The Lone Man in the Isolation Pavilion
It wasn’t just humans in the isolation pavilion.
The moment I noticed it was the very first night.
Just as I was about to doze off on a tree branch, I felt something cold and heavy crawl up my ankle.
The instant my eyes snapped open, I reflexively flung my body sideways.
Thud.
When I looked down after landing, a snake as thick as my forearm was coiled around the branch I had been sitting on, staring straight at me. Its scales were a deep crimson shade. Not something I had ever seen in the wild.
Snake.
Once it realized I had moved away, the creature vanished back into the branches as if losing interest.
They didn’t just dump it in here.
The design of the isolation pavilion was anything but simple. They must have figured that simply having humans kill one another wasn’t enough. By releasing creatures carrying poison inside, even survivors who somehow outlasted the fights could drop dead the moment they relaxed.
The next day, on the ground, I found a palm-sized black centipede. But it wasn’t alone. Hundreds of them were tangled together beneath a pile of fallen leaves I had almost stepped on.
I can make good use of these.
***
I swung my iron blade once and shook the blood off.
That makes ten.
I counted inside my head.
How long had it been since I entered the isolation pavilion? I had barely slept at all, so my senses were starting to dull. I had dozed off a few times while leaning against a tree branch, but that was it.
The only saving grace was that Body Enhancement Lv.2 let me recover fatigue at a far slower rate than any ordinary person.
Easier than I thought.
Basically, the humans inside this isolation pavilion were all trash. Not a single one had properly built up spiritual energy. The best they could manage was basic martial arts—decent footwork, but nothing more.
I still couldn’t control spiritual energy either, but the body-forged instincts I had gained from five years of running wild in E-rank dungeons combined with Body Enhancement Lv.2 made me a match for anyone here.
Still, never let your guard down.
Among those I hadn’t met yet, there might be someone who could wield spiritual energy.
I sheathed my iron blade behind my back and hid the dagger again inside the sleeve of my right arm.
At this point, the numbers should have dropped quite a bit.
I had personally killed nine of them. Add up the ones the others killed among themselves… and quite a few must have died already.
Next… how do I proceed?
Continue hunting directly, or climb up the tree again and keep watch?
Maybe I should rest a little first.
Before the thought finished forming, a sharp shout rang out from somewhere close.
“Die—!”
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The sound of blades clashing echoed one after another. This time, it was pretty close.
I lowered my body and slowly approached the direction of the noise. Hiding behind one tree, I peeked out.
A hulking man two meters tall and a woman with a far too delicate frame for his size were trading blows.
The hulking man swung two massive axes with wild, brute force. The woman barely blocked with a slender sword and kept retreating.
Her movements were agile, but she was being pushed back too hard by sheer strength.
She’s beautiful.
Long black hair, red eyes, and a face that was pale yet dignified.
And strangely, she wore neither shoes nor panties—barefoot and bare beneath.
She’s practically begging to be raped.
The hulking man laughed as he lifted his axe high.
“Hahaha! You’ve held up surprisingly well, but it’s over now!”
The moment the axe came crashing down, the woman twisted her body and raised her sword to block.
Clang!
The impact sent her blade flying. The gap allowed the hulking man to kick her chest hard with his foot.
The woman’s body sailed through the air and slammed into a tree trunk.
“Ugh!”
She groaned and leaned against the tree, sliding down. Her red eyes trembled slightly with pain, but she showed no sign of surrender.
The hulking man smiled as he slowly approached, convinced he had won.
“Hmph, you’re quite pretty, pretty girl. It’s a waste to just kill you here.”
The woman glared at him without a word, teeth clenched. No surrender showed in her red eyes.
I watched the scene silently from behind the tree.
Should I help?
I hesitated.
That hulking man was obviously no ordinary opponent. Even in that split second, I had seen blue light flash along his axe blade when he struck.
Though I had never seen it before, if my hunch was right, he was likely on borrowed time.
I could probably beat him…
He was definitely weaker than Wi Ho. But did I really need to risk it?
If I struck the moment he was about to rape her, I could cut off his head in one clean swing while he was still exhausted.
But giving such a beauty to a brute like him was too painful. I wanted to be the one to rape her, not let someone else lay a hand on her first.
Screw it.
I gripped my sword and began timing the ambush.
The hulking man took one step closer to the woman. As his huge hand reached for her hair to yank it up roughly, I planted my foot on the ground and leaped forward with all my strength.
Two steps would be enough to slip in behind his back. Before he could react, I swung my iron blade toward his nape.
Clang!
“Kuh… you little rat…”
He lifted his axe at the last moment to block. Unable to withstand the impact, he staggered back two steps and glared at me.
I never thought the ambush would be blocked.
“So that’s how you do it.”
He immediately spun his body and swung the axe in a wide horizontal arc.
I lowered my body and dodged. The axe blade swept over my head, whipping my hair with the wind.
Before I could recover, he stomped his foot and brought the axe down from above.
Clang!
I raised my iron blade to block. The power behind the strike was lighter than I expected.
“What? Why is your strength so weak for your size?”
