Chapter 20
"Kraaaah! My aaaaaaarm!"
With his right arm sucked so dry it was left with nothing but bone and skin—and then chopped off on top of that—An Gojun rolled around on the ground in agony.
"Oh. Uh..."
Geom Mujin wore an awkward look at the carnage he’d made.
He’d meant to tear the monster demon apart the instant he arrived, but who would’ve thought the thing would dodge that fast? Still, when you’re doing something big, a little screwup was practically part of the package.
"Relax! I already put the monster demon down!"
If you thought of it not as [lost one arm] but as [saved your life in exchange for one arm], then this was basically a massive profit, right?
"Y-you insane bastard...!"
Unfortunately, that was apparently only Geom Mujin’s logic. An Gojun glared at him with bloodshot eyes.
"And who the hell are you!? You dare cut off my right arm!?"
As they say, even rotten fish can still taste decent in some places. He pressed a few pressure points to stop the bleeding.
"I don’t care who you are, I’ll dismember you right alongside that monster demon!"
In this case, dismember means postmortem mutilation.
Back in the ancient days, when people’s brains were ruled by Confucianism, tampering with a corpse was considered a grave violation of propriety. But to say you’d do it anyway—that was proof the man was very, very, very pissed off.
An arm might be an arm, but when you cut off a martial artist’s precious right arm, what was the proper response supposed to be?
Fortunately, I’m a professional in this field, so I know exactly how to handle it.
"Enough! I’ll just pretend none of this ever happened!"
That’s right—face like iron plating!
Geom Mujin had just hacked off a man’s arm and was now the one shouting at him like he was in the right.
Are you the strongest iron-faced bastard in the Greatsword world or what?
"I’ll forget it all too, so you forget it as well! Okay!?"
Geom Mujin spoke with the tone of someone already sick to death of the whole thing.
In the martial world, grudges and favors were like a Möbius strip.
One person drowned their enemy in revenge, and then someone else came along dreaming of revenge for that revenge.
One dunk after another, over and over.
Once it started, you couldn’t see the end of it, and you sure as hell couldn’t get out.
That was why someone had to break the cycle.
No one in this seething martial world of grudges and debts had managed it, but I would.
Me, and no one else.
Geom Mujin—the one doing the harming—cut the thread between himself and An Gojun—the one being harmed.
"You son of a bitch! Mouthy little—cough! Cough!"
His eyes bulged red as if they were about to burst, and blood started to surge up his throat. It was an early symptom of Qi deviation.
"At this rate you’re gonna die on me. Just sleep."
Hoit!
"Ghk...!"
In the blink of an eye, Geom Mujin got behind An Gojun, hooked him from behind, and hit him with a pressure-point strike—hoit—knocking him unconscious.
He was a Transcendence expert, so he wouldn’t be subdued so easily by pressure points, but his opponent was no ordinary man either.
"Phew... I have no idea how many times I’ve saved his life now."
If An Gojun woke up, he’d have to face the reality of being one-armed and half-crippled from the effects of qi deviation, but I don’t dwell on trivial things like that.
"Anyway, I’ve kept this guy waiting long enough."
Geom Mujin roughly shoved the what’s-his-name to the side and looked ahead.
There, shrouded in bloody mist, was something.
That guy was Mount Mui’s fantasy pocket... no, a brand-new species of monster demon vampire.
Who’d have thought he wasn’t a vampire, the way he was wrapped in blood mist.
"Still hanging around. That’s surprising."
I figured he’d have run with some impossible stealth trick by now.
"......"
Unlike how he appeared now, it had wanted to run the moment it felt Geom Mujin’s aura.
This thing was not an opponent it could possibly beat.
The instincts screaming inside it said this was a monster that would turn predator into prey.
And yet it was still here because it couldn’t leave.
All this time, while it had been tormenting the large prey it had found, that monster had been radiating an incredibly sharp killing intent.
It felt like a warning: move, and you die.
That sharp pressure stirred something inside it.
It was an emotion that had followed it around every day, tormenting it, and an emotion it was feeling for the first time since waking up newly in the cave—fear.
- ...Test subject... No. 3... result...
- As expected... a fail...
Fear acted like water hitting dry tinder, and something seemed to rise in its mind.
A memory it had buried deep because it was too terrifying, too hateful.
"What are you doing? Planning to stand there all day?"
"....!"
When Geom Mujin moved, it flinched.
The memory that had been barely surfacing scattered apart.
Compared to the leader of the prey pack that had gathered to kill it, this one didn’t seem to have much energy at all.
So much so that the aura it had felt earlier now seemed like a lie.
At that level, it almost felt like it could swallow this monster whole.
But it decided to listen to the warning its instincts had sent.
"Kiiiiiieee!"
"Grrr... for the maaaaster!"
At its signal, the thralls all charged Geom Mujin at once.
That was one of the things it had learned from the Green Serpent Sect affair before.
When you run, you need someone to guard your back.
"Smart little thing."
Geom Mujin snorted as he watched the monster demon, clearly aware of the importance of rear security.
Flash—!
At the same moment, sword light blazed.
".....!"
"!!"
The thralls rushing in together were all cut down in a single sweep.
Splatter-
The hacked-up pieces of the thralls rained down.
