534 – A Dog Really Doesn’T Know How Scary A Tiger Is
The mountain king who had crushed me underfoot turned around. Although I couldn’t read the thoughts of animals, it was clear that he thought I was dead. I shouted at the mountain king’s back.
“Hey, tiger. Are you that good at fighting?”
The mountain king’s steps suddenly stopped. Although he was in human form, the way he glanced at me with his eyes glinting was enough to make my stomach churn.
Wait a minute. I barely survived dying, and now I’m going to be torn apart again? Recalling the pain from before, I quickly averted my gaze.
“Ah. Sorry. You’re a tiger, so you must be good at fighting. Go your way.”
However, even though there is a saying that a tiger will come if you call its name, it didn’t just leave. The mountain king glared at me again and moved sideways. Unlike before, he seemed to be somewhat wary of me, who had come back to life.
Fortunately. If he’s wary, I’ll die more slowly than before. And surely even the mountain king wouldn’t want to eat something suspicious. He wouldn’t want to get sick.
“Wh, what are you looking at like that? It’s scary. I’ll give you a rice cake, so don’t eat me, okay?”
Fortunately, he didn’t seem to want to eat me. In an instant, he disappeared from my sight, and then I felt an eerie presence behind me. I was about to turn my head when something strong hit me in the head. My head spun around and around. I didn’t know where my body was or what I was, and my neck was broken.
Kyaaak!
It hurts like crazy. Death came close and then receded. The body possessed by the devil regenerates and returns me to my original state.
I won’t die. But that doesn’t mean I’ve gotten incredibly strong! I’m just a punching bag with regenerative abilities!
“Keuheuheu. Tiger…! You’re so strong that you don’t even want to talk…!”
As I lay on the ground sobbing, I felt something ominous. I immediately lay down on the ground and raised my javelin. There was no sound or vibration, as if even the footsteps had been killed, but the mountain king fell on me in an instant.
Kugugung. The mountain king’s forelegs fell on the javelin I had extended. The wind pressure ruffled my bangs. My head almost exploded and I died, but fortunately, even the mountain king couldn’t move the javelin.
Curious about the object blocking its forelegs, the mountain king swung its forelegs a couple of times at the javelin. Even though it was just poking it out of curiosity, I could feel a considerable force. Fortunately, the javelin remained a solid barrier between me and the mountain king.
As expected of the javelin. It’s sturdy. Ah, this isn’t the time for this.
“Hey! Tiger! Listen to what I’m saying! Are you deaf? You became human to listen to me!”
From Noble mtl dot com
Since the mountain king appeared, I’ve been facing him the closest and for the longest time. Now is the time to talk. The mountain king perked up its ears slightly and replied, as if it had heard me.
“Why should I follow the whims of a lowly creature?”
“You can hear me well! Have you just been pretending not to hear me until now!”
“The voices of humans are noisy and messy, so I do not keep them.”
“What….”
Before I could say anything, the mountain king’s head suddenly turned. Instead of my upper body, which was covered by the javelin, it bit my stomach hard. My lower body was severed, and blood and entrails gushed out.
Fortunately, it didn’t seem to want to eat a suspicious human, and the human body isn’t structured in a way that makes it easy to swallow after being bitten. The scattered pieces of flesh returned and reattached themselves to my body.
“Phew. Gulp, gulp, gulp. That crazy beast….”
It’s good that I saved my life, but it’s not much different from not dying! This way, I’ll just keep repeating my defeats in a battle I can’t win! Suffering forever!
Damn it. Is there anything I can do? If I have to, is there any way to get hit less painfully?
Ah. I had that.
I took out the devil’s card. The one in my hand was the spade 7, the lightning thief’s lightning whip. Until now, it had only been able to paralyze wounds with electricity or sew with static electricity, but now that I can use my body as a ‘tool’….
The lightning whip seeps into my body. I feel a sharp pain as if my nerves are being burned all over my body. Gritting my teeth and enduring it, the lightning whip settled completely inside my body and curled up.A moment later, the pain was gone. Along with it, all my senses became sharper and more acute. It was as if the part of me that had been dedicated to feeling pain had been repurposed.
