Chapter 165
Chapter 165
Pathfinder (1)
While Irena and Simid were talking about rebellion, Kairus flew through the sky and arrived near Bennett City.
"Ah, this damned city."
Darkness had fallen, but the gas lamps illuminating Upside still shone bright. Trains came and went, and all kinds of people, swept up in the seven emotions and six desires, indulged in pleasure and were wounded by crime.
Still, it was lovable.
This filthy and hideous city, untouched by either the Empire or the Republic, could become the nest of the fallen bird, Kairus.
But that nest already had owners. Like a cuckoo chick, Kairus had to push out one of the eggs inside and take its place.
"Nice weather."
Balancing precariously in mid-air, Kairus looked up at the sky. The wind was blowing, and dark clouds had gathered.
It looked like a spring rain was coming. In his experience, after this spring rain, the world would be fully ready to welcome spring.
"Tapas Aiola."
The Pathfinder of Lantern District. One of the rulers of this city and a powerful figure who distributed an enormous amount of narcotics.
He was the one who had to die by Kairus’s hand today. The egg Kairus would push out of the nest.
"I have to survive."
Kairus had a reason he had to survive.
'About 30 minutes.'
That was how long it would take for the other members of the Operations Committee to arrive after he attacked Tapas Aiola’s base, located on the outskirts of the city.
Kairus had to kill Tapas Aiola within 30 minutes and then face the other four members of the Operations Committee.
And he had to survive for a certain period of time to prove that he could replace Tapas Aiola.
‘Simple and difficult.’
Just kill one and survive against four.
It was so simple, and that made it all the more difficult. Currently, the Lunaseeker Agency was actively cooperating to conceal Kairus’s whereabouts.
They would block any telegrams or phone communications.
To be more precise, the executive branch and ruling party of the Aylan Republic were cooperating for their own purposes.
"Let’s do this. Let’s see who dies here."
The fact that the sky was already covered with rain clouds was a good thing.
It meant there was less Kairus had to do to win.
Arriving at his destination, Kairus raised the Veil of Plumed Mist into the sky. The dark green blade looked like it could pierce the heavens.
"A drizzling spring rain doesn’t suit a damned day like this."
As if responding to Kairus’s muttering, hidden thunder roared and the clouds blanketing the sky thickened.
The predicted spring rain was replaced by a thunderstorm. As the sky changed, so did the wind.
Weather forecasts were never to be trusted anyway.
The sky lit up white-hot, and several bolts of lightning struck near Tapas Aiola’s hideout.
KWA-BOOM!
With a deafening roar trailing behind the light, Kairus dove sharply through the sky toward his destination.
"…."
Kairus's body landed on the ground. A downpour so heavy it was hard to see ahead soaked everything standing on the earth.
"What the, what the fuck!?"
Another flash. A white blindness.
A pale bolt of lightning connecting heaven and earth appeared, then vanished.
Kairus opened his mouth.
"Came to see the Pathfinder. Tell that junkie bastard to come out."
Thunder roared in response to his declaration.
"That lunatic."
"That bastard, it's Kairus."
The men guarding the area all rushed out with weapons in hand and stared at Kairus.
They weren’t just street thugs—they were men working under Tapas. They had already been informed about who Kairus was.
"We told you not to come! The Operations Committee isn’t some kind of joke…!"
He couldn’t finish his sentence. Kairus didn’t have much time.
As he moved his sword, a gale slammed into them. The man shouting was crushed like he'd been hit with a giant hammer, and the rest were flattened to the ground, unable to withstand the pressure of the wind.
Kairus looked toward Tapas’s mansion. It was an excellent residence, worthy of being called a grand estate.
He didn’t plan to go in and fight.
He planned to act like the wolf from a fairy tale.
"To hell with your brick house."
The wind ran. It ran like a lemming. Even knowing that the wall of the mansion stood in its way, the massive wind kept running. A violent gust slammed into the mansion.
A dull crashing noise echoed as the mansion slowly began to rip apart. The roof was the first to be torn off and sent flying, followed by everything inside being dragged out and flung into the sky.
"Ugh… Aaaaaaaaah!"
People floated in the sky. With no wings, they couldn’t fly. They simply drifted, carried by the wind.
In mere moments, they were so high up that their desperate screams sounded like faint moans.
The floating people died midair. Their corpses drifted. The wind subsided. Everything swept up in the storm began returning to where it belonged.
THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD!
Everything that had been flung into the sky came crashing back down. Like an imitation of the torrential rain pouring from the dark clouds. Shattered corpses and the wreckage of the mansion rained down.
A horrific massacre that unfolded in the blink of an eye.
"Thoughts."
Amidst the debris of the torn-apart mansion sat a woman. A beautiful blonde in modest clothing, with a long smoking pipe in her mouth.
What filled the pipe wasn’t tobacco, but opium. The woman slowly rose to her feet. She was wearing a short-hemmed, black halter dress.
"Why?"
If it weren’t for the carnage surrounding her, any man would have cast his gaze at her body first. Saying she had three heads wouldn’t have felt like an exaggeration.
The blonde beauty in the short halter dress, holding a broom in her hand, had violet eyes hazy as if dreaming, intoxicated by drugs. Her forearms were covered with needle marks, as though she had injected herself countless times.
That woman was Tapas Aiola. Kairus didn’t have the luxury to look anywhere else.
