Elf Sword God, Chapter 10
Bang!
Just when only one child remained, a tremendous explosion rang out.
"Jayeon!"
"Yeah."
My mother had finally arrived.
A bone-chilling aura hung in the air around us, so intense it made every hair on my body stand on end.
Pretty soon, the cult bastards would start moving to find us too.
"Let's go. Time to save the last one."
"This way!"
The cat-eared beastkin we'd rescued after the traffic light pointed in a direction with her finger.
Even without any mana, her senses seemed sharp from the very nature of her race.
"Isn't this a wall?"
"This is the right place. I can hear someone inside. It's a girl."
Tap. Tap.
Bang.
There was one spot where a different sound came through.
"It's hollow inside."
When I glanced at Hyehwa, she nodded.
"This time too, we're going to swing on one and two, right?"
"Exactly."
One.
Two!
Crash!
Hyehwa's red mana and my blue mana slammed into the wall.
The shape inside became faintly visible.
"Everyone, come over here."
At my words, the kids hurried into a row in front of me, then looked at me with the helpless expression of people who had no idea what to do next.
Thud.
I drove the tip of the wooden sword into the newly revealed opening.
After jabbing at it a few times and rocking the wooden sword from side to side, I nodded.
"Hm, that should do it."
"Uh, Jayeon. Don't tell me you're not serious?"
The kid with the green bowl cut raised the question.
He must've been pretty sharp, because he'd already figured out what I was planning.
Kids these days really are smart.
Either way, that didn't matter.
"Hurry up and cling to it, then push down with your weight."
They stared at me like I'd lost my mind, but when I glared back with the thought, What am I supposed to do, I'm not a volunteer? You not doing this? they quietly latched onto the wooden sword.
"Grrrgh!"
They strained until the veins on their necks stood out.
"Good. Keep repeating that until the wall comes down."
I had my own work to do in the meantime.
"Hah, finally found you. Looks like it's time for the brats to go back where they belong."
A bald man with a skinhead stepped into view.
He swung a hand axe and slowly advanced, as if confident he could take all of us on at once.
Hyehwa looked at me, her face tense.
"Jayeon, you don't even have a weapon right now. Are you okay?"
"Huh? What do you mean, I don't have a weapon? Hyehwa, you stay here and be ready in case anything happens. I'll be right back."
"I-I, no, I mean, okay..."
I stopped her with a look before she could say she wanted to help fight.
Now wasn't the time to lean on Hyehwa.
"Hm, okay."
Stride length, reach, approximate strength.
Assessment complete.
Step by step, the distance between the bald man and me closed.
And then, when only about five meters remained, the two of us hurled ourselves at each other.
***
Just as Jayeon was walking toward the bald man, the cat-eared girl asked Hyehwa,
"Is it really okay to send Jayeon off like that?"
Okay to do that...?
"We just trust him. Jayeon has always shown us why, and always proved it."
On their first meeting, in his first real battle, during the Demon God Cult's attack.
And even now.
"So let's trust him. Trust him, and hurry up and break through this wall."
"Okay..."
The cat-eared girl folded her ears back and tightened her grip on the wooden sword.
Everyone seemed uneasy and couldn't focus on the task.
To them, Hyehwa clapped her hands and said,
"Come on, come on! Jayeon will definitely come back, so let's finish this before that!"
"Yeah!"
Hyehwa looked away from the kids, who were sweating nervously as they worked, and watched Jayeon's fight instead.
Will I ever be able to fight like that?
Jayeon's movements were efficiency itself.
The first exchange left a scratch because he couldn't fully avoid the enemy's attack.
His opponent had even been grinning in delight at the sight.
"Hahaha! The brat might be fighting a little, but this hand axe is still too much for Lee Eokma!"
Lee... Eokma? Was that even a person's name?
Even while listening to that crude, taunting voice, Jayeon didn't let a single expression change cross his face.
