“We’ve found the direction.”
Adel spoke in a low, resolute voice.
The traces of amplification were fading, and the veins on his face were settling down,
but his skin was still flushed red.
Every time he exhaled, a scorching heat scraped at his throat.
He looked toward the forest.
It was less the enemy’s main base than—
a foothold for operations.
“It should be about when the shade shifts once.”
Adel turned back and looked at the members of the detached unit.
“Remember this.”
His voice was weary,
but not a shred of its resolve had broken.
“Our top priority is the black-haired girl.”
“More precisely, the sword that girl possesses.”
A faint stir ran through the unit.
Cedric asked cautiously.
“Was our mission not… to pursue the Silver Moon Order?”
Adel did not hesitate.
“The target is not the Silver Moon Order.”
“That sword is within the Silver Moon Order. That is all.”
Kyle pressed his lips together and tried to say something, but swallowed it in the end.
Adel’s eyes did not permit it.
Adel turned his gaze forward again.
“We move out.”
“The enemy must have sensed my presence as well. Don’t give them time.”
And so the detached unit picked up speed and began cutting through the forest.
—
The movement inside the encampment was hectic, but swift.
Unnecessary baggage was thrown away.
Straps were cut, and sacks dropped to the ground with a thud.
A few pieces of metal rolled into the dirt.
Light, for now.
As fast as possible.
Amid all this, Bido had wrapped herself deeply in a cloak,
quietly taking deep breaths.
“Hoo….”
Just then, Miryeong placed a hand on Bido’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry.”
“Just follow this big sister.”
Beside them, Kallen butted in with a teasing tone.
“Big sister? Don’t you mean auntie?”
Miryeong glared at Kallen as if she would kill him.
Kallen immediately averted his gaze, grabbed his baggage, and ran off.
“Ah— so busy, so busy!”
Muryeong looked at Bido and said in a low voice,
“I’ll hold Adel back, so don’t worry.”
“You… when Adel tries to use Mirkin, all you have to do is cut it off.”
Jincheong added a word as well.
“You need to watch out for the priest’s Mirkin too.”
Bido swallowed and nodded.
“If that’s Mirkin too… then I….”
Miryeong roughly ruffled Bido’s hair.
“You’ve become so reliable!”
Bido smiled very faintly.
But her fingertips were still cold.
Raen’s gaze moved to Bido’s hands,
then quickly shifted away without a word.
Rangnan said,
“Now then, everyone moves to the main base.”
“As I told you before, don’t move together. Scatter. Each of you along your own route.”
“Don’t leave even the smallest trace behind.”
He looked at Bido.
“And Bido.”
“Don’t overdo it. You only need to endure for ‘a little while.’”
Those words, “a little while,” sounded strangely heavy.
Bido tightened her grip on the necklace.
Rangnan raised his hand.
“Move out.”
The rock at the entrance to the encampment opened.
Raen took one step toward Bido,
then stopped.
“…Bido, you have to come back.”
Then she turned around, blending into the other members and disappearing among them.
Rangnan and the members swiftly vanished into the forest, each along their predetermined route.
The traces of people passing were soon buried beneath overturned earth,
and the wind that blew in covered them with fallen leaves, blurring the marks.
The very fact that someone had passed through was erased from the forest.
Before entering the forest, Raen looked back just once more.
And after confirming only Bido beneath her hood, she wrenched her gaze away as if gritting her teeth.
And then—
the four who remained.
Bido and the three Haraya.
Miryeong, Muryeong, and Jincheong.
They tightened their cloaks and pulled their hoods deep over their heads.
Similar height.
Similar lines of the shoulders.
From a distance, they could easily look like the same silhouette at a glance.
Four shadows slowly walked toward the forest on the opposite side.
This time, there was no need to hide their traces.
No—
they left them even more roughly.
They scraped the dirt with their toes and deliberately stepped down once more.
A path that anyone would say clearly meant, “They went this way,”
they created with their own hands.
—
“There’s no presence.”
Cedric said in a low voice.
Adel nodded.
They had all but run here, following nothing but the direction.
But—
they caught nothing.
The forest was quiet as a forest should be,
and the ridge only looked like a tangle of trees and rocks.
No breathing, no movement.
It was as though no one had ever passed through.
Then one soldier shouted,
“Sir Paladin! There are footprints here!”
Kyle immediately approached and crouched down.
His fingertips brushed over the soil, tracing the shape of the footprints.
“That’s right.”
“They’re Haraya footprints. Traces of hurried movement.”
Adel’s gaze fixed on the spot.
There was no presence, but there were traces.
He said in a low voice,
“I see. They must have abandoned this place and moved.”
Cedric narrowed his brow.
“They were that thorough… and yet they made a mistake like this?”
Adel cut him off.
“It doesn’t matter.”
He did not hesitate for even a beat.
“Even if it’s a trap, it doesn’t matter.”
“We pursue them immediately.”
—
The detached unit advanced along the traces.
Cedric and Kyle sharpened their senses to the utmost.
Every grain of earth underfoot, every shift in the wind set their nerves on edge.
Ambushes and traps.
They had already suffered them once.
A second time would not be tolerated.
But Adel was different.
He simply pressed forward.
Even when branches brushed his face, he did not dodge,
and even when tough blades of grass scraped his gauntlets, he did not lift a hand.
He simply pushed through.
There was no hesitation in his stride.
A low, heavy certainty—
as if it could shove aside even the sturdiest fortress wall.
Then suddenly.
He sensed a presence ahead.
Adel’s eyes widened.
Small stature.
Black hair.
And the sword carried on her back.
‘The black-haired girl.’
It was Bido.
