Chapter 2 — The Fire-Wielding Yokai (1)

“Ugh…”

“My lord, my lord! Are you coming back to yourself?”

— Mya-ohng!

When Shin Hweein came back to his senses, his field of vision was filled, half with the face of a young woman and half with the face of a kitten.

More than relief at having actually escaped the flame-hound, what struck him was the realization that the myodusa had been swept along by the art, and on that mingled feeling he gave the two faces a slight push away.

“You are close.”

“M-my apologies! My lord would not wake for so long that this maiden grew worried…”

— Myak!

Hoa, abashed at the gesture, drew back at once.
The myodusa, by contrast, rapped the back of his arm with its tail in a fit of pique, as if to say why are you pushing me away.

He had taken the creature for plain bad temper, but every time that snake-tail struck him, life flowed back into the bruised corners of his body where he had rolled and scraped across the ground, and bit by bit his condition improved.

He was grateful, of course.
Yet he could not help thinking that, if it could heal him this readily, it might as well have done so while he lay unconscious, and would that not have been better?
When he stared at the creature with that thought in mind, it spat into his face, as if to ask what are you looking at.

To his astonishment the spittle that struck him head-on evaporated and gave off a blue glow, and in that instant the eyes that had been so severely near-sighted saw a fraction better.

A degree of healing power that not even the curse-quelling healers who specialize in restoration could readily imitate.

He could see now why a creature with no combat ability whatsoever had been recognized as Rank Six on the strength of its specialist power alone.

Only…

“The healing I am exceedingly grateful for, but your manner is grating beyond measure…”

“Hoho. It cannot bring itself to be honest. Both this maiden and my lord owe a debt of kindness to the myodusa.”

Hoa said this and ran a hand over her own abdomen.

A great hole had been torn through the very middle of her once-clean garments, the cloth around it stained red, a testament to how dreadful the wound had been.
But the bare skin exposed through the hole was smooth, mercifully, without so much as a mark on it.

The gesture was meant, presumably, to underline the myodusa’s healing power.
Yet the moment Shin Hweein saw it he shut his eyes tight, awkwardly worked off his outer coat with one hand, and held it out to her.

“It is not for a woman to show her bare flesh. It is also said that a woman ought not to let her belly grow cold. If a sickbed-garment will do, take this and wrap yourself in it.”

“E-eh? But this maiden is no more than a low spirit…”

“Are you saying that, because you are a low spirit, you have no sex? In that case, take a man’s form at once.”

“This maiden shall wear this garment as though it were my lord himself, and treat it with the utmost care.”

Whatever Shin Hweein had added cut off any further reply.
She took the coat at once, threw it on, covered her abdomen without a gap, and smiled, embarrassed.

“For a creature as lowly as this to wear the garments of so noble a personage… this maiden fears she will soil them, and dares not stir.”

“It is a garment I shall throw off soon enough anyway. If it pleases you, keep it. For now, let us speak rather of what is to be done from here.”

“From here…”

At those words Hoa’s eyes widened a fraction.

“You do not mean to ask about this maiden? Or about that art at the last…?”

“There is no need to hear it. I knew from the moment you called yourself a low spirit that you were no ordinary one.”

Hoa pursed her lips and lamented that she had failed to win her lord’s trust, but Shin Hweein only let out a short, mocking breath.

What low spirit would ever lower itself by calling itself a low spirit?

As a rule, the meaner and more inconsequential the ghost, the more it inflates its name and its reputation.

“You have done me the kindness of saving my life, and so I shall let private matters pass. The reason you approached me, I shall uncover on my own.”

“This one truly had no hidden design in approaching my lord.”

“Enough. Once a root of suspicion has taken hold, will shallow talk pull it up so easily? I am merely setting it aside.”

If anything, Shin Hweein was now warier of Hoa than when he had first laid eyes on her.
Even so, he was not so foolish as to make an enemy of her on the spot.

Even were she keeping a hundred snakes coiled within her breast, it was no less true that she had saved him from a death he had been face-to-face with.

Drawing out what she truly intended could wait until the matter with the flame-hound was settled.

“It does not seem the flame-hound will give me up. I cannot tell how far your art has taken me from him, but…”

“The art of Self-Severance Path-of-Living beguiles its target. However lofty the flame-hound’s standing, since it was properly caught in the art, it will not find my lord for a good half-day at least.”

