A Change of Heart
“Find her, now! If we don’t tear that bitch limb from limb before the boss gets here, we’re the ones who die!”
“We’re searching as fast as we can. But we can’t pick up a single sign of her presence…”
“Comb every inch around the one who just died, damn it! You useless bastards.”
A mountain of a man, a crescent blade strapped across his back, barked at his subordinates with mounting irritation. He was restless. Before the chieftain of their raider band—the man they simply called Boss—arrived in person, they had to find the assassin hiding somewhere in this place, no matter what it took.
In the first chase they had written her off as just a woman and tried to handle her half-heartedly. That carelessness had cost them more than five comrades. Fresh raiders could always be rounded up, but training and drilling them took time—and that made the losses catastrophic.
“Five men dead to one damn girl? Shit… how the hell am I supposed to report this?!”
The woman who had killed the Boss’s son—and five more raiders besides—was still hiding here. They would not leave until they found her and put her down. It was not a matter of choice. Walk away with her still breathing, and the Boss would kill them himself.
Die by the Boss’s hand, or find the woman and tear her apart. Faced with those two options, the latter was the only rational pick. Whether it took a week or a month made no difference. They would not leave until they had killed her with their own hands and confirmed the corpse.
“Search every last corner! If there’s anywhere in this cave she could be hiding, go in after her—even if it’s underwater!”
A girl checked the floating community window hanging in the air before her. She stared at the username written there—killer—and sank into thought. From far off came the noisy clamor of men searching, and her heart began to hammer harder and harder.
She typed a brief last will into the community. There was no time for a long, rambling story. Just a single line of thanks to the Administrator—and a farewell to the community friends who had comforted her.
While a medium-sized raider band hunted her, in all the hours she had spent praying they would simply leave, the community was what had kept her upright. Hunger, boredom, terror, regret, frustration, despair—whenever any of those feelings rose up, she poured them out in posts. And the strategy had worked surprisingly well. It had let her hold out five full days in a cramped space with no one else for company—and, by a stroke of luck, she had even made contact with the Administrator and gotten an Elixir out of it.
She had been lucky. No—more than lucky. She had started to wonder whether a greater miracle than this was even possible. In more than a year since she had been transmigrated into this place, Choi Yebin had never once received proper help from anyone. Her ability to tell truth from lies by looking at someone had kept her alive for a long time, but that was her own power—not some fated encounter or hidden piece handed to her on a platter.
She had crawled like a dog to stay alive. She had killed people because she did not want to die. Guilt had dulled with time until all that remained was pure survival instinct.
Why did I have to get stuck in a place like this…
She had cursed it hundreds, thousands of times a day. No one could know how hard she had fought just to survive on her own for over a year in a world crawling with raiders—and in a woman’s body, no less. Or maybe the people on the community did know. She had written quite a lot about herself there.
She set the self-pity aside and took stock of the throwing weapons she still had.
Six needles coated in paralyzing poison. Three shuriken. Three daggers. A handful of other small tools. Not many—but enough. Actually, a good number. More concealed weapons meant an edge in ranged combat, but the extra weight also constrained movement and fighting. Carrying them on her body always introduced tiny differences in how she moved.
She culled what she did not need. Traditional tools like poison-laced thumbtacks she laid in advance along the paths the enemy would take. Not to catch their feet—boots would handle something that small. The targets were anyone who fell during a fight.
Palm, back, thigh, leg—anywhere. As long as she could make them land on the tacks, those little spikes would punch far above their size as weapons.
This should do it.
She chose her position. Every trap she could set was already in place. All that remained was the fight. She did not have to wait long.
Splash.
The sound of someone stepping through the muddy water pooled in the cave—and the sound of someone coming closer.
She had already discarded the option of simply hiding until they left. These lunatics had been camped here for five days. The search would not end until she killed them or they killed her. If she had to fight, now—while the Elixir still left her body whole—was the best chance she would get.
With that thought she sprang forward and drove a dagger straight into the face of the man who had just rounded the corner.
Thuck!
A cold sound, and the man collapsed in a heap. At once a grotesque noise exploded through the cave.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep!
It was like a siren. Looking at his hand, she saw he had pressed some kind of special device in the instant before death. Choi Yebin ripped the device from the fallen man’s grip and smashed it. Too late. A throng of footsteps was already pouring toward her.
She took a breath and hurriedly dragged the corpse deeper inside. A human body made an excellent shield. Thin needles, simple daggers—even longswords—could be stopped by flesh and bone. Especially with no cover, nothing beat a person for soaking ranged attacks.
“We’ve got her location—kill her now! Capture her, tear her apart, and bring her to me!”
The shouting of the man giving orders, the voices and footfalls of countless people flooding into the deep cave, all came at once.
“Gahk!”
The moment one man stepped forward, she threw a dagger. Two left. From here on she would have to ration her ranged throws.
“You… you little bitch!”
Another man, worked into a frenzy, charged straight at her. Luck was on her side. Anyone who pushed in alone before enough backup arrived was nothing but a moving scarecrow to her.
Shunk!
She buried the dagger and drove forward with it, then shoved the corpse into the man coming up behind and knocked him flat.
“Ah… aaaargh!”
