Lair Under the Bridge (11)
Ayoung was horrified by the sight of the man pulling out a kitchen knife and charging straight at them. “No way. A kitchen knife?! Is he actually insane?!”
Serpina found it strange. The fact that Ayoung was screaming in shock over something as trivial as a kitchen knife puzzled her more. “What’s there to be so surprised about? You’ve seen way worse than a kitchen knife before.”
In the Shinsi they had visited together, people openly carried swords at their waists. Since it was a place with no ordinary humans anyway, it was apparently fine to display them. It seemed odd that Ayoung, who had grown used to such sights, would be startled by a mere kitchen knife.
But Ayoung had her reasons for panicking. “This is the outside world! If anyone sees it, a kitchen knife is impossible to explain away!”
It wasn’t for nothing that Ayoung had turned her weapon into a selfie stick. She knew full well that reinforcing a kitchen knife with mana was more effective than reinforcing a selfie stick. Above all, the key factor was concealment. Even if someone spotted it while she carried it around, a selfie stick wouldn’t draw much suspicion. Unless it was a rare no-filming zone, people would usually just think, ‘Is she shooting a vlog or something?’ and move on.
A kitchen knife, however, was different. If it was still in its packaging, maybe, but seeing someone walking around with a gleaming blade would mean the police being called was only a matter of time. Before the day was out, articles with headlines like ‘Armed Suspect Apprehended’ would flood the internet.
That alone wouldn’t expose the existence of magic. Ordinary people couldn’t tell whether the knife was a normal one or enchanted. But one could never be too sure. Real life was stranger than fiction. And the Wolha Association, which governed the magic world, tended to react to that ‘what if’ with outright paranoia.
If discovered, the punishment that awaited made the human world’s criminal laws look like a joke. That was the real meaning behind treating a deadly weapon as a tool.
“That’s kind of an interesting story. But right now, this matters more. Here. Take this.”
Serpina handed Ayoung a wooden stick. The moment Ayoung reflexively grabbed it, Serpina gave her back a light tap and pushed her forward.
“Eh? Senior?”
“Give it your best. If you maintain the magic properly, you should be able to block a kitchen knife at that level.”
“Senior? Senior?! Kyaaak!”
Ayoung kept calling out in panic, but the man closing in was faster. The kitchen knife came slashing down at Ayoung, who had instinctively raised the wooden stick.
- Thunk!
The magic-reinforced blade bit deep into the wood. Bark fragments flew everywhere, and a large gash appeared on the stick. Ayoung’s body staggered violently as she took the full-powered strike from the man, who carried a (very slight) trace of werewolf blood. Yet the wooden stick held firm without being severed.
Ayoung’s eyes widened. “I… blocked it?”
She realized the magic on the stick had changed. It wasn’t the impact-amplifying spell from training, but the durability-enhancing magic she herself liked to use. And it was woven with far greater efficiency than her own clumsy attempts.
She would have loved to dissect exactly how the magic was structured, but there was no time.
“Grah! Hah!”
Strange battle cries accompanied the kitchen knife as it flew at her without pause. The blade stabbed and slashed at her neck, chest, and abdomen indiscriminately, as if declaring it didn’t matter if Ayoung died.
“Huh?! Whoa! Kyaaak!”
Compared to the blade’s lethal intent, Ayoung’s screams sounded utterly pathetic. From the sound alone, one might think she was just messing around with a friend. But for her, the situation was deadly serious.
She shoved the stabbing blade aside. The sideways swing was met with the wooden stick. With every exchange, she kept retreating. It was too one-sided to even call it a fight, but one thing was clear.
Ayoung was holding her ground.
Watching her, Serpina nodded inwardly. The training she had given Ayoung so far hadn’t included actual combat techniques. The fact that Ayoung was somehow enduring, however precariously, came purely from her talent.
- Thud!
“Kyuuuek!”
“…Sigh.”
The moment Serpina acknowledged her talent, Ayoung took a hard kick to the side and went flying with a scream.
She had focused too much on the opponent’s weapon and neglected everything else—a common mistake for beginners unused to real fights.
“Grah! I’ll start with you, bitch!”
The man brought the kitchen knife down on the fallen Ayoung without hesitation. Clutching her throbbing side, Ayoung tried to raise the wooden stick she had never let go of, but she clearly lacked the raw strength to stop a downward slash from above.
It was the moment Ayoung gritted her teeth, bracing for the pain of being stabbed—
“That’s enough.”
“Ugh!”
Serpina had closed the distance without anyone noticing and simply shoved the man back with her foot. It wasn’t even a proper kick; she had merely planted her sole against him and pushed. Yet the immense power behind that casual motion sent the man staggering backward several steps.
Serpina didn’t spare him a glance. “You did well thinking to dodge or deflect since you couldn’t match his strength. It didn’t work out quite as planned, but that’s just because your skills are still lacking. You’ll improve with experience. And you already know the parts I’d criticize without me saying them, right?”
“Cough, hack… Y-yes.”
Ayoung’s answer was short. Every time she opened her mouth, pain surged from her ribs. It felt like something might be broken.
“You! You! Youuuuu!!!”
The man who had been shoved back let out a scream that echoed through the space under the bridge.
