Chapter 16 — Desire And The Blue-Robed Boy (3)

The Baek House, one of the corners of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses, had long been famed for a sorcery that wielded light.
Beyond merely gathering light to harvest its heat, they granted it physical force as well, perfecting it into a swift and powerful beam.
They built their encircling array from mirrors crafted by a special art and reflected at will, and it was said that once the array was set, no one could ever escape it. They would be turned into a honeycomb and fall.

“So that’s why those sorcerers get dragged around. To fill out the encirclement. A disgrace to one’s house, plain and simple.”

Thanks to Flame-tail’s nimble footwork, Shin Hweein dodged the beam without much trouble.
He sensed it bounce off a mirror held out at the front by a man standing well behind them, and shifted his body again as he ran his mouth.

“You know the Baek House passing well. Then you ought to have fled before the encirclement closed!”

The mirrors that had ringed Shin Hweein’s party were not real objects. The sorcerers had conjured them by chanting incantations.
And it was no simple mirror-making sorcery, either. It tuned their own spiritual-power wavelengths to Baek Yeongho’s so that they could deflect his light.

Properly speaking, anyone who handled the Baek House’s unique sorcery with any skill should have needed no retainers at all. They would conjure their own mirrors, control them alone, form the encirclement themselves, and even reshape it afterward.
That Baek Yeongho could not manage several mirrors on his own and so handed the work off to his subordinates was, simply, pathetic.

“All you do is dodge! Stop your prattling boasts and try blocking it, or striking me back, for once!”

It was only the destructive power the beams discharged that, true to the Baek House’s renown, ran peerless. Even Shin Hweein would not dare take one head-on; he had no choice but to evade.

Zer, by contrast, merely stood there as though the whole thing were laughable. A clash must have already taken place before Shin Hweein arrived, because Baek Yeongho was not aiming at him in the slightest.

‘So Zer has already been walled off, has he. And so he means to attack me and the rest of the party alone, to open a chink in Zer’s guard? Truly, a man with no growth in him.’

He glanced back to check on Sister Barbara, and thankfully she was still slung over Geum Moa’s back like a parcel of luggage, swaying this way and that with Geum Moa’s movements as she dodged the beams.

“I’m about to get motion-sick. Won’t you set me down already?”
“No, Sister. You can’t dodge these.”
“I think I might be able to, actually…”
“Quit your nonsense and just shoot. Don’t aim to kill.”
“They’re aiming straight for our vitals, and we have to go easy on them? Why can’t I just punch a hole through his heart?”
“You’re a religious person, aren’t you?”

Each time Baek Yeongho loosed a beam, the subordinate sorcerers shifted their positions diligently, adjusting the angles of the reflection.
He fired in patterns hard to read. A beam would strike a mirror and come hurtling in from an utterly unexpected direction, hunting the chinks in Shin Hweein and the others’ guard.
Spiritual-power could be sensed only in the instant the beam was already in flight, so one might still evade it by reflex alone, with enough confidence in one’s reaction speed. But.

“You dance up quite the merry jig.”

When Shin Hweein went on doing nothing but dodging beams, Baek Yeongho, sure now of his advantage, let a smile creep onto his lips.
To be sure, the blood-armaments Leon had forged, Zer’s iron chains, Sister Barbara’s bullets had all somehow managed to aim at the man even amid the storm of beams. But more than half of them collided with Baek Yeongho’s light and vanished, and those that did draw near his body were stopped by a barrier the Gem-Mage, pressed close at his side, had thrown up.
What was more, she sacrificed gems of her own to amplify his beams. Well, well.
The combination of light and gems did look rather plausible.

“It’d be amusing to see who tires first, wouldn’t it? Though to drain my spiritual-power, you’d have to bring ten of yourselves!”
“I heard that a fellow without aptitude for sorcery, trying to make up for it by sheer volume, has bled his house’s coffers and drunk spiritual elixirs like water. Granted that your spiritual-power has grown a little. Could you defeat your elder brother with it?”
“…You!”

Meanwhile, Shin Hweein had only run his mouth to mock Baek Yeongho. He himself was doing nothing at all, merely hanging on to Flame-tail’s back.
Yet a single word from him had stoked Baek Yeongho’s emotions more effectively than any half-decent sorcery, so perhaps it could not be said he had done nothing.
The comparison with his own elder brother was surely Baek Yeongho’s sore spot. Now in a towering fury, he began to wave his fan wildly and unleash several beams at once.

