Chapter 730
Chapter 730
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 730
Chapter Title: Fugitive (5)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1.
Half a day.
The time it took to sweep away those donning armor so terrifying that even a mere glance from her mother struck fear into them, the soldiers armed with swords and spears, and the mobs preying on the chaos to rob and pillage.
Rinne trailed behind her mother like a duckling, etching every one of those scenes into her memory.
"Now I am your master. From henceforth, do not call me mother—call me master."
After the great purge was over and they returned to the mansion, where she gathered her father, brothers, and the household servants' corpses into a pyre and set them ablaze, her mother declared.
She who was mother, foe, and witch had become Rinne's master.
In truth, Rinne had known.
That the woman she called mother and followed was the one responsible for all this devastation.
Why would she do such a thing? How could she?
Such questions were only natural.
Yet before she could even question it—before outrage at the atrocities could take hold—Rinne chose obedience and submission.
There were surely many reasons.
Perhaps because the strength her mother displayed terrified Rinne, convincing her she could never overcome it right then and there.
Or because her young heart knew it was impossible to survive alone in this brutal world.
Or because, no matter how heartless the deeds, she was the only family— the only mother—Rinne had left.
Not awe. Not love.
Not hatred. Not resentment.
Standing somewhere in that gray expanse, neither white nor black, Rinne withheld judgment on the feelings she held for her master.
Without any preparation whatsoever, Rinne received the vessel and became an Apprentice Witch.
2.
The disciplinary methods of her forebears evoked the ways of a lion.
The cruel legend of hurling a cub off a cliff and abandoning it if it failed to climb back up.
"Never lose this. You must keep it with you so that I can find you again."
Her master presented a gift to Rinne, freshly minted as an Apprentice Witch.
A priceless necklace adorned with four jade beads, carved from fine jade and plated in gold.
And without even a moment to dwell on the grief of her lost family, Rinne was abandoned in the wild mountains that very night, armed with nothing but a single dagger.
"Mother... Father... Brother..."
Left alone in a forest so dark without the moon that she couldn't see an inch ahead, Rinne shivered from the cold and loneliness.
All around came the howls of wild dogs, fattened on feasting upon corpses.
To avoid freezing to death, Rinne huddled in the hollow between tree roots, clutching the necklace her mother had given her whenever fear gripped her.
She stifled her sobs, lest the cries draw wild beasts, and wept silently again and again.
3.
Unlike other apprentice witches who received basic magical knowledge alongside their vessels, what Rinne was granted was utterly meager.
The strength of an average adult man. A sturdy, semi-permanent body that required no food.
Nothing but the curse of deficiency that would savagely ruin her life going forward.
While evading beasts that had tasted human flesh and huddling in burrows at night, waiting for her mother to come, who appeared before Rinne were mountain bandits clutching spears.
The first humans she had encountered in three days.
Joy lit up Rinne's face as she rushed toward them.
She didn't know why her mother had left her here alone, but she thought that with this farmer's help, she could await her mother in somewhat better circumstances.
But the instant her eyes met those of the mountain bandit, who had bloodied armor dangling from his back like a grotesque trophy, Rinne froze in place.
"Hey, we hit the jackpot."
He bared his few remaining yellowed teeth in a grotesque grin.
It was an age of war.
An era in which powerless commoners were engulfed by the flames of war and burned away meaninglessly.
Farmers who had lost family, land, and future to the conflict gladly gripped weapons in their gaunt hands and chose to become straggler hunters.
Hunting down routed and lagging soldiers to strip their gear was far more productive than tilling fields that could be plundered at any moment.
And it was the finest revenge: taking from those who had taken.
Sermons of morality and justice rang hollow to those with nothing left to lose.
To the eyes of these straggler hunters, a lone young girl wandering the wild mountains was perfect prey—nothing more.
All the more so if that girl bore what appeared to be precious jewels upon her person.
Rinne, utterly ignorant of worldly affairs, could not possibly know such realities.
Children raised in love always uncover the world's cruelties late in life, and Rinne was no exception.
Yet her instincts screamed a warning.
This man, his whites clouded gray from malnutrition, was someone who posed grave danger to her.
"Stay right there!"
Rinne whirled and fled; the mountain bandit gave chase.
When the gap refused to close, he cast aside even his spoils of war, pursuing with nothing but his spear in hand.
Even with her physical abilities slightly enhanced by the semi-permanent body, Rinne—raised as a sheltered maiden—could not match the speed of a mountain bandit who prowled these hills.
"Chasin' along real nice, ain'tcha?"
Driven to the edge of a cliff where a waterfall cascaded down, Rinne could go neither forward nor back and turned to look behind her.
Even ragged garb could not conceal her innate nobility.
The sudden appearance of a beauty he could never have dreamed of while toiling in the fields was enough to bewitch a farmer who had long forsaken goodness.
Beasts that had tasted human flesh were not the only ones that devoured mankind.
Since time immemorial, the entity that had consumed the most humans was humanity itself.
