Chapter 22

Chapter 22.

Rian’s breath stopped.

At that instant, every sound in the world vanished as if it had been a lie. The commotion from the distant imperial army camp, the chirping insects tickling his ears, even the rough breathing of Kairon standing beside him, all sank into a far-off abyss.

Only two things remained. The dull sound of his own heart beating through his blood vessels. Thud, thud. And the song of the wind brushing past his cheek, whispering all the information in the world.

Rian’s pupils narrowed to the extreme. The edges of his vision softly blurred, and only the silhouette of the watchtower, which had seemed so distant, came into focus as sharply as the tip of a needle. The distance of two hundred meters no longer had any meaning. It seemed as though, if he reached out, he could touch even the rough wooden surface of the flagpole precariously planted at the top of the watchtower.

The wind brushing his right cheek held a faint trace of moisture. The dew that had fallen through the night had dissolved into the cold dawn air. Through the fingertips drawing the string, the slight warp and imbalance of the crude arrow shaft were conveyed to him exactly as they were. The feathers were sparsely missing, and the arrowhead was dull. The worst bow, with the worst arrow.

But it did not matter.

‘The wind is from the northeast. Its strength isn’t constant. It’ll bend once above the target point.’

It was not Rian’s head that calculated that. The instinct engraved into his body—the instinct that Elias, the master archer, had honed through decades of blood and death—was saying so. Every variable converged into a single perfect ballistic formula.

The index finger of Rian’s right hand moved ever so slightly. It was a movement that minutely adjusted the position of the arrow’s fletching to match the uneven flow of the wind. Then the angle of his left arm holding the bow lifted just slightly, so little that no one else would have noticed it. It was a correction that even factored in the faint resistance that gravity and moisture would exert on the arrow.

Kairon’s brow furrowed as he watched the entire process. To his eyes, Rian’s actions looked like nothing more than meaningless stalling.

‘What’s he doing? There’s no way it’ll reach just because of that.’

His eyes were still filled with deep disbelief. It was impossible by common sense. With that worn-out bow, even shooting beyond one hundred meters would have been close to a miracle. Let alone a flagpole two hundred meters away. From the beginning, the test itself was absurd nonsense that could not even stand as a test.

It was then.

Rian eased the strength out of the three fingers drawing the string with extreme smoothness.

Twang!

As though the old bowstring were screaming, it let out a sound on the verge of bursting and pushed the arrow forward. The arrow traced a black arc and shot up into the darkness of dawn, where a faint blue hue had just begun to seep in.

Rian did not move at all, remaining in the exact posture from which he had fired. His gaze was fixed on a single point in the air, as if chasing the tip of the arrow that could no longer be seen. As if he had sent a part of himself flying, as if he could feel the result with his own body.

Kairon’s gaze instinctively followed the arrow’s path. The arrow soared more forcefully than expected, but that was only for a moment. Soon, drawn by irresistible gravity, it reached the apex of its parabola and began to descend.

To Kairon’s eyes, the arrow seemed as though it would fall far short of the target and plunge weakly into some empty patch of ground in front of the watchtower.

Just as a faint sneer of “as expected” was about to appear at the corner of his mouth—

As though an invisible hand had lightly pushed it, the trajectory of the descending arrow corrected itself slightly. It was far too obvious a movement to dismiss as an optical illusion.

It was the irregular wind above the target that Rian—no, Elias’s senses—had predicted.

As if gaining a new driving force, the arrow once again flew as though being sucked toward the watchtower.

At that moment, the sneer vanished from Kairon’s face in an instant. Without realizing it, he swallowed dryly. His Adam’s apple moved once, visibly.

The arrow had now become a tiny point, almost invisible to the eye. It melted into the boundary between darkness and dawn until even its existence grew faint.

Silence flowed.

An overwhelming silence ruled the surroundings, so complete that not even the breathing of the two men could be heard.

One second.

Two seconds.

Time passed as if it were eternity.

......Crack!

Riding on the wind, very faintly, yet unmistakably, came the sound of something hard breaking. It was like the sound made when stepping on a dry branch, and also like the sound of a pebble striking a hard surface.

Kairon’s eyes widened in disbelief. His gaze fixed on the top of the watchtower as if drawn by a magnet.

The flagpole that had been standing perfectly fine swayed precariously. Like a great bird that had perched there briefly and flown away, the flagpole bobbed several times before losing its strength.

It seemed as though a snap could be heard. The imperial army flag, broken from the middle of the flagpole, plunged downward. The flag scraped several times against the rough wooden wall of the watchtower as it fell, then soon disappeared into the darkness and could no longer be seen.

Silence returned once more.

Only the flagpole, broken and half remaining, stood hideously against the dawn sky. Like evidence proving an impossible reality.

Kairon stared blankly at that sight, his mouth slightly open. His mind had gone utterly white. More than any bizarre thing he had experienced while rolling through battlefields for decades, what had just happened before his eyes felt more unreal.

