Chapter 17
I felt a sense of ease, as if I had a reliable bodyguard.
Yeon Cheongha, perhaps thinking that he couldn't just play around while his disciple was training so hard, also started training.
"Socheong, aren't you lonely and bored just standing there by yourself?"
Not at all.
But seeing Yeon Cheongha's gaze, I eventually picked up a sword and started training next to him.
This wasn't what I wanted, and while it seemed like things were going my way, they kept going slightly off track.
* * *
The effects of feeding Pae Maseong the inner core appeared quickly.
I don't know how it happened, but in the middle of the night, some ruffians appeared at the inn where we were staying.
They were wearing masks, but I recognized them at once as the people we had encountered before.
The people who had galloped through the market on horseback.
The people who had suddenly disappeared in front of the mountain.
They were the people we thought were from Mohwa Mountain Manor.
The fact that they appeared seemed to mean that someone had told them what we had said about Mohwa Mountain Manor.
But there was no time to think about such things leisurely.
Several people came at us in an instant, brandishing all sorts of rare weapons, and I thought they were people without reason because of their cruelty.
Even the most demonic of humans would have some hesitation, but they had none at all.
It was to the point where I could understand why the person who had died trying to protect his father had died so miserably.
These people didn't seem to think of us as humans like them, nor did they seem to have any awareness that they were killing their own kind.
One person swung an axe as if to smash a watermelon or a wooden barrel.
It was not the movement of dealing with a person, but the movement of breaking something that needed to be broken, and it was an act not accompanied by any emotion.
The monstrous strength of each person was enormous, and seven such people came in through the window at once.
They broke through the firmly locked window and came in, brandishing their weapons indiscriminately and trying to kill us. I was so flustered when I first experienced it that I couldn't think straight.
I thought that if I had trained that much, it would have been ingrained in my body and I would have moved naturally, but that was not the case.
I was suffocated by extreme fear and couldn't think properly.
The fact that I didn't die even in that dazed state was purely because of Yeon Cheongha and Pae Maseong.
It would be more accurate to say that it was because of Pae Maseong rather than Yeon Cheongha.
In fact, for a while at first, Yeon Cheongha was no different from me.
He seemed to be as shocked as I was, and his thoughts seemed to have stopped for a moment due to their overwhelming monstrous strength and ruthlessness.
But Pae Maseong was different.
Pae Maseong didn't seem much different from them.
Once he saw them attacking Yeon Cheongha and me, he swung his sword as if there was no reason to think about anything else.
The timing was so appropriate that I wondered what would have happened if he hadn't absorbed the power of the inner core before.
Seeing Pae Maseong fighting them, Yeon Cheongha also quickly came to his senses and joined in. I realized Pae Maseong's true nature as I watched the two of them fight together.
Yeon Cheongha was by no means an ordinary person and was one of the top assassins in Heavenly Forest, but at that moment, Pae Maseong was not inferior to Yeon Cheongha.
His techniques were not refined and were clumsy, and his sword path was not accurate, but should I say he was specialized in killing?
Once he targeted someone, it seemed that person would surely die.
If Yeon Cheongha skillfully drove his prey and succeeded in the hunt, should I say that Pae Maseong felt like he just stubbornly chased his prey and smashed its head?
As I was watching the two of them, thinking it was amazing, a few people flew at me.
But they couldn't even bring the tip of their weapons to me.
Each time, Pae Maseong would approach at a terrifying speed and block it.
At first, they probably thought I was an easy opponent, but as time passed, it seemed that they also realized that was not the case.
I didn't even need to swing my sword in that fight, but watching Yeon Cheongha and Pae Maseong fight was also a considerable study.
I felt like I knew why people talked so much about the importance of observation.
Watching what Yeon Cheongha and Pae Maseong did, I even tried swinging my sword in the air.
The value of such a vivid experience was beyond words.
Yeon Cheongha and Pae Maseong glanced at me.
They seemed to have been worried that I was scared, but then they seemed to realize that they no longer needed to worry about that.
When there were two opponents left, Yeon Cheongha lowered his sword.
He seemed to think that Pae Maseong could do it alone, but that was also a funny thing.
To think that Pae Maseong could do it alone because there were two of them.
They weren't just third-rate ruffians, but two human weapons whose existence was shrouded in secrecy, and he had entrusted them to Pae Maseong.
But Pae Maseong, as if he were very satisfied with the situation, went on a rampage.
Yeon Cheongha watched him and told him what to fix.
"Maseong, if you do that, you'll get tired easily. Even if you have a lot of internal energy, it's not infinite. What will you do if you meet a ruffian with no internal energy after fighting like that? You never know what will happen later, so you always have to be prepared for it."
