Shadow Stepping (4)
『Refine your agitation.』
『Your soul has been laid bare.』
“Huh……?”
『The remedy is imperfect.』
『You must not trust in that alone.』
The Twin Dragon Blades were doing their best to soothe my bewilderment. Their words only flustered me further, but before long I followed their advice anyway. Once, twice—each time I steadied my breathing, the tension standing my spine on end slowly began to settle. Even the tiger frozen rigid in front of me gradually relaxed its expression.
“……So it backed off?”
“……That's how it looks, for now.”
Seong Gwon, who had been commanding us from the rear, came over. It was Pyo Do-hyeok who answered her.
“Why did it retreat, though?”
“No idea……”
Nobody could answer Seong Gwon's question. Not even me. I had no clearer picture of what had just happened than anyone else did. Judging by the Blades' words and the tiger's reaction, I seemed to be the cause, but……
What did I actually do?
Was getting worked up in a situation like that really such a crime? Isn't that just a physiological response?
No, I can't be sure of anything yet.
But my instincts were already insisting they'd found the answer.
“Yahui, Pyo Do-hyeok. You two hurt anywhere?”
“Uh, no.”
“No injuries.”
“……Good that you're both unhurt. You went through a lot.”
Seong Gwon assessed our performance with a look that was somewhat conflicted—the eyes of someone who thought we'd been reckless and understood all the same that it had been the best call.
“Huaaaah. Thank god. I'm so glad it ended without anything worse happening.”
“Seriously.”
With the immediate danger past, the others began to speak up one by one.
“Hey, hey, this class is like a real deployment, isn't it?”
“Agreed. If it weren't for those two, somebody would've gotten hurt.”
“Yahui and our squad leader both reacted so fast that we made it out alive. They were both amazing.”
The hands of the chattering cadets trembled ever so slightly. The ambush had taught them, at least in part, what the words live combat were actually worth.
“Right, right? Thank god you two stepped up first. If you hadn't…….”
“…….”
Kim To-eun's voice shrank little by little. The bright mood we'd barely managed to keep afloat hit the ground in an instant.
“……Hey, hey. How long has our class been going, anyway?”
“Not even ten minutes yet.”
“I can't believe that……”
For the record, the instructor hadn't simply abandoned us without any measures at all. We weren't given weapons, but each of us did receive a wristwatch with a flashlight, compass, and clock built in, a canteen, and a signal flare. That was the only reason we could even tell the time, what with our phones confiscated.
“Can we hold out on our own? I mean, that one was fine, but what if their numbers go up even a little from here?”
Kim To-eun's point was valid. Honestly, we'd barely scraped through this fight because the man-eating dogs had stopped at three. Any more, and we'd have been in real trouble.
“Personally, I'd be stretched. Gong-ri-bi-sa's hit rate is worse than I expected, and Gol-saeng-chung goes without saying.”
“For something with a low hit rate, it made a pretty big difference at the end there?”
“Huh?”
“Thanks to it, I landed a clean hit when it got close.”
Gol-saeng-chung was far too slow to contribute mid-fight, but Gong-ri-bi-sa was another story. Not decisive, perhaps, but more than enough to create openings.
“……Well, that's a relief, then.”
“Separately, though, we're short on a tank. You know, someone to stand up front and hold the line. Like To-eun said, if the numbers climb, we won't be able to cover it.”
“Then should I summon mine and keep it out?”
At my suggestion, Sa Seo-yeon pointed at her own Phantasm. Numbers with the Old Man, or quality with the son? It wasn't a question a single ambush could settle.
If it were nothing but man-eating dogs pouring out around the clock, the Old Man would be the better pick……
But was there any guarantee the instructor would only send man-eating dogs? For contingencies' sake, wasn't it safer to keep Sa Seo-yeon's option in reserve?
We're spread way too thin. If even one more person here had a partner specialized in defense—
Wait. Hold on. Did we really have to hold out on our own?
“Gwon-ah, hold on a sec.”
“Squad Leader. I've got a proposal.”
Pyo Do-hyeok and I spoke at the same time. Seong Gwon, who had been covering our watch while the others caught their breath, turned toward us.
“What?”
“So here's the thing—”
“After that fight—”
We talked over each other again. I reflexively looked at Pyo Do-hyeok, and he—evidently running along the same mental track—was looking right back at me.
“If you two aren't going to spit it out, I'll go first. I'm thinking we try linking up with another squad. Worth a shot or not?”
“……!”
“……!”
Seong Gwon had landed on the exact same idea I had. Possibly Pyo Do-hyeok too.
“I think it's a great idea! Come on, numbers are a weapon too!”
“It's certainly not a suggestion we'd regret trying. It's not as if they're docking points for picking up survivors.”
“The problem is communication. Is there any way to rally everyone who's scattered?”
Be that as it may, we put our heads together over the new idea. Since it tied directly into building up our strength, nobody objected.
“Hmmm. What about lighting a signal fire? Build a big bonfire!”
“C-can we really light a fire in a forest in winter?”
“It's a fake forest! The trees are real, sure, but still!”
Now that our headcount had grown, ideas came pouring out.