"Gotta be a bride sent by the spirits. Thank ya, spirits—thank ya kindly."
"Haa... haa..."
"C'mon now, set down that dangerous toy and come with me."
From the bandit's salivating approach, Rinne recalled the bandit mob she had witnessed at the mansion.
Trailing that memory was the silhouette of her mother, passing judgment upon their lawlessness with a single sword.
Could such savage impulses truly be called talent?
Even amid this abruptly upended world, Rinne knew precisely what she must do.
Clutching her dagger as if it might shatter, Rinne kicked off the frozen ground.
"You little minx! Runnin' right to your hubby!"
The mountain bandit's smile, as if her charge were some adorable jest, soon drowned in crimson.
Rinne stabbed and stabbed at his chest with her dagger, again and again, even as he clung to his spear until his dying breath.
4.
Strange rumors began to circulate.
That a fox demon in the form of a girl was devouring people on the mountain behind the local temple.
They said the girl possessed a beauty beyond human.
That she wore a priceless necklace of curved jade no amount of gold could buy.
That she felled every farmer and straggling warrior she encountered, her tally easily surpassing a hundred.
That the new lord had placed a bounty on the demon's head.
By the time that final rumor spread, even the farmers from neighboring villages, who had paid no heed to the grim tales, could no longer stand idly by.
The lord had indeed offered a massive bounty, along with the unprecedented promise of permanent tax exemption for any village that captured the demon.
Under this exceptional decree that would honor any successful captor or slayer regardless of status, even local bandits joined the fray, launching a full-scale manhunt.
Meanwhile, hundreds formed a vast encirclement, slowly closing in on the wild mountains.
Rinne, for her part, was adapting to the hunt with each passing day.
A mere month's experience was enough to upend her consciousness entirely.
And more than enough to awaken the talent dormant within her.
She learned how to protect her body amid the hellish cold where even breath froze solid.
She learned that ambushes exploiting darkness and terrain could fell even groups of foes.
She learned the stench of a human whose skin had split open.
She learned the spots to strike for a silent kill.
She learned how to face warriors clad in armor and wielding greatswords.
She learned that even a kindly old woman offering a gourd of water might have laced it with poison.
No one extended a helping hand to Rinne.
Her mother had been right.
Life forgave no weakness.
To avoid becoming prey, one had to become the hunter.
By day, Rinne crawled into abandoned beast dens to hide her body.
By night, she ventured out with a looted longsword in hand to hunt.
She had never formally learned swordsmanship, but it didn't matter.
Her body taught her. The sword taught her.
Rinne, who had been little more than a flower in a greenhouse just a month prior, was drawn forth by her cursed talent and awakened the gift of the sword ghost.
"Kwaaak!"
"D-Demon!"
"Grab her! Grab her!"
"Run! Run away!"
Rinne had sheared her long, bush-hindering hair into a short bob. She leaped from the trees, unleashing a thunderbolt of a single stroke.
Leveraging her small frame, she darted through the steep, densely wooded slopes at blinding speed, cutting down the entire search party of over a dozen men.
"......"
In scarcely three minutes, without so much as a proper call for aid, the corpses lay sprawled across the ground.
Limbs severed, entrails spilling—the dying wounded on the brink of death.
Rinne wove between them, sliding her blade gently into the throat of a farmer thrashing like an overturned insect.
Discarding her nicked longsword, she claimed a serviceable weapon and trudged with weary steps toward the valley she had scouted beforehand.
-Splash splash
The blood caked thick upon her hands unraveled into crimson threads in the cold, clear waters.
Upon the rippling surface reflected a self-image utterly transformed, like another person entirely.
"U... uek!"
Unable to hold back, Rinne vomited bile and dragged her exhausted body back to her hideout.
The relentless exertion without true rest in these extreme conditions was grinding Rinne down.
Though she bore a vessel, its effects amounted to only the most basic physical enhancement via mana.
Rinne had to endure this hell with a girl's frail body.
She collapsed into her leaf-stuffed burrow, curling tight for warmth as she clutched the necklace in her hand.
The largest curved jade was her father.
The two smallest were her brothers.
The second largest was her mother.
"Father. Brother. Mother."
With no physical or mental refuge left to her now.
What Rinne clung to were the happy days of her family—days that felt like ancient history though they were recent.
Dancing and frolicking before her father, her brothers beaming with fond smiles, her mother embracing her tenderly.
Utterly ordinary.
Yet moments she could never return to.
Even recollections stirred by the curse of deficiency brought no emotion whatsoever.
Still, Rinne chewed over those memories like a paranoid obsessive.
She hated her mother for shattering everything.
She couldn't understand it.
She loathed her.
Yet she loved her.
"Mother. Mother... Rinne is doing well, just as you commanded... Please come fetch me soon..."
Rinne could not hate the precious family from her happiest moments.
She waited for her mother's warm embrace to envelop her once more.
Her mother came for Rinne two months later.
Only after Rinne had slain every last pursuer.