Chapter 277

“They hid something in the forest. I followed the trail, and it led that way.”

Finn also had a knack for tracking people. Wherever humans passed, traces remained.

The scent was different, and footprints were left behind. Even a single twig broken on their clothes could give them away.

Finn had found such signs, and Encrid, having wandered the continent and met all sorts, guessed she might have once worked as a bounty hunter.

Of course, her past didn’t matter—what mattered was that it was useful.

That was how they found the hidden tunnel from the village.

It was a village built beside a small forest, leaning slightly northward.

In the distance, the Pen-Hanil River could be seen.

Inside the forest, they had dug a burrow to hide monsters.

Every one of them was drugged and staggering. There were wolves with their tongues lolling out, and even traces of the alchemist whose arm, leg, and head had been removed before.

That bastard had really stuck his hands into everything.

It was a wolf-type monster, but its legs were those of a deer.

If such a combination succeeded, the world called it a chimera—

A man-made creature, neither monster nor beast.

“Who’s there?!”

There were five—either handlers or monster feed.

“Attack me and you die.”

At his sudden words, they attacked. And died.

One who’d been sitting in the back with eyes darting about freed the remaining monsters.

‘Kreee!’

A lion with a snake’s tail charged. A half-finished chimera, something like a manticore, came rushing only to lose balance and tumble across the ground.

Encrid split its head in two.

With a ‘shhk’, the blade cleaved the skull, spilling brains and dark red blood.

Jaxson and Sinar also joined the fight.

Esther climbed into a nearby tree and simply watched.

The man who had released the monster tried to slip away, but an arrow a handspan long lodged in his head.

Finn’s work.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

The weapon was one Encrid had taken from a Black Blade Bandit earlier.

‘She uses it twice as well as that bandit did.’

She hid the firing slot under her sleeve, and when her target looked away, she aimed for the back of the head.

Unless the target was unnaturally alert, they’d never dodge a decorative “arrow” sprouting from their skull.

The released monsters were savage.

‘Grrraaah!’

‘Screeeech!’

A human-faced hound with transplanted snake venom sacs sprayed poison from its fangs. But they were all half-complete.

There was no reason to waste much time killing them all.

It still took more than half a day to kill them, wipe out the village, and clean up.

“Next one’s four days on foot.”

At the elf commander’s words, Encrid nodded.

From then on, it was like a traveling circus tour—

Find a village, enter, strike, beat, kill, clean up.

Over and over again.

When village bandits saw the chief and monsters dead, most ran.

That made things easier.

“If the higher-ups find out, do you think they’ll leave us alone? They’ll think we’re staging a rebellion! Anyone who values their life, follow me!”

Any bandit with a functioning brain decided this and fled, rallying their own forces to leave.

Every organization had its ambitious types.

Encrid didn’t bother chasing each one down.

It would have been a waste of time.

“It feels wrong. Leaves a bad taste.”

Some perceptive bandits muttered this as they ran.

Only a handful remained. The villages Encrid struck quickly became quiet.

Even when villages shared information and prepared, it was pointless.

When five of their guards died without so much as a groan, throats slit, the rest of the bandits were terrified.

“What the hell! Is a ghost loose here?!”

The elite assassin who led the village was drowning in fear.

The impossible had happened.

Six of the guards by his side had vanished without a sound.

He hadn’t sensed a thing.

No—that wasn’t quite true. He’d seen it.

In the corner of his bedroom, a hand reached from the shadows to grab a guard’s neck and twist it—like someone who’d broken thousands of necks before.

What was most terrifying was that there was no sound of the neck breaking.

Even more frightening was that the dying guard seemed not to realize he was dying.

His expression showed no shock—his sharp eyes still scanned the room, his tense mouth still clamped shut as his neck twisted and killed him.

“There!”

The assassin-turned-chief threw a poison dart.

A deadly toxin—fatal with just a graze—disappeared into the darkness.

Several guards stabbed at where their comrade had vanished with spear-like blades.

When they stirred it up, a horrifying sight appeared.

A hole in the floor behind the corpse—when had that been made?

