Chapter 205
Chapter 205: Cosmetics and Surgery (4)
Swish—
He flicked the sword down once toward the ground.
Warm blood still dripping, it scattered in a straight line across the disheveled fallen leaves.
Progress: 25/31
The severed head seemed to have something it wanted to ask, still rolling round and round, but he had no particular intention of answering.
The dead have no need of anything.
Still, his gaze naturally fell to the sword the collapsed corpse had been gripping.
[Spirit Eyes] reacting automatically.
『Evil-Warding Sword』
◆ Grade : Rare
◆ Category : Blade
◆ Description : A family heirloom passed down through generations of the Jin Family.
◆ Special Effect : When facing enemies of the Evil Demon type, increases all of the user's stats by 3%
※Only the highest increase among overlapping abilities is applied (cannot stack).
'Useful enough.'
He immediately put it into his inventory.
Then he promptly lifted his gaze, and—
Ding—
【Sub】Innocent Village
【Chain】 : The world is always so overflowing with wronged people. Realistically, you cannot help all of them. But if you have begun helping, shouldn't the conclusion always be clean? Please don't be too late.
․ Save the surviving villagers.
├─ Progress: 0/3
└─ Reward: Hero History +1, Fame +5
Lumina's gentle mechanical chime rang out.
Dong Bong-soo's eyes moved slowly.
North.
The direction of the village.
The flames had not yet died down, but faint vital responses—four of them—were being caught within the Super True Energy Field between the corpses and the wreckage.
Alive. The responses weren't strong, but they were unmistakably alive.
South.
Click—, alongside a mechanical sound audible only to him, the mini-map activated and visually displayed every corner and recess of the forest's interior.
One red dot—himself.
And several yellow dots blinking breathlessly, scattering southward and further down.
That would be a movement to regroup after fleeing further away.
"……"
Dong Bong-soo swept his gaze back and forth between south and north one more time.
Three villagers from the Chain Quest.
Six remaining targets from the Sudden Quest.
'Priority.'
A brief moment of deliberation.
His action was like a flash of lightning.
Which direction he moved—even the leaves of this forest could not tell, so swift was he.
***
When he emerged from the forest.
Sang Gwan-hwi was alive.
But only five had survived, himself included.
Most were limping, their entire bodies covered in wounds, and having burned through too much True Origin Energy, they were barely clinging to life.
Hah…… hah……
He drew ragged breaths and looked back.
The darkness of the forest.
Within it, nothing could be seen.
Even that sticky energy from before—the one that had wrapped around the entire forest like a spiderweb—could no longer be felt.
'Have we shaken it?'
He couldn't be certain.
But there was no leisure to think at length.
They needed to survive first, which meant running again toward those city walls visible far in the hazy distance.
Gangdo.
Blasted Gangdo.
Once they got inside the walls, something would work out.
'Even if it's a backwater sect, it calls itself Hero Gate by name, doesn't it?'
If they encountered those people, there would be a way.
'At the very minimum, within the walls.'
Even that monster of a man wouldn't be able to act recklessly.
He had no idea where that thing had appeared from, or what sort of creature it was…… but the unseen opponent had been an absolute master.
He must never engage in reckless mutual destruction against him. That would be exactly what that man wanted.
Sang Gwan-hwi raised his exhausted body, and immediately began running, leading the remaining four.
***
The Slash-and-burn Village was still burning.
The remains of the huts, leaving behind only their scorched frames, were sending up orange flames, and smoke swallowed the moonlight as it surged into the sky like a black pillar.
Among corpses scattered here and there, pools of blood formed small streams.
The nameless people of a nameless village lay dead, nameless.
Right in the middle of it all.
The corpse of an old man with a back bowed like a bow.
No—what had been one thing, now split into two.
Three women were wailing, clutching the remains of the village head, cleaved in half.
A middle-aged woman with a full bosom, covered in bruises and claw marks between the tears in her clothing.
A young woman whose red handprints around her slender waist had not yet faded.
A girl still young enough to be called a child, with clear marks from rope around her delicate ankles.
All three had redressed themselves, but that very fact—that they had needed to redress—said everything.
The older woman's wailing had already gone hoarse, barely producing sound. Only a cracked, nasal sob seeped out.
The older daughter was trembling violently, clutching her younger sister tightly in her arms, while the younger daughter gripped her father's severed hand and could only stare ahead with wide eyes.
How long had they been like that?
Rustle—
The sound of treading grass.
Light but unmistakable footsteps.
The older woman raised her head.
The older daughter instinctively shrank at the same moment.
In the direction their eyes were drawn, a man appeared.
White clothing.
Splattered with blood and blotched, but unmistakably the same garb as those villains from before.
"……Ah."
A ripple passed through the women's eyes simultaneously.
Though it had happened once, it was a fear burned into their souls.
Was it beginning again?
Did they still not have enough?
The man—the Sword Patrol Corps member—staggered forward breathlessly, yet approached step by careful step.
