Gumiyeong’s story.

It took a few long moments for the other two Youkai to completely comprehend what Jiyeong, the diviner Youkai, had said.

Their faces turning disgusted at the word Kumiho.

And it was a few more moments after that when they looked in my direction and concentrated some of their small mana reserves on their eyes.

Both of them, through the use of their magic infused eyes, saw me bright as day.

Clearly, my invisibility needed a bit of work.

I dropped my invisibility spell and floating spell. I then landed on the ground and stood their, awkwardly, unsure of what would happen.

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, the diviner Youkai, Jiyeon spoke, aloof of the tension in the air, "Hello Mr. Wynn! Would you like to become a Youkai?"

What?

"The lord, has informed me of your status as a human, and would like me to convey his message. They want nothing more than for the prosperity of the Youkai race, and your wife and soon to be child, are apart of that jurisdiction. And you would become a Mabeop Yuukai, the second most powerful type of Youkai in existence! Only behind the Shin Yaneo!"

She started to ramble. Not good. A nutjob with the support of a god. And if memory served me correct "shin" meaned God in Korean and Yaneo could be translated to being of the night. So basically a god Youkai.

Were Mabeop Yuukai really so powerful? All they had was an immense talent for magic, at least that is what Gumiyeong knows. Gumiyeong hadn't been here since she was a newborn, so it wasn't that unlikely she forgot things about an unrelated Youkai type.

So I spoke, "And what would the process of becoming a Youkai entail?"

Jiyeon continued to ramble, "The process of becoming a Youkai isn't all that complicated! Humans are maliable, baseline creatures with nothing sticking out about them, and Youkai are adaptable, breeding with any race with no issues.

And Youkai are very bloodline related creatures, if your great-great-great-great grandmother was a 10 tailed kitsune, so will you. No matter if your… ancestor was the hardest working person imaginable and you the laziest, you would be guaranteed to be born as strong as her.

So all we have to do is replace a very small amount of your blood with that of a Youkai, and then you will gradually transform! The more Youkai blood the faster the process, just don't do it all at once because your blood is highly valuable and it wouldn't do you becoming a 100% of the chosen Youkai."

That was a lot of information. But becoming a Youkai did seem like a pretty good idea. Not from any of their blood of course.

But from Gumiyeong.

Because Gumiyeong was special in a few aspects.

————-

POV Gumiyeong

The FAR FAR PAST, hundreds of years ago.

I sat on the side of a lake, looking into it I saw my reflection. I was a small fox, barely bigger than 5 inches. I had one tail attached to my behind.

I wasn't like the other Youkai, who were born of another. I was born from the worlds life itself, like most Kumiho. As no one in my race had time to hive birth, being constantly hunted due to our very nature.

They said we were unworth of this earth, born as a mere unwanted product of the… the lord, not worthy enough to be born 'normally'. The reason Kumiho's needed to eat liver, the more powerful ones Youkai liver, was because we were incomplete. Born as a mere fragments of the 'greater Youkai'.

He wasn't much of a lord if he let his own people kill each other. He said he strived to to help the Youkai population, as their god he would and could do them no harm.

But how would that be true if he made us, we would have to harm Youkais to live at our higher stages of development. He was either a dirty liar or he didn't make us.

I was inclined to think both.

But recently, the faith of the 'greater Youkai' was shaken. The… what did they call themselves? The Seirei Hantāzu? Whatever, after they started to invade with their technology, flying metal lumps, weirdly shaped hunks of metal that shot laser beams, and small round shaped devices that went-

*BOOM*

Yeah. That. Clearly I had spoken of the ak-ma.

I started to flee forward at a rapid pace. At least for a small fox such as myself.

——-

I hid in a small crevice, afraid for my life.

The 'Lord's Cleansers' as they called themselves, had chased me far away from the tribe of Kumiho I lived in.

Kill the young while they are weak, so they don't become the strong, they said. Didn't make sense to me, it takes 30 years for a Kumiho to grow a tail. So why not kill the strong?

Shivering intensely I peeked out if the crevice, finding nothing I walked out of the crevice and started to flee once more.

Only to find myself in the middle of a Seirei Hantāzu base after I ran through the foliage.

Robotic armies marched up and down, building something, a large gate, it looked like it had a swirling red portal in it. It looked like a new base as well.

I heard a few shouts behind me, the Lord's cleansers. Either die, or jump through the portal.

And so I did.

————

Ugh? Where was I? I glanced up and down, left and right.

I looked to be in a small town, people on the streets begging for food stood out to me. They made ne remember my own struggles, the struggle to live in this world.

Their faces were covered in dirt and grime, some faces were bloody from being beaten. All because they needed to eat, to live another day.

———

I curled up in a corner huddling for warmth. It was cold, the ground was covered in snow. Inches upon inches.

A small child ran through the alleyway I was in. Being chased by a large man. In the child's hand was an apple. A brown and rotten apple.

And the man was chasing the child just for this. Just because he was hungry and needed to eat. And he took the rotten apple.

Rage boiled inside me. How DARE THEY, don't they have any sympathy? Any remorse? Any… kindness? Or were they filled with bigotry towards something they would do in the same situation?

I un-curled from my position, raising upwards and leaping outwards to attack. My claws unfurled from my paws and I scratched at the face of the man. Scratching at it viciously. The man screamed in pain and grabbed me, slamming me into the snow. The boy came over too, "Father! Are you alright?"

Huh?

The burly man touched the scratches on his face, "Son, nobody fell for it today." He sighed. Several other men emerged from the alleyways.

The child looked viciously towards me and started to stomp onto me hardly.

———

I lied in the snow bleeding everywhere, dying the snow red. A girl with shoulder length black hair in a kimono walked through the alleyway.

Several guards followed behind her.

Eventually she found me in the snow.

"Jae-hoon. Save this fox."

"But little mis-"

"It looks fluffy."

Jae-hoon sighed. He was tired of his little misses whims.

——-

Many cycles of snow and not snow passed. The girl that had once saved me turned into a young woman. And from a young woman to a woman. And from a woman to an old woman.

And all the while she didn't question how I lived for so many decades with her. 5 decades to be exact.

The day the young miss died, my whole world collapsed. No one even through my 50 years here hsd shown me any kindness.

In fact the day she died I was kicked out of the mannor. That was the day I decided to only look out for myself.

————

Present day.

I woke up from my nightmare with a cold sweat. Phew, luckily I had Merl-

Where was Merlin?

WHERE WAS MERLIN?

I burst out of the door and found three Youkai staring down Merlin intensely. No… it couldn't be…

The Lord's cleansers? Had they come back to take Merlin away from me? Why where the two females looking at him like he was such a commodity? Why didn't he wake me up?

My eyes turned to behind the presumed Lord's cleansers. There was a cart full of corpses? My eyes honned in more.

There was a cart, full of my brothers and sisters corpses. There where young Kumiho in there as well. Normally you couldn't tell how old a Kumiho was apart from the tails, but as a Kumiho myself I could.

And I could see many corpses of a few months old.

Barely having lived. Barely having seen the beauty of the world. Barely having known what the meaning of living was. Not old enough to even know why they were being hunted.

No doubt not old enough to know love.

And I would make them pay the price for this.