Chapter 4

Chapter 4.

A pitch-black forest where not even a single strand of light seeped through.

His breath rose all the way to his throat. His lungs were hot as if they were burning, and his heart, on the verge of bursting, hammered madly against his ribs.

‘Damn it…… damn it!’

Rian swallowed curses inwardly and desperately moved his feet. His whole body was already drenched in sweat, and the sensation of his tattered military uniform clinging damply to him was revolting.

Slash, slash!

Branches stretching out in every direction whipped his cheeks and arms like lashes. Stinging pain from torn skin came one after another, but right now, he did not have even the tiniest bit of room to care.

Because the sound coming from behind him was even more horrifying.

Thud, thud, thud…….

Heavy, persistent footsteps. Like a beast driving its prey, the sound of feet kicking off the ground at steady intervals followed him, coldly scraping down his spine. The imperial soldier. That beast-like bastard still had not given up.

‘He’s still…… still chasing me!’

Thanks to the talent that had once belonged to the scout Flynn, his body moved with strange agility even in the darkness. His feet instinctively chose firm ground to step on, and his upper body tilted fluidly to avoid obstacles.

But the soul, the true owner of this body, was Rian. It was the weak body of a boy who had drifted from orphanage to orphanage and had been treated as a straggler even at the training camp.

His stamina had already reached its limit long ago.

His throat was parched with a burning thirst. Every step made his legs heavier, as if they were lumps of lead. The agile senses of Flynn dwelling in his body and Rian’s own exhausted flesh gradually began to fall out of rhythm. His mind ordered him to run faster, but his body would not keep up.

‘How much longer…… How much longer can I run?’

Despair rose with fatigue like fog, blurring his thoughts.

That was when it happened.

“Stand right there, you rat bastard!”

A spiteful shout burst out from much closer than he had expected, right behind him.

His heart felt as if it dropped all the way to the ground with a thud. The distance had closed in an instant.

‘No. If I’m caught, I really die this time.’

Rian squeezed out every last bit of strength he had left. The terror of death forcibly poured oil over the dying ember of his life. He gasped for breath as if screaming and put on one final burst of speed.

All he could see was darkness and the silhouettes of trees faintly swaying within it. He had to look ahead. If he misstepped even for an instant, it would be over.

At that very moment, his right foot caught hard on something.

Thump!

It was a thick tree root that had cunningly hidden itself in the darkness.

With a sharp agony as his ankle twisted, the balance of his entire body collapsed.

‘Ah……!’

Not even a short scream burst out.

His body, carried by momentum, pitched forward helplessly. The ground rushed quickly toward his eyes. Rian reflexively stretched both arms forward. It was the instinct of a living creature trying to reduce the impact even a little.

‘Damn it, like this……!’

Just as that despairing thought flashed through his mind, his right hand touched the damp ground first.

But it was not the squishy feel of soil he had expected.

It was cold, stiff, and hard.

Rian’s pupils widened. A form far too familiar, different from an animal bone. His eyes confirmed the identity of what his hand had planted against the ground.

A human hand.

It was the hand of a corpse, already drained of blood and stiffened pale. Had he fallen behind during the battle and fled this far? It was the body of a nameless Kaien soldier.

That hand was still gripping the shaft of a long, solid spear that had fallen to the ground, unable to let go even in death.

‘An allied soldier……? Or someone else……?’

The confused thought flashed past, and at the same time, a terrible sense of déjà vu covered his whole body.

From the corpse’s hand touching his palm, an icy cold energy began flowing backward through his veins.

‘This feeling……! No!’

It was exactly the same as when he had touched Flynn’s corpse. Back then, he had obtained something, but now was different. He did not know the rules of this ability, but his instincts were sounding an alarm.

In a flash, the agility that had been wrapping around his whole body as lightly as feathers began being sucked out rapidly through the point of contact at his palm. As if air were being drained through a huge hole, all in an instant.

Whoosh!

‘It’s disappearing…… Flynn’s power is……!’

Terrified, he tried to pull his hand away, but it was already too late. His body had fallen to the ground and could not move, and the escaping power mocked his will as it vanished without a trace.

An empty space was left where the agility had been sucked away. Into that void, an entirely different kind of sensation forced its way in.

Heavy.

Solid.

The sensation of a stubborn, weighty strength like a boulder. From his shoulder through his elbow and down to his fingertips, an alien sensation, as if a solid steel core had been driven into him, dominated every nerve.

