บท 11: Payment?

POV Gumiyeong

I rushed at the Lord's cleansers and attack the man in the middle. Clawing half of his face in half. Using a fire magic in my claws, his face started to melt.

5 wolf tails popped out of him as he landed on the ground screaming and rolling in pain, half of his face bloodied and melting. That was odd, back when I was younger they at least had 7 tails, close to 8.

One of the female Lord's cleansers backed up in fear, while the other simply accepted it. Was that bitch crazy?

The one who was calm spoke, "Hello! The Lord has been waiting for you to wake up! I am his strongest messenger and diviner! And I have come on this mission to meet you and your husband!"

What? The… The Lord had sent her here? For me? And Merlin? I growled, what was he trying to do?

She continues, "The Lord knows that you would be resistant to our meeting. But know this, he only means the best for the Youkai. You are the first 10 tailed Youkai in hundreds of years, 243 to be exact. Not to mention you are pregnant, which is incredibly hard for high tailed female Youkai. Your husband's seed must be very strong.

But that brings me to the reason I came here. Your strength in comparison to the rest of our race. The Lord is currently preoccupied, so our race has declined significantly. If I estimate correctly you are 393 years old. So you should have been around back in the Youkai's golden age.

Back in the golden age there should have been hundreds of nine tailed Youkai. Now, there is only one. That being myself."

Nine golden retriever tails extended from her back, matching her golden hair that extended to the middle of her back.

"I am by far the strongest in our race, the next strongest being barely 7 tails. And he is an outstanding individual. Only 10 6 tails, 34 5 tails abd the rest are to weak to even bother to count.

You may not know this but, only natural born Youkai such as yourself gain tails through age. Because they were born of nature, they may absorb nature. That is the true reason behind your race's extermination."

Her face remained stout, as if talking about the weather and not my race being hunted down to near extinction.

And believe me, it hurt to know that my people were hunted because of our potential. And about the Youkai liver eating? Although that was true, there was many, many unintelligent types of Youkai.

"And up until now, I was the leader of our race, besides The Lord, because of my strength. But you are much stronger than me. Not only because of your 10 tails but your innate magic potential rivaling the Mabeop Yuukai!" Her face turned reverent at the mention of The Lord's strength.

Me? Leader? In her wildest dreams. I would never lead such a vile race the exterminated my people daily.

The golden retriever saw this coming as before I even opened my mouth she already began to talk again. I think she was slightly social.

"And if not, could you give us some of the sperm of your husband? It will greatly help the Youkai race deal with the current threat."

My mouth hung wide open, unable to comprehend the audacity of this bitch. Clearly she could predict things, just not good enough to save her from my,

"Wind Magic: Forcefull transfer: model air ball"

A ball of wind shot out at high speeds, encasing The Lord's messenger in it. The outer shell of the air bubble hardened and went through a magic circle in the air, propelling it into the horizon. I turned to the other two Youkais. The other female was crawling away whilst the wolf man was still rolling on the floor.

I raised both my hands towards the two Youkai and created two more bubbles, sending them to where I sent the golden retriever.

I then took another long glance at the corpse waggon containing no less than 30 of my people.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Merlin.

"You can cry, it's only natural after seeing that."

And so I cried.

—————-

POV Merlin

After Gumiyeong cried into me for a little bit we did a burial ritual for all of her dead people, using nature magic so their bodies got absorbed by the world, returning to whence they came.

I won't go on about how the spirits of the dead came alive and thanked us before ascending, because they didn't. Nothing short of the highest tier life and soul magic could bring back something that has been dead for so long. And even if I could I wouldn't. They were long dead, although their lives were taken prematurely, they where still dead.

And most importantly, even if they were revived, what would they do? They had nothing. If I died and had nothing left to do, no one left to be with, nothing left to see, I would want to remain dead.

But it was a nice little bit of closure on Gumiyeong's part. Seeing your race being hunted down and exterminated was not a nice feeling.

But now would be the perfect time to ask for her blood, so I could become a Youkai. Afterall I would be half part of her race afterwards. A Kumiho Mabeop Yuuki. A bit long for my taste.

———

A few syringes worth of blood where on a table, and Gumiyeong looked slightly pale.

After I mentioned the whole becoming a Youkai thing, she seemed shocked I wanted to become one. After all, nobody wanted to change their own race.

Unless they were a crazy Magic junkie.

"Merlin… are you sure about this? There is no going back. And what if a side effect we don't know about happens?" She said seemingly trying to convince me not to become on of her race.

"I'm sure Gumiyeong. Not only will my Magic potential increase past the limit of the human race, but I will get to spend forever with you. Not constrained by the limits of lifespan."

"Are you trying to act romantic? Because it is not working."

Maybe. I grabbed a syringe of blood and injected it into me. Then another and another. Until all ten were gone. I started to feel a bit woozy and I started to stumble.

Gumiyeong promptly caught me.

"Goddamit Merlin, you need to be more careful!"

Ahe sighed audibly. Whispering, "Fucking Magic junkies…."

I passed out.

————-

Everything and ringing. My breath sounded like a hurricane, my heartbeat like a war drum, and the wiggling of my toes like the earth being shattered. I could see every dust particle, I could taste the air.

Air didn't taste good.

Fucking hell, perhaps I should be a bit more careful eh? I raised my hand and tried to use some of my mana to create ear plugs.

I sent out how much I would usually use, but I ended up with two gigantic balls. Definitely not what I was going for.

Gumiyeong, who I just noticed sat besides me, created ear plugs in my stead. Shoving the two of them into my ears.

"Merlin."

Oh fuck here came the lecture on my safety. I experienced this a few times before, and it is not fun.

——-

I stumbled around the house, trying and failing to walk straight with my center of mass being slanted downwards.

I closed the door to the bathroom behind me very carefully. Grabbing my new fox tail and pushing it out of the way of the door.

And it flickered backwards into the door again.

Having a tail, was like having children.

That was what Gumiyeong said. Then why did she want 15 kids? I would never know.

I attempted to use a little bit of magic,

"Wind magic: Door close."

A slight gust of wind closed the door and locked it.

I had developed this one specifically because of my problem child tail. All so I could fucking take a shit in peace. Oh yeah, do you want to know how hard it is to take a shit with a tail?

———-

Gumiyeong stood in front of me while I meditated on the ground, attempting to control my now, much, much, much higher mana.

With the way I worded my wish, I would always have the highest magic talent possible. And humans were apparently talentless creatures compared to a race specialized in magic.

Who would have guessed?

Now that I had two tails after a while of training, didn't help either.

Each tail for a Maeop Yuukai was like doubling your magic talent. So I had 4 times the amount of mana I had before. But that wasn't the only reason why I was having so much trouble.

The quality of mana also tripled. So at first I had 6 times the amount of mana, then 36…. And I was destined to grow a lot more tails.

So basically my control was completely fucked over.