Chapter 17
The public recruitment for laborers was over.
Along the way, there had been an accident that cracked open the heads of two applicants and killed them, and another two had ended up crippled from the waist down, but that wasn’t important.
In the end, Taeho Sect hired a total of twenty-four workers.
Geom Mujin and Park Seongchul were among them.
For the record, not a single person applied for the third specialty test.
What kind of skilled worker in their right mind would sign up for this?
Trying to find a tradesman here had been shameless, Murim-style shamelessness.
Anyway, with preparations complete, Taeho Sect finally set out to hunt the Goema.
“This hunt will include the sect leader himself!”
An Gojun, the leader of Taeho Sect—Trench Saber—raised his enormous greatsaber and shouted.
“We will exterminate the Goema, the leftover filth of the Demonic Cult, and bring peace to Gangneung!!”
He said exterminate, but what it really was, was hunting.
By hunting the Goema and reducing the region’s instability, they’d boost trade; and as a bonus, peace would come to the sect’s finances and to his own back pocket.
As he imagined a result that was profitable from every angle, a grin slowly spread across An Gojun’s mouth.
“Advance!”
At his booming command from the very front, Taeho Sect’s extermination squad surged forward.
So this is finally happening. A new kind of Goema.
Walking along with the laborers’ procession, I let my eyes sparkle.
* * *
A mountain somewhere between Jiangxi and Fujian.
Mount Mui.
It had once been a place woodcutters and herbalists climbed all the time, but now no one went there at all.
It had started when woodcutters and herb gatherers found something.
- Woah! W-what the hell is that?!
- Isn’t that a mountain beast’s corpse?
Finding a dead beast on a mountain wasn’t especially strange.
Remains left behind by predators like wolves or lynxes were common enough.
But the corpse they found was nothing like that.
Far from being half-eaten, it looked as though every last drop of blood had been sucked out of it.
It was an unnatural sight, but they didn’t think much of it.
They just said, “Huh, weird,” and moved on.
This wasn’t a world that paid rewards for reporting things, and the instinct to report incidents among the barbarians of this age wasn’t all that sharp.
Besides, people lived alongside freaks who could slice iron with swords, run through the air by stepping on nothing, and do all manner of other impossible things, so something like this wasn’t even that shocking.
Even after that, the dried-up corpses of mountain beasts kept turning up now and then, and then that day finally came.
The day a human corpse was discovered instead of a beast’s.
- Th-this isn’t Herbalist Beom’s body, is it?!
- That old man said he was heading deep in to gather herbs...!
- Shouldn’t we tell someone right away?
They felt a sudden sense of danger when they saw the dreadful state of someone they knew.
More precisely, a sense of danger for their own necks.
This time it was Herbalist Beom who’d died, but only Hades knew whose turn was next.
- Looks to me like this was the work of a Goema. Let’s report it to a martial arts sect.
The Murim folk usually caused more trouble than they solved, but in cases like this, they had to be the ones to handle it.
If it was a Goema, then those gold-eyed freaks would come swarming in and hunt it down on their own.
Sure enough, after word of the Goema spread exactly as intended, a sect called the Blue Serpent Sect came rushing to Mount Mui.
They ended up getting hunted down by the Goema and dying in a thoroughly pathetic way, but this time was different! This time!
Because the place leading the Goema hunt this time was none other than Taeho Sect!
“Each squad, move to your assigned position and form up!”
“Yes, sir!”
At An Gojun’s order, the sect members moved with perfect coordination.
“Workers, follow the squad you were assigned to in advance!”
The laborers, with huge packs strapped to their backs, headed for their designated positions.
“.....”
Then Park Seongchul, who kept sneaking glances at me, wandered off.
He was heading east, I guessed.
“Barbarian! Move faster!”
“Ah, yes! Coming now!”
After staring at the back of his head for a moment, I ran off at the sect member’s call.
Man, this was my first time meeting the guy and he was already calling me a barbarian.
The sect member I’d been assigned to seemed tense ahead of the Goema hunt.
“You barbarian bastards are too damn slow. Back in the day, trash like you would’ve had their leg bones broken and left in the dirt.”
“......”
It wasn’t tension. He was just a rotten asshole.
Haa... Just endure it.
Endure three words of insult and you avoid a murder—wait, huh?
Then if one murder means you don’t need to endure three insults, wouldn’t that be a better deal?
Should I kill him? Master?
Endure it. My inner greatsword master.
I suppressed my itching hand and followed after the sect members.
The formation Taeho Sect had prepared wasn’t anything special.