“……If we head back to the lot where the jeeps were parked and try it there, the odds of the fire spreading to the surroundings drop too. We'd still need to be careful.”
“Ohh, right! The jeep that brought us here! It was parked on the inside of the blast wall, wasn't it? That spot would be perfect!”
“But can we actually start a fire, though? I heard starting one without proper tools is really hard.”
Even Pyo Do-hyeok had offered his two cents. In response to Sa Seo-yeon's doubt, I carefully pulled out one item and held it up. The signal flare the instructor had given us.
“Are we allowed to use that?”
“It was issued for emergencies, sure, but realistically, how likely is it that all six of us end up so battered we can't even move? I'd say we can spare one.”
“What if the instructor mistakes it for a real emergency?”
This time, the finger pointing at the flare rose to the trees above. There, tucked discreetly out of sight, sat a speaker and a CCTV camera.
“If someone who's alone fires it, you'd read it as a distress signal. But with a group this size, using it in a way nobody could mistake for asking to be rescued—I doubt it'd be misread.”
Besides, this particular instructor was the kind of legend who'd chucked her cadets into an artificial forest with nothing but survive. Would someone like that start bellowing about strict adherence to the rules? Or would she just watch it unfold and mutter, well, what do you know?
“Good idea. One more thing to factor in if we go with that plan, though. The fire we light won't draw only our classmates.”
“You're worried about enemies swarming to it.”
“Exactly.”
“Uuugh, this is haaard.”
The moment the discussion seemed to gain traction, Kim To-eun grabbed fistfuls of her hair at each new obstacle.
“I think it's worth a try.”
“Seo-yeon?”
“Even if we don't light anything, the instructor has almost certainly pinpointed our location through the CCTV already. Which means the enemies she's controlling know where we are too.”
“……That's a leap, but it's not wrong. So?”
“The instructor said clearly that no one has ever survived this class to the end. Most of those seniors would have tried to survive as squads, right? She deliberately scattered us precisely so that squads couldn't stay together.”
Sa Seo-yeon's green eyes gleamed as she laid out her position with quiet firmness.
“I don't know whether anyone before us tried to group up like this. But surviving with your squad alone is definitely the wrong answer. So……”
“Then we bet on the option that isn't a guaranteed wrong answer?”
“Yes.”
“Not bad. I'm in.”
Her words were the clincher. Starting with Lee Hoe-uk, the vote came back unanimous.
“Hey, hey, but does anyone remember where the starting lot was? I'm kind of turned around on the direction.”
“You head a bit west from due sou—contact.”
Before Pyo Do-hyeok could finish the warning, Seong Gwon's tiger was already moving, and my hands were unbuckling the sling belt.
“Three front.”
“Two on the left flank.”
“Two here as well.”
“Nothing on the rear!”
“Seo-yeon, summon the Old Man!”
“Yes!”
Rally up, plan ahead—whatever. The crisis right in front of us came first.
“……Well, what do you know?”
Shim Jae-gyeong, instructor of the Live Combat course, let out a hollow laugh at something she had never once experienced in her life. Her cigarette shed a flurry of ash because of it.
“That's the kid from before, right? The one who flipped the whole training run with that breakout stunt?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“I heard it was resolved. Guess it wasn't fully dealt with, hm?”
“Headquarters is looking into it now.”
Shim Jae-gyeong tidied up the ash she'd dropped outside the tray, sinking into thought.
So the structure is—normally he's fine, but once a fight starts, the Phantasms cower?
Tap, tap, tap. Her finger knocked ash off in a dull rhythm.
No. The fight itself isn't the trigger. He was mostly fine in the early going. Which means……
She clamped the freshly trimmed cigarette between her lips. Hooah. Smoke filled her lungs.
Something that happens mid-combat is the trigger. No idea what, exactly.
On the screen wired to the CCTV, the cadet kept glancing around at his squadmates' faces. It was the behavior of someone who had figured out he was the problem—which meant otherwise, it would never have shown.
“Got a reply. They say it's a plausible enough occurrence. But they can't spare personnel to fix it right now.”
“ figures. Those bastards are swamped as it is.”
Shim Jae-gyeong puffed on her cigarette while she picked her words. Part of the thought she'd arranged came tumbling out.
“We pull him out, then?”
“Given that otherworlders pull stunts like this from time to time, the experience would be fairly valuable…… but this isn't something a first-year should be going through, ma'am.”
“What's a year got to do with it? Has live combat ever gone easy on anyone for their age?”
“There are degrees all the same. And even for the cadet's own sake, I think isolating him now would be kinder. If word gets out, he'll be ostracized.”
“If I had a comrade like that, I'd have carried him on my back everywhere. So he puts our side off balance—and he also takes down enemies for us? What's the complaint?”
“Kids that age don't think that way, ma'am…… And this is a class. Let them fight through it that way and they'll pick up terrible habits.”
I couldn't follow her on anything else, but that last line I had no choice but to accept. Shim Jae-gyeong rose from her seat, thinking of all the students she'd seen come and go over the years.
“Okay, okay. Then I'll go myself.”
“You're going in person?”
