Aura Blade (3)
"...It's closer to ruins than some hidden vault."
Unless the exterior had been disguised with a formation or something, this unidentified space didn't appear to hold anything that would actually help us. After all, the only things here were white bones.
"...We should probably look for the owner of that voice from earlier."
"What if it's a trap?"
"Just trust me. For now, don't answer. It could be a trap."
Always so worried.
I gently roused my sleeping mana core and advanced while sweeping the area with my torch. Just what the hell had happened here?
I scanned the bone fragments crunching underfoot and probed the surroundings with the flickering light.
"...Looks like there was one hell of a fight."
Rusted weapons, untouched for who knew how long, glinted sporadically in the firelight. Bones clearly shattered by artificial force lay scattered among torn scraps of clothing. The fact that a battle had broken out here meant something had triggered it. But what could have driven them to kill each other like this? Hostile forces? Internal strife?
The darkness made it hard to piece together the scene. And where the hell had that voice come from?
"Uncle, are you sure it wasn't just a hallucination? It sounded more like a ghost than a person..."
"Maybe..."
"..."
Hye-ryeong's voice trembled as if she were genuinely frightened. I took her hand for a moment to calm her. She squeezed back immediately. Her palm was slightly rough, yet it held a hidden softness. The hand of a swordswoman, and a woman's hand as well.
"Nothing's going to happen, so stop scaring yourself. Even if a ghost shows up, it's not scarier than a living person."
With those idle thoughts running through my head, I kept walking until we reached a dead-end wall. We'd come roughly two hundred steps from the passage, so even if I couldn't tell the exact shape of the space, I could tell it was massive, like some kind of grand hall.
Could people of this era really build something like this?
...Then again, humanity had been constructing pyramids since 3000 or 2000 BC, so this wasn't impossible. Of course, those were built by pharaohs rounding up massive amounts of slave labor, so the comparison itself was ridiculous...
So where was the owner of that voice?
"Who goes there?!"
The voice rang out again. I strained my ears. It was completely hoarse and weak, as if the speaker had exhausted every ounce of strength. He'd clearly tried to shout, but the echoes made it impossible to pinpoint the source.
"Uncle, shouldn't we answer him now?"
"Just in case, both of you stay behind me." They nodded silently and moved into position.
"Can you hear me?!"
"Who are you?!"
"Just a passerby! I happened to find the entrance and came in! Where are you?!"
"O...ver... here...!"
That direction?
I stood with my back to the wall and stared toward the right diagonal. Nothing was visible, but that seemed the most likely spot.
"...Hye-ryeong, Mok-gyeong. You two move as discreetly as possible."
"What about you, uncle?"
"Me—"
I drew aura from my activated mana core and wrapped it around my body. Since this wasn't for combat, I kept the layer thin. The Aura Armor clung to me like a second skin, making blue light sparkle across my form. Perfect for drawing aggro nice and clean.
This way, even if we were ambushed, the attention would focus on me.
I drew my sword from its sheath, prepared to unleash aura at any moment, and walked toward the direction of the voice.
Ten steps.
Twenty steps.
Fifty steps.
Seventy.
Eighty.
Ninety.
One hundred.
"Hey... where are you...?"
There had been some margin of error after all. I changed direction, walked another thirty steps forward, and stopped.
"To meet a foreigner after so long... Fate truly is strange..."
What were all these bones?
I alternated my gaze between the old man who looked like he'd been cast adrift and the small pile of animal bones beside him before asking, "Excuse me, but why are you here, old sir?"
"Old sir? I'm not that old. Call me Brother Gang!"
No matter how you looked at him, he was ancient. What was he talking about?
...Is he like me? Misjudged in age because of his appearance?
"So you've been trapped here this entire time?"
"I've lost one eye and one leg. Simply being alive is a miracle."
He made a sound that could have been a cough or a laugh, then slowly raised his head to look at me.
I cleared a small space with my foot and sat down. From his physical condition and the aura I sensed, he seemed to hover around the Peak realm. Even compared to Mok-gyeong, who had only recently entered that level, he appeared inferior.
I glanced at the missing left leg and asked, "What happened here?"
"...We killed and were killed. All to obtain the treasure said to be in this place."
"Treasure... Is this some hidden vault left behind by a reclusive master?"
"You entered without even knowing this is the burial place of the Three-Step Sword King, one of the top ten masters of the world from a hundred years ago?"
