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Chapter 4

Act 2: Wailing-Infant Dragon Steed (1)

Six years later.

Spring.

By the time the seasons had turned over six times, the Ghost Temple had undergone quite a few changes.

Most of the ghostkin boys were nearing adulthood now, and with the breeding season that rolled around once every ten years, a fresh batch of baby ghostkin had been born, bursting with life and bringing the joy of new life to the temple.

In the middle of all that, Yise had gotten caught completely blindsided by the ghostkin’s breeding season, and the shock of it had caused a minor uproar for a while. Looking back on it afterward, he admitted it had been more shocking than the first time he’d ever laid eyes on a demon.

The ghostkin boys around Yise’s age hadn’t been old enough to take part themselves, but witnessing the ghostkin’s breeding ritual had been more than enough to wake something up in them. Without even realizing it, the way they looked at Gong-ah had also changed.

Unfortunately for them, Gong-ah was too busy falling after Yise to notice any of it.

“Gong-ah.”

“Hen?”

“You are distracting me.”

“Excuse me? That’s so mean! You are supposed to be resting!”

“Resting property is part of training too. Besides, my break’s almost over anyway.”

Gong-ah shot him a glare and took a step back.

“Oh, just because you hit a little growth spurt, you think you can mouth off to your big Sis—”

Yise shot to his feet. As far as he was concerned, his training and resting schedules were the law, and it was time to get back to work.

But the moment he rose to his full height, Gong-ah was forced to crane her neck just to meet his gaze, making her click her tongue and bite her lip in annoyance.

Over the past six years, Yise has really grown a lot. Even considering the fact that humans matured twice as fast as ghostkin, he was so tall and well-built that one could easily mistake him for a fully grown man. And he hadn’t even come of age yet, still smack in the middle of his teens.

No. Wait.

—Considering the downright unholy amount of food he inhaled daily, maybe getting this big was completely natural?

Sometimes Gong-ah wondered if Yise was secretly some kind of starving ghost in disguise.

The thought was enough to make her tilt her head and look at him.

“You used to be so sweet and polite when you first got here, you know.”

“Well, doesn’t that just mean I get more comfortable around you?”

“Ugh, you’ve just turned into a smooth talker.”

Yise answered her complaint with a light laugh.

Fulfighter, Gong-ah swatted on the chest and told him to stop smiling at her like he was trying to charm his way out of it.

“Hey! Yise!”

From across the training grounds, three ghostkin boys who’d been sneaking glances their way came swaggering over.

The boys were still jealous that Yise had Dong-ah’s favor to all himself, but the four of them had actually gotten pretty close over the years. All those sparring matches during Mong Ryeon’s lessons had a lot to do with that.

As the saying goes, kids bond by fighting, and after getting beaten by Yise more times than they’d cared to admit during sparring, the once cocky boys had toned down considerably.

After that, Mong Ryeon had practically forced Yise to do some socializing with boys of his age as homework, which led to him joining the boys in building a secret base and cementing their friendship.

Above all else, six years was more than enough time for any lingering bad blood to evolve into genuine affection.

They still acted sullen and prickly on the outside, but Yise could easily read the warmth and brotherhood hidden underneath.

Leading the pack was Gong b-chwi, a ghostkin sporting a single horn on the left side of his head. He was the eldest of the teenage group and treated Yise as his ultimate rival due to their similar size and Yise’s monopoly on Gong-ah’s attention.

Trailing behind him was Gong Gwae-ji, a ghostkin whose horn hasn’t fully grown yet. He was a curious little oaf who loves tagging along after the older boys.

Catching a subtle nod from Gong Gwae-ji, Gong-ah Oee Geol immediately started shooing Gong-ah away with his hands.

“Hey, Gong-ah. Go on.”

“Excuse me? Why should I?”

“Oh, please. You’re all just looking for an excuse to annoy Yise again, aren’t you?”

Realizing this was his golden ticket out, Yise be casually chimed in, “To be fair, Gong-ah, you are distracting me, so you should probably just head back inside.”

Lips puffed in a pout, Gong-ah stomped off while grumbling the whole way.

Gong-il chatted watched her go with obvious regret written all over his face, then shook his head and spoke. “Brother Gwae Cheon went down to the village earlier, and apparently spotted a Low-Grade Demon nearby.”

“What?!”

Yise’s head snapped up, and he stared straight at Gong B-Chwi. The appearance of a demon was one of the few things that genuinely held his interest.

“Aren’t you supposed to take the entrance exam for the Great Martial Path this year? Might as well get some demon-hunting experience under your belt before then. What do you say?”

“Let’s go hunt it together.”

“It’ll be fun, right!”

