“Of the creature, too, you will know. Yes?”
“The bad one who made Auntie have nightmares. I can tell.”

Just so. Its shape was ridiculous, looking as though someone had heaped together a clump of rice spilled from some great rice-pot, yet every one of them knew that only moments before its power had reached into every corner of Do Yumi’s dream.

“The last thing you must look at is the situation. Why the creature laid its sorcery upon Do Yumi. And what will follow, if we drive it out. But, not being gods, how should we know all the causes and consequences of an affair in which we ourselves are entangled?”
“Mm. It’s too hard.”
“Then if that is hard to know, think only of this. —The person you truly must protect, and what you must do to protect that person. If only you judge and act rightly on these things, there will be nothing for you to regret in the result.”

— Kkwi-eh-eh-eh-eh-ehk!

A cry uncommonly shrill.
The barrier of letters that had until now stopped up the creature’s front began at last to crack.
Shin Hweein swung his hand several times more, driving needles of blood into its body, but its strength did not greatly diminish.

‘Beyond what can be overcome at once?’

Watching Seonwoo, his face puckered against his arm, deep in thought, Shin Hweein murmured inwardly.
Now that he had actually to deal with a dream-demon, the creature was no easy opponent; yet it would not be true to say that he, who had attained dream sorcery, could not subdue it.
The trouble was only that, with the power he now had, killing the creature was possible while driving it outside was difficult.

He had meant to borrow Seonwoo’s power and cast the creature out first, the better to draw forth the black hand hidden somewhere within Zone 1, then to pursue it from behind with the strength of the Yun House.
If that proved impossible, he had no choice but to give up the pursuit of the truth and simply destroy it.

“Bad one.”
“Hm?”

But before Shin Hweein had hardened his mind to use a sorcery, Seonwoo murmured just so and raised his head.
A divine power had settled into the boy’s eyes, and they gave off a bluish ghost-fire.

“No matter how I think on it — a bad one.”
“Just so. You have thought carefully, not wishing to make the same mistake as before.”
“Mm. And he is a bad one for sure. He hurt Auntie too, too much. A baaad one!”

— Kkwi-eh-ehk!

The instant Seonwoo’s shout left him, charged with fierce will, a powerful pressure arose around the monster and began to bear it down.
The chance had come.
Shin Hweein, his own eyes glinting, intoned a sorcery to second the boy, and scores of letters formed of blood-curse fastened themselves thick upon the dream-demon’s body and dragged it down to the floor.

“To cast the creature out entirely. Can you do it?”
“Mm, I can. That is a bad one, so it must be driven outside.”
“That is precisely it.”

When he thought of the process by which the boy had come into the power of boundaries, indignation rose up of itself; yet this child, whose nature was so upright one could scarcely believe that woman had borne him, knew well how to tell the inside from the outside.

The inside is the space that is protected.
The outside is the fearful space.
What must be protected is drawn into the inside; what is harmful is driven out.

“Go outside. Return to your master, and, holding your tongue in silence, await the punishment of heaven.”

An immense hole was bored into the floor.
The huge rice-clump monster thrashed as though loathe to be cast out, but Do Seonwoo’s divine power and Shin Hweein’s blood-curse held it fast and dragged it along until at last they flung it through and across the hole.

— Kkwoo-eh-eh —!

Shin Hweein stretched out one hand and waved it this way and that, and following his gesture the lingering, miscellaneous traces of the monster’s aura that still hung in the dream-space were drawn in and flung together into the hole.
A moment later the hole was filled in, and silence came to the dream-world.

“Uncle…!”
“Well done, Seonwoo.”

Perhaps worn out from having exerted his power so greatly, Seonwoo went wholly limp in his arms; patting the boy, Shin Hweein landed carefully upon the floor.

Before long Do Yumi, who had hurried over, asked in an anxious voice.

“H-he’s gone? Completely?”
“The word completely is not one to be used lightly.”

At his words, spoken with a slow shake of his head, her expression twisted up at once.

“So he’s going to come back? That doggone — no, that infuriating nightmare, again.”
“Be at ease. So that he does not, this time I intend to hunt him down myself.”

He had already laid his hand.
Since he had fixed many needles and letters of blood-curse to the creature’s body, even were it to flee deep into Zone 0 it would not be able to wipe away the traces he had inscribed.
And if one asked how a trace buried within a dream could be followed in waking reality, well, the creature being a dream-demon and Shin Hweein himself a wielder of dream sorcery, that was his answer.

“So you may rest at ease and look to your body until… What is it?”
“…Ah, n-nothing.”

She was staring at him for some reason, in a daze, and when he put the question to her, Do Yumi, much flustered, shook her head from side to side.

“I was just saying thanks! Honestly, I never even imagined you’d come to help me, so I was surprised, that’s all.”
“Empty words. Since you and I are already bound by fated bond, did you think I would feign not to know?”
“…Are you maybe doing this on purpose, since a moment ago?”
“What say you?”
“Ah, it’snothing.”

