Those Who Live Without the Law

Chapter 193

Tail Feathers (2)

Empty void. The humans who set their feet upon the earth gave it the name sky in order to distinguish it from their own world.

As if it were like the ground, they assumed there would be a ceiling up above as well.

When I first flew, I learned that was not true. The blue sky was an illusion.

Even when I went up, there was no such thing as a ceiling. No matter how far I ascended, nothing like a ceiling appeared. There was only an empty expanse stretching endlessly, so vast that I could not tell where it ended.

“Haa….”

I once climbed to an altitude so high that my head grew dizzy from the lack of air. It was a height that even lungs strengthened by the procedure of the Featherwing could not withstand.

And yet, despite that, the sky continued to unfold without end.

There was a limit to the sky permitted to me. I had been granted more space than others, but I had not been granted all of it.

‘This is as far as it goes.’

An altitude of roughly 20 kilometers above the ground. A distance one could reach in less than an hour even by car, not just by train.

I had invested such long years under the longing to fly through the sky, yet the place the Featherwing could reach was only that much.

I must not go any higher. I recalled the words that had been passed down through the elders of the family for generations.

[If you ascend any higher into the sky, a strange fishy scent will emerge, and your lungs will gradually deteriorate. If you ignore this and climb even higher.]

You would suffer burns, go blind, and your skin would be ruined. They said the head of the family 250 years ago had died that way.

“Perhaps the Featherwing’s next goal was to overcome this limitation.”

To discover the cause of the strange scent that damaged the lungs and overcome it. And to prevent the injuries that awaited at even greater heights.

But now, the only remaining member of the Featherwing was me.

I gazed at the setting sun from above the sky, then let out a deep breath with a long exhale.

“I endured one full day.”

I had been drifting through the sky. For an entire day, I had succeeded in drifting through the sky using only my tail feathers, without relying on the output of Veil of Plumed Mist even once.

I had achieved my goal. It was the result earned after nearly a month of training. As I brushed the ice clinging to my eyebrows away, I muttered to myself.

“The sky isn’t empty.”

My initial belief that there was nothing in the sky had been completely denied through this training.

There were currents of air. Flows that raced with power so immense it was almost unbelievable.

‘I saw many things.’

I felt how immense currents of air were racing across the transparent sky that appeared to hold nothing at all.

And I came to understand that these immense currents were splitting apart into hundreds, thousands of branches.

I observed the sight of immense winds colliding with other immense winds. I saw rain clouds forming, and what had been ice in the sky falling to the ground and melting into rainwater.

Hail, thunderstorms, snow falling far away in the north.

Sudden gusts and dragon spouts. I took all of them into my eyes and even let myself be swept up in them, feeling them with my own body.

“It was the other way around.”

Swift Blade, Cloud Seizing Art, Moonwalk.

The three sword techniques the Featherwing learned… though I was not entirely sure if it was even correct to call them sword techniques.

Among them, the first to be created was Moonwalk. The founder of the Featherwing had wanted to fly through the sky and created Moonwalk.

From the scenery visible only above the sky, Cloud Seizing Art and Swift Blade were born. Swift Blade was likely the last of the three.

‘Because air cannot be seen.’

Only by hurling oneself into thunderclouds roaring with lightning could one feel the currents raging within. To understand how clouds formed, one first had to understand the wind.

It was one of the Moonwalk training methods recorded in the Training Compendium. Throw yourself into a thundercloud and endure inside it until the thundercloud completely dissipated.

“Simply to fly better.”

Making rain fall or commanding the wind had likely never been important. The understanding and enlightenment contained within Swift Blade and Cloud Seizing Art were the results of efforts to fly under any conditions.

I continued to fly. A strange sensation lingered within me, as if something was just within reach, yet not quite.

I flew for two more weeks. Not as training, but to seize whatever it was that felt like it would slip away if I stopped here. This time, I did not descend even once. I drank the water produced by the norigae and ate the pemmican I had brought, flying continuously for two full weeks.

And at last, I reached a question.

“Should this really be called the sky?”

Then, on the night that came one month and two weeks later, I gazed down beneath my feet.

The space that people on the ground called the sky lay beneath my feet.

The sky was called the sky because it was above one’s head.

What lay beneath one’s feet, people called the ground.

Then should I call the sky of others my ground?

The sky…

“It’s up there.”

My gaze turned not toward the space beneath my feet that others called the sky, but toward my own sky.

The endless expanse spread above my head. The place even the head of the Featherwing had never advanced into.

Would it grow ever colder the higher I climbed? Would the thinning air eventually vanish entirely?

Up there as well, would the sky remain blue when the sun rose, and black when night fell?

“The stars.”

Just how far would I have to ascend to finally stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

Instead of enlightenment, I became filled only with questions. But for now, I set all of them aside.

If there were a next generation of the Featherwing. And if that next generation continued on, bringing with it the tail of the next.

Someone in the family would fly the sky and come to hold the same questions I now carried.

Now was not the time for that.

“I’ve got business below.”

I needed to look downward. The sky was not my portion. Even if I were to challenge it someday, that day was not now.

