No. 640 Daeeung Escort Bureau (3)
“......”
“......”
Even with the drum's echo still hanging in the air, a long silence settled over the training grounds. Everyone simply darted their eyes left and right, warily sizing one another up. The standoff, however, did not last long.
“Hyaaah—!”
A ronin who could bear the waiting no longer swung his wooden sword at the man beside him. That man raised his own blade to meet it, blocked, and countered. The crack of wood striking wood rang out across the yard.
Clack! Clack!
The attacker had presumably picked out someone who looked like easy pickings, but the moment they actually crossed swords, the gap in skill was plain to see. Before they had traded so much as a handful of blows, he found himself sprawled flat on his back in the dirt.
And that was the spark that set the whole battlefield alight.
“Uwaaaah—!”
Without waiting to see who would move first, the ronins began swinging their wooden swords at one another. The quiet training grounds were, in an instant, filled with war cries, screams, and the relentless crack of wood against wood.
Our trio, meanwhile, had taken up position near the edge of the great circle. It carried the risk of being shoved out of bounds at any moment, but with no chance of being surrounded from all sides at once, it was a fair trade of one danger for another advantage.
Especially with Jwidori and Eoguri holding my left and right, I couldn't help thinking, What a reassuring pair.
“Hyap!”
A few ronins, evidently deciding that Eoguri's bulk made him one big tempting target, came charging at him. His thick arms tensed, veins standing out in vivid ridges, and his long saber came around at a terrifying speed. The enemy had swung first, yet it was Eoguri's blade that connected sooner — proof enough of the monstrous speed and destructive force behind it.
Crack! Crack!
One ronin dropped with every swing, each strike punctuated by the gruesome sound of something breaking.
Jwidori, too, handled the oncoming attackers with practiced ease — turning aside a strike with the sword in one hand while driving the one in his other hand straight into a solar plexus. When the men who rushed him went down in the blink of an eye, the ronins faltered... and then, deciding that the fool standing blankly at the center of it all looked like the easiest mark around, one of them came slicing his wooden sword at me.
“Whoops.”
Feigning a flustered fumble, I deflected the blow aside, then gave the passing ronin a light push between the shoulders. The compressed air burst—
Whump.
—and he went stumbling forward several steps, carried along by the gust. He wheeled around for another go at me, but—
“Out of bounds!”
At the escort leader's cry, I glanced over to find the man already standing outside the circle, his face twisted with frustration. The leader seized him and hauled him off the field.
Apparently my little display had looked frail enough that the ronins began singling me out for concentrated attacks. Eoguri and Jwidori stepped up to screen them, trading a word apiece.
“Kim A-woo, stay sharp. We might not be able to cover you the whole way.”
“So stick close.”
“Yes, brothers. I'll stick to you like glue, brothers.”
With an expression of utmost tension, I watched the ronins. If I'm being honest, I was watching Go Hyeon-woo over their shoulders.
Shff!
Go Hyeon-woo drew his wooden sword in a clean diagonal arc. The ronin raised his own blade to block — and the very next instant, it was sheared neatly in two. Staring at the smooth-cut surface, the man's eyes bulged.
“B-but that was wooden sword against wooden sword...”
“Will you be continuing?”
“N-no, young hero—forgive me, great hero.”
Eyes lowered, he fled the circle as fast as his legs would carry him.
“Out of bounds!”
Go Hyeon-woo swung at his next victim, and this time too the man's wooden sword left in two pieces.
He's coming along nicely.
The instructions I'd passed to Go Hyeon-woo through the strategy guide had numbered three in all.
The first was to flaunt overwhelming strength. That would engrave his power into the ronins' minds while drawing the attention of the Daeeung Escort Bureau's leadership. This one was already proving its worth — the ronins wouldn't so much as drift near Go Hyeon-woo now, having instinctively grasped that keeping their distance was how one stayed standing. And judging by how the chief and his executives were studying Go Hyeon-woo with grave, appraising eyes, the second half of that plan seemed to be working as well.
The second instruction: leave only the strong.
The temporary guard recruitment and this chaotic free-for-all formed the first half of the linked dungeon. Once the temporary guards were chosen here, the next dungeon in the chain would begin with—
the escort mission itself.
In other words, this was my one chance to handpick the roster exactly to my liking. And naturally, the more capable hands left standing, the gentler the linked dungeon — the escort run — would become. Bringing Jwidori and Eoguri over to our side from the very start had been one piece of that puzzle. On top of that, I had already described to Go Hyeon-woo what the skilled ronins looked like and how they carried themselves.
Which left Go Hyeon-woo with a single task: stay clear of those men.
The real talents would perform beautifully enough on their own; all he had to do was avoid tangling with them. Of course, if one of them came at him first, he'd have no choice but to respond. Just like right now.
A man with a face like a praying mantis was thrusting his wooden sword at Go Hyeon-woo again and again. He was one of the skilled ones I'd pointed out, so it was best not to put him down if it could be helped. Go Hyeon-woo accordingly eased out of the way, thrust by sly thrust — until, at the decisive moment, he let his momentum rise.
A soft current of wind rose and coiled about the blade.
Whooosh—
Caught in that gentle wind, the mantis-faced man's sword slid harmlessly past, and Go Hyeon-woo, riding the flow, slipped straight by his side.
“...!”
A beat late, the mantis-faced man flinched and spun to look behind him. Had this been a real fight, his head would have left his shoulders the moment he bared his back to an enemy. He grasped the difference in skill at once and turned his attention elsewhere. Everything had gone exactly as intended, so Go Hyeon-woo let him go.
