Chapter 104: Just Dance
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 104: Just Dance
Throughout history, what tool has killed the most beasts?
A sword? A spear? Or perhaps a stone axe?
None of the above.
Since ancient times, the tool that has killed the most beasts—most cruelly and simply—was none other than the rope.
A weapon belonging only to humans, with their blunt nails, delicate dexterity, high intelligence, and the innate cruelty that comes with it.
“Ghhhk! Kegh! Gkh!”
“Welcome~ to a world of~ wonder~.”
The Colonel’s boiling gasps and my humming formed a harmony. I pushed his back with my foot, pulling the rope even tighter.
Being suddenly choked tends to induce a state of panic. The Colonel instinctively made a futile effort to tear away the rope tightening around his neck.
What’s happening?! My neck, being choked. Who the hell is it!
His survival instinct jolted every part of him awake. Having been a man of rigid thought who simply followed the Lieutenant General’s orders, he began to think for himself for the first time since coming down here.
He drew up his Qi, wrapping it around his neck. Protecting it with Qi Deflection and reinforcing Qi to secure a minimal flow of blood, he glared and thought.
A laborer! How dare a mere prisoner ambush an officer!
His thoughts came in fragments. Holding his breath, he assessed the situation for a moment and became utterly enraged.
You think you can beat an officer just by choking me!
Even while being strangled from behind, his hostility surged.
Anger must not be a combustion reaction, seeing as it burns even when you cut off the oxygen.
I’ll show you the difference in our strength!
Fortunately for me, it’s quite difficult to reach one’s own back.
Attacking someone behind you requires a plan.
And if you make a plan, I can read it.
Now, let us dance.
The Colonel’s elbow flew toward my shoulder. A powerful reverse strike.
I took half a step back with my right foot and leaned back slightly. Due to the limits of his range of motion, his elbow stopped just short of hitting me. It was a move so close it was as if we had choreographed it.
I smiled sweetly, momentarily loosening the rope around his neck before whipping it around his right arm.
The Colonel’s right arm was now tied to his neck.
My right arm! You bastard…! Then how about this!
Next were his feet. With us pressed so close together, his vision was obscured; he intended to kick me off with a backward strike. If I hadn’t read his thoughts, I would have been hit.
If, and only if, I hadn’t read his thoughts.
I stepped back exactly as far as he extended his leg. As if performing a couple’s dance, the Colonel and I moved in tandem, stuck to each other.
A couple’s dance?
The thought just occurred to me, but it’s not a bad metaphor.
Except for the fact that my partner is a man built like a bear.
This is it for today. I whispered into the Colonel’s ear.
“I’m not letting you go, partner.”
Bull… shit…!
I read my opponent’s mind and react, following his every move.
Able to match steps with a stranger so naturally, I must be the Military State’s greatest dance partner.
N-no. My breath…
His attempts to escape failed one after another.
When he tried to turn his body, I pulled the rope taut and turned with him.
When he flailed his arms and legs, I moved just enough to accommodate his wild movements.
The Colonel tried to push me away by deploying his Qi Deflection, but the push and pull is my specialty. All I had to do was let go for a second and grab on again.
No matter how much he thrashed, the distance between us remained a constant half-step.
Through the rope, I could faintly feel his pulse. The climax was already over, and all that remained was the gradually fading finale.
Until the song of life ends, this dance will not be over.
I’m… going to die?
It was a little—no, quite—late, but the thought of death finally crossed the Colonel’s mind. With fear came desperation.
Finally ready to be honest, are we?
“Grant McKinsey. You probably think you survived because you were superior. You must be brimming with confidence, thinking you’ve become the Lieutenant General’s right-hand man after enduring all sorts of hardships, ready to do something that will change the world.”
You can’t have a couple’s dance without a little small talk. Pulling the rope tight, I whispered into his ear.
“When in reality, you’re just a slightly stupider, slightly luckier version of Lieutenant Colonel Callis.”
Me… compared to that… disposable… litmus test…?
“Just because you’re in a position to use the lives of others doesn’t mean you have two lives of your own. People get confused about that sometimes.”
I let out a sigh, as if showing off the breath he could no longer take.
“Now it’s your turn to be tested. Are you prepared to put a period at the end of your life, Grant McKinsey?”
N… no…
He had no intention of dying. No, in the first place, he wasn’t a man of deep thoughts. He had simply followed the Lieutenant General’s orders and fallen with him.
The only emotion he could call his own was a vile sense of superiority he felt from casting aside Lieutenant Colonel Callis. As he placed the chain that was meant for his own neck around Callis’s, the Colonel felt a sense of relief and superiority.
The Lieutenant General had kept him alive not because he was better, but because he was stupider.
The living tool’s hand reached out in vain. His desperate gaze fell upon Nabi.
Nabi…! Help me! You worthless, drug-addled beast! I’ll give you more, just help me!
If Nabi had been just a little less high, she might have reacted differently to this crisis.
But Nabi just kept purring atop her mana herbs, not even glancing this way. The Colonel’s eyes, filled with resignation, found Callis.
Callis…! Save me…! Don’t just stand there…!
If he hadn’t wrapped that chain around her neck, Callis might have hesitated for a moment. But now, she had lost all will to resist, merely staring blankly in our direction.
But the karma the Colonel had accumulated was already a thing of the past. No one can change the past…
With the exception of one person.
No…
At the very, very end, the Colonel tried to throw me off by miserably rolling on the ground. It was the moment he squeezed out all his strength to lurch forward.
Just before he could exert that force, I tripped his leg.
The Colonel’s massive body tumbled forward gracelessly. I, still choking him, was pulled along.
But even then, I didn’t let go of the rope. I rolled once, landing on my back with the fallen Colonel on top of me, and pulled the rope to my chest. He reached out with his left arm, but one arm wasn’t enough to escape this position.