"...Quick little bastard."
The monster demon’s figure vanished.
It had slipped away in that instant.
"This isn’t just some simple act of masking its presence."
As expected of someone with a stealth ability that had been making fools of people all this time, even his senses and naked eye couldn’t catch it.
But I wasn’t worried.
Sodam, find it.
Because I had a cheat button.
* * *
Swish-swish-swish!
It sprinted up the mountain at full speed.
Then, all at once, the strings connected in its mind disappeared.
It knew exactly what that meant.
The thralls it had sent to attack the monster were all gone.
To think that had happened in such a short time.
The thralls that had been blocking behind it were gone, so the monster would surely pursue it—but it was confident.
No one had ever found it first when it hid in the dark.
Until now.
".....!"
Then it felt something approaching at great speed.
It was coming straight at it without any sign of hesitation or confusion.
BOOM—!!
"You’ve gone pretty far in just a moment."
Geom Mujin, who had chased after it, came walking out while brushing dirt off his collar.
".....!"
It was thrown off by a situation it had never experienced before.
Ripple—
As if reflecting its shock, the mist wrapped around its entire body shuddered violently.
"Heh, looks like I startled you."
It had only been a little over a quarter of an hour since he’d taken care of the thralls.
How had he managed to find an opponent that had completely escaped his senses in such a short time?
The answer was in the sky.
A hawk was flying over the night sky of Mount Mui.
Nice work, Sodam. Performance checks out.
- Kiiieee!
Could a monster demon’s stealth, which fooled human eyes and senses, fool the eyes of a spiritual beast?
Much less the eyes of a hawk, a beast famous for its sharp vision.
In fact, Sodam had already caught sight of the monster demon once.
So just in case, I had it search again—and bingo.
Sodam’s eyes pierced right through the stealth and found the monster demon fleeing along the mountain ridge.
"Game of tag’s over."
I walked toward the monster demon.
What should I do with this new species of monster demon?
I had no intention of killing it and selling its parts or turning it into equipment.
Better to capture it alive, probably.
In my experience, it was always better to keep something alive and have trouble than kill it and create trouble.
But before that, I had one question.
"Why were you running upward instead of down?"
We were near the summit now.
For a fleeing person, that was the exact opposite direction they should’ve been heading.
"Got another trick up your sleeve?"
"......"
Once again, the monster demon didn’t answer.
"Whatever. Of course a monster demon wouldn’t answer."
After all, the intelligence needed for communication had been completely devoured by its demonic nature—
"R...right... now..."
"!?"
At that moment, a small, faint voice reached my ears.
Wondering if I’d misheard, I widened my eyes—and from my side, a wild boar burst out.
"Kwieeek!"
Swish—!
The boar was split in half before it could even touch him.
A blade heavy with blood reflected a chilling light.
"Blood?"
When the boar split open, blood burst out.
Of course a living thing would bleed when cut, but the amount was beyond anything normal.
"Why is there so much of it?"
No wonder the boar had looked strange. Was it because of all that blood?
It hadn’t just been running away blindly.
While fleeing, it had been issuing orders to its thralls.
Bring it all the blood it had gathered so far.
And the thralls had faithfully carried out the command.
Shrrrk—!
As it reached out toward the blood, the crimson mass began to surge.
It hadn’t told the thralls to bring the blood so it could drink it.
Spikes of hardened blood poured out in great number.
"I did think you were kind of plain for a vampire."
I swung my sword at the blood spikes pouring down.
Right—vampires were supposed to use blood.
Geom Mujin moved his sword and spread a barrier of countless slashes.
Tap-tat-tat!
The blood spikes that touched the sword barrier scattered into droplets of blood dust.
The attack had failed, but that didn’t matter.
While he handled the spikes, the thralls packed full of blood arrived.
The moment it reached out, the thralls burst apart all at once.
Gush—
The blood inside the thralls soaked the ground, filling the whole area with the stench of blood.
As it drew that saturated scent deep into its lungs, its confidence rose.
Blood was power.
And that rising confidence turned into action.
"Mm...!"
Blood shaped like chains coiled around Geom Mujin’s legs.
Blood flow manipulation wasn’t exactly a skill it had much use for, but there was no trouble using it.
The corners of its mouth, hidden inside the mist, lifted like a crescent moon.
"Oh, this is pretty im—"
Before he could even finish speaking, the blood surged up like a beast’s maw and swallowed Geom Mujin in one bite.
CRUNCH—!
".....!"
Having landed its best attack, it clenched its fist, and the blood sphere that had swallowed him began compressing.
More. More!
It was about to crush that monster to death right here when a razor-sharp slash burst out from inside the sphere.
The slash, cutting through the blood sphere like tofu, swept past its side.
It hadn’t even brushed past, really, and yet it felt every hair on its body standing on end.
Cracks spread from the spot where the slash had emerged.
Crack—!
The fissures rapidly expanded, and then the blood sphere shattered into pieces.
Plip, plop—
As the falling blood-rain struck him, Geom Mujin walked out as calmly as ever.
"Is that all your little performance’s got?"
When Geom Mujin, holding a sword imbued with the energy of punishing the evil and setting aright the world, asked that, the smile vanished from its face.