Blood & Flag (6)

Crimson light flooded the cramped hideout.

The goddamn diamond spinning overhead was advertising itself like a lighthouse on a black sea. Pile of cash right here. Come and get it.

I listened to the noise closing in and chewed what was left of the chocolate bar. The sweet little rest was over. Rustle. Rustle. One, two, three... At least five of them were tightening around me.

Every one of them can smell money. I'll give them that.

I peered out through a gap in the roots. They'd stopped bothering with stealth. First come, first served—they came pounding in, breath ragged, a pack of starving hyenas.

"Found him! Over there!"

"Out of the way! Whoever grabs him first owns him!"

The axe-wielding giant roared, and I kicked free of the hideout.

My heart hammered. Their excitement, their killing intent—it filled my chest with a fierce joy. This was when I felt alive. And in the same breath, my head went cold. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling.

Since it's come to this, I might as well enjoy myself.

The closer they came, the more my pulse, paradoxically, settled into stillness.

"Hraaaah!"

The giant was first. He bellowed and brought the axe down, and a red trajectory cut a sharp diagonal through the dark. I slipped aside as if mocking the line. A rush of parted air skimmed my ear. Before that huge blade could bite the ground where I had been, I was already inside his blind spot.

The point drove in deep—into his flank, exactly where spine and organs lock together.

Swinging back with superhuman strength after a thrust like that is movie fantasy. The instant the core muscles and nerve bundles that hold a body upright are severed, a man can't even stand, let alone walk. The giant screamed and crumpled.

"Haha! All that big talk, and look at you. You're mine!"

Another one came in on his heels, sword swinging—a man who looked Indian. Excitement had wrecked his line, and to me the cut crawled. I flowed between the incoming blows like a ghost. Thrust, cut, thrust again. Three strikes, and nothing more. Unadorned blows ravaged his vitals one after another. In a blink his left thigh, his shoulder, and his throat were opened, and he slammed into the dirt like a sheaf of straw.

There was no time to savor it. Rustling rolled in from every side like a wave. As long as the red lighthouse over my head stayed lit, I was nothing but a giant target, wherever I stood. I didn't even flick the blood from the blade. I moved at once, out toward the edge of the jungle, where the signs of life were thinnest.

A moment later a keen red line tore the forest dark and crossed my vision.

Someone's hiding.

In the same instant a blade burst from the brush like lightning and lunged for my throat. I dipped my head on reflex, letting the cut slip past, and swung level. In the moment we crossed, the sensation of the edge sinking softly into his neck traveled up through my palm.

"...Kh—hikk."

He hit the ground and folded like a puppet with its strings cut. From the punctured windpipe came the grotesque hiss of a balloon losing air. A single exchange. One clean, unadorned stroke.

I pushed on through the grass, taking stock of my body.

Strange.

The hunted always burn more stamina than the hunter. Not knowing when or where a blade might come eats several times the usual energy, just from the pressure. And yet the longer this went, the fresher I felt. My rough breathing smoothed out almost at once, and the tight fatigue in my muscles was simply gone.

So it's true. A mark-holder's stamina recovery jumps hard.

At this point I was almost glad I'd picked the thing up. My position was exposed? Didn't matter. Kill them as they came.

The board's set. I ought to stir it properly.

I turned my steps toward another red lighthouse, far off.

Night deepened, and the battlefield didn't cool. It burned hotter.

The red beams cutting the primeval dark were no longer the marks of men on the run. They were closer to predators charging in to eat one another. Go Tae-min in particular—demon mask on, cutting straight across the jungle—was enough to steal the breath from anyone watching. Instead of shaking the pack on his heels, he cut down every warrior blocking the path and ran a straight line toward another mark-holder.

The commentators poured out their praise.

Go Tae-min, unaware of any of it, was sprinting without pause through the dense trees.

Somewhere along the way the horizon had begun to burn red. The pitch-black night had passed, dawn had come, and now that sun was sinking past the horizon once more. With the physical burden gone, he had been able to focus on nothing but fighting, and the match had slipped past its midpoint before he noticed.

That was when a new window opened in his vision. A chime rang.

Another hidden rule. The added text was simple enough: a special reward for whichever warrior endured the longest while holding a mark. None of that complicated wording reached Go Tae-min. His eyes locked on a single line—the name of the reward.

...No way. They're giving out a Waldstein Series?

His feet stopped dead.

Waldstein. One of the most famous blacksmiths in the world. The swords he forged were called the Waldstein Series, each stamped with a number in the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠order it was made. No.113 meant the hundred and thirteenth blade to leave his own hands. They were masterworks. A single one went for tens of thousands of dollars at the low end, and depending on condition, hundreds of thousands—sometimes past a million.

Insane. I have to take this. No question.

It was lottery money. Tens of thousands of dollars drifting right in front of his face—there was no way his eyes weren't going to roll.

Go Tae-min checked the current standings, his gaze gone flat and cold. The satisfaction he'd felt a moment ago over a bonus of about six thousand dollars had vanished without a trace.

So who's in first... huh? That's me?

