Let's Keep It Quiet (2)
The sun hung directly overhead, and not a single breeze stirred. In the thick, stagnant air, the bandits' distinctive stench of sweat and grime boiled up fiercely.
I descended slowly from the watchtower and opened my mouth.
“Did everyone stuff themselves properly?”
One of the bastards behind me let out a hearty laugh. “We’ve been fucking gorging ourselves since yesterday!”
“Good. Today, some fuckers are coming to stick their spoons in our rice bowl. So what should we do about that?”
At that, every single one of the bandit scum roared in unison.
“Exactly. You set your own table and eat from it. Any bastard who tries to shove his spoon into someone else’s bowl deserves to be buried. And not with a spoon—with a blade.”
I tapped the hilt of the knife in my hand a couple of times and grinned. Behind me, an assortment of crudely maintained blades, bamboo spears, iron clubs, and cheap shields clattered together. The glint in these bastards’ eyes had changed. Not a single one of them wore proper armor, but that went both ways. The fuckers coming to crush us were just another band of bandits, after all.
“Total forces mobilized: three hundred and fifteen,” Yu Byeok reported from beside me. “Thirty men are guarding the entrance, with minimal troops stationed at each path. Our equipment is still in terrible shape, but—”
“Since when have we ever given a shit about equipment? Bandits have always been the equipment itself. The lucky bastard who survives the day gets the best gear.”
A few of them snorted with laughter at my words.
At that moment, So-yeon approached quietly. Today she carried neither her usual bamboo slips nor raised her voice in that annoying way. She simply clasped her hands in front of her, looked me straight in the eye, and spoke.
“Please be careful.”
I frowned at her. “Do you think something’s going to happen to me?”
“No. You’ve always returned safely without incident until now, but today… the aura around you feels different.”
I lifted the corner of my mouth slightly. “Yeah, it is different. The bastards trying to steal our table outnumber us, don’t they? Then we just have to bite harder. That’s how you keep the table from being taken.”
I tilted my head down and flicked her forehead lightly with my finger. “I’ll come back safe, so get the drinking table ready.”
So-yeon nodded silently.
When the preparations for departure were complete, I sprang lightly from the front line.
-Tap.
I vaulted over a low rock, landed on the ground, and steadied myself without the slightest tremor in my toes. Swift. Precise.
“…That’s right. In the history books, this body was called the Flying General. Fuck, I really am fast.”
I muttered to myself and glanced behind me. Including Yu Byeok, the bandit rabble was following in a disorderly swarm. After winding through the forest path and crossing the mountain slope, the view opened up wide. Under the sunlight, dust rose alongside the smoke from the enemy’s campfires.
“Yu Byeok. How many of those bastards are there exactly?”
“Roughly a hundred in the front line, around two hundred estimated as the main force behind them, and fifty to a hundred in the rear.”
“They really brought a fucking army.”
“The enemy’s equipment consists of bamboo spears, blades, and a few shields. Typical for bandits who crawled out of some hole. Almost none of them are properly armed.”
“Aren’t we the same?”
I laughed as I loosened my sword from its sheath. “Still, if they came to smash someone else’s table, they’d better be ready to die for it. They wouldn’t have come without that kind of resolve.”
I drew the blade slowly.
-Shiiiiing.
“Only those who can protect their table get to eat from it. Today, let’s settle once and for all who the real owner of this table is.”
-Thud!
The sound of a club smashing down on a skull rang out. A bamboo spear thrust forward, and the bastard whose head had been crushed had his teeth flying through the air.
We had charged first, but the enemy numbers were greater than expected.
“Uwaaaaack!”
One of the men in the front line collapsed on the spot. His thigh was torn open by a kitchen knife, spraying blood into the air. The men beside him flinched and hesitated.
“There’s a fucking lot of them…”
I didn’t rush in with my blade right away. Instead, I stood in place and assessed the situation. Tangled formations. A complete dogfight. The bandits were smashing each other’s heads, stabbing, slashing, and shoving—but when similar scum clashed, numbers trumped momentum every time.
Yu Byeok approached my side. His eyes were sharp, but his breathing was ragged.
“There are more than we thought. It seems difficult to push them back with momentum alone.”