When he pressed her, unable to make out her words at all, Do Yumi shook her head in haste; yet Shin Hweein himself felt strange, as though he had heard something like this before.
Could it be that some particular conduct of his was making others uncomfortable?

Then, of a sudden, he became aware that he had resumed his original form, and that his bare face was laid open to view.

“Ah — I had forgotten the mask. My apologies.”
“Itsfineifyoudon’tcoverit.”
“Did you intone some incantation? I thank you for your consideration, but my face is —”
“Isaid it’sreallyfineifyoudon’tcoverit, can’tyou hearapersonspeak?”
“…”

Was it consideration?
Or was it that, having been helped, she did not wish to show any reluctance toward his appearance?

At the sight of Do Yumi shaking her head as if she truly meant it, Shin Hweein felt grateful within and gave a nod.

In any event, this dream would soon collapse.
The yokai that fashioned the nightmares had been driven out, so before long she too would wake from sleep.

“To serve as great a god as Seonwoo and yet be undone by a sorcery of this sort is a disgrace. Strive diligently to build up your power.”
“I know that, too… I’m sorry to put you through such trouble.”
“Auntie…”

Do Yumi gathered up Seonwoo, who was murmuring under his breath as though drowsy.
The way she patted the boy was, after all, rather convincing, so Shin Hweein too was reassured.
She would certainly do better from now on.

“The name you gave the child — even on waking, do not by any means forget it.”
“That, too, I know. …Thank you.”
“Just so. Then let us, by and by, take our leave.”

At the sense of his body remaining still while only his consciousness slowly rose, Shin Hweein quietly closed his eyes.

“Wait — a moment.”
“Hm?”

Shin Hweein, on the very point of giving himself wholly over to that sensation of waking, opened his eyes again at Do Yumi’s hurried voice and turned to look at her.

“Is it all right if I get in touch with you on the outside? I mean — when I get stuck in training, and that sort of thing. There are times Seonwoo wants very much to see Big Bro, too.”
“…Big Bro?”

By any reckoning, Do Yumi was likely the elder.
At an address such as he had never heard in all his life, Shin Hweein widened his eyes; but Do Yumi carried on, brazen.

“It’s fine, isn’t it? Since Big Bro was the one who saved my life, give me just a little aftercare too. If I succeed, I’ll pay you back in full.”
“It seems you are mistaken — my age is —”
“Then — see you on the outside, Big Bro!”

But Shin Hweein could not finish his words.
In the next instant he was driven out from Do Yumi’s consciousness and opened his eyes in the waking world.

Caught in Geum Moa’s arms, Shin Hweein finished his appraisal of the situation, watched Do Yumi slowly open her eyes upon the bed, and narrowed his own in disbelief.
For one who had had no resistance and been undone helplessly by a dream-demon, to grow strong enough to drive Shin Hweein himself out of her own consciousness…

Had her growth come only a little sooner, would there have been no need for all this suffering?

Of course, looked at rightly, it was because she had once been undone by the dream-demon that she had been spurred to grow; and Shin Hweein too had been able to find an easy means of driving the creature out only thanks to having found beside her another whom the dream-demon had undone.
And yet there was no helping the feeling, somewhere within him, that this was not altogether to his liking.

“Young master, are you well? Did that creature — the dream-demon — do anything to you?”
“I am well. I drove it out, and have made arrangements to pursue it as well.”
“Ngh…”
“Sister!”

At the same moment Shin Hweein opened his eyes, Do Yumi too recovered consciousness; Father Lucas rejoiced, while Yun Jubaek, who had until then kept his post, looked upon him with an expression that simply could not bring itself to believe.
If Yun Jubaek knew that what Shin Hweein wielded was no unique sorcery at all but the authority of a dream-demon, he would wear an expression that could not be compared to this one…

Keeping such a thought to himself, amused, he checked that this time he had his mask properly on, then asked Yun Jubaek.

“There is something I would ask of you.”
“What is it? Although there is no small amount I would ask of you in return.”

Shin Hweein drew blood from a fingertip and brought forth the blood-curse.
The drops that fell out into the empty air shifted shape this way and that until at length they took on the form of letters that he alone could read.
He read them, confirmed once more that Old Aengseol’s words had not been mistaken, and said to Yun Jubaek.

“If I tell you that the perpetrator is in Zone 1, would you be able to lay hold of him?”
“What —!”

Yun Jubaek’s eyes flew wide.
But before any word could come forth from him, the door slammed open and Sister Barbara appeared, wearing an expression of boundless displeasure.
The reason her mood was so foul was made plain at once by the face of Shin Myeongin, who came in behind her.

“As much as you like! Leave it to me — Shin Myeongin, the young talent who represents the Shin House!”

Yet, astonishingly, just now her voice sounded rather welcome, and Shin Hweein laughed to himself.