“When…?”

That was the chief’s last word, his dying gasp.

A strand dropped from above and sliced his neck clean through with a ‘shhk’.

An alchemically crafted assassination tool—a string knife.

Thinner than a pinky, the razor wire beheaded him and held the head in the air.

“Aaagh!”

Killing the rest of the guards was no trouble.

In their panic, some even stabbed each other.

Jaxson, hanging upside down from the ceiling, hurled two silent knives to finish it.

When things like this happened, what else could follow?

The villagers all fled.

The place the group had stayed in became as quiet as if a ghost had moved in.

A breeze whistled through the village square.

“All we need is a wraith to pop out and it’d be a perfect picture.”

Finn remarked.

Encrid agreed, but he had no intention of slowing down.

Of course, they wouldn’t leave it like this forever. After wiping out the village’s combat force and slitting the chief’s throat, Sinar released her crows.

‘Caw!’

When she extended her arm toward the trees, a black bird landed on it.

The trained crow flew straight to the Border Guards to deliver the message—

That troops were moving in to take over the village the bandits had abandoned.

In the meantime, Encrid’s group kept moving, heading for the next village.

When needed, they bought horses; when not, they released them and scaled cliffs.

At times, the path clung halfway up a cliff, but such rough mountain trails weren’t particularly difficult.

‘Rattle.’

Pebbles scattered underfoot, tumbling down.

If a person fell here, they’d be lucky to ever walk again—the cliff was that high. Yet the whole group clung to it without fear.

Finn wedged a dagger into the cracks, using her elbow guards to hammer it deeper before gripping and climbing. Looking down, she said:

“If someone fell and died here, it’d be kind of funny in its own way.”

It wasn’t hard to see why she’d say that.

And what about the panther following them?

Its claws dug into the cliff like a peerless sword, climbing as if trudging through mud.

It looked little different from walking on level ground.

Naturally—those were the claws and skill to scale sheer castle walls.

Encrid, Jaxson, and Sinar needed no mention—they could all take care of themselves.

Encrid climbed steadily, Jaxson looked as though glue had been smeared on his hands, and Sinar even joked as she moved, tapping along the cliff with ease.

“Ever kissed someone on a cliff, fiancé?”

“…Do you think I have?”

“Sometimes I wonder if my fiancé’s still a virgin.”

Whether it was a cliff that would break your legs if you fell, or a leisurely tearoom, it made no difference to her.

That Encrid could take such banter in stride was remarkable.

In truth, one of them dying here would be about as likely as a crow being killed by an ant.

Soon, they reached the next village.

In a place where slaves were stockpiled, Sinar spotted three of her own kin.

She didn’t even furrow her brow.

“Foolish to be captured.”

Her sharp rebuke drew no reply from them.

One male elf, freed, immediately grabbed a dagger from the ground and drove it into the belly of a smooth-faced bandit six times.

“Ugh, guh!”

The man—who had been begging for his life moments before—was unprepared.

Encrid caught the elf’s muttered words:

“A peach even worms wouldn’t eat.”

Thanks to the elf commander, he’d become familiar with elven idioms.

Spoken in the common tongue, it was easy to grasp.

A peach, left to grow, almost always attracted worms—but if not even worms would eat it?

It meant an utterly useless, worthless person.

It wasn’t hard to guess the source of his hatred.

The two female elves likely suffered the same treatment.

They’d been violated—and the male elf too.

‘A man without discrimination, huh.’

A broad, disgusting taste.

It wasn’t pleasant, but across the continent, such things weren’t rare.

Could one cut down and kill them all with a sword?

As a child, he’d thought that as a knight, he could.

After leaving his village, he learned it was impossible.

It wasn’t about talent.

It wasn’t about losing to some boy barely in his teens.

He’d been young and short-sighted.

As the idea of a village grew into that of a territory, and then into the entire continent, it changed.

He realized—

Even as a knight, even as a battlefield disaster who could cut down a thousand men with one sword, he couldn’t cut down such things.

So should one give up and let it be?

Remain just another flashy swordsman?