She stood at the edge of the forest, in the center of a shallow clearing.
Her hood was off, her black hair fluttering,
in a place that anyone could see was declaring, “Here.”
Before he knew it, Adel let the words slip between his lips.
“…At last.”
His greatsword swiftly came free from his back.
The weight settling into his hand, if anything, made his heart feel lighter.
“Surround her.”
At his command, the elite soldiers scattered to the left and right.
Their spear tips drew a half circle as they slowly closed in.
Cedric and Kyle thought the same thing.
This isn’t normal.
So easily.
So blatantly.
And yet—
Adel, their commander, had already crushed that doubt underfoot.
His eyes were fixed only on the “target.”
Bido merely stood there in silence.
Even as the spear tips tightened around her,
even as Adel approached in red armor with a greatsword in hand,
not a flicker disturbed her gaze.
And then Bido—
opened her lips.
Wheeet.
It was a short whistle.
In that instant, Adel felt the slightest “misalignment.”
The earth beneath his feet—
sank once, as if taking a belated breath, then held.
Somewhere out of sight, someone was holding the soil in place.
By force.
To the very limit.
The moment Adel gripped his greatsword once more—
that “hold” disappeared.
Crack.
The ground split first.
Fissures spread in all directions from the tips of Adel’s feet,
and the thin layer of soil covering the surface collapsed all at once.
Rumble—!
Armored soldiers swallowed their screams as they pitched forward.
Spear tips cut through empty air, and feet stepped onto nothing.
The ground that had remained like wheel tracks caved in whole.
Adel and the knights, and even the soldiers who had crowded in—
all of them dropped straight down.
Dust surged up, obscuring their vision.
And below,
a hole deep enough that a person could not easily climb out of it gaped open.
—
A little earlier.
“Here.”
Jincheong said in a low voice, placing her hand on the ground.
On the surface, it looked like perfectly ordinary soil.
It was merely covered thinly with fallen leaves and gravel.
“This is a subsided area, so it’s hollow inside.”
“I’ll hold the surface together as much as I can, then let go when the signal comes.”
“Then they’ll fall.”
Muryeong frowned.
“Will that mean anything?”
Jincheong nodded.
“For ordinary people, it won’t be easy to get out right away.”
“The walls are slippery, and for soldiers wearing armor, even more so.”
—
Jincheong split the ground beside Bido and crawled out as if scraping her way through the dirt.
Her fingertips were covered in soil, and her breathing was rough.
“Did… it work…?”
Jincheong’s hands were trembling.
They had gone weak, like those of someone who had been forcibly holding up something heavy until just now.
Bido hurriedly pulled her hood deep over her head and approached.
“Jincheong. Are you all right?”
Jincheong clenched her teeth and stood.
“Ah… I don’t have much strength in my hands right now.”
“But I can still run.”
At that moment, Bido got a clear look inside the hole.
It was deep below.
For an ordinary human—
even more so for a human in armor, it was a height impossible to leap out of.
The walls were a mix of mud and gravel, offering no purchase for the fingers,
and every time one tried to brace a foot, the earth slid down.
Climbing out itself would be an act of consumption.
However.
Adel,
and those things called knights, were far removed from the ordinary.
The first thing to surge up from the dust was explosive leg strength.
Adel, gripping his greatsword, struck the wall once with it—
and hauled himself up an absurd height in a single motion.
Two knights followed, springing up in the same manner.
The instant their bodies rose into the air, their armor reflected a flash of light.
‘What… is that…’
Just as Bido swallowed her breath—
Whoosh!
A gale blew in.
Just before the three of them touched down on the ground, the wind struck them sideways.
Their toes stepped into empty air, and their landings went awry.
At the same time, a voice rang out from somewhere, nearly tearing itself apart.
“Hey!! Run, hurry!”
It was Miryeong.
Bido and Jincheong took that shout as their signal.
They had no time to look back.
The two ran at the same time.
Fallen leaves scattered beneath their feet, and their breath broke.
Ahead, Miryeong and Muryeong waited with their hoods pulled over their heads.
Behind them, once again—
the sound of metal clashing followed.
—
Adel gave orders as he ran.
“Chase the black-haired girl.”
“The rest don’t matter!”
Cedric gasped for breath and asked from beside him,
“Sir Adel…? But the black-haired girl….”
Before he could finish,
shadows appeared between the gaps in the forest.
Four of them.
All with their hoods pulled deep over their heads.
Their cloaks fluttered in the wind, concealing the outlines of their bodies,
and behind their shoulders—
the shape of something long showed from within their cloaks.
A sword.
It could not be seen clearly.
But the weight carried on their backs
pulled the cloth of their cloaks inward, creating a silhouette “like a sword.”
The four shadows moved as if crossing through one another.
They slipped between the trees, emerged again, and overlapped behind one another.
From moment to moment, it became confusing whose shoulder line belonged to whom.
Then they picked up speed.
For their small frames, the forest was a path.
On the other hand, for those bearing armor and greatswords—
the trees themselves were obstacles.
The moment Cedric and Kyle instinctively tried to widen their spacing,
Adel surged ahead first.
He did not avoid the trees.
He drew up Idrin.
His muscles bunched hard, and his breath grew hot.
Adel ran, smashing through the obstacles before him.
He shoved them aside with his shoulder, snapped them with his arms, and struck them down with the side of his greatsword.
Bark split, and wet branches broke and flew.
In that way, the red armor began to smash through the forest in pursuit.
“Don’t stop!”
Adel’s voice sank lower.
“It doesn’t matter which one.”
“I’ll confirm the sword myself.”
The red armor came after them, breaking the forest apart.
From here on, it was no longer a pursuit, but a hunt.