Chapter 91 : Chapter 91

Chapter 091: A Lie Greater Than the Truth (9)

As Kendrick ran, his thoughts raced.

Who would’ve thought I’d be running back and forth through this forest so many times?

Was it some kind of ill-fated connection?

Perhaps in a past life, he had some unresolved grudge tied to this place.

Maybe he’d died here, leaving behind a buried treasure chest or something.

In any case, though he had awakened in many ways, he still hadn’t fully grasped the reason for this.

This is my doing. I have to tie up the loose ends with my own hands.

His life had generally been like that.

Looking back, there were many moments filled with regret.

In that sense, Kendrick ran with the resolve that this path would be his last.

The Blue Mist Forest.

They called it a mystical forest, and that, at least, felt undeniably true.

“Huff, huff! It should be around here…!”

Kendrick stopped running and whipped his head left and right.

The place where he’d first seen the Mist Fang Wolf.

He recalled how Yeats had been up to something strange there.

To think it was summoning a demonic beast.

Back then, he hadn’t had the chance to think rationally.

The sight of the incomprehensible demonic beast before him had left his mind reeling.

Would things have been different if he’d known?

…

With a heart heavy with atonement, Kendrick scanned his surroundings.

His steps were cautious, almost delicate.

“Ha!”

Kendrick’s eyes widened as if they might pop out.

From between the dense foliage, black smoke was seeping out.

It writhed as if alive, and just looking at it sent chills down his spine.

Gulp.

In that critical moment, a thousand thoughts flooded his mind.

Fear took the lead.

What if a pack of Mist Fang Wolves was lurking nearby, or if Yeats’s soldiers were lying in wait?

He might have recklessly charged in only to meet a dog’s death.

But then, the stubborn grit of the mercenary captain, long buried in a corner of his heart, roared back to life.

Kendrick slapped his cheeks hard and glared fiercely.

“Knight Kendrick!”

With a shout, he tore through the bushes where the ominous aura was emanating.

…!

Five yellowed sheets of paper were arranged in the shape of a pentagram.

The strokes drawn on them formed a pattern, glowing with a reddish, eerie light.

It was exactly as he’d last seen it.

The only difference was the black smoke ceaselessly billowing from the pattern.

Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be anyone around.

Only then did Kendrick let out the breath he’d been holding. His legs felt weak, and he wanted to collapse on the spot.

No time for this!

He gripped the axe handle tightly and approached the nearest sheet of paper.

Raising the axe high above his head, he swung with all his might.

“Arghhh!”

Crack!

The axe blade sliced cleanly through the yellow paper, splitting it in half.

The smoke that had been pouring out stopped.

That was easier than I thought!

Kendrick cut through the remaining four sheets.

The thick, murky fog in the air began to clear slowly.

“I did it! I actually did it! Damn it, I was freaking out over something so simple…”

Kendrick flopped onto the ground.

A piece of the sliced yellow paper fluttered down and landed gently on his eyelid.

As he irritably brushed it away, a voice spoke.

“Well, well, did Bihen Benkou put you up to this?”

Every hair on Kendrick’s body stood on end.

He sprang to his feet.

“Surprising. To think that guy would understand the principles of summoning sorcery. I heard Imperial warriors despise sorcery, unlike the Kingdom knights who respect magic.”

“…”

“I should’ve toyed with him a bit more. Oh well, this is enough for now.”

Yeats crouched down, inspecting the torn pieces of yellow paper while muttering to himself, as if Kendrick wasn’t even there.

Kendrick gritted his teeth.

“…You bastard.”

The moment a man overcomes fear isn’t when he musters courage.

It’s when he’s ignored.

“Bihen Benkou didn’t send me. I came here on my own, by my own will.”

Yeats stood up, tilting his head.

He let out a scoff, as if amused.

“So what? No, damn… Why are you suddenly getting all dramatic? Are you crazy?”

“Come at me, Yeats. I’ll kill you right here.”

Kendrick spat on his palms and gripped the axe handle tightly again.

Yeats’s expression hardened as he looked at him.

A brief silence hung in the air.

“Strange. Do Mist Fang Wolves use illusion sorcery too? Kuhn didn’t mention that.”

