Chapter 11

Chapter 11. Midnight Raid

Balun had wanted to find out the identity of the utter bastard who had attacked a sleeping man, but unfortunately, the assailant was wearing a mask.

Balun immediately tried to reach up and tear that mask away, but sadly, he failed. The masked figure, hanging from the ceiling, drove a hard kick into Balun’s abdomen.

It did not hurt that much. But it did succeed in making him loosen the hand that had been clutching flesh. Balun fell flat onto the floor, and the moment the masked figure landed lightly on the ground, a dagger came stabbing toward him.

“Eek!”

Still lying down, Balun rolled away to dodge it. He felt the cracked wooden floor scraping against his back.

‘Ah, if I had known this would happen, I would have slept with my clothes on.’

Grimacing at the stinging pain, Balun kept rolling around the room. The low, dull sound of the dagger burying itself into the wooden floor echoed through the darkness. He wanted to get up, but there was no opening.

Inside the room, filled with nothing but darkness, the short blade of the enemy seeking his life glinted in the moonlight. That was how Balun tracked the enemy’s position.

‘Now.’

The dagger stabbed toward him. Balun shot out a hand and grabbed the masked figure’s right wrist, the one holding the dagger. Startled, the masked figure let out a short groan.

The masked figure strained to pull the arm free. But Balun’s hand, clamped around the wrist, did not budge in the slightest. It was like rock.

Balun tried to twist the masked figure’s wrist as it was. But before he could, the masked figure made some kind of gesture first.

She puffed out both cheeks, drawing in as much air as she could.

‘What is this? Is she trying to act cute?’

The thought flashed through his mind for a moment, but of course that could not possibly be it.

Sensing that she was about to try something, Balun acted at once. He lashed out and kicked the masked figure’s leg.

“Urgh!”

With a groan, the masked figure flew backward and slammed into the wall. Her puffed-up mouth opened from the impact, and some sort of powder burst out from inside and sprayed into the air.

Balun’s face twisted at once.

What the hell is she spitting out?

‘Could it be poison or something?’

No matter how he looked at it, it seemed like an attack. Whether it was poison or a sleeping drug or whatever, it looked like filthy trickery.

Balun hurriedly grabbed the blanket from the bed with both hands and fanned it. The powder drifted away from him, then settled softly onto the floor.

In the darkness, they faced off. For a moment, a battle of nerves unfolded.

“What?”

“……”

“Why did you attack me?”

There was no answer. At a glance, it was obvious she had no intention of telling him, so Balun did not press further. He would beat her senseless first and ask questions later. Then she would spit everything out.

Silence fell. The masked figure glared at him savagely with a dagger in hand, while Balun quickly swept his gaze around the room.

He was looking for his axe.

Fortunately, it was not far away. The two-handed axe had been propped diagonally by the window, and the hand axe had been placed on the shelf above it.

‘I should have slept with the axe by my head. Then I would have split her skull open already.’

He regretted it, but it was a regret that came too late. How could he have known? That he would be attacked in his sleep?

Even Balun had never experienced anything like this. Barbarians, at the very least, did not ambush people while they slept.

Watching for an opening, Balun suddenly twisted his body and snatched one of the hand axes into his grasp. Only then did he feel relieved. Really, he needed an axe in his hand.

Failure flashed in the masked figure’s eyes. Judging by her look, she had been trying to stop him from getting hold of a weapon.

But she could not dare approach recklessly now. She must have realized just how enormous the difference in strength between them was.

If he caught her again like before, she would be finished on the spot. She probably knew that better than anyone. That was why she was doing nothing but engaging in this tense standoff.

‘But why is it so quiet? You would think people would have woken up by now.’

He did not know. First, he needed to deal with this thing in front of him.

Just as Balun was about to stride forward with that in mind, his eyes flew wide open.

What had he just seen?

The masked figure’s shape was fading. As though someone were erasing her outline with an eraser, the silhouette that had separated her from the darkness sank into that darkness and vanished.

‘What in the…….’

The scene was so absurd that even in this desperate moment, Balun rubbed his eyes.