Eight squads would take positions in the eight directions—east, west, south, north, and the four diagonals—and surround Mount Mui.
The goal was to pressure the Goema through that encirclement.
Our squad had been assigned to the southwest.
“Everyone, up we go.”
The squad, made up of eight sect members and three laborers, began climbing the mountain where the Goema dwelled, where a sinister aura seemed to seep through the air.
Of course, we weren’t just climbing.
Like every other squad, including Geom Mujin’s, ours had two missions.
The first was to search.
We were climbing from all directions, but not in some impossibly tight net of encirclement.
There are about ninety Taeho Sect members participating in this Goema hunt.
They’d brought every available hand they had, but even that wasn’t enough to form a true heaven-net-and-earth-web.
To really do that, you’d need at least twice this many.
I’d experienced the heaven-net-and-earth-web a few times myself, so I knew.
In any case, since manpower was limited, we had to do the searching ourselves to make sure the Goema didn’t slip through the gaps in the encirclement.
“If you see anything, signal immediately.”
“Understood.”
The sect members parted the undergrowth and searched for the Goema.
Rustle—!
“!?... Stop.”
When the brush rustled, the squad leader stopped everyone in place.
At that, the sect members tightened their grip on their weapons and the laborers swallowed hard. I just blinked.
Something burst out of the bushes.
Totter-totter.
What emerged was a deer.
The deer stared at us with its large, round eyes.
“Damn it. I got worked up for nothing.”
“It just popped out all of a sudden, damn it.”
The sect members, who looked ready to swing their blades at once, let out sighs of relief.
“Hey.”
At the squad leader’s lazy nod, the laborers moved.
The second mission.
This one was for the laborers like me more than for the sect members.
“Shoo! Shoo!!”
“Get lost! Go on!”
The laborers waved their hands and threw stones to threaten the deer.
Drive the mountain beasts out of the mountain.
That was the second mission.
Hey, hey... Shoo... shoo...
No, seriously, what kind of clown show is this?
I mimicked the other laborers half-heartedly and felt a deep sense of self-loathing.
The reason we were doing this ridiculous clown show was part of the Taeho Sect leader’s scheme.
Something about launching a food siege on the Goema.
Mount Mui had already been sealed off, and no one had been allowed in for days.
That meant the Goema’s food supply was limited to mountain beasts.
If you drove the beasts out under those conditions, the Goema would inevitably go hungry, and that meant weakening it.
Not only that, but even if the Goema tried to lie low, it would have no choice but to come out if it didn’t want to starve to death.
Weaken the Goema and block its route of escape—what a brilliant plan!
It was the kind of scheme that would shock Zhang Liang, impress Zhuge Liang, and make Sima Yi tremble in fear.
But even such a plan had a problem.
Do they seriously think these mute beasts are going to understand them?
If you said, “Please go hang out on the mountain next door until our Goema hunt is over,” would they go, “Yes! Go Taeho Sect! Rooting for you, heroes!” and leave politely?
This bastard makes everything sound easy because he’s not the one doing it.
Even the deer that had appeared in front of us didn’t run off—it just stared blankly at us.
“Hey! You barbarian bastards! If they won’t run, just kill them! Slaughtering things is your specialty anyway!”
As time dragged on, the squad leader started spouting racist garbage and losing his mind.
His bravado was so intense it was hard to believe he’d just been tense enough to make his testicles shrink up between his legs.
Apparently even the Taeho Sect leader wasn’t a complete idiot, because he’d told them to kill the beasts if they didn’t run.
Snick—
As the squad leader barked at us, the laborers pulled knives from their robes, and I let out a small sigh.
Haa...
I wasn’t keen on killing animals casually, so I decided I’d scare the deer off with killing intent.
“Huh?”
Thump-thump—!
But before I could, the deer flicked its hooves and disappeared down the mountain.
....What was that.
It was a relief to avoid needless killing, but the deer’s eyes as it stared at us right before leaving felt strangely unsettling.
* * *
The eastern side of Mount Mui.
There, too, the assigned squad was climbing the mountain.
Of all the people ascending the mountain while searching and driving off beasts, one laborer in particular was full of spirit.
“Shoo! Shoo—! Get lost!”
Park Seongchul swung a long branch.
Whip! Whip!
The mountain beasts, chased by the rough swings of the branch, turned and fled.
It was obvious they were leaving more out of annoyance than fear, but leaving was leaving.
“We drove off all the mountain beasts! Warriors!”
“Good work.”
Park Seongchul’s shoulders rose.
He wasn’t happy because he’d been praised. He was happy because he was ahead of the others.
