Chapter 811

“East. You mean east.”

Magic Johnson turned his head to check the direction. For the Skeleton King, that was unfortunate.

He had to fight to hide the shock on his face. The shock filling his mind was harder to shake.

Why on earth?

To the Skeleton King, a monster, the Demon Realm language was practically his mother tongue.

Unlike Magic Johnson, who had been watching the rear of the formation, he’d stayed beside Jin Taekyung at the front the whole time. He’d heard enough of the conversation to understand it perfectly.

The Ant Lion said most of the monsters went west. I’m sure of it.

His thoughts tangled together. Jin Taekyung’s expression hadn’t changed in the slightest, and for a moment the Skeleton King wondered if he’d misheard. But no. However many times he went over the exchange, his memory stayed the same.

That vile human… lied.

So what did Jin Taekyung’s lie, and this situation now, mean?

After a brief moment of thought, the Skeleton King found the answer himself. It was the answer he’d already suspected and had tried so hard to ignore.

No way.

His pupils trembled as he faced what he could scarcely believe. Just then, Magic Johnson looked away from the darkened east and turned toward him.

“Did you send your minions east to search—hey. Are you listening to me?”

“Hm? Oh. Of course.”

“What were you looking at?”

The Skeleton King had looked at Jin Taekyung without realizing it, but he couldn’t say so. The instant he heard Magic Johnson’s voice, his heart had lurched. He forced himself to settle down, then gestured with his chin toward the dead Ant Lion’s corpse.

“That one. I thought it might move well if I brought it back as an undead.”

“Hmm, not a bad idea. But it burrows deep into the sand, so humans like us couldn’t ride it. And aboveground, its size would make it too conspicuous.”

“Then I’ll give up on it. Come to think of it, controlling something like that would take a lot of magical power.”

Had he answered convincingly? Had Magic Johnson noticed anything strange about his behavior?

As Johnson slowly stroked his chin, the Skeleton King pushed down his anxiety and hurriedly continued.

“But what were you going to ask?”

“Oh, right. I was going to ask if you’d sent your minions to search the east.”

“The eagles and griffins?”

“Right. Didn’t they already go out and come back? If the monsters fled east, I’d have thought they would’ve spotted them.”

Magic Johnson was right. The Skeleton King had already sent his subordinates east.

While everyone else regrouped and rested, a dozen or so eagles and griffins had taken to the sky after the monster army fleeing frantically across the desert. His magical power had soon run low, ending the undead’s pursuit without results. But he knew, at least, that few monsters had gone east.

“Well…”

His voice trailed off. Beside Magic Johnson, Jin Taekyung watched him with a dark, steady gaze.

Damn it.

The Skeleton King didn’t know if the choice he was about to make was right.

Then he remembered something Jin Taekyung had once said—words that had calmed not only him, but everyone around him.

If you can’t trust yourself, trust me.

He recalled the words and repeated them to himself. In that instant, his hesitation ended.

“I lost sight of them quickly, but there’s a good chance most of the monster army fled east.”

The Skeleton King trusted Jin Taekyung’s judgment—no, his friend’s judgment.

Perhaps more than his own.

Even before we met the Ant Lion, I’d put the conflict lingering in the back of my mind aside.

Now all I had to do was tug on the thread I’d barely managed to grasp and find out what lay at the other end.

But I can’t do that right away.

I had to be meticulous. I couldn’t leave them an opening.

I sorted out my thoughts, then gathered a few of the people in command.

“We’ll split up our forces and move out.”

My abrupt announcement sent a ripple of unease through the group. Team Leader Choi was the first to object.

“Weren’t we all going east together?”

Most of the monsters had headed east. That was what everyone except the Skeleton King and me believed, so his question made sense.

Assuming what they believed was true.

“Team Leader Choi.”

“Yes?”

“When did I say that?”

“But…”

“I know what you mean.”

My voice came out dry, so unlike my usual voice that it sounded strange even to me. I looked at Team Leader Choi’s stiff face and went on.

“But we can’t act on the Ant Lion’s information as if we know it’s true. It’s too dangerous.”

“You mean it could be a deliberate trap?”

“Yes.”

It struck me again: I was pretty good at lying.

I also knew a truth I’d learned in both Murim and the modern world.

Authority.

A lie told by someone with authority is remarkably persuasive. People who trust that person are ready to believe it.

Just like now.

“They lost the battle and ran, but they still outnumber us by more than five to one.”

Five thousand.

An army that had numbered well over ten thousand had been cut to a third in a single battle. But we’d taken losses, too.

Even with an overwhelming kill ratio, the two hundred or so people we’d lost amounted to a fifth of our force.

If the monster army was a pie too big to finish in one sitting, we were a muffin someone could swallow whole.

“We need to be careful. We should split up and pursue them.”

Xiao Shen nodded.

“I agree with Sir Jin. If we act on false information, we could walk into a trap—or head the wrong way and lose the monsters.”

“Exactly. Splitting up would lower the risk.”

Team Leader Choi furrowed his brow.