“Good. Then, within that span, a way to slip free of the Specter Realm…”

The moment he began to speak, Hoa shook her head, and Shin Hweein sighed and named her thought for her.

“You think he will follow even into the present world?”

“My lord knows as well as I do that this is well within the reach of a yokai of high standing. Unless one means to spend one’s whole life in hiding, the matter must be settled here.”

“Settled? You and I, you mean to deal with him? When you yourself have just said he is a yokai of high standing?”

“But there is a variable. My lord wields a power that springs from the same root as his, does he not?”

At that, Shin Hweein had been about to kindle a flame again, but he stopped.
Would the creature come for him afresh the moment he handled fire?
Hoa, reading his thought, set him at ease.

“So long as the art holds, my lord cannot be read. There is no need to worry.”

“…Very well. Say that I do wield a flame the equal of the flame-hound’s. By what means, then, is this flame to drive the hound off? If you mean for me to hurl it to you, as I did when we faced Eul…”

“Were it possible, this maiden would gladly stand in my lord’s place and bear the danger. Against the flame-hound, however, it cannot be done. Only a pure, unalloyed flame, one mingled with nothing else, can drive that flame-hound off.”

In short, this time Shin Hweein was to face the flame-hound by his own power alone, and that was beyond him.

Two battles had taught him to handle the flame tolerably well, but that was a matter of practice.
The strength of the flame itself had not grown.

“Do not trouble my lord overmuch. As small things grow smaller still with ease, so great things grow greater still with ease. My lord’s inborn spiritual power is vast. Enlarge it only a little, and that will be strength enough to face the flame-hound. This maiden, slight though her aid may be, will help.”

“Within half a day, you mean.”

“That is not all… though I know it is an impertinence to my lord, this maiden ventures to make a request.”

When Shin Hweein wordlessly prompted her to go on, Hoa flushed and spoke.

“It is a poor trick of mine, but… would my lord consent to learning a few flame-handling arts from this maiden?”

“Let us do so.”

“Truly, you are willing!”

In contrast to how Hoa had delayed in laying out the proposal, Shin Hweein accepted on the spot, so much so that she herself cried out, more startled than he was.

But for Shin Hweein, who, having had no spiritual power to wield in the first place, had never until now had the chance to learn any proper offensive art, the offer was nothing short of a gift to be received with thanks.

Of course, arts came in many kinds, some of them dangerous enough that merely learning them affected one’s body or mind, or even one’s soul, so one could not learn just any art.

But the arts Hoa had wielded earlier were too cleanly shaped to be ordinary yokai-craft, and at the same time they were suffused with a peculiar mystery.
If her method of training was not perverse, then what was there to shy from?

“Truly splendid! Then I shall teach my lord the incantations. Pray master them swiftly, and we shall make them serviceable through real combat.”

“Real combat?”

“Yes, indeed.”

Hoa, who had been smiling brightly, apparently so pleased to have him agree to learn her arts, raised one finger and emphasized her point.

“There are many ways to increase one’s spiritual power, but what a sorcerer must take first is the accumulation of karma. Whether good karma or evil karma, the more karma one piles up, the larger one’s soul grows, and naturally the spiritual power one can wield expands. The easiest way to accumulate karma is to put down the foul spirits that overflow this Specter Realm. And on top of that, the secret art I have mastered can raise spiritual power at once…”

“Out of the question.”

“Ah.”

There was no need to hear another word.
Shin Hweein declared it flat.

“The latter, especially. What you spoke of just now, is it not the way in which one yokai devours another to pile up yokai force? I know full well what becomes of a sorcerer who soils his hands with yo.”

“That is only because the dabblers handle it carelessly. The way I know leaves no aftereffects…”

“Hush. As for the former, what you said is not so wrong, but it is a matter of time. To spend half a day putting down the foul spirits I can subdue at my present level, the karma to be gained from that is not so very much.”

Moreover, karma was not something one accumulated by trying to accumulate it.
It was the result accumulated as one’s heart moved and one acted accordingly.

One might subdue foul spirits in the course of practicing an art, or out of hatred for those foul spirits, but one could not subdue them merely to pile up good karma.

The result of killing something might be good.
But a killing that is good from the outset does not exist.

“As one might expect of my lord.”

“It is only a manner of thinking befitting a human being, before one is a sorcerer. To presume to bend karma to a man’s will from the start is… hm?”

Shin Hweein left the sentence unfinished, for he had felt, abruptly, a warmth in the breast of his garments.

