Chapter 55: The Weight of Blood and Vengeance

– Courtly Secrets and the Queen’s Downfall

The progression of the simultaneous assault campaign should not have unfolded in such a way.

Two mighty bosses: the Yokai Queen and the Yokai General.

One by one, allies fell.

The bosses toyed with the lone remaining player, their overwhelming power crushing any hope of victory.

Following their defeat, the player was imprisoned in the palace’s underground waterway.

Here, they met the adversaries of the two bosses who had been captured earlier.

By leaking information to send the Yokai General outside the capital

and exploiting the Queen’s vulnerabilities to weaken her forces,

the plan was to eliminate the Queen and escape to the mortal realm before the General returned.

Failure and revenge.

Ambush and retreat.

This was the storyline prepared in Banryo Valley for the players visiting the Yokai Realm for the first time.

[Defeating the Yokai General in a one-on-one duel… How could I ever stand against such a human?]

[What good would come of a futile fight? I surrender.]

This was not the intended story.

No one was supposed to defeat the Yokai General by skill or force the Queen to surrender.

Is this how you’re supposed to clear it?

No idea.

If only one person has done it, this must be the real way, lol.

While viewers were skeptical about whether others could replicate this strategy,

the story continued to unfold regardless of their doubts.

[Story Mode]

The boss fight was over.

Before the prince, standing tall despite his battered body,

the Yokai Queen knelt on the ground.

[After killing the King and plunging the Yokai Realm into chaos, you’ve now lost even the power you fought so desperately to seize. Don’t you think it’s your own doing?]

[Heh. I may beg for my life, but you cannot deceive my heart. Did you truly think that neither you nor your mother were to blame?]

The Yokai Queen began to speak.

[Oogama. Since awakening the lore of devouring human energy, nothing—no plant, no animal—could survive around me.]

[This cursed power, inherited through a damned bloodline, brought nothing but solitude, as everything near me withered and died.]

Her massive, grotesque appearance, already rotting and corrupt,

led others to see her as nothing but a brutal and tyrannical queen.

But her words revealed an inner truth that starkly contrasted with her outward image.

[Then, one day, a fool appeared before me, lamenting the waste of my powerful lineage and claiming that he alone could withstand my curse.]

[A yokai who taught me, at the end of my endless solitude, what love truly was. That yokai became my husband the Yokai King.]

[Those were happy days. I experienced the joy of being a woman, the bliss of being a wife, and the dignity of being a queen things I thought I could never have in my lifetime.]

As if to silence her vile words, to strip her of the right to reflect on her past,

a choice window appeared before Hae Eung Eung.

【Interaction Options】

[1. Kill the Queen.]

[2. Interrupt her and refuse to hear her excuses.]

[3. Hand the Queen over to the yokai outside the palace.]

[4. (Remain silent.)]

Kill her, silence her, or deliver her to hostile forces—

each option led to an unhappy end.

111
22
111

After what she did to the bees, kill her immediately.

Lol.

1111

Smarter enemies are scarier than stronger ones.

Her subordinates caused enough trouble after being given a chance. Imagine how much worse the Queen could be.

The viewers expressed distrust,

and the fighters in the party shared similar hostility.

[She’s a cunning traitor. Kill her.]

[This time, I agree with Wendigo. Think of all the atrocities the Queen has committed. We have no reason to listen to her pleas for survival.]

[…]

[Even the Boogeyman nods from his closet.]

Or perhaps he didn’t move at all.

Despite Hae Eung Eung’s frivolous thoughts, the prince was lost in deep contemplation.

[Mother, what do you think? Is there any need to listen to the Queen further?]

The choice window blinked again, urging Hae Eung Eung to make a decision.

Her gaze met the eyes of the kneeling Yokai Queen.

Those eyes, filled with resentment—

Was it humiliation from the defeat?

Rage at the power she’d lost?

Or was it something else entirely?

[(Remain silent.)]

Though she was once a man, Hae Eung Eung had now lived longer in a woman’s body.

From the perspective of one woman to another, she found herself curious.

As a woman, a wife, and a queen—

how had someone who once seemed to have achieved unparalleled happiness fallen to this state?

