Chapter 105
Chapter 105
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 105
Clang clang clang clang clang!
"Wh-what the—!"
"That's coming from the mansion."
The Gauri soldiers who'd been lying down trying to calm their restless hearts sat up at the sudden uproar and tried to figure out what was going on.
"Something might have gone wrong. Grab your gear. Fast!"
The senior soldier started taking charge in Ryu-hwa's absence.
Even though the Gauri troops kept their gear maintained and ready to move out at a moment's notice, the commotion only kept growing. And just like that, a grim unease began to sprout in their hearts.
"You think we've been made?"
"No way."
"Did that idiot jump someone while he was supposed to be gathering intel?"
"......."
In the middle of the murmured back-and-forth, one soldier's remark made the rest of them clamp their mouths shut. Then they let out sighs and looked toward the chaotic mansion.
"Hiyah-cha-cha-cha-chat!"
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
Arrows were knocked every which way by the spear Ryu-hwa brandished along with his battle shout. The number of soldiers charging at him the instant he escaped the mansion had multiplied exponentially, and despite Ryu-hwa's dazzling martial prowess, soldiers and knights threw themselves at him as if he were their sworn enemy.
"Son of a—!"
"Kill him if you can't take him alive!"
Obscenities flew at the same time as a knight of the Haian Kingdom was heard giving orders to the troops. Leaving the room and taking a wrong turn had gone bizarrely wrong.
Ryu-hwa had entered a place swarming with middle-aged men, beaten them all down, and fled—only to learn later that it had been the Council of Nobles command staff who had set out with Viscount Biken on the demon hunt.
Ryu-hwa, his transformation undone, had naturally become a demon—and from a mere scoundrel, he had turned into a criminal guilty of trying to annihilate the command staff.
Whoooosh!
"Wh-what—!"
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
Flames erupted with a deafening blast behind Ryu-hwa as he frantically threw himself aside from the searing heat.
"Magic Arrow!"
FWOOSH!
"Koff!"
Three or four bolts of light streaked toward Ryu-hwa, who was coughing from inhaling the dust.
"Shit! They're wizards!"
He faltered slightly—he'd had plenty of training but had never actually fought a wizard—yet he didn't bother dodging the incoming bolts any longer.
"Hoo-wup!"
Ryu-hwa drew his spear back and extended his left hand forward as he inhaled. The four bolts of light halted and streaked toward him, drawn as if sucked into his body.
"Pah-hap!"
Exhaling as though his breath were a strike, he thrust the spear in a flash of light, and the foot on the same side as his spear hand stamped hard against the earth.
WHOOSH! KABOOM!
A wind rose, and the incoming bolts of light were snuffed out in an instant. Even that wasn't all: an immense wave of wind pressure crashed into the pursuing soldiers.
"Aaaargh!"
"A demon's magic!"
Blood sprayed from the soldiers charging at Ryu-hwa as the razor-sharp wind tore gashes in their bodies. None of them died, but it was enough to slow their feet.
Ryu-hwa ran for his life.
TAP-TAP-TAP!
"What happened?"
"Did someone confirm what's going on?"
The other Gauri soldiers bombarded him with questions as he leaped down from a rooftop with movements like a cat.
"Captain Mong......"
"......."
No further explanation was necessary. At that single phrase, every remaining soldier sighed and shouldered their gear.
"Well, we'll just have to grab him and get out."
"Yeah."
Even a thorny bond is still a bond. Besides, wasn't this the same man who had arranged a group meeting for their sake? One soldier hoisted his weapon onto his shoulder and spoke up.
"Hate the sin, not the sinner, as they say."
"Bullshit. The sin's the one that deserves pity here."
The soldiers had decisively concluded that Mong Ryu-hwa's sins were, in fact, more pitiable than the man himself.
Crack!
"Geuhk!"
The head of the Haian Kingdom soldier guarding the alley spun a full 180 degrees, met a Gauri soldier's eyes, and then silently collapsed. Thanks to the clouds intermittently veiling the moonlight, the Gauri soldiers could dispatch the Haian troops with ease and open an escape route for Ryu-hwa.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
"Hyaaah!"
From around a bent alley, flames shot skyward and a bizarre scream rang out. Dozens of light-streaks flashed, creating an almost dreamlike atmosphere—if you ignored the screaming and the noise.
"Doesn't even need watching to know it's a total circus."
"Quiet! Everybody get ready."