“Yeats!”

Whoosh!

Kendrick’s axe swung through the air.

…!

Panic flashed in Kendrick’s eyes.

A chill ran down his spine.

Stab! Stab! Stab! Stab!

He couldn’t even groan.

Blades pierced his side and back, ravaging his organs.

In an instant, the muscles supporting his body gave out.

Thud—

“Urk…! Gah… Urgh.”

Kendrick writhed on the ground like a dying insect.

His vision darkened.

He grabbed at Yeats’s leg in a futile attempt to do something, but it was meaningless.

“Tch, what a…”

Yeats clicked his tongue and kicked Kendrick’s shoulder to roll him onto his back.

Looking at Kendrick’s blood-soaked face, he grinned.

“You’re one hell of a nuisance, you know that?”

Yeats crouched down again, bringing his face close to Kendrick’s, as if doing him a favor.

“You’re really an annoying guy in every way. I spared you, and you crawl back here to mess things up? Do you know how much effort I put into this? No, you don’t, you bastard.”

“Urgh…”

“Just slaughter all the Sylphiroa people and threaten them—that’d be the end of it. But why do you think I went through all this trouble to set up this game? It’s because I was curious how long that ignorant Bihen Benkou could hold out. Sure, he’s not the type to blink at a simple hostage situation.”

Yeats clicked his tongue again.

But that wasn’t all.

Draining Bihen Benkou’s strength was the real goal.

“Well, whatever. The real show starts now…”

“Heh heh…”

“You’re laughing?”

“You’re… so kind to blab about your plans… Aren’t you… embarrassed?”

“…”

“Third-rate villain.”

Thwack!

Yeats kicked Kendrick’s jaw.

Kendrick’s head lolled limply.

“You’re just itching to die, aren’t you?”

Yeats rummaged through his clothes.

What he pulled out was another yellow paper with a red pattern drawn on it.

“Now, shall we use Kuhn’s final gift?”

Flutter—

The talisman slipped from his fingers, tracing an arc through the air before crumbling to ash before it even hit the ground.

The ash dispersed into black smoke.

When the smoke cleared, only Kendrick’s fallen body remained.

* * *

Meanwhile, in Sylphiroa, a bizarre scene unfolded.

The pack of Mist Fang Wolves surrounding the village’s wooden palisade began to vanish all at once.

Their black forms shriveled and collapsed as if sucked into an invisible vortex, their glowing red eyes lingering in the air like living things before fading away.

“What… What's happening? They’re just disappearing like that…?”

The youngest mercenary muttered.

Not just him—every mercenary wore a dumbfounded expression.

“Huff, huff… Sir Bihen? What in the world is going on?”

Kevin, who had been squeezing out his mana to extinguish the fires spreading to the buildings, asked.

He was so exhausted that even speaking felt like a chore.

“…”

Bihen was just as stunned.

Wisps of breath puffed from his slightly parted lips, dissipating in the air.

Click.

Bihen sheathed Zahara Toxeed behind his waist.

The sound echoed loudly in the sudden stillness.

The traces of the teeming demonic beasts were gone.

The chaos from moments ago felt like a lie.

In the village now submerged in silence, everyone stood frozen, at a loss for words.

“Ah! The captain… Where’s Captain Kendrick?”

The youngest mercenary blurted out.

As if just remembering, the mercenaries began looking around.

They had all seen Kendrick charge into the midst of the demonic beasts from a distance.

But back then, there was nothing they could do.

Even afterward, they were too busy fending off the relentless waves of beasts to think clearly.

If not for Bihen’s fierce efforts, the Spirit Tree might have already burned to ashes.

“No… It can’t be, right?”

“Hey, don’t jinx it. He’s not the type to throw his life away so easily.”

“Then where did he go?”

The mercenaries exchanged silent glances.

Then, another mercenary spoke cautiously.

“Maybe he ran out to lure the beasts away from the village? He’ll probably be back soon.”

The responses were lukewarm at best.

It sounded plausible, but no one nodded in agreement.

As the new Black Rose Mercenaries huddled together, discussing…

Bihen was looking elsewhere—beyond the palisade, somewhere in the forest.

