The Thief in the Moonlight
I slowly pieced together my memories of the phantom thief from the past.
Back then, the wealthy households nearby had been robbed one after another, and the whole area had been thrown into chaos. But as I recalled, the Northern Heavenly Sword Clan had shown little interest in the matter at first.
Why?
Because they had considered it a matter for the local authorities, not the martial world.
Since they assumed no mere thief would dare target a martial clan like theirs, they had dismissed it outright.
What laughable arrogance.
That confidence had been thoroughly humiliated. The Northern Heavenly Sword Clan had been stripped clean by a thief.
And not just of silver and gold, either. He had stolen the family heirloom, the Wind God Sword.
Naturally, an emergency had been declared afterward.
Every martial warrior in the clan had been mobilized to catch the thief, but he was never found. After showing himself during the theft, he had vanished without a trace.
Though he was exposed later for an absurd reason.
By then, the bastard had already disposed of the Wind God Sword.
The stolen wealth had also been moved elsewhere, which meant nothing at all was recovered in the end.
And because of that, I had been forced to bear the blame.
On top of that, simply because I had been acting as the clan head at the time, I had to endure endless backbiting from the family retainers.
The elders had deliberately steered the atmosphere that way.
In any case.
Seeing a report like this meant there probably wasn't much time left before the thief paid a visit to the Northern Heavenly Sword Clan.
Remember it clearly. That night, the full moon was out.
I looked up at the sky and estimated the date.
Probably ten days from now.
That was when he'd come.
A smile rose to my lips.
The time to avenge my first life was drawing near.
Of course, my daily routine didn't change after that.
During the day, I handled work. After dinner, I shut myself up in the training yard.
I had Sagong Cheon stand guard while I trained in the Vajrayaksha Divine Art inside.
There were plenty of other martial arts I needed to practice, but for now, I thought building up my body had to come first.
If the foundation was solid, everything else would follow, wouldn't it?
Thanks to that, my physical condition had improved tremendously compared to the first day.
The speed of my recovery was almost shocking.
The effects of the Vajrayaksha Divine Art were far better than when I had used it in my first life.
Maybe it's because I started learning it before my body was completely ruined?
I considered that possibility, but I couldn't be sure.
There could easily have been another reason.
Perhaps I was simply more skilled now than I had been the first time I used the Vajrayaksha Divine Art.
Well, it doesn't really matter.
If my progress was faster, that only benefited me.
And so, another ten days passed.
At an hour when everyone else was asleep, I was walking through the clan grounds at night with Sagong Cheon.
"I feel like I've kept you out far too late," I said.
"It's fine. Escorting you is my duty, Young Lord."
"My apologies. It's just that the workload's been so heavy lately, my head feels cluttered. I wanted to get some night air."
For the moment, I had told him it was nothing more than a light nighttime walk.
If I brought up the thief now, it would only give people reason to grow suspicious later.
But I can't keep wandering around near the storehouse forever like this. So please... hurry up and come.
It was just as I was thinking that.
"Urk!"
"A-a thief!"
At that exact moment, a scream and a startled shout rang out from the direction of the storehouse.
Sagong Cheon and I exchanged glances at once and rushed over.
By the time we arrived, two guards were already lying on the ground unconscious, their heads struck down.
And from inside came a man in black, sprinting out.
At his waist hung the Wind God Sword and a pouch that looked stuffed with valuables.
No mistake.
It was him.
"Escort Sagong. Get him!"
"Yes!"
At my order, Sagong Cheon rushed forward without hesitation.
The thief before us was, by any standard, caught in the act.
"Eek!"
With a yelp, the thief sprang straight over the wall of the Northern Heavenly Sword Clan.
He was astonishingly fast. His movement art had clearly reached a considerable level.
"Don't worry about me—go after him!"
Sagong Cheon seemed to make up his mind at my command and continued the chase.
But even for a Peak Realm master like him, the thief wasn't easy to catch.
"Stop right there!"
Roaring furiously, Sagong Cheon clung to the pursuit with relentless determination.
And so the midnight chase began.
And then...
"Good. Just as expected, he went the other way."
Left alone, I vaulted over the wall as well and stepped outside.
But I did not head in the direction the two of them had run.
Even if I chased after them, with my current condition I'd only barely keep up for a short while before collapsing from exhaustion first.
If that's the case, there's something else I should be doing instead.
That something else was raiding the phantom thief's hideout.
The bold bastard had set up a secret refuge in an abandoned house not far from the Northern Heavenly Sword Clan.
There was an amusing story behind how that fact had come to light.
In my first life, after receiving a tip that he was there, I had once attacked the man staying inside.
Later I heard the fence had betrayed him, or something like that.
Not even betrayal, really. The thief had tried to cheat the fence first and gotten caught.
So the enraged fence had reported him and gotten him captured.
But back then, we hadn't recovered anything.
He had already moved his fortune somewhere else.
In the end, the Northern Heavenly Sword Clan hadn't recovered a single coin—and had even lost its heirloom.
But things are different now.
At this moment, the bastard was being chased by Sagong Cheon in the opposite direction.
Unless he was an idiot, there was no way he'd return directly to his hideout with a pursuer on his heels.
He'd probably circle around the area trying to shake Sagong Cheon off.
If so, the chase would certainly drag on.
Which meant I had more than enough time to hit his base.
Tap, tap, tap.
After checking whether anyone was nearby, I slipped into the abandoned house that served as his hideout.
Fortunately, this area was wrapped in eerie silence thanks to a rumor that ghosts haunted the place.
I moved calmly deeper inside and pried up part of the floor.
Creak.