Was this a dream or was he awake?

‘Is that cloaking or what?’

He could not see the masked figure. Something blurry seemed to be moving, but he could not tell the exact position. It was enough to make anyone drop dead from shock.

‘No, how does that even make sense? It is not like that is some superpower.’

Just then, something flashed in the darkness. It was the blade, reflecting the moonlight.

“Gah!”

Balun threw himself aside in a panic. Barely avoiding the blade, he shouted,

“That is cheating! A superpowered person is a scam!”

No, wait. Did superpowers even exist in the first place? Were they actually real? Weren’t they supposed not to exist?

The question crossed his mind briefly, but when he thought about it, maybe they did make sense. This was a world where monsters existed, so why would superpowers not exist too?

The blade kept flashing. Balun dodged with the reflexes of a wild beast. He was avoiding it by watching only the gleam of moonlight reflecting off the blade.

His movements were practically miraculous, but the situation was not good. How was he supposed to react when someone he could not even see kept stabbing at him? At this rate, he would have no choice but to let himself get hit.

‘Should I run? If I just throw open the door and bolt… no. If she is blocking the door, I die right there.’

Even if he escaped, he had no idea how far she might chase him. And besides, this was someone who could suddenly turn invisible with some bizarre superpower. How could he possibly leave someone like that alive without knowing what she might do next?

Balun, who had gone through more than a hundred wars before the age of sixteen, felt his instincts telling him something.

A person like this had to be killed in advance.

Otherwise, he would regret it.

One of the things Balun had learned from spending sixteen years among barbarians was that attack was the best form of defense.

He did not personally like that method, but sometimes it was the only answer.

Just like now.

But how? How was he supposed to kill her? An enemy he could not even see?

‘Wait. I just cannot see her. That does not mean she has no body. No matter what, she is still somewhere in this room.’

A good idea came to him. Balun rolled his eyes and spotted the blanket he had thrown aside.

Dodging the blade once more, Balun snatched up the blanket and hurled it straight ahead.

The blanket struck something in midair and slid down to the floor.

Balun’s eyes lit up.

‘There!’

He brought the axe down exactly where the blanket had hit.

THANK YOU!

“Ugh!”

‘Got her!’

Balun grinned. The attack had worked. He could feel the sensation of the axe blade biting in through his fingertips.

Shhhk!

The faint shape grew clear again. The strange superpower she had been using came undone.

“Scammer-Shattering Punch!”

Balun shouted at the top of his lungs and drove his left fist straight into her face. WHAM! The masked figure took the blow to the jaw, went rigid, and collapsed with a thud.

Quietly, Balun placed a hand over his chest. He could feel his heart pounding wildly.

He had not realized it, but he had been incredibly tense.

With a sigh, he sat down on the bed and fingered the necklace. It had been trembling before, but now it was not moving at all.

‘To think this really saved my life…….’

If he met Ulan again later, he would have to thank him. Thanks to him, he survived.

But what was this, exactly? What kind of effect did it have that made it tremble like that?

Leaving the question aside for the moment, he approached the masked figure and removed the mask. The face of a delicate-looking woman was revealed.

She had a face that would have bewitched plenty of men, but instead of being taken in by her beauty, Balun clicked his tongue. He could not believe that someone who looked so perfectly normal would go around stabbing people in the middle of the night.

This was exactly why you could never know what was inside a person.

How dangerous the world was.

The thought made him feel that he needed to become even stronger.

“Hey. Wake up.”

Balun shook the woman. She did not stir at all. Balun looked around. Was there anything he could use to wake her? Even slapping her cheeks lightly had done nothing.

Then his eyes landed on the shelf. There was a leather waterskin sitting on top of it.

Balun grabbed it at once, opened the cap, and poured the contents over her. The moment the cold water hit her, the woman jolted awake in shock.

“Ugh……”

Balun pressed the axe to her neck and asked,

“Woman. Answer what I ask.”

“……”

“Why did you attack me?”

The woman did not answer. Balun slapped her across the face immediately.