A hundred years ago? Of course I wouldn't know. Mok-gyeong and Hye-ryeong probably wouldn't either. When I glanced back, both shook their heads.
"We don't know."
"Huh. Then how did you get in? To reach this place, you must solve countless traps and the puzzles left by the Three-Step Sword King..."
"...I simply found a path by chance and ended up here."
"There were no traps?"
"None."
"No stone monuments inscribed with difficult phrases?"
"...None."
"Huk...!"
"Old sir?"
"Don't call me old sir...!"
Why was he suddenly hyperventilating? I stared blankly at the self-proclaimed "Brother Gang" as he gasped for air.
Just what kind of place was this?
It took him a long time to regain his composure. When he finally did, he asked in a desperate voice, "Truly, there was nothing? In the passage you came through?"
"There were some skeletons reduced to white bones."
"So I've been fighting illusions all this time..."
His sigh echoed through the cavern like a ghost. Just how long had he endured in this place?
"Hey, who is the current emperor?"
"I don't know."
"The current Son of Heaven is..."
Mok-gyeong stepped up beside me and recited the title of the emperor ruling this nation. The old man bowed his head deeply, as if struck by a heavy blow, and muttered in a hollow voice.
"The emperor... has changed? Just how long have I been trapped here...?"
"It hasn't been that long since the emperor changed."
"It looks like quite a long time to me."
If his clothes were worn to the point of tearing, at least five years must have passed. But there was no need to dwell on the exact calculation, so I moved on.
The Three-Step Sword King. This part interested me.
"So... the legacy of the Three-Step Sword King is here in this tomb?"
"If the map is accurate, yes."
"The map... where is it?"
"I don't have it. I lost it during the fighting..."
How much of this could I believe? For all I knew, he'd gone mad and invented an imaginary expert in his head, convincing himself this was a place that hid some grand legacy. At least his internal energy didn't feel like that of a demonic practitioner, but it still felt too ambiguous to trust him completely.
"I should have asked this first... What kind of martial artist was the Three-Step Sword King?"
"He earned the name because no one could block the sword he swung in the time it took him to take three steps. He may not have been the strongest under heaven, but he was said to be close to it. Then one day his whereabouts suddenly became unknown."
A common tale in martial arts stories. An outstanding master, unable to find a suitable disciple in his later years, creates a dungeon-like trial to prevent his techniques from dying with him.
But it seemed we'd accidentally entered from the exit side and arrived without encountering any obstacles.
"So you gathered people, entered this place, fought over the legacy, and you're the sole survivor?"
"I don't know if I'm the only survivor. But I'm certain I'm the only living thing left in this space. I've endured for so long without meeting anyone."
"Why did you fight?"
"At first we were just watching each other. But the moment we entered, the passage closed and all the night pearls that had been faintly illuminating the area shattered at once. Someone must have seen it as an opportunity and swung their blade. In the darkness, we had no choice but to fight for our lives. I survived, but my leg and eye ended up like this...
The only thing I could do was catch the rats that approached thinking I was a corpse, eat them, and circulate my energy. I reached the realm I had dreamed of... but what was the point? In the end, I couldn't overcome the final gate..."
The final gate.
So this wasn't the end point after all.
"Where is the final gate?"
"The door behind me."
I raised the torch and examined the wall—no, the door—that Gang Hyeong was leaning against. Under the light, it was clearly a different color from the surrounding stone. It looked like steel.
When I rapped it with my knuckles, the heavy sensation confirmed it. The thickness seemed considerable. Moving the torch slightly revealed countless sword marks covering one side of the door. He'd tried to cut through it.
"My sword qi couldn't cut it..."
"I see."
But what about an Aura Blade?
The blue aura gathered naturally, condensing along the edge of the blade into a sharp, destructive force. With a single diagonal slash from left to right, the Aura Blade carved through the steel door without mercy.
"Hye-ryeong, shine the light over here."
"Yes!"
She hurried over and held the torch close. The cut surface was revealed—clean and smooth, like tofu sliced by a kitchen knife.
"A few more cuts should do it."
The door was too thick to simply fall over. After several more precise slashes, I finally created an opening large enough to pass through.
"Ooh, oh...!"
"I'll go in first alone. We don't know what's inside."
After the unilateral announcement, I stepped through. The interior was faintly lit, perhaps by more night pearls.
"...Hmm."
I took another step forward.
And immediately wrapped my body in Aura Armor.