There Was No Paradise Where He Fled
No matter that there had been an order, killing a person was never an easy thing.
Even living in the murim, where the sight of people dying was an everyday occurrence, did little to change that. Experience alone could not make a man indifferent. And this was the murder of a comrade, no less — something no one could casually set about doing.
Just as the Black-clothed Man was considering whether he needed to make another example of someone, he confirmed something, and a faint smile touched his lips.
Then what he had confirmed began.
A wet, spraying sound of blood erupted from behind them. One by one, the men turned in confusion — and what met their eyes was a scene of pure shock.
A man who had always kept to himself, quiet and unremarkable, had driven a dagger straight through the heart of the comrade standing beside him. Not a single member of the escort caravan present managed to remain unmoved.
The initial jolt of surprise lasted only a moment. The man who had been stabbed coughed up a mouthful of blood and tried to move. Even a vital point, it seemed, did not sever a life so easily — but the owner of the dagger was far more ruthless than that.
The instant he confirmed the man was still alive, he twisted the blade.
Pain stacked upon pain, and the victim's body was forced still. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but the froth of blood filling his mouth ended it. The light drained from his eyes, and he crumpled — the first sacrifice of the night, dying with a hollow emptiness.
Watching it, the Black-clothed Man's smile deepened, the expression of a man who had just unearthed a gem from the dirt. But it did not last long. A first of anything, good or bad, was bound to draw every eye. What would follow was easy enough to predict.
If he intervened, he could save the fellow. But that was a matter of if. Surviving this crisis would at least prove the man was somewhat useful. For now, he would simply watch and see what came of it.
With that gleam of interest in his eyes, the affair continued to unfold — exactly as expected.
Reluctant as they were, the others closed in around the dagger's owner. Most of their faces were a tangle of rage, irritation, and incomprehension. But what needed to be done was clear. Several of them lunged at the tense man all at once, and the situation the Black-clothed Man desired began in earnest.
As I thought — better than fretting over clever schemes. Moving with the body is always better.
Direct action suited his tastes. A good whiff of blood every so often kept the mind sharp. That was why he preferred missions that let him act freely.
Good. Very good.
A fight was always most entertaining when the rabble tore into each other. Watching it, a smile rose unbidden. It was a sight he never tired of, no matter how many times he saw it.
Slash—!
The first to move killed another. That made two already. But the process had not been clean — his body was already a wreck.
Looks like the body can't keep up with the head.
No matter how large the vessel, without water inside it was nothing but empty. Even if the man died like this, there would be no reason for disappointment — that, at least, was fortunate.
Thrust—!
But he overturned that expectation. In his final moment, he took his opponent down with him in mutual destruction. The man impaled on the dagger stared with eyes stretched wide, as if he had never imagined he would die here.
Huh. Should I have kept him alive?
A faint sense of waste crossed the Black-clothed Man's mind — all the more so because what followed was thoroughly unremarkable. He sighed inwardly, checked the reduced numbers, and moved.
Boom—!
A short, sharp stomp of the quaking foot shook the earth. Even those mid-fight flinched and stopped at the force of it. A little more than half were dead, but an error of that size hardly mattered. He had never planned anything precise to begin with. Frankly, even if only a single man were left standing, it would not have posed any real obstacle to his purpose.
"That's enough. You may stop."
The escort caravan, which had numbered just under thirty, had been whittled down to roughly ten. In a place thick with the stench of blood from the dead, the boy could only let out a hollow laugh.
What the hell is he thinking?
"Thinned out nicely enough. Too many bodies just make the managing a chore."
The boy laughed hollowly again. Looking at those indifferent eyes, it did not seem like empty talk. He had seen this type before — people who seemed to have had every altruistic feeling, pity and sympathy alike, carved clean out of them. Cold judgment was all that remained; nothing human showed through. The Black-clothed Man did not quite reach that extreme, but the mad streak was unmistakable.