He was someone who had scattered following Sang Gwan-hwi's earlier orders, then made a wide detour east instead of south, and circled back north to the village.
He hadn't particularly been moving with the women as his goal, but his gaze stopped precisely on them.
"Hah…… hah……"
Ragged breath.
As the man glanced around to survey his surroundings, his eyes registered nothing.
No pursuer, no comrade, no enemy.
And so his murky pupils returned once more to the three women.
The women flinched, shot to their feet, and stumbled backward.
The man's lips curled as he swallowed dry spittle, parting slowly.
"Whew—."
Like a beast that has discovered its prey.
"Gotta eat something before I can shake off this fatigue……"
Before the man's words could even finish, the air split.
A single beam of light pierced through between his brow and the back of his skull.
Nothing more than a dry, colorless streak of light. And precisely because of that, without a single moment's hesitation—an accurate, clean blow.
The man froze, lips still parted in the shape of his unfinished words.
His knees buckled first, then slowly—thud.
He drove his face into the dirt.
The women swallowed their screams.
Three pairs of eyes turned to the direction beyond where the man had fallen.
Between the flames, beyond the smoke.
A man dressed in a black night robe stood there.
Moonlight illuminated only the two eyes above his mask.
Those colorless eyes were directed toward them.
The man slowly approached, and before long, a quiet voice flowed from beneath the mask.
"Are you alright?"
That was all.
The older woman looked up at the man's face for the first time.
A face hidden behind a mask.
But those two eyes.
No killing intent, no lust resided within them.
Simply a gaze of nothingness.
Slump—
The strength drained from the older woman's knees then and there as they bent, and the older daughter immediately followed.
The younger daughter had yet to release her father's hand, but her lips trembled faintly and barely, barely, she squeezed out sound.
"Thank……you……"
Even to words that could not complete themselves, Lumina responded kindly.
Ding—
Progress: 26/31
Those eyes of his—Dong Bong-soo's—moved slowly downward to confirm the additional system message as well.
Progress: 3/3
[You did not turn away from the innocent and succeeded in saving them.]
[But the root of this evil has yet to be resolved.]
Even though the quest had been completed, no reward log appeared.
'As expected, it's because it's a Chain Quest.'
Since it had been derived from the main quest, it was being counted as incomplete until the original quest—[Innocent Village]—was resolved.
It had been something he'd been curious about, but the experiment was a success for now.
Dong Bong-soo immediately lifted his eyes.
Once again, south.
Five yellow dots marked on the mini-map were running straight toward the further south.
***
How long had it been since they left the forest and ran on.
The pursuit had been cut off.
That sticky energy that had been bearing down on all sides had not returned.
Furthermore, not a single beam of light had come flying since they escaped the forest.
'Is it over?'
He still could not be certain.
But it was a fact that the offensive had clearly stopped after that.
Had they left its territory.
Were they beyond its range.
Or had it given up on them.
He didn't know the reason.
Little by little.
Ever so little by little.
The tension drained from his stiffened shoulders.
The city walls of Gangdo began to appear under the moonlight as a silver line in the distance.
Still far away, but the single fact that it was visible—that they had closed enough distance to discern it with the naked eye—sent strength returning to his legs.
Vice-Leader Yeon Sang-gi was running right beside him.
Behind them, the remaining three were desperately following.
Five.
From thirty-one, five.
Sang Gwan-hwi gritted his teeth.
His fingertips were trembling, but he pressed them down into a fist.
Not yet.
Not yet.
'When I return, I will definitely find out that madman's true identity—'
Just then.
Thwack—
The relief was a delusion.
A hole was punched through the forehead of the man running at the very rear.
A colorless, soundless streak of light.
'It hadn't stopped!'
The man had simply been waiting. Until the prey that had emerged from the forest had moved far enough into the wide-open plain. Until they had walked on their own two feet into the perfect hunting ground with nothing to hide behind.
Thwack—
A second.
The man whose chest was pierced crumpled without even managing a scream.
The third man looked at Sang Gwan-hwi with terror-stricken eyes.
Leader, was all his lips formed—but.
Thud—
His throat was punched through.
Cleanly.
As though a hole had been there from the very beginning.
And then.
The fourth beam of light came flying.
This time, aimed at Sang Gwan-hwi.
Sang Gwan-hwi's eyes narrowed.
He felt it.
A faint tearing of the air.
Something—too fast to call a hidden weapon, too alien to call an Energy Wave—was sensed as it came streaking toward the back of his head.
Swish—
He tilted only his upper body.
The minimum of movement.
The beam of light grazed his nape as it passed.
The skin between his neck and shoulder split along a single line, and a thin stream of blood ran down his spine.
The narrowest of margins.
'As expected…… fast.'
No—fast was an understatement.
The exact same thing that had punched through his subordinates' foreheads and chests in the forest earlier. A projectile energy dedicated to long-range killing—different again from the rotating Sword Energy.
