Ambush (1)
Like the forearm of an old man who ought to be lying in his coffin any day now — like the veins beneath skin so stripped of flesh and elasticity that not a trace of plumpness remained —
that was how shallowly the tree had rooted itself, half of it exposed above the ground.
The roots that had failed to burrow down into the earth were grotesque, writhing like parasites fastened to a host, busily sucking something up in great greedy gulps.
The mist that had seeped out like breath from the holes punched through the trunk began to dwindle, and with it, the fog that had blanketed the surroundings thickened no longer — little by little, it thinned.
"That seems to be the source of the mist."
Vigrind, who had been staring blankly as the dead clawed their way up out of the earth, turned her gaze toward the tree at Scarlet's words.
"The miasma... it's overwhelming."
She could barely force the words past her lips.
But she was the Saintess, after all — the one person who could not help but sense the demon's aura, the perfect inverse of the Heavenly God's power, more keenly than anyone else.
The miasma surging from that tree like a rising tide, and the dead now staggering to their feet on the earth below, spewing out inexplicable shrieks — gwoaaaah —
with every step they took, a dark gray slime dripped down from them.
The wet, squelching unpleasantness of it, like sodden mire, mingled with the strange moans they vomited up until the whole chorus sounded as if it were rising from the deepest pit of hell itself.
"Come here — come closer to me."
Vigrind clenched her trembling jaw shut. Seizing the rosary hanging at her throat, she began to chant, and with every line of the prayer, radiance bloomed above her head.
It took the form of a rounded halo, widening as it descended, until the moment it touched the ground — and there, blazing above Vigrind's head, the emblem of the Heavenly God Church flared into view.
The Proclamation of the Heavenly God's Dominion.
A proclamation declaring a domain where miasma could not intrude — one of the invocations only she, as Saintess, was able to use.
It was, fundamentally, an invocation for securing a sanctuary, the first priority in any place where every manner of danger lay coiled in wait.
The instant Vigrind proclaimed this ground to be the domain of the Heavenly God, a thick smoke rose and burned away within a fixed radius around her.
For a moment, everyone stood aghast at the sight of the miasma that had seeped down into the very soil being scorched alight by the holiness.
"Now then, Sir Scarlet. Let's go. The others should be safe in the Saintess's keeping."
The Hero strode forward.
Scarlet nodded and glared at the dead.
"The mist appears to drag up the memories one wishes to avoid and force them into a confrontation. Saintess — please look after them."
The cathedral knights and ordinary knights who had followed Scarlet into the mist were even now rolling on the ground in states best described as disgraceful, as though they had yet to wake from their nightmares.
None of them were in any condition to fight.
"A-are the Hero and Sir Scarlet truly all right?"
"...Well, what kind of Hero would I be if I couldn't overcome this much?"
"I am quite well too, Saintess."
Ludwig leveled his spear. Scarlet, likewise, tightened her grip on her morningstar.
"Now then — let's go. Sir Scarlet. Are you ready?"
"Without issue, my Hero."
Without either needing to signal the other, the two of them kicked off the earth at the same instant.
With the thunderous pounding of boots against the ground, they hurled themselves at the dead.
*
"— The payment is me. I shall remain with you until the day you achieve your purpose."
When Kayak had laid out his terms, Yona had hesitated for a moment.
Not because the payment displeased her.
Whatever the payment was, she'd fully intended to accept if Kayak would help — had he so much as asked for a handful of fairy tales, she'd have agreed without a second thought.
"Can't sleep. Damn it."
Yona sat up from where she'd been lying.
The floor of the room, laid with only a thin padded mat instead of a bed for the first time in ages. It had been so long since she'd sprawled on a heated ondol floor with warmth seeping evenly into her body that she'd expected to drop off the moment her head touched down — but no such luck.
She'd accepted the request, and so the plan was to head back to the sanctuary the day after tomorrow — but now something else was gnawing at her.
'...As if I could sleep.'
From across the room came the low rumble of snoring.
Yona knew perfectly well who was making that racket. She wasn't about to complain about a little snoring, but here she was, drowning in her worries, while Alec slept like a log and snored on top of it — it was irritating for no good reason.
'I want to smack him right on the back of the head.'
There had been a time when she'd walloped him on the skull without a shred of hesitation, rubbed that smooth bald head, and gone hey, baldy — the way you'd treat any old friend.
Could she still do that now? She honestly didn't know. No — she probably could. She just wasn't sure she could do it like a friend anymore.
'Why did he have to go and confess... that rotten bastard.'
She called him a rotten bastard, but there was no real venom in it.
If anyone here was the true rotten bastard, Yona knew better than anyone that it was her.
Moving quietly, careful not to make a sound, Yona opened the door and slipped outside.
When she pushed open the latticed door — thick paper wrapped around a delicate wooden frame — the chill was the first thing to greet her.
A sleepless night called for a walk, she'd figured. The inside of Lizard Den was safe enough, after all; a little stroll couldn't hurt.
