Chapter 304 : The Grasslands (4)
Chapter 304: The Grasslands (4)
She had been scrutinizing the terrain ever since they arrived in the area. No, she'd been scanning her surroundings with her senses on full alert throughout the entire journey.
It was all because of what Il-mok had told her a few days prior.
'The o-only thing I can do to h-help the Young Master is this.'
If she achieved Transcendence in the Ghostly Spirit Divine Bow, she might actually become a peerless master just like he predicted.
But that was a dream for the distant future. As it stood right now, her combat skills were practically zero help to the group.
So she'd decided to lean into her strengths.
Taking full advantage of the sensory perception Il-mok had praised, she had been acting as their permanent lookout.
Thanks to that, she didn't miss the faint traces left near the river where the Jarchigud tribe had supposedly been.
Blades of grass that didn't match the height of the surrounding scrub, as if livestock had grazed on them. The faintest indentations of trampled earth and flattened weeds cling to the riverbank.
They were incredibly subtle signs. If you looked at them one by one, they wouldn't seem like anything special.
But taken together, they pointed to one conclusion: some group had been camped here until just a few days ago.
"Can you follow those traces?"
"I-I'll try."
Jin Hayeon, who had been quietly observing the exchange, chimed in.
"Young Master, there's a risk of straying even further from our route to the Tianshan Mountain Range if we chase them."
"If the trail goes cold or leads too far out, I'll give up. We're just the advance party anyway. A few days' detour for the sake of scouting the area shouldn't be a major problem."
Il-mok hadn't been thinking of a reckless pursuit either.
'Even if they are nomads, they do not constantly roam the pastures without rest.'
Whether it was because the climate had worsened too much. Or the water in the stream had dried up. Or their livestock had eaten almost all the grass in the pasture.
Those were the reasons they moved to find new pastureland. Their nature was to stay put for extended periods once they'd settled somewhere.
And the fact that traces still lingered here meant it hadn't been long since they'd left.
Il-mok concluded that they were most likely camped at another nearby pasture.
"Follow the trail, Miss Jeong."
"Y-yes, Young Master."
Following Il-mok's order, she stepped up to the front, closed her eyes, and took a deep, steadying breath.
"Haaah... Phew..."
The weight of the whole group staring at her with such high expectations would have normally paralyzed her, but thanks to everything she'd been through recently, she knew how to push past the pressure.
'That's right. Pushing me to preach, pushing me into those sparring matches... The Young Master only put me in those situations because he believed I was strong enough to handle them.'
Steeling herself, she snapped her eyes open and pushed the Ghostly Spirit Divine Bow to its absolute limit.
The vast, unobstructed expanse of the great plains flooded her vision, and a wildly paradoxical sensation washed over her body.
It felt as if the entire world was infinitely expanding outward, yet simultaneously collapsing inward to her all at once.
Within that strange perception, she examined the traces she'd found moments ago.
As she swept her gaze across the vast plains, entirely new sets of tracks burned themselves into her vision.
While some of the prints were scattered and random, a distinct portion of them merged into a single continuous trail that stretched far into the distance.
"This way."
Having uncovered a path that was completely invisible to everyone else, she took the lead and guided the group forward.
They followed her lead, leaving the pasture behind and traveling for quite some time.
When Jeong Hyeon reached her limit and pressed her throbbing head against the pain, Il-mok spoke to her.
"Just tell us the direction and rest for a bit. There's no need to keep running the art nonstop like this. From now on, just check the direction of the trail with the Ghostly Spirit Divine Bow once in a while."
"I-I'm sorry, Young Master."
"Don't be. Without you, we wouldn't have been able to follow these traces at all."
From then on, they continued the pursuit as Il-mok directed.
Once Jeong Hyeon recovered, she'd use the Ghostly Spirit Divine Bow to confirm the trail's direction, and while the group moved the way she indicated.
The trail stretched on longer than expected.
The one silver lining was that it didn't veer entirely from the route to the Western Regions.
After two days of following the traces northwest, they arrived at a new stretch of pastureland and spotted a settlement in the distance.
"Well done, Miss Jeong."
Il-mok offered his praise, but his expression didn't look particularly pleased.
"I think everyone needs to get their masks out."
Screams and the smell of blood were spreading in every direction from the settlement ahead.
* * *
Sensing combat, Il-mok and his party donned their wrathful deity masks and approached the settlement.
As the distance closed and the situation became clearer, Il-mok let out an involuntary chuckle filled with confusion.
'What the hell is that?'
The nomads were fighting. But their opponent wasn't human.
"Is that... a mountain goat?"
It certainly looked like a mountain goat.
The problem was its size.
'The fuck? It’s the size of an elephant???’
It was an absolute unit of a mountain goat, boasting such a ludicrous size that the phrase 'as big as a house' immediately sprang to mind.
"Young Master, I believe it's a Spirit Beast."
"...So Spirit Beasts really do exist."
He had already suspected as much the moment he saw its ridiculous size, but hearing it confirmed out loud finally made it click for Il-mok.
He'd been in this bizarre world for years now, but this was his first time seeing a Spirit Beast.
Just then, the enormous spirit goat charged and sent a nomad flying through the air.
"Miss Jeong!"
Before Il-mok even finished the command, Jeong Hyeon had already drawn her bow mid-stride and released the string.
Twaaang!
Her arrow cut through the air with a crisp whistle, aimed straight at the goat's eye.
Fwip!
But the goat twisted its head just in time. The arrow struck its forehead instead.
Or rather—
Ting.
The arrow stuck its forehead and bounced right off.
