The Second Chase: Hyunwoo vs. Adelia (3)
The voice rang out near my ears just as we reached the city walls, burning with unmistakable fury. It was her voice.
Why is she so angry?
More importantly, how could I even hear her? Was she that close already? Had we been spotted? Damn it. Things had been going so smoothly.
My heart raced. I pushed the cart harder as I ran.
“We’re looking for a man pulling a cart covered in black cloth. Have you seen him?”
The moment I realized the female knight was questioning people as she closed in, I yanked off the straw hat and ordered Marcus out of the cart immediately.
“What’s going on? What happened?”
“The soldiers are searching for us. They’re asking everyone if they’ve seen the guy pushing a cart.”
“How did you know that? Are you hearing conversations from far away again?”
“Yes. Let’s move, quickly.”
I supported Marcus, who limped on one leg, and we sprinted the final stretch to the wall that stood roughly five meters high. It was a long barrier encircling the city’s outskirts. But simply scaling it wouldn’t guarantee our escape. Beyond the wall lay the moat.
Fortunately, the deep trench wasn’t filled with water. Flavio had told me earlier that because Nobern had a canal system, the moat was normally kept dry during peacetime to avoid mosquitoes and sanitation issues. Citizens would secretly dump trash and waste into it, which quickly filled the carefully dug ditch. Only in wartime did they divert river water to flood it.
That was exactly why I had chosen to cross here. Once we cleared the wall, nothing else would stand in our way.
“There should be a rope somewhere around here. Look for it.”
Marcus and I searched along the base of the wall for the line Flavio had lowered. He had only given me a rough location, and since this was our first time here, anxiety gnawed at me. The darkness of night made it even worse. In the blink of an eye, the female knight’s presence drew terrifyingly close.
“Hyunwoo!”
Marcus suddenly waved and called out to me. I rushed over and saw the rope dangling from above. A sigh of relief escaped me.
“You go first.”
“I’ll be slow. You climb first. If anyone gets caught, better me than you.”
“Stop talking nonsense. I’ll push from below, so get up there. We don’t have time for your stubbornness.”
When I spoke firmly, Marcus reluctantly grabbed the rope.
“Tch, this kid. Fine, I’m going.”
Grumbling, he started climbing. I supported him from below and followed right after. I had never done anything like rock climbing back on Earth, but with my life on the line, it turned out I could manage. The only problem was how exhausting it was.
Whenever Marcus looked like he might slip, I braced his backside with my head, and together we steadily scaled the wall.
“There will be patrol soldiers on top of the wall. I hope we don’t run into them…” Marcus muttered anxiously, keeping a sharp eye upward.
“Don’t worry about that.”
“Why? Do you have some secret weapon or something?”
“I had Kelly’s younger brother bribe the soldiers on patrol right now. They won’t come this way for a while. They’re the ones who left the rope for us, too.”
Marcus looked down at me with something like pride in his eyes.
“Heh heh, that boy’s got talent.”
“Stop looking down and just climb. I’m dying down here.”
“Got it, you brat.”
We climbed in silence for a moment. Then Marcus spoke again, his voice low.
“I’m sorry about everything.”
“For what?”
“For suspecting you.”
I let out a small snort of laughter.
“It’s fine. I already forgot about it, so stop getting sentimental and just climb.”
I might have sounded cool, but the truth was that my face was now known to the soldiers and I had nowhere left to go, old man. Damn it. From now on, I’d have to live as a criminal. For the rest of my life.
“As an apology, from now on I’ll trust every word you say without question. I swear it.”
“Save that kind of talk until after we make it out alive,” I added with a serious expression. “Because we’re in serious trouble right now.”
“Why? What else went wrong?”
I glanced behind us. What we had feared had finally arrived. In the distance, a blonde female knight was galloping toward us at full speed. Even from far away, an overwhelming killing intent washed over me. Her presence blazed as if flames were pouring from her eyes.
The one small mercy was that she had appeared only after we had nearly reached the top of the wall.
The instant Marcus and I spotted her, we moved with desperate speed and scrambled over the top. We hauled the rope up with both hands as fast as we could. Without it, there was no way she could scale a five-meter wall.
After pulling the rope up and feeling a moment of relief, an absurd voice echoed in my ear.
Hmm. That height should be easy enough to leap over. I’ll use the rooftops for a running start.
What…?
Dear god. The thing we were facing wasn’t human. It was a monster.
“Grab the bombs! Bombs, bombs! At this point, the only thing we can rely on is the bombs!”
