With Heukma’s words, both Yellow Tiger and Red Tiger formed a sharp glint in their eyes.
It’s impossible to use sensing or insight skills to detect the Demon Race’s Eye, and only a few people of royal lineage can actually detect it on their own.
For now, the only way to block the Eye is either to protect an area with a boundary or to block communication and satellite signal reception.
As the current situation is still quite blurry, the tigers couldn’t help but be wary even though they do not yet completely understand what Heukma was saying.
‘…They can transmit the Eye?’
The fact that the priest, who was then overpowered by the Spiritual Word skill, tried to collect energy wave in his eyes at the very last moment bothered Yellow Tiger.
The Yellow Tiger, who has fought many wars and overpowered countless enemies, has seen such prisoners who did that very thing.
The Yellow Tiger verbalized his doubts.
“What does transmitting the Eye’ mean?”
“Oh, so it looks like you don’t know what that is.”
Heukma grinned and rose the teacup to her mouth.
As she gulped some tea, she seemed to be gauging the extent of what the Tiger Clan knows.
Although Heukma came to the middle of the tigers’ cave on her own, she doesn’t intend to be moving recklessly and giving out information hastily.
Instead of urging Heukma to give an answer, Yellow Tiger reheated the tea.
His gesture expresses that he has no intention of speaking again unless Heukma answers first.
Heukma, who stared at Yellow Tiger gracefully preparing the tea again, put down her teacup.
“After the worldly collisions, and even after the Horse Clan settled on the Korean Peninsula, our quarrel with the Demon Race has never halted. Fights that range from petty pranks to actions that tried to exterminate our Clan. Over the course of a hundred years, I have dealt with a lot of demons.”
Heukma was taking her time to ease into the topic.
Unlike Yellow Tiger, who listened calmly as he elegantly sipped his tea, Red Tiger had an anxious face as he stared at Heukma.
Heukma continued to speak.
“They don’t have any centrality, and they have a diverse background just like humans. But those demons have one thing in common.”
“Does it have something to do with the Eye?”
Red Tiger unknowingly opened his mouth to speak.
“What they have in common is that they are obsessed with ‘seeing’. It’s almost perverted. There are very few people who will follow the Demon Race just to see something. Perhaps things that they can’t see on their own using their own light skills.”
“I see. So that obsession led to the development of technology that can transmit the Eye.”
Heukma nodded at Yellow Tiger’s words.
With her head slightly lowered, Heukma began to speak again.
Her long black hair was now half-covering her face, so the tigers cannot see her facial expression anymore.
“Yes. There was a time when the Demon Race were lured into my territory, and I had them captured alive to prevent them from leaking the information that they’d discovered.”
Heukma calmly talked about what had happened in the past.
After dozens of raids, Heukma realized that the attacker’s Eye were observing her territory.
When the Demon Race realized that the boundaries in the territories of the 12 clans cannot stop their eye, they tricked the Horse Clan into taking them inside their territory, pretending to be the latter’s prisoners.
It was to dig up information that they couldn’t access before.
“But that was a mistake. We underestimated their obsession.”
It isn’t easy to capture and torture demons without the Spiritual Word skill.
The Demon Race’s priest resisted well, only giving a vicious smile as he refused to speak even as he was being tortured.
Shinsoo had to use his power to tie the feet of the Demon Race priest, and Heukma had to come forward and personally dangle the priest on the boundary between life and death.
As soon as the Horse Clan got a clue about their ability to transfer the Eye, the Demon Race attacked.
The Demon Race had successfully attacked all the weak spots of the Horse Clan’s territory.
All the information they needed has already been transferred.
“The priest built an altar. A shrine where they can worship the demon gods. As long as they’re alive, they can pray to the demon gods.”
“…And their prayers have something to do with transmitting the Eye.”
“Yes. They can transmit everything. Energy waves and mana accumulate in that makeshift altar where they pray to the demon gods, and in return, they’re given trust and blessings by their god. Everything that they see with their own eyes is transmitted to the altar.”
“Impossible…!”
The Red Tiger shouted in astonishment.
Their obsession with seeing was beyond imagination.
Yellow Tiger scorned the indecent obsession and reflected on what Heukma has narrated.
Yellow Tiger spoke right away.
“I will confirm this.”
“As expected of the mythical tiger. You’re very quick-witted.”
Heukma revealed the conditions for the demons to move the Eye.
He intends to visit the Avaritia’s Priest to check whether it’s true or not.
* * *
Light Skill Research Institute, Eungwang District.
In a basement area inaccessible to the outside.
Beyond the solid line between the head of the Tiger Clan and the chief sorcerer was an abyss.
Once dragged into the abyss, not even death is the merciful thing that one can experience.
The only time death is allowed in this abyss is when the person dies of old age.
However, unlike humans, people of royal lineage and their descendants do not die of old age, and so those beings that are imprisoned in this abyss are trapped in it forever.
Among those who were brought to this place to be punished for the crimes they had committed, only the Red Tiger came out alive.
Inside that abyss, the White Tiger was walking.
Grrr….!
“Calm down.”
Beside the White Tiger was a huge shadow.
It was Shinsoo in his true form.
Shinsoo growled several times, obviously not fond of the air in the abyss.
White Tiger had to occasionally raise his hand to stroke Shinsoo’s fur.
“Even if you don’t like the atmosphere down here, try to hold it in. I’ll take you for a walk after this.”
With that, Shinsoo tapped his nose on White Tiger’s shoulder and sighed, visibly dissatisfied.
He seemed to want to go for a walk outside right now.