Casting his mind back, he remembered that before leaving the house for the Gatekeeper Rite he had tucked the Indulgence into his inner pocket.

But surely, since the first occasion on which it had loosed its power, he had felt nothing from it…?

“Uuh. It is a sanctified aura, more so even than my lord’s flame. This maiden will withdraw a little ways.”

In the end the light leaking from the Indulgence began to pierce through the front of his coat.
Hoa, taken aback, stepped back to put distance between them, and at last hid herself among the trees nearby.

Shin Hweein followed her shadow with a strange expression.
Then, with a fuu, he let out a sigh and slid a hand into his breast pocket.

The instant his hand touched the Indulgence within, what he had long since expected struck him.

His awareness slipped far away, and threads stretched in every direction with him at their center, and then one among them blazed forth in a powerful light.

As before, it was the thread of the burning bird.

— You think a thing like this will let you escape me? Let you escape me, do you really think?

— It hurts, it hurts so much! It is you who wounded me, so why is it I who must suffer like this?

— I will find you. I will surely find you. I will never let you slip away! And this time, this time…!

The voice, thick with deep resentment, hammered through his head and brought on a worse headache than before.
Shin Hweein rolled on the ground, both hands clutching at his head, and writhed in pain.

But he endured it a short while, and mercifully the light shining out of the Indulgence grew more intense.
Before long the voice and the headache faded together.

The change made itself felt at once.

The thread connecting him to the burning bird remained as it had been.
But where until now it had served only to channel the bird’s curse one-sidedly into him, it was now also performing the role of drawing a little of the bird’s power out of it and into him.

The thread’s role, and the balance of authority between the two of them, had begun, slightly, to shift.

It went without saying that, as the Indulgence took effect again, Shin Hweein’s inflammation receded a further degree and his lungs felt fresher still.
The spiritual power he could wield freely had grown, and with that same power he could now produce flames of considerably greater force.

‘So it did not end with the one time. …I had thought, seeing the talisman had not burnt away, that some meaning remained in it.’

A happy miscalculation.

His strength had increased, raising not only his immediate chance of survival but also handing him the means to unwind, one by one, the curses heaped upon him in layers.

To be sure, the bird’s resentment had only deepened, and there was reason to worry over what monstrous being would next manifest each time he so much as brushed a thread.
Yet, when he was already under their curses, to leave those curses in place out of fear of provoking them would be more absurd still.

‘But why now? Is it a matter of a fixed interval, so that the artifact activates again after some time has passed? No, for an instrument that subdues so great a curse, that would be too cheap a price. Then the change that has occurred in me in the meanwhile is…’

Karma.

The realization struck Shin Hweein like a hard knock upon the head.

The karma piled up by driving off the low spirits and saving the myodusa.

The karma piled up by standing against Eul to save Hoa, and, though it was with her aid, by finally driving Eul down.

And since Eul was an ill-omened yokai whose appearance heralds war upon a country, the karma earned by subduing him could be no slight thing.

Those, beyond a doubt, had been the conditions for the Indulgence to act again.

“Haa…”

Once he had his answer, a sigh escaped him on its own.

It was scarcely a moment ago that he had told Hoa it was not right to go deliberately hunting foul spirits in order to pile up good karma, and now here he was, about to start chasing after good karma himself.
How should he not feel ashamed?

— Meow?

“It is well now, leave off. I thank you.”

The myodusa had been tapping at the back of his head with its tail, apparently under the misapprehension that his head still hurt, since he had clutched it there on the ground when the Indulgence activated.
He gentled the creature.

But when he made to gather it into his bosom and rise from the ground, he realized that the staff which had been like a part of his own body had been lost just before this, for that very reason.

The curses upon him had eased and the spiritual power he could wield had grown, and yet, without a staff, the cripple still could not so much as stand properly.

At that, Shin Hweein’s spirits, which had begun in some small measure to lift, sank again into restlessness.

“My lord! I have found, in the wood, a branch that looks well suited to serve my lord as a staff! Only…!”

Just then, with timing too apt for words, Hoa came running back toward him with a long branch in hand.

And behind her, with a thud, thud, trees were giving chase. Tree-monsters, rather, that had wrenched their own roots up and were moving wholesale.

— Give back the one!

— Catch that thing and kill it!

At the sight, Shin Hweein’s spirits sank a further degree.

He could only hope that he would not, in the end, pile up more evil karma than good.