Chapter 132
Chapter 132
Release the Dogs (2)
We were almost there. The boat Kairus was on would soon arrive in Bennett City.
[“Swift Blade is the most practical, and Cloud Seizing Art is a stepping stone to Moonwalk. Moonwalk is a finishing technique granted only to the head of the Featherwing family and cannot be learned by anyone else. Once you master Cloud Seizing Art, the path to Moonwalk becomes smooth.”]
This was written on the very first page of the Cloud Seizing Art manual. When I read it while traveling by car, I had a hard time figuring out what the hell it was even saying.
As soon as I boarded the boat, I went back to reading Cloud Seizing Art in my cabin, and finally managed to understand what that line meant.
“Shit.”
Vaguely, I had begun to grasp the essence of Cloud Seizing Art. I also finally understood what it meant for Swift Blade to be “the most practical sword art.”
“This thing’s made for war.”
Swift Blade had evolved into a form of swordsmanship refined to handle a wide variety of combat scenarios.
It offered tools for every situation, from one-on-one duels to small skirmishes and even large-scale battles. Peerless Wind and Local Wind, for example, were just a few of the cards it had up its sleeve.
Cloud Seizing Art, on the other hand, ignored small-scale fights altogether.
“You can’t even use Cloud Seizing Art unless you’ve mastered Swift Blade first.”
Which, honestly, made sense. It’s like trying to find a detour without knowing your starting point.
To learn Cloud Seizing Art, you had to reach the state of Grand Resonance with Swift Blade. You had to feel widely and deeply.
After reaching Grand Resonance, you had to expand the influence of Swift Blade to an enormous scale before you could even begin Cloud Seizing Art.
How far?
To the sky.
“Swift Blade that reaches the sky.”
You’d have to seize the winds high up in the atmosphere, control their temperature and humidity, then clash them at the right angle and speed to form and manipulate clouds.
To put it simply, the thundercloud I roasted Nora with back in Pontus operated on the principle of Cloud Seizing Art.
To be exact, it was just one of the processes covered in the art. The difference was—
“Doing it at that altitude, at that massive scale, with clouds and thunder like that.”
Dragon spouts, squalls, microbursts, wind shear, hurricanes, cyclones...
Can a human really create this kind of thing? That thought briefly passed through my mind.
Then came another one—colder and more chilling.
‘Is this... really power a human should possess?’
It was on a completely different scale than Swift Blade. It could devastate tens of kilometers in radius. Reaching it required talent, effort, and time—but it wasn’t in the realm of impossibility.
And this was swordsmanship?
If this was swordsmanship, then a battering ram might as well be a toothpick.
“…Thinking of Dana Watson’s case, I guess you could call it swordsmanship. And besides.”
I closed the Cloud Seizing Art manual for a moment. Honestly, all that crap about whether people should have this kind of power or not—those idiot-level philosophical questions—could be thrown out the window.
‘I need it.’
I wasn’t going up against a single city or a single group. To achieve my goal, I had to go up against a nation.
And not just any nation—I had to tear through the interference of the Valorn Empire, a monstrosity of land and population, and butcher that bastard Emperor.
I might need a power that could sweep through dozens of kilometers. So I had to learn it.
“I even touched it once.”
I’d succeeded once underground. It was just a coincidence, but still—having pulled it off once by chance didn’t make the experience any less real.
They said Cloud Seizing Art was hard to use on a small scale, but I had already done it…
‘Hipflask.’
It looked like I could actually use it. The process itself was different from how Cloud Seizing Art generated clouds.
But if you looked at the result, it had plenty of potential uses. Sure, the mist created from the hipflask would rise into the sky and evaporate without leaving a trace, but…
‘That’s all humidity anyway.’
If the foundation of Swift Blade was Peerless Wind, then Cloud Seizing Art’s foundation was cumulonimbus clouds. You had to control wind that had the right temperature and humidity. I could adjust the humidity using the hipflask, even if I didn’t do it myself.
‘And to think it was this focused on large-scale combat…’
That meant I needed to rely on Nimbus’s vibration blade and Swift Blade for the smaller skirmishes and petty conflicts that happened so often in the city.
“Testing it’s gonna be… ah, fuck.”
Muttering to myself, I stepped out onto the deck. The ship was sailing through rolling waves, with the night sky stretched wide above.
“The sky, huh. What a heartbreakingly beautiful goal.”
The founder of the Featherwing family once had a dream. It wasn’t something like conquering the world or becoming the strongest.
They just wanted to fly through the sky, it seemed. And standing there, staring into the night sky, I could sort of understand my family founder’s dream.
‘And they actually did it.’
But while I was now learning the sword art born from that pure and innocent dream shaped by the passage of time, my own goal was nothing like that founder’s.
“Let’s see…”
I drifted into thought.
There’s something about gazing up at the night sky from a ship adrift on the sea—it pulls your mind into realms of imagination and speculation.
The Emperor had erased my records, but kept me alive. That meant he still had use for me.
One day, if things got bad enough, he might send someone to offer me the restoration and glory of my family.
If that day ever came—if that moment arrived—
Could I really take the hand of the Emperor, the bastard who had reduced everything I loved to ashes?
“No. Revenge really does seem like the right answer for me.”
I couldn’t do it. If the Emperor ever reached out his hand, I would undoubtedly cut it off. I had two goals.
And I had just decided the order of priority between them.
“What’re you mumbling about all by yourself like a lunatic?”
While I stood there, taking in the breeze beneath the night sky, a voice came from beside me. It was Nora Galatea.
“How’s Irena doing?”
“Still smells like puke every time she opens her mouth.”
