Chapter 1119

BOOOOM!

A deafening crash rang out, and the ground shook.

A thousand monsters rampaged without distinguishing friend from foe. Three thousand defenders stood ready to fight to the death. And four Supreme Peak masters flashed across the battlefield, clashing again and again.

The battle around the East Gate began in greater chaos and brutality than ever before.

Even the man who had designed and set this whole situation in motion could barely suppress his fear, despite putting all his strength into it.

—Kyaaaaa!

Hyuk Mujin watched the monsters charge, his eyes trembling as they roared.

They stood over one jang¹ tall, with limbs as thick as the trunks of great trees. Their strength and speed far exceeded human limits. Their charge felt like a wave nothing could stop.

How has Captain fought so many of these things?

Jin Taekyung came to mind at once. He had always fought at the front, at the center of everyone else, risking his life.

And Mujin understood all over again why he had survived so many crises. He understood the enormous gap Taekyung had filled alone, and the weight of the responsibility he had carried.

So this is what it felt like.

Hyuk Mujin let out a ragged breath. His question would never reach Taekyung.

He was afraid. Afraid enough to throw down his sword and run as far as he could.

I would have done it before. No question.

But things had changed. The heir to a venerable fabric shop had become a martial artist of the Jin Family of Taiyuan, and he had come too far to turn and run.

The people who had gladly taken him along despite his lack of talent and skill had taught him too much. Jin Taekyung most of all.

“Never retreat.”

The words slipped past his trembling lips. They were less a command to the allies around him than a vow to himself.

They were also words the reckless Third Young Master—who now existed only in Mujin’s memories—had once said to him.

“Once you retreat… you’ll never be able to move forward again.”

So Hyuk Mujin did not retreat.

He suppressed the fear surging up from the depths of his chest, steadied his trembling sword tip, and charged at the monsters with all his might, roaring at the top of his lungs.

Just as Jin Taekyung had. Just as the other companions who had always believed in him did.

SHWEEEE!

A fierce wind whirled around him, wrapping his entire body.

Anyone who has experienced war agrees on one thing.

Battle was another word for madness, and war was all that madness gathered in one place. Keep cutting down the enemy before you and dodging the attacks that never stopped coming, and soon you would forget everything you knew.

Mujin clearly remembered hearing those words from an elderly man when he was a child.

He also remembered what the old man had told him when Mujin declared he would become a martial artist.

Hope is dazzling, but reality is cruel.

Yes. That was probably how he’d put it.

Now Mujin felt the truth of those words down to his bones.

THUD!

A heavy blow sent a shock through his entire body.

He had no time to react. Even if he had, he could not have dodged it completely. His strength had run out long ago.

KRRRUNCH!

How many times had the sky and ground turned over in his vision, bleached white? The first thing Hyuk Mujin felt after he was flung a long way was pain, great and small, sweeping through his body.

Blood came up with his cough and ran from the corner of his mouth.

His aching joints and twisted innards told him the truth: he was in terrible shape.

Damn… it.

Mujin gritted his teeth and swallowed the blood rising in his throat.

The old man’s face had long since faded from his memory, but his words had not. Reality was cruel.

To Mujin, at least.

Only fifteen minutes, and look at me.

He could barely make his body move. A weak, self-mocking laugh escaped him.

Losing control had not made the monsters any less powerful. The creatures Dark Heaven had made were as strong as they were hideous.

Without the fine sword still in his hand, Mujin doubted he could have brought down twenty of them on his own.

Come to think of it, I only managed that much because of Captain.

He looked at the blade. Even after cutting through the monsters’ tough bones and flesh, it had lost none of its keen edge.

The sword had been forged from part of the iron chain Jin Taekyung had given him after finally breaking free of his iron balls, just before the Star-Array Grand Banquet. It was the very chain the Fire Gate Clan had made to bind criminals of its own sect.

