Chapter 23

The Jin Family of Taiyuan.

As its name suggested, the family was based in Taiyuan. But like a conglomerate in the real world, its influence wasn’t limited to a single city.

The family had been established two hundred years ago and had long since expanded its sphere of influence by setting up branches in county towns throughout Shanxi.

Scout the area near Jeongyang and return within five days.

That was the reconnaissance squad’s first mission. When the squad members heard their orders, their reactions fell into two camps.

“Doesn’t sound like much.”

Some, like Hyuk Mujin, were disappointed. Others, like Han Yeop, sighed with relief.

Of course, neither reaction pleased me.

Hyuk Mujin was caught up in a pointless hunger for glory, while Han Yeop was afraid of fighting.

Still, a safe mission is better.

Try running into the enemy with a bunch of guys like these. It was horrifying just to imagine. I’d be safer fighting on the front lines with people I could trust.

Should I apply for a transfer?

Suppressing a sigh, I raised my fist. It was one of the hand signals I had taught them earlier. It meant stop.

Snort.

The eleven horses, which had been moving at a moderate pace, halted with a chorus of snorts. Hyuk Mujin, riding to my right, spoke irritably.

“Why are we stopping?”

“Rest.”

“Again?”

“Two hours of travel, fifteen minutes of rest. Didn’t I tell you that beforehand?”

“I can keep going!”

“Then go by yourself.”

I jerked my chin toward the rear. The other squad members were breathing heavily. Riding a horse was faster than traveling on foot, but it consumed a considerable amount of stamina.

Hyuk Mujin’s much higher Level let him hold up fairly well, but fatigue was building in the others.

“When I tell you to rest, rest. That’s an order.”

Ignoring Hyuk Mujin’s scowl, I addressed the squad.

“Fifteen minutes of rest.”

They had fifteen minutes to rest, but the reconnaissance squad members didn’t look particularly happy. That was because I immediately pulled out a large leather backpack.

I reached inside and thought,

Open Inventory.

With a clatter, three shields were summoned into the backpack.

They were wooden shields plated with iron, taken from the armory before we left the Jin Family of Taiyuan. Light, sturdy, and perfectly usable.

“Number Seven. Number Eight. Number Nine.”

The three designated reconnaissance squad members accepted the shields with faces that looked ready to die.

They were the tanks I had forcibly appointed.

Seven damage dealers. Three tanks. And me.

It was the kind of party that would be wiped out the moment it entered a Gate, but for now, this would have to do.

“Everyone to your positions.”

Next came formation.

“Basic formation.”

The three shield bearers took the front. Six swordsmen, from Number One Hyuk Mujin through Number Six, formed the second row. Han Yeop and I brought up the rear.

A formation focused on watching the front.

“Spread out. Scatter and assemble. Disperse.”

Their faces were still full of complaints, but they carried out the commands with a fair amount of skill now. At this point, they were much better than F-rank Hunters fresh out of a Hunter training center.

The NPCs here are better than real people.

The difference probably came down to whether they could use internal energy.

Unlike F-rank Hunters, who couldn’t manipulate mana at all, Murim’s NPCs could use internal energy, however faintly.

They were merely low-Level and inexperienced.

I moved on to the final stage of formation training.

“All-out retreat.”

The reconnaissance squad members hesitated.

“What?”

“What does ‘all-out retreat’ mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. Retreat with everything you’ve got.”

“Then what formation should we—?”

“By that point, formation won’t matter. Just run as fast as you can. Don’t look back, and scatter as widely as possible.”

“Heh. You call that an order?”

The mocking voice belonged, naturally, to Hyuk Mujin.

“I can’t stand this any longer. Third Young Master, is war some children’s game? If you want to make nonsense sound convincing, you should at least have read one military strategy manual before coming here.”

“A military strategy manual?”

“Yes, a military strategy manual! Retreating in good order is one of the most basic principles of warfare. What kind of nonsense are you spouting?”

Hyuk Mujin’s open defiance drew hesitant murmurs from the other reconnaissance squad members.

“He’s not wrong.”

“We aren’t government soldiers. Why are we drilling formations and being forced to carry shields…?”

“I’ve never even heard of an all-out retreat.”

See? Everyone thinks the same way I do. Hyuk Mujin’s smug face seemed to say exactly that.

Then Han Yeop cut in, his voice wavering.

“I-I don’t think that way.”

“What?”

“The Third Young Master—I mean, the Squad Leader—must have a reason for doing this… right?”

“A reason?”

Hyuk Mujin glared at him.

“What reason could there be? The Third Young Master spent his youth neglecting his training and doing nothing but guzzling booze with women. He caused every kind of trouble despite being like that. And that’s not all. He was also the one who caused this war—”

“Enough.”

Hyuk Mujin flinched when I cut him off. He seemed to realize he had made a mistake.

But some people were like that. When they needed to back down, they took another step forward instead.

“Wasn’t the Third Young Master the one who caused this war?”

Hyuk Mujin’s pride was too great to let him stop there.

The words finally left his mouth, and a chilly silence descended.

Gulp.

Someone’s throat bobbed loudly. Nine pairs of eyes turned toward Hyuk Mujin and me.

“D-do you have something to say?”

Something to say? Of course I did.

“Everyone gets another fifteen minutes of rest.”

At the same time, I slapped Hyuk Mujin across the cheek with my flat palm.

Smack!

“One.”

His jaw twisted to the side. It was an ordinary slap, without even a trace of internal energy. His face was still dazed by the sudden turn of events when I struck him a second time.

“What the—!”

He wasn’t completely helpless, at least. He raised an arm to block.

What he had failed to account for was the difference in our strength.

Smack!

“Two.”

