A Small War on Bukhan Mountain (2)
"What's a tag match?"
"It means we fight one-on-one, each of us taking a turn."
"And why would we do that?"
Ignoring the wraiths entirely, the Toy Soldier turned its gaze on Kang Jihun.
"You've taken quite a beating. Why don't you rest a moment?"
"…"
Kang Jihun did not let his guard down. Rest, it said — but this toy soldier was clearly no human. The glossy lacquered wood of its body, the doll-like joints, the plastic sheen of its eyes. No amount of costume and makeup could fake that.
And yet it wasn't a golem either. The mana waves rolling off it were far too ominous and savage to have been crafted by human hands.
A beast?
Something close to the wraiths themselves. As a hunter with real experience under his belt, he was not about to confuse a human's signature with a monster's.
"Kyaaaaaah!!"
The wraiths, claws already regenerated, surged back into motion. Twenty gray blades of nail came hurtling at Kang Jihun.
The Toy Soldier's rapier arm began to move at a terrifying speed, calmly turning aside every one of those countless trajectories.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tang!!
A clamor like glass cups colliding over and over. The wraiths, who had been thrusting their claws in half-heartedly, realized the guard was far sturdier than expected and quickly switched targets.
"Kill this one first! This one!"
It would take a little longer, but the ending was already decided. Their side had two; this side had one — and a dead weight to boot.
The Toy Soldier began to let attacks through. It had to protect the wounded Kang Jihun, after all. A defense-first strategy in a limited space — a poor approach against wave after wave of speed-type beasts. The wraiths shredded through the Toy Soldier's clothes and skin in moments, as if gnawing them away, and their ferocity only climbed as time went on.
"Heeheeheehee! So tough, so tough!"
"But the recovery's slow, huh? Let's turn it into sawdust!"
And then it happened.
In the instant the wraiths let their guard down and lost focus, the Toy Soldier's rapier flared with rainbow light and severed the female's left wrist.
"Kyaaak!!"
In the next breath the rapier punched straight through the abdomen of the male lunging in from the side.
Pook!
The male stretched its neck long, trying to bite the blade free of its own wrist — but the Toy Soldier had already abandoned the rapier without a second thought. It seized the brown musket slung across its back and swung it with all its strength.
"Adios."
Kwaang!!
A flash of rainbow mana. The musket's stock smashed into the wraith's skull.
"Guhhh…!"
The male staggered, spitting three or four fangs onto the ground. That was when the female, recovered, struck from behind. Claws gathered to a single point like a magic spear grazed the Toy Soldier's side, and a fair number of wood chips sprayed free.
Pusuk!
"Playing at fencing, are we?"
"Yeah! Gonna kill you! Kihhihihihi!"
The Toy Soldier swung the stock again. The female sneered and leaned her torso back to dodge — only to find a bayonet, which hadn't been there a second ago, fixed to the musket's muzzle.
"…!"
Gripping the musket tight, the Toy Soldier kicked off the ground and shot forward like a bullet.
"God Save the Queen!"
Kwajijik!
"Kyaaaa!!"
The bayonet drove clean through the female's abdomen, but the Toy Soldier didn't stop. It kept charging, smashing through several withered trees and driving her all the way to the cliff's edge. She swung her claws, but with her balance broken no real hit would land. In that opening, the musket's trigger was pulled.
Taang!
The Toy Soldier's musket was no automatic. Like a weapon from the Revolutionary War, its conditions of use were complicated and finicky. In exchange, a single clean hit could deal damage even an S-class beast couldn't shrug off — a powerful trump card for flipping a losing fight.
A gaping hole blown through her gut, the wraith went limp, blood pouring from all seven orifices.
{…!}
The male cocked its head at its comrade's corpse.
What? She's dead?
Why? The Toy Soldier was strong, but their side still held the clear advantage in raw power. By now they should have been grinding that weird toy into sawdust and dragging the human off. So why was reality this warped?
The wraith's gaze settled on the Toy Soldier's torn-open side.
{Doesn't matter. Just tear that open a little more.}
Whatever it was, split the body in two and it wouldn't move freely. Gather the claws and stab the way the dead one had — it would be over in a heartbeat.
"Ugh…!"
{…?}
"You son of a bitch! Recovery's done!"
In that instant, Kang Jihun — body steadied — hurled himself at the wraith like a hound off the leash. The wraith failed to react. It had expected a sword thrust, of course — not bare hands clamping down on both its legs.
"Heh. You dumb bastard. Let's see that back of yours."
Admitting his own sluggishness and locking down the enemy's mobility was commendable enough — but it left his entire body wide open. The wraith lashed its claws mercilessly at Kang Jihun's back.
"Uwaaaaaaah!!!"
{Huh?!}
But Kang Jihun was a monster of strength beyond anything it had imagined. With the fury of an enraged gorilla he hoisted the wraith up and slammed it into the ground again and again.
Kwang! Kwang! Kwang!
"You piece of—! Shit! Bastard!"