“There weren’t any soldiers among the beasts, right? Did anyone see anything?”

Perhaps because of the ongoing conversation, the question felt a bit out of place.

The mercenaries shook their heads.

One of them spoke up.

“No way. If there’d been a person mixed in with them, they’d have been torn apart and dead by now. Unless someone was controlling the beasts like hunting dogs.”

Bihen slowly turned his gaze toward the mercenaries.

A few who met his eyes flinched involuntarily.

“You lot are denser than I thought. Did you really think those were ordinary demonic beasts?”

“W-We know! They’re Imperial demonic beasts, aren’t they?”

Bihen narrowed his eyes.

These mercenaries had joined just as the Mist Fang Wolves began to appear.

In the heat of the moment, he’d only told them to be careful because the beasts’ corpses could explode—no other details were shared.

“…How do you know they’re Imperial demonic beasts?”

It didn’t take long.

Some of them realized the youngest had already slipped up.

The oblivious youngest, catching his mistake too late, covered his mouth, making it even more obvious.

“W-Well, we’ve never seen beasts like that before, so… it’s natural to assume, right? Right, brothers?”

Cruelly, no one backed him up.

The youngest’s face, along with everyone else’s, turned pale.

This Imperial swordsman, whom they’d seen since Talrug Canyon, was a merciless figure who wouldn’t shed a drop of blood if stabbed.

They’d never seen him crack a joke.

If he knew who was behind this chaos, hired by Yeats?

Forget camaraderie from fighting together—he’d cut their throats without hesitation.

Every mercenary was thinking the same thing:

We’re screwed…

Bihen’s eyes scanned the group.

The timing of their encounter right after leaving Ludglen, their uneasy demeanor upon arriving in Sylphiroa, and Kendrick’s return—Bihen remembered it all.

He didn’t chalk it up to mere coincidence.

He’d just held off on pressing them because there was no immediate need.

“…Wait a second.”

It was the youngest.

His widening eyes and mouth soon froze stiff.

“Captain Kendrick… No way…”

“What? What’s wrong, kid?”

“I think he went there.”

“There?”

“The Blue Mist Forest. Where he met Yeats and came back…”

He said it outright.

It wasn’t just recklessly spilling the beans because the water was already spilled.

He didn’t even have the presence of mind to care.

Soon, everyone’s faces matched the youngest’s.

The same memory was surfacing.

If what looked like a magic circle formation was actually a ritual to summon demonic beasts?

The youngest, as if confessing everything, spoke to Bihen.

“W-We all saw it. Yeats was doing something with yellow paper covered in strange symbols. It must’ve been magic to summon the beasts. Captain Kendrick definitely went after him.”

Bihen wasn’t particularly shocked.

He already knew Yeats was the mastermind.

The real question was how Yeats had managed to summon such a number of beasts.

The yellow paper is a talisman. If it looked like magic to summon beasts, it must be a sorcery formation. The sorcery formation was designed to act as a mana core.

Bihen’s eyes widened belatedly.

His intuition finally caught up with the unease that had been nagging at him.

…Artificially creating a mana core?

Kingdom knights and sorcery.

He’d been too fixated on the disconnect between these two, missing the bigger picture.

I was looking at it all wrong from the start.

What if it was simply a matter of activating a pre-completed sorcery formation?

What if Yeats had a hidden ally skilled enough to make it happen?

It hit him suddenly, clear as day.

The Imperial sorcerer using the name Marian, Zephyros’s adjutant…

As the central piece of the puzzle emerged from the shadows, the scattered fragments fell into place.

Bihen didn’t care about the reasons or causes behind this sinister connection.

Yeats never intended to settle things with me in Sylphiroa.

Of course, capturing Bihen Benkou here would be ideal, but it didn’t matter if that failed.

Forcing him to fight to protect the Spirit Tree and the villagers, then seizing the chance to finish him off personally—that would be the best outcome.

But Yeats had prepared a backup plan in case that failed.

The fallback plan for the best-case failure is his real scheme.

Bihen’s head turned to one side.

It was the direction Linda had taken with the villagers.

The people of Sylphiroa—the bait Yeats had set—were heading toward the main force.

Tip: Tap/click the left or right side of the screