Chapter 73
"I missed it."
He picked up a dead rat from a corner of the back alley and carved a pattern on it with his fingernail. Then he levitated it and threw it towards the mirror fragments that were flipping him off.
Bang!
The rat caused a small explosion upon touching the fragments, turning all the mirror fragments into powder. However, one fragment at the center didn't turn to powder and maintained its original shape, looking like a hexagon roughly sanded with sandpaper.
Strangely, the hexagonal mirror piece didn't reflect light even in sunlight, but rather greedily absorbed it. Yet despite absorbing light, it still reflected the scenery, making it clearly an unusual object to anyone who saw it.
Annwn's boundary sorcery. Specifically, a Tylwyth Teg pass.
Jinseong clicked his tongue, tsk, looking at the mirror piece.
Annwn's boundary sorcery was a branch of Celtic sorcery mainly used in Europe, primarily by sorcerers in Wales. It used 'mirrors' as a sorcerous medium to create ambiguous boundaries, and those who were skilled in its use were said to be able to escape from any situation.
The general method of use was to throw oneself into a mirror to escape, as the fortune-teller just did, but if used by a sorcerer who reached a high level, they could even use someone else's pupils as a mirror to escape.
Jinseong stared intently at the floating mirror piece and then quietly closed his eyes.
Then he recalled the pattern he had seen through the insects yesterday.
The pattern that the 'cleaned' insects had sent to him along with their death.
A bizarre shape like a distorted whale swimming.
It had a form that seemed to float in the air, shaking eyeballs swirling in all directions, with celestial bodies becoming swirling eyeballs and halos forming lines and planes to create a twisted body.
A pattern that couldn't be easily noticed from a human's eye level, and could only be seen when looking up from a low place.
The pattern of Crom Cruach's human sacrifice altar.
* * *
"Sigh- I don't know where it went wrong?"
In an abandoned bunker in the Russian wilderness.
A bearded man popped out of the mirror in the innermost part of the bunker.
It was the fortune-teller who had fled from Jinseong's attack.
He glanced around the bunker, full of mold and thick dust, then sighed and quietly looked at the mirror he had popped out from.
Although there was no chance of an image forming in the mirror in the depths of the bunker where not a speck of light entered, the mirror he was facing showed a clear shape that anyone would recognize as a human silhouette. Moreover, as if to prove that it was his reflection in the mirror, it followed the man's actions exactly, rolling its eyes here and there.
"Just my luck to meet some monster bastard. Damn it."
The reflection in the mirror cursed.
Instead of moving its mouth to mimic the man's actions, it moved its mouth independently and voiced words. And this from a mere shadow reflected in a mirror.
"Did he notice? What do you think? Hm? What do you think?"
The man outside the mirror, using a feminine speech pattern, asked the shadow.
The shadow pondered for a moment and then said:
"There are two possibilities."
The fortune-teller stroked his beard, pondering the shadow's words.
"Hmm. Two?"
"Yes."
"One is that he figured out what we were trying to do. And the other is wha-at?"
The shadow smirked at his feigned ignorance and said:
"What else. It's just that the bastard was a monster."
"Oh my?"
"Have you ever seen a monster weighing this and that before attacking? If it looks tasty, they just pounce."
"Oh my, tasty, you say. Such words are embarrassing."
The fortune-teller's face, contrary to his words about being embarrassed, was filled with killing intent.
"But I don’t quite like it. Hm? I don’t like it."
"Ha, you think I'm fine with it? We got beaten one-sidedly, I'm in a bad mood too!"
"It's not like we're doing anything bad, we're just trying to do some good, and we get treated like this!"
Bang!
He kicked a piece of junk lying around in the bunker as if bursting with anger.
"Don't you agree? We're just trying to bestow a blessing on his younger sister, and this is how we're treated?"
"Can't be helped if the guardian doesn't like it. Damn it."
"If we sacrifice one worthless girl, good things will happen to both pretty ones! It's not often we get a chance to accumulate so much good karma!"
The fortune-teller tore at his hair as if bursting with anger.
With a ripping sound, clumps of long hair were pulled out and blood began to trickle down his head, but the fortune-teller, seemingly unaware of the pain, continued to fume angrily until he turned his head at the ticklish sensation brushing against his cheek.