“Feeble. Conclusion.”
Kairus flinched from a sudden wave of dizziness. If he’d let his guard down for a second, his head would’ve slammed into the ground.
The woman’s index finger pointed at him.
“Regret.”
It wasn’t a proper sentence. But Kairus didn’t have time to reply.
His eyes stung, and his mind turned sluggish. He just wanted to lie down and sleep.
A crushing drowsiness weighed down on Kairus, so heavy his head nearly drooped forward.
“Goddamn…!”
Flash.
A flicker of light. Kairus, groggy with sleep, quickly leapt backward.
The afterimage of a blade swinging right in front of him vanished, and Tapas Aiola still stood exactly where she had been.
Click. The sound of the blade being drawn from the broom and returning to it followed.
‘Th-this… is so… slooow…’
Sleep dulled his thoughts, and dulled thoughts delayed his reactions. Could he even fight in this state?
Kairus wielded heavenly energy. But in the end, he was the one who had to command the forces of nature.
If the one giving orders was nodding off, neither wind nor cloud could move properly.
“Sleep. Death. Regret. Your… nightmare.”
Not sentences, just a string of words. Occasionally, she managed to attach a particle. Her voice slipped into Kairus’s ears.
Even with the rain beating down so hard, that soft voice clearly struck his eardrums.
Could he fight like this? Or more fundamentally, could this even be called a fight?
‘This bitch.’
Kairus stared at his opponent. He wasn’t asleep, but it felt like seeing someone in a dream.
There was no presence coming from her at all. She just stood there like an apparition.
Another attack came at Kairus, who was once again resisting sleep. It slipped through the wind, between the falling rain, as if the blade had always belonged there.
Naturally.
In short, Tapas’s attack resembled natural death.
‘This… Sopor wasn’t even the real issue.’
He had to win against an opponent whose presence he couldn’t even sense, all while enduring unbearable drowsiness.
Kairus pulled out a container from his pocket, threw a pill into his mouth, and swallowed. It was a dried fruit from the South, made into pill form.
It was packed with caffeine. The problem was…
‘It’ll only keep me from falling asleep.’
The fatigue weighing down on his body wouldn’t change. In a daze, Kairus boosted the output of the Veil of Plumed Mist.
Drowsiness didn’t matter. He had already laid the foundation for using Swift Blade and Cloud Seizing Art—no matter how sleepy he was, he could use them.
The roar of a turbine echoed as the sky above Tapas’s head rumbled ominously.
“Mmm.”
Tapas quietly muttered while gazing up at the sky, then slightly lowered her stance and reached toward her staff.
The sound of rain faded entirely, and the howling wind fell silent. As she drew her blade from the staff, Tapas swung it toward the heavens.
“This crazy bitch.”
CRACK!
A massive slash, as if made by a beast’s claw, tore across the sky.
The thick layer of storm clouds split open, revealing the blue sky beyond. The lightning that had been about to strike down around Tapas instead scattered in directions other than Kairus had intended.
She had pulled off the colossal feat of opening the sky, and yet the wound in the clouds looked as if it had always been meant to be there.
“Crude.”
Swish. With that sound, Tapas sheathed her blade again. The sword disappeared back into the staff.
“That… that was real swordsmanship.”
Sopor didn’t matter, nor did the relatively weak output of her battle gear. The real power of this woman, whose body seemed sculpted like embossed metal, lay in her boundless swordsmanship.
At least, the caffeine he’d taken earlier was starting to kick in.
Kairus raised the Veil of Plumed Mist. Her half-lidded violet eyes turned toward him. With a soft hiss, Tapas injected something into her own body.
The haze faded from her violet pupils, and a faint light returned. Was it some kind of neutralizer?
“You failed to become the master of the wind you summoned.”
Tapas's movement pierced forward like a single falling raindrop. It was a light thrust. Kairus parried with his blade.
The moment he blocked it, he was flung into a cloud of slashes.
“The cloud is merely dragged along, never leading.”
Several small wounds carved themselves into Kairus’s body.
“You bark without knowledge. That is arrogance.”
“…Now you’re talking properly.”
Drip. A thin trail of blood slid down from a cut on his cheek. Her blade work was incredible.
Click.
The sound of Tapas sheathing her sword was heard.
“?!”
Pak! Kairus felt the sensation of his own neck being severed and blood spurting out. Not something that had happened—something that was about to happen.
As he pushed his output to the max, a wall of wind hundreds of meters long rose before him. A raging storm that could pulverize flesh on contact.
Her slash crossed the wind barrier, aiming straight for Kairus’s throat. The moment he blocked it, the tip of her sword flickered dozens of times, trying to shred his body apart.
“How…”
“I am your period. There’s no need for a question mark on a life that’s already ended.”
It meant, basically, what’s a dead man so curious about?
“Oh, is that so?”
Kairus rubbed the cut on his face with his thumb. It stung faintly. At least ten of those kinds of wounds now marked his body.
Digging into one of the stinging cuts with his nail, the pain helped shake off some of the drowsiness.
He hadn’t been able to dodge her attacks. But at the same time, an interesting thought popped into his head.
“You talk a big game, but I guess you’re not quite strong enough to kill me.”
She had left so many wounds, yet not a single one was fatal. Just scratches, like being nicked by a protruding nail.
What that meant was clear.