Only part of that chain had gone into the blade, but it contained a full four nyang² of Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron. Its strength and sharpness made it worthy of being called a fine sword.

People who knew its origins sometimes teased Mujin that the sword was too good for him. He always bristled, but deep down, he knew they had a point. He had been stuck in the First Rate realm, making no progress. He owned a sword this precious only because Taekyung cared for his subordinate.

“Always snapping at people… and still making sure they have everything they need.”

Mujin gave a faint, amused snort and slowly forced his screaming body upright.

Then he wrung out what strength remained and rushed the nearest enemy from behind.

Slice!

Perhaps it was exhaustion. His sword tip wavered at the last moment, but it still cut through his target’s neck. This enemy, after all, was made of flesh and blood like Mujin.

SPLAT.

The headless fanatic staggered and fell into a pool of blood. Looking down at the body, Mujin felt his heart sink.

If only we’d had a little more strength. Just a little…

The strategy using the captured corpse sorcerer had worked. Most of the thousand monsters had fallen into confusion, and the three thousand defenders had charged into the chaos, driving their enemies back without regard for their own lives.

But the enemies they faced were not all inside the walls.

While the East Gate defenders gave everything they had to fighting the monsters, Dark Heaven’s fanatics climbed over the walls using hooks and ladders. The moment they entered the battle, they tipped the balance away from the defenders.

Even now—

“……!”

“……!”

The eight-character creed, steeped in madness and all too familiar by now, rang out with a muffled force.

Mujin saw fanatics pouring down from the walls. He saw his exhausted allies, and the monsters beginning, one by one, to come back to their senses.

He heard the strong blare of a horn, now only a few hundred jang¹ away. And he saw the face of someone who had recovered his smile as though nothing had happened.

“Your struggle ends here.”

Mujin could not hear the words. But he could see the black-robed man’s lips moving far away, before the tightly shut gate.

The man’s companion had been killed by the monsters under his command as soon as the battle began. This sorcerer had managed to retain some control. Dozens of monsters still shielded him, and he was alive to enjoy a victory that, after one brief scare, seemed all but certain.

Yeah, maybe it really is over. But…

If Mujin ran away here, where would he ever win?

Hyuk Mujin muttered to himself as he staggered forward.

Forward, not back.

Whoooosh!

Even through his dulled senses, he felt the violent rush of air. A monster’s fist, backed by hundreds of geun³ of force, came down toward the crown of his head. It would crush him in an instant.

Then—

Slice.

A sharp streak of Sword Energy came from somewhere and split the thick bone and flesh.

“It’s too late. If you don’t want to die, get back! Now!”

That face. That voice.

But Hyuk Mujin did not stop for Song Ilseom’s warning. More precisely, he heard nothing at all.

At that moment, only one person’s voice echoed in his ears like a hallucination.

“Mujin.”

Jin Taekyung.

The man Mujin wanted to be like more than anyone—and the man who had shown him that he never could be.

Mujin moved his lips, stiff with dried blood, remembering their conversation before the battle.

“Yes. Go ahead.”

SHWICK!

The hiss of something cutting through the air from his blind spot answered him instead. But Song Ilseom was not the only one who wanted Mujin to live.

THUNK!

A fanatic charging Mujin from the side arched backward like a bow.

Ju Hwaran drew her sword from the collapsing man’s back. A dozen or so enemies who had been moving to stop Mujin changed direction and rushed her instead.

KRRRANG!

Steel rang out amid the unending screams and shouts. Mujin walked as though entranced along the path they had opened wider for him.

He left everything around him behind and listened to the voice still ringing in his ears.

“If something goes wrong—I mean, on the slightest chance that it does…”

Taekyung had been different then. There had been no laughter in his face, no trace of mischief.

“At least die where I can see you.”

And then, facing his subordinate, who had gone rigid, he’d forced a strained smile.

“Of course, that won’t happen. But if it did, I’d be able to avenge you, wouldn’t I?”

