The Weight of Sacrifice
Sacrifice?
“......”
Maharet stared blankly at the cliff where Raiden had fallen. A canyon so deep the bottom was invisible. Unable to believe the scene that had just flashed before her eyes, she spoke the boy’s name as if to deny the reality unfolding around her.
“Raiden...?”
Naturally, no answer came back. The tragedy had happened so suddenly that her mind had frozen solid. The girl’s crimson eyes trembled violently.
Maharet fumbled through reality, desperately trying to process what had happened.
“......”
They had clearly thrown themselves across the canyon. Then Raiden had used his unique magic to leap through space. Up to that point, there had been no problems. Maharet had even noticed his plan and admired how brilliant it was.
It had looked precarious, but entirely possible.
At least until she saw the look of utter defeat on Raiden’s face right after he blinked through space.
-Ah… they had failed.
The two of them, suspended in midair with a bottomless abyss beneath them. Only then did Maharet realize that Raiden had used both of his blinks to protect her.
'……Ah. I’m going to die.'
Feeling her heart drop, Maharet squeezed her eyes shut. As she waited for the price of failure to arrive, the boy who had been holding her suddenly hurled her body with all his strength.
-You…?
Watching the boy grow distant, the girl muttered weakly. Raiden vanished without even leaving her a proper answer.
“......”
Maharet stood at the edge of the cliff, completely dazed. She tried to search for the boy within that endless despair, but it was futile. He was already…
-Thud…
Maharet’s legs gave out and she collapsed on the spot. Raiden was dead. It was a simple sentence, yet Maharet couldn’t seem to comprehend it. The boy who had been walking beside her just an hour ago was now gone from this world. The horrifying dissonance left her frozen in place.
The girl remained like that for a long time, unable to do anything. She simply stared with hollow eyes at the canyon floor where the boy had disappeared.
Meanwhile, at that same moment.
About a kilometer away from the Wutan Gorge where Maharet stood, deep within the forest.
There, Gold Tae-yang and Violet were facing off against seven black knights.
“Haha~ This is kinda troublesome, huh?”
With an awkward smile, Gold Tae-yang stepped backward. He made an exaggerated gesture while glancing at Violet, who was hiding behind him.
“That bastard definitely said he’d draw the aggro… but looks like a few of them chased after us instead!”
“Hiiik…! W-what should we do? T-Tae-yang?”
Violet shrank back, looking up at him. Her eyes were already glistening with unshed tears.
Gold Tae-yang shrugged with a bright expression.
“Beats me~? We’re probably gonna die. Looks like Professor Lucas got killed too. How the hell are we supposed to fight those things?”
“T-t-t-that’s not—!”
Even in this situation, Gold Tae-yang refused to drop his playful attitude, while Violet was on the verge of tears. As the two of them stood frozen, the undead knights slowly closed in.
Gold Tae-yang let out a small sigh and clenched his fists.
“Still too young to die…”
He planted his feet in a combat stance. Then, steadying his breathing, he muttered to Violet without looking back.
“Go.”
“Huh?”
“I said go first. Back to the base camp.”
At the casual command, Violet’s eyes widened. Gold Tae-yang didn’t even spare her a glance, his gaze locked on the approaching death.
“Keep going a little further and you’ll find where we tied the horses… Get to camp and bring the professors.”
“B-but then… w-what about you, Tae-yang…!”
“Ugh, you’re such a pain. You’re just dead weight in a fight, so I’m telling you to get lost.”
Gold Tae-yang shot the hesitant girl a sharp look, then flashed his usual relaxed smile.
“I’ll hold them off for a bit and catch up later.”
“Th-that’s a total death flag…”
“Hey, I said hurry up and go.”
-Clank. Clank…
Even as the two bickered, the undead continued their advance. In the end, Violet, forced to make a choice, began running away with tears streaming down her face.
“I-I’ll definitely come back with the professors…!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Gold Tae-yang watched Violet’s back disappear into the bushes and let out a long breath. As he smiled with what looked like relief, one of the knights that had finally closed the distance spoke.
“To your, sacrifice, for, others. We, pay, our, respects.”
“What the hell? Your boss seemed pretty good at talking earlier. Why’s your tongue so fucked up? Did it rot or something?”
Even with enemies right in front of him, Gold Tae-yang showed zero signs of tension as he hurled insults. The undead, dismissing it as childish bravado, raised their swords toward the boy.
“Foolish. Do not, beg, for, your, life… Death, comes, for, everyone, eventually.”
“......”
Gold Tae-yang stared expressionlessly at the knight issuing its eerie warning. Then he closed his eyes and began picking at his ear with a bored look.
