Chapter 21

Chapter 21.

The cold of the blue-edged blade touching his throat ran down his spine and along his backbone. More than the faint pain biting into his skin, that chill froze every nerve in his body. The sensation of the fine hairs on his skin standing on end, of his blood running cold. It was as though death had drawn close behind him and breathed a cold breath down his neck.

The voice digging into his ear was low and rough. That voice, mixed with the sound of scraping metal, was filled with unfamiliar menace, yet the tone underlying it was strangely familiar. A voice he had heard until he was sick of it every morning at the training ground, or inside the barracks.

‘This voice is.......’

Rian’s eyes, which had been shaking violently for an instant, sank into stillness as if the trembling had been a lie. The fear that had been pounding madly against his heart until just a moment ago calmed in an instant, as though plunged into ice water. The killing intent weighing down on his body remained, but the moment he realized who its owner was, the nature of the threat changed. From the attack of an unpredictable beast to the warning of a human being with a clear intent.

The shadow behind him moved with a faint rustle. Along with the sound of thick bushes brushing against each other, a black silhouette appeared at the edge of Rian’s vision. Spiky hair and sturdy shoulders. And a side profile carved with a long, deep scar, visible even in the darkness.

It was Sergeant Kairon.

He did not look at Rian’s face. His gaze was fixed on only one place: the old oak longbow that Rian was gripping tightly. His eyes were as if he were looking at an insect. Soon, a bitter smile filled with blatant contempt settled on his lips.

Kairon’s gaze moved slowly. From the bow stave that looked like a rotting piece of wood, to the string that had decayed as if it might snap at any moment. Then to Rian’s fingers holding the tautly drawn string. Finally, his gaze shifted to Rian’s eyes. It was a persistent, sharp look, as if he meant to see through everything.

“What were you planning to do with that toy?”

The question he threw out again in a low voice was filled with even thicker mockery and ridicule than before. Like an adult scolding a childish boy for playing with fire.

Rian did not answer.

Instead, he met Kairon’s eyes without the slightest movement. There was no fear or panic of someone who had been caught in his eyes. Only a cold silence of unknowable depth had settled there. Like a winter lake without a single breath of wind, a stillness that made it impossible to even guess what lurked beneath its surface.

Rian moved his chin ever so slightly.

The direction indicated by the tip of his chin was clear. Down below, at the center of the imperial army camp where countless torches burned in disorder. It was the command tent where Haken the Slaughterer had been standing.

At last, Rian opened his mouth.

“I was trying to carry out the mission.”

There was no emotion in his voice. It was neither an excuse nor a protest. It was simply the dry, calm delivery of a fact, like a dead branch snapping.

Hmph.

Kairon snorted. The sound scattered into the night air, unable to hide his disbelief.

“Mission? You?”

As if dumbfounded, Kairon looked back and forth between Rian and Haken’s tent below. His eyes openly carried the contempt of, “How dare someone like you?”

From this point halfway down the cliff to the tent, the distance looked to be well over one hundred and fifty meters by rough estimate. It was far beyond the effective range of any ordinary bow. On top of that, the darkness of night and the flickering torches made accurate aiming almost impossible.

“With this rotten piece of wood, all the way over there?”

Kairon’s eyes swept Rian up and down as if he were pathetic. His gaze seemed to stamp the word “impossible” from Rian’s head to his toes.

However, Rian still did not loosen his stance.

The bowstring, drawn taut like a full moon, did not move even slightly, as still as stone. His arm, shoulders, and back muscles were fixed in perfect balance, like a statue made of steel.

Kairon’s gaze pinned itself to Rian’s eyes again.

Rian’s eyes did not waver. Despite the rebuke and mockery, his eyes did not show even the slightest agitation. They only held pure will directed at the target, shining still and black like a well whose depth could not be known.

At that moment, the sneer at Kairon’s lips slowly faded.

‘Those eyes.......’

A memory flashed through his mind. A coward who had trembled without being able to properly hold a spear shaft at the training ground. A greenhorn who had frozen in front of a comrade’s death, unable even to scream. The Rian Kairon remembered was like that.

‘Those aren’t the eyes of that terrified greenhorn.’

Kairon saw something in Rian’s eyes. It was not simple recklessness or bluffing. A vicious tenacity toward the target. A pure focus that erased everything around him and concentrated on only a single point. It was like the eyes of an old wolf that had spent decades aiming only for the throats of its prey.

Kairon’s eyebrows twitched faintly. The contempt that had appeared on his face had vanished at some point, and in its place was a strange expression, a mixture of the confusion of someone facing an incomprehensible phenomenon and sharp interest.

It was right then.