Even though she had boldly boarded like it was nothing, Irena had suffered some serious seasickness. Toward the end, she didn’t even have anything left to vomit—just kept leaking bile into the sea. Watching her over the past few days had left quite an impression.
“She just has to hold out a little longer. She said she hopes she never has to ride a ship again.”
“She’d probably adjust quicker if she just let her body get used to it.”
Nora replied after hearing what I said.
“Unni’s having a blast, you know that, right?”
“She deserves to.”
It must feel like rediscovering a forgotten bank account filled with a fortune. If that doesn’t make you happy, you’re not even human.
“I’ve heard of the Kellogg family too. It’s pretty rare for a knight that skilled to come out of a family in charge of books and numbers in the Empire, right?”
“She basically went from accountant to company commander.”
The Kellogg family wasn’t a lineage that had honed the sword through generations. At my words, Nora let out an impressed little “Oh.”
“So you’re saying unni’s skill is about company commander level?”
No need to answer. Nora hadn’t disagreed with the comparison I’d just made anyway.
“But she looks like she’s aiming for captain, too.”
“She’s set Dana Watson as her target, so she’s aiming higher than captain.”
Nora swung herself up to sit on the ship’s railing and began kicking her legs, grinning.
“When Lunaseeker agents end up like that, what do you usually do?”
“You think I’d answer that? Don’t insult me.”
No way I’d spill agency secrets like that.
“I once saw comrades who hadn’t eaten for a week and hadn’t slept in two days start turning on each other, doubting and breaking down.”
Grinning slyly, Nora began to speak, and I could tell she had a point to make.
“There was this guy who used to sneak a smile to another cadet whenever the instructor wasn’t looking. When that guy was hanging off a cliff, he let go of his hand just to save himself. I even got stabbed in the back of the head by a friend’s knife.”
“You really enjoyed a buffet of life’s bitterness.”
“All of it in a single day.”
Nora Galatea might still be young, but the density of her life so far had been intense. Lunaseeker training was designed to put someone through hardships in a single day that others might experience over a lifetime.
And going through days like that—day after day—that’s what it took to become a Lunaseeker. To survive and earn your status as an agent, you had to be way more than just mature for your age.
Of course, I hadn’t exactly lived a gentle life either.
“She hasn’t gone through something like that.”
“And we’ve never lived as Valorn nobles, have we?”
I knew Irena hadn’t had it easy. I was sure of it. A daughter of a family like the Kelloggs could never have had a comfortable life. But unlike Nora, the kind of hardship she endured wasn’t the kind others would sympathize with or pity.
If someone said the only daughter of the Kellogg family had a rough life, the beggars scraping for coins in the street would probably spit on the ground and curse her out.
At my words, Nora hummed in thought and nodded.
“Talking shit with a brat under the night sea helped clear my head.”
I decided to leave Irena alone.
“You think she’s going to get better?”
“What choice do we have if she doesn’t?”
Even if she stopped improving, she was still a Kellogg. One reason I brought her along was her talent—but that wasn’t the only one.
“Do Lunaseeker trainees who fail get another chance? You can at least answer that much, right?”
At my question, Nora just smiled and said nothing. Irena had to get better on her own. It wasn’t something I could fix.
And if she couldn’t improve—then all I could do was hope her end wouldn’t be a miserable one.
“If someone under your command fails, the one in charge has to take responsibility, don’t they?”
“If that’s how you see it, oppa.”
People ought to be completely free, and everyone is responsible for their own actions. That applied to Irena, too.
That was Nora’s answer—carrying a different perspective from mine, shaped by growing up in the Empire.
No matter where those thoughts might lead, the ship we were on had entered the Antaria Grand Canal.
“…Shit. What the hell is that?”
What greeted me at the docking point was a grotesque sight—five corpses strung up like laundry, entrails dangling from the tops of two streetlamps.
“Should we report this?”
At Nora’s question, I replied.
“Report it to who? The police? The Security Corps?”
I spat on the ground and started thinking. I had no clue what the hell was going on here.
“There’s no point to it.”
Drip. A drop of blood trickled down one of the hanging corpses and hit the pavement. A pool of blood had already formed beneath them.
The crimes I’d heard of or seen in Bennett City always had a motive. People acted with a clear reward in mind.
But what gain could there be in stringing up corpses like laundry with their guts out?
“Maybe it’s a warning? You know, like… if you see this—”
I let out a sigh at Nora’s words.
“Kid. This is the Antaria Grand Canal. It’s managed by the Canal Operations Committee.”
Who would you be warning by doing something like this? All this would earn you was a gruesome death.
“We’ve arri—”
Irena had come up to the deck just as the ship stopped, but when she saw the scene before us, she froze. Her face turned pale, and the rest of her words died in her throat.
“What is that…?”
“It’s not some decoration made just for us.”
It looked like they were just hung there. I doubted anyone wanted to threaten us specifically.
“Did you report it to the Security Corps…?”
I shook my head. Even if I had, they wouldn’t come. Below the hanging corpses, the spilled blood had pooled and dried into a dark crust.
That much time had passed. There wasn’t a single trace of police or Security Corps presence. They weren’t coming.
“I’m thinking of making a call to the hiring office on the way back.”
“The hiring office? Why?”
Irena asked, eyes still locked on that horrific display.
“Cleaning up this mess is fine and all—but I’m not doing it for free.”
The hiring office didn’t just call in construction workers. If no one's placing contracts, they can’t recruit labor. Sometimes, contractors themselves proposed a job, and the office would find someone willing to fund it.
“If I post: ‘Anyone want to pay to get rid of this psycho’s handiwork?’—someone will show interest.”
“What if no one does?”
That wouldn’t happen. Because someone owned this canal.