“Hey… I think you’re misunderstanding something.”
“What, do, you, mean?”
“You’re acting like you’ve already decided I’m weaker than you guys, right?”
“Hm?”
The knights tilted their heads at the boy’s mischievous smile. In the next instant, Gold Tae-yang wiped the playfulness from his face and opened his previously closed eyes.
“You insects don’t even know your place.”
A sharp voice that seemed to scrape against their eardrums slammed into the knights. The undead instinctively took a step back, raising their weapons. It was a kind of primal fear. The terror of prey facing its predator.
With trembling eyes, the knights stared at it.
The carefree boy who had been chatting with them moments ago was gone. All that remained was an overwhelming presence crushing the entire area with killing intent.
-Crackle, snap…!
Blue electricity sparked across the boy’s entire body. At the same time, his golden hair slowly lost its color, turning pure white. His blue eyes glowed with an enchanting light.
“Hiya… It’s been a while since I felt this. I haven’t brought this form out in years because I was hiding it!”
The transformed Gold Tae-yang murmured as he flicked the blue sparks dancing at his fingertips. White hair and blue lightning. One of the frozen knights recognized the distinctive appearance and gasped in horror.
“Don’t tell me… a member of the Thunder Dragon clan…?”
“Oh? You actually know?”
“Of, course… If, it’s, dragons… we’ve, met, enough, to, be, sick, of, them.”
“Well, I guess~ You guys lived in an era when there were still plenty of dragons around, huh? From the looks of it, you’re from about a thousand years ago.”
“Are, there, not, many, dragons, now?”
“They’re pretty much all dead.”
“I, see.”
Gold Tae-yang gave a half-hearted reply to the knight’s question and clenched his sparking fist tightly. His entire arm, starting from his hand, began glowing blue as it released high-voltage current.
“Well then, enough small talk…”
-CRACKLECRACKLECRACKLE!!!
Amid the raging lightning, the boy’s snow-white hair whipped wildly. With his usual light smile, Gold Tae-yang snapped his fingers.
“Die.”
With that short death sentence, primordial lightning swallowed the black knights whole. The blue bolts turned their corpses to ash without even a sound of impact. Within the storm of scattering dust, only the white-haired boy stood alone, completely calm.
-Swoooosh…!
The violent sound of rushing water. Fierce currents slammed against the rocks, roaring wildly. The noise that had been assaulting his eardrums finally roused Raiden from unconsciousness. He opened his eyes.
“Guhhhk!!”
With a choked scream, Raiden immediately clutched his throat and vomited a large amount of water. After several more dry heaves and expelling all the river water that had filled his stomach, he finally managed to regain his senses.
“Haa… haa… ugh…”
Breathing raggedly, Raiden looked around. The place where he had collapsed was at the edge of the Wutan River. It seemed he had been swept downstream by the current. Relieved that he hadn’t been carried all the way to the sea, Raiden collapsed back onto the ground.
“Cough! Cough! I’m… I’m alive, at least…”
Muttering to himself, Raiden gulped down what little air he could manage. Pain radiated throughout his entire body. Thanks to slowing his fall, he had avoided being crushed like a tomato, but he was far from unscathed.
“Haa… haa… This isn’t… the time to be lying around…”
Grinding his teeth, Raiden forced his aching upper body upright. The accumulated fatigue and severe muscle pain pressed down on him like a mountain. The urge to collapse again flickered through his mind, but he bit his lip and pushed the temptation away.
“The rest of the group… they should have escaped safely…”
Raiden let out a heavy sigh, his face clouded with worry. Gold Tae-yang and Violet were together, so they were probably fine, but Maharet was another story.
“Will she be okay…? She must think I’m dead right now.”
Like most kind-hearted people, Maharet had a fragile heart. She might look tough and energetic on the outside, but she was a girl who took wounds more easily than anyone. And she had just watched someone die right in front of her eyes… The shock must have been devastating.
“……I need to get back quickly.”
Raiden picked up Bitan, which had been lying on the ground, and used it like a cane as he took a step forward. He had to hurry. Although he had lost consciousness, it didn’t seem like that much time had passed. At most, an hour or so. Assuming the knights still hadn’t found a way across the canyon, there was a chance they were still wandering near the forest. So he needed to get out of here and regroup at the base camp as fast as—
-Clank. Clank. Clank…
As Raiden staggered through the trees, a familiar noise reached his ears. The metallic clattering of armor pieces rubbing together.
“……No way.”
Raiden’s expression hardened as he slowly turned his head toward the source of the sound.
“Ah… fuck. This is actual bullshit…”
There, crimson eyes were staring straight at him.