Tyr’s potion allows me to use even my own body as a tool. Originally, the body is something to be protected and cherished, a vessel that holds my life, but once Tyr’s potion takes hold, everything becomes merely a tool. Bones, muscles, nerves, blood. All of it can be broken, damaged, shattered, and then repaired again, becoming nothing more than tools.
Even to protect ‘me’, I must use my body as a tool. I let out a hollow laugh at the absurdity of it all.
It’s as if ‘me’ and my body are separate entities. Then what am I? If not my body, is it my thoughts that define me? Like the old philosopher said, I think, therefore I am?
There’s no time to dwell on such musings. As I sluggishly try to get up, a sense of foreboding washes over me. My body, now attuned to death, involuntarily twitches. Thud, the ogre leaps forward, its foot crushing down on my windpipe.
It’s still fast. But the difference from before is that I can now see the ogre’s form, albeit faintly.
The Lightning Thief’s lightning bolt is not an enlightenment about lightning. It’s an enlightenment about the tiny bolts of lightning that course through the body and mind. A forbidden knowledge that even he himself fears to discover, and so he hides it away.
To realize that even seeing, feeling, and thinking are not proof of spirituality… but rather objects of understanding.
If that’s the case for beasts, then I don’t know about the Lightning Thief, but it’s not so shocking to me. If it’s a tool, then I should use it well.
Perhaps because my thoughts are faster, my body moves faster as well. I brandish my staff and shout.
“Tiger, sir! I am your lost brother! Don’t you remember?!”
There was no answer. The tiger seemed about to charge, but then it leaped over my staff and pounced on me. My shoulders were crushed together as if they were caught in a pair of cymbals.
For a moment, his body too came close to death, but his thoughts did not cease. As the ogre slid down, unable to control its own strength, I staggered and barely managed to call out to the potion.
“If you save me, I’ll give you something delicious! How about a persimmon, a persimmon?”
“Ugh.”
This isn’t working.
Even though I have an immortal body and my reactions are faster, my opponent is an ogre. The king of ogres, whose life even a fully-grown human king would have to risk to take. On this flat plain, I’m nothing more than a self-repairing punching bag.
I have to mess with it even more. Otherwise, I won’t be able to talk to it.
I turn my head and see an uprooted tree. It’s just a tree in a meadow that doesn’t even bear fruit, but as I reach out my hand, a branch grows from the uprooted tree. Flowers bloom and wither in an instant, and in their place, round fruits form, their colors mixing like paint on a palette.
Nevida’s potion, the Tree of Origin. With it, I harvest a ripe persimmon from the uprooted acacia and throw it at the ogre.
“Here! Catch!”
The ogre finally stops and catches the persimmon I threw in its mouth. It seems to hesitate for a moment, but then it chews on the persimmon, its curiosity piqued now that it’s in its mouth.
Phew, it finally stopped. I let out a sigh of relief.
“How is it? Is it delicious?”
“Hmph.”
“Hey, hey, hey, don’t spit out something that doesn’t have a pit!”
But I’ve achieved my immediate goal. The ogre, who saw me create the fruit, shows curiosity instead of charging at me right away, and circles me slowly.
I never intended to win from the start. My goal was to pique its curiosity and have a conversation.
“Tiger. How about it? There’s no reason for us to fight. The wolf is already gone!”
“…And?”
“And? There’s no need to keep the promise of a wolf that’s gone! So stop being violent towards humans!”
“I refuse. A promise is not made to another, but to oneself. Just because the wolf is gone does not mean that I can break my promise.”
What kind of beast uses such difficult words that even I don’t understand? And why is its credit so good? Just break the promise!”Even if the wolf is not the fox’s friend, it is a beast that shows its wit in place of the fox’s violence. The fox will show the violence of the wolf to the humans who pity the wolf.”
San-gun glared at me with fearsome eyes and growled.
“If that human, you, had been facing me, the violence would have been more valuable.”
“Damn it. I knew it!”
“Human, you disappeared from the world after being eaten by another human? Then I will not choose the same method. I will eat you after showing you enough violence.”
