Chapter 70
As befits a heroine from a wuxia story, Yuchi Hye had swept all her long hair back and wore a long garment that covered her entire body, yet she looked not the least bit old-fashioned.
If anything, she was far more alluring than Hee-ra, whom I had been with until recently.
‘Is this a scam? How can someone look that beautiful dressed like that?’
Even with a completely unadorned face, her beauty made it impossible to look away.
Neither her tousled hair nor the bits of straw stuck to her face could conceal her beauty.
If anything, her disheveled appearance only highlighted her pure charm.
‘The main heroine, all right… She’s seriously insane.’
The collarbone peeking subtly through her disheveled clothes was enough to drive a man mad.
I wanted to pounce on her right then and there. She was the very embodiment of a femme fatale.
To think I could netori a woman like this… Once again, I found myself praising ‘Heroine Netori.’
“…What… do you intend to do with me…”
When I approached her, Yuchi Hye glared at me with tears welling in her eyes.
Unlike before, when she had been startled, her expression was resolute.
So she wasn't just a passive heroine? I could sense a firm will in her.
“Kyaaah!”
-Thud
But she didn't answer.
Instead, I knocked her unconscious and lifted her up.
In any case, I had to abduct her according to plan.
-Clang!
-Clang!
But then, a sharp sound suddenly rang out, and two swords fell right in front of me.
Had I… almost died just now?
Startled, I looked around and saw the old master clicking his tongue and the one-armed captain.
“Damn it… You brat! Take your hands off that girl!”
“Well done, No. 6. Take her away just like that. Anyone who can, cover No. 6!”
“Stop him! I said stop that bastard—urgh, this brat?”
“Hurry!”
I didn't know what was going on, but it seemed the captain had saved me from being killed by the old master.
This world was terrifying. Goosebumps rose all over me.
-Dash
Just as I was looking for an escape route, one of the squad leaders appeared in front of me.
Judging by the blood pouring from him, he had been cut several times.
This is brutal. Seriously brutal.
“No. 6! Follow me!”
“Yes, sir!”
Maybe he wasn't a squad leader for nothing, because despite being injured, he began carving a path through.
Fortunately, it seemed the Wind Cloud Trading Company had no one else as skilled as the old master,
and once the other squad leaders stepped up to cover us, there seemed to be no one who could stop us.
-Slash
“Aaaaargh!”
“Stop them! We have to stop them, even if it costs us our lives!”
The Wind Cloud Trading Company desperately tried to stop us, but they were outmatched.
The Black Wind Squad had outnumbered them from the start, and even the old master could no longer help, so the outcome was only natural.
But what kind of woman was Yuchi Hye that they were using every ounce of strength to abduct her, while those people were willing to give their lives to protect her?
Was there some secret I didn't know about?
-Clang!
“Ghk! You bastard, Deokbae! Stop looking around and run!”
Gasp, I almost died again.
I had been running while looking straight ahead and failed to notice the sword rushing at me from the side.
This was my first time in such a chaotic melee, and I couldn't adapt.
Fortunately, my senior appeared and saved me before I was struck by the sword.
“Thank you!”
“Never mind that. Just run!”
But this guy seemed perfectly fine; seeing that he didn't have a single wound, I began to suspect he had only been pretending to fight.
Still, I guess he had saved me. Jeez…
-Tap-tap-tap
-Tap-tap
“No! Protect the young lady!”
“Grrraaargh!”
After that, the Wind Cloud Trading Company continued trying to impede us, but failed to stop us.
After a desperate struggle, the squad leader, my senior, and I managed to escape the battlefield.
I could hear the old master's howls behind us, but judging by the captain's repeated screams, it didn't seem as though he would be able to chase us immediately.
“Phew…”
The battle had been far more difficult than planned, but we had ultimately succeeded, even if we were battered and broken.
My senior and I let out sighs of relief at that fact.
“Ha, haha! Hahaha… We actually pulled it off.”
“Indeed, brother. It really wasn't easy.”
With the thought that it was over, my whole body began to tremble. As my tense muscles relaxed and my strength drained away, my body no longer felt like my own.
Since I wasn't the only one feeling that way, we decided to take a brief rest after crossing halfway up the mountain.
I set down the unconscious Yuchi Hye and reviewed the battle we had fought today while taking a short break.
During that time, my senior took out the golden wound medicine he had been carrying, applied it to the squad leader's wounds, and bandaged him.
“It’s thanks to you, No. 6. You somehow found where the target was hiding.”
“I was lucky.”
“Luck is part of skill. We almost failed the operation… Urgh, you bastard…!”
While receiving treatment, the squad leader praised me. So, as a token of my gratitude, I took a green dagger from my inventory and stabbed him with it.
The squad leader, who had let his guard down, had no chance of blocking the surprise attack.
The wound he had barely kept closed burst open, and as poison mixed into it, the squad leader's face turned black.
When I looked behind me, my senior was staring at me with a bewildered expression.
“Hey, this is how you stab someone in the back.”
***
Abduction was merely a means; my true objective was to netori Yuchi Hye.
Therefore, any plan was subject to change at any time if it helped me netori her, and I was in a position to betray them whenever I wanted.
The reason I had followed the Black Wind Squad's orders was that doing so gave me the greatest chance of pulling off a netori.
But things were different now.
The seriously wounded squad leader, my senior, who had never been a match for me in the first place, and the unconscious heroine—
If I removed those two, I could netori her whenever I wanted, so why bother?
In a situation this perfect, I had no reason to follow the Black Wind Squad's orders.
Besides, if I had to eliminate those two anyway…
Couldn't I make things a little more entertaining?
So I came up with a new plan.