Rian’s body sank heavily toward the ground, as if it had suddenly become several times heavier. The body that had been light as a feather only moments ago now felt heavy and dull, like soaked cotton.

His [Agility] talent disappeared, and the nameless spearman “Gareth’s” [Basic Spearmanship] was forcibly overlaid onto his body.

‘What is this feeling……? Why is my body like this……?!’

Having lost the lightness he had grown used to, left only with an unfamiliar heaviness, Rian was swept up in extreme confusion and deep despair. The tool of survival he had needed most had been lost at the worst possible timing.

He froze in the position he had fallen in. He could not understand at all what had happened in the darkness.

Step. Step.

His heart seemed to stop at the leisurely footsteps coming from directly behind him. The pursuer was no longer running. He had clearly confirmed that the fugitive had fallen.

Rian, covered in dust and dirt, barely turned his head.

The imperial soldier stood right in front of him, sword drawn. On the soldier’s face was the leisure of a victor, along with a cruel smile after having toyed with his prey to his heart’s content.

“Ha, you fell in such an ugly way. Looks like you don’t even have the strength to run anymore, do you?”

The soldier tapped Rian’s fallen shoulder with the tip of his sword. The cold feel of metal pierced through his uniform.

Humiliation and terror pressed down on Rian like a massive boulder.

‘Now…… it really is over.’

It felt as if every last hope had turned to ash and scattered.

“You, what was that movement earlier? For a rat bastard, it wasn’t half bad.”

The soldier stabbed his sword into the ground right beside Rian’s face.

Shhk!

With a sharp sound, dirt sprayed up and struck Rian’s cheek.

“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. What’s the point of understanding a dead man’s trick?”

The soldier pulled his sword out again and slowly raised it. Though they were inside a dark forest, the faint moonlight seeping in flowed coldly along the blade.

Now there was no miracle, no lucky chance left. Flynn’s talent had disappeared. His body had returned to its former slow, powerless state—no, it had turned into something even more unfamiliar, like a heavy lump of iron.

Rian’s eyes widened in fear. They were the eyes of someone who had given up everything, someone facing death.

“Well then, I’ll send you off comfortably. You Kaien insect.”

With that mockery, the soldier brought his sword down vertically.

The blade drove straight toward Rian’s heart.

That brief instant felt like eternity.

‘Move…… move, damn it!’

His brain screamed madly, but his body, frozen with fear, would not listen, as if bound in chains.

And yet…….

His right arm was different.

The very arm onto which the unknown sensation called [Basic Spearmanship] had been engraved just moments ago when it touched the corpse’s hand.

Completely unrelated to Rian’s will, his right arm moved like lightning.

The spear lying beside his fallen body. He instinctively grabbed the shaft of the spear that the corpse had clung to until the very end. The feel of wood clinging to his palm, and beyond it, the heavy sense of balance. Everything was far too familiar. As if he had spent his whole life with it.

‘Huh?’

Before a question could even rise in Rian’s mind, his arm lifted on its own.

It was not a panicked defense. It was a clean, perfect trajectory that could only come from repeating the motion thousands, tens of thousands of times.

Just before the soldier’s sword touched Rian’s chest, the spear shaft raised at an angle blocked the path of the blade head-on.

CLAAAAANG!

Along with a metallic sound that tore at the eardrums, a dull, intense impact shook his entire arm.

Rian’s shoulder joint screamed, but the hand gripping the spear did not move in the slightest. Rather, it was as firm as a tree rooted in the earth.

The soldier’s sword was stopped by the spear shaft and bounced away violently.

“……!”

The relaxed smile vanished from the soldier’s face in an instant. In its place came disbelief-filled shock.

‘……He blocked it? From that position? A bastard who was lying on the ground?’

It was something utterly incomprehensible by his common sense. He had clearly been a greenhorn who had sensed death and frozen in terror. Yet that same bastard had perfectly blocked his full-force sword strike with a single spear raised while lying on the ground.

Rian also could not understand what his arm had done.

Just moments ago, he had certainly been paralyzed by fear. He had given up everything.

Yet this arm had moved on its own and stopped death. As he looked down at his right arm, which still tingled from the impact, his expression was colored with the same shock as the soldier before him.

For a moment, silence flowed through the forest.

Only the lingering ring of sword and spear after they had clashed—clang……—proved that the collision just now had been real.

Rian, lying on the ground with the spear raised at an angle, and the imperial soldier, frozen with his sword in hand.

Their gazes collided in midair like sparks.

Thus began an unexpected standoff.