“Fuck, they’re just another band of bandits, so why do so many of them have shields? We’re getting pushed back.”
I spat on the ground and glared at the bastards shoving our lines with their shields.
-Thwack!
-Crunch!
-Gaaaah!
Screams and blood filled the air as the battlefield turned into pure chaos. No one was maintaining any kind of formation. They were simply shoving with rattling shields and frantically stabbing each other with half-broken bamboo spears.
To be honest, we were losing ground. Little by little… backward… backward…
“This looks fucked,” Yu Byeok growled. Even he, who rarely cursed, had grown crude as the situation worsened.
“It’s still fine for now.”
I raised my hand and signaled the troops waiting in the rear. A simple hand gesture ordering the rear line to advance. The enemy was pressing forward with sheer numbers, and we were short on manpower. If things continued like this, we would be completely overrun. The remnants of our formation had now vanished entirely, and the plan to crush them with momentum had gone completely off the rails.
I narrowed my eyes. The troops trying to push forward from the rear were completely halted by the wooden shields of the enemy and couldn’t build any momentum.
“For now, we hold and wait for an opportunity, Boss.”
“…Fuck off.”
I muttered under my breath.
“Looks like I have to step up myself now.”
I planted strength in my toes. Kicking off the ground, I added my full weight and leaped straight into the heart of the battlefield.
-Tap!
I charged into the middle of the tangled mess where bamboo spears, clubs, and kitchen knives were all intertwined. Before the bastard right in front of me could even lift his head—
-Crunch!
My knee shattered his jaw. He flew backward, and the two men beside him flinched simultaneously.
“That’s more like the Flying General. Consider yourselves already dead, you fucks.”
This time I gripped the hilt in my left hand and drew the sword.
-Slash!
I severed one man’s wrist and sliced open another’s belly. Blood sprayed everywhere, and the organs inside spilled out in a filthy mess. After cutting down three men in an instant, a small space opened up.
“Hey, you fucks! We have more numbers, so stop getting pushed back!”
The enemy began to shout. That was when Yu Byeok burst forward right behind me.
“I will support you from behind, Boss!”
Five or six of the men who followed me poured into the gap I had created.
-Thud!
-Bang!
-Urk!
It was only a small change, but the flow of the battle that had been one-sidedly retreating began to shift. The line that had been giving ground stabilized and slowly started pushing forward again.
I kept moving without pause, slipping past a shield-bearer like a shadow and slicing through his leg.
-Slice!
-Aaaaaaaaagh!
The man whose leg was severed threw away his shield and thrashed wildly, but I stepped on him and advanced toward the enemies ahead.
“Uwooooo—!”
As I stepped forward and carved a path, our side’s momentum began to return. The men who had only been retreating started following one by one, turning into a wave. Before long, their eyes had changed. Our camp was no longer being pushed back. Riding the momentum, we drove the enemy backward.
-Thud!
-Chak!
-Clang!
I sliced through a bamboo spear and took the head of the man in front of me.
“What good are numbers if one bastard opens a path and you all collapse like this?”
I flicked the blood off my glistening blade.
“I’m going to fucking end every last one of you today.”
-Kraaaaaagh!
Another legless bastard rolled screaming in front of me, and his cry froze the feet of the surrounding enemies. I plunged back into their formation and—
-Slash!
—sent the head of the man in front flying. Blood sprayed like a fountain over and over, and the hands of the men holding shields beside him began to tremble violently.
“Stop them! Fucking stop them!”
“You crazy bastards! We have more heads, so stop falling back! Push forward!”
Shouts erupted from within the enemy bandit group as well. But it was already too late.
“Push!”
“Fuck them with momentum!”
Yu Byeok shouted, and our men began pouring in like a flood. The momentum had completely flipped. The enemy’s front line slowly crumbled. For the first time, we were making a proper breakthrough.
“Take out the shield-bearers first!”
“Steal their spears and stab them back!”
I didn’t know who shouted it, but the bandits grew excited as they snatched bamboo spears, smashed shields, and went wild.
-Bang!
-Thud!
-Crunch!
Shields and clubs collided. Screams mixed together as blood soaked into the ground.
I circled the edge of the formation, scanning the surroundings. Then—
“…Huh?”