“A nameless cur who knows nothing of the Baek House, prattling on as he pleases! I shall punish you and set my house’s authority aright!”
“For a man who makes sorcerous implements by offering human beings up as sacrifices to speak of his house’s authority, how very entertaining. Is the authority of your house, to you, a convenient thing to throw on when needed and tuck away when it troubles you?”
“Die!”

The name of a noble house carries considerable weight. How could he have failed to know that he himself must bear that weight as well?
If you employed others to conjure mirrors, then of course you could wield your unique sorcery with ease. That much was a fine thing.
But did Baek Yeongho imagine the representatives of the Baek House were fools, laboring alone at conjuring and controlling their own mirrors out of sheer ignorance?

And also.

“One subdued.”
“Tsk.”
“You. That’s some sort of mockery-sorcery, isn’t it? It has to be. Otherwise none of this makes any sense.”

Almost without any time-lag, the sorcerers holding the mirrors began to topple, one after another.
While Baek Yeongho, his sight narrowed by rage at Shin Hweein, aimed his beams at him and him alone, Zer and the rest of the companions had attacked and put them down.

“Khh…!”

The encirclement collapsed in an instant, and Baek Yeongho, chewing his lower lip, could not hide his fury.
Yet the name of a direct heir of the Eight Pure-Blood Houses was not entirely empty after all, for he swiftly flashed a hand-signal and redeployed the sorcerers.
What was more, their mirrors all at once began to give off light. The moment a beam Baek Yeongho fired struck a mirror, it doubled in number, then scattered in every direction, hunting the party.

“I’ll finish you.”
“Just a little more, my honey! It’s almost done!”
“No. I’ll finish him myself!”

Ten beams, twenty beams, the multiplying shafts of light came pouring down upon the party.
By this point even his companions had no opening to break off and aim at another sorcerer. They had to focus entirely on blocking the beam-sorcery. And yet Shin Hweein was still casting no sorcery of his own.

“All mouth, this one! With nothing but a knack for handling shikigami, why not bow to the Shin House and learn a little shikigami arts before you come back!”
“My shikigami are too strong, you see.”

Even as so many beams crisscrossed the field of battle, Shin Hweein, who had wholly entrusted his body to Flame-tail, kept his voice perfectly serene.
He trusted that Flame-tail, reclaiming the strength of his true form, could not fail to read these paltry beams, be there tens of them or hundreds.

“To aim at you directly carries the risk that I might kill you. So I had a small bit of trouble in choosing my means.”
“Puhahahahah! Are you wanting to teach that flame-hound to tap-dance? If you’re so confident, then breathe fire, or do anything else! Let’s see you try it!”

He had surely judged it bluster, for Baek Yeongho went on yelling and only multiplied the beams.
If Flame-tail truly turned to the offensive, Baek Yeongho would seize the chance to inflict a fatal wound. That much was plain from his tensed gaze and the force concentrated in the hand that waved the fan.

This was why a sorcerer must conceal his intent.

Once you read the man’s tension, you could also see that the trajectories of the beams he produced were, little by little, growing skewed.

‘It’s not for nothing he’s been handling only a small number of beams at a time. The fellow has no confidence that he can control all of his amplified, scattered beams. Same principle for why he only manifested this new sorcery after more than half his subordinates had fallen. He’s being swayed by his own sorcery. His beam-sorcery is utterly unripe.’

Looking only at the spiritual-power he had stored up, Shin Hweein had judged him a sorcerer of the second rank or above. But that had been a misjudgment.
Compared even with Yun Jubaek, no, with Yun Juna, his sorcery and self-control fell far short.
Ham Seoyeon? It would be embarrassing even to make the comparison.

He had also worked out at last why the able men of the Baek House did not drag along throngs of low-ranking sorcerers to conjure mirrors for them.

— Flame-tail, next time, move that way.
— Hmm? You sound as though you’ve read the trajectories these beams are about to take… No, the other way around. We should be heading away from where they bunch up, not into it!
— Now!
— Tsk, can’t be helped!

Flame-tail, who up to now had controlled his body with such precision as to dodge the beams perfectly, suddenly leapt, paying no heed at all to the few beams that grazed his fur.

“Now! Die!”

Baek Yeongho surely took this for the omen of an attack, for his eyes lit up and he flung his fan open wide.
The beams reflected by the many mirrors converged, wondrously, at a single point and came pouring down on Baek Yeongho all at once. Meeting his fan, which had itself transformed into a single mirror, they were shot back at Shin Hweein, amplified further still, at the speed of light.

The next moment.

A single mirror surfaced before Shin Hweein.

“…Hah?”

Baek Yeongho let slip a stupid-sounding voice.
But by the very next moment, the beam Shin Hweein had deflected had already cleanly erased the arm that held his fan.

