Hunter or Prey (5)
His exceptional reflexes worked against him.
When an arm shot out from around the bend of the underground waterway, Najin reflexively snapped his eyes wide. He needed to identify what that hand held and ready himself. His reflexes were sharp enough that the intention succeeded.
But success does not always mean the best outcome.
Najin saw it. The lantern gripped in the outstretched hand. The flame burning blue-green inside the lantern wavered. The moment that flickering fire fixed itself on his retinas, he felt the world turn upside down.
The blue-green flame is visible.
The burning flame casts a shadow.
The fire-shadow imprinted itself on Najin’s retinas.
The change struck in an instant. First his sense of balance vanished. Second, the landscape before his eyes warped. Third, every sensation inside his body scrambled into chaos. Am I still standing? Have I fallen? Or is it something else entirely…
Vision and sensation tangled together.
Najin!
But even with everything else distorted, the voice ringing from within remained clear. It was not something heard by the ears but a resonance of the soul. As Merlin’s voice echoed, Najin clenched his teeth with a sharp grind.
Even with his senses in ruins, Najin felt something closing in on him. Trusting pure instinct, he thrust out an arm and kicked off the ground.
Thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip!
Bone stakes shot through the air and slammed into his body.
The stakes aimed at his face were blocked by the hand he had thrust forward, and the leap bought him just enough distance to keep them from piercing anything vital.
An astonishing movement for someone whose sight and senses were completely scrambled. But that was as far as it went. Leaping without looking where he was going, Najin plunged straight into the water channel flowing through the sewers.
Splash, and then a long rush of water…
Almost the same moment Najin hit the water, a single arrow flew. It blasted through the corpses blocking the path and streaked toward the hand holding the lantern. The arrow never pierced the arm.
Screech, skreee, skreeee.
A defensive spell unfurled over the arm and caught the arrow. Then, with a sharp crack, the spell shattered. That a single shot had broken a mage’s barrier was impressive enough… yet it did nothing to improve their situation.
Click.
At last she stepped out from around the bend.
A woman holding a lantern of blue-green flame, adorned with ornaments crafted from human bone. Pauve, the black mage who was the target of this mission, smiled.
“Impressive.”
A bracelet snapped and dropped to the floor with a soft clink.
It had been the focus that bore the cost of the defensive spell. A bracelet that could normally withstand four full strikes from a Sword Expert had been shattered in a single blow.
The power was startling, yet Pauve merely offered a brief murmur of admiration; she showed no real alarm.
She still carried plenty of other relics on her person. Smiling at her leisure, Pauve looked at the ranger leveling a crossbow at her.
“But are you sure about this? Your companion already fell into the channel. Shouldn’t you go pull him out?”
As she spoke she tapped the floor lightly with her staff. Circles rose behind her back. Pauve shook the lantern in her hand and smiled wider.
“Once you’ve been hit by this and you fall in the water… you’ll never surface again. If you don’t go after him, he’ll drown. Shouldn’t you jump in after him?”
One circle. Bone stake.
The stake screamed through the air toward Kaufman. The instant it nearly reached him he loosed the crossbow. With a heavy thung his deep-hooded poncho flared.
Crack.
The arrow smashed the bone stake to powder. The arrow continued through the scattering bone dust and stopped right in front of Pauve’s nose. This time it failed to break her barrier; the shield focused entirely on the front had caught it cleanly.
“Cold. Men without loyalty are the worst.”
Pauve clicked her tongue and leveled her staff.
“But what can you do? Nothing is more helpless than a marksman without a vanguard.”
One, two, three.
Three circles rose behind Pauve. And it was not only circles that appeared. From around the bend came corpses with eyes rolled back in their heads, along with two more black mages.
Among the corpses were knights and heretic inquisitors.
Those who had entered earlier, or who had been reported fallen to the black mages not long ago. Watching them, Kaufman clicked his tongue. Things had just gotten troublesome.
Ranger Kaufman Teosis assessed the situation.
Two black mages of the Second Circle.
One black mage of the Fourth Circle, and more than twenty corpses they could command as mediums. Even that alone would be difficult to handle without preparation…
And she even has a Masterpiece.
A Masterpiece in the form of a lantern. Fire Shadow.
He did not know its exact effect. But judging by the way that brat had lost his balance, moved strangely, and fallen into the water the moment the lantern flickered…
Hallucination or sensory disruption, most likely.
