Dokgo Seong managed to discern an emotion all too familiar to him on the soldier’s face:
contempt for him. Something gradually began to surface in his eyes.
“You, too, look down on me?”
In a moment when he was agonizing deeply over his own fate, seeing that expression of contempt
finally made Dokgo Seong lose his reason. His emotions had already swelled to the point where the slightest touch might make them burst.
The soldier’s expression had struck the spark to the tinder… Dokgo Seong launched himself forward like
a wild beast. His target was none other than the soldier wearing that contemptuous look.
“Hrk.”
The soldier hurriedly tried to take up a defensive stance. But his opponent’s movements far exceeded
his expectations. Though he had lost his inner force, the footwork he had honed on the battlefield was still far beyond
what ordinary soldiers could possibly withstand.
Dokgo Seong lightly evaded the sword thrust out in panic, flowed around behind the soldier as if like water, and seized
the soldier’s face. When he lifted his hand, the neck hidden beneath the helmet was exposed in full, and Dokgo Seong
brought the sword to the nape of his neck.
“Wh-what?”
The soldiers who had been collecting the orc’s corpse rushed over in shock, but their senior soldier was already
completely taken hostage.
“You bastard. Let me go!”
The soldier who had suddenly become a hostage shouted in terror, but Dokgo Seong instead formed a cold
smile. To begin with, he could not understand the man’s words, and even if he could, it would not have mattered.
“I don’t care what you say. Just consider yourself unlucky. Come with me
on the road to the Yellow Springs.”
Without hesitation, Dokgo Seong drew the sword across the man’s neck. No—it was only what he wished to do.
“Kuaaak.”
The instant he tried to put strength into his hand, an extreme pain once again surged through his mind. It was the pain caused by the
Sevenfold Binding Prohibition Art. That hateful restriction, which activated without fail the moment he tried to kill,
was not off by so much as an inch. With a shock as if he had been struck on the crown of the head with a hammer, Dokgo Seong’s mind
went blank.
Clang.
The strength left his hand, and the sword fell limply to the floor. Dokgo Seong released the soldier’s neck and collapsed to the ground,
beginning to tremble all over.
The soldier whose head had nearly been severed managed, by the narrowest margin, to preserve his life. As if he could not believe
the situation, he wore a dazed expression and touched the neck that had almost been cut. When he came back to his senses,
what rose in his mind was rage toward the one who had nearly killed him.
“You son of a bitch.”
With the edge of the shield he was holding, he struck the crown of Dokgo Seong’s head as he rolled on the floor.
Thud.
With a single blow, Dokgo Seong was freed from the pain burrowing into his mind. In other words, he had fainted.
As though his anger had not yet subsided, the soldier raised his shield once more and was about to bring it down mercilessly.
Then the surrounding soldiers rushed in and restrained him.
“Please hold back, Captain. We have orders from above to move this man to another prison and treat him.”
“If you kill him, there will surely be punishment.”
Only at the word punishment did the soldier regain his reason. With furious eyes, he glared down at Dokgo Seong’s limp form.
Perhaps because discipline was rather strict, the soldier ended his venting there.
“I almost lost my head. Thank the heavens. But why didn’t that bastard finish me off?”
No matter how much he thought about it, there was no way he could know the reason. In the end, he ordered the soldiers
to move Dokgo Seong as instructed. His men swarmed in and lifted Dokgo Seong’s small body.
In the midst of it, when he saw Dokgo Seong’s face once more, his brow furrowed of its own accord.
“No matter how I look at him, he really is an ugly bastard. Is he perhaps a half-ogre? No, if that were the case,
he’d at least have an imposing build. This bastard is only a little bigger than an orc.”
After pondering for a moment, the soldier soon cleared away his thoughts and followed his subordinates out of the prison.
Inside the vast prison, only the blood spilled by the orc and Dokgo Seong remained, pooled thickly on the floor.
“So. He tried to kill a guardsman?”
“Yes. But at the final moment, he failed to accomplish his intent and collapsed to the floor.
According to the soldiers who witnessed it, he looked as if he were suffering extreme pain.”
“Is that so?”
Sergei felt a measure of curiosity toward the outsider who had become his experimental subject. He truly had many
aspects that were impossible to understand. First of all, the fact that he had gone from being a Sword Master of an incredible realm
(through Benitez’s testimony, he firmly believed that the outsider had been a Sword Master)
to an ordinary person was, to him, a mystery in itself. For such a thing had never occurred
in Truvenia until now.
A Sword Master, able to handle mana through the grace of the gods, never lost that ability no matter what happened.
In Truvenia, that was.
“Truly strange. Astonishing. It is something worth studying.”
“What shall we do with him?”
At Benitez’s words, Sergei turned his head.
“First, have him treated, then confine him securely. Once his condition improves, take the measures
I mentioned before…”
“Understood.”
Within the darkness-filled prison, a figure sat blankly in a place where moonlight shone dimly.
It was a narrow cell of barely three square meters, but because the moonlight fell straight upon him,
the shape of his face could be clearly made out. The one imprisoned there was none other than Dokgo Seong.
With his face buried deep between his knees, as if he had lost all will to live, he looked terribly wretched.
From his outward appearance, the wounds he had received in the struggle with the orc seemed to have healed to some extent.
But from the sight of his swollen body, one could faintly tell that the internal injuries still remained as they were.
