Chapter 37
Chapter 37
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 37
Chapter Title: The Second Warrior
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"Hmm, you can still talk."
Hwijun looked at him with puzzlement.
It was a grievous wound that would have killed any ordinary human.
"Not only can I talk, but..."
Two soldiers seized the opening, charging at Sairan's front and rear.
Sairan grabbed the shaft of the spear from the soldier lunging straight at him with one hand and spun his body.
The soldier who had thrust the spear lost his balance and tumbled over.
Sairan slit the throat of the soldier aiming for his back with the hand holding his sword, then stomped on the neck of the fallen one.
-Crack.
Only the sound of breaking bone echoed, without a scream.
"...I can fight just fine."
A crescent moon peeked through the clouds for a moment before vanishing.
The soldier whose throat had been slit clutched at the gushing blood with his hands before finally collapsing.
The black scales of the lizardman seemed to gleam faintly.
The dozen or so soldiers flinched, unable to easily close in on Sairan's intimidating presence.
Sairan snorted derisively at the frightened human soldiers, then gripped the spear shaft protruding from his back with one hand and wrapped his tail around it.
-Snap!
Without so much as a groan, Sairan snapped off the bothersome spear lodged in him.
He hurled the spear shaft aside and bared his teeth at the enemies between him and Hwikyung.
"Hwikyung. If you're not turning back to run, come here."
"Okay."
Hwikyung moved to stand behind Sairan.
Sairan glared at the enemies.
"Do you know that running away was the right choice?"
"Yeah."
"Then why make the wrong one?"
"I don't know."
Sairan glanced back at Hwikyung.
Their eyes met.
Hwikyung spoke again.
"I don't know. All I know is that humans sometimes make wrong choices. Even if they know it's wrong, even if it leads them to their own ruin."
"Not humans—people."
"Why?"
"The chief told me to protect you, but not to risk my life. He said it was fine to give up and retreat if it got dangerous."
Hwikyung found this puzzling.
Over the past three weeks, not only had his own life been in peril countless times, but so had Sairan's. Though he never said it aloud, ever since he'd come to rely on Sairan, Hwikyung had felt grateful each morning just for waking up alive.
"...Then why stay?"
"Didn't you already say it, Hwikyung? You don't know the reason, but people sometimes make wrong choices. Choices that are wrong and ultimately lead to their own destruction."
Hwijun, standing off at a distance, furrowed his brow upon hearing a whisper from someone nearby.
Hwijun spoke.
"What are you lot doing? Kill them already!"
One soldier muttered softly.
"But that lizard's aura is overwhelming. And... the talk of him being 'chosen'..."
"Idiots. You think he'd hide his power until a spear was in his back?"
That rumor had been spread by Hwikyung himself, and it had held up until now.
But Hwijun seemed to already know it wasn't true.
"Lizardman! If you can call down that lightning, try it on me."
"......"
"Knew it."
Hwijun invoked the baseless rumor.
He wasn't sure if it was true himself, but it was worth mentioning if it boosted the soldiers' morale.
"From what I know, the number of 'chosen ones' is limited. There's no way the Blue Insect God would waste attention on a lowly warrior like that."
"......"
Sairan remained utterly silent.
Gaining confidence, Hwijun declared,
"See? He can't even refute it! The one who brings me their heads gets an extra cart of silk!"
The eyes of the soldiers in the clearing changed.
The soldiers charged, and Sairan fended them off.
But for every soldier Sairan felled, two or three more took their place.
As time dragged on, the situation increasingly favored Hwijun.
Sairan whispered to Hwikyung.
"We'll escape to the right. It'll be hard to carry you through, so follow close."
"The right is a wall?"
"As Hwijun said, I can't blast a path with lightning. But as he said, I'm no mere foot soldier."
Hwikyung had assumed as much.
"I've thought that since we first met."
"Then what number do you think I am?"
"Uh, well..."
Hwikyung thought it a somewhat childish question for such a dire moment.
"The chief is the chief, so we don't rank him. Our tribe's top warrior is Yur."
"I know that."
"...And I'm the runner-up. People don't remember second place well."
Hwikyung sensed a small inner wound in the steadfast Sairan. Being forever second among warriors who only praised the best must hurt.
'She probably wouldn't show that fragile pride if not in a moment like this.'
Sairan glanced right and said,
"Remember, to the right."
"I know, but there's a wall there."
"Not for long."
"What?"
"Stick close."
Pure curiosity about what was happening crossed Hwikyung's mind, but not even Hwijun's soldiers managed that much.
The escape route Sairan had indicated was a wall of bedrock.
The material was soft rock that could be broken with a low-quality pickaxe made of poor iron, and the inside was surely hollow since it was part of someone's home—but a wall was a wall.
To humans, it had long been recognized as an unchanging feature of the landscape. Something immovable, unchangeable; if it blocked the way, one had to find a path around.
If the wall could think, it probably would have believed itself firmly rooted there, unchanging for centuries to come.
But not in Sairan's mind.
Sairan was the runner-up warrior of the Black Scale tribe.
Runner-ups had the authority to resolve disagreements with their own strength.
'If there's no exit...'
Sairan slung his right arm over his left shoulder and crouched low.
One soldier blocked between Sairan and the wall, unaware of his intent.