It was the first time Taekyung had said anything like that.

Through all the dangers they had survived together, he had only ever told Mujin one of two things.

Run.

Or make sure you survive.

Whatever danger came, Taekyung was always the one at the center, the one out in front. He had never hesitated to take the lead in this damn gamble they played with their lives.

To protect a subordinate, a companion, his master—or someone he had never even met.

Mujin could not help respecting him. And he could not help giving him the answer he wanted.

“Of course we’ll win this time, too. But yes. If it comes to that, I promise I will.”

Perhaps that was when Mujin had first begun quietly turning the word death over in his mind. When he had truly prepared himself to die.

But…

If I’m going to die, I won’t die for nothing.

He forced up a corner of his blood-crusted mouth and brought down the sword in his clenched hand.

Slice!

The two fanatics blocking his path fell at the same time, as though they had planned it. So easily that it looked like a scene from a play.

Then, at the fanatics who had stopped short, eyes wide at this unexpected turn, a fierce torrent of saber energy swept in.

KRRRUNCH!

Beneath a fountain of blood came a cold voice, strangely at odds with the ferocity of the attack.

“Go. If that’s your choice… I’ll open the way.”

That was all.

Sama Pyo plunged among the enemy without hesitation. A strong hand caught Mujin’s shoulder as he stumbled.

“Hyuk Mu…”

Mujin quietly shook his head at Taishan.

He knew what Taishan wanted to say. Killing the black-robed corpse sorcerer, now just twenty jang¹ away, would not change who won this battle.

But Taekyung would have said that even if they died, the trade would be worth it.

“Hur…ry.”

It took nearly all Mujin’s strength to get the word out.

Taishan watched him silently, then tightened his grip. And with one short sentence, he used all his strength to send Mujin flying far away.

“Let’s go eat something good later, Vice Captain.”

SHWEEEE!

Wind tore past Mujin’s body. He answered Taishan in his heart.

We will. We’ll eat until we burst.

And then the black-robed man’s wide eyes were right in front of him.

Slice!

A flash carrying the last of Mujin’s strength swept across the corpse sorcerer’s neck.

In a battle where thousands—tens of thousands—were locked together, one person’s death might mean nothing.

But the single head rising into the air was enough to change the battle around the East Gate.

Thud. Clatter.

The head fell. The ritual bell dropped from the dead man’s loosened hand.

At the same instant, the roughly three hundred monsters that had survived the terrible melee and were still rampaging stopped moving.

“……!”

“……!”

For one stretched-thin instant, silence fell.

Some stared wide-eyed. Some smiled faintly.

And someone else, who had made all of this possible, felt a shiver run down his spine as he silently looked at the head at his feet.

No—not at the head. At the clean cut across the corpse sorcerer’s neck.

At the trace of what people under heaven called Sword Energy.

It wasn’t the sword…

It had happened for only an instant. Perhaps, with his mind already half gone, he had imagined it.

That did not matter. He had finally done it with his own strength.

He had proved, at least a little, why he’d been able to defeat twenty monsters, and why he deserved to stand alongside companions who were far more than he could ever hope to deserve.

And just as a feeble smile formed on Hyuk Mujin’s lips—

BOOOOM!

A blast like the sky splitting open shook heaven and earth. An immense wave of qi flung open the tightly shut gate.

Wooooooong.

The air trembled.

Through the faint darkness, a shadow wreathed in an aura as immense as a mountain leaned toward Hyuk Mujin, standing alone before the gate.

“What is your name?”

In that moment, Mujin knew this was where his life would end. He would not be able to keep the promise he had made to Taekyung before the battle.

“Fire Dragon Pavilion… No. Swift Wind Sword Hyuk Mujin.”

He answered more calmly than he ever had before.

Then, with the shadow’s quiet reply, he felt an immense force drive into his chest.

“I’ll remember it.”

POOM!

Hyuk Mujin’s vision plunged into darkness.