Dokgo Seong, who had kept his head bowed in silence, only raised it after a long while. The moonlight seeping in between
the bars felt unbearably lonely. A little later, a hoarse, choked voice slipped through his lips.
“Still, the moonlight is the same here as it was in the Central Plains.”
In any case, he had no affection for his homeland. Rather, the Central Plains was a place
filled with more unpleasant memories he did not wish to recall. Dokgo Seong thought that this Truvenia,
located far away in a place no one could have imagined, might instead be better.
All at once, the face of Sa Junhwan, the root cause who had made him this way, rose in his mind.
A detestable hypocrite who had used him to the very end, then cast him away without hesitation once his usefulness was gone.
Just thinking of him made a rage surge up as if his blood were flowing backward. Yet on Dokgo Seong’s face,
rather than anger, there appeared instead an expression of self-mockery.
“Kukukuk. With this useless body, I wouldn’t even be able to get near him.”
The fact that this place was Truvenia seemed, if anything, fortunate. For him, living beneath the same sky as the man
while possessing a body incapable of revenge would have been a humiliation worse than death.
Burying his head between his knees once more, Dokgo Seong began to recall the first meeting with the being
who had been the most important presence involved in his life—Sa Junhwan.
“Wh-who are you?”
A young man with a face full of bewilderment stammered out the words. His face was quite hideous,
making it difficult to discern his age, but judging by his skin, one could roughly guess he was in his late twenties.
Seeing how his back jutted out as if clothes had been stuffed beneath it, the young man was a hunchback.
From his shabby clothing and the dust covering his entire body, it seemed he had likely just finished some hard labor.
The young man had finished all manner of menial work at Shaolin Temple and returned to his lodging, dragging his exhausted body along.
Yet before him, something utterly incomprehensible was taking place. Out of nowhere, more than ten figures
had appeared and prostrated themselves before him.
Judging by their appearance, they were none other than martial artists of the jianghu. Moreover, they were skilled enough
to be called masters. For such men to perform a full five-point prostration, signifying absolute obedience,
before him, who belonged to the lowest class even within Shaolin Temple—it was only natural that the young man was dumbfounded.
The first thing to enter the young man’s eyes was the Asura emblem engraved upon their chests.
Of course, the young man, who knew nothing of martial history, had no way of knowing that they were disciples
of the Baegyo Cult. Instinctively, wariness rose within him, and without realizing it, the young man took a step back.
“Wh-what in the world are you doing?”
Then the one who seemed to be the leader among those prostrated slowly raised his head. Showing the utmost respect,
he lifted his body. He was a middle-aged man with a face as black as the bottom of an iron cauldron.
“Please kill us. For only now have we come to find you, Young Cult Master.”
“Young Cult Master?”
Because it was something he could not begin to guess at, the young man’s ugly face was filled entirely with bewilderment.
“Could you perhaps have the wrong person?”
“That is not so. We have come in search of Young Master Dokgo Seong, the son of the previous cult leader.”
“If you mean Dokgo Seong, that is me.”
Glancing at Dokgo Seong, who still looked bewildered, the black-faced middle-aged man began to explain in a respectful tone.
“I understand. Those damned monks of Shaolin must surely have told you nothing
about your birth.”
“The secret of my birth?”
The black-faced middle-aged man nodded and continued speaking.
“That is correct. Young Master, you are the only son of Dokgo Mugi, the Death-Spirit Heavenly Venerable,
the eighteenth cult leader of the Baegyo Cult, which prides itself on being the heaven of the unorthodox path.”
The young man’s eyes grew wide.
“B-Baegyo Cult? Then my father was…”
“That is correct. Young Master, you are a person of such exalted status. And I am Do Wicheong, the Black-Faced Yama,
who was that great man’s loyal subordinate.”
After prostrating himself once more, Do Wicheong swiftly looked over Dokgo Seong’s entire body, and a murderous light suddenly appeared
in his eyes. At a glance, he could easily guess Dokgo Seong’s current circumstances.
“Those hateful monks of Shaolin… How dare they treat the young master of our cult in this manner?”
But Dokgo Seong still seemed unable to find his bearings. With an expression full of doubt,
he asked the middle-aged man who had introduced himself as Do Wicheong in return.
“I am sorry, but would you explain the details of all this to me?”
“Of course, I shall explain. As I have already said, your honored father—no, now I suppose I should call him your late father.
Your late father was Cult Leader Dokgo Mugi, the dignified eighteenth leader of our cult.
He was a great hero of the unorthodox path, acknowledged by all. At the time, he was investigating the state of the jianghu
while taking with him his only son, who had been born not long before. But tragically, he fell into the schemes
of those Shaolin monks and lost his life together with the subordinates who accompanied him.”
The middle-aged man’s tone as he explained was filled with grief and righteous indignation. He stared intently into Dokgo Seong’s face
and continued.
“That only son of his is none other than you, Young Master. Due to our insufficient strength,
we have only now come to rescue you.”
Dokgo Seong kept silent for a moment. He needed a little time to understand the secret of his birth
that had been revealed out of nowhere. He was presently twenty-eight years old. Having spent his entire childhood at Shaolin Temple,
Dokgo Seong had by now become completely a menial worker of Shaolin. He had also already
grown accustomed to his own situation.
‘I am the young cult master of the Baegyo Cult?’
Through Dokgo Seong’s mind, sunk in thought, the countless moments of scorn and contempt inflicted upon him until now
flashed past like a revolving lantern.