Far off to the side of the formation, a single quietly moving silhouette caught my eye. It was a woman with her long hair tied back. The same bitch I had seen at dawn yesterday.
She crouched low, using the short sword in her hand to slice into the side of another bandit.
“That bitch… looks like she’s had a bit of blade practice?”
A few of our bandits, their eyes bloodshot at the rare sight of a woman on the battlefield, charged at her. But she dismantled them one by one in perfect order. She cut them down precisely, one after another. Fast as a shadow, mouth closed, but her eyes were ice cold.
I stared at her for a moment before muttering, “That bitch… she actually knows how to fight.”
She quietly wiped her blood-soaked hand on her clothes. The sight made me chuckle despite myself.
“I’ll deal with that one myself later. For now, I’ll just watch.”
I turned my head again. Amid the blood-spattered battlefield, broken shields, twisted bamboo spears, and corpses embedded in the dirt, the enemy’s front line split apart and their formation began to slowly give way.
“Don’t get scared! Fuck, we have more heads than them!”
I gripped my sword tightly once more and leaped straight into the remaining enemies.
-Thud!
-Bang!
-Kraaaagh!
Blades shattered, clubs splintered into pieces, and the bastards’ screams scattered like smoke.
“How dare you try to shove your spoons in here, you fucking bastards. This is my territory.”
“Boss! Another force is moving in from the rear!” Yu Byeok shouted.
I whipped my head around. From the enemy’s rear formation, men were slowly pushing forward with shields at the front.
“Fuck, they’re throwing everything they have now.”
Three or four shield-bearers formed the front line, followed by dozens of men carrying cheap spears and axes they had been holding in reserve. Their appearance clearly meant they intended to reclaim control of the collapsing battlefield.
And at the very front of that group was one tall bastard holding a shield and pushing forward silently. His steps were slow but stubborn. Even when the men beside him hesitated and stopped, he kept advancing like a bull.
“…That fucker’s the leader.”
I muttered, “Look at the way that bastard moves. He’s definitely the head.”
Yu Byeok nodded beside me. “Moreover, he is the center. They are reforming their line around him.”
I flicked the blood off my blade and leaned toward Yu Byeok.
“Go cut that bastard’s head off. You can do it.”
‘Of course. This bastard tried to take on Liu Bei and Cao Cao once. He’s way stronger than some nameless bandit A.’
Without a word, Yu Byeok lowered his head and immediately turned toward the flank.
“Don’t do anything reckless. Just bring me his head.”
“Understood.”
I scanned the battlefield once more. The remaining troops were screaming as they clashed, along with the men who had just begun pushing in.
“Good. Fuck, just a little more and it’s over.”
I readjusted my grip on the hilt and charged toward the final wave of enemies rushing in.
-Thud!
Blade and club collided. A few metal fragments flew from the sword’s edge, but the battlefield remained a scene of snarling beasts.
I leaped forward and drove my blade into an enemy’s abdomen.
-Squelch!
Something hot touched my hand, and blood immediately covered the back of it.
“Push them all! Those bastards are on the verge of death! Push!”
With Yu Byeok gone, I stood at the center. Two enemies in front of me hesitated and stepped back at the same time, but—
-Slash!
—I cut between them and severed one man’s wrist.
“Hiiik——!”
“Don’t fall back! Fuck! Keep pushing! Finish them!”
Our troops roared as they began driving the enemy back with pure momentum.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Yu Byeok had already come face to face with the enemy leader. The man held his shield stubbornly while Yu Byeok gripped his worn blade and slowly steadied his breathing.
-Step!
Yu Byeok moved first. He tried to slip through the small gap between the shield, but—
-Bang!
—the man blocked it. But Yu Byeok did not stop.
-Chak!
-Thud!
He kicked the man’s leg, then twisted his body and slammed the shield with all his strength. The shield smashed straight into the man’s jaw.
-Urk!
As the man staggered and twisted, Yu Byeok charged in.
“It is the Boss’s command. I will take his head.”
-Crunch.
The sword drew a line of blood, and it sprayed like a fountain. The battlefield was nearly finished. Some of the enemy threw down their shields and fled, while a few dropped to their knees and raised their hands.