Chapter 15

Chapter 15.

A hair’s breadth from disaster.

Inside the tavern, time had hardened like lead. The air seemed mixed with iron filings, scraping at the lungs with every breath.

Every gaze was fixed on Garik. More precisely, on the rusted dagger blade touching the recruit Thomas’s neck. The red line just drawn across Thomas’s pale throat was horrifyingly clear. A drop of blood gathered on it, then failed to resist gravity and slowly trickled down to his shirt collar.

Kairon’s face was hardened like stone with rage. Den crouched low, his body twitching like a lion about to leap out at any moment. But no one could move recklessly. Thomas’s thin life hung in the hands of that vile deserter.

Rian watched the entire scene without moving a muscle.

It was strange. His heart was not beating. No, it must have been beating, but he could not feel it. The fear that would normally have risen to his throat was nowhere to be found, and his mind was as still as a clear winter lake.

‘I have to protect him.’

It was not Rian’s own will. It was the final testament and obsession of Borik, the veteran spearman, forcibly occupying his body and mind. The regret of failing to protect the greenhorns became an icy blade, carving away every emotion Rian had.

In that cold composure, Rian’s eyes saw through everything about Garik like a predator analyzing its prey.

‘The blade at his throat has no strength in it. He’s distracted by his mockery.’

A vile smile hung on Garik’s face. His gaze was not directed at Rian. He was sweeping his eyes over the terrified squad members one by one, savoring the superiority of having complete control over the situation.

“Hey, Sergeant.”

Garik opened his mouth toward Kairon with a chuckle. His breath, reeking of rot, touched Thomas’s ear.

“Is your subordinate’s life not even worth that one worn-out spear? I told you to throw it down! Are you deaf?”

He nodded, looking satisfied.

That was the exact moment.

Garik’s center of gravity shifted subtly onto his left foot along with that mocking gesture. The blade aimed at Thomas’s neck lost its threatening force for a very brief instant.

A momentary opening.

‘Now.’

Before Rian’s brain could even make the judgment, his body reacted first.

Fwoosh!

There was not a single word of warning. Rian’s boots kicked off the dirt floor of the tavern and shot forward. His crouched body unfolded explosively, and he flew in a straight line toward Garik like an arrow.

“......!”

At that movement, Kairon’s and Den’s eyes widened until they looked ready to burst. What they perceived was not Rian’s movement, but only the afterimage left behind after he disappeared.

‘What......?!’

Garik’s brain sent a danger signal, but his body could not keep up. Before he could react, Rian’s spear had already reached his eyes.

But it was different from what Garik expected.

It was not a thrust. Not the eerie spear tip, but the hard, well-dried wooden shaft was flying horizontally toward his wrist. It was a movement filled not with killing intent, but with the will to destroy.

THWACK!

A dull, heavy impact rang through the tavern.

Rian’s spear shaft struck Garik’s wrist bone, the hand holding the dagger, with perfect accuracy and not a hair’s breadth of error.

“Graaah!”

A scream of pain burst from Garik’s mouth. Along with the horrible sensation of his wrist bone being crushed, the dagger bounced weakly from his hand and fell to the floor.

CLANG!

The sharp sound of metal striking the wooden floor rang out.

But Rian did not stop. That had only been the beginning.

He withdrew the spear shaft that had struck the wrist and spun his forward-pitched body low like a spring.

The movement was as natural as flowing water, and brutally efficient.

The centrifugal force created by the rotation of his body traveled fully into the end of the spear shaft. Then the spear tip carrying that destructive force drove fiercely toward Garik’s left knee, where his center of gravity had shifted.

CRUNCH!

The eerie, horrifying sound of bone twisting and breaking rang vividly through the quiet tavern. It was not a simple impact. It was a chilling rupture, the kind of sound that might be heard when a solid green branch was forced to snap.

“Aaaaaaagh!”

A tearing scream burst from Garik’s mouth. He collapsed. His left leg, having lost its support, was bent completely at an unnatural angle that did not seem human.

As Garik fell, Thomas, who had been his hostage, was released and dropped onto the floor on his backside. Rather than relief at being freed, his face had gone deathly white from the brutal scene that had unfolded before his eyes. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out, and he merely trembled faintly.

Everything happened in the blink of an eye.

Absolute stillness flowed inside the tavern. Only Garik’s beastlike groans of pain filled the space as he rolled on the floor, clutching his completely broken leg.

“Ngh...... Uuugh...... my leg......!”

The other deserters were utterly frozen. Instead of growing angry or rushing in after seeing what had happened to their comrade, they froze in place like mice before a giant snake. What was reflected in their eyes was not a fellow soldier. It was an incomprehensible disaster itself in human form.

‘He isn’t human...... that thing......’

The same thought flashed through all their minds.

Kairon was the one who broke the silence. He was the first to come to his senses, and he shouted with bloodshot eyes.

“Now! Take them all down!”

Kairon’s shout was the signal.

Only then did Den and the other squad members come to their senses and charge in with a roar. The deserters, who had already completely lost their will to fight, could not offer any real resistance. Some simply dropped the weapons in their hands onto the floor, while others sank down where they stood and wrapped their arms around their heads.