Down in the camp, Haken yawned broadly and stretched. He gave some kind of order to the sentries around him, then turned, lifted the thick flap of the tent, and disappeared inside.

The perfect chance for the shot had vanished like smoke.

“The prey is gone.”

Kairon murmured in a low voice. Along with a subtle sense of relief, there was an intent in his voice to probe Rian’s reaction.

Rian showed no reaction even after hearing those words.

He released the bowstring slowly, with an extremely smooth motion. It was a flexible, restrained movement, like flowing water.

The tautly drawn bowstring returned to its place, and the extreme tension wrapped around his whole body slowly loosened. Then Rian quietly lowered the bow.

No emotion such as regret or anger showed on his face at all. There was not even any lingering attachment to the missed chance. There was only the expressionless face of a hunter waiting for the next opportunity.

Kairon watched the entire process without blinking once.

‘There’s no emotional disturbance at failure. As if...... he has experienced this hundreds of times.’

The suspicion lodged in Kairon’s eyes gradually changed into something else. It was something like a cold awe toward an unknown being, beyond simple curiosity.

He slowly withdrew the blade aimed at Rian’s neck.

Shing!

The sound of the sword sliding into its scabbard rang out exceptionally sharply in the stillness.

When the cold killing intent pressing against his throat disappeared, Rian finally wiped the back of his neck, where the blade had cut faintly into him, with the back of his hand. A damp, lukewarm sensation touched him.

Bright red blood stained the back of his hand.

Rian looked at the blood indifferently, then casually wiped it off on his trousers. As if the wound had not been on his own body.

Kairon turned his back on Rian and took a step toward the edge of the cliff. A dizzying emptiness spread below his feet, and the entire imperial army camp entered his vision at a glance. Hundreds of tents, soldiers like ants moving between them, and clusters of burning torches crouched like a giant beast.

Kairon silently raised one arm.

His index finger pointed to a place far in the distance.

“Look there.”

Rian’s gaze followed the tip of Kairon’s finger.

At the outermost edge of the camp, he saw a wooden watchtower standing noticeably taller than the other structures. In the darkness, he could barely make out its shape from its faint silhouette. The straight-line distance from here looked to be well over two hundred meters.

At the top of the watchtower, the imperial army’s flag was snapping violently in the wind that greeted the morning. It was so far away that even the imperial crest embroidered on the flag looked faint.

“Not the flag.”

Kairon spoke coldly. His voice no longer carried the mockery from moments ago, but an icy composure.

Rian waited silently for Kairon’s next words.

“Hit the flagpole holding that flag.”

Considering human eyesight and the performance of the old bow in his hand, it was a demand close to impossible.

Whoooosh!

As if to prove Kairon’s words, a fierce gust of wind happened to blow along the ridgeline, making the flag shake even more savagely.

The thin flagpole kept appearing and disappearing behind the flag fluttering in the wind. A thin wooden rod hidden behind a scrap of cloth whipping madly in the pitch-black darkness. That was what he was being told to hit.

Kairon’s eyes did not leave Rian for even a moment. His gaze now belonged to an examiner.

‘I don’t care what you are, whether you’re possessed by a ghost or just a madman. I need to confirm it with my own eyes.’

Kairon spat out his final words. It was both an order and an ultimatum.

“Prove it. Prove that you are truly qualified to carry out that mission.”

Instead of answering, Rian silently raised the bow again.

He drew a straight arrow from the worn leather quiver on his back and set it against the string.

There was not a trace of hesitation in his movement, nor any complaint about the impossible demand. It was simply a natural, inevitable act, like drinking water or breathing.

Kairon held his breath and watched Rian’s every movement. All emotion vanished from his face, leaving only the look of a cool-headed commander waiting for the result.

Rian slowly began to draw the bowstring.

The old bow, which looked as though it should have creaked, bent smoothly in his hands without making a single sound.

His eyes narrowed.

At that instant, the world spread out before Rian’s eyes changed. The distant scenery that had seemed so far away abruptly came closer before his eyes. The outline of the watchtower sunk in darkness became clear, and the movement of the fluttering flag began to look slow.

He felt the flow of the wind on his skin. The resistance of the air was calculated through the sensation brushing against his cheek. Even the cold humidity of dawn and the angle of the faintly rising sunlight—everything in the world entered his senses and aligned into a single vast ballistic equation.

These were not Rian’s senses.

They were the archer’s senses that Elias, the master archer who had spent decades roaming battlefields with a bow, reading the wind and shooting death into the air, had honed over his entire lifetime.

A faint breath slipped out between Rian’s lips. It was not a sigh of tension or anxiety. It was the calm breath released by a marksman who had finished every preparation and was just about to pierce the heart of the target.