“If a person steps in directly, it breaks their immersion, doesn't it? I'm confident I can pass for something that isn't a person, so it's fine.”
“……You're using your Phantasm? What if the kid gets scared of it too?”
“The atypical and object types were the ones he didn't flinch at, so we're good.”
Shim Jae-gyeong ground her half-smoked cigarette into the tray. The ember crushed out, its red light guttering and dying.
“Might as well go loosen the old bones, hm.”
It was a deployment order.
The ox chewed through the raw meat in slow, grinding strokes, and as it did, that hulking body shrank back into an ordinary seventeen-year-old boy. Clack. The ox-head mask, shed automatically, dropped to the ground.
“You.”
Pyo Do-hyeok picked up the mask and looked at me. Standing before that gaze, I had nothing at all to say for myself. It had only just happened, after all—my presence scaring the Phantasms into cowering.
“……Forget it.”
But rather than reproach me, Pyo Do-hyeok simply turned away.
Honestly, that was harder to take. If he'd called me out openly, I could at least have shot back that it wasn't fair. When he came at me like this, I had no comeback at all.
“Hey, hey. Yahui, you okay?”
“Yeah…… Sorry. People got hurt because of me. Again.”
Separately from that, my chest felt genuinely stuffy.
I'd noticed the pattern—that focusing on the fight, and the sharper emotions that came with it, was what triggered the Phantasms' fear—but knowing it didn't fix anything. I mean, how easy is emotional regulation mid-battle supposed to be? The enemies kept getting stronger and more numerous the whole time.
Just moments ago, the kids who'd been shielded in the back had nearly taken hits. Staying calm was easier said than done.
“Eh. Honestly, I'm kind of grateful.”
“……?”
“Sure, our guys get spooked because of you. But how many dangers did you carry us past in exchange?”
Lee Hoe-uk tossed the words out in his flat, deadpan way.
“You all think so too, right? That was genuinely dangerous. If those two hadn't panicked and fallen back, we'd have lost more of them.”
For the record, it wasn't just our squad gathered here anymore. The plan—smoke signals at the starting lot to rally allies—had worked out reasonably well. Seventeen people stood on the lot now: Platoon 1, one short of full strength. Not that it was only our platoon.
“So the Phantasms get scared, and it interferes with continuing the fight? Who cares? Our guys get scared, and the enemies get just as scared and back off.”
“Still, hurting our own side on top of it……”
“Has anyone actually been eliminated because of him? People whose lives he saved, plenty. People he got knocked out, zero.”
“He's right. Honestly, if Yahui hadn't stepped up, more than half of us would be out by now.”
Lee Hoe-uk wasn't the only one quietly taking my side—Sa Seo-yeon joined in too. That much was a small comfort.
“Oh, I see how it is. That whole thing about… blood being thicker than water? What heartwarming friendship.”
……Pyo Do-seok, swaggering over with that ingratiating grin, was absolutely no comfort whatsoever. Still.
“Ha, and you're one to talk—you're only alive because of Yahui, you—”
“Hoe-uk-ah, it's fine.”
I gripped Lee Hoe-uk's shoulder and gave it a light pat. He shot me a look asking why on earth I was stopping him. I answered with a small shake of the head: don't give him an opening.
“And it's not like I don't have things to fix. I can't count on enemies being scared of me forever.”
Enemies attacking freely while allies tiptoe around my feelings? Horrifying even to imagine. If this were a real deployment instead of a class, it would be worse still.
I retightened the Twin Dragon Blades' sling and kneaded my palm for no particular reason. Slowly but surely, the talent steeped into this body was getting harder to carry.
“Still, that seems like a tall order right now, so keeping my distance is probably the best move for the moment. Commander, can I take the outer watch?”
“……East is open. Take that side.”
“Got it.”
I moved only after getting Seong Gwon's leave. The moment the lot held people from other platoons as well as ours, all command authority had consolidated under her—so even for small actions, deferring to the commander was correct.
“I'm so tired, seriously……”
『What business has a whale among minnows?』
『The matter at hand is no fault of yours.』
“……Excuse me, I'd rather you not call my friends minnows, sir.”
Anyway, putting some distance between myself and the others helped me breathe. I leaned against a tree and let my lungs work.
I was tired.
I still have to find a way to fix this, though……
Unfair or not, I couldn't let it go on like this. As I kept up my watch on all four sides, I found myself wondering how the original Yahui had ever navigated a problem like this. It had never come up in the source material, so I had absolutely no feel for the solution.
There was a mention that the original Yahui made his teammates uncomfortable, but I can't tell whether it was for a reason like this or just the criminal's-brand baggage.
If the original Yahui had gotten even a little more screen time, might I have found a hint?
Just as my thoughts had drifted down to that idle a question, the fifth ambush came strolling toward us.
KWAAANG!
“……?!”
A hulking humanoid monster—easily two and a half meters tall—came down like a hammer right in front of me.
This thing was on an entirely different tier from the man-eating dogs and the Grade 1 and Grade 2 otherworlders we'd faced so far.
“……East side! Powerful contact!”
Could I stay calm facing an enemy like this?
Already, I wasn't so sure.