Pae Maseong seemed to be busy fighting and listening to Yeon Cheongha's words, but he didn't seem to be listening to what Yeon Cheongha was saying carelessly and was applying it.
"For now, try to keep one of them alive."
Yeon Cheongha seemed to be trying to get information from one of them, and Pae Maseong, after repeatedly punching the face of the person who had already become a pulp, pressed his back and made him lie on the ground.
He had only been told to keep him alive, not in what state, so it seemed he had just kept him barely breathing.
He lay flat on the ground and was quiet.
Looking at his condition, it would have been right for him to be panting and begging for his life, but there was none of that.
It was to the point where I felt fear from his appearance, as if he had no will to live.
I couldn't tell what state this person was in.
"Why did you come here? Who sent you here?"
Yeon Cheongha approached, grabbed the man's hair as if to tear it out, forced his head up, and asked.
I also went next to him and looked at the man's face.
On the outside, there was nothing particularly distinctive.
At first, he had no expression at all, so I wondered if he was wearing a human skin mask, but that wasn't it either.
"If you don't talk, I'll kill you."
But the opponent did not answer even at those words.
"Could it be that he can't talk?"
Pae Maseong asked, and Yeon Cheongha also seemed to think that was a possibility.
Then he suddenly looked at us and shouted loudly.
"Everyone, run outside. It's poison!"
Then he grabbed my arm and flew out the window.
Pae Maseong was able to escape on his own, and we looked up at the room we had been in just a moment ago from outside the inn.
Then, a fierce fire erupted from there.
"It seems there was poison in their bodies. It seems it was designed to spread from the bodies of the dead. It's more terrible than I thought."
As the fire erupted, the people in the inn shouted, "Fire!" and ran out.
We quietly left the place and watched the scene from a distance.
"Heavenly Forest betrayed us, right, master?"
When I asked, Yeon Cheongha nodded.
"I don't know if it was the Lord, or if the news leaked out at another stage, but I can't go the same way as Heavenly Forest anymore."
Yeon Cheongha had a complicated expression.
As much as he had been doing assassination missions in Heavenly Forest, it seemed difficult to face that truth.
"Well done, Maseong. It seems the results of your hard training are showing in this way."
"No. I felt that I still have a long way to go."
There was not a hint of falsehood in Pae Maseong's words.
He seemed to be really thinking that way and feeling regretful.
"In any case, it seems that what Socheong said is true to some extent. Otherwise, they wouldn't have targeted us."
"They must be the people from Mohwa Mountain Manor, right?"
At my words, Yeon Cheongha nodded.
"Still, it's a relief. When I didn't know how strong they were, I was just scared, but now I'm not just scared."
When I said that, Yeon Cheongha and Pae Maseong looked at me at the same time.
"Why? You saw how strong they were, so you should be scared, Socheong."
"You and Maseong both fought and won with ease."
"It's a bit much for me to say this myself, but I'm one of the top assassins in Heavenly Forest, Socheong. I'm one of the three great assassins of Heavenly Forest. My name is not widely known because I'm an assassin, but that means the Lord has acknowledged me. It means I was able to kill them because it was me. Maseong is a monster anyway, so there's no need to talk about him."
Hearing that, I thought that might really be the case.
I had thought it was easy after seeing the two people next to me fighting the monsters of Mohwa Mountain Manor, but it turned out that they were among the top people in the Heavenly Demon Sect.
"If those people had appeared in Nether Shadow Valley, everyone in Nether Shadow Valley would have died. The Valley Lord and the instructors would have all died."
Yeon Cheongha said, as if he thought it was better to be sure.
"Even if those people had gone to Heavenly Forest, many people in Heavenly Forest would have died."
Yeon Cheongha seemed to be trying to let me objectively gauge their strength by saying that.
Hearing that, my flesh trembled.
"You don't have to worry, Socheong."
When Pae Maseong said that, Yeon Cheongha laughed and said that was really true.
The two of them seemed to have firmly decided to protect me.
* * *
Whether we had underestimated Heavenly Forest's information network or not, we were caught by people from Heavenly Forest not long after leaving the inn.
However, they did not treat us insultingly like they were catching runaway assassins, but were quite polite.
I thought that was because of Pae Maseong.
In my opinion, when the monsters of Mohwa Mountain Manor attacked us, they also seemed to have watched the scene in hiding.
If so, they would have known how strong Pae Maseong was and would have thought that Pae Maseong was essential to them in the future.
"The Lord wishes to see you."
When the people who appeared in front of us said that, Yeon Cheongha looked at me and Pae Maseong.
"You two, go your separate ways now. It seems this is as far as we can go together."
At that, the people who had appeared in front of us were flustered and quickly continued.
"We must all go together."
"There is no reason to."
When Yeon Cheongha said that, they shook their heads.
(End of Chapter)