The Captain of the Pursuit Squad of the Namgung Clan.
Bright Moon Sword Song Gwang-sik thought.
Looking back quietly on his life so far, he did not seem to have been particularly lucky.
No matter what he did, crises always came for him.
And to overcome them, he had to roll through hell until he was practically shitting blood.
Still, as he somehow passed through those crises and endured.
The evaluations around him improved, and he gained subordinates who trusted and followed him.
Now, within the clan he belonged to, that is, within the Namgung Clan, he was receiving fairly respectable treatment as he worked.
Good comrades. A good background and environment.
The excessive honors that a street orphan without a single coin had no right to possess, he had somehow come to hold in both hands as if it were only natural.
But.
ROOOAR—!
Such things only had meaning if one survived in the end.
The witch before his eyes.
The young girl of the Mansi Sect had crossed countless lines of life and death until now.
She was a monster itself, enough to turn all of Song Gwang-sik’s career, which had allowed him to break through most crises with a laugh, into dust.
And against such a monster, Song Gwang-sik was now fleeing like mad.
“You must survive and get out, even if you are alone, Captain.”
His insolent junior, who was always watching for a chance to take his place. Storm Sword Na Han-il.
That arrogant junior who was the Vice Captain of the Pursuit Squad.
That fellow had remained behind with the subordinates.
“What we always talked about like a joke. The time has come when we have to do that now. That is all. So get your head on straight, Captain.”
This bastard was insolent even at this moment.
How dare he treat a grave decision made by his Captain like that?
He did not know why the bastard had to resist until the very last moment.
“No, fuck, Brother Gwang-sik! Please get a hold of yourself! We’re too damn slow to run away anyway, all right? You know that better than anyone!”
How strange.
I don’t remember allowing him to call me brother.
I am usually not the sort to curse much.
But right now, curses surged up on their own from his qi center.
Song Gwang-sik clenched his molars and raced through the forest at a mad speed.
In truth, Song Gwang-sik had also finished grasping the situation coldly in his head.
The moment they faced that unnamed monster of the Mansi Sect.
If even one of them was to survive and get out, this was the only way.
But Song Gwang-sik had tried to choose staying behind himself.
“Fuck, Brother Gwang-sik! You’re the fastest one here. Who here doesn’t know that? Or are you going to make our men die like dogs here for nothing? Someone has to tell the clan. So from now on, grit your teeth and run. I’m begging you. Just listen to me once this time. Please?”
Come to think of it, Na Han-il.
He had spent more than ten years bickering with this fellow already.
For all that he was an orphan like himself, he had enough venom in him to survive.
From the day he first transferred into the Pursuit Squad until now, the bastard had been unmatched when it came to handling work quickly and sharply.
At some point, such a fellow had become this useful.
He should have gradually stepped back and handed his position over to this bastard.
It seemed he had been too greedy.
If this bastard had been Captain, would this crisis never have happened in the first place?
“Fuuuuuck!”
Now that he had been driven into an extreme situation.
All kinds of fucked-up thoughts rose in his head.
Bright Moon Sword Song Gwang-sik ran until the muscles in his thighs and calves felt like they would tear.
With eyes turned blood-red from burst capillaries, he stared only straight ahead.
While desperately ignoring the screams and explosions erupting from behind him.
***
He had thought it strange that there had been no obstruction in the corridor.
He should have thought something was wrong then.
JINGLE—
Along with the sound of a bell coming from afar.
Il-hyang saw purple thorn-flowers blooming in riotous profusion as if enveloping a certain area, though their shape was not concrete, and without realizing it, he whistled like a fool.
Inside and outside had been divided.
And over quite a wide range at that.
‘A magic circle is originally the work of dividing a boundary.’
The method by which a mage forced his own rules upon this vast world.
That was a magic circle.
Within a magic circle, the rules of the world could be twisted.
And within it, a mage’s intent, or mental image, could be realized in reality.
Whether it was a large mass of fire. Or a large mass of ice.
That which was created inside a magic circle could exert sufficient physical force.
However, once it left the boundary line of the magic circle, its power rapidly decreased.
Because the world resisted the mage’s will.
But there was a small exception.
‘A 4th Circle mage.’
From the 4th Circle onward, a mage was a true mage.
They were beings capable of realizing their power, their will, to a certain extent even beyond the boundary line.
He had thought they would exist in this world too.
After all, traces of magic existed here, primitive though they were.
But once he actually felt the thick scent of magic, his excitement was absurdly intense.
‘Closer.’
Il-hyang actually began approaching the magic circle little by little.
Right now, inside the magic circle, a purple thorn-flower field was swirling and tearing apart the people on it.
Il-hyang looked at the white-haired girl at its center and slowly reached out.
‘Here is the boundary line.’
The boundary line of the magic circle.
