Chapter 55: The Chase
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 55: The Chase
Was this a dream?
Absolutely not. For a dream, the pressure constricting not just her body but her very soul was far too visceral.
Rin’s placid heartbeat instantly rocketed to its limit. Her senses sharpened, but her body froze, and goosebumps prickled the back of her neck.
Her beastkin instincts blared a deafening alarm inside her head. Every one of her senses screamed a silent warning.
That thing is dangerous.
You have to run. Now.
But Rin couldn’t move a muscle.
The aura of death was pressing down on her entire being.
The cold, heavy presence of death crushed her lungs. Even breathing was a struggle.
“Yelp…”
Rin stumbled backward, an unconscious retreat.
Wary of the Reaper, she scanned for an escape route.
The closest one was the door right behind her. Having spent her entire life on the run, Rin was confident in her ability to flee.
She crouched as low as she could, gathering strength in her legs. She pressed her feet firmly into the floor, her curled toes gripping the rough wood grain.
All for a single, explosive sprint.
In the tense, charged air, the Reaper made its move. Its ghastly scythe fell like the guillotine at an executioner’s block, delivering a death sentence.
Fwoosh!
At the same instant, Rin unleashed the power she could no longer contain and shot forward.
Beastkin possessed far superior physical abilities. Even as a young girl, Rin’s leg strength was comparable to that of a human knight using physical enhancement.
With a crack, the inn’s floorboards buckled as Rin’s body launched forward.
A perfect escape!
Clank!
“Gak!”
Or not. Her body jerked to a halt in mid-air. It was the chain. The sturdy chain Karami had procured from the blacksmith.
In her extreme tension, Rin had completely forgotten she was shackled at the ankle. She slammed onto the floor with a thud.
The scythe fell.
Thanks to the chain, perhaps, the Reaper’s attack had been aimed at the door, as if predicting her escape route. If the chain hadn’t stopped her, her upper and lower body might have parted ways for good.
But she couldn’t relax just yet. The Reaper’s attack wasn’t limited to what was visible.
Swoosh!
A fierce wind erupted. As if it were magic interfering with the laws of the world, the Reaper created something from nothing. A torrent of razor-sharp wind, much like the blade aura of a master swordsman, rushed toward her.
“Yelp!”
Countless cuts appeared all over Rin’s body, blood bursting from the wounds. The inn room was chopped to pieces like firewood, and the chain, too, was sliced cleanly by the storm of blades.
The moment the restraining chain was severed, Rin’s legs spun uselessly for a moment before she shot out the door like an arrow.
The Reaper phased through the wall, pursuing the escaped fox.
“Hmm…?”
Karami woke up just after.
Still groggy from sleep, his eyes shot open. A gaping hole in the wall, debris scattered on the floor. Wind and rain whipped into the room.
That wasn’t the real problem. It was surprising, but it wasn’t his property.
Rin was gone.
Only a neatly severed chain lay forlornly by the open door.
“What in the…?”
Thump, thump.
The sound of urgent footsteps approached.
Seira, her face pale, rushed into the room.
“Are you all right?”
“Uh… I’m fine, but what’s all this commotion?”
“I heard a noise and came out to see the pink fox being chased by a Reaper. I followed, thinking you were finally getting your divine punishment, but you’re annoyingly unharmed.”
The inn room looked like a battlefield, with nothing left unscathed, yet the area around Karami was strangely untouched.
“Rin is being chased by a Reaper?”
“That’s right. For a Reaper of that magnitude to appear so suddenly… it must be the misfortune brought on by the pink fox.”
Having brushed past the Reaper, Seira had caught a glimpse of its aura.
Her legs had nearly given out, almost causing her to collapse on the spot. The Reaper exuded a presence so overwhelming that even with death at her throat, she wouldn’t have had the will to resist.
It had to have appeared because of the pink fox’s misfortune. That thing was far beyond the scope of an ordinary Reaper.
“What are you doing?”
Karami was changing his clothes, preparing to leave. Seira, unable to guess his intentions, just stared blankly.
“I have to go after them.”
“You’re going to chase that? You?”
“My slave is in danger. Isn’t it a master’s duty to save her?”
As a wolf beastkin, Seira didn’t much care for dogs. Their barking was unpleasant. And right now, the nonsense Karami was spouting sounded just like a dog’s barking.
After all, even if he found Rin, there was nothing Karami could do. It was the kind of thing only someone completely ignorant of combat would say.
“If you go, you’ll just be another offering. Don’t do anything foolish and stay put.”
There were two ways to handle this. They could call the knights to subjugate it before more damage was done, or they could wait for the pink fox, the source of the misfortune, to die.
BOOM!
A tremor shook the building. Beyond the hole in the wall, a cloud of dust rose from the residential area.
“There they are.”
Ignoring Seira’s warning, Karami immediately ran out.
Seira couldn’t even manage a hollow laugh at his retreating back. Where did he get that confidence? Was he certain he couldn’t die?
‘Let him die, for all I care.’
