Honbul: Flame of the Soul

“I don’t know what exactly is going on between you two, but get a grip. Think this through. Gifted are everywhere. You can always find another successor candidate. But not another ginseng child. This is not the time for this.”

Lee Youngshin’s sharp rebuke had barely finished ringing out when Jaegyeom, still standing exactly where he was, pulled something from the pocket of his uniform pants.

It was the old silver dagger he had once used to make a talisman.

Youngshin flinched and turned toward him.

He had a weapon?

The rusted sheath came away, revealing a sinister gleam of steel.

Jaegyeom spread one arm wide, then, without a trace of hesitation, slid the blade under the cuff at his wrist.

Mesan’s eyes flew wide.

“M-my lord, no! Don’t—please don’t!”

But Jaegyeom did not stop.

The sharp blade sliced through the uniform sleeve wrapped around his arm in an instant.

When his bare arm was laid open from wrist to shoulder, Jaegyeom brought the silver dagger back to the wrist where he had first touched the blade.

He drove it in about an inch, then drew a straight line up the inside of his arm all the way to the shoulder.

The Naja sucked in a breath at the ghastly sight.

“What the hell. H-he’s insane...”

They had thought he meant to throw the knife.

Or else cut the rope bound around his ankles.

Instead, the boy was carving into his own body.

From a little way off, Yoon Taehee frowned faintly.

Mesan, who had understood at once what Jaegyeom was trying to do, broke into loud, helpless sobs.

“Please don’t, ngh—my lord, please, no...”

A deep slash now ran the length of the boy’s clean, pale arm from wrist to shoulder, deep enough to expose the flesh beneath.

Far more blood poured out than when he had taken the direct hit from the Submergence Cell.

Dangerously more.

It was the kind of wound that made pain flare in your own skin just from looking at it.

Without hesitation, Jaegyeom raised his other hand.

Then, gritting his teeth, he dug his fingers into the wound in his arm.

As if he were searching for something.

Everyone stared at him with their mouths hanging open.

“A bone. D-did he just pull out a bone?”

Lead Naja Park’s face had gone chalk-white.

What Jaegyeom drew from the length of his arm was a long rod, nearly the exact same length as the slash.

Pulled from blood and flesh, it was naturally drenched in blood.

Jaegyeom lifted the long rod and gave it a light swing.

It was far too slender to call a bone.

And it had a strange, springy give to it.

“It’s not exactly fair if I’m the only one fighting barehanded.”

Originally, he had planned to beat them to death one by one with his bare hands.

But now he was nailed in place.

There was no way to get close to the Naja.

On top of that, they kept pulling shallow little tricks with strange tools he didn’t even understand.

For a while now, it had felt as though his ghostly force were being blocked off.

Every time he tried to let it out, something seemed to suck it away whole.

It was probably the rope around his feet.

It had been a very long time since he had taken this thing out.

Just feeling it in his hand made his heart pound.

Jaegyeom ran his gaze slowly along the rod, then finally looked back at the Naja.

Gripping the exact center of it, he extended his arm straight into the air.

The glitter in his eyes was so chilling it no longer looked humanly sane.

“If I can’t get close,”

Jaegyeom pulled at empty air with his injured arm.

At once, both ends of the long rod bent in a smooth curve, and something blood-red took shape where a moment ago there had been nothing.

Yoon Taehee’s eyes widened.

“Then I’ll just shoot.”

Jaegyeom drew the string tight to his chin.

“...A bow?”

What the boy had pulled from his arm was the bow stave.

*****

As the boy mimed drawing a string through empty air, the bright blood running from his arm began taking shape in an instant.

Before anyone could blink, a single arrow stained red with blood had formed.

“...A bow?”

The sight of the boy standing there soaked in blood, holding a bow, was pure horror.

He pulled the string back with all his strength.

Blood streamed from his injured arm, but he did not care.

The terrible eyes fixed on the Naja were as sharp and merciless as the arrowhead.

It was a clean counterattack.

The Naja from the Ritual Implements Department had frozen solid.

Before they even understood what was happening, they were already stumbling backward.

While the panicked Naja floundered, neither able to flee nor hide, the boy released the string.

“Ghk!”

One of them went down at once, an arrow buried in the shoulder.

A moment later, the Naja writhed and screamed in agony—

then suddenly fell still.

The pain had knocked them unconscious.

The boy loosed another arrow immediately.

Thrown into chaos, Lee Youngshin slashed a hand through the air.

He meant to raise a gust of ghostly force and knock the arrow aside.

But the arrow never wavered.

It split straight through its chosen path.

Youngshin twisted away a moment too late.

“Ugh!”

The arrow barely grazed his arm.

If he had been even a little slower, it would have gone clean through him.

Youngshin’s face twisted.

Clutching the wounded arm, he dashed behind a tree.

There was no time even to catch his breath before another arrow came flying.

Even as the mountain darkened minute by minute, the young archer saw cleanly through the growing dark.

He never lost the trace of his prey.

“Lead Naja Park!”