But now that she was actually out here, the cold made the very idea of walking unthinkable.
Giving up on the walk, Yona perched on the great wooden veranda between the rooms — the veranda that sat between her room and Alec's — where the bright full moon hung in plain view.
'My purpose...'
She turned Kayak's words over again in her mouth.
Until the day you achieve your purpose, he'd said — but when it came to what that purpose actually was, Yona had faltered.
What was her purpose?
Days ago, she could have answered that question without a flicker of hesitation.
Become a man again. That was the goal. And once that was achieved, she'd have said without missing a beat, she would find a way back to her original world.
But now things had changed.
She could still give an answer. On the surface, nothing seemed different — except that the answer no longer came instantly.
Alec's confession was the reason.
Three years of Yona's life here. Two years and seven months of them, spent at his side.
Measured against a lifetime, not such a long stretch — but if you weighed it by density rather than duration, was there a single soul in her whole life she'd been closer to than Alec?
Parents whose faces she'd never once seen since birth, orphanage teachers she'd never spared a glance for. Run through every person she'd ever had a connection with, and not one of them had been as close as he was.
And it was that Alec's confession — I love you — that had thrown her into this endless spiral of doubt.
That word, love — a word she'd only ever encountered in song lyrics, dramas, webtoons, web novels — the instant it turned toward her, her world had come crashing down, and now she had to rebuild it from the foundation up, stone by stone.
So Yona agonized.
Why, exactly, had that confession unsettled her so?
Why did a confession received from Alec — a man — one that should have been nothing but repulsive, now fill her head to bursting, impossible to ignore no matter how hard she tried?
Yona couldn't understand it.
And so, sleepless, she had circled the same worries again and again.
Her purpose — the one purpose there was supposed to be.
And the reality that, even now, she couldn't confidently say that purpose remained what it had always been. Over that, she anguished, and anguished, and anguished still.
"What, you didn't sleep?"
When Alec saw Yona sitting with her head propped against a veranda pillar, his eyes went round.
An adventurer's stamina was nothing to scoff at — a day or two without proper sleep wasn't going to cause any real problems — but the dazed look on Yona's face at a single glance was anything but normal.
"Uh... yeah, uh..."
The moment she laid eyes on Alec, Yona averted her gaze, gave a vague non-answer, and her voice shrank inexplicably.
"Something wrong?"
"...I don't know. You bald bastard."
For no reason at all, looking at him made her angry.
She hadn't slept a wink all night, and here he was snoring like a buzzsaw and sleeping just fine, then asking what was wrong —
before she knew it, the words had come out steeped in irritation, and Yona climbed down from the veranda and stepped into the shoes waiting on the footing stones.
"Where are you going?"
"None of your business, Baldy."
Lips pursed, pout jutting out a good four strides ahead of her, Yona left the house.
The sun was up now, its light slanting across the ground — the earth would be warmed through by now. This was finally the moment Yona had planned to take a proper look around the village.
The more she looked, the more familiar it all felt to her.
There were houses fenced with walls of bundled straw, and stone walls stacked high with mud packed between the stones and hardened with straw. The footpaths winding between those walls had weeds sprouting along both edges, and walking them gave her the strange sensation of strolling down the lane of some old Korean village.
'Hero Siwoo... Siwoo. Was he Korean?'
Even murmuring it aloud, there was no way to know for certain. No record of Siwoo's homeland would ever have survived, and the cathedral's lessons had never once touched on where he'd come from.
All she could do was guess.
Lizardman children were scampering all over the village in raucous packs.
The first time she'd seen them, they'd looked like Kayak shrunk down to doll size, and she'd found them a little gross — but the longer she watched, the more she discovered they had their own charm.
Squat little bodies, and squat little tails to match. Little lizard children whose feet, each no bigger than Yona's palm, carried them racing across the whole village.
And to think these little things would grow up into Kayaks someday. Something about it struck her as wondrous.
'I wonder how Rubina's doing.'
The Rubina they'd left in the Church Territory's orphanage. She was probably doing fine.
They'd promised to come visit her, after all. She hoped the girl wasn't crying her eyes out, saying she missed her big sister.
Yona wandered the village, sightseeing here and there.
Every time the lizardmen caught sight of her, they greeted her with wide smiles, and Yona nodded back, awkwardly returning the smile. They said she'd saved their lives, and judging by the extravagant hospitality, it was no empty phrase.
'Peaceful. So peaceful.'
Yona let out a soft huff of laughter as she looked around.
And in that very moment, she felt a surge of heat rush up from somewhere deep in her gut.
A sensation like her whole body beginning to itch —
a feeling she knew all too well.
That time Alec's hands had kneaded her chest.
The heat blooming, the itch spreading, her breath turning ragged, the strange moan that kept threatening to slip out unbidden —
【It would seem one of our own kind has arrived.】
The instant Berbaria's voice whispered through her, a roar like the very axis of the earth shuddering rolled across the land.
Far in the distance, at the edge of the forest, something black was heaving and surging.