Was that what he’d wanted as a knight—just to wear shining armor and radiate glory? Was that all?

Of course not.

Never once had he thought so.

The knight he’d dreamed of wasn’t just a killing tool good with a sword.

While such thoughts filled his mind—

“Want to wipe them all out? Burn everything down? Go ahead. I’ll help if you want.”

Jaxson approached, eyes blazing red. It didn’t seem like calculated words—just something said in the heat of the moment.

Which made Encrid wonder—

‘Is he sick in the head?’

The guy said strange things sometimes.

Encrid gathered his thoughts and asked:

“All of a sudden?”

“Your eyes are burning.”

At that, Encrid closed his eyes briefly, then opened them.

The earlier flames were gone—or at least, the destructive fire Jaxson had seen had vanished.

“Let’s go.”

Encrid focused on the task at hand.

He hadn’t started thinking differently just because he’d become as skilled as a junior knight. The fire in his chest had always been there—

Now, it was just visible.

“Oh? There’s a dwarf too?”

Was this some sort of “collect all the races” game?

This village had dug holes everywhere to hide slaves.

“What the hell are these bastards?!”

A few bandits who resisted had their throats slit under the chin, spraying blood—Jaxson’s work.

He’d moved silently, hiding his presence, using something he’d picked up.

“Got a nice artifact as a gift.”

The way he openly said it after taking it from a corpse—he definitely wasn’t normal.

Not a single bandit reacted when Jaxson got behind them.

One by one, he slit their throats with a dagger.

When eight noisy ones died, the rest knelt trembling.

The village chief was long dead.

This one wasn’t a mage or assassin. He wasn’t even good with a sword—

Just a schemer who set traps in his bedroom.

But with Sinar and Jaxson there—

‘Enough said.’

Encrid barely had to lift his sword—just once, to parry two of the village’s stronger fighters with [Tutor Blade] before cutting with Snake Step.

‘Thwack, thwack!’

Two bodies hit the ground, and no one else dared approach.

With such brutal methods, they took the village.

All the remaining slaves were freed, and any who still resisted were cut down.

Most villages were the same—once a few strong ones fell, the rest surrendered or fled.

In all, they scoured five hidden villages of the Black Blade Bandits over two months.

A mere two months.

Given their pace, that was fast.

By the time the bandit officers realized half their villages were gone, the other half couldn’t be saved either.

‘Those insane bastards!’

‘Bang!’

An officer slammed a candlestick onto his desk in rage.

The rosewood split and splintered, leaving a groove in the center.

“Huff, huff!”

The Black Blade Bandit officer’s fury didn’t subside—in fact, it burned hotter.

At last, he hurled the silver candlestick out the window.

‘Crash!’

Red, yellow, and blue shards of expensive stained glass shattered and sprinkled down.

The candlestick fell into the garden of the three-story estate.

The gardener, pruning with scissors, jumped in fright and bowed his head.

He quickly retrieved the candlestick and went to find the butler.

Something had happened.

Of course, they could know nothing.

The officer kept his identity well hidden.

Most estate staff knew him only as a palace noble and bureaucrat.

But inside, he was boiling.

In the royal capital, a new guild had formed—and it was uniting the underworld at frightening speed.

‘What the hell is the Language Revival Guild?’

Their stated purpose was idiotic.

Among the gangs they crushed were several criminal guilds under his protection.

That meant he couldn’t pull out.

‘Damn it.’

He couldn’t even deal with the ones targeting his dens.

Even if he stepped in, nothing would change—he had no troops left, no swordsmen to send.

The enemy’s preparations were better.

They were striking villages deliberately.

So he had no choice but to report to the main branch.

The thought that he might die like this filled his head.

‘Shit, shit!’

His operations were wrecked, the villages he’d built over a lifetime gone.

He wanted to scream, but his attendant stopped him.

“Will you throw away your value just like this? Find out the name of the one who did this. That’s the best move.”

Sensible advice.

The officer pulled every string—bribing the information guild with gold, hiring mercenaries.

At last, he had a name.

“Markus, you son of a bitch!”