The Wretched Dog's Desperate Play
Clank.
Carried on the wind, the faint sound of iron chains rang out, distant and ethereal.
Clank.
The sound of chains reached my ears.
It was the rusted chains that bound my arms and legs, clanking with every movement I made.
I looked up.
A winter sky so blue it stung the eyes stretched above me. That sky was far too blue, far too clean. In contrast, this well was impossibly dark and gloomy.
I lowered my head again.
Clank.
The chains rang out quietly, like the soft chime of a wind bell. Then, every so often, they would suddenly clamor as if in a fit.
Clank-clank-clank-clank…
The place where that sound echoed was a well—deep, endlessly deep.
…! ….Get up.
“…?”
Dazed, heavy with lethargy, I lifted my head. Far off, from within the sticky darkness, a black dog barked as if yanking me up in a single pull.
Get up! Stay like this and you’ll really die!
“…!”
The moment my eyes opened, I coughed up bloody foam. I hacked out rough, ragged coughs and forced the breath that had been stopped up inside me free.
“Hah… hah…!”
My inner energy was completely drained. Strength had fled my muscles. Both my internal power and external strength had hit rock bottom. My entire body felt shattered.
The instant I opened my eyes, the worst of the present situation—something I had forgotten—came flooding back.
“….”
I crawled forward. I tried, somehow, to do something. I stretched out a trembling hand—
Crunch!
Ilmanhyeolje’s heel smashed down onto the back of my hand and crushed it.
“Gyaaaaah!”
My desperate scream tore through the air.
Crunch! Grind!
He ground the heel of his foot into the back of my hand, twisting it round and round.
Keh-heh-heh! I thought I was a dead man… At the end there, even I, Ilmanhyeolje, felt a genuine chill run down my spine, you vermin bastard!!
His fists and feet began to rain down. I couldn’t even defend. I simply took every blow that came.
Crunch! Grind!
My whole body started to pulp. Being hit with an iron hammer would have been kinder. Flesh split open. Emotion began to pour into his strikes.
Trash like you! If I’d gone all-out with both swords from the very beginning, I would have taken your head before we’d even exchanged ten blows, do you understand?! How dare you, how dare you!!!
Bloodshot veins stood out in his eyes. He stretched out a hand.
Wooooom!
With a swirl of purple mist, the two long swords that had been stuck in the ground some distance away shot through the air and slapped into his palms. Roaring, he brought them down toward my neck.
You dared humiliate This Seat, so die—!
The blades stopped right in front of my throat.
No. Wait. That’s not it.
Ilmanhyeolje muttered to himself.
We still have something we must do, don’t we? I almost forgot an old connection in a moment of rage. That’s right.
He seized me by the hair—my face a mess of split lips and streaming nosebleed—and hauled me up.
Time to settle that old score.
He dragged me along. The place he was taking me was where So Yeomgyo lay crumpled against the wall. She must have spotted me being hauled over; she tried somehow to push herself up while cradling her broken arm. In the end she couldn’t rise. That was how badly she was hurt.
Thud!
Ilmanhyeolje flung me to the ground. He drove one sword into the dirt and kept the other in his hand.
I still remember it crystal clear. You called me a coward, didn’t you? Everyone shows their true face in the face of death. You think you’re any different?
Those were words So Yeomgyo had spoken as well.
From now on, I’ll strip that mask right off you.
His blade pointed at my face as if ready to split it open.
Let’s play a little game. And since it’s a game, we’ll set one rule. And that rule—even if heaven itself splits in two—I will keep it without fail.
Over Ilmanhyeolje’s face, Ak Ryu-yeop’s expression now fully overlapped and showed through.
Only then…
He lifted the trembling long sword and licked it.
…will my revenge truly shine!
Flash!
With a swirl of purple mist his blade cut twice through the air.
Screeech! Screeech!!
Two deep scars scored the ground in a straight line. They were two parallel lines, roughly a shoulder’s width apart, with me between them. The lines stretched all the way back to So Yeomgyo.
The rule is simple. From this moment on, I will advance without ever stepping over these two lines. The target—
Clank!
Ilmanhyeolje flung the sword he had been using into the dirt.
—is that bitch behind you.
“…!”
My breath stopped.
If you want to stand in my way, then stand. It would be a shame if you died too quickly, wouldn’t it?
Ilmanhyeolje opened and closed his two bare hands—now fully restored—and looked them over in turn.
Crack!
He laced his fingers, pushed them forward, and cracked the knuckles free.
With bare hands, without a single scrap of inner energy, using only pure external force, I’ll cook you. But the moment I push past you, the woman behind you will be begging me to kill her instead. Look forward to it.
“….”
Bloodshot veins rose in both my eyes.
Ilmanhyeolje spoke again.
It’s not time to get angry yet. What comes next is the real heart of this game.
He raised a finger and pointed at the two boundary lines on either side of me.
Even a single finger is fine.
If, while taking my hits, even the tip of one finger crosses either of those lines and you run, I will immediately spare you without touching a single hair on your head. I’ll say it once more. Can’t take it? Then just brush the line with a fingertip. I’ll take it as surrender and let you live. I swear it before heaven and earth. Absolutely, unconditionally, I will spare you—and only you.
“…!”
I understood exactly what Ilmanhyeolje—Ak Ryu-yeop—wanted from me.