He simply looked like he was measuring the opponent.
Hyehwa knew that expression well.
The face of someone dismantling everything about his opponent and making it his own.
That was a different kind of talent from the one written in the status window.
From the point of view of the person on the receiving end, it was enough to make your skin crawl.
The feeling that everything about you had been stripped bare and laid out for the other person to see.
Though, honestly, that's more convenient for us.
As if he had finished calculating, the corner of Jayeon's mouth lifted.
"How dare you smile in front of me. Die!"
The moment the bald man swung his hand axe, Jayeon drove his body inward.
"Wha...!"
Of course, the axe only sliced through empty air.
The bald man reached out, trying to seize Jayeon as he slipped inside.
Jayeon twisted his body the opposite way to evade, then struck the man's wrist at the same time.
The wrist holding the axe met the edge of Jayeon's hand.
The result.
Clang.
With a clear sound, the hand axe dropped from the bald man's grasp.
The axe floated through the air.
"Ah!"
It was about to smack down on Jayeon's foot.
I need to dodge—
But Jayeon casually caught it on the top of his foot.
The hand axe flew off like a kicked soccer ball.
Whoosh—
The axe shot in a straight line and buried itself in the bald man's shoulder.
"Whoa..."
A gasp of admiration came from beside her.
Before they knew it, the children had let go of the wooden sword and were watching the fight.
Even to them, this was the first time they'd ever seen a battle like this.
"So you can fight like that..."
What the children were thinking was the same as Hyehwa's own thoughts.
A fight like that wasn't something you'd see just anywhere.
It was a combat method born from ruthless, relentless refinement, designed to defeat an opponent with a body that barely moved at all.
There must be no gap of even 0.01 seconds between thought and action.
Those were words Jayeon had once said to her.
Back then, she'd wondered if that was even possible.
But watching Jayeon fight, there was no choice but to understand.
He was already doing it.
The opponent could no longer use one of his arms.
Jayeon seized that opening and moved to an angle that forced the wounded arm to be used.
"Aaaagh!"
The man, frustrated, forcibly pulled the axe free from the arm it had half-embedded itself in.
"I'll kill you!"
The bald man glared at Jayeon with bloodshot eyes.
He'd chosen to give up one arm completely, but it made no difference to the battle.
"Hey, mister, did you really think you'd win by picking up the axe again?
The moment you chose to either drag things out or just leave it alone, you were finished."
"Shut uuuup!"
No matter how wildly the bald man swung the hand axe, it never reached Jayeon.
It was outright one-sided slaughter.
Even in the children's eyes, the hunter now was Jayeon.
As the outcome of the fight gradually became clear, the children turned back and grabbed the wooden sword again.
There was a strange spark of vitality in their eyes.
Their anxiety had been transformed directly into passion by Jayeon's performance.
"Let's do our best, everyone! We can't just stand around either!"
"Ooh!"
"One, two!"
Crack— crack crack—!
Along with the sound of stones falling, the fissure widened even more.
Just as the kids were about to put in their final burst of strength,
"It's big enough now. You don't need to keep going."
"J-Jayeon? What about him?"
"Him? Though you probably shouldn't look."
"It's fine. We'll have to face it eventually anyway."
In the direction Jayeon pointed with his chin, the collapsed opponent lay on the ground.
His head and body were separated.
It was gruesome, but the cut was so clean it felt almost unreal, which somehow made it easier to take in.
"Ugh..."
The children clearly didn't feel the same way and gagged in disgust.
Among them, the red-haired boy spoke up.
I couldn't remember his name.
Jayeon had just called him red hair, so red hair it was.
"I don't think I can eat pressed meat anymore."
He could still think about pressed meat in a situation like this?
"Hey, before you quit pressed meat, a dog will quit eating its own shit first."
The blue-haired boy shot back.
"Really?"
***
After cutting down the bald man's neck and coming back, what I saw was pretty admirable.