The flame in the lantern Pauve held had almost died out. Watching it slowly regain size, he guessed the relic required a recharge period. Having reached that conclusion, Kaufman let out a long breath.
A troublesome opponent.
And this was their home ground.
He still had not fully mapped the prey, and the battlefield was unfavorable. But… so what? Kaufman was a ranger, and before that he had been a soldier. He had fought in far more unfavorable situations than favorable ones.
What mattered was flipping the board.
The corpses charged toward Kaufman.
The knight and inquisitor corpses stood guard around Pauve while, behind the surging dead, Pauve and the black mages chanted. Raising a vanguard while preparing a major spell. For black mages, they were following the textbook approach.
“Tsk.”
Clicking his tongue, Kaufman pulled the ballista’s trigger and at the same time let his body ride the recoil. There was no need to aim carefully at the corpses rushing straight at him.
Thung.
The recoil drove him several steps backward. As he retreated he released the ballista. It hit the ground with a heavy thud; by then Kaufman’s hands were already inside his poncho.
What emerged were throwing daggers.
The daggers thunked into the corpses whose numbers had already been thinned by the massive ballista bolts. As corpses with blades through their skulls toppled, a line of sight opened. Beyond them stood Pauve, staff leveled at him.
Blood droplets hovered above the staff she aimed.
Kaufman knew that magic.
A favorite of the Crimson Blood school of alchemists and of necromancers. Magic that used blood as its medium. It required vast quantities of blood, making it difficult for anyone outside the Crimson Blood school… but black mages were the exception.
They did not need to use their own blood.
Some corpses had collapsed without taking a single dagger or arrow. Their skin was completely desiccated, as though every drop of blood had been drained. That stolen blood now swirled above Pauve’s staff.
Three circles.
Third-circle magic: Crimson Ray.
A spell that lived up to its name came flying. Because of its destructive power and because black mages favored it, Kaufman knew the spell well.
He also knew how to break it.
Still low to the ground, Kaufman flicked his fingers. The daggers embedded in the corpses blazed with blue light. He was no mage, but he knew how to handle magic tools. The more usable weapons, the better.
Engraved on the five daggers was the concept of Refraction.
The blue-glowing daggers bent the Crimson Ray. Dodging the zigzagging beam, Kaufman thrust one arm straight forward. That arm pointed at the black mages standing beside Pauve.
Thwip.
An arrow launched from the hand-crossbow mounted on his wrist.
The shot disrupted the black mage mid-incantation. Those few stolen seconds were enough. Kaufman drew the great bow from his back and nocked an arrow in the same smooth motion.
A movement he had repeated thousands, tens of thousands of times. The bowstring drew to its absolute limit.
Sizzle-sizzle-sizzle!
The refracted Crimson Ray melted the sewer wall and came back around. The beam returned at terrifying speed. Thin their numbers before that ray reaches my back. That was the thought in Kaufman’s mind as he prepared to release the string.
Glug.
A sound. An unexpected sound.
Something burst from the channel, cutting through the current. Water sprayed in every direction as the figure that erupted from the waterway was Najin, bone stakes still buried in his body.
Aura already wrapped his blade.
Spinning once in midair, Najin drove his sword into the ceiling of the sewer. The instant the blade sank into the stone he withdrew the aura, locking the sword in place. Then he planted both feet on the ceiling.
That took one second.
Aura flared again around the sword fixed in the ceiling, light leaking from the edge. Najin yanked the blade free and kicked off the ceiling, launching himself straight at Pauve.
“···!”
Pauve whipped the staff she had aimed at Kaufman around toward Najin. The Crimson Ray that had scraped along the sewer wall was just about to swing onto him.
Whoosh.
Reading the situation instantly, Kaufman released his bowstring. The arrow flew for Pauve’s staff. The Crimson Ray pouring from the tip melted the shaft, yet before it could fully dissolve the arrow still struck the end of the staff.
The trajectory of the staff aimed at Najin skewed. The Crimson Ray skimmed past him by a hair’s breadth. Twisting his body, Najin swung.
Pure white aura carved a pure white arc. The crescent of force crashed down onto the defensive spell wrapped around Pauve. A spell that could block at least four strikes from an Expert…
Crack.
It could not stop Najin’s blow.
White aura split the defensive spell. The violently thrashing edge was about to reach Pauve’s nape when the barrier exploded with a thunderous boom.