“I understand why you want to split up, but… wouldn’t that leave the units vulnerable to being picked off one by one?”

Any commander would worry about that, but the chance of it happening was extremely low.

The monsters fled west, not east.

I swallowed the words on the tip of my tongue and answered without hesitation.

“We’ll keep the units close together. Even with communications disrupted by the high concentration of magical power, we should still be able to maintain a reliable connection.”

“Hmm. I agree with Jin,” Magic Johnson said. “By my rough calculation, a hundred kilometers¹ or so between units should be close enough.”

I looked at him in silence, then answered with a heavy heart.

“That’s right. We’ll cover more ground, too.”

The Rub’ al Khali Desert was said to be the second-largest desert in the world. Its size was staggering.

Even Team Leader Choi seemed to realize anew how large it was. He reluctantly nodded.

“If we assign a hundred people to each pursuit unit… we could cover the southeast and northeast as well as the east. Understood. There’s no time to waste, so let’s move quickly.”

He was about to leave, but turned back before he’d taken a step.

“You’ve left one thing out,” I said.

“Mr. Jin Taekyung, what do you mean—”

“West. I’m sending a pursuit unit west, too.”

“What?”

“But that’s the opposite direction.”

“That’s right.”

I looked around at everyone.

“But if we travel a few more hours west from here, we’ll reach the oil fields. The very place the message The Prophet left for me points to.”

“……!”

“You heard the message yourself,” I said to Yamamoto Genji. “Tell them. Am I right?”

He’d looked miserable ever since I mentioned splitting up. Now everyone was watching him. He glanced around nervously and nodded.

“Uh, well. He said it was a land where black jewels were buried, so I think that’s probably right…”

“Good enough. We’re going west.”

“Wait. We are?”

“Yes. You, me, the Skeleton King, and Magic Johnson.”

Yamamoto Genji’s face went deathly pale.

“Jin Sama²! How can you do this?”

“Right here.”

“That’s ridiculous… Leave me out of it! I want to stay with the others!”

“No. I won’t leave you out. I have no intention of leaving you out. Go back.”

After answering firmly, I continued speaking to the people who were blinking at this unexpected turn of events.

“We didn’t come here for the monster army. We came for The Prophet. We need to follow his message at least as far as the place it points to. We’ll be back soon. Until then, keep pursuing the remaining monsters, but avoid a clash.”

“No!”

Team Leader Choi, who’d been staring at me blankly, shouted in protest.

“If The Prophet was in the west all along, why would the monsters run the exact opposite way?”

“That’s true. But if most of them don’t know The Prophet exists, like the Ant Lion, they have every reason to run east.”

“Mr. Jin Taekyung. Do you really believe The Prophet is there?”

“I don’t know. But even if he isn’t, you and the others will still be pursuing the monsters, so nothing will go wrong. And if he’s in the west… we’ll have enough strength to take him on.”

Three S-rank Hunters.

No, four, if we counted the Skeleton King. And with his abilities, he could bring undead soldiers into the fight.

“But…”

Just as he parted his lips to say something, I delivered the final blow.

“This is an order.”

“……!”

“Hurry. Before the monsters get any farther away.”

I turned away. Then I sent a Sound Transmission, as though in passing, to someone who’d stood there without a word all this time.

—From now on, don’t answer or react to anything I say. Just listen.

For a brief moment, the Skeleton King’s eyes, which had been trembling violently, settled into a deep stillness.

After that one-sided discussion, I spent a short while circulating my qi, then set out west.

I wasn’t alone. The Skeleton King, Magic Johnson, and Yamamoto Genji came with me.

There were only four of us, but we were a powerful force, and we moved at a speed that couldn’t compare to when we’d been traveling with the army.

Whoosh!

Amid the scenery flashing past, I spotted pools of thick, sticky blood. I didn’t have to stop and examine them to see how much had been shed, or how far the trail spread.

A few dozen monsters couldn’t have left all this behind. Everything the Ant Lion had said was true.

Though that’s not the important part.

I kept running, muttering to myself. We crossed rolling dunes and passed through an open stretch of wilderness.

After about thirty minutes, we reached a canyon between two facing cliffs. Only then did I begin to slow.

“Hah… Hah. C-could you slow down a little?”

Yamamoto Genji was panting. Magic Johnson wiped his sweat-soaked forehead and spoke to me.

“Jin. How about we rest here for a bit? I don’t see any monsters around.”

Instead of answering, I came to a complete stop and slowly looked around.

Cliffs stretching into the distance. A narrow passage. Good terrain.

Little room to move. A narrow escape route.

I looked up at the sky. In the distance, I saw a shadow flapping its wings against the faint moonlight over the desert.

An eagle.

Magic Johnson followed my gaze and frowned.

“Still birds out here? With this concentration of magical power, they should hardly be able to live here.”

“Not impossible, if they aren’t ordinary eagles.”

“What?”

Magic Johnson blinked, not understanding. I stepped in front of the canyon entrance and blocked the way.