Serpina frowned. “Shut up, you half-baked mutt. I’ll overlook it while you’re useful as teaching material, so stay quiet.”
“Shut up! This is the only time you get to act so relaxed! You think I came unprepared?!”
The man threw away the kitchen knife and pulled out a syringe. Without hesitation, he stabbed the cylinder filled with sloshing red liquid into his thigh.
“Doping? How cliché.”
Serpina watched calmly, as if curious to see how far his little performance would go.
The man tossed the empty syringe aside. A laugh bubbled up from the power surging through his body.
“Kuk, kukuk… So this is the true power of the wolf!”
- Riiip, riiiiip.
His body swelled. His clothes tore apart as thick gray fur sprouted all over. His skeleton itself began to change. Claws far sharper and harder than any kitchen knife extended outward.
By the end of the transformation, the man had finally become something recognizable as a werewolf. Overflowing wildness and tenacious vitality. His body drank in the moon’s mana like a sponge.
“Sigh. I got my hopes up for nothing.”
Serpina let out a disappointed breath at the sight. She would need to analyze how they had turned a human with added wolf scent into a werewolf, but the crude workmanship was obvious at a glance. The intelligence visibly shrinking in real time, in inverse proportion to the swelling body, was plain in his eyes.
Humans are distinguished from animals by their intelligence. A werewolf that had lost its mind was nothing more than a wolf walking on two legs.
- Grrrr!
At last, the wolf that had even forgotten human speech lunged forward. Sharp claws and pointed fangs assaulted Serpina. They tried to slash, batter, bite, and tear her apart.
Or at least, that was the intention. Not a single attack driven by that ferocious momentum actually touched her body.
Instead, she spoke to Ayoung as if this were the perfect teaching moment. “I’ll move slowly, so watch carefully.”
Serpina’s movements slowed to a speed Ayoung could realistically match. Even at that pace, she slipped through the gaps in the attacks like flowing water.
Ayoung forgot the pain in her abdomen and drank in every motion.
“Of course, I’m not telling you to move like this right away. Just keep it in mind as a glimpse of what you’ll become in the future. Next is magic…”
"Icicle."
⟨ Icicle ⟩
With a crackling sound, an icicle roughly thirty centimeters long formed in the air and settled into her hand. She drove the thorn-like spike straight into the wolf’s body.
“Graaaah!”
A scream tore from the wolf’s mouth as it flailed uselessly at empty air. The freezing sensation ripping through its organs jolted its reason back from the depths of instinct.
But the gap between Serpina and the werewolf wasn’t something a little recovered sanity could bridge.
“Icicle. Icicle. Icicle. Icicle.”
Icicles appeared one after another. Each one embedded itself into the werewolf’s body in sequence.
“Guh, ugh…”
The werewolf vomited blood and staggered back. Its rage-heated mind cooled rapidly. Both instinct and reason now sensed death.
“Cough, kuk, grrrk…”
There was no hesitation. The werewolf spun around and fled, squeezing out the last of its strength despite the bloody foam rising from its mouth.
“Ah! It’s running away!”
“Huh. I didn’t expect it to turn tail first after charging in like that.”
A mocking voice followed from behind, but the creature kept running. The uglier and more pathetic someone was, the more desperately they clung to life. It didn’t want to die. No matter how filthy or wretched, it wanted to survive.
How far had it run? Its legs finally gave out. The werewolf, which had ignored its draining stamina and focused solely on escape, tumbled disgracefully across the ground.
- Crash!
“Khu, khuk…. Where… am I?”
The same dull stone walls and broken streetlights stretched on endlessly. It was a familiar scene—some back alley in the city. Even while fleeing in a mindless haze, its old habits had steered it away from anywhere human eyes might reach.
“Did I… survive…?”
The moment the werewolf let its guard down, footsteps echoed through the alley.
- Step.
“Who’s there!”
“You look terrible.”
“Y-you are…”
The werewolf, claws extended in wariness, immediately dropped to its knees the instant it recognized the newcomer.
“Didn’t you swear you would bring our youngest by any means this time? I even provided that precious potion as support. And this is the result?”
The other party was the client the werewolf had made a deal with to capture and deliver a kitten magic beast.
“I waited because you said you would auction it off, but it never appeared. I gave you support when you claimed you would catch it yourself, but you failed to bring it back. There is a limit to uselessness.”
The client—a middle-aged woman—irritably tapped her parasol against the ground.
- Tap.
Each strike of the parasol’s tip against the asphalt increased the number of presences around them. One, two, three… Eyes began to glow in the darkness. Distinctive shining cat eyes. Those menacing pupils fixed on the werewolf.
“W-wait! I can explain—explain everything! If it weren’t for that strange bastard…”
“Dispose of him.”
“Just one more chance! Give me one more— Aaaaaargh!!”
The moment the middle-aged woman finished speaking, the gathered cat magic beasts swarmed over the werewolf. It flailed its arms desperately, but its injured, exhausted body couldn’t hold out for even a few seconds. The screams cut off abruptly, replaced by the wet sounds of something being violently torn apart.
Inhaling the thick metallic stench of blood as if it were a pleasant fragrance, the middle-aged woman murmured, “I can’t endure this any longer. This time, I’ll have to move myself.”