Chapter 333: Chapter 333
Ba-dump.
I was reminded of the first time I was deployed to a battlefield.
Ground squelching with blood and filth.
Warriors left untreated, groaning where they lay.
Curses hurled every time I hesitated, and an incompetent superior who turned violent even against his own.
Ba-dump.
The superior who’d told us to follow only his orders vanished in the middle of the war.
Dead or deserted — I couldn’t even tell which.
Not that I had the luxury to care.
I searched for another superior, just in case, but of course there was none.
Ba-dump.
And so, every member of the command who’d demanded absolute obedience was gone.
Dead or deserted — I couldn’t tell.
I could only hope it was the former. Yes, I’d rather it be the former.
Ba-dump.
Enemies surged from every direction and we didn’t know what to do.
We’d never needed to know. We’d been nothing more than meat shields all along.
Ba-dump.
Demonic practitioners charging with blood-drenched swords.
Under the setting sun, the whole world seemed stained crimson.
Everything looked submerged in blood.
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
“……Se……”
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
A situation where I didn’t know what to do.
Drowning in a sea of blood, frozen and blank — then someone grabbed my shoulder hard and shouted.
“ELDEST SENIOR BROTHER!!!”
“……!!!”
What was that?
Just now, that was……
I turned my head and saw Eun-ho gripping my shoulder, worry etched across his face.
Is that so……
I’d been spacing out?
Ba-dump.
My heart wouldn’t stop pounding, as if what I’d just experienced had been real.
Ba-dump.
The situation was clearly different from my past life.
I wasn’t that “Jin So-un” from my previous life anymore.
“Eldest Senior Brother, are you all right?”
Besides, I wasn’t alone here.
SMACK.
“……!!!”
I slapped both my cheeks with my palms.
My cheeks stung, but my mind returned.
“It’s nothing. Drowsiness hit me.”
“……”
I patted the wide-eyed Eun-ho’s shoulder to reassure him, and while doing so, the hunter approached.
“……Representative. The tracking fragrance still has traces remaining, but……”
A question asking whether we’d continue the pursuit.
The reason I’d tried to rejoin the main group despite our strained relationship with the instructors was purely as preparation for the worst-case scenario.
These weren’t Education Pavilion instructors — they were Alliance instructors at the Hall Master level.
No matter how bad the relationship, they’d at least serve as capable swords in this place.
‘Though I suppose it’s my fault for not expecting them to be this worthless.’
They’d cared about their juniors enough to step down from their Hall Master positions, so I’d placed some hope in them — but how could they be so disappointingly the same?
“We’re not going.”
“What? The weather isn’t looking good right now. If a rain shower hits, we won’t be able to follow the tracking fragrance anymore……”
“Don’t you understand what those signal flares going off at sunset mean?”
They’d subsided by now, but the red signal flares that had bloomed alongside the sunset.
They were no coincidence.
“W-wait, so what exactly are you planning to do?”
A Righteous Path Association member who’d been listening to my conversation with the hunter cut in.
“If there’s tracking fragrance, we should follow the instructors right now!”
I didn’t look at him and murmured quietly.
“We’re not following the instructors.”
“What? Jin So-un, have you lost your min—”
“You’re the one who needs to find theirs!”
“……”
When faced with hardship, the easiest path for people to take is escapism.
Everyone who sets their first foot on a battlefield can’t easily turn away from that sweet temptation.
But it’s never the right answer.
“You still don’t understand? Even after seeing those signal flares? The instructors aren’t coming. Chasing after them now would be pointless.”
Force people away from a foolish choice, and they push back.
Because this is, after all, directly tied to their own lives.
“Jin So-un, who do you think you are to give us orders?”
As expected.
I let a light sneer slip.
In a clear wartime situation, I could enforce it, but right now nothing was certain.
“I have no intention of giving orders. If anyone wants to go, go. I won’t stop you. But if you want to stay, follow my commands from here on.”
“……!”
“Academy regulation four. In an emergency where instructors are absent, Academy students are to follow the commands of the Academy Representative.”
“Th-that’s……”
“I’ll give you one last choice. Those who want to go — go.”
With that, I turned away.
The man who’d been pushing back spat curses and began discussing with people who appeared to be his friends.
They then spoke with the hunter and started gathering people.
Meanwhile, I returned to my squad.
“We’re camping here for the night. Stagger the night watches by time slot so there’s overlapping coverage. Do as much first aid as possible on the wounded so they can walk on their own by tomorrow morning.”
“Understood.”
“Got it.”
“You should rest too, Young Master Jin.”
They were plain, no-frills instructions, but Namgung Seon-hwa took the lead and distributed tasks among the group, and everyone started moving quickly.
In the meantime, the group heading after the instructors seemed to have sorted themselves out, and about twenty people began moving under the hunter’s guidance.
