No. 471 Daeeung Escort Mission (5)
The Yeomwang Squad Vice-Commander stared at the scars the Inferno Fist had left behind. The flames still lingered there, smoldering and breathing out waves of heat.
"You've mastered an art like the Blazing Yang Art, and you still claim you're not the Flame Tyrant?"
"Believe it or don't, that's up to you. Either way, I've said my piece."
"......"
Apparently my breezy, shrugging reply had grated on his nerves; the Vice-Commander's brow furrowed. And yet he could not afford to act rashly. The Inferno Fist had utterly wrecked his formation, which meant he had to buy time for the men who hadn't been caught in it to mend their ranks. On top of that, crossing a man suspected of being the Flame Tyrant himself carried far too steep a risk.
Leaving the Vice-Commander rooted in place, able to neither advance nor retreat, I turned my back and walked toward our side.
As I drew near, Escort Leader Jo's face twitched without pause. A plan that had been all but complete, undone by a single flaming punch — his desolation must have been beyond words.
"Since when did you see through me?"
"Only an idiot wouldn't have. It's hardly the work of a day or two."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Not telling."
I hadn't taken on this dungeon just once or twice; by now I ought to have every key figure's habits strung out from head to tail. All the more so for a piece like Escort Leader Jo, who would land a colossal backstab the moment you took your eyes off him.
Of course, even back in my green first-attempt days, long before I'd become the veteran I am, I had never once taken that knife between the shoulders. The clues that something was off about Jo had been seeded here and there, and by staying on guard to the very end on their strength, I'd come through clean.
For one, at the first pass he had proposed pushing ahead without a second thought even after the Green Forest bandits sent a warning. He might simply have been thoughtless, or drunk on his own confidence — but it was clue enough to start a suspicion.
The next clue revealed itself if you kept watching the string of ambushes. The black-clad attackers curiously concentrated their assault on the ronin rather than the regular escorts, while the escorts, for their part, mostly fought by guarding their own hides. The result: losses big and small piled up ceaselessly on the ronin side, while the regular escorts' damage stayed comparatively light. The men under Jo's direct command weren't just lightly wounded — they came out not so much as scratched.
The escorts weren't that much stronger than the ronin to begin with, so the fact that only one side bled, one-sidedly, was worth raising an eyebrow at too.
And finally, there was Jo volunteering to stay behind with the wounded. Right up until then he'd spared the ronin barely a thought, and then, all of a sudden, he was looking after the injured. I understood honoring his own word — but was there truly a need to linger on a death ground for it? It read as rather excessive.
Seen in isolation, each of these clues might have passed for an overactive imagination. Gathered in a single place, they turned sharply suspicious.
Of course, I had no obligation to lay all of that out for Jo, first detail to last. But telling him since when I'd caught on — that much, I could do.
I drew a slip of paper from my breast pocket and answered. "Since this."
"...!"
Escort Leader Jo's eyes bulged as if they would tear. The slip of paper I held up. Its identity was none other than the treasure map piece I had swiped at the manor. The manor had been a safehouse of the Demon Cult, and while its residents were away meddling with the Daeeung Escort Bureau, I had slipped in and made off with the ink-wash painting it was hidden in. And what that meant was —
"You knew everything from the very start......"
"That's right."
"Ha, haha."
Escort Leader Jo let out a hollow laugh. A sneer that seemed to mock himself had crept up to the corner of his mouth.
His shoulders heaved with laughter for a long while — then his movement stopped dead. Raising his head, both his eyes flickered with a settled, patient killing intent.
"Die!"
The next instant, Jo swung his sword at Jwidori standing before him. His thinking, apparently, was that if it had come to this, he would drag at least one more soul down with him. On his heels, the other escorts launched their attack on the ronin as well.
Combat had restarted without warning, yet I stepped forward at ease and unleashed Point Explosion twice in rapid succession.
Bang—! Bang—!
Two small detonations.
Neither one did much damage, but together they severed Jo's movement at the perfect instant, opening a gap large enough to matter. And Jwidori, blades locked against his, let no such gap go to waste.
Shunk—!
The twin blades sank deep into Escort Leader Jo's chest.
Yet even pierced through the heart, Jo granted Jwidori not so much as a look. Instead his stunned eyes locked onto me — and it seemed that only now did one more realization strike him.
"......It was you!"
The Yeomwang Squad who had infiltrated disguised as ronin, wiped out to the last man in the Daeeung Escort Bureau's chaotic free-for-all — that had been me. And the quiet aid slipped to the ronin at every single ambush — me as well.
"Yes. All of it, me."
"Ha, ha... completely...... in the palm of your hand...... we were played......"
Escort Leader Jo could not finish, and crumpled to the ground. The next moment, a small box rose up over his chest.
◈ Quantity: ×1
Thank you kindly for the drop.
By the time I had the random box tucked away with a rustle, the last of Jo's escort followers had been split clean in half by Eoguri's long saber.
That settled this side of things for the moment, so I turned my head back to the Yeomwang Squad Vice-Commander.
"And what will you do now?"
"...Do we truly have a choice?" the Vice-Commander threw back. He was pulling the surviving Yeomwang Squad into order even as he watched our side. As though being taken for the Flame Tyrant were not burden enough, he had evidently grasped that, disaster upon disaster, his infiltration of spies had dissolved to nothing. Even so, befitting the Demon Cult's fighting unit, he looked set to battle to the last — but what if another option were offered?