The iron body inherited from his father, the reinforcement magic tempered through brutal training. Even a high-rank beast, if it was a speed type, couldn't easily break free — it was flung about like a sheet of paper. The panicked wraith's claws found no path, thrashing at empty air.
{Uh, uhhh!!}
Kang Jihun hadn't missed it. In the fight with the Toy Soldier, the female had lost her center of balance — shake the lower body or the torso hard enough, and the accuracy of those claw strikes plummeted.
"My back? Let's see whose back gets wrecked first. Starting today, I'm turning you into a goddamn pretzel, you fucker!"
Kang Jihun's assault only grew fiercer, never flagging. Now and then a claw raked across his back or limbs, but he paid it no mind, slamming the wraith down over and over.
Wooddeuk—
From the wraith's knees, locked in Kang Jihun's grip, the sound of bones grinding began to rise.
{Ki, kyaaaaaah!!}
"Hmm… should I step in, or shouldn't I?"
The Toy Soldier had drawn close without notice, stroking its own chin. Watching would have been more entertaining, but the situation left little room for leisure. From every direction, hundreds of mana signatures were thrashing and colliding. On this isolated mountain, the Queen's legion and the beasts of the Wraith Realm were locked in fierce combat. Numerically the Queen's side outnumbered them several times over — but the gap in quality was vast.
"No choice. Every single combatant matters right now. Ah, what a waste."
Watching a high-rank beast get crushed by raw strength was not a spectacle one saw every day. Lamenting the loss of such a fine plaything, the Toy Soldier drove its rapier into the back of the wraith's skull.
Pishuk!
The wraith's whole body convulsed, then went completely limp. The Toy Soldier cleanly took its head and spoke.
"Shall we move on? Her Majesty is waiting."
"…"
Kang Jihun stared blankly at the headless wraith. He flung the corpse aside and asked,
"You. What's your goal?"
"My goal, you say…?"
"Why is a beast helping a human?"
"An interesting question. For my part, I am simply doing my utmost as Her Majesty's servant. Though I suppose that answer will not satisfy you?"
The Toy Soldier tilted its head, waiting for a reply, but Kang Jihun only glared at it for several seconds. The Toy Soldier's head tipped further and further down — then spun a full circle clockwise. At that grotesque motion, Kang Jihun's face twisted. No matter how he looked at it, this was no ordinary golem.
In a voice thick with suspicion, he asked,
"Who the hell made you and sent you here?"
At that, the Toy Soldier flung both arms high and split its mouth wide.
"Why, the great Queen of Siphonside, of course! Long live the Queen!"
"…Siphonside?"
At the same moment.
Chief Instructor Yoo Taehwan had entered the maze. Without warning, the internal mana communications had gone dead. Given the nature of spatial distortion, he wouldn't normally have found that strange — but this was right after the academy had suffered a major disturbance. Checking it out couldn't hurt.
If someone screwed up, I'll tear them a new one.
He wasn't particularly worried. There were hundreds of golems hidden across Bukhan Mountain. They primarily moved for combat training, but they were designed to protect the students the moment their lives were truly at risk. Whether beast or terrorist, nothing could easily make a move here.
"What the hell."
But the situation was unfolding in a deeply bizarre way. He had been heading for the summit — and yet the leaf-strewn fork he had already passed was appearing again.
…I went in a circle?
Ordinarily the instructors knew every path cold. They had to, in case they needed to extract students in an emergency. Inwardly rattled, he hurried his steps — only for a pure white fog to wrap the surroundings. Then a blizzard, and a landscape of pure white snow unfurled before him.
A curse burst from the chief instructor's mouth.
"Ah, for fuck's sake. The Ether Stone! Which crazy bastard swapped it out?!"
The paths had been completely rearranged. Clearly one of the caretakers had made an unforgivable blunder.
Kwak—
"…?"
"P-please, save me."
That was when it happened. The chief instructor startled and looked down. An arm had thrust up out of the snow and seized his ankle — an arm covered in long, raking wounds.
Busseus—
The owner of the arm pushed his head free of the snow and looked left and right. A fourth-year male student whose face was, by now, somewhat familiar. He swallowed hard, then spoke with eyes utterly seized by terror.
"Instructor. A m-monster… I saw a Grave Warden."
"What?"
"There were wraiths too. The golems held them off while I ran, but the rest of my party got dragged off."
The chief instructor opened his mouth to say something, then shut it. The maze rewritten at will. Mana communications still silent. And an upperclassman trembling from head to toe.
…This is real.
It wasn't easy to believe — but the situation right now was unmistakably unnatural. On top of that, combat-grade mana waves had begun to filter through in snatches. Not the kind of output you'd get from a fight with mere D-class beasts.
"…Can you stand? Where were your teammates taken?"
The chief instructor gripped the student under the arms and hauled him up. The student answered,
"I-I'm not sure, but I think they said they were going to the summit. I overheard a wraith talking."
"Good. Let's go."
"But, Instructor."
"Hm?"
With a puzzled look, the student pulled something from his coat. A teddy bear, half its body torn away.
"This is one of the golems you installed here, right?"
"…?"
"No? This thing saved me."