The thoughts of the man pinned beneath me grew darker.
“Goodbye, Grant McKinsey. Once the protagonist of a brilliant world… who survived by abandoning his own thoughts to become a tool. It’s always a shame to see a book become a copy of something else, but I suppose a summary from a different perspective has its own value.”
And so, the music that had been gradually fading reached its finale, touching the final note on the score.
Snap.
It stopped.
A period was placed at the end of a book.
I let go of the rope. Red marks from the pressure rose on my palms. I sighed in exhaustion, took out the skewer hidden in my boot, and slowly picked myself up.
The first thing I saw upon getting up was none other than Tyr. She was watching me, her Sanguine Horse at her side. If I had faltered during my dance, the Sanguine Horse would have rushed in and flattened the Colonel into a pancake.
I’m glad it didn’t come to that. I wanted to avoid bloodshed if possible. I raised a hand toward Tyr.
“I missed you quite a bit, Tyr.”
At my greeting, Tyr’s eyes welled with tears as she approached me.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?”
“My heart, a little?”
“What, what did those brutes do! How is your heart hurt?”
“As the dark knights I believed would protect me were shattered, my heart was torn to shreds along with them…”
Flinch.
Tyr, who had been preparing for a moving reunion, froze at my sudden rebuke. Her crimson eyes trembled, but for a different reason than before.
“I-I… I am sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. It happens. I was well aware that the dark knights were rather useless… But I heard that was a power that once destroyed an entire city. I’m sorry, but was that city made of sand?”
“W-well… it was stronger back then… and…”
Tyr trailed off, avoiding my gaze as if she had committed a crime.
After fidgeting for a while, she fiddled with her fingers and added in a small voice.
“There is something I have not told you. My Bloodcraft is incomplete.”
Huh? What was that?
At the sudden confession, my eyes widened and I shouted.
“What? What do you mean?”
“If darkness is the vessel, blood is the power. I was supposed to imbue the dark knights with my blood energy, allowing them to move with a part of my power… but for some reason, I cannot control blood energy freely right now.”
Come to think of it, when the Lieutenant Colonel was stabbed by the suicide packet and started bleeding, the blood didn’t move at all. I should have been suspicious, but the scene was so normal that I just let it slide.
More importantly! What the hell is going on! Why did I risk my life to get her heart back! For her Bloodcraft to get weaker?
Feeling like the victim of the most expensive investment scam in history, I cried out in frustration.
“What? You get weaker when you’re on my side? What kind of nonsense is this?”
“I-I… I am sorry.”
“No, this is all my fault! Azzy is on my side but is completely useless, and Tyr gets weaker the moment she joins me! At this point, I’m the problem! I’m the problem!”
I deliberately ignored the embarrassed Tyr and beat my chest, lamenting.
“People of the world! A walking debuff is here! If you want to get weaker, come and be my ally! You’ll learn the true meaning of weakness!”
“N-no. It is not your fault at all. It is all my oversight… I should have stayed by your side to protect you…”
“This is so unfair, so unfair! If this was going to happen, give me back the heart! Give me back exactly what I gave you!”
Tyr’s eyes widened and she gasped. She looked down at the ground with a sad and resentful expression, then, as if having made a decision, she squeezed her eyes shut and raised her fingers to her own chest.
“…Very well. It is yours, so I shall return it…”
“Hey, you can’t actually try to give it to me! Can’t we take a joke as a joke?”
If she took out her heart and reverted to a cold-blooded vampire, there was no telling what she’d do to me. It was better to have her as a weakened ally. At least she wasn’t a liability.
Thanks to my desperate intervention, Tyr’s heart was saved. But her confidence had plummeted, and she muttered dejectedly.
“…I did not know that mere soldiers could be so strong. He was only a Lieutenant General, lower than a General, yet he was that powerful… The world has clearly changed. It is difficult to keep up.”
“Well, of course he’s strong. A General isn’t just some random title.”
“He was much lower… a Colonel, was he? To think that a mere soldier could so easily overpower a dark knight.”
“No, he’s not a soldier. He’s an officer.”
“…? Are they not the same thing?”
It seemed she thought titles like mercenary captain or guard captain were synonymous with General, and that a Colonel was just a grunt.
The Colonel, who had groveled like a dog under the Lieutenant General to barely earn his promotion, would have died from sheer frustration if he’d heard that.
What a shame. Instead of me blabbering on, I should have let the Colonel hear it from the ‘real deal’ Tyr.
Goes to show a civilian knows nothing about breaking a soldier.
In any case, it was a bit much to explain the Military State’s command structure to a girl from twelve centuries ago. I just nodded vaguely and changed the subject.
“Alright. Before Shei-ssi leisurely comes back after taking care of a mere Lieutenant General, what should we do about that drug addict cat over there?”
At my suggestion, Tyr asked back, her tone far less confident.
“Must we attack…? Hu, as you probably know, a Beast King unleashes the Star of the State on the brink of death. A Beast King in that state is an incredibly troublesome opponent. Even Shei only managed to drag out the fight against the Cat King.”
Hold on. When did I ever say we were going to fight? I gave her a light scolding.
“Why are you so eager to fight? It’s not like you’re very strong right now.”
“Ghk…”
This reaction might be fun. I smirked at the shrinking Tyr and shrugged.
“We have to coax her. We have these mana herbs, after all. I’ll try to calm her down with them.”
It was then.
A trickle of blood flowed from the dead Colonel’s mouth. The metallic scent of blood filled the air. Because Tyr couldn’t control it, the scent slowly began to spread.
Huh. He died of strangulation, so why is he bleeding?
I tried to avoid drawing blood since the smell can agitate beasts.
A little bit of blood should be fine, right…?
Just as I was having that complacent thought.