“I will ask again. Why did you attack me?”

Still no answer.

Balun did not wait long.

He brought the hand axe down without hesitation. Blood sprayed, and one of the woman’s little fingers was severed. She let out a shrill scream.

“Aaagh!”

“Why did you attack me? If you do not answer, I will cut off another one. One finger at a time. After that, your toes. Then only your torso will be left. You become a bowling pin.”

There was no answer. Balun raised the axe again.

Then the words burst out of her.

“I-I was ordered to!”

“Ordered? By who?”

“Master! My master!”

What the hell was a master? Balun raised the axe higher.

“Speak simply.”

“The Vipers’ Guild Master, Jackson! So please, spare me…… urgh!”

“Keep talking.”

“Th-that is……”

Soon, the woman spilled everything freely, and Balun stored every last word in his head without missing a single detail.

***

One of the strange things Balun had felt while fighting the midnight attacker was this:

Why had the inn been so quiet?

It was not as though they had fought out in an open field. They had brawled noisily on the second floor of a wooden building, so why had it been this quiet?

Even if he did not know for certain, there must have been an enormous amount of noise between the floors and through the walls.

Even Balun, who had been too overwhelmed to think straight, could hear the creaking and the pounding. It was obvious how loud it must have sounded to people who had been sleeping peacefully.

There was a reason for that.

They truly had not known.

As it turned out, someone had mixed a sleeping drug into the stew pot. The large cauldron in the kitchen.

That was why the guests had not noticed anything.

They had all been completely dead asleep.

This incident only became known in the morning, when bloodstains were found all over the inn, and the furniture inside had been knocked about and left in disarray.

And that was not all. The room Balun had stayed in was, quite literally, a complete disaster zone.

“You did not know?”

“No, sir. Not at all. I was completely knocked out. I closed my eyes, opened them, and it was morning…… Did something like that really happen?”

“It did.”

“Good heavens, that cannot be…….”

Barel and his subordinates alike all reacted as though they were hearing it for the first time.

“Barel. You said this would not happen. That is a lie.”

“Pardon? Ah, well, that, um…….”

“Take responsibility.”

Balun barked at him while pretending to be angry, and Barel, his face pale, floundered in a panic.

“Ugh, normally they should not have targeted you……. It seems I made a mistake. I am truly sorry!”

“Not sorry. Take responsibility. That makes me happy! If you do not take responsibility, you die!”

“How should I take responsibility…… Perhaps this will do?”

Barel discreetly showed him some coins.

At once, Balun nodded.

“Excellent!”

Barel, reading the room, slipped him about two gold coins and clicked his tongue inwardly. What kind of barbarian was this, to be so sharp with numbers? He truly had never seen a barbarian like this in his life.

Watching Balun put the gold coins into his money pouch, Barel said,

“Those Vipers bastards seem to like you much more than I thought, Balun.”

“They want to make me a slave.”

“That is right.”

“They are men who deserve to be torn to pieces.”

It was his honest feeling. He had nearly died in his sleep. How could he not be furious? If he endured it here, he would be a saint.

And Balun was not a saint.

If he had been that saintly, he would never have survived among the barbarians. No matter how cowardly he was.

‘I do want to crush those bastards…… but the question is whether I actually can.’

In truth, he had been weighing that from the moment morning came. Could he really crush those men, the Vipers or whatever they were?

Even if he could not wipe them out, he had to at least make it so they could not touch him. Otherwise, they would keep coming after him.

‘Just following Barel is… no. If I do that, I will be crushed to death by money. I will get trapped in rent hell and spend all my time earning money until I die. If this is the capital of a kingdom, the rent has to be absurdly expensive.’

Die crushed by money, or die with a knife in his gut.

Either way, death was still death.

It was only a difference in choice.

The former meant dying slowly and painfully.

The latter meant dying quickly and for certain.

Which one was easier to solve?

In Balun’s opinion, it was overwhelmingly the latter.

“I solve knife-stabbing hell!”

“Pardon?”

“Barel. Tell me about the beginner thugs’ base.”

