No. 640 Daeeung Escort Bureau (4)
When Go Hyeon-woo accepted the proposal without a moment's hesitation, a satisfied smile settled on Chief Jang's lips. Presently, he introduced the master standing at his side.
"This is Escort Leader Kang—among the escort leaders, a man who ranks among the very best. He should give you a fine match."
The Chief then stepped aside, and Escort Leader Kang wasted no time in putting a question to Go Hyeon-woo.
"Will you be using a wooden sword?"
"I am more comfortable with the weapon my hand knows well."
"An answer to my liking. The same goes for me."
Escort Leader Kang drew the heavy saber slung across his back, and Go Hyeon-woo took his iron sword in hand.
His main weapon might be the talisman sword, but that thing blazed gold so conspicuously that it would draw every eye on the field. Besides, it would be strange for a ronin to be carrying such a precious item in the first place—so he apparently meant to make do with the iron sword.
It won't break, will it?
Ever since I had crafted the [Sturdy Pen] for him, his weapon durability troubles had improved considerably. The option it already carried, [Weapon Damage Protection], had climbed from F-rank all the way to C, so even the iron sword held up for quite a while these days. And in a friendly spar like this, there would be no call to spam grand techniques like Clear Stream in the first place.
The two men faced each other at a respectful distance, and Escort Leader Kang spoke first.
"Ordinarily I would yield the first move, but against a master of your caliber, doing so would leave me with no opening at all. Here I come."
"Please, show me your skill."
Escort Leader Kang advanced with care, saber held before him, while Go Hyeon-woo simply raised his iron sword to mid-guard and watched him without moving. The distance between them narrowed inch by inch—
"Hup!"
With a single long stride, Escort Leader Kang slashed his saber in a diagonal arc. Go Hyeon-woo stepped forward half a pace and brought his iron sword up against the blade's path. But contrary to the onlookers' expectation of steel ringing against steel, the saber slid clean past the iron sword and carved through empty air.
"...!"
Escort Leader Kang's face stiffened slightly. He retracted his half-spent swing and struck again—yet once more, the moment Go Hyeon-woo casually laid his iron sword in the way, the trajectory fell apart.
Again Kang pulled his saber back mid-arc and struck anew. Again Go Hyeon-woo slipped his sword in, light as a breath. Sword and saber crossed without ever meeting. After this repeated several times over, the onlookers split into opposing camps.
"Why do they keep slashing and stopping, slashing and stopping?"
"Can't tell if this is a duel or a couple of kids playing pretend."
The ones making such remarks were the lesser hands. All their eyes could see was Escort Leader Kang halting his swings halfway through, and Go Hyeon-woo lazily setting his sword against them. With nothing before them but two men waving weapons at empty air, it was little wonder it looked like child's play.
"..."
Chief Jang and the masters of vice-leader rank and above, on the other hand, had watched the duel with grave, unwavering focus from start to finish. So had Jwidori and Eoguri.
"Damn impressive, that."
"The young man's skill seems a move to a move and a half above."
"I see it the same way. If it weren't so, there'd be no way he could flow past saber strikes that fierce so effortlessly."
Redirecting an attack cleanly is a harder art than blocking or dodging it. It demands reading the enemy's attack with perfect accuracy and seizing an opening of mere instants. And Go Hyeon-woo was letting every one of Escort Leader Kang's furious strikes slide past him without visible effort—that alone was proof enough of the gap between them.
[Following Stream].
It was Go Hyeon-woo's third technique, after Clear Stream and Rapid Torrent. Back in the Black Snake Gang raid it had been far from polished—he'd had to scrape through White Snake's assault by burning through every last object within arm's reach. But he had honed Following Stream relentlessly through his mentoring sessions, and it had served as the decisive stroke when he cut down the mid-bosses in the Feathered Serpent Temple. And now he wielded it with a mastery beyond even that day.
"Mm..."
Beads of sweat had gathered on Escort Leader Kang's forehead. He had unleashed every ounce of ability he possessed in a storm of attacks, and still not a single one had landed. Go Hyeon-woo, meanwhile, faced him with the same calm he'd worn at the very start. The gulf in skill was so stark that continuing the duel would have been meaningless.
Yet Escort Leader Kang showed no intention of giving up. For the first time since the duel had begun, he fell back to open up distance, roused his spirit to its very peak—and then he loosed his saber in a continuous barrage at tremendous speed.
- Pa-pa-pa-pat!
Blade after blade of saber qi came crashing in, weaving themselves into the shape of a vast net. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that this was Escort Leader Kang's proudest masterstroke.
"..."
Even Go Hyeon-woo's tranquil eyes turned a shade more serious. Just as the onrushing web of saber qi threatened to shred him to ribbons, he raised his sword to mid-guard and advanced—slowly, deliberately.
[Rapid Torrent]
- Whrrr—
The gale roaring in behind the technique lent it explosive speed. Go Hyeon-woo shot forward in a single sweep of his sword, and the net of saber qi was sheared apart, strand after strand, in the space of a breath. Having torn the technique to pieces, he kept flying—and stopped directly in front of Escort Leader Kang.
The iron sword had stopped there as well, a hair's breadth from his throat.
Escort Leader Kang stared down at the blade's point with trembling eyes, then squeezed them shut.
"...I have lost."
It was an overwhelming victory for Go Hyeon-woo.
"Aigoo, my dear customers! Did you all have a good run in there?"
Shin Byung-cheol greeted us cheerfully as we emerged from the cleared dungeon. Instead of answering, we flashed him grins and produced our winnings.
Go Hyeon-woo had secured an escort-leader position, maxing out the dungeon's objective, and so received three random boxes. I had barely scraped into a temporary escort's post, so I got one.