"When you have power, nothing needs to be complicated…"
The Black-clothed Man's mouth curved upward. With his face covered, it was hard to see clearly — but the smile was there.
"Between people, there is always an invisible hierarchy. Even among strangers. Do you know the easiest way to settle that unspoken business? Infamy. Say someone killed this person or that, and even those who know nothing of him will feel fear first."
"Is that why you did all this?"
"Hmm. Not only for that. I'm in a good mood, so I'll answer you. Infamy spreads far without any effort at all — whether as a warning to be careful, or simply as an object of pure terror."
When people needed someone to curse, they often turned to a man with a notorious name. Infamy was still a kind of renown, after all.
Having achieved his primary purpose, the Black-clothed Man's next task was to make himself known. As that thought ran through his mind, a streak of light flashed.
Slash—!
No one saw how he did it. An ultra-swift blade stroke grazed past the questioner's throat.
Thud.
The head hitting the ground was the only announcement that the man who had asked was dead.
…This lunatic.
"To offer up your life as the price of satisfying your curiosity. You've got some nerve. Heh! I hope it makes for decent traveling money on the road to the underworld."
What did one call a man who killed someone for a single spoken word and then laughed about it? A quiet, seeping madness radiated from him. Before a person like this, even a single breath needed to be reconsidered — at least, that was what experience taught.
"From here on, this is just me talking to myself. Listen or don't — I don't care."
Meaning: listen as carefully as you can.
"Before coming here, I wiped out three sects. The Dark Silence Orthodox Gate, the Guarding Robe Sect, and Battle Sword Valley. Beyond that, I've half-destroyed several groups like yours that I happened to run into."
So at least several hundred are dead, then.
"Of course, I didn't do it alone. Ammak. We've come to found a new branch on new soil."
Ammak…
"A witness's job is simple. Spread the word. Widely, and far."
So we're to play the messengers.
The boy roughly understood the story. Something about it sat wrong, but in a situation like this there was nothing he could do — forced acceptance was all that remained.
"Later, rather than like this, as guests…"
The Black-clothed Man's brow twitched, as if something had grated on him.
Did he sense something?
"It seems the talk ends here. After this, do as you like."
With those brief words, the Black-clothed Man vanished. Not a single motion of his departure could be tracked — a speed beyond anything approachable.
That last bit felt hurried.
It was not a problem worth dwelling on, so the boy set it aside for now. All that mattered in the moment was that he was still alive. It had been genuinely dangerous. But beyond irritation, there was nothing he could do about it. He could only think of it as bad luck — being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Getting through it unharmed was fortune enough.
Was this ill fortune, too? Ideally, nothing would have happened in the first place — but ever since he was small, he had a habit of getting swept into things that somehow, messily, resolved themselves in the end.
Thinking the affair was over, one of the men who had been holding his breath finally gasped and spoke, his breathing ragged.
"A-are we… alive…?"
"Seems that way."
Among the more fragile of them, some even sank to the ground as their strength gave out. That was how overwhelming the Black-clothed Man's presence had been.
"Hah… continuing the escort seems out of the question, doesn't it?"
"Impossible."
"What do we do about the cargo, then?"
"That is…"
Whether the tension had broken or they were simply trying to look away from the situation, they fell into ordinary talk. The boy did not think it was wrong, exactly — but it was only avoidance. Without facing reality, this escort caravan looked finished. Killing the guide had been the problem from the start. The mountains were treacherous enough as it was. Even allowing for the chaos of the brawl clouding their vision, a guide was essential to any escort company — someone who steered them clear of dangerous paths and found the side trails. If they wanted to turn back, that person was indispensable. With the guide dead, even finding their way was a problem; and even if someone remembered the road they had come by, avoiding whatever they might suddenly encounter was a distant hope. What they had done was take ten steps backward for every one step forward.
The boy sighed again — and then it came.