Hyuk Mujin’s upper body slammed into the ground. He sprang back up, my palm print stamped across one cheek like a tattoo.

It didn’t take long for his bewilderment to turn into rage.

“You fucking bastard!”

Now he was properly pissed. He charged at me, eyes bulging, and I hooked his leg out from under him. At the same time, I put some strength into my left hand and struck him again.

Smack.

“Three.”

“Urgh.”

His legs seemed to give out, and he staggered. Three consecutive blows with that much force were bound to leave his skull rattling.

“What, are you saving your internal energy to boil soup later?”

That got through to him. Strength filled his wavering legs, and power surged through his body. His glare dripped venom.

“You’ll regret this.”

“I doubt it.”

I caught the fist flying toward my face.

Speed, strength, timing.

I could see it all. Compared to Lee Seogeun, he was far behind.

“Four.”

Hyuk Mujin’s head snapped back. Sticky blood sprayed through the air in slow motion. His pupils were unfocused, and his legs hung limp.

Yet somehow, he didn’t fall.

He couldn’t—not unless I let go of his fist.

“Five.”

Smack!

That was his limit. Hyuk Mujin could no longer endure and passed out. Something fell with a soft thud onto his body, sprawled out in a bizarre position.

Snow?

I raised my head toward the sky. The winter sky was raining down small white scraps of garbage.

“Rest is over. We’re leaving.”

I tossed out the words and turned away. Behind me, the reconnaissance squad members finally released the breaths they had been holding.

When Hyuk Mujin woke two hours later, the first thing he did was charge at me.

“You fucking—!”

Smack. Thud.

“Move him.”

“Y-yes, sir!”

Another satisfying slap knocked him out cold. The other reconnaissance squad members dragged him into a corner of the cabin.

A cabin. We got lucky.

According to one squad member who knew the surrounding area well, we should have reached Jeongyang before sunset at the latest.

But there was nothing we could do about the sudden heavy snowfall, and this cabin was the only place we had managed to find.

Apparently, it was a hunters’ shelter known only to people familiar with the area.

It’s ridiculously small, but I’ll take it.

The mission might be delayed, but this was a hundred times better than walking through the snow all night and then running into the enemy while utterly exhausted.

That was when—

“Squad Leader?”

It was Han Yeop. Behind him, the other squad members stole glances at me, trying to gauge my mood.

“What should we do now?”

“Hm? Sleep.”

“N-no, that’s not what I meant…”

As I looked at the fidgeting reconnaissance squad members, a thought struck me.

Don’t tell me…

“Do you want to train?”

Nod, nod.

Look at those heads bobbing furiously. Look at those eyes burning with enthusiasm.

Forget seeing once. One beating beats hearing something a hundred times.

One beating really was better than a hundred explanations.

It was around noon.

Sunlight flashed along a sword blade. That was the only thing the martial artist managed to see.

“Urgh.”

Thud.

His knees buckled, and his face slammed into the frozen ground.

Blood poured from the gaping wound that ran from his shoulder to his chest. There was no recovering from an injury like that. The martial artist knew he was going to die.

“The others… Please, spare them.”

His exhausted voice cut off abruptly. Looking at the martial artist’s wide-open eyes, a middle-aged man clicked his tongue.

“Good grief, you poor fool.”

What were you thinking, charging in like that?

The rest of his words never reached the dead man. The fifty-odd wandering martial artists surrounding them snickered.

“Of all people, he had to run into the boss. What rotten luck.”

“Only an orthodox-faction bastard would keep playing the hero right to the bitter end. What should we do, Boss?”

Their gleaming eyes turned toward the remaining survivors—a group of six or seven women and children.

“Great Hero, please spare the children.”

At the plea from the oldest-looking woman, the middle-aged man—One Question, One Kill Jopil—smiled gently.

“I’m sorry, but what can I do? I’m no Great Hero.”

“But you’re still human. How can you kill children who can’t even tell right from wrong?”

“Hah. You have quite a bit of spirit for a woman. Wait. I heard the Sakju Branch Leader’s family survived. Could you be…?”

“He is my husband.”

“Ah, I thought so. Who would have imagined such a pathetic man could have such a virtuous wife?”

Jopil smiled, and the woman’s expression hardened.

“You have no intention of sparing us.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not in the habit of raping women before I kill them.”

“The children…”

“This is a harsh world. How could little ones survive without their mother?”

“You’re worse than a beast.”

“I heard your last words.”

That was the signal.

Swordlight flashed, and screams rang out.

A short while later, the blood-soaked wandering martial artists tossed the corpses into the mountain thickets.

“Looks like the wild animals will be the only ones feasting.”

The man with tiny, birdlike eyes muttered. He was Jopil’s right-hand man, a first-rate wandering martial artist known as Black Mountain Blade.

“We should feast, too. If we finish this job properly, what’s a mere thousand pieces of gold?”

Jopil laughed with pleasure. The payment for this job would be enormous, but the situation itself was what he enjoyed.

“I never imagined the day would come when we’d hunt the Jin Family of Taiyuan.”

He planted a filthy leather shoe on the fallen martial artist’s corpse.

The martial artist had belonged to the Sakju Branch, one of the ten or so branches of the Jin Family of Taiyuan.

“Was that the last of them?”

“No, Boss.”

“They’re slipping away like rats. How many?”

“Three in total. One martial artist and two children. They passed through Jeongyang only a few hours ago and are heading for Honju.”

“That’s troublesome. It’ll take half a day.”

“There’s no need for you to go yourself, Boss. I’ll take care of it.”

“Would you?”

A pleased smile spread across Jopil’s lips.

“Good. Take half the men. You have half a day. How does that sound?”

The answer was already decided.

Black Mountain Blade bowed deeply.