Our side, meanwhile, was holding a turtle's defense. The ronins had taken the measure of Jwidori and Eoguri through those first few clashes and mostly kept their distance now. Jwidori spoke to me where I stood protected between the two of them.
“Let's just keep it like this.”
“Yes, brothers.”
As Chief Jang had made clear, the melee would run until a suitable number remained. In that case, hunkering down and outlasting everyone beat chasing people around to knock them out — and we could bank our strength while we waited. The ronins, it seemed, had reached much the same conclusion, as a fair number of them were idling away the time at the circle's edge.
Time for the dead weight to clear out.
Whooosh—!
And then, quite suddenly, a fierce gale came sweeping through.
“Wh-wha—?”
“What in the world is this wind...!”
The ones with genuine skill managed to plant their feet and endure, but the dead-weight ronins were shoved helplessly out of the circle, and the observing escort leaders struck them off in droves.
“Out! Out!”
“Wind's really picking up today, isn't it?”
“You keep your head down too, Kim A-woo.”
Exchanging idle pleasantries with Eoguri as if nothing were amiss, I turned my gaze back to Go Hyeon-woo. If the second instruction had been to spare the strong, then the last and third was precisely the opposite: select them, and take them down.
The targets: the instigators behind this whole temporary-guard recruitment — the ambushers. They had thinned the escort bureau's ranks with attack after attack, herding it into hiring ronins. And even at this very moment, some of them were lurking in our midst disguised as ronins. If they were left to sow chaos from both inside and out during the escort mission to come, our odds of success would plummet. Far better to root them out now, while they were all gathered in one place.
Shraaack—!
Go Hyeon-woo's wooden sword hissed through the air with a razor-sharp shriek and came down square on the shoulder of a ronin with a heavy black beard.
“Kraaagh!”
One glance at the bearded man clutching his shoulder and howling, and Go Hyeon-woo was already moving toward his next target. This time his sword snapped the arm of a ronin with long side-whiskers.
“Uraagh!”
He had already pieced together the full picture, and there wasn't a shred of mercy in his hands. Leaving these men upright meant leaving ourselves exposed, so he broke arms and legs without ceremony.
“You bastards!”
When Go Hyeon-woo began so flagrantly picking off only the false ronins, several of them seemed to grasp that their cover was blown. They threw off their concealment and lashed out in counterattack — and even then, Go Hyeon-woo was a cut above. He brushed the strike aside with practiced ease and broke that man's arm too.
Still, the circle was far too large for him to cover alone; it was only right that I lend a hand. And as it happened, I'd recently picked up a skill tailor-made for exactly this situation.
Amplification has been activated.
The rank of Point Explosion has increased. (E → C)
A quick sweep of my surroundings turned up a ronin with thick, caterpillar brows pressing his opponent hard. Just as he moved in for the finishing blow, mana gathered at his lower belly—
Whump.
—and detonated. Clutching his stomach, the caterpillar-browed ronin pitched forward on his face.
Jwidori happened to catch the scene and cocked his head. “What's gotten into that fella?”
“Looks like he ate something that didn't agree with him.”
Whump.
The next target took a Point Explosion square in the gut as well. Sinking to his knees, he turned to the very man he'd been trading blows with moments before.
“Ughh... what manner of devilry is this?”
“I-I have no idea.”
Confusion was written all over both their faces. Nestled safely between Jwidori and Eoguri, I kept the Point Explosions coming. Cheap? Underhanded? I was well aware.
But this, too, is for the peace of the world.
With Go Hyeon-woo and me clearing out the fake ronins, the genuine talents who would otherwise have been locked in combat with them were left to roam the circle all the more freely. The result: the rank and file thinned out faster than ever. Before much longer, the yard that had been packed shoulder to shoulder with no room to breathe had grown noticeably sparse, leaving barely a dozen men standing. Having taken one another's measure, none of the survivors dared move rashly.
Booom—!
Then the drum thundered, declaring the scrimmage at an end. It was safe to say that everyone still inside the circle had just been hired as temporary guards.
“......”
Chief Jang of the Daeeung Escort Bureau stepped down from the platform and came walking toward us at an unhurried pace. Before long he stopped in front of Go Hyeon-woo and let out a low breath of admiration.
“You can't be more than twenty at the outside, and yet — remarkable skill for such a young man.”
“You honor me too much.”
“If it's no imposition, might I ask after your school?”
“I train under the Cheonpung Sect.”
“Hmm... my own learning must be narrow. The name is new to me.”
Truly, a man of real martial skill was a sight to behold. Had some nobody thrown out an unfamiliar sect's title, the chief would have scoffed — Cheonpung Sect? Does a sect like that even exist? But with Go Hyeon-woo standing before him, he could only fault his own limited knowledge.
“As it happens, I have a proposal for you.”
“Please, speak freely.”
At that, a master who looked to be of escort-leader rank — when had he even approached? — took his place at the chief's side. The chief indicated the man with a glance and went on.
“Care to put a little more of that skill on display? For this escort mission, I promise you the authority and standing of an escort leader.”
In other words: take down an escort leader, and be treated as one. This was precisely what Go Hyeon-woo had been angling for all along, flaunting his strength and gathering every eye in the yard. Wielding an escort leader's authority instead of a mere temporary guard's badge would make managing the linked dungeon infinitely smoother. From where Go Hyeon-woo stood, there was no reason on earth to refuse.
“I accept your proposal.”
[148] The Support Ate It All