episode_0081
by fnovelpia“Where are you taking the owner?”
An eerie voice that seemed to freeze the space.
Lin, who was floating in the air as if a god had descended, looked down at the ground. The Hoyo tribe, who had been singing in search of freedom, collectively stopped.
“Tuesday?! Hey, what’s going on here?”
The elder frantically checked the barrier, but it was still functioning normally. The same goes for the confusion amulets attached to the tree.
The elder had no idea what kind of magic Lin had used to find their location.
Lin read his confused expression and said as if it was natural.
“Lin is the master’s slave. Did you think she wouldn’t know where she was?”
If you can handle mysticism to a certain degree, whether it be magic or sorcery, it is not a difficult task to trace back the chains and find Karami’s location.
Above all, the Soul Shackles are a skill that even Mirabelle cannot remove once applied. It was impossible for them to be blocked by the low-level magic of an old Sam-Tailed Fox.
“Bring the owner here.”
After almost being killed by the Blood Wolf, Rin’s obsession with Karami skyrocketed.
The Hoyo tribe, who didn’t like Karami, kidnapped her. There was no way they would let it go.
One of the Hoyo tribe members, who knew this better than anyone, thrust a sharp claw into Karami’s neck.
“Wow, don’t move! If you do something stupid, I’ll rip this human’s neck off!”
“… … .”
“Come on, get out. It’s Tuesday!”
The Hoyo slowly back away, wary of Lin. Something grabs the arm that was threatening Karami.
The thing wrapped around the Hoyo tribe’s arm, which he checked with a glance, was a tree branch. It was a dried tree ghost, Gomokui (枯木鬼). Gomokui stretched out a long branch and grabbed the Hoyo tribe.
Before I could even shake it off, Gomoku-gwi snapped my arm and broke it.
Woodduck.
“Gyaaaahh …
The fox man screamed in pain and collapsed. The panicked Hoyo tribe members were unable to come to their senses.
Before they knew it, the monsters of Baekungok had surrounded them.
And yet, without posing any threat to Dorin, it looked like the monsters were submitting to Rin.
Survival of the fittest.
Strong, weak, weak, strong.
The monsters are simple.
Submit to a monster stronger than yourself.
If you had been submissive to Ungwi, who was the strongest in Baekungok until now, it was the nature of a monster to submit to Lin, who had overwhelmed Ungwi.
“Excuse me, wait a minute?”
The Hoyos realized their situation.
There was no leniency.
The merciless trampling has begun.
The will-o’-the-wisps burned the Hoyo tribe, and the old tree ghosts broke each of their bones and folded them neatly like origami.
A giant bird monster fell straight down from the sky, grabbed two Hoyo tribe members in its talons, and flew away somewhere.
It was a total mess.
“Please save me! You said you were the owner! Stop him!”
A quick-witted Hoyo begged Karami for her life. Karami smiled and politely pushed the woman away.
“Rin, we must keep the elder alive. Only the elder knows the location of the shrine.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll spare you.”
The meaning of those words was simple, and the color evaporated from the faces of the Hoyo tribe who heard their conversation.
That day, the sound of new ghosts’ cries appeared in Baekungok.
***
Back to the fox den.
The three are back.
One was Lin. She looked no different than when she left the fox den, even though her hair was disheveled and dusty.
Another one is Karami. He was the same. He had no problem, except for the marks on his wrists where the stems were tied.
The last one is Elder Fox. First of all, his gait is unsteady. The reason is that his three tails have been reduced to one. The rest have been plucked out and burned, disappearing.
Since he was born as a Sam-Tailed Fox, he could grow back if he absorbed the magical powers, but what he had to worry about was not his tail, but his life.
Except for the elder, all the other Hoyo tribe members had become prey to the monsters. Now, he was the only Hoyo tribe member from the fox den.
Even that one might disappear soon.
The two men led by the limping elder. They passed through the empty village and stopped at a corner. As the elder chanted a spell, the ground shook and a hidden underground staircase appeared.
A dark basement where you can’t see even an inch ahead. It’s been left unattended for so long that the air is stuffy and the smell is musty.
Lin continued to advance, lighting a single foxfire as a light.
A magic spell that is placed at every corner of the maze. If you do not lift the spell, you will suffer from hallucinations and rot underground for the rest of your life.