Shinsoo did not hide his dissatisfaction and continued to give a low and thick cry, creepy enough for the Tiger Clan’s subordinate who stood on guard from afar.
Still, White Tiger comforted the giant Shinsoo as if he was soothing a child.
“Yellow Tiger has to deal with Heukma right now. We need your powers, so you need to come forward.”
Shinsoo cried as if convinced by White Tiger’s words, but he shook his tail in anticipation of something else.
Because of Shinsoo’s enormous size, his tail wagging seemed to be a very threatening weapon from afar.
“Alright. I won’t tell Jo Euishin.”
Woof…
Shinsoo gave a short bark as if he were acting cute.
The cute sound of when Shinsoo is in his small form didn’t come out, but White Tiger raised his hand and scratched Shinsoo’s neck just as he always does.
They continued to walk before stopping in front of a line visibly bound by three layers of the boundary.
It was the place where the Avaritia’s priest was sealed.
Over the boundary, the priest can be seen frozen, unmoving.
After fainting in the hands of Yellow Tiger at the Eungwang Stadium, the priest never opened his eyes.
“Wait here. If anything goes wrong, use your abilities and stop that man from moving.”
Grrrr!
After stroking Shinsoo once more, White Tiger crossed the line and the boundary and approached the Avaritia’s Priest.
White Tiger lifted the priest’s eyelids without hesitation.
White Tiger noticed that the priest’s eyeballs weren’t moving, and his pupils were barely visible.
His eyes looked mostly white.
Fwaaaa!
White Tiger gathered energy waves around his eyes and activated his glare skill.
White Tiger’s eyes quickly changed and he thoroughly examined the priest’s eye.
It wasn’t until the white energy wave completely filled White Tiger’s eyes did he see something.
White Tiger got up and immediately contacted Yellow Tiger.
“Yellow Tiger, this man has lost his eyesight.”
* * *
“…So everything that the Avaritia’s Priest saw is transmitted back to the demon world.”
“Exactly.”
I recalled what happened that day.
The Avaritia’s Priest clearly saw the light skill that I used.
I’m most concerned about the fact that he saw me use the Spiritual Word skill.
Among the people in Eungwang High, only Jegal and Gong Cheonghwon have that skill.
Those two aren’t aware of the fact that their light skill is the Demon Race’s weakness, so I guess there’s still a relatively low need to be wary.
However, since I used that skill that day, the priest clearly knows that I am aware that the Spiritual Word skill is their weakness.
On behalf of Hwang Jiho, I tied up the priest before he could attempt to kill himself.
‘From now on, the Demon Race will have that information available. They’ll actively target me and the Tiger Clan.’
Jegal and Gong Cheonghwon aren’t at high risk, but they’re teachers from Eungwang High, which is famously under the control of the Tiger Clan.
They may have to be vigilant too.
There was one more thing that bothered me.
I encountered that demon in my Jo Euishin appearance.
— Hello. I am Jo Euishin from Eungwang High’s newspaper department. Can I ask you to take a photo and film an interview with you?
I said that as I held out my ID.
‘I thought I was acting naturally. It seems like I revealed both my name and my face to the demon.’
I was bothered that the name Jo Euishin, my real face, and affiliation are now in the possession of the Demon Race.
They’ll surely target me.
Assuming that there’s very little clue to the existence of the person who knows that the Spiritual Word skill is the Demon Race’s weakness, the Demon Race might resort to trial and error – they might attempt to kill every person who did noticeable things during that day.
No, they might even target every human who came to the opening ceremony that day.
“Stop using that crow mask from now on.”
Hwang Jiho’s words stopped my thoughts.
I was a bit conflicted.
It’s because I know that the Demon Race’s Eye is expressed in various forms and that the Eye of Avaritia and the Eye of Sidelentium have slight differences.
They’re both ‘obsessed with seeing’ but it manifests differently between demons.
The Eye of Sidelentium, Demon King of Silence, is invoked through crows.
Not wearing a crow mask means I’m not letting him see anything from me.
‘I still need to keep wearing the crow mask.’
I didn’t answer Hwang Jiho.
With my silence, Hwang Jiho quickly clicked his tongue.
“It seems like you have no intention of not using that mask.”
“Yeah. I’ll use it until next year at least.”
“…Until next year? What’s the deal with next year? You intend to do that even though your life is at risk under the hands of the Demon Race?”
Hwang Jiho’s voice got more and more firm with every word.
Rather than until next year, I just need to use the crow mask until this year ends.
At the end of this year, the event that PMH users called the ‘collapse of the concrete layer’ will occur.
Of course, the official name of the scenario in the game was different.
“Yeah. I just need to use it until it snows.”
“What are you talking about?”
The scenario will occur in the midst of heavy snow, and snow will be covering the entire Eungwang High.
I thought this was the right time to tell Hwang Jiho about it.
“Pungbaek and Usa. Do you remember Unsa?”
(T/N: The names mentioned are part of Korean mythology. Pungbaek is the ruler of winds, Unsa is the ruler of clouds, and Usa is the ruler of rain.)
Three gods were mentioned in the Myth of Gaecheon.
It is said that those three, who voluntarily abandoned their power and went down from the heavens along with the Son of God, became weak.
While the Son of God ruled the Korean Peninsula, the three fought famine and flood alongside him and organized a ritual under a sacred tree.
“…I remember. There’s no way I will forget a dead comrade.”
Hwang Jiho looked flustered as if he had never imagined those three names being mentioned by me.
“Those three are alive. They’ll bring snow to Eungwang High this year, and… If we don’t take proper measures, Red Tiger and Yong Jegun will die. Countless players, regardless if they’re humans, royal lineage, or descendants, will die.”