A tremendous roar crashed through the foothills, and the men who had been speaking with a fragile calm began to tremble in an instant. So they had not forgotten after all. They had only been pretending. The avoidance that had steadied their nerves shattered at once. But even that was not the real problem — the conversation that followed made it clear the trouble had not even begun.
"W-we have to run!"
"Run where, exactly?"
"Back — back to the agency. We t-tell the master."
However they imagined that was possible, the very idea of going back was laughable. Had they not even located the source of that sound? It was coming from behind them. Whether the Black-clothed Man was fighting someone or something else entirely had broken out, walking toward it of their own free will was the same as seeking it out.
The boy grimaced and thought.
If I stay here, I'll get dragged into it too. Getting out of this place is the only way to live.
He scanned the surroundings briefly, then slipped away in secret. To the very end, the escort caravan never noticed that one of their number was gone — from start to finish. They were a thoroughly disappointing lot.
Except for a few of them… maybe all of them will die.
He shook his head. Even after putting distance between himself and the place, the intermittent explosions still reached his ears. The boy frowned slightly. Hearing them after walking this far meant the caravan's chances of survival were vanishingly slim.
Good thing I got out.
What remained was finding a destination — and that was no simple task.
The nearest town was about a day's journey, wasn't it?
And he did not even know the exact road. That meant picking his way forward step by step.
Wandering this mountain without knowing what's going on is suicide. Better to find a hiding place. Come to think of it, earlier I overheard the guide saying that if you head north, there's a cave…
And it was raining. Finding a cave seemed the right call. He hesitated only briefly; with no real alternative, the decision did not take long.
The smell of blood is everywhere.
This was not something that ended in the hundreds. Four digits. At least four-digit numbers of people had died in this area. It had been bad enough before, but this was a massacre in every sense of the word — nothing less. Was someone aiming to become a public enemy of the entire murim?
Nothing else explains it. No — Ammak wouldn't do that on its own. A commission, then. Assassins only move for that.
It was far too extreme a method simply for founding a branch. Something else was at work.
Is this noise part of the same thing?
It was not confirmed as a fight, but if he assumed it was, it made sense — some kind of power struggle, or perhaps a follow-up measure. The sense of it was neither clearly receding nor drawing closer, so he hurried on. Far ahead, something seemed to come into view. Thinking it might be a cave entrance, he rushed toward it — and from behind came a boom incomparable to anything before. How massive did the shockwave have to be to reach this far? Cave or not, he needed to hurry.
The strong are supreme. These mad bastards…
They seemed to be running wild as if nothing else in the world mattered. Did assassins not move in secret? Why announce themselves so flamboyantly?
I can roughly make it out. Doesn't look like a cave. A cliff? Ah — don't tell me this is Manjang Cliff.
Had he come the wrong way?
No wonder I've been feeling that chill for a while. Damn it — I can't go back either. I've arrived at Manjang Cliff? Wasn't my run of bad luck supposed to end after running into that capricious master?
Manjang Cliff was famous as forbidden ground. The reasons given for that were many, and even the drowsy-eyed pretty boy did not know the true cause. But one thing was certain: countless people had died here.
I've also heard that because no one knows where it truly ends, it's called the place closest to the underworld.
He could only click his tongue. Behind him, the unidentifiable explosions; ahead, Manjang Cliff stretched open. A magnificent situation. So this so-called ill fortune of his had been plain misfortune all along.
Is this where my life ends? No. I won't accept that. I jump. I'll survive somehow.
If he stood still, he would probably die. Better to do something before that. Jumping did not mean certain death. He chose to believe this was still ill fortune — not mere misfortune.
For the end to be decided like this would be too hollow. I believe in a fixed fate.
Ill fortune was fate.
Whoosh—!
He flung himself bare-bodied over the cliff. Unable to find his center, he flailed, struck his head against the rock wall, and lost consciousness. The last thing he saw before blacking out was light — light alone flooding his vision — and then the boy finally fainted.