Only the elder knows how to remove the spell. It is no exaggeration to say that the elder is alive thanks to it.
We had been walking down the hallway for about 30 minutes. While Karami was humming a tune while carrying her luggage on her back, Lin’s pupils began to shake slightly as they went deeper.
I felt something inside me pulling me like a magnet.
The group that had been walking like that finally reached their destination. When they put fox lights in the lanterns installed here and there, they started to burn brightly and pushed away the darkness.
What was revealed was literally a small shrine.
Stone foundation.
A statue in the shape of a fox.
Behind the altar was a mural depicting a large fox, waving its nine tails in a majestic manner, as if connecting heaven and earth.
But what caught Lin’s attention more than anything else was the golden fox bead placed on the altar. It shone with a splendid sunlight in the dust-covered shrine.
The elder said.
“This is the sacred place of our fox clan. It is a shrine built by our ancestors who were imprisoned in Baekungok.”
In a time when the nine-tailed fox was not just a monster but was revered as a god of the tribe, the Hoyo tribe of that time built this shrine to honor their god.
The orange fox bead is a collection of fragments of the sealed nine-tailed fox’s power. It was also the reason why monsters who feared the nine-tailed fox’s power could not enter the fox’s den.
Of course, as time passed and the history of the gumiho was erased, the existence of the shrine was also forgotten.
Karami touches the fox bead out of curiosity.
Hurrah!
“Hey, Mr. ”
The fox bead lit a fire.
Karami flinched and pulled his hand away.
“You’d better not touch it rashly. I won’t allow you to approach unless you’re a gumiho.”
“So how did you get here?”
“That’s….”
There is no record of it.
Did you have a group chat?
Or maybe they moved it using a machine?
The fox elder, who had been thinking seriously for a moment, came to his senses and said, “Huh!”.
“That doesn’t matter. The moment the gumiho takes this, I’ll start to seriously suppress the gumiho.”
“Rin, you heard? This is all you need.”
“Yeah. I heard you right.”
“When did you say something like that! I told you that you wouldn’t be safe either? It would be better to be content with the present and live in hiding… .”
“That’s not what I want. As a master, I want my slave to be completely liberated.”
To do that, you must take the fox bead and inherit the power of the nine-tailed fox.
“It’s not something you can have if you want it. If you don’t pass the nine-tailed fox’s ordeal, you’ll be eaten.”
“If you were going to back down now, you shouldn’t have come in the first place. Lin?”
“Yeah.”
Lin slowly approached the fox bead and took a deep breath. Feeling as if fate was calling her, Lin carefully placed her hand on the bead.
That moment.
Hwaaak!
A fierce flame surged up and engulfed Lin. Lin’s body was still in the shrine, but her spirit flowed away somewhere like a stream.
The place where the spirit that flowed down the water arrived was pitch-black darkness.
Lin looked down at her body. He felt it with his hand. It was a vague feeling, like he was standing on the border between reality and the virtual.
‘What should I do here?’
There is only darkness with nothing in it.
What kind of trials will appear?
As I tilted my head, the darkness was filled with color. What appeared was a familiar fox den. However, the Hoyo tribe that had clearly been killed were walking around brazenly.
Lin frowned sharply and immediately lit a foxfire, but it disappeared without causing any damage. It was as if it wasn’t real.
Could this be a trap?
Did the crooked fox deceive you?
But the power of the fox bead was real.
Looking back now, the fox den was subtly different from Rin’s memories. The layout and shape of the buildings, and even the Hoyos wandering around the fox den.
I had a feeling of foreboding, but I don’t remember exactly.
As Lin furrowed her brow in frustration at the unresolved question, a commotion was heard.
“Guys. Didn’t Mom tell you not to play with Tuesday?”
A mother fox taking her young foxes with her.
As if tearing something away.
That something was Lin herself.
However, this was not the current Rin, but rather she was wearing rags, had no shoes, was covered in bruises all over her body, and had only one tail. This was the Rin when she was young.
No. It’s only been a few months since Lin grew this much, but that wasn’t a recent Ilmiho, it was a Ilmiho from a very long time ago.
Thinking about it that way, I understood the awkward feeling of being stabbed in the brain with a needle. This place was a fox den from the past.
Lin could roughly guess what the ordeal was about.
Liberation from the past.
That was the ordeal the gumiho gave me.
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