"Withdraw as you are, and I won't pursue."
"...You mean that?"
"I don't play games with things like this."
"Why not?"
Because you've got nothing to drop, mister.
Escort Leader Jo had paid out a random box when felled; the Vice-Commander, curiously, produced nothing whatsoever. I had wondered if the odds were simply stingy and put him down dozens of times to check — no drop, ever. Which meant that fighting on could win us nothing at all.
"And besides, we'd like a bit of rest ourselves."
Granted, a whole cluster of them had evaporated under the Inferno Fist, but a fair number of the Yeomwang Squad yet lived. Should we come to grips now, the wounded ronin — their lifelines already strung on threads — stood a real chance of going down. Fewer survivors meant thinner rewards, which would be a loss outright. Dodging the battle here was simply the sounder trade.
"Of course, sending you off with nothing in hand would be a bit shabby."
I had said there were no drop items. I had never said there would be nothing to collect. Facing the Vice-Commander, I gave my breast pocket a couple of light taps. "Leave what's sitting in that breast pocket of yours behind."
"...!"
The Vice-Commander's eyes darkened with meaning.
"How did you know?"
"My instincts run a touch uncanny, you see."
Because that was the very prize I'd come for in the first place.
Sending Go Hyeon-woo ahead and staying behind with the wounded had held reasons beyond simply flooring Escort Leader Jo.
"......"
The Vice-Commander's deliberation did not last long. On one side of the scales rested one item of no small importance; on the other, the lives of the Yeomwang Squad, his own among them. Were the thing worth trading lives for, he would have fought to the end — but it did not command that price.
"Fine. I'll pass it over."
The Vice-Commander reached into his breast, drew out what he had been keeping, and flung it with a flick of his wrist. I caught the pale blur dead in front of me.
A fragment of the hidden treasure map.
The second treasure map piece, on the heels of the one recovered from the Demon Cult safehouse. A final third remained before the treasure map would be whole — but even as things stood, I was ready to take my seat at the bargaining table with the Swordsmanship Club.
My tone came out considerably smoother. "Received with thanks. You may go now."
"We will meet again."
"Yes, let's. And next time, do travel stocked with spirit elixirs at the least — secret martial manuals would be even better."
Got to pack generous if there's to be any flavor in cutting you down.
The Vice-Commander bored his glare into me for a few seconds more, then turned his back. At his lead, the Yeomwang Squad swept out of the grounds in short order.
"Kim A-woo... now that I look at you proper, you were a tremendous master all along......"
Even with it all over, Jwidori and Eoguri still wore traces of astonishment. I bowed my head to them once more.
"Forgive me for deceiving you, brothers."
"Not at all. Without you, Kim A-woo, we'd already be men of the next world."
"If anything, it's us who should be thanking you."
A warm glow settled over the scene. Jwidori, meanwhile, seemed to remember something, and his face set a shade stiffer. Nodding his chin at what had been Escort Leader Jo, he asked, "But if that Jo bastard was the one playing us false, hasn't something gone wrong with the caravan as well?"
"You catch on straight away."
I nodded. The stated purpose of the wounded and the ronin staying here had been to buy the caravan time on the road — but in truth, that premise had been flawed from its very root.
Who's to say they had to pursue from behind?
Just as in that first encounter, the Yeomwang Squad's main force would be dug in along the road ahead of the caravan, waiting. And the strongest of their masters, the Yanwang Unit Leader, would be waiting there as well.
The moment this dawned on them, the ronin stirred, visibly rattled. Not only had their stand here been wasted effort — the caravan now stood in graver danger than before.
Jwidori pressed urgently. "Then shouldn't we hurry and go help?"
"You needn't worry."
Still, I smiled, easy and unhurried. And at what I said next, the ronin's faces brightened in a flash.
"Escort Leader Go is strong."
"...!"
Jwidori's palm cracked against his knee. "You two were thick as thieves from the very start!"
"Haha, that we were."
"No wonder you two looked to be about the same age."
Go Hyeon-woo and I had kept up the pretense of strangers through both of the linked dungeons, all to blind the eyes of the demonic practitioners — Escort Leader Jo first among them. Had they caught so much as a whiff that I was connected to Go Hyeon-woo, then no matter how thoroughly I buried my strength, they would have set their senses twitching at my every breath and step. In that case, when I stayed behind with the wounded, Jo would very likely have handled things differently. But we had held that card until the decisive moment — and so it fell to me to face the pursuit force under Jo and the Vice-Commander, and to Go Hyeon-woo to face the Yanwang Unit Leader.
"Let's go. That side should be wrapped up by now as well."
I took the lead at a leisurely pace.
Leading the wounded at a slow pace, we found, sure enough, the wagons halted far off in the distance. Jwidori and Eoguri kept their guard up the whole way there, but as the gap to the caravan narrowed and it became plain that everyone was safe, their expressions eased bit by bit.
Before long the other side caught sight of us too, and Go Hyeon-woo came out to meet us. In one hand hung his golden sorcery sword — which is to say, he had sheathed the iron blade and put his real mettle on display. Yet beyond a scattering of scratches he bore not a single wound; as predicted, the Yanwang Unit Leader had hardly been a difficult opponent for him.
"You've arrived, Brother Kim."
"Yeah. You wrap things up all right?"
At that, Go Hyeon-woo beamed and raised his other hand. Resting upon it were two small boxes.
◈ Quantity: ×2
"Two of them came out, you see."
[156] The Support Ate it All