Marcus pulled out the pouch of explosives from his waist. I remembered then—the spicy paprika bombs he had made. I took one out as well and stared at it blankly.
We were supposed to fight that monster woman with this? Ridiculous. This was a David and Goliath fight if I ever saw one. We were holding water guns while she had a real rifle.
Even as I let out a sigh that seemed to empty my lungs, the female knight threw herself from her horse and began scaling the building next to the wall like Spider-Man. The bizarre agility was truly astonishing. No matter how hard we struggled, it felt like we would never escape her grasp.
Was I really going to die like this…?
I couldn’t allow that. Thinking of Phelton and Harry filled me with resentment toward her. I had no confidence I could win in a one-on-one fight… but after everything this female knight had put me through, there was no way I could just roll over and die quietly.
There had to be a way to win. I racked my brain desperately.
“Oh.”
A brilliant idea suddenly flashed through my mind.
“When she tries to cross between the building and the wall, that’s when we strike.”
I immediately put the plan into action. Marcus shouted from behind, telling me to run, but I ignored him and moved to the exact spot where she would land, waiting for her. It was as if I were daring her to come and catch me.
I could only act this boldly because I had seen straight through her intentions.
The female knight easily reached the roof, spotted me standing on the opposite wall, narrowed her eyes, and drew her sword without hesitation. Then she broke into a sprint, stepped off the edge of the roof, and leaped powerfully into the air.
She gripped her sword with both hands above her head as she flew. She clearly intended to cut me in half the moment she landed on the wall.
No, I could literally hear her voice declaring exactly that.
But I wasn’t about to let her have her way.
She remained in the air for only about two seconds. I staked everything on those precious two seconds.
Now!
Before she could swing her descending blade, I flung the paprika powder I had been holding into the air.
Whoosh!
She clearly hadn’t expected this.
“Ugh!”
Caught off guard by the sudden face full of paprika, she reflexively closed her eyes. I quickly dodged to the side. Her sword slashed through the spot where I had just been standing, but her accuracy was terrible. The moment she landed on the wall, she lost her balance, stumbled forward, and caught herself with both hands on the ground.
In that instant, my eyes gleamed like a hawk spotting prey. I wasn’t about to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“Cough, cough! You cowardly bastard!”
While the female knight, now crying and sniffling uncontrollably, flailed on the ground, I dashed forward, grabbed one of her ankles, and poured every ounce of my strength into a single pull.
“Diiiieeeeee!”
I yanked her ankle hard. She was dragged forward helplessly, and I hurled her over the wall like swinging a baseball bat with all my might. With a look of pure panic on her face, she flew helplessly through the air and fell back to where she had come from.
Falling five meters would cause at least serious injury, possibly death. She slammed into the building wall hard enough to crack it, then dropped straight down to the ground.
Thud!
“Aaaargh!”
A terrible scream echoed through the night sky.
I looked down to see if she was dead. She was moving slowly, but she remained sprawled on the ground, unable to get up. What a tenacious life force. The way she clutched her waist with a fierce scowl suggested she had only broken a few ribs. What a shame. I couldn’t get my full revenge.
Wait. No. If she had died, that would have made me a murderer. Maybe it was better that she survived?
Suddenly, something glinted nearby. I looked down at my feet. A sword that was clearly a fine blade reflected the moonlight with an elegant glow.
Is that her sword?
A good idea came to me. I remembered a movie I had once seen. When fighting an enemy, you had to crush them thoroughly from the very beginning so they could never rise again. So that the next time they saw your eyes, they would tremble in fear.
I picked up the sword and shouted down at the female knight, who was writhing on the ground in pain.
“A knight values her weapon as much as her own life, doesn’t she? This sword, I shall take for myself! Therefore, consider yourself slain by me today!”
Robbing the enemy of her weapon and shaming her with it. In the current situation, that was the greatest revenge I could manage. There was no telling when the soldiers might arrive, and I couldn’t exactly climb down the wall to finish her off.
“M-my god… A petty thief actually defeated a knight…!”
Marcus, who had approached at some point, stood with his mouth wide open, staring at me as if I were a hero who had saved a doomed world. His expression was utterly dumbfounded. If I had my phone, I would have taken a picture and teased him about it for the rest of his life.
“If we tell this story back at the mountain stronghold, no one will believe it. Even I can hardly believe it, and I saw it with my own eyes. I can’t tell if this is a dream or reality.”
With those words, Marcus and I hurried to escape the city.