Of course, with E-rank random boxes, skimpy rewards hardly mattered. What mattered was the groundwork we'd laid in this dungeon for conquering the next one in the chain.
"So in that linked dungeon you speak of, I am to begin as an escort leader?"
"That's right. Your role is crucial."
Go Hyeon-woo would be charged with commanding everyone taking part in the escort mission—and above all, the band of temporary escorts made up of ronin would fall under him. This, too, I had foreseen, which was precisely why I'd ordered him to display overwhelming martial prowess. Only then would the ronin fall in line without a word of complaint.
Sure enough, Jwidori, Eoguri, and the ronin with the praying-mantis face all wore the look of men deeply impressed by his skill.
The Chief had deliberately avoided the subject, but everyone present instinctively understood that an escort mission would never simply end with delivering the goods to their destination. Something was bound to happen along the way—and with a master like Go Hyeon-woo leading the escort, their odds of coming back alive could only rise. No one could very well be displeased by that.
Everything, start to finish, had gone according to plan—and yet Go Hyeon-woo's face was far from bright. If anything, he looked a touch anxious.
"I am not certain I can manage it. The sword, aye—that I have confidence in. But handling people is something I have never once done."
"It's nothing. Just do exactly what the strategy guide says."
"Understood. I shall commit it to memory."
Go Hyeon-woo nodded. We kept up our silence for a while, doing nothing but climbing the stairs back to the surface—until Shin Byung-cheol, who had been leading the way, suddenly spoke up as if something had just occurred to him.
"Hold on, weren't you two supposed to go grab something for the Swordsmanship Club?"
"Got it."
When I produced Treasure Map Piece A, which I had discreetly lifted from the manor, Go Hyeon-woo and Shin Byung-cheol leaned in and examined it from every angle. But with only a single fragment to go on, there was nothing remarkable to find.
"The Swordsmanship Club cares about this kind of thing?"
"If you want to smooth things over with them, first you have to know exactly which buttons set them off."
It wasn't about sneaking into a dungeon and pocketing a few random boxes. What had enraged them was that we had entered a dungeon they held priority bidding rights on. An infringement on the club's influence was, in other words, a declaration that they were being looked down on.
Shin Byung-cheol seemed to finally be catching on.
"Ah, so it's an honor-and-pride thing."
"Exactly."
"But what's that got to do with the treasure map?"
"Both this map and the place it points to have never once been made public."
"Seriously?"
Countless heroes of the past had turned Dungeon Island inside out, and by now barely any unexplored territory remained. To get one's hands on this treasure map was to win the first claim on that untouched ground. Monumental glory, guaranteed.
"Well then, no wonder they'd be drooling over it. But what map is it, exactly?"
"That comes later."
"Hey, who cuts off right at the good part? That's just plain evil."
If the map's true nature leaked out now, a scramble for the fragments could break out before we knew it. And so, even as Go Hyeon-woo and Shin Byung-cheol fixed me with looks of unbearable curiosity, I deliberately averted my gaze.
"Come on, at least a hint."
"A hint. It's three syllables."
"Three syllables? What are they?"
"Later on."
When it came to random box openings, doing them alongside Seo Ye-in—my lucky mascot—was always the best option. But we couldn't very well hold the ceremony without Go Hyeon-woo, the hero of the Daeeung Escort Bureau raid, so the opening was postponed until all three of our schedules lined up.
The next day, the dungeon runs and mentoring sessions marched on right on schedule.
"Aaargh!"
- KRAK!
Gwak Ji-cheol, faithful as ever, took the ogre's blow head-on and keeled over. I, meanwhile, ground out skill ranks all by myself.
- Boom! Boom!
I tormented the ogre with Point Explosion for a good long while.
About time he woke up.
Judging that Gwak Ji-cheol was due to come to, I headed out of the dungeon. We were in the middle of a mentoring session, after all, and those were meant to be one-on-one whenever possible.
Just as expected, Gwak Ji-cheol's eyes were open.
"Nnngh..."
Open, at least—though he was still sprawled flat on the ground, squirming feebly. I prodded him with Root.
"Up you get, mister. You'll catch a cold sleeping on the floor like that."
"Nngh... shut it."
"You need to get home. I said up."
"I told you to shut it...!"
Gwak Ji-cheol vented what temper he had left, all while stubbornly refusing to budge from his sprawl. Then all at once he spotted something, his eyes flew wide, and he scrambled to his feet. I turned to see what had startled him so badly—
"B-Brother."
"..."
There stood Gwak Ji-cheol's older brother, Gwak Seung-jae, his face as stony as ever. He had a group of other second-years with him, so he'd apparently stumbled across us in passing. Without ceremony, Gwak Seung-jae addressed his companions.
"Something has come up. Go on ahead and wait."
"Sure, whatever."
His group answered offhandedly and moved on. Gwak Ji-cheol kept his eyes lowered, braced for the scolding to follow.
But Gwak Seung-jae spared his own younger brother no more than that single initial glance.
Apparently, it was me he had business with.
"There is something I wish to ask. Will that be all right?"
"Yes, senior."
Gwak Seung-jae was one of the true powers behind the Disciplinary Committee. When a man like that requested a one-on-one conversation outright, it would have been wasteful to simply let the chance pass—and besides, curiosity was stirring. What could he possibly want to ask me? So I moved with him to somewhere quiet.
Going by what I'd heard from Song Cheon-hye, Dang Gyu-young, and the rest, Gwak Seung-jae was a man of extreme directness—the type to take whatever he had to say and throw it straight into your face, no detours, no windup. I had braced myself, therefore, for a fairly blunt conversation.
What came out of Gwak Seung-jae's mouth went far beyond anything I had imagined.
"I am told you are dating Senior Dang Gyu-young."
"...I beg your pardon?"