'...make one.'
Sairan charged in a tackle stance.
The soldier raising his sword was flung aside by Sairan. He neither wounded him nor slowed him down.
-Boom!
Sairan burst through the wall and vanished.
Dust billowed from the crumbled wall, cloaking their already limited visibility in darkness.
Hwikyung was the first to grasp what happened.
He dashed through the dust into the hole Sairan had disappeared through.
One soldier shouted to Hwijun.
"Th-the bastard broke through the wall!"
"I know! What are you waiting for? Chase them!"
Hwijun bellowed orders, but the soldiers dawdled, using the pitch blackness as excuse to light more torches from each other's flames. Anyone could see they had no desire to be the first after Sairan.
'Damn cowards.'
Hwijun recalled three weeks ago, when the trolls had come.
'Should I have brought in outside forces? Could I have ended it sooner?'
There had been five of them, and these trolls knew not only the internal situation of Automaton Castle but also about Hwijun himself.
With tough claws on sturdy fingertips and powerful legs, they were fierce warriors even by troll standards.
Above all, they offered to help without demanding anything in return.
But Hwijun had refused them.
Refused and driven them out.
'They said if I became the next lord, Automaton Castle would fill with followers of the Wrathful Fang God. That was all they wanted.'
They hadn't demanded Hwijun worship the Wrathful Fang God.
They just said that's how it would be.
Meaning, even if Hwijun didn't believe and tried to stop it, it would happen anyway.
'If I become lord, the next enemies would be trolls and lizardmen. I can't accept help from such scum. Nor can I stand by while someone who does becomes lord.'
His other brothers already followed either the Wrathful Fang God or the Blue Insect God. It was fortunate they had fallen out quickly.
But now, Hwijun couldn't rely on schemes and plots.
Time was short.
'Father's coming. Must end before sunrise.'
Hwijun gazed in the direction his last brother had fled.
'If he ran that way, it won't take long.'
─┼
"Looks like I messed up choosing our escape route."
"More precisely, my mistake. I lived here and should have scouted the paths ahead."
"It was too dark to scout. Besides, Hwikyung, you're no miner."
Hwikyung decided not to blame himself further.
It wasn't a good time for self-recrimination anyway.
The path they had fled led to the salt mine—a dead end.
There were other issues too.
The salt mine's interior wasn't complex, making pursuit easy, and the passages narrowed gradually, hindering Sairan more than the humans due to his larger build. Hiding deep inside would only disadvantage them further.
Moreover, Sairan's wound was worsening.
As Sairan began limping deeper into the mine, Hwikyung had no choice but to suggest they stop.
Sairan slowly nodded.
Hwikyung removed his cloak and pressed it against Sairan's wound, but blood kept pouring out.
"Sh-shouldn't we pull it out?"
"Without proper treatment now, the blood loss would kill me. I'd have to fight not just Hwijun but sleep demons too—and I'd lose."
"Damn it, what do we do?"
"Some things can't be helped, Hwikyung."
At Sairan's words, Hwikyung felt something well up that he thought he'd long since spent—something he never expected to feel again.
Tears.
"Hwikyung, are you crying?"
"Don't tease. This isn't the time."
"No, no. I'm glad. Are you crying for me?"
"Yeah. You big lizard mountain. What's so good about dying?"
"Don't worry. I've seen many—enemy or ally—dying from spear wounds. I don't know much, but if I can move this much, proper healing should save me."
"Don't talk like it's someone else's story. How do we get proper healing in this mess?"
Sairan's mind blanked for a moment; he knew it was blood loss.
But he could hold on still.
The problem was Hwikyung, who wept distrusting the runner-up warrior he was.
Sairan said,
"Thinking it's a curse?"
"Yeah."
"That everything going wrong is because of a curse?"
"Can you say it's not?"
"...We've done a lot of reasoning these past three weeks. Let's do it again. Bottom line: you're not cursed, Hwikyung."
Hwikyung wiped tears with his sleeve.
"Why?"
"Think of the ambushes and traps you've faced these three weeks. Your brothers were always behind them. Not coincidence or some curse-casting god. Someone with clear malice targeted you."
"I know, but..."
"Sure, you want to call the source of that malice a curse. But consider the opposite. How have you survived, Hwikyung? Me meeting you, the chief helping for your silk, the priestess aiding without regard for past debts, Old Miner Su spilling the truth to us, the fishmonger's secret that saved our lives... All coincidences? Hwikyung, what do you call such chance kindnesses?"
Hwikyung answered.
"Luck?"
Hwikyung felt time stop for a moment.
It was the voice from his heart that had been silent for three weeks.
'Shut up.'
Hwikyung clutched his temples, and time resumed.
Sairan apparently hadn't heard the voice inside him.
"Yes. Luck."
Sairan continued.
"When we first met and went down for the silk, I inspected the priestess's cart. The wheel broke because someone had scratched the axle pin. No time to mention it then, and after realizing she was on our side, I assumed one of your brothers did it."
"What? But I borrowed the cart before the succession fight even started properly."
"That's what struck me odd. Prior fights were just posturing, not kill-or-be-killed. And targeting low-priority you intentionally? But that sabotage suggests someone had been after your life even before—maybe steadily."
Hwikyung felt a headache coming on.