First, I would wake the unconscious Yuchi Hye with Heal and Purification, then,
just around the time she woke up, kill the squad leader, who would have let his guard down.
“You, you bastard…!”
“You never said you were going to make me do something like this!”
“Cough! Ghk, you… What the hell are you talking about all of a sudden…?”
“I’ll see you in the afterlife!”
“Urgh! Ghk, graaaargh!”
And along with that, I would mix in some words that sounded meaningful.
The squad leader might have no idea what I was talking about, but Yuchi Hye, who was listening, would have plenty to think about.
“Deokbae, have you gone mad?! What are you doing?!”
“Brother… I’ll be joining you soon…”
“D-don’t, don’t do this! You bastard, what the hell are you—Graaagh! Eek, blood, blood! Eeeeek!”
Then I would kill my senior as well, saying I would follow him.
I was grateful that he had saved my life once, but I hadn't liked him ever since he stabbed me in the back.
“Phew… Brother, I’ll send this man on his way and follow you shortly…”
Finally, I would subtly let her hear me say that I intended to let Yuchi Hye live.
That would lower her guard around me.
“You… What are you doing…?”
All right, I'd laid out all the bait. Now, shall I deceive her properly?
***
“Oh… You’re awake?”
“What is this…? You abducted me, and then you did this to your own comrades…”
As expected of a righteous heroine, Yuchi Hye glared at me with a horrified expression after I killed the squad leader and my senior.
She had been abducted by me, but she couldn't forgive the vile act of killing comrades? Was that it?
Good. The more virtuous she was, the greater the chances my plan would succeed.
“Comrades, comrades… Haha…! You call those men my comrades?”
“…Aren’t they? Then were you forced to join them?”
“No, they were my comrades, weren't they? My comrades. They were my comrades. Haha…”
“…?”
“It’s cold. There’s an abandoned house nearby; it’ll be better than staying out here. Come with me.”
“H-hey!”
I guided her to the abandoned house while pretending to be a man of mystery.
It was one of the places known only to my senior and me.
Yuchi Hye kept her guard up and watched the situation, but perhaps she grew frightened when I moved away, because she followed me right away.
“What will you do if I run away like this?”
“I suppose I’ll have to find you. The mountains are dangerous at night.”
“Is that really the only reason…?”
“Could there be another reason?”
When I said that, her expression changed strangely.
It was a complicated expression, a mixture of suspicion, puzzlement, relief, and concern.
“Come inside. Just getting out of the wind should let us hold out until sunrise.”
“…Are you going to let me go?”
“That’s right. Otherwise, I would have had no reason to kill those men.”
“……I don’t understand. Why…?”
Good, she'd finally taken the bait.
To be honest, from here on, it was a gamble. A high-risk, high-return gamble at that!
It was a gamble I would never have attempted in reality, but this wasn't reality.
So I would take the chance.
“Phew… It’s a long story.”
***
“I had a younger sister. I had grown up without parents, and she was a truly good child. I could do anything for her. She alone was the light and hope of my life.”
“My younger sister, who worked as a server at an inn, dreamed of running an inn of her own. She had even chosen a name: the Brother-and-Sister Inn. She would handle the guests, while she told me to do the cooking, and every night she dreamed about the future.”
“But is it that the poor aren’t even allowed to dream? One day, when I returned from work, my sister was there to greet me as a cold corpse…”
“My cute, innocent sister had always been loved by everyone. Even the inn’s guests cherished her. But apparently, one martial artist took a dislike to her.”
“They say they kicked my sister, who couldn’t dress up or wash often because she was poor, calling her dirty and smelly… Then, saying they would wash her, they poured the liquor they had been drinking over her and trampled her mercilessly. It was far too cruel a torment for that poor girl…”
“In the end, that was how she left this world. A martial artist’s drunken violence took her life in the flower of her youth…”
“When I heard the news, I was furious. I hurled words of hatred at the innkeeper and guests for failing to help her. But there was nothing they could have done. The martial artist was the true culprit.”
“So from that day on, I devoted my life to taking revenge. I did everything I could to grow stronger, whether the work was filthy or cowardly. That was when I learned about the Black Wind Squad. They were an assassination group that targeted martial artists…”
“Once I learned that, I gave everything I had to the Black Wind Squad. Then I commissioned them. I asked them to avenge me by killing that bastard. But absurdly, he was already dead… It was terribly hollow.”
“With the target of my blade of vengeance gone, the purpose of my life disappeared. I wandered aimlessly every day. But when the Black Wind Squad saw me like that, they gave me a new purpose—a ridiculous goal: to exterminate every martial artist.”
“Yet it was a strangely alluring goal to me. Martial artists were all the same, anyway. As far as I was concerned, they were all people who deserved to die. So I joined the Black Wind Squad to kill even one more of them.”
“But the Black Wind Squad was not the place I had imagined. At some point, I realized I had become someone who was killing civilians. I had become the martial artist I had hated so much.”
“I wanted to die. But I couldn’t die. I had to kill at least one more. Then, one day, I saw you.”
“When I looked into your eyes, I thought of my sister. My sister, who always stood strong no matter where or when, and never lost her smile…”
“I was ashamed. I couldn’t bear to face my sister. So I’m going to put an end to this now…”
“I don’t know why you’re being targeted, but please… Stay alive.”
I spat out every word I had made up on the spot.
As I went on, even I no longer knew what I was saying,
but I somehow continued, calling to mind all the wuxia novels I had read up to then.
Even after I finished speaking, I could barely remember what I had said,
but seeing Yuchi Hye fall silent, it seemed to have had some effect.
“If you walk east from here, you’ll come to a large village. You can leave when the sun rises. I… will go in the opposite direction and draw their attention.”
So, reassured, I cast out my final fishing line to reel her in.