When Hae Eung Eung silently expressed her desire to hear the Queen’s story,

the prince nodded,

and the team of fighters begrudgingly suppressed their dissatisfaction.

[After my husband became the Yokai King and unified the Yokai Realm, yokai stopped fighting among themselves and turned their ambitions to invading the mortal world. It marked the

beginning of the Second Yokai War, following the first that had occurred long ago.]

[We conquered vast territories, plundered treasures, and subjugated human lands and kingdoms. Many humans were reduced to livestock or food.]

[Then, one day, the king of a small human nation came to us, offering his daughter as a sacrifice, begging for mercy.]

The prince interjected.

[Was that daughter my mother?]

[Indeed. She was breathtakingly beautiful, enough to make one resent the very concept of beauty itself. Her allure was such that no one could help but admire it, regardless of status.]

[It didn’t take long for my husband to lose his heart to her.]

The Second Yokai War.

The cause of the yokai bloodline spreading across the mortal world,

allowing countless half-yokai to exist in human society.

It was a time of endless slaughter and destruction, with entire nations falling to ruin.

And yet, the war ended when a single woman of peerless beauty, embraced by the Yokai King, pleaded for peace.

[Faced with her dream of a world where humans and yokai could coexist rather than kill each other, I found myself speechless.]

[Even if her dream was foolish, I knew it was the right path.]

[No matter how many lonely nights I spent without my husband by my side, I endured, knowing that my sacrifice could bring peace to both realms.]

Though the world gained peace,

a gaping wound was left in one yokai’s heart.

[Six years passed like that.]

[When you were five years old, you came to greet me for the first time. At that moment, my hatred began to subside. I thought that, for the children, peace wasn’t such a bad thing.]

The prince, unable to suppress his anger, shouted:

[Why? If you had such feelings, why did you kill my father?!]

[That night, your mother came to me. A human woman who could only set foot in the palace because of my sacrifice and acquiescence. She told me this:]

[“The Yokai King’s heart belongs to me. Manipulating him to do as I wish is no challenge at all. If you don’t want to be humiliated further, leave on your own accord.”]

[That’s impossible!]

[She also said, “Tomorrow, it will be officially announced that I am the Yokai King’s second wife. There’s no need for you to stay and face disgrace.”]

[Her insult pushed me over the edge. I lost all reason.]

The prince unsheathed a dagger meant for assassinations.

[Don’t defile my mother’s name with your filthy lies!]

[Ah, those eyes. They’re the same as hers. The expression she made when she looked at me.]

[Even while preaching peace and ending the war, what she truly desired was revenge.]

[Your mother never loved the Yokai King. She sought only to avenge the humans who perished in the war by exacting vengeance on us yokai.]

[Lies!!]

[I couldn’t forgive her. Not for demeaning my sacrifice, nor for tarnishing his love in such a way.]

The Yokai Queen closed her eyes and spoke softly.

[So I killed him.]

As the Yokai Queen’s confession echoed, a new prompt appeared:

【Interactive Choice Menu】
[1. Kill the Queen.]
[2. (Allow the prince to kill the Queen.)]
[3. (Stop the prince.)]

Hae Eung Eung’s gaze locked onto the menu, and her decision was immediate.

[ 3. (Stop the prince.)]

The moment she chose to intervene, everything unfolded in a blur.

As the prince lunged toward the Queen, Hae Eung Eung stepped in to block him.

[Do not stop me! She’s the one who murdered my mother! That woman is my enemy!]

The prince’s pitiful, bloodied form trembled with fury as he shouted, his voice cracked with grief.

Looking at him, Hae Eung Eung came to a grim realization about the true essence of this tale of yokai and humans.

The Yokai Queen and the illegitimate prince—

They were both victims.

Wounded by the malice of others,

neither wholly righteous nor wholly wrong,
merely trapped in the endless cycle of vengeance.

‘Once someone steps into that cycle, the only escape is to see it through to the bitter end.’

If the prince’s blade sought only the Queen’s life, it might have been the lesser evil.

But Hae Eung Eung understood that the prince’s years of humiliation and suffering—

ostracized as a half-yokai and ridiculed for his mixed blood—

could lead his vengeance to unimaginable extremes.