As the kindness of a dog is directed towards humans, the violence of a wolf is also mainly directed towards humans. That’s why San-gun intends to kill humans according to his promise with the wolf.
And I am the king of humans. There is no human as violent as me!
Oh my god. If I get eaten like this, I might die. But there is no way. I have to fight to live. Even if I use everything else as a tool.
“Are you the only one who is violent? I am also violent! Don’t think you can eat me easily!”
“Ooh.”
San-gun bared his teeth as if he was laughing at me. He is clearly wearing a fluttering vest, but he disappears from my sight the moment he takes a step. I barely found San-gun running over the rock with his heightened senses, but it doesn’t matter if I know or not.
I grabbed the jizan and made up my mind. Violence is not for defeating the enemy, but for protecting me. I will hurt him somehow and make him unable to touch me.
…How do I do that? I don’t know either. Should I hug him and fall?
San-gun jumped while I was thinking about something stupid for a moment. He raised his forelegs with the momentum to crush a mountain. Anyway, I can’t avoid it or block it. I waited for San-gun’s attack, prepared to accept the blow.
Then, Aji ran over, barking fiercely.
“Woof!”
I wasn’t that happy even though reinforcements had arrived. I don’t think anything will change just because Aji is here.
Aji, who blocked me, stretched out his forelegs towards San-gun. San-gun also slammed his forelegs down on the enemy that had appeared before his eyes. The two kings of beasts clashed.
The sound was too intense and destructive to be called a sound from a physical body. The shock wave exploded and the two kings of beasts were thrown in opposite directions. San-gun grimaced at the sight of Aji, who had broken in.
“Wolf?”
San-gun, who had landed on the floor, approached Aji slowly, examining him carefully.
“No, a dog. It’s a domesticated beast.”
Aji, who had been pushed away, greeted San-gun happily.
“Hello. Nice to meet you!”
“Nice to meet you? I came to show violence to humans at the behest of the fox who is a wolf.”
“Woof? Don’t show it!”
“It’s what the wolf did. I just came to keep the fox’s promise.”
“Wolf, not a wolf now! Come on! Violence and kindness together! Promise void! Stop fighting!”
Aji is also trying to persuade me. It’s surprising, but it’s even more surprising that it works. San-gun relaxed his fur and said to Aji.
“I know. No one will replace the fox’s violence now. However, that is a reason not to be forced into the fox’s promise, not a reason not to fulfill the promise.”
“Fighting, it hurts. It hurts, I don’t like it. Human, wolf. Or tiger. Fighting, bad. Coexistence, good!”
“You have to show violence to eat.”
“Hungry?”
Aji asked calmly. It was an unexpected question, but San-gun answered seriously as if he were dealing with a very important issue.
“Someday.”
“Woof! Human, share food! Be kind!”
“That’s domestication. It’s about entrusting your violence. The fox is violent, so he can’t do that. The wolf had nothing but violence. Although weaker than the fox, he was more violent than anyone else. So the fox also promised to add to the wolf’s violence.”
“But there’s more than just violence.”
Aji did not flinch even when he saw San-gun, the king of tigers.
“I can be violent. But I can also be tamed. I can eat and play. It’s safe. It’s warm. I like that. And you like that too.”
“The fox is strong and violent. You can’t be tamed like this dog.””You are big and fierce, and you have been living alone on a mountain. That may be true, but that’s not all you are.”
Aji said with a firm smile. At the same time, something began to rise above Aji’s head. It looked similar to the crown of the king of beasts, but it was white in contrast and had a round and even shape. It looked more like a halo than a crown… Yes, it resembled a halo.
“Hold, lick, run, and play. Your fur is for wrapping warmly, and your tongue is for licking wounds. You are big and fierce and can only live alone on a mountain, but if there is a lot of prey, you can live with humans.”
Aji, who had opened up a new realm as a saint, a saintess, and a holy dog, stretched out his forelegs, scattering light.
“If the wolf has replaced your violence, I will replace your kindness. Let’s be friends.”
Ah, finally a clear-cut definition to Tyr’s magic god and how it changes the definition of humans, that’s nice.