Very slowly, like a creaking machine, he turned his head and looked at Rian.

Rian was slowly lowering his bow as though nothing had happened. There was no joy, no pride, no surprise, no emotion of any kind on his face.

It was an expression that said he had done something utterly natural and inevitable, like watching the sun rise in the east every morning. To him, hitting a flagpole two hundred meters away seemed no different from breathing.

Rian slung the old bow over his shoulder carelessly.

Kairon’s thoughts began tangling in a complicated knot.

‘Luck? No. That isn’t something that can be explained by luck. The wind’s flow, the arrow’s defects, the distance—without calculating all of it, this would be impossible.’

His reason desperately denied it, but the result before his eyes was shouting that denial down.

‘Then what exactly is that bastard......?’

Kairon’s eyes persistently swept Rian from head to toe. His slight frame, his worn-out military uniform, and the face that, only a few days ago, had trembled in terror before a comrade’s death. The memory of yesterday and the sight of today simply would not merge into one.

But the one standing before him now was a completely different being. A precise machine gazing at the world with empty eyes, as though human emotion had been cut away from it. Or a hungry predator that saw nothing but its target.

A flash of light passed through Kairon’s eyes. It was not confusion, but something closer to decision.

‘Let’s not try to understand him.’

As if he had decided to erase every question from his mind, he let out a short breath. What had happened to that boy, where that ability had come from—none of that mattered now. There was no way he would find an answer by digging into such things.

‘The process doesn’t matter. Whether he’s possessed by a ghost or he’s a madman.’

Kairon’s thinking arrived at an extremely practical conclusion.

‘What matters is the fact that he did it. And that he can do it again.’

Soon, all confusion cleared from Kairon’s expression like fog. Having returned to the face of a cool-headed and ruthless commander, he turned his back on Rian.

“......”

He said nothing. He only looked for a moment at the distant place where the broken flagpole stood. In his mind, countless plans shattered and were rewritten. The unpredictable variable called Rian was shaking the entire board.

Soon, as if having settled his resolve, Kairon turned back to Rian. Unlike before, his voice contained no mockery or contempt at all. It was only a dry voice confirming a fact.

“What did you say your name was?”

Rian answered calmly. His voice also carried no emotional disturbance whatsoever.

“Rian, sir.”

It was the first time Kairon had properly called Rian by his name. Until now, he had always called him “tagalong” or “hey, you there.”

Kairon gave a short nod.

“Rian.”

He rolled the name once in his mouth, as if confirming the formal designation of a new weapon.

“I won’t ask anything more.”

Those words were a declaration that he would not take issue with Rian’s past, the source of his ability, or anything else. He turned around again and began walking toward the base.

As he walked, Kairon tossed out a remark over his shoulder.

“Follow me.”

Rian followed behind him without saying a word.

Crunch, crunch.

Only the sound of their footsteps broke the stillness of dawn. It was a silence that carried a clearly different weight from before. It was no longer the one-sided pressure between a superior and a subordinate. It was a silence threaded with taut tension, as they measured and explored each other.

Kairon’s broad back was visible as he walked ahead. Rian thought nothing. He simply walked in silence. His senses were still sharply open. The sensation of the soil crumbling underfoot, the change in the dawn air, even the subtle movement of Kairon’s muscles as he walked ahead.

Kairon, too, was focusing every nerve on Rian’s presence behind him.

His footsteps were quiet, and his breathing was steady. It was impossible to believe this was immediately after he had turned the impossible into reality; there was no emotional disturbance to be felt at all. His presence was calm and solid, like a rock that had stood there from the beginning.

‘He’s dangerous.’

Kairon instinctively judged him so. An existence that could not be controlled or understood was always dangerous.

‘But he’ll be useful.’

At the same time, a faint bitter smile settled on his lips. Danger was also opportunity. Especially on a hellish battlefield like this.

‘The assassination of Haken. Perhaps it really may be possible.’

He recalled the impossible mission he had thrown at Rian like a joke. At first, he had merely intended to drive a cowardly greenhorn to his death. But not anymore. A faint light of possibility had begun to show in that impossible mission.

‘No, it isn’t just that.’

Kairon’s steps paused for a moment. Rian also stopped silently two steps behind him.

Kairon looked at the horizon where dawn was breaking in the distance. In the place where a red glow was spreading, in the direction of the imperial army’s main camp. His gaze seemed to pierce beyond Haken’s tent and into the great enemy’s heart farther beyond.

‘If it’s this bastard, he may become the dagger that can shake the very course of this war.’

This desperate state of the war, with the kingdom army driven onto the defensive. A war of attrition like pouring water into a bottomless jar. A sharp move that could overturn all of it at once. A quiet and deadly dagger that would stab the enemy’s heart from a place no one expected.

Kairon began walking again. His steps were a little faster and filled with more strength than before.

In Kairon’s mind, now that he had once again recognized Rian’s value, a new plan began to take shape. It was a picture far larger, more dangerous, and bolder than the assassination of Haken.