If that hatred erupted,

the bloodshed would not stop at a single victim.

It would grow into a river of blood and mountains of corpses, creating a hellish nightmare.

‘Does he even realize where this path will lead?’

From Hae Eung Eung’s perspective as someone who had already lost everything to her enemies in the martial world and succumbed to vengeance,
she felt unqualified to stop him.

[Let go of me! Release me this instant!]

Yet, she remembered the vulnerable boy who had stood before her not long ago.
The trembling voice and shy face of a half-yokai who had asked her,
“Will you be my mother?”
That memory compelled her to act, not as an avenger, but as a mother.

Until the prince’s next words shattered her resolve.

[You’re not even my real mother!!!]

At that moment, the strength drained from Hae Eung Eung’s hands.

[Urgh…!]

The prince’s face twisted with anguish,

a mix of guilt and fury battling within him.

He stood there, unable to decide whether to carry out his vengeance on the Queen
or apologize to Hae Eung Eung.

[Just like her. Your talent for driving stakes into people’s hearts is uncanny. Like mother, like son.]

The Queen’s voice, sharp as a blade, mocked him further.

[Even your inability to let go of the woman who tormented you that, too, is just like him.]

[He announced to the court that her death was not my fault but caused by the complications of childbirth. Then he turned his back on me forever.]

[He never cared to hear the truth that she wasn’t the kind, innocent woman he thought she was but a cruel avenger who sought to destroy us all.]

Just as the Yokai King had once been consumed by vengeance,

the prince, head lowered, walked past Hae Eung Eung without a word.

—

[Ungrateful bastard! How could he—]

Is he abandoning his mamá?

Never trust someone with black hair. Smh.

Omg, I’m feeling this in my chest.

Silent Swordsman crying rn?

The stream of messages flickered past, but the scene continued.

The prince returned to stand before the Queen.

His eyes, clouded with dark, festering emotions, met hers.

The Queen chuckled bitterly as she looked into his tainted gaze.

[If he had looked back at me even once, I could have suppressed the curse that fed on his affection for her. But he never did. Not once.]

[After a hundred days and nights, the Yokai King was dead. And you, abandoned to the world outside the palace, became the outcast you are now.

That is the secret of the court, the reason your parents met their end.]

The Queen’s voice fell silent, leaving the prince frozen in place.

[And that is why you must die.]

The prince raised his assassin’s blade high, its shadow looming over the audience chamber.
Behind him, the silhouette of the Silent Swordsman stretched long across the polished floor, unmoving.

With a swift motion, the prince’s blade struck the Toad Yokai Queen.
Again and again, he drove the blade down, his actions filled with relentless fury.

Though half-human, half-yokai,
the illegitimate prince’s decision was made.
He had chosen bloodshed, not forgiveness.

Hae Eung Eung didn’t look back.

3.

[Player Mode Activated.]

Her body was her own again. Even as the sound of the blade piercing flesh echoed repeatedly,
Hae Eung Eung stood silent.

Not because she was unable to speak,
but because she was consumed by thought.

The prince had decided to wash blood with blood.
But was the cause of his torment the yokai blood in his veins?
Or the human blood that made him mortal?

What was it that left both him and Hae Eung Eung scarred?

“Is this the artifact you’ve been searching for?”

The Maganon, careful and observant, presented the mirror.

Hae Eung Eung gave a faint nod of acknowledgment, silently expressing her gratitude.

Her steady hand reached for the mirror, but the Silent Swordsman’s trembling grip caught her attention.

The one who had never flinched before the attacks of mighty yokai now seemed as if even the lightweight mirror might slip from his hands.

[You have acquired the Mirror of Still Waters.]

After unlocking the secret vault of the library and retrieving the mirror,
Hae Eung Eung stood motionless for a while, lost in thought.

In the end, she realized something.

Whether the prince’s revenge stemmed from his human lineage or his yokai heritage no longer mattered.

All the powers in the palace had fallen. The world that awaited the prince’s vengeance a world teetering on the edge of destruction was no longer hers to be concerned with.

It was a world she would leave behind,
a world she would never return to.

Hae Eung Eung stepped out of the library.

Her hands, which had trembled just moments ago, were steady now.