His face twisted in annoyance at my taunt. He gritted his teeth and lifted the axe high again.
“You bastard…! How dare you mock me!”
The moment he brought the axe down, blue light enveloped the blade edge.
Danger.
I pulled my iron blade back instead of blocking. I had switched to evading.
At the exact instant the axe fell, I twisted sideways and lowered my stance. The blade edge skimmed my shoulder by a hair’s breadth and buried itself in the ground.
His stance has collapsed.
Seizing the opening, I dove straight into his arms. He quickly tried to reset his posture, but I grabbed the dagger hidden in my sleeve and thrust it upward.
Thud!
The blade pierced the thin gap beneath his jaw—exactly where the neck met the chin.
“Kuh…!”
All strength left his body in an instant. The axe clattered to the ground with a heavy thud.
I twisted the dagger free and stepped back.
Boom.
The massive body collapsed forward and slammed into the earth. I wiped the bloody dagger on his clothes, slipped it back into my sleeve, and checked on the woman still leaning against the tree.
“…Eh?”
She was gone.
The spot where she had been sitting was empty. Her dropped sword was nowhere in sight.
She ran.
I had a rough idea which way she had fled, but I had no intention of chasing now. The stench of blood was already too thick. The others would likely swarm this way soon.
She ran, so she ran. We’ll settle the score when we meet again later.
I picked up the dropped axe and left the area.
***
I forced back a yawn that tried to escape.
I don’t know how many are left, so it feels weird.
For several days the forest had been filled with screams and fighting, but it had gone quiet lately. By now, most of them must be dead.
More than that, is she still alive?
I thought of the woman with red eyes I had saved from the hulking man a few days ago.
If she had been raped to death somewhere, I’d feel sorry for it.
I shifted my body slightly on the tree branch.
At this point, the survivors were either hiding like me and keeping a low profile, or hunting down the hidden ones, or one of those two. Maybe all three.
“Just like now.”
Before the words left my mouth, a sharp whistle sounded along with the wind. Dozens of throwing knives flew straight at my head. I leaned my upper body back lightly to dodge.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
“Damn… good sense of timing.”
“You’re the one who ambushed like a complete idiot.”
I descended from the tree and scanned the man. His face clearly showed he had survived days without sleep, just like me.
I pulled out my iron blade and asked casually.
“If the ambush failed, you should have died, right?”
He answered by kicking off the tree and leaping upward.
If spotted, he should have run.
Taking on a frontal fight from the start would have disqualified him as an assassin. Well, it made things easier for me.
I tracked his movements with my eyes. He was racing up the tree from above in a zigzag pattern. His footwork was light, but the accumulated fatigue had thrown off his rhythm slightly.
When he reached the top, he hurled the knives.
I knocked the first one coming straight at me with my iron blade, then twisted to evade the next wave—only to feel it graze my shoulder. It stung, but not deeply.
The instant he landed, my iron sword was already pressed to the front of his neck.
His eyes widened.
“W-wait! I-I have information!”
My sword halted exactly at his nape. The slightest movement and his head would fly.
“Drop your weapons first.”
Thud.
The knives clattered to the ground.
I studied his face for a moment. His eyes were filled with terror, yet no surrender showed. His pupils trembled faintly as he tried to find an escape route.
“What information?”
“T-the sword first…”
“Want me to kill you?”
“H-huh…”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. I brought my iron blade closer and said,
“No time. Speak quickly. By the way, if you lie, I’ll kill you.”
He swallowed hard and started talking at once.
“T-today’s survivors are around twenty… of them, ten have formed an alliance…!”
“Alliance?”
“Y-yes… they’re using the rule that anything goes as long as you survive—reversing it. The Red Blood Sect doesn’t ban it.”
His words were correct. Elder Wang O had said it himself. Anything goes. Alliance or betrayal, it was all outside the rules.
“They’re systematically killing one by one. Did you hear the screams a few nights ago…?”
“I did.”
“That’s what they did….”
He didn’t seem to be lying, but telling the truth so readily only made me suspicious.
And he’s hiding something else.
From the start, his pupils had been shifting slightly to one side, as if searching for something.
“That’s all the information?”
“…F-for now, that’s all I know. I’ve told you everything… sword…”
I pressed the blade harder against his nape instead of answering. His Adam’s apple moved sharply.
“Where are the allies located?”
“Approximately… near the northern cliffs… they seem to have set up a base… and I heard from a distance that their leader is a third-stage Qi Condensation expert.”
“Wait, why would a Qi Condensation third stage come here?”
“I-I don’t know.”
At that instant, his eyes shifted slightly to the right again. My sword moved and severed his head.
Sever!
“Kuh… why…”
He clutched his neck and dropped to one knee. Blood poured between his fingers.
“Bastard, your information is too detailed. And you belong to that group, don’t you?”
His eyes twitched violently. With his neck half-cut, he tried to open his mouth one last time, but I swung my iron blade again and completely severed his head.
I wiped the bloody sword once and slowly turned my gaze to the right—the direction the man had glanced at last.
“Come out.”
From the bushes and behind the trees, nine men and women slowly emerged.