The kids were sweating buckets as they strained against the wooden sword.
At this rate, one good blow and it'll be over.
Maybe because they'd grown attached to each other while I was gone, even their joking around looked warm and affectionate.
"Move aside. I'm going to do it now."
"Ah, no. Jayeon, you've already had a hard time. Rest a little."
Well, I appreciated the concern.
"We're short on time. You could get hurt, so could you step back a little?"
"Y-yeah."
The kids let go of the wooden sword and took a step back.
"A little farther back."
That should do it.
I grabbed the hilt of the wooden sword and pulled back.
Clak, clak, clak.
I felt it catch on the stone, but once I fed mana into it, it came free easily.
I raised the sword.
And brought it down.
Bang!
Ignoring the children with their mouths hanging open in awe, I bit into a potion.
That's more like it. I can breathe again.
My stamina, which had been drained by the fight, began to recover.
"Phew. Let's go in."
"W-wait!"
The cat-eared girl pointed in one direction.
"Hm?"
There was a child wearing ragged clothes.
"What the hell?"
This was harsher treatment than anyone else trapped here had received.
"Let's hurry and get them out!"
The red-haired boy lurched forward.
His personality was just as rash as his hair color.
I grabbed his shoulder first.
"Wait a second."
Something was odd. It was possible for the child's hair to be white.
Hair color could change however much it wanted depending on mana.
"What's wrong, Jayeon! We need to save that kid too, hurry up!"
Unlike when we'd rescued the others, there was a reason I was hesitating.
"That kid's been poisoned by miasma."
"What?"
Dark, sticky miasma clung faintly around the white-haired girl's body.
It was different from the full strength miasma of the cultists.
It looked like mana and miasma were mixed together fifty-fifty.
No way...
"Human experimentation..."
"W-what do you mean, human experimentation?"
"Ugh... Is someone there?"
Hearing our voices, the girl slowly lifted her head.
"Hrk!"
"H-heh!"
"This is bad..."
What exactly had those Demon God Cult bastards done...?
The veins standing up on her face twitched like insects.
"Guys, turn around."
The instant I finished speaking, everyone except Hyehwa turned their heads away.
This was probably too hard for them to look at.
The white hair, too, was likely the color distortion caused by pain.
Grip.
Hyehwa clenched her teeth and pulled on my clothes.
"If it's hard to look at, you can turn around too. I'll handle this part."
Hyehwa shook her head.
"N-no. Then that kid would be too pitiful... They didn't choose to end up like that..."
"Yeah... Then stay here. If you get poisoned by miasma too, it'll be dangerous."
"What about you?"
"I'll be fine. Trust me."
"Okay..."
I was the one who'd even taken down the Demon King.
I wasn't going to get poisoned by something like this.
The girl seemed unable to see very well, because she kept looking around in confusion.
Can she not hear well either?
"Tsk."
"W-who's there? A-are you... maybe my big brother?"
Big brother?
"What are you talking about?"
"Y-you... Who are you? P-please stop..."
PTSD.
Old memories were tormenting the girl in front of me.
"Calm down. I'm not going to do anything. I'm here to rescue you."
"Did my brother send you...?"
I didn't know who this brother was, but...
"Yeah. You mean the guy who goes around wearing a black hood, right?"
All the Demon God Cult bastards wore black hoods.
"W-what about my brother? Did he come too?"
"Yeah. You heard that loud noise just now, right? Your brother's probably fighting those Demon God Cult bastards up above right now. So..."
"W-what! That's impossible! There's no way my brother could fight Demon God cultists! What's going on? We have to get out of here right now!"
The girl thrashed so violently that the chains binding her body rattled and tangled.
"Calm down! What are you talking about!"
"This is a room built so that the witch can sense anyone the moment they enter!"
"What?"
Whoooosh—
The air around us froze cold.
"Oh my, so you've been here, little cat."
A voice that should never have been heard came from right beside us.
Shit.