'...Not only big, but it’s also tanky.’
Il-mok let out an incredulous chuckle at the ridiculous display, but they had still managed to accomplish their primary goal.
The monstrous goat let out a bizarre cry, then turned its head and glared at Il-mok's group.
Hrrrnnk.
Blowing hot steam from its snout, the mountain goat pawed at the dirt like an enraged bull, then barreled straight toward Jeong Hyeon, effectively bulldozing the surrounding nomads like a bowling ball to its bowling pins.
The surviving nomads desperately thrust their spears and loosed arrows at the beast, but everything bounced off without exception.
Whether others attacked it or not, the goat only had eyes for Jeong Hyeon.
Watching this bizarre spectacle, Il-mok unsheathed his Ascension Sword in a flash and planted himself firmly in front of her.
"Alright. So standard attacks aren't going to cut it."
If ordinary methods wouldn't work, then all he needed was something far from ordinary.
Il-mok forcibly disrupted the flow of the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword, which had been coursing through him as peacefully as a calm sea.
Like a violent typhoon making landfall, the demonic energy surging through his meridians roiled and aggressively funneled into the Ascension Sword.
Crackle!
In an instant, fierce arcs of lightning comprised purely of Sword Force swirled around the blade.
Bzzzzt!
The moment Il-mok charged straight at it with his sword wreathed in lightning, the mountain goat's entire demeanor shifted.
As if its survival instincts were screaming that it had made a terrible mistake, the crazed fury in its bloodshot eyes cooled rapidly.
This goat apparently didn't suffer from genuine anger management issues like Wi Jin-hak. Its rage was selective.
And just before Il-mok's Ascension Sword collided with the goat's forehead mid-charge—
BOOM!!
The goat kicked its legs frantically and veered just barely off course, dodging Il-mok's strike by a hair's breadth.
'A Spirit Beast is a Spirit Beast for a reason, huh?'
But even after narrowly dodging the attack, the goat didn't slow down and was hell-bent on ramming into Jeong Hyeon.
Whoosh!!
Il-mok materialized a solid platform of energy in mid-air, then stomped it with enough force to shatter the construct and launched himself after the mountain goat like a missile.
Bleaaaat!!
The goat realized too late what was happening and let out a panicked shriek. It tried to twist its body again, but it was a step too slow.
CRUNCH!!
The Ascension Sword pierced clean through the massive goat's skull.
Whoosh!
Riding the momentum of his lethal strike, Il-mok swooped down to scoop the paralyzed Jeong Hyeon out of the beast's path and threw himself sideways.
CRAAASH!!
A split second later, the goat's massive corpse crashed on the spot where Jeong Hyeon had been standing and left a deep trench due to its sheer leftover momentum from the charge.
Gazing down at the colossal carcass that had just gouged a trench into the landscape, Il-mok mused internally.
'Should I consider myself... lucky?'
His gaze was fixed squarely on the goat's horns.
Then a trembling voice came from right beside him.
"C-could you p-put me down? Y-Young Master."
Turning his head, Il-mok realized that Jeong Hyeon, currently securely scooped in his arms, looked like she was on the verge of suffering a total nervous breakdown.
* * *
Roughly thirty minutes after Il-mok slaughtered the giant mountain goat, in an encampment dozens of miles away...
"WHAT!?"
The Khagan of the Mangud tribe roared in fury.
"You expect me to believe those pathetic refugees from the north managed to take down the Lord of Khangai Mountain? Do you honestly expect me to believe that!?"
The reason for the Mangud Khagan's rage was simple.
The Spirit Beast known as the Lord of Khangai Mountain was prey they'd been hunting for days.
Since ancient times, there had only ever been one way for humans to hunt animals stronger than themselves.
That is by using sheer battle of attrition and overwhelming numbers.
It was a brutal cycle of harassing the prey from a distance, retreating, and tracking it again until the creature finally collapsed from sheer exhaustion.
They had employed the exact same method.
They'd climbed Khangai Mountain, found the Spirit Beast, then peppered it with arrows from afar, alternating between retreat and pursuit.
But a Spirit Beast was a Spirit Beast. The thing refused to go down easily.
Then the Mangud Khagan had hatched a scheme.
He'd remembered the Jarchigud tribe that had recently settled nearby.
By carefully herding the Spirit Beast’s escape route, they led the beast to the Jarchigud tribe's settlement.
The plan was to let the Spirit Beast and the Jarchigud tribe wear each other down, then move in for the kill once the beast was exhausted.
Better yet, once the Jarchiud warriors were completely wiped out, the Khagan planned to absorb their surviving women and children, bolstering his own tribe's numbers.
So when word arrived that this grand plan had fallen apart, the Mangud Khagan's fury was beyond containment.
As killing intent rolled off the Khagan's body in waves, his subordinate dropped to his knees and shouted.
"It wasn't the Jarchigud tribe that killed it! O-outsiders intervened and took it down!"
The Mangud Khagan glared with bulging eyes toward the Jarchigud settlement.
"How dare they steal our hard-earned prey."
After seething for a long moment, the Mangud Khagan shot to his feet and barked his orders.
"Prepare for battle immediately! We must take it before they absorb the Spirit Beast's divine energy!"
What he was after was the goat's inner core.
He believed that if he obtained the inner core of that Spirit Beast, which was called the messenger of the Tngri, he would be able to overcome the wall blocking his path and reach the realm known as 'Baatar'.
'Once I break through that wall, I will return to that place once again.'
He gritted his teeth as he recalled the massive western tribe that had driven the Mangud tribe out to this place.