‘They picked out only the able-bodied ones.’
Then again, people moving in the dead of night wouldn’t think to drag the wounded along.
“Is that going to be okay?”
I turned my head and saw Horse-Nose tending to the wounded while watching the departing group.
“Once they leave…… half the people remaining here are injured.”
Their thinking was obvious.
They’d figured minimizing the group and chasing the instructors was the best option.
A foolish choice that could only be made by those who’d never seen real combat.
I looked at Horse-Nose and asked.
“Horse-Nose, why didn’t you go?”
“……You said it back then, didn’t you?”
Horse-Nose looked me straight in the eye.
“That you’d do your best.”
Then he jerked his chin slightly, gesturing behind him.
“Meanwhile, what they’re doing is not the best.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
A rather pleasant one at that.
“Right. Moving now isn’t the best. But forcibly sitting them down isn’t the best either.”
“……”
I looked at a wounded person sitting in the distance and asked Horse-Nose.
“Can you get them walking by morning?”
“Jin So-un, don’t underestimate Qingcheng’s first aid techni—”
“Representative.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Horse-Nose said in a small voice.
“……Representative Jin.”
So he’d rather die than add the honorific?
“Fine, that’ll do. Treat them properly, Horse-Nose.”
“My name is……!”
“I know. Jong Chu-ak.”
“……!”
Looking at the frozen expression on his face, I curled the corners of my mouth upward.
“If that man walks properly by morning, I’ll call you by your name.”
“……”
With that brief exchange, I headed toward those who’d newly joined us.
Even though the night was deep, there was much to do.
***
“Why did the instructors leave you behind?”
“……”
This was the most critical question.
Instructors who’d felt keenly that a Divine Spirit hunt couldn’t proceed short-handed — if they’d abandoned the Academy students and disappeared, it surely wasn’t because of the Divine Spirit.
And they said they were going to the base camp to bring back more people?
If they couldn’t even consider that abandoning Academy students in the middle of the Demonic Reaches was more dangerous, then those bastards needed to be investigated by the Execution Pavilion.
Unless it was part of a deliberate plan to weaken the Murim Alliance’s strength, there was no way they’d make such a stupid move.
Then there was only one answer.
“What made the instructors go off on their own?”
“……”
Something else had happened.
They glanced at each other, evading the question.
Hostile glares shot between the silences, clearly showing their resolve not to answer.
Did these bastards still not understand the situation?
“Do you know how many Academy student corpses I saw getting here?”
“……”
“Some of them were better than you. You want to wait here for the instructors and become corpses yourselves?”
“……”
“As I said earlier, in an emergency you’re to follow the Representative’s commands. You saw how many red signal flares went off, didn’t you?”
Throwing around threats like that, the stony faces finally began to crack.
Sure — they might have received all the praise and treatment of being elites, but this was the first time they’d ever found themselves in a disaster like this.
On top of that, the able-bodied ones had taken the hunter and gone off to find the instructors.
Naturally, their morale crumbled first.
And sure enough, the reaction came immediately.
“Jin So-un. Are you really going to leave us behind?”
“Representative.”
“……Representative. Are you really thinking of leaving us behind?”
That wasn’t quite formal speech, and it wasn’t quite casual either.
I smirked.
“Why should I bother dragging along subordinates who won’t listen?”
“……”
Their faces grew even paler.
I dropped the smile and added.
“But if you follow my commands, I’ll do my best to keep you alive.”
“……!”
“That’s all I want.”
The Righteous Path Association members deliberated amongst themselves for a moment.
After a brief huddle of whispers, one of them finally spoke as their representative.
What kind of earth-shattering secret could there possibly be?
“Instructor No Jin-ha, he, well, that is to say……”
“That instructor bast— no, so what did the instructor do?”
The man swallowed once, then finally forced out the sentence.
“……He was kidnapped by the Divine Spirit.”
Shit, no wonder they couldn’t say it.
***
The nighttime ambush I’d feared most never came.
Of course, that didn’t mean it had been a restful night.
The tension-filled forest.
Demonic Beasts that could appear at any moment.
The red signal flares their fellow Academy students had fired into the sky.
No one could sleep peacefully carrying that kind of anxiety.
SNOOOORE.
GROANNN.
Mmnya, mmnya.
……Except for our Taeul Sect disciples and squad members, who were sleeping over in the corner.
“……Are their nerves just dull?”
“They’ve lived rough, so they’ve got no fear left.”
“For people like that, Namgung Seon-hwa and Murong Jae-hwa sure looked like they slept well too.”
“I saw it — someone pressed their sleep acupoints……”
“……Are they sane?”
While the Righteous Path Association members muttered about our squad with hollow eyes, Sa-ryeon approached me.
“Did you sleep?”