Go Tae-min laughed, awkward and pleased. Everyone else was desperate to tear the mark off. He'd worn it like a stamina potion, and the habit had come back as an absurd windfall. Hold it from here, and that monstrous reward would be his.

He wandered the jungle in high spirits. The special reward was the special reward. The bonus in front of him was a separate matter entirely. He meant to defend first place, and he had not the slightest intention of slacking on the hunt for the other Red Diamond holders.

Better keep busy catching them until this is over.

A short while later, beyond the brush, he came upon another red lighthouse wavering in the dark.

The man gave off an incongruous air. Neatly combed hair, intellectual glasses—he looked like an honor student who belonged in a laboratory. Set against that mild face, the body glimpsed through the leather armor was enormously muscular. And more than that...

He was already fighting four pro warriors who had blocked his path. Outnumbered one to four, he was overwhelming them anyway.

Not bad.

The red lines carried more information than they seemed to. The steadiness of a sword's speed. The precise division of force. A trajectory straight and without waste. In that sense, the lines the man with glasses drew held remarkably stable.

A wet slice.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Kh... kuh..."

He dropped the fourth and final warrior. Flicking the blood from his sword, he turned his head slowly, and his eyes met Go Tae-min's.

"......"

"......"

Go Tae-min didn't look away. A mark-holder's position was shared in real time. Hiding was meaningless. He pushed through the brush and walked toward the man, unhurried. A moment later they had closed to a distance where a stumble would have knocked their noses together. Go Tae-min stopped at a hairline point the other man's red lines could not reach.

Definitely not ordinary.

His opponent didn't so much as twitch, even with Go Tae-min right in front of him. That unshaken stance was proof the man knew his own spacing perfectly. And when Go Tae-min halted exactly outside his reach, the man with glasses wore a meaningful look of his own—eyes that said, you know what you're doing too.

"......"

A taut standoff, neither man crossing into the other's ground. Two red diamonds faced each other at close range and pressed down on the jungle's silence. The spectators watching poured out their awe.

Antonio moved first.

He stared at the demon mask, then closed in with a short, clean motion and thrust. A red line came straight on. A stab so precise it raised the hair on the neck, driving for Go Tae-min's heart.

Steel rang.

Go Tae-min set his sword at an angle and lightly let the attack slide off. In the instant the sparks jumped, Antonio used the rebound, twisted his wrist, and sent the follow-up. Astonishing speed. Flexible past all belief for a body that muscular, and coming in from an angle no one would have expected.

Go Tae-min had already read the trajectory. No wasted movement—he turned only his head, and the blade missed by the thickness of a sheet of paper.

"......!"

Antonio's eyes flew wide behind the glasses.

He dodged that?

A reaction that had blown straight past his calculations stalled his thoughts cold. They didn't get to continue. Go Tae-min's dagger slipped into that instant of opening and carved deep across Antonio's throat. A chilling sensation spread through his whole body.

With that, a heavy silence settled over the jungle. Insects filled the air. In that stillness the huge frame of the man with glasses lost its balance and toppled. For a warrior who had been making a name cutting through the forest, it was an empty death.

Go Tae-min put the sword away and let out a thin breath.

Hoo. That was almost a disaster.

From the outside it had looked easy. It hadn't been. At the last instant the red line had kinked at a grotesque angle, and inwardly he had flinched. That was what had let him dodge with a little room to spare. Without a talent that laid an opponent's trajectory bare the way his did, taking that attack would not have been easy at all.

That aside—

So that was Antonio.

He glanced at the place where the man with glasses had dissolved into light, then opened his status window. He checked the rankings, and stopped cold.

What is this.

The board had been rewritten. Juggernaut and Big Rabby, who had been holding the top ranks, were gone without a trace, and the Grey Ghost—fifth a moment ago—had already climbed to second. That meant one thing.

Second and fourth are dead too.

Juggernaut, in particular, had been one of the three named fighters in this match. The man people had been calling a favorite to win had evaporated off the standings. The excitement that had been riding Go Tae-min through his bonus hunt went out of his eyes in an instant, replaced by something serious.

The information in front of him couldn't say whether the missing names had been mobbed by a pack or taken down by a single strong hand. But if it was the latter... and if that one hand belonged to the Grey Ghost, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠who had been sitting in fifth until a moment ago, then the story changed completely. A monster who had dropped second-place Juggernaut and fourth-place Big Rabby back to back would be coming for him. That was as plain as watching a fire.

Rustle. Rustle.

His guess was not wrong. Light footsteps, the brush parted, and a pretty boy stepped out.

"Oh—hello there."

Comfortable jeans, a white T-shirt. A sword in his hand, dripping blood. Five foot three, maybe. The handsome blond boy still hadn't shed his youthful look, and the air around him was so out of place it could make a man forget this was a battlefield.

"Kept you waiting, didn't I? The toys in front of me were a bit stubborn. Clearing them out took a minute."

A face he knew. Three profiles his senior had shown him, with a warning to be careful. One of them had been this boy. The Grey Ghost. Christopher.

"Now the only red one left around here is you. You're first place, right?"

The boy smiled brightly and came closer.