Back in the arena of Unwol Jiju, when the Blood Cultists had closed in on his life, he had ignored the pleas of the commoners who looked to him for help. Instead he had tried to offer up a little girl as the price to beg the cultists for his life—and I had looked at him with pure contempt for it.
He was trying to recreate the exact same situation now.
I looked behind me.
Through blood-soaked bangs, So Yeomgyo was gasping for breath with painful effort. Our eyes met. She closed her Flame Eyes, then opened them again.
“….”
Slowly, she shook her head. She moved the wrist of her broken left arm in a tiny flick, gesturing me to the side. The cheap bracelet around her wrist caught my eye.
You can still run outside the lines right now. Honestly, you of all people should know the state of your own body better than anyone.
Ilmanhyeolje whispered the sweet words.
Can you even stand properly right now?
Countless thoughts raced through me. Every thought I had ever lived with raced through me.
Host, get out first. You have to live to fight another day. Abandon So Yeomgyo. Cool your head. Do not do something incomprehensible. Even the word “reckless” is too good for this—it’s pure suicide.
Mumyeong said.
Could I fight? Could I win? The odds of facing him again in bare-handed combat and winning… the odds of facing a no-longer-careless Ilmanhyeolje again and winning… the odds of even managing to grab her and escape… the condition of my body… the stamina I had left… the inner energy…
“…There’s really nothing left.”
Everything was perfectly, completely empty. Not a scrap of strength, not a drop of inner energy. My legs trembled.
Keh-keh-keh. You’re shaking. As expected, everyone becomes honest in the face of death. Especially anyone with reason left.
Ilmanhyeolje’s eyes filled with laughter.
There was a limit to how far sheer recklessness could take you. Reality was cold and merciless. I had to take full responsibility for this.
I was afraid of death. Ever since I had watched my mother freeze to death right in front of my eyes, death had terrified me more than anyone.
Host, think rationally! Remember the teachings of Asura! You’re an adult now, not some greenhorn from the past! So—!
Mumyeong was screaming like a madman. The one absolute thing he and I shared was the pure hunger to survive.
I shouldn’t say this, but So Yeomgyo is neither blood kin nor any truly vital connection to you. In a moment like this you must strategically cast her aside and plan for later. Besides, the full moon will rise soon and emergency body restoration will become possible! So for now, leave this pl—…! …!! …!
Mumyeong’s voice grew distant and faint.
Ever since I had closed my eyes as if falling asleep and then witnessed that infinite, endless darkness that came afterward, I had feared death more than anyone alive. I wanted to live. I truly, desperately wanted to keep living until now.
Thick, sticky blood poured from my nose and ran over my lips. I couldn’t breathe through my nose, so I opened my swollen mouth like an idiot and forced air in and out with difficulty. On legs whose strength had given way, I stood trembling and just breathed. Both eyes were swollen blue-black, teeth were missing, and not a scrap of inner energy remained. My trained fists were broken; there was no spirit left in them, no pride of a man, no dignity of any kind.
No one was watching. No one was expecting anything of me. In this forgotten space deep in the underbelly of the martial world that no one would remember and no one in the jianghu would ever know about, I was offered a deal: bend once before this disaster and keep your life.
Even if I compromised here, no one in the jianghu would know. No one would know that I had bent my will just once. And I would live again. I would go on living. I would be able to keep living once more.
Because I wanted to live more than anyone, because I did not want to die, I had thrashed and clawed my way this far. Life was my driving force; it was not something I could cast away like a discarded weed.
Bend today… and promise myself tomorrow.
Someone from my past had said something about those words once. What had it been? It felt like I could almost remember, and yet I couldn’t. Everything was hazy. I had lost too much blood.
And yet. And yet even so—
The answer I would give in this very moment, the path I had walked until now…
Well then, shall we begin? You’re not running? You’re really not running?
I dragged in a ragged breath. I planted my hands on my knees. I looked at So Yeomgyo. Truthfully my vision was already so blurred that anything farther than a short distance was only a fog. I couldn’t tell what expression she wore, whether her face was a mess of tears.
Ilmanhyeolje bellowed.
Since you don’t look like you’re planning to run, let’s get started!!
Boom!
Ilmanhyeolje kicked off the ground and charged. His muscles writhed. This was not an ordinary man’s body. This was not ordinary hand-to-hand technique. Even if he had only just been reborn and less than the first of the seven days and nights had passed—even if he possessed only sixty percent of his full strength—even if no inner energy rode the blow—this was still a fist that carried the full martial power of a Guardian, and a founding-era Blood Cult Guardian at that.
CRAAAAASH!!
A massive impact slammed into my face. My head snapped back with everything it had.
“Guh!”
Teeth shattered. My jaw cracked. I barely managed to straighten my body. Ilmanhyeolje’s fists and feet began to thrash every part of me.
Hah, you’ve trained hard, I’ll give you that! I acknowledge it! Kahahaha! A wooden training dummy that doesn’t break easily even when you hit it this freely!
A rising blow lifted my abdomen. Even so I didn’t fall. I staggered. Ilmanhyeolje tried to push past me. So Yeomgyo was behind him.
Shuffle.
I stepped into his path and blocked him.
“…Why are you just trying to walk past.”
I sucked in three hard breaths.
“I still haven’t stepped over the line to run. I still haven’t said I’ve lost.”
…You little bastard.
Sparks flew in Ilmanhyeolje’s eyes.
Fine. Today it’s you or me—one of us ends this!