The commotion was settled in an instant. The squad members quickly tied them up. Subduing deserters worn down by hunger was not difficult.

But the squad members’ gazes were fixed not on the bound deserters, but on one place.

On Rian, who stood without moving a muscle, his grip adjusted on his spear.

He stood quietly at the center of all the commotion, like the eye of a storm. On the end of his spear shaft were faint traces of Garik’s blood and flesh from the blow just now.

Den looked at Rian. There was no longer awe or jealousy on his face. Only primal fear toward an incomprehensible being lay thickly there. Without realizing it, he took one step back.

Another soldier reached out to help Thomas up. But Thomas shook off the hand and backed away from Rian in terror.

“M-monster......”

A voice as faint as a mosquito. But that whisper was heard clearly by everyone inside the tavern.

That voice lodged in Rian’s ear like a sharp fragment.

At that moment, he felt the intense will of Borik that had been controlling his entire body rapidly ebb away like the receding tide. His icy composure broke, and his senses returned.

The brutal sensation of the violence he had committed with his own hands. The vibration of bones being crushed transmitted through the spear shaft. Garik’s scream tearing at his ears. All of it surged in late like a tidal wave.

Rian’s hand began to tremble faintly. The palm gripping the spear was damp with sweat.

‘Did I...... did I do that?’

He clearly saw Thomas, whom he had saved, looking at him with fear as if he were a monster. He read wariness and terror in his comrades’ gazes.

Isolation.

A deep, cold isolation unlike anything before swept over his entire body. He had only struggled to survive, and before he knew it, he had become something other than human.

***

A short while later, in the open ground outside the tavern.

The prisoners were crouched in a row to one side, bound and gagged. The squad members were busy collecting the spoils of victory: canned food and a little dried jerky. But there was no sense of victory or relief on their faces. Only heavy, awkward silence hovered among them.

Everyone was consciously avoiding one person.

Rian stood blankly away from the others, his back against the old wall of the tavern. In his hand, he still held the spear faintly stained with Garik’s blood. He could not let go of it, as if it had become part of his body.

Then Kairon approached him.

The other soldiers, tense, stole glances at the two of them. All of them looked curious about what the sergeant would say to that “monster.”

Kairon stopped directly in front of Rian. He did not look at Rian’s spear or his trembling hand. He stared straight into his empty eyes.

‘What is he going to say? How should I make an excuse?’

Rian swallowed dryly. But his mouth was parched, and nothing went down. His heart began beating on its own again.

Kairon was silent for a long time. Then at last, he opened his mouth in a low, quiet voice.

“......I will not ask anymore.”

It was unexpected. As if surprised, Rian raised his head and looked at Kairon. It was not an interrogation or a rebuke.

“Whether you are possessed by a ghost or a madman.”

Kairon’s gaze was deep and serious. It was a different kind of gaze from the suspicion or wariness he had shown before. It was the gaze of a man who had given up trying to forcibly understand an incomprehensible phenomenon, a man who had decided to accept only the result.

“It does not matter now.”

He took a small folded piece of old parchment from inside his clothes and held it out to Rian.

Rian hesitated. His gaze went back and forth between the parchment and Kairon’s face. Slowly, he reached out and took it with trembling fingers.

The parchment was heavier than he had expected. It did not feel like simple paper, but like the weight of someone’s fate.

“Because it is true that you saved the squad. That madness of yours did.”

There was a faint bitterness in Kairon’s voice.

“But this is not the end. The real hell begins now.”

‘Hell......?’

Rian’s eyebrow twitched. Was there a hell worse than what he had already gone through?

“A bigger hunt is about to begin, Rian.”

For the first time, Kairon called him properly by name. Not simply “hey, recruit” or “you bastard.”

“From now on, you are not the squad’s spearman.”

Kairon’s eyes flashed like blades. At that gaze, Rian swallowed his breath without realizing it.

“You will work directly under me.”

Kairon grasped Rian’s shoulder hard once, then released him.

“When you return to the barracks tonight, you must read this alone. You must not speak of it to anyone.”

Kairon left only those words behind and turned away. Then, as if nothing had happened, he raised his voice toward the other squad members.

“Enough chatter! If you have gathered everything worth taking, hurry and prepare to return! We need to be back before sunset!”

Rian was left alone in that place.

He looked down at the parchment in his hand. Its old, rough texture. And on it, one word faintly visible, written in Kairon’s handwriting.

[Dagger]

A blade that moved most covertly in the darkest places and pierced the enemy’s heart most sharply.

Rian sensed instinctively that this was his new role.

The isolation he felt from his comrades remained. But now, on top of it, a heavy and clear “goal” that had not existed before was added. Not a consumable, but a useful tool. No, a weapon.

He still could not judge whether that was something to be happy about or something to grieve over.

Rian carefully placed the parchment inside his clothes, deep against his chest.

From afar, he felt Kairon’s gaze, which had been urging the squad members on, turn toward him for the briefest moment before passing by.