As he fell, his hand impaled itself on the poison-coated tacks on the ground. His whole body went pale, and he died.
The fighting went on. With economical, precise movements she cut down a fair number of men; the tacks proved weaker than hoped and only killed about two. One problem was that she had thrown one of her two remaining daggers in a moment of urgency. A bigger problem was that the enemy no longer closed to short range.
They began to ring her at a distance of about twenty meters. They had figured it out too. Never mind the danger of traps in a space like this—one-on-one with the girl in front of them simply did not work. Even so, they did not all rush her at once.
Looking at the more than ten corpses on the ground, instinct told them: the first one in dies.
Raiders did not sacrifice individuals for the group. Men who lived by stealing other people’s things were not the type to have loyalty. So the standoff turned awkward—more than twenty men clustered together, keeping Choi Yebin at bay. The cave was not wide enough for a real encirclement, and the unpleasant deadlock dragged on. Now and then someone flung a sword from range, but Choi Yebin simply caught their own weapons and returned them with overwhelming speed and accuracy. After two more died, they stopped throwing weapons carelessly either.
“Surrender! If this standoff keeps going, we win! Our Boss can use magic. Once he gets here, no matter how good you think you are, you’ll be toyed with and killed. Give up now and we’ll at least kill you cleanly.”
Worst-case scenario. A mage who had not even been on the field was about to join them.
Close in? No—impossible. Even for me, charging straight down a line and killing more than twenty people is not something that happens.
The standoff stretched into a war of attrition. Then, from behind the raiders, a man’s cackling laugh began to echo. He carried a staff carved with a skull and wore a splendid robe.
“Boss!”
A man who looked like he held some rank lit up and greeted him. The one they called Boss did not look particularly pleased. He merely smiled.
“B-Boss? What’s wrong?”
Thuck!
A lump of mana slammed into the man’s head. As if bidding farewell to the fresh corpse, the Boss informed him of the cause of death.
“I told you to tear her body apart before I got here. And you’re still standing around in a standoff like idiots?”
The chieftain of the medium-sized raider band swept a glare across the others one by one.
“If it weren’t for this month’s collection, I’d kill every last useless bastard like you. Worthless trash.”
Then he stepped forward and began to chant.
Whoosh!
Choi Yebin immediately flung a concealed weapon, but with a sharp clang it bounced harmlessly away.
Checkmate.
Charging meant more than twenty men guarding the mage they called Boss. Ranged attacks did not work. And the enemy was in the middle of casting magic of terrifying density.
This was the end.
She could see no path forward.
Her endless struggle for life would end with roughly fifteen corpses and a river of blood scattered across the ground. Judging by the chieftain’s furious face, she would not die cleanly.
Even so, the girl did not give up the fight.
A massive chunk of ice was taking shape in the air, and still she raised her dagger—so that the instant the ice magic fired, she could knock it aside.
“Stupid bitch.”
Seeing that, the raider chieftain did not waste words. He simply loosed the spell.
A vast shard of ice, honed to a razor edge, hurtled toward the girl. She tried to bat it away with the dagger; the blade snapped clean, and the ice closed in on her face—
She kept her eyes open to the last and foresaw her own end.
At least it’ll be clean.
No torture. No time for them to violate her. A clean death. Maybe she could even call it a good one.
In the instant before the thread of her life was cut—
What…?
The ice stopped. Midair. Completely frozen a hair’s breadth from her skin.
Then came the sound of a man’s footsteps and a long sigh at the same time.
“Haa…”
She turned her head. The Administrator was walking toward her, pressing his fingers hard into his temples as if nursing a splitting headache.
“Why are you here…?”
When the girl asked, the Administrator answered.
“Wasn’t that conversation earlier about abandoning me so you could live?”
“Hmm…”
The man looked ready to argue, then thought better of it. After all, she would know a lie if she heard one. So he kept it short.
“I changed my mind. You held out long enough that I’ve gathered plenty of mana. I’ve got room to spare.”
As the Administrator spoke, the raider chieftain watching them ground his teeth and roared.
“Get the hell out of here. Or I’ll tear you apart right along with that bitch.”
The Administrator burst out laughing and answered.
“You? With that pathetic excuse for magic? Your problem isn’t size or power—your magic is just crude. So trashy I can barely stand to look at it with my eyes open. The formulas are so simple they barely need calculation.”
Dealt the worst insult a mage could hear, the raider chieftain immediately clapped a hand to one of his subordinates and drained the man’s life force to the dregs.
“Ghk… ghk…!”
The man withered to a husk and died in an instant. That vitality poured straight into the chieftain’s body.
“Say that again. What was that about my magic?”
“Black magic, is it. The ones whose real skill is worthless always go looking for shortcuts off the proper path.”
“I’ll torture you until you beg me to kill you—then I’ll kill you.”
Vast mana began to condense at the tip of the raider chieftain’s staff. But—
Cancel
Clang!
At a single word from the Administrator, the man’s formula shattered in an instant.
To the stunned raider chieftain, the Administrator walked forward slowly and said:
“Say that again. Who’s killing who? You? Me?”
And then, from the Administrator’s hands, an immense tide of mana began to swell.