The three ghostkin boys chimed in one after another, like they were taking turns singing the same song.

Ghostkin weren’t allowed to hunt Demon until they came of age. But after nearly forty years of nothing but training, it was no wonder they were itching to get out and do something. Especially for a race like the Ghostkin, who got curious over even the smallest things, it was completely understandable.

“What kind of Demon is it, anyway?”

“No idea, exactly. Apparently, it makes sound like a crying kid. Probably a Ghost Infant.”

A Ghost Infant.

A Low-Grade Demon, ranked Danger Level Nine, the very bottom of the barrel even among Low-Grade Demons. In fact, it was so weak that even a regular mortal with no ability to handle Spirit Qi could take it down with just a little training.

“Anything else?”

“Nope.”

“Then count me out.”

Of course, he had never intended to join them in the first place.

He was definitely feeling the itch for real-world combat experience too, but he was worried about deliberately going against the adults’ rules and ending up in some kind of dangerous mess.

“What, you scared?”

“Pretty much. Don’t go doing anything risky. You’re not far off from coming of age anyway. You’ll be sick of running into these things soon enough, so why rush it?”

“Oh, get it. If no matter how good you are with a weapon, you are still a human after all. It makes sense for you to be scared. But Yise, Ghostkin like us have been hunting Low-Grade Demon with our eyes closed since we were little.”

“Great. When you come of age, you can open your eyes and catch a whole bunch of them.”

“You… coward. If you really that scared, we’ll just go without you.”

“If you go do something reckless, I’ll telling Master right away.”

“Tch, you’re such a snitch!”

The three ghostkin boys huffed and stomped off.

Funny how they were always at each other’s throats normally, but the moment they wanted to cause trouble, they suddenly couldn’t wait to drag him along.

“Slow down and eat proper, dear.”

As usual, Yise was demolishing his food like a starving animal. To him, mealtimes was nothing more than less than a chance to refuel. But when it came to quantity, he packed in as much as he possibly could. As long as there was still all room in his stomach, cramming in just one more grain of rice was practically his personal code.

The adult Ghostkin always praised him for his healthy appetite, but to Yise, this was less about enjoyment and more like another form of training.

“Why do you always yowl your food down like that? You’re gonna get a stomachache.”

Yise swallowed his mouthful, chased it down with water, and answered.

“Thanks for the concern, but I’ve never gotten a stomachache from it.”

“I swear, your stubbornness is incurable. Ghostkin are supposed to be the most pigheaded creatures alive, but you somehow put us all to shame.”

“My apologies. By the way, where are the kids?”

He hadn’t ever asked them to, but at some point over the years, the boys had just started gluing themselves to his side during meal times. Not seeing them in their usual spots made him tilt his head.

“Gong-ah went to bring lunch boxes to the sentries. As for the rest of them, I’m not sure. Maybe they tagged along?”

“Those three aren’t exactly the type to do chores out of the goodness of their hearts.”

Yise scraped up the last of his mixed grains and got to his feet.

“What about Master?”

“Didn’t you know? Today’s the territory’s regular patrol.”

A bad feeling shot up his spine in an instant.

The territory’s regular patrol.

A periodic ritual where most of the Ghost Temple’s combat forces went out together to sweep the entirety of the Ghostkin’s vast territory. The patrol ranged out far and lasted all the way through the night until dawn.

In other words, it was the perfect window for the boys to get into trouble.

“Ma’am, could you send a message to my Master for me? Because I’m almost positive the boys just snuck out to do something incredibly stupid.”

“What did you say?”

Yise quickly explained what had happened earlier that day, then bolted out of the kitchen.

This was bad. Really bad.

There had been plenty of times when the adolescent Ghostkin had caused trouble, but it was usually stuff like startling the adults, breaking some relic they’d been messing around with, or getting hurt sparring with each other. Nothing on the scale of what was happening now.

If it really was just a Ghost Infant, Yise could probably handle it on his own.

But information as vague as crying like a baby didn’t help pinoint what kind of demon that is.

If someone asked him to listen to them right now, he could rattle off well over a dozen without even thinking.

“Sir Gwae Cheon!”

Yise ran toward the main hall and immediately confronted Gwae Cheon, the source of the whole mess.

“When you got back from the village today, did you say anything to the kids about a Ghost Infant?”

“A Ghost Infant? What are you talking about?”

Just as he suspected.

The adults would never go out of their way to share that something exciting with the boys. What must have actually happened was that Gwae Cheon had been briefing the other guards on the intel he gathered from the village, and the boys had eavesdropped while jumping to the wrong conclusion.

“Damn it, those little brats… We need to find them, now.”

And of all days for them to cause trouble, it had to be the day when most of the adult combatants are away for the patrol.

How are three people supposed to search this entire vast plateau?

“I’ll help too.”

Gwae Cheon looked at him for a moment, then nodded like he didn’t have much choice in the matter.

He handed Yise a bundle of keys.

“Before you head out past the border, stop by the Ghost Treasure Pavilion and grab a signal flare. You remember how to use them, right? If you spot the kids or the Demon, fire one off immediately. Do not try to play the hero and fight it yourself.”

“Understood. Would you mind if I grabbed some defensive gear while I’m in there, too?”

Gwae Cheon seemed to think it over for a moment, but quickly gave his approval. There were plenty of valuable items kept in the treasury, but given everything he’d seen of Yise’s character, he doubted the boy would touch anything beyond what he actually needed.

“Alright. I’ll report it to the chief later. Just stick to things you actually know how to use. There’s plenty of dangerous stuff in there too.”

“Understood.”

As Gwae Cheon blasted off toward the gates like an arrow, Yise headed straight for the treasury.

First, he tucked his signal flares into his clothes. Then he found himself hesitating in front of a golden wooden box deep in the back of the treasury, the one holding the medicinal pills inside.

These were supposedly an incredibly rare kind of silk. It was really okay for him to take them without permission?

After mulling it over, Yise pocketed both of the only two pills there were.

Now it was time to grab some gear.

“What should I take…”

He didn’t even know what he was up to against with. There was only one clue.

The sound of a crying baby.

Instantly, over a dozen different kinds of Demon came to mind.

He crossed off the Lowest-Grade ones first. Those tended to instinctively steer clear of Ghostkin territory.

That narrowed it down to nine species.

Next, he filtered out the ones whose natural spawning grounds were on the opposite side of the continent.

That left with four possible targets.

From there, he immediately eliminated the High-Grade Demon from those. If it turned out to be High-Grade, there was nothing he could do no matter what he tried. And if things had gotten that bad, every Ghostkin in the temple except Mong Ryeon would already be wiped out. That aside, Mong Ryeon would have immediately rushed out to tear it to pieces the moment it appeared within the Ghost territory.

Ultimately, only two Mid-Grade demons remained.

Facing either head-on was a dizzying prospect, but Yise steel himself and shifted five Ghost Treasures into his clothes.

With every preparation could think of in place, he took off running toward the Red Marsh, the outer boundary of the Ghost Temple’s territory.

Meanwhile, the three Ghostkin boys raced blindly among the mountain trail as the sunset slowly faded.

Their red eyes burned bright against the dimming surroundings. They might’ve looked like a bunch of innocent kids most of the time, but they still were Dokkaebi. Wherever the three of them passed, insects and birds sensed the ominous aura and scattered into the air with a flurry of wingbeats.

The corners of Gong B-chwi’s mouth curled upward.

It felt almost like he’d become the Mountain Lord himself, the apex predator that ruled over these mountains.

His heart sounded with excitement.

His very first Demon hunt.

Just thinking about the hunt made his blood boil and his fighting spirit blaze. He’d take down whatever Low-Grade Demon had the nerve to set foot anywhere near Ghostkin territory and swallow its demon core to finally surpass Yise.

Yise was a good guy and all, but losing to a mere human had quietly chipped away at his pride more than he wanted to admit.

“Hey, where are hiding, you big guy?”

But no matter how long they wandered, there wasn’t a single trace of the Ghost Infant anywhere.

The excitement that had set their bodies buzzing while they combth the sprawling mountain range was just about ready to die out.

The sun was setting, too.

By now, someone back home had probably noticed they were missing.

“Looks like we’ve only got a couple of hours left. Let’s sweep the area one more time and head back.”

“Aww, goin back empty-handed would be such a waste, though.”

The ghostkin boys smacked their lips in disappointment.

They didn’t know how much time had passed since their sweeping began. Just as they were starting to think about giving up, the sound they’d been hoping for finally reached their ears.

Waaah! Ahaah!

The unmistakable wail of a crying human infant echoes through the mountains at dusk.

“Get ready. Let’s move.”

Gong Ii-chae bared his teeth and tightened his grip on the cub in his hand. Then he kicked off the ground, charging toward the source of the sound.

Any second now, the Ghost Infant would show itself, and his cub would crack its skull open for good.

“No hard feelings. Don’t hold this against me.”

Tearing through the last line of thick brush, they burst into an open clearing and spotted the Demon crouched in the dirt.

“???”

The instant the Demon rose to its feet, all three Ghostkin boys instinctively sensed that something was very wrong.

Squelch—!

The sound of slicing echoed, followed by a scream filled with pain.