That he had been able to dodge that one shot was purely thanks to the one hidden ace he had kept concealed. A razor-thin evasion permitted by his Middle Sword Sense, honed and refined over decades.
But.
Yeon Sang-gi's eyes went wide.
"Leader?"
What he had just witnessed, Yeon Sang-gi likely could not understand.
Sang Gwan-hwi was undeniably a master who had reached the Pinnacle as one of the Vast Heaven Three Swords.
And so it could have been possible—to dodge an unseen assault without even looking back, using the minimum of movement, all while running.
But—but in that instant, the inner power that had slipped out unbeknownst……
"……It is nothing."
Sang Gwan-hwi said tersely.
It was not relief at having dodged that weighed down on him.
It was the awareness that it had been triggered.
This one evasion—dangerous enough to strip away the mask of the Heavenly Bloom Sword he had built up over many years, all in a single moment.
And so he ran faster.
But the fifth beam of light did not come.
Instead—a presence.
A heavy, sticky gaze sweeping across his back.
It was drawing closer. Slowly, without urgency.
As though it would catch him regardless.
Yeon Sang-gi, gasping as though his breath would give out, shouted.
"Leader! That thing is coming again!"
"I know."
Sang Gwan-hwi's voice was unexpectedly calm.
"I—I'll buy time here! Even if only the Leader can—!"
He was a loyal subordinate.
Also an old friend with whom he had spent more than ten years in the Sword Patrol Corps.
Someone who believed more deeply than anyone in the righteousness of the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect.
"Alright."
Sang Gwan-hwi stopped walking.
"You are correct."
Yeon Sang-gi also halted and drew his sword. His hands trembled, but his eyes alone were resolute.
"I, Vice-Leader Yeon Sang-gi, for the sake of the Heavenly Bloom Sword, am gladly—"
Ssshp—
It was not a sound.
It was the sound disappearing.
A silence that swallowed the wind, the insects, even his own breathing.
In the midst of that silence, Yeon Sang-gi felt something leave his throat.
It was warm.
It was wet.
He lowered his gaze.
A blade tip protruded from the front of his chest.
A sword that had entered from behind.
"Leader……?"
He tried to turn his head, but his body no longer obeyed.
Just before his knees gave way, a voice reached his ear.
"You've worked hard, Sang-gi."
A voice smooth as silk, as it had always been.
"But it would be inconvenient if you were to remain alive."
Slump—
Yeon Sang-gi fell to his knees.
Toppled forward.
An expression of incomprehension set hard beneath the moonlight.
Swish—, Sang Gwan-hwi withdrew his sword and flicked the blood off once.
"Hahaha."
A laugh escaped him.
At first, low.
But soon his shoulders began to shake and uncontainable laughter burst freely forth.
"Hahahahahaha—!"
A laugh utterly ill-suited to this plain.
"To the very end, you—"
Sang Gwan-hwi raised his head.
Toward the gaze watching him from somewhere beyond the darkness.
"—have made this one into a villain."
At that moment.
The Middle Dantian.
Right at the center of his chest—that which he had sealed and concealed his entire life—began to stir, creeping open.
Twitch.
Twitch, twitch.
Like a snake long asleep uncoiling from its coil.
Hummmmmmmmm—
The air hummed.
An energy wholly unlike the pure white Vast Heaven Energy.
Dark, heavy, rank and rotten-smelling energy—began to rise from every inch of Sang Gwan-hwi's body.
Peerless Evil Energy.
The entire plain surrounding Gangdo began to be swallowed by that evil energy.
Grass blackened and withered.
Insects died.
As though even moonlight refused to touch him, darkness thickened around Sang Gwan-hwi at its center.
Only now revealed—the true face of Heavenly Bloom Sword Sang Gwan-hwi.
One of the Vast Heaven Three Swords of the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect, the mightiest sect of the Orthodox Martial World, must absolutely never cultivate.
Nine Netherworld Heaven-Corroding Sword.
A sword that corrodes the heavens with the evil energy of the Nine Netherworldly Deaths.
The moment this became known to the world, Sang Gwan-hwi's existence within the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect would be finished.
Not just the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect—the entirety of the Orthodox Faction would come rushing to take his head. He might even become a Public Enemy of the Martial World.
And so he had endured. Even as his subordinates died one by one. Even as thirty-one became twenty, became ten, became five—he had gritted his teeth and endured with desperate, wretched patience.
But.
There were no more witnesses now.
Among allies.
"All of this is your fault."
Sang Gwan-hwi raised his sword.
The blade, drinking in evil energy, swallowed the moonlight and was dyed pitch black.
"Tonight, Gangdo is erased from the Martial World."
No witnesses would be left behind.
Not even a single blade of grass on this plain.
Beyond the darkness.
Two eyes above a mask gazed down at it all in silence.
"……"
No particular reaction.
Neither surprise nor wariness.
The other side, too, merely raised his sword slowly.
As though he had known from the very beginning.
No—
As though from the very beginning, this was what he had been trying to draw out.