Second-circle spell: Veil of Rejection.
The repulsive force blasted Najin backward.
He was thrown all the way to where Kaufman stood and let out a long breath. Kaufman was staring at him with an expression of pure disbelief.
“···You somehow managed to crawl out of that.”
A muttered remark of pure incredulity.
Najin did not bother explaining that the moment he hit the water he had driven his aura-wrapped sword into the wall and simply forced his way against the current. He only delivered the essential information.
“That hallucination lasts about a minute and thirty seconds.”
From the instant his senses twisted, Najin had been counting time inside his head. He passed on the duration of the Masterpiece’s effect—whatever it was called, Fire Shadow—while breathing hard.
Bone stakes still jutted from his body.
He had held his breath underwater, so his breathing was ragged.
His condition was far from good. He had taken a critical wound in their first clash without any information. Najin pulled the bone stakes free and steadied his breathing.
“Kaufman-nim.”
“Speak.”
“How many can you handle?”
“You first.”
Najin let his sword hang and looked ahead.
The two black mages gathered with Pauve, and the corpses they commanded. Looking at the inquisitor and knight corpses, taking them all alone would be a bit much.
“You crazy bastard···!”
While the two of them spoke, Pauve glared at Najin with eyes wide open. Even after using the Veil of Rejection, Najin’s aura had still managed to rake her skin just before he was thrown back.
Blood ran from her nape. Pressing her palm against the wound, Pauve ground her teeth.
Cursing under her breath, she roughly struck the lantern hanging at her waist. The recharged Fire Shadow flared blue-green once more. As Kaufman started to close his eyes against the flickering light—
“I’ll take that bitch.”
Najin’s voice rang in Kaufman’s ear.
“Handle the rest however you like.”
“What?”
An order, not a request.
Before Kaufman could even demand what kind of insane nonsense that was, Najin stamped the ground. With a heavy boom, cracks spiderwebbed across the floor of the underground waterway.
Instant acceleration.
Najin kicked off and shot forward. Kaufman’s eyes were closed, so he did not see it, yet he still sucked in a sharp breath. The presence that flared for that single moment had been far too fierce.
Najin kicked off the ground and sprinted.
With mana drawn up in an instant, his speed as he charged was in no way inferior to a Sword Seeker. In that fleeting moment the black mages could not track him with their eyes.
By the time they recovered, Najin was already right in front of them.
The knight and inquisitor corpses, however, reacted—if only belatedly. They brought their blades down toward him, and Pauve thrust the lantern at his face. But Najin’s eyes were already closed.
Eyes shut, yet he still felt presence.
Najin took one more step forward. Carrying the full momentum of that step, he swung. The Veil of Rejection shattered and tried to shove his body away; in that same instant he thrust out a hand.
···The repulsive force of the Veil of Rejection triggers twice.
The first concentrates instantly on the weapon that broke the veil. The second, after a brief delay, erupts across a wide area. Merlin had told him that, and he had just experienced it.
Because he had experienced it, Najin aimed for that gap.
Because he had experienced it, he swung with one hand.
The sword that shattered the veil, and the left hand gripping it, were flung backward—but his right hand remained free. The right hand he thrust forward closed around Pauve’s collar. As the repulsive force shoved Najin’s body back, Pauve’s throat was choked by the pulled robe.
“Ghk!”
Breath broken. Mana flow disrupted.
Najin was not about to miss that opening. He stamped down with a raised foot and swung his arm. Using even the force that was trying to push him away, he hurled Pauve.
Pauve went flying far.
Distance opened between her and the black mages supporting her, between her and the corpses guarding her. A corpse knight swung its sword and an inquisitor whipped its spear too late… by then Najin had already kicked off the ground and was charging after Pauve.
He raced toward the isolated black mage.
His eyes were still closed.
Watching the blind charge, Pauve gritted her teeth. You’re going to fight with your eyes shut entirely? Fine—try it if you can. She touched her nape and swung the lantern in a wide arc.
Fire Shadow was a Masterpiece.
If simply closing one’s eyes could neutralize it, it would never have been called a Masterpiece.
The moment he falls for it again.
This time I’ll punch a Crimson Ray straight through that torso.
A smile began to form on Pauve’s lips—right as Najin opened the eyes he had kept shut. He stared straight into the flickering flame.
Wide-open pupils.
Those eyes had turned platinum-gold.