For the time being, it was enough to be satisfied that I had grown stronger through what I had gained.

‘Even if I fly while using Swift Blade or Cloud Seizing Art together.’

I could endure it. High-speed flight at a level the enemy could not resist was still impossible, but even if it rained or the wind blew, the option of rising into the sky still existed.

‘I don’t even remember how many times I smashed my body apart.’

In the process, I must have ended up in the hospital at least five times. Even then, “hospital” simply meant getting roughly dressed up and then flying back out again.

All that pain and endurance became results in their own right and turned into my strength.

“Drink.”

When I opened the office door and stepped inside, Irena, who had been sitting on the sofa, handed me a cup of coffee.

The coffee in the cup floated through the air and stopped neatly in front of me. Even that alone showed the progress Irena had made while I was training.

“Thanks.”

“It’s nothing.”

As I drank the coffee, I checked the date and spoke.

“Didn’t Nora say she’d be back by today?”

“She should have arrived by now—.”

Irena, who had been continuing her sentence, suddenly fell silent. I let out a small sigh.

“She behind me?”

“Meow.”

From behind, I heard what sounded like a poorly imitated cat’s cry. It was a familiar voice. Nora was standing there.

“Where’d you sell one of your eyeballs?”

The first thing that caught my eye was one of Nora’s eyes, which had changed color. Her right eye, originally blue, had turned purple.

“I got a procedure. It fires a destruction beam.”

“Did you actually train? Looks like you improved your nonsense, not your skill.”

I said that, but until she stepped into the office, I had not noticed Nora’s approach.

That meant her skill had improved.

“I trained hard. I almost died.”

The training personally overseen by Younia Fallon had been uniformly hellish. In a short time, she had achieved significant growth.

And along with the procedure, she had obtained several Add-Ons.

“They’re items that used to belong to an agent who was treated at the level of another department head.”

“Did you inherit them after they retired?”

At my words, Nora let out a low “Mm.”

“They’re already dead, so I couldn’t get permission.”

She meant they were relics of the deceased.

“Oh dear. Don’t you end up like that.”

At my remark, Nora giggled and replied.

“I’ve already decided how I’m going to die.”

“Oh really? Now I’m curious.”

“Natural death from old age!”

After becoming a sweet old granny, falling asleep in a soft bed and simply not waking up the next day—that was the death Nora had chosen for herself.

“Of course, when morning comes, my two children will find me dead and cry.”

She had no intention of having more than that. Lunaseeker could not guarantee her safety.

“That’s ambitious.”

That was how I responded to her words.

“Now that I’ve confirmed Nora returned safely.”

My gaze shifted to Irena. Realizing the meaning in it, she spoke calmly.

“Father said he wants to see you. He’s on his way near this city.”

Of course, we would not meet in Bennett City. Once he arrived at a nearby city, we would go out to meet him.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the Treasury Chief’s face.”

Aside from seeing him once long ago, I had never had the chance to sit face-to-face and talk.

“Let’s see just how well that gentleman prepared himself to dare put the word rebellion in his mouth.”

The grand plan was being drafted by Simid Kellogg anyway.

In my case, I was merely riding in the completed automobile Simid Kellogg built, switching the radio channel in the passenger seat and peeling tangerines.

Since he asked to see me, it was fair to assume preparations were nearly complete.

“You said he’s on his way, so it won’t take long.”

“He’ll probably arrive within a few hours.”

Preparation had to be meticulous, but once things began, they needed to be finished as quickly as possible.

I checked the time and rose from my seat. Everyone looked to be in decent condition, so there would be no problem departing immediately.

As we headed toward the city where we were to rendezvous, I asked Nora,

“So why did you swap out that eye? There’s a reason, isn’t there.”

If it was the result of a new procedure from Lunaseeker, it would not be ordinary.

Nora answered simply.

“To put it simply, it’s like an auxiliary brain.”

“…A brain?”

The newly implanted eye also served the role of a brain in itself.

“With two brains, I can think two thoughts at once.”

Or, when focusing on a single thought, the implanted eye could assist her thinking and help her make better judgments.

“It’s like playing chess. The opponent is one person, but I’ve got someone next to me whispering advice. Ugh, it’s complicated to explain.”

After trying to explain it in her own way, Nora soon gave up.

In any case, there was no reason for me to know the details. You did not need to understand why a train ran or how a car moved in order to ride one or drive one.

“Did you get stronger?”

“I did. A lot.”

What mattered was the question: could she reach the destination or not?

And to that important question, Nora gave a satisfactory answer.

“That must have been hard.”

Irena said that softly to Nora. With tears welling in her eyes, Nora threw her arms around Irena.

“You’re the only one who understands, unni! That damned oppa hears that I ripped out a perfectly good eye and replaced it with a brain and all he says is ‘Did you get stronger?’!”

It was not an easy procedure. The optic nerve was directly connected to the brain. That was likely why the auxiliary-brain procedure had been performed on the eye.

“For days after the surgery I felt sick and kept throwing up! Later, when I vomited, blood poured out! And then the boss dragged me off to train anywayyyy!”

Nora poured out her miserable story to Irena. With a bitter smile, Irena comforted her.