“Ugh, uwaaaaaaagh!”
“Finally! I thought I was going to die of boredom!”

The battlefield froze at the sight of Baek Yeongho, screaming with one arm lost.
Yet there was one who, freeze or not, paid no mind to the rest and moved. That, of course, was Zer.

— Chrrrk. The iron chains wrapping his whole body all at once loosed and rushed forth, piercing clean through Baek Yeongho’s remaining limbs, and through the limbs of the subordinate sorcerers, helpless now, who had been holding the mirrors, pinning them all to the wall.

The only one left unscathed was the Gem-Mage, who had sacrificed a number of gems to throw up a barrier and bounded back near the altar to escape.

“How… how….”

Baek Yeongho, immobilized and fixed to the floor, let slip a hollow voice.
Shin Hweein turned upon him the sort of look one might give a foolish younger sister.

“Did the able men of the Baek House never tell you why they do not bring sorcerers along to serve as mirrors?”
“They only ever… treat me like an idiot… What, would they have taught me…”
“Then surely they thought you a fool. Surely they pitied you.”

Why a unique sorcery could be called unique.
How vital it was that a man wholly control his own sorcery.
That a direct heir of the Baek House should have forgotten even so basic a truth. How pitiable he must have seemed.

“To share out your sorcery to others, tuning their wavelengths to your own spiritual-power, will certainly let them reflect your light. But that is to mar the mystery of your own sorcery with your own hand.”

Shin Hweein conjured a new mirror and let it float into the air.
Only then, examining the mirror closely, did Baek Yeongho find his lips quivering.

“How is it that you, of all people… surely the Baek House has some tie to you…?”
“I learned it just now from your subordinates. If low-ranking sorcerers in such numbers have already learned the sorcery, would there be any law against my learning it as well?”
“Impossible!”

Baek Yeongho cried out, eyes wide.

“It took years of teaching for them to barely master it…!”
“Impossible is not a word to be spoken in the face of what has already been done. That is not the word you ought to be speaking now.”
“….”

Baek Yeongho clenched his lips tight.
His eyes filled with tears, but he held them back, fighting desperately not to let them spill.

“Never again… never again will I suffer such humiliation. I shall remake my sorcery. So that no one but myself may use my mirrors…”
“Yes. So long as you have learned that, it is enough. You have grown.”
“Spare… me. I will make amends. Through the Baek House. I’ll apologize, like this…”

A truly remarkable man.
Having driven at him in a fury, as though one of them must die, he changed his tune the instant he was beaten. In a certain sense, that itself made him a man of substance.
Shin Hweein gave a small laugh and shook his head.

“I told you from the start I had no intention of killing you, did I not. Nor do I require amends. Let us simply, between us, cleanly forget what passed within this place. How is that?”
“….”

It would be a difficult thing.
Faced with the foe who had blown off one of his arms, however desperately he might beg for his life, the word forget could not easily come out of his mouth.
At least Baek Yeongho seemed to grasp the weight of the words he was being asked to speak, and Shin Hweein gave a small laugh.

Stepping down from Flame-tail’s back, Shin Hweein drew near to Baek Yeongho and spoke quietly.

“Let us make a contract. A promise between you and me. You know the weight of a promise, do you not?”
“A contract.”
“I promise this. You shall return to your former state. The arm you have just lost will be restored, and no wound shall remain. As though it were all a thing that happened in a dream, every event within this space shall be made null.”
“That cannot possibly be…”
“It is enough to write that condition into the terms of the contract. Should it prove impossible, you may use the contract as a leash and do with me as you wish. It is no loss to you, is it?”
“….”

Surely persuaded by Shin Hweein’s words, Baek Yeongho gave at last a nod.
Geum Moa and Zer, who of course knew the truth, watched Shin Hweein with the eyes one might fix on a swindler. But neither of them added a word.
Their thoughts about Baek Yeongho would differ from one to the next. Yet to leave him truly nursing a grudge, and so make one more bad bond with the Baek House, would be the worst possible play.

‘Though he has run with men of poor conduct and let even his own filthy nature show, in the end he has been given a chance to make it all as nothing. I do not think his temperament will be easily mended… but should he truly pile up evil karma later on, I can intervene again then.’

A contract holding only the simple clauses each of them desired was struck in an instant.
When Shin Hweein finished with the contract and gave a signal, Zer, making a face that asked is this really right, obediently drew all his iron chains back in.

The situation was not yet wholly settled, however.

“It’s done! Completed! Now I am the ruler of these ruins!”

For there still remained the Gem-Mage, who had at last secured the completed ruby from the altar and was crying out in triumph.