She had done her surveillance. If she reported that he had willingly crossed the line of death, she could return to her comfortable administrative duties. She could…
‘…But I have to make an accurate assessment.’
Karami, the habitual slave abandoner.
She would witness his depravity with her own two eyes and record it.
Rationalizing it this way, Seira gave chase.
“Pant, pant…!”
The city night was filled with the sound of the downpour.
Frantic footsteps cut through the darkness.
The terrain was unfamiliar. The feel of the road, not dirt and stone, was incredibly awkward for Rin. Nevertheless, she put the escape skills she had honed her entire life to good use.
Using her small frame and cat-like flexibility, she darted freely through any gap she could squeeze into. She slipped between walls and, at times, twisted sharply to scale steep walls and leap onto rooftops.
Her light, feral movements were reminiscent of a wild animal. This would have been enough to shake off any ordinary pursuer, but the Reaper was no ordinary pursuer.
She didn’t have to look. She didn’t have to hear.
She knew.
The Reaper was chasing her, scattering the scent of death, aimed solely at her. The smell made her heart pound relentlessly, like a bomb about to explode.
Why is it chasing me?
The question suddenly occurred to Rin. She had once thought that the yokai in White Cloud Valley were a problem of location. That if she could just get out of there, she might be okay.
But the Reaper, chasing her with such clear hostility, severed that slender thread of hope.
Misfortune was coiled around her life like an infinite loop.
As long as she was branded with a pink tail, there was no escape.
Panting heavily, Rin ran forward, then glanced back. The Reaper, which had been clinging to her like a leech, was gone.
Where did it go?
Did I lose it?
It was a mistake. What she could see wasn’t everything. She could still feel the aura of death.
Just then.
CRASH!
The wall beside her exploded, collapsing with a roar and kicking up a massive cloud of dust. Cracked bricks and debris flew in all directions, and from within, the indigo Reaper revealed itself.
Its scythe glinted like a blade slicing through the flow of time itself, and a shockwave washed over Rin.
“Yelp!”
Rin’s body was thrown high into the air before plummeting back down. She skipped across the ground like a flat stone on water.
Her small body absorbed the full impact. Rin trembled, trying to get up, but collapsed again.
“Whimper…”
Rin let out a pitiful cry. Her wretched state was enough to evoke sympathy, but her opponent was a Reaper, so it was useless.
The Reaper’s indigo eyes fixed on Rin. Its distant gaze seemed to stare past her body and into her soul, as if it were interested in the soul itself.
Or perhaps, the shackles bound to it.
The Reaper slowly reached out its hand.
Rin squeezed her eyes shut.
“Now?”
“Now.”
Reflected in a puddle on the ground was a towering chimney. And silhouetted against the moon, a single wolf-woman.
Seira, her long, ash-gray hair flying, shot forward like a cannonball. Using a partial beast transformation, she morphed her arm and slammed her claws down.
SWAT!
Seira knocked the Reaper’s arm aside. As the Reaper faltered, she spun around, grabbed Rin by the scruff of her neck, and used the momentum to throw her.
“Catch her properly.”
She threw.
“Hahaha, you don’t have to tell me, I can handle this much with—Gak!”
Karami, who had been waiting, spread his arms wide to catch Rin, but his feeble body was no match for the momentum. Unable to withstand the impact, he was sent flying backward with Rin.
Karami skidded across the rain-slicked ground. Even so, the arms wrapped around Rin never loosened their grip.
“Whine…?”
A gentle warmth spread through her chilled body. As she sniffed, a strangely calming scent filled her nose. Rin looked up to see.
His hair was plastered to his head like seaweed, and his clothes were a mess. Yet, there was Karami, looking down at her with a smirk.
“You’re a really good runner. But I’d prefer it if you didn’t run from me~”
“Whine?”
Karami patted Rin’s head and stood up.
Seira dodged the Reaper’s attacks with nimble footwork. She planted a foot on the scythe’s handle, using it as a springboard to leap backward, landing gracefully beside Karami.
“I did as you wished… but what now? This is no ordinary Reaper. I doubt we could guarantee victory even if we summoned the entire Knight Order.”
While Seira’s fur stood on end in high alert, Karami silently stared at the Reaper. He’d had a feeling when he saw it from a distance, but it was indeed a Reaper of a familiar color.
“Father, even you can’t just go around swinging your scythe at my slave.”
“Father…?”
The Reaper, in turn, stared at Karami with its own placid, indigo eyes.
Their gazes met mid-air. Caught between them, Seira looked back and forth, unable to understand.
It was the Reaper who broke eye contact first. It turned its head as if looking somewhere, then calmly flew off in that direction.
The situation ended so anticlimactically it made the built-up tension feel pointless. Seira vaguely sensed that Karami was the cause.
“You…”
“Gosh, look how cold you are. Let’s hurry back. The kid’s going to catch a cold.”
Karami turned and walked back toward the inn, using a convenient excuse. Seira watched his retreating back, her eyes narrowed.
She would have to correct her assessment.
Karami was perhaps a more dangerous figure than his reputation suggested.