A hidden space revealed itself beneath it.
"Hup."
There was so much dust I had to hold my breath as I climbed in, where a space about the size of an ordinary room greeted me.
But the contents inside were far from ordinary.
Silver was piled up in heaps, and there were all kinds of treasures that looked valuable at a glance.
"Hah."
Just looking at it lifted my spirits.
I took some of it and packed it into the bundle I'd prepared beforehand.
Don't get greedy. Just take what I need for now.
There was a reason for that.
To begin with, there was no way I could physically take everything here anyway...
And it would be better to leave behind enough wealth to make a show of returning it to the robbed rich men later.
That way, gratitude would come back to me in time.
So instead, I tossed aside all the middling junk and selected only the choicest pieces.
Fortunately, I had enough experience to recognize what was truly valuable.
Is this a secret manual?
After rummaging through the back for a while, I found a manual titled Overlord's Footwork.
When I opened it, I found the formulas for an exceptionally profound movement art.
To be honest, I couldn't help being surprised.
The Thief King?
The Thief King was one of the two divine thieves of the Central Plains, alongside the White-Faced Divine Thief.
In other words, he was a truly major figure.
But as far as I knew, the Thief King remained active long after this thief had been captured.
So this bastard couldn't be the Thief King himself...
One of his disciples, perhaps?
Well, that would explain how he could escape Sagong Cheon's pursuit. After all, Sagong Cheon was a Peak Realm expert, and one near the upper end at that.
I carefully stored away the manual for Overlord's Footwork.
Then I looked around again to see if there was anything else worth taking.
That's fleeceflower root.
As it turned out, I found a dried root stored in a bottle as well.
Would anyone preserve an ordinary fleeceflower root this carefully?
Of course not.
Which meant there was a high chance this was something precious, close to a spiritual medicine.
At the very least, it was probably worthy of being called a Hundred-Year Fleeceflower Root.
Not a bad haul at all.
That thought naturally brought a smile to my lips.
With one raid on a thief's hideout, I had secured a massive reserve of emergency funds, a secret manual, and even a spiritual medicine.
After leaving the hideout, I erased all traces that I had ever been there. Then I secretly buried the items I'd taken beneath a nearby tree.
Since I had dug a hole and covered it back up, no one would ever find them unless they dug in that exact spot.
After that, I concealed myself nearby and waited, pretending I had been searching for the thief.
How much time passed like that?
"You bastard! Stop right there!"
From a distance, I spotted Sagong Cheon and the thief still locked in their chase.
"Escort Sagong!"
"Young Lord!?"
The moment I saw them, I sprang out.
"Why are you here, Young Lord...?"
"I thought that if you kept chasing that thief, you might end up coming this way, so I was patrolling the area. More importantly, let's catch him first."
"Yes, sir."
We exchanged a glance and closed in on the thief trapped between us.
"Ugh!"
The bastard looked deeply troubled.
High walls blocked both sides, and pursuers were closing in from the front and back. There seemed to be no way out.
But soon his eyes flashed savagely.
With his path blocked, he seemed to have decided to break through by force.
And naturally, the direction he chose was—
"Young Lord! Be careful!"
Me.
After all, having realized during the chase that Sagong Cheon was the stronger fighter, the thief had chosen me as the weaker-looking target.
"Hah."
How ridiculous.
I snorted and glared at him.
He came at me with ghostlike footwork and threw a straight punch.
It was probably the same strike he had used to knock out the guards watching over the clan.
But it wouldn't work on me.
"How dare you."
With fearsome force, I swung my hand and slapped the punch aside.
"...!"
The thief froze in shock, clearly never having imagined his attack would be blocked.
But I had no intention of waiting for him to recover his senses.
I grabbed his arm, yanked him toward me, and flipped him over in one smooth motion.
Bang!
"Urgh!"
The phantom thief cried out in agony as he hit the ground.
He immediately tried to scramble up and counterattack, but—
"It's over."
Sagong Cheon had already arrived and was pointing his sword at him with killing intent.
One wrong move, and his head would be severed.
"P-please spare me!"
In the end, the thief could only plead with a tearful face.
Thus, the thief who had caused such an uproar for so long was finally captured.
The captured phantom thief said his name was Nam Cheon.
He was in his mid-twenties.
And as I'd expected, he turned out to be one of the Thief King's disciples.
Sagong Cheon seemed genuinely shocked by that.
"You're a disciple of the Thief King?"
"Y-yes! That's right!"
"Don't lie. Why would a disciple of the Thief King do something like this...?"
Sagong Cheon's words trailed off, as if he had suddenly run out of things to say.
Come to think of it, no matter how grand the title Thief King sounded, a thief was still a thief.
Asking a thief's disciple why he was stealing was idiotic in the first place.
In the end, Sagong Cheon shut his mouth as though he had nothing left to say.
I spoke in his place.
"Why did you target our Northern Heavenly Sword Clan?"
"Th-that is..."
"If you're honest, I may be willing to take your circumstances into consideration."
The moment I cast the bait, he swallowed it whole.
"Because I was hired!"
"Hired?"
That was not what I had expected.
I had assumed it was either for the money, or perhaps some test imposed by the Thief King.
But a contract?
That was something I hadn't considered at all.
And when I heard what came next, my expression hardened at once.
"Someone offered me a large sum if I robbed the Northern Heavenly Sword Clan's storehouse, stole the family heirloom, and tarnished the Young Lord's reputation!"
"What?"
Well now.
To think there were actually people brazen enough to make such a proposal.
But at the same time, another thought rose in my mind.
Couldn't I use this?
This might actually become an opportunity for me.