The vague point where inside and outside were divided indistinctly.
He slowly placed his hand on that fluid point.
Then.
SLUUURP—
As if he had dipped his hand into wobbly pudding.
His arm sank deeply in, all the way to the forearm.
Il-hyang’s two legs were clearly outside the magic circle. But his two arms were vividly feeling the other mage’s magic circle.
‘The spicy bite is strong.’
A sharp, tingling scent brushed the tip of his nose.
With his eyes slightly unfocused without realizing it.
Il-hyang licked his lips with the tip of his tongue.
As if he had touched a highly toxic substance.
His entire forearm, which he had put into the magic circle, tingled like mad.
At the same time, moment by moment.
The mage’s emotional flow. That torrent.
He could clearly feel it thrashing wildly.
This was a kind of emotion Il-hyang knew too.
‘Rage.’
And revenge.
Il-hyang felt that the other party was being shaken far too violently by emotion.
Thanks to that.
Despite the gap between him and the other mage, room had appeared for him to intervene like this from outside.
And if he could intervene from outside to inside?
‘I can land a hit.’
If one got down to it, this was purely that brat’s fault.
She had appeared before his eyes in such an alluring form and tempted him.
Therefore, this was all the fault of that little brat, who had stirred his curiosity.
What he was about to show her now.
Was, as an adult, merely a kind of lesson.
To become an excellent mage.
This was like a tax that one absolutely had to pay.
A kind of growing pain, perhaps.
Of course, she would have to survive in order to grow.
‘Can she survive, I wonder?’
Il-hyang quietly read the fierce flow inside the magic circle the girl had deployed.
Then, in tune with that torrent, he released a little poison.
So subtly that the other party would not notice.
If the other party’s realm had been higher, or if she had a little more experience.
It would have been a clumsy method that would not have worked at all.
Fortunately.
‘You are still far too immature and ignorant.’
Pitiful thing.
In the world of mages, the immature had to die.
In the world of mages, ignorance too was a capital sin.
Right now, the other party was paying attention to something else, so she had no idea about Il-hyang’s stealthy approach.
Naturally, she also failed to read the method Il-hyang had deployed.
GRRRIIND—
“Die! All of you, die! How dare you do that to my little brother! Mere worthless mortals dare!”
The girl’s loose white hair rose toward the sky strand by strand.
And bloody tears flowed down from both her eyes.
The formation the girl had deployed now.
The wide-area magic circle spanned roughly one hundred meters.
‘Purple Blossom Abyssal Dust Diagram.’
A purple thorn-flower field of death.
This was one of the three formations the Mansi Sect boasted of before all under heaven.
And near the center of the formation raging like a whirlpool.
The members of the Namgung Clan’s Pursuit Squad were being ground into rags by the thorn-flowers.
‘By now, the Captain must have escaped, right?’
They wanted to end their lives right away.
But even as they became half-minced lumps of meat, they had to hold out somehow.
Only then could they buy more time.
For the Captain to escape from this monster.
The Pursuit Squad members stood with their backs against one another like that.
And just as they felt death clearly drawing near.
CLUNK—
The formation that had been swirling suddenly came to a stop.
Was this a brief pause to catch its breath?
Next, a truly terrible attack would come.
While everyone was preparing themselves for that.
A sharp scream burst from the mouth of the white-haired girl before their eyes.
“Aaaaaaaah!”
FWOOOSH—
The girl’s body suddenly began to burn.
As if she had been covered in molten lava.
Flames blazed as though boiling up from within.
The poison Il-hyang had planted.
Burned the girl’s qi center.
Then soon began burning her entire body.
She thrashed and writhed in every direction, trying to escape the fire, but the flames showed no intention of going out.
“What in the world…….”
The Vice Captain of the Pursuit Squad.
Na Han-il looked straight ahead with eyes swollen to bursting and oozing fluid.
There, right now.
The girl who had seemed like a devil until moments ago was screaming and rolling on the ground, struggling somehow to put out the flames.
While everyone else froze in bewilderment.
Na Han-il moved without hesitation.
He swung the sword in his hand, broken halfway down, in a crescent arc.
Slice—
His swordsmanship, which he had cultivated over a long time, did not betray Na Han-il at the most important moment.
At last, the scream being torn from the mouth of that Mansi Sect monster was cut off.
“Ha…… Hah! Hahahat!”
Her neck had been severed.
Even Jiangshi could not move once their necks were severed.
He did not know whether that monster had originally been a living being or not.
‘But now she’s definitely dead.’
Just as the hope that he could survive surfaced in Na Han-il’s eyes.
Something that had not been there moments before caught his eye.
“Hmm, she ended up dying after all.”
“……!”
A boy.
The boy named Il-hyang, the Pursuit Squad’s original surveillance target.
The fellow was looking down at the girl’s corpse with a face full of regret.