One soldier clicked his tongue, and another growled at him in a low voice. The troops ranged from men drawing bowstrings to men gripping hand axes, to men quietly picking up throwing stones.
BOOM!
"Uwaaak!"
Fwiiiiiish!
The mouth of the alley burst apart, and Ryu-hwa's body came spinning and tumbling through the air like a cartwheel.
"Shred 'em!"
CLATTER-CLATTER!
Along with the senior soldier's voice, four or five arrows, throwing stones, hand axes, and more rained down on the soldiers pursuing Ryu-hwa.
"Oh, hell!"
The weapons that whooshed past Ryu-hwa battered the Haian Kingdom soldiers chasing him. But Ryu-hwa's expression shifted to one of dismay, and the soldiers who'd made the effort to rescue him scowled deeply.
"We help him and he still flips out."
The muttered curse would probably have reached Ryu-hwa's ears, but he only wore a frustrated look as he kept running. It didn't take long, however, for the Gauri soldiers to understand why Ryu-hwa had grimaced.
"The disguise is gone!"
"Oh, damn!"
From the start, these men had been operating under the assumption that Ryu-hwa had jumped the viscountess and was being chased for it, and they had moved out naturally thinking they were in danger too. But wasn't the Ryu-hwa sprinting toward them the one whose transformation had been broken? In a word, being mistaken for a demon was only natural.
"Shit, what do we do!"
"Only one way—kill everyone and run......"
Killing intent flashed in the eyes of the Gauri soldiers as they belatedly grasped the situation.
If more than ten people got mistaken for demons, the encirclement would tighten uncontrollably, and it was obvious that coming to help would turn out to have been nothing but poison.
The soldiers readjusted their weapons and dashed out in the direction Ryu-hwa was coming from, intent on destroying the evidence. At the sight, Ryu-hwa greeted his subordinates and shouted.
"Run for it!"
"What?"
The Gauri soldiers who'd been dashing forward cocked their heads at Ryu-hwa's shout. But as they saw the Haian Kingdom soldiers increasingly pouring out of the alley, they began to backpedal.
"They're endless!"
The mass of troops flooding through the narrow alley mouth looked at least several hundred strong. And on top of that, four wizards were flying through the air......
"Ah, screw it—start with the wizards!"
WHOOSH!
The moment he swung his arm toward the wizard exactly as he'd been taught, a sound like a watermelon bursting rang out from midair.
Crack!
"It's definitely black magic!"
"Shield!"
"Dispel!"
As one wizard's skull shattered and he plummeted, the remaining wizards frantically began chanting spells in midair. What the soldier had thrown was a throwing stone, but it had been invisible to the eye, and the ki contained in the stone was also misidentified as a mana bolt.
One wizard threw up an omnidirectional Shield and shouted Dispel at the soldier who was winding up his arm again. At that, the pursuing Haian Kingdom soldiers all stopped in their tracks as if on cue.
"What the—?"
It was the Gauri soldiers who found the sight baffling. The Haian troops had seemed to scream something, yet it was their own pursuit that had halted.
"Aagh!"
"What's wrong with you?!"
When a Gauri soldier turned toward his comrade and screamed, the comrade's eyes went wide as he shot the question back. Then, as if in mutual agreement, shouts erupted from both sides.
"The transformation broke!"
"There's a whole swarm of demons!"
The words burst out simultaneously from the Haian Kingdom ranks and the Gauri ranks. And with that, they had no choice but to start running for their lives.
* * *
"......."
After hearing Mong Ryu-hwa's lengthy explanation, Gye Ung-sam wordlessly let his head drop.
Tension began to fill the cave. Slowly, Ung-sam raised his head again.
"So you jumped a woman, and your cover got blown. Isn't that what happened?"
"I did not jump her!"
At Ung-sam's gruff question, Ryu-hwa practically levitated, flailing both hands. But someone quietly spoke from the back......
"Sure you didn't—when we saw you, you were running around bare-chested."
"Shh, he'll hear you."
They obviously meant for him to hear. Ryu-hwa's face stiffened, and one of Ung-sam's eyebrows slowly climbed upward.
"By the way, what's an incubus? That's what they kept calling Captain Ryu-hwa."
"Some kind of demon-like thing that jumps women, I hear."
"Yeah? Sounds about right."
Thus did the ten soldiers unload all their accumulated grudges.
Ung-sam broke the silence at last.
"You."
"Yes, sir!"
"You're Dupyo's peer, aren't you."
"......Yes, sir."
A sudden chill washed over Ryu-hwa, and he answered with a voice that was half-dead. But that was all. Ung-sam didn't try to hold him back; he simply heard those words and flopped down flat on his back.
"We'll settle this once we're back."
"......."
To Ryu-hwa's ears, the words translated as: "I'm going to smash you to pieces over and over for a long, long time." And so the night in the cave wore on.
Chapter 28 — Go Jin-cheon's Definition of Justice
Samdol the hobgoblin couldn't hide his complicated feelings. As long as they had been inside their village, the goblin clan had at least been able to maintain peace. But the moment uninvited guests began to enter the Reganza Mountains, a calamity descended on the thirty-odd goblin tribes.
He hadn't imagined it when he first heard the rumors about a human who kicked a goblin cub—their protected young—into the air. But that was when he should have started preparing.
Even when his subordinate goblins told him a boat was moving over the land, Samdol had dismissed it. Because the low intelligence of ordinary goblins, who weren't hobgoblins, was something Samdol—himself a hobgoblin of the same species—knew better than anyone.
On top of that, he hadn't believed the claim that minotaurs and orcs were pulling the boat.
He should have believed that report back then.
The price of disbelief was bone-deep. Even when he was dragged somewhere and buried in the earth, he had still thought he could take revenge—and he had even succeeded in exacting it. But that success had been the true beginning of misfortune. The humans who had been hauling minotaurs on ropes came rampaging in.
One or two would have been one thing, but a herd of more than ten minotaurs was a disaster for a goblin tribal village. After that, he was dragged away and saw hell.
Goblins being raised as livestock. Their own kin had become fodder for minotaurs and orcs. Enraged, Samdol contacted the other hobgoblins with his sound waves.
He told them it was time to unite.
That had been the worst mistake of Samdol's life.
The black-haired humans rejoiced at the sight of the swarming goblin horde and charged out in force. Every last one of them had wrapped their bodies in leather that reeked heavily of ogre and minotaur and carried clubs, and they began seizing goblins.
The result was horrific. The hobgoblins of more than half of the thirty-odd tribes were captured wholesale. That was when a human had spoken to him.
'You want to die, or you want to listen.'
Samdol and the other hobgoblins made a decision in order to save their kin, who had been reduced to livestock feed. They would live in a region the humans designated. In exchange, the humans said they would no longer capture goblins for food and would only take kobolds. And thanks to that, he had been brought here.
"Samdol, eat this."
"Kik."
Samdol took the chunk of meat the black-haired soldier tossed him and brought it to his mouth. And he thought to himself.
'I must survive.'
Of course, he had endured endless torture before that compromise had been reached. But Samdol had swallowed his tears for the greater cause.
"This little bastard behaves himself pretty well these days."
"Of course he does. General Buru personally trained him."
"Kii......"
He had absolutely not...... yielded to violence.
"Well, since it was General Buru himself who handled it......"
Listening to the Gauri soldiers' conversation, Samdol recalled the memories of that day.
"Hey, did this guy's face just turn all pale?"
"It was always kind of blue-green, wasn't it?"
Samdol glared at the soldiers and quietly stood. The goblin among goblins, the chosen ruler—a hobgoblin.
"Here, have some meat!"
WHOOSH!
Snap!
For the sake of survival, he caught the meat the soldier threw for him again today and turned a somersault.
"Hey, General Buru says you're to relay a communication to the main camp!"
"What's it about?"
Samdol, who had been busily eating his meat, raised his head and looked at the approaching Gauri soldier.
"They said Risel and General Hwi-garam have also been ordered to regroup."
"What?"
The soldier's eyes went round. Samdol blinked, wondering what was going on.
"Wait, even them?"
"Looks like a big fight's coming."
After exchanging a few more words, the messenger soldier turned back, and the one who'd been feeding Samdol spoke up.
"Interpretation."
"Kik!"
The soldier's translation ring flared with light. The soldier's intent began to be conveyed.
"His Majesty has ordered Taedaehyeong Yeon and Uljeol Risel to come here directly. Relay that to Sadol."
"Kiiik!"
Samdol nodded at the soldier's words and transmitted the message by sound wave to Sadol. The message would pass through Sadol and be delivered to Odol back in the homeland.
"Ildol, Idol, Samdol...... His Majesty's naming is so simple it's a problem, honestly."
As Samdol diligently relayed the message, the soldier spoke in a calm voice.