“What do you mean by…… Ah, you mean the Vipers’ headquarters.”

“Yes.”

Balun thought to himself.

If he could not choose the best option, then he should at least choose the lesser evil.

***

There was still quite a bit of time left before the Barel Merchant Company departed in the afternoon, so Balun made use of their help a little longer.

He gathered supplies in his own way and made sure to memorize the area around the Vipers’ headquarters thoroughly. After that, he practiced.

In his head, he ran through countless simulations of the raid. How he would storm in, how he would fight if it became a one-against-many battle, and if things became truly dangerous, how and through which route he would retreat.

He thought through every one of those situations, over and over again.

It was a habit.

Balun’s own habit.

Whenever an important battle approached, he always practiced like this.

‘Whew, this should be enough for preparation.’

By the time the afternoon came, after the Barel Merchant Company had departed,

Balun had packed all of his gear.

His main weapon, the two-handed axe. Two hand axes. Three daggers. A small buckler that could be strapped to his wrist. A thick rope……

And finally, a leather sack containing the head of the female assassin who had tried to kill him.

Once he had gathered all of it, Balun boldly headed for the Vipers’ headquarters.

The Vipers’ headquarters was located in the slum district northwest of Milford.

‘Screw it, let us do this. What is there that I cannot do? I have fought and beaten things far more terrifying than these bastards.’

Taking a deep breath, Balun strode into the alley.

The two men leaning against the narrow alley glanced at Balun with narrowed eyes.

“What is with this giant?”

“Hey, get lost. Unless you want to die.”

The two men waved their hands as though shooing away a fly. Whether they did that or not, Balun strode right up to them and stopped in front of them.

At the sight of his body, not just sturdy but almost massive, the two men shuddered for an instant.

“W-What is with this bastard? You want to have a go?”

“Move. If you do not move, I will kill you.”

“W-What the hell did you just say? Ha! You little…….”

CRACK!

“Aaaaargh!”

The man on the left screamed his lungs out.

Balun had casually shot out a hand, grabbed the left man’s right arm, and bent it.

“Y-You son of a bitch! How dare you mess with our Vipers……!”

“If you move, I let you live.”

The man on the right, perhaps frightened, stepped backward one pace at a time. Meanwhile, enemies began to swarm in groups. They seemed to have come after hearing the scream.

“What is this?!”

“What happened he— huh?!”

With an indifferent face, Balun swept his gaze over the enemies blocking his path. Every one of them was holding a blade.

‘Ha, there are a fucking lot of them.’

His heart pounded heavily. Balun was already under extreme tension.

‘I should not have come. I should have just obediently followed Barel.’

He regretted it, but regret always came too late.

“Who are you?”

“……”

“You are not answering?”

It was not that he was refusing to answer.

He could not.

His mind had gone blank.

All those long hours of preparation?

That kind of thing was already gone from his head. The training had become meaningless.

‘Damn it, I forgot. I had a method planned out.’

Ah, whatever.

He could not just stand there doing nothing, so Balun moved as his instincts commanded.

He opened the leather pouch in his left hand, turned the opening downward, and threw it at the ground as though smashing it there. A blood-soaked head tumbled out of the leather sack and rolled across the floor.

At that, the Vipers members sucked in a breath. There was not a single person among them who did not recognize the woman’s face. She had been the Rogue most cherished by Jackson, the Vipers’ Guild Master.

“Move. I'm going to meet your boss.”

“And if we do not want to?”

“I kill all of you. But if you move, you live.”

Balun glared at them. The man at the very front, who appeared to be their leader, looked back and forth between Balun’s eyes, his thick forearms, and the axe. Then he let out a long sigh.

“So it has finally come. I told him so many times that we should not do this.”

“……”

“Let him through.”

“What? What are you saying, hyungnim?!”

“I said let him through.”

When the man at the front glared, the alley split like a wave. Balun entered that path without hesitation.

No one would ever know.

No one would realize that this man, who looked every bit the proud and powerful warrior, was in truth only a step away from bursting into tears.