“No.”
“What…… were you even thinking? You put everyone else to sleep by pressing their sleep acupoints and then.”
“I was waiting for something. It never came, though.”
“For what?”
Red signal flares.
Distress signals from the Righteous Path Association members who’d left with the hunter group.
But not a single signal flare went off through the night.
Which meant either.
They’d safely rejoined the instructor group, or else……
“What was it?”
There was no need to show Sa-ryeon all my cards.
“……Nothing.”
That said, I had no intention of letting guilt stop me from acting.
Regret from my past life was more than enough.
“Go call the squad leaders. We need to set out.”
“Already? The sun hasn’t even risen yet.”
Exactly why we needed to move now. While our enemies might still have their guard down.
***
“We’re really moving with the wounded? ……Representative Jin?”
“I don’t know what Representative……nim is thinking, but with this many people, wouldn’t it be better to just select a smaller detachment and go?”
“Right. Moving everyone is just pointless suffering, isn’t it? Representative……nim.”
Tch.
What a bunch of nonsense.
Seriously, was it that hard to use honorifics in a chain of command? Either commit to it or challenge me to my face. And there they were, hedging with that half-formal crap because they couldn’t stop watching each other’s reactions.
“If you don’t want to come, you’re welcome to stay.”
“……”
But not a single person wanted to stay behind with the wounded.
“Then shut up and follow me.”
“……”
With that, our “agreement through dialogue” was settled, and we quickly finished preparing to depart.
The number of wounded was considerable, so forming a proper battle line was out of the question.
I’d never planned to in the first place.
Those with injured hands or arms carried those who couldn’t walk, with cloth binding them together.
Those who could still use at least one hand were given hidden weapons and rocks to provide ranged support.
At the vanguard, I placed the strongest and uninjured fighters. On the left and right flanks, personnel were arranged in order of combat ability.
Yang Ja-pyeong, our only guide, was positioned directly behind the vanguard.
So he could provide directions when I had to rush forward.
“Keep a steady pace. Moving consistently matters more than moving fast.”
“Where are we headed, Representative Jin?”
“The base camp. That’s where we’re going.”
“Without joining up with the instructors?”
“Didn’t they say the instructors’ destination was the base camp too?”
“……”
The conversation didn’t continue much longer.
Not because there was nothing to say, but because a Demonic Beast appeared.
“White-Faced Blood Spider!”
At this hour before dawn, most Demonic Beasts still awake would be ones like this.
I drew Sword Force and burst forward.
The creature fired webs like cannon shells.
The webs weren’t venomous, but once stuck to the body, they were maddeningly hard to peel off.
I deliberately flashed brilliant light as I executed the Taeul Eighty-Thousand Divine Steps.
Eight eyes spun wildly trying to track the luminous afterimage, and its round web slammed into bare ground.
The moment it frantically tried to locate me.
I split its belly clean in half.
SCREEE—!
After confirming the kill and returning to the column, the vanguard fighters who’d been running alongside me wore expressions of undisguised shock.
“Sword Force……”
“When did his skill grow again……”
They gaped in disbelief.
“Focus. Now isn’t the time to worry about anything else.”
“……R-right.”
“Understood, Representative Jin.”
As the sun began to rise, the number of Demonic Beasts blocking our path grew steadily.
‘Definitely different from before.’
Unlike the Demonic Beasts we’d encountered until now — the ones that eyed humans warily and refused to leave their territory — the ones appearing now charged ferociously, as if humans were their mortal enemies, or their prey.
Because of this, everyone at the front was soon drenched head to toe in Demonic Beast blood.
“Damn it…… If I’d known it’d be like this, I’d have stood at the rear.”
Of course, the rear wasn’t free from harm either.
Some waited for the Academy students to pass, then ambushed the most vulnerable point.
“Damn Demonic Beast bastards……!”
Less than one shi-chen had passed since we’d left for the base camp, yet everyone was visibly exhausted.
But no one suggested resting.
They’d begun to feel it too.
That the number of Demonic Beasts appearing was growing with each passing moment.
After roughly two shi-chen of marching.
We stopped for the first time.
“These bastards……”
“Why are they here……”
Several of those who’d been in the vanguard immediately rushed to the bodies strewn across the ground.
“Twenty-one in total…… How did not a single one manage to escape?”
While the Righteous Path Association members stared at the corpses with hollow expressions, I examined the wounds.
‘So they’re not even bothering to disguise it as an animal’s work anymore?’
The cross-sections of the wounds were unmistakably made by human weapons.
And on top of that.
Drrrr.
The Red Phoenix Bracelet trembled again.
I hadn’t been able to confirm it until now, so I’d refrained from stating it outright. But now I was certain.
“Damn it.”
The Demonic Cult was in this forest.
And they clearly intended to kill us all.