This time it was Lead Naja Park’s thigh.

Park collapsed on the spot.

A wound to the leg should not have been fatal.

But Park, just like the Naja before, foamed at the mouth and thrashed all four limbs wildly—

then lost consciousness.

With flat, emotionless eyes, Jaegyeom tracked every living presence around him.

That made three rats left.

One of the Ritual Implements Department Naja had already darted behind a tree after Lee Youngshin.

But Yoon Taehee alone, for whatever reason, was still standing exactly where he had been, still inside the killing range.

The blood-soaked arrow leveled itself precisely at the mask on Taehee’s face.

A vicious sound tore through the air.

Taehee, who had paused, flicked his hand.

A gust of wind mixed with ghostly force ripped through the mountain.

This time, the arrow veered off course and drove itself into a tree.

From behind the tree, Lee Youngshin’s eyes flew open wide as a rabbit’s.

When I tried it, it didn’t work!

Instantly aggrieved, Youngshin shouted,

“Hey! If you could block it, why the hell were you standing around till now?!”

Silent until then, Taehee lifted a hand lazily and gave a short reply.

“Didn’t know. Sorry.”

It was an apology so perfunctory it carried not a shred of remorse.

Youngshin bit down hard on whatever he had been about to say next.

The flesh the arrow had grazed was starting to burn as though it were being seared away.

Having smoothed it over well enough, Taehee turned his head and looked at the arrow embedded in the tree.

The bow the boy had cut from his own arm had looked extraordinary at a glance.

But those arrows born from blood—what in the world were they, that everyone was being so helpless against them...?

Taehee’s eyes, fixed on the arrow, slowly widened.

“It’s blighted...”

The wood around the point where the arrow had lodged was turning black.

Among the Naja, that was a common enough phrase.

It happened often enough too.

Ordinarily there would have been no reason to be surprised.

But Yoon Taehee looked badly shaken.

He was staring at the boy aiming the bow, disbelief plain on his face, when a figure suddenly burst into view before him.

It was the low-ranking Naja from the Ritual Implements Department who had been taking cover behind the tree to avoid the arrows.

Once Taehee had blocked Jaegyeom’s shot, the Naja must have trusted the opening and jumped out.

Probably with the thought of pulling the arrows from the others and giving emergency aid.

The instant a hand reached for the shaft—

“Wait. If you touch that—!”

Taehee turned his head and spoke.

But he was a beat too late.

The moment the Naja grabbed the shaft, the low-ranking Naja’s face contorted.

Then, all at once, they clutched their wrist and began to writhe.

“Aaaagh!”

The palm that had touched the shaft began blackening as though it had been scorched by fire.

The Naja’s eyes rolled back as a scream tore out—

and then the body went limp.

Watching from behind the tree, Lee Youngshin stared in the exact same shock Taehee had shown a moment earlier.

“How can it inflict blight? That’s impossible...”

Youngshin repeated it with a face gone deathly pale.

For something to be blighted meant backlash had set in.

People often described it as having taken on contamination, but backlash belonged to the realm of divine punishment—

something that happened when careless hands were laid on spiritually potent natural things, or when a spirit was provoked into wrath.

Human hands could cleanse away contamination and purify it.

But no matter how strong someone’s ghostly force was, causing blight was impossible. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

“Ha. Well, this is bad. Fuck...”

Leaning against the tree, Lee Youngshin let out a hollow laugh and slid down into a crouch.

His face was already slick with cold sweat.

The pain in the arm grazed by the arrow had been ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) worsening by the second, and he had known something was wrong.

Only now did he understand.

The agony of burning flesh was spreading through him until he could barely hold his body upright.

They should never have bound his feet in the first place.

That bow was beyond anything human.

A weapon like that was cheating.

The one whose feet were tied was the boy, and yet absurdly enough, they were the ones who could no longer move.

Even while his subordinates collapsed one after another, he could not even go to them.

At first he had thought tying the boy’s feet would be enough.

But now he could not bring himself to face that nameless thing wearing the shape of a boy.

No.

He was afraid of it.

Lee Youngshin groaned and squeezed his eyes shut.

Even so, he could not abandon the little master like this.

“Is that human? Is that really human?!”

They could not beat the boy by force.

While Yoon Taehee stood out front drawing the attention like that, they had to find an answer.

Youngshin pictured the ritual implements inside the hip pack at his waist.

If he ran through each object’s function and use, a way out was bound to appear.

In the end, it always came down to ritual implements.

Ritual implements were the only things they could rely on.

“Where did you get that bow?”

Yoon Taehee asked in a low voice from behind the mask.

But Jaegyeom gave no answer.

With that same horrifying expression, he only drew the string again.

As another arrow began taking shape from the blood spilling down—

“My lord, please stop now...”

Mesan’s voice broke into sobs.

“If you lose any more blood—if you bleed any more than this, it’ll be dangerous. You’ve already lost too much. Please... please, you know that...!”

At Mesan’s pleading, Jaegyeom’s hand faltered for the first time.