He rolled his eyes and looked at the other laborers.
Among us, none of them can outdo me.
Their enthusiasm and contributions were all ordinary compared to his.
He didn’t know what the other squads were like, but at least—
As he thought of the laborers in the other squads, he suddenly froze.
...Brother.
A fellow Joseon man, yet someone so strong he couldn’t even be compared to.
If that man were also aiming to enter Taeho Sect like he was, there wouldn’t even be competition—but he’d said he wasn’t interested in that sort of thing.
Given his own goal, it should have been something to celebrate, but Park Seongchul couldn’t feel happy.
- This isn’t something you can handle.
The last thing that man had said lodged itself in his chest like a stone.
He could have just ignored it, but that wasn’t easy.
What does that brother know, he barely even met me.
Geom Mujin had been giving him a sincere warning in his own way, but there was something he had overlooked.
Even if the strong give advice to the weak, the weak may not be able to accept it as advice.
His warning had struck at the weak man’s pride.
No matter what anyone says, I’m going to make a contribution...
“We’ll make camp here for today.”
By the time the sun had begun to sink, the squad leader declared they would camp for the night.
It had been announced in advance, so no one was surprised.
“We’ll go scout the surroundings, so you lot set up the tents.”
“Here, sir?”
A laborer glanced around and asked.
The area was wide open, making it look easy for an enemy to spot their position.
“A place like this gives us the best view—no, hold on. Do I really need to explain every little thing to you lot?”
The squad leader, who had been about to say something, narrowed his eyes and let out a coercive aura.
“Th-that’s...”
“...No, sir! We’ll have everything ready before you warriors return, so please go and come back safely!”
Just then, Park Seongchul answered energetically.
“Hmph. Joseon men are always too talkative. Learn a thing or two from that one beside you.”
The one beside him was also a Joseon man, but the squad leader didn’t care.
With a snort, he took the sect members and went out to scout, while the laborers started pitching tents.
I’m not just setting up tents right now. I’m setting myself up for merit.
Park Seongchul worked with all his heart and soul.
Clatter-clatter.
He cleared the stones from the ground, laid out the waterproof sheet, and erected the supports.
He was just about to place the tent over them and hammer the stakes into the ground when—
“!?”
A faint metallic smell brushed the tip of his nose.
Park Seongchul and the other laborers all turned their heads at once.
The first thing they saw when they turned was red.
An “it” shrouded in crimson mist so thick it was hard to make out its shape appeared, and the scent of blood trembled through the air.
He blinked unconsciously, and “it” vanished.
Crunch—!
No, it hadn’t vanished.
It had lunged at its prey and sunk its teeth into its throat.
“S-s-save me...! Aaaagh!”
The laborer with his throat bitten reached out toward them, but soon that arm dried up and shriveled.
“Aaaagh!”
At that horrific end, the other laborer screamed and ran.
And so did Park Seongchul.
The only difference was that he didn’t scream, so he didn’t draw “its” attention.
Even then, Park Seongchul’s mind was still racing toward merit.
Aaaargh—!
Ignoring the other shrieks echoing from far away, he opened his mouth and shouted.
“Warriors, over here! The Goema has appeared here!!”
Park Seongchul yelled at the top of his lungs.
That was the best he could do.
He had to call the squad leaders who were out scouting.
If they came back and managed to kill the Goema, then his contribution would absolutely not be a small one.
“Warriors!! Hurry, come quick!!”
But even though he ran quite a long way along the mountain path, no one appeared.
Could it be they hadn’t heard him?
“Kgh!”
Bang—!
With a burning pain in his left leg, Park Seongchul rolled across the ground.
“It,” having devoured two laborers, had caught up to him.
“H-hah... Goema...!”
He tried to scramble back to his feet, but it was impossible.
His left leg, the one he’d lived with all his life, was trapped in its jaws.
“My, my leg! My leeeeg...!”
He clutched the leg that had been torn away.
“......”
“J-just a moment... please, save me...! Just one—”
As Park Seongchul flailed both arms toward the approaching “it,” something suddenly caught his eye.
The squad leader and the sect members were looking down at him and the Goema from the branches of the surrounding trees.
They hadn’t failed to hear him.
They had heard him and chosen not to show themselves.
Seeing their eyes, Park Seongchul understood.
“Ha...”
A hollow laugh escaped him.
His warning had been right.
Something like him had never been capable of handling this.
What Taeho Sect had wanted wasn’t laborers or even apprentice disciples.
What they wanted was bait to draw in the Goema.
Crunch—!
Bright red blood sprayed into the air.
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