The Deepest Prison (5)

A pro league is, in truth, little more than a festival for its own people. The Master League and the Super League — where the highest-ranked fighters in the world gather — are already broadcast live, and few foreigners bother keeping up with some other country's lesser circuit on top of that.

Today was the exception.

A mission of vicious difficulty: VIP Rescue. And the appearance of a Pro Warrior who had put a knight in the dirt shook communities across the world in real time.

The Japanese boards roared for a star born in their own league.

The Chinese community, armed with its particular sense of the Central Realm and a legion culture all its own, decided Demon was Chinese beyond any doubt and set the nationality war ablaze.

Even the Korean community, cynical by comparison, poured into the live broadcast the moment a Pro Warrior appeared who had felled a knight. The surge was violent enough to overload the relay servers for a stretch. In the end, viewership for Ashmoon Knight 200 blasted past a million in an instant — and the second match Go Tae-min had entered became the fifth most watched in the history of the US Pro League.

"Huff... huff..."

Air drawn deep into my lungs came back tainted with the iron of blood and the wet smell of earth. My side, crushed only moments ago beneath the knight's massive armor, burned as if it had been set alight. Every joint was screaming, but I didn't stop walking.

This was the dense primeval forest wrapping the outskirts of Rasgrid. Through leaf litter soaked enough to clutch at my feet like a bog, I pushed on with a hand clamped over my ribs.

"...Where are we headed?"

I didn't so much as turn at the question from the target behind me. I answered in the flattest voice I could manage.

"Through Noah, then over into Warshawat in the Anacren Kingdom."

The win condition was simple: secure the target, then cross intact into a neighboring country. I had already cut the shortest route on the assumption that we would get out of Rasgrid. The young man's face darkened at the answer.

"The empire will already be holding that road."

"They will."

Of course they would. If you meant to leave Rasgrid and cross a border, that was the easy way, which meant imperial search parties would be laid thick along the Noah approach. It wasn't the only route. We could pass Veracruz and enter Felgrad in the Kingdom of Kainon — but that meant cutting back across the Rasgrid we had just escaped and coming out the other side. We would be hunted either way, and marching through the middle of the enemy's ground would multiply the difficulty several times over. If a sword dance was unavoidable no matter which way I chose, then the short, fast road was the right one. The more tangled a situation gets, the simpler the answer tends to be.

This body has to hold until then.

I pressed the throbbing side and kept my feet busy. To leave as little sign as possible I avoided the crisp dry leaves and chose my steps, cross-checking the compass against the ground and setting a careful bearing. All the while, the knight's impossible movement clung to the inside of my head like an afterimage that refused to burn off.

He knew how to use the white lines.

Every time he swung that greatsword, the white lines rang with it. More precisely, white lines pouring out of his body had clung to his fist, his sword, even every part of him that moved, and swung along. So that's mana. No wonder it had been abnormally fast and strong — past anything human muscle could explain. They said you refine it. Or store it in the body and use it that way.

I looked at the white lines wavering all around me. Honestly, I wanted them. If I could handle those lines at will, meeting that knight head-on might not be out of the question.

How do you even do it?

Between strides I reached for the lines drifting through the empty air. My fingertips felt nothing. However I tried to catch them, they passed indifferently between my fingers like phantoms.

They said you store it in the body.

I didn't break stride. I drew air deep into my lungs — and something astonishing happened. The lines floating around me, which had shown no reaction at all in the real world, rode my breath and seeped into my body.

"...!"

Huh? What? Did that work?

A chill like swallowed ice water slid down my airway and spread through me. I could feel the white lines moving inside my body, clear as anything, and the fog in my head cleared all at once. The good news ended there. Once they were in, the lines soon turned murky and settled into every corner of my blood vessels. I tried to move them. They wouldn't budge. I had no sense at all of how to control them, draw them back out, and put them to use.

Then I'll just gather them for now.

It felt like pouring water into a jar with no bottom, but all the while I pushed through the forest I kept breathing in the white lines hanging in the air. As that fouled energy piled in my vessels like sediment, a strange clarity wrapped my whole body.

I was taking one step, then another, when it happened.

Fssst—

"...!"

Finer than wind through leaves, a thin and utterly artificial rasp knifed past my ear. I stopped dead where I stood.

"...What's wrong?"

"Quiet."

Already? They can't have caught up. They shouldn't have. The empire wouldn't even realize we had left Rasgrid until a fair amount of time had passed, and I hadn't left anything that would pin our route. So how is there already a tail on us? Someone specialized in tracking, then. I had honestly looked down on them for being NPCs, but their suppression — and the speed of everything after — was better than most veteran agents. A bitter taste filled my mouth.

This is bad.

Dozens of scenarios flashed through my head. These were people who had locked onto our trail even under conditions like these. The odds of reaching Noah with them stuck to our backs were close to zero. The plan had to change. I pulled the compass and checked the bearing fast, then pointed into the northwest, where the forest dark lay thickest.

"Keep running this way. About a kilometer straight and you'll hit the Thebe River."

At the sudden order his eyes shook hard. Bewilderment frosted that painfully familiar face, and a strange déjà vu pricked the inside of my chest. He looked from the blood on my side to the direction I was pointing, and asked in a rush.

"...What are you going to do?"

I reset my grip on Waldstein's hilt and half-turned toward the sound.

"I'll handle myself. Stop talking and run. Don't stop until you reach the river."

"But—!"

"That's an order. If they catch you, I die for nothing too. Understand?"

At a voice cold enough to cut, he swallowed dry. He hesitated a moment, then nodded with his face set.

"...Y-yes. You have to follow. You have to."

Then he dropped low and pushed through the brush, vanishing soundlessly toward the northwest. I drew Waldstein and counted under my breath.

One, two... three.

Now I was the only one left in this stretch of woods. I picked up a few wet leaves and roughly covered the footprints. Not careful camouflage — an obvious lure, meant to hold a pursuer's eyes for even a moment.

All right, specialist. Let's see what you've got.

From the dark came the sound of someone stepping through grass again. Much closer this time.

Rustle—

A thin branch snapped, and a shadow slipped without a sound through the pitch-black brush. Not one. At eleven o'clock and at one, the air stirred, faint but there.

Three of them.

I pressed myself tight behind a nearby dead tree. They were careful. I could feel them stop in front of the crude traces I had left and look the ground over. The wound in my side burned, but the pain honed my head sharper instead. The nearest one was about five meters off now.

Shall we start the hunt.

The moment he slowly bent his torso toward the pile of leaves, I kicked off the ground.