He calmed down when he saw his reflection in the mirror reaching out an arm to caress his face.
"Let's calm down and organize our thoughts."
"Organize?"
"First, let's establish one premise. We can't give up this opportunity. Right?"
"That's... right. But it won't be easy with that monster around, will it?"
The fortune-teller recalled what he had just experienced.
The nightmarish battle where swarms of evil spirits attacked.
Where did he gather so many evil spirits that were rarely seen?
Evil spirits with all sorts of terrible appearances rushed in like hungry ghosts before food, and their momentum was so great that even the fortune-teller, who had experienced all sorts of things, was taken aback.
Moreover, the sorcerer sending the evil spirits was nowhere to be seen.
He just sent evil spirits from an unseen place, strengthened them, and continuously tormented him, without revealing himself or taking any direct action.
Thanks to this, he had no choice but to flee after being beaten one-sidedly.
"That's right, it won't be easy. But you know what? Are we going to give up because of that?"
"Oh my. What are you saying?"
When you did good deeds, you accumulated good karma.
In Celtic sorcery, it was said that the path a person walked in life became a record, and when records accumulated, they gained meaning in themselves, and as that meaning piled up, the influence one could have on the world increased.
A human who could exert meaningful influence on the world.
In Celtic tradition, this was called a 'hero'.
"How can we give up such a good opportunity? Are you crazy?"
"Of course not. What a great opportunity this is!"
Lee Arin and Ella, who appeared before him as he sought to become a hero, had truly been like gifts from heaven. A golden opportunity to greatly increase his good karma and approach the goal of becoming a hero in one go.
It was ironic that the method was human sacrifice, but...
What did that matter?
If sacrificing one person benefitted two people…
Wasn't that a good deed, a righteous act?
"Let's look for an opportunity, an opportunity."
"It's good if we can get both. Even if we can't get both..."
"It seems difficult to target that bastard's sister, but couldn't we somehow manage with the remaining one?"
"Oh my, of course if we're going to target someone, we should target those girls."
"That's right! It's an act of accumulating good karma through saving lives, so it should take priority over enlightenment!"
The two came to a conclusion while facing each other.
Both if possible.
If they had to choose one, the Rabbit.
"Alright. Let's look for an opportunity."
The fortune-teller recalled his top priority.
Long hair as white as snow.
Eyes redder than the blood shed by the first child placed on the altar.
Skin whiter than white clouds floating on a drought day.
A chest slightly swollen, bearing traces of her sisters.
"We'll need a lot of materials."
The fortune-teller smiled a twisted smile, thinking of the white witch.
* * *
The first thing Jinseong did upon returning to the hotel was to visit Lee Arin and Lee Serin's room. He entered the room without hesitation, made the two who were playing on the bed sit up straight, and sat down opposite them.
Then he drew a bizarre shape on a piece of paper and showed it to them.
"Do you know this pattern?"
That pattern was quite peculiar.
No, it might be more correct to describe it as bizarre.
With swirling eyeballs, it looked like a primitive person's imagination of a whale, or a representation of a severely distorted monster from the deep sea. At a glance, it could be mistaken for a child's scribble, or something cultish that had briefly trended and then disappeared.
"Brother. What are you saying all of a sudden?"
Lee Arin looked at him strangely.
It was too sudden.
He suddenly barged into the room and drew a strange picture.
Then he showed it and asked what it was.
"What's going on? And what is this picture?"
Judging by his serious face, it didn't seem to be a simple quiz, but it was a picture she had never seen before no matter how she looked at it.
However, Lee Serin, sitting next to Lee Arin, seemed to recognize it, perhaps with a hint from her demon.
"C-Crom Dubh?"
Jinseong nodded at those words.
"That's right. Crom Dubh. Or the symbol of what is also called Crom Cruach."
He handed the paper with the drawing to Lee Serin and said:
"From now on, you must find cursed objects engraved with this."
Lee Serin looked at him, bewildered.
Her face was full of questions about why she had to do this.
"U-um?"
Perhaps to answer her questions, the demon whispered something in her ear.
At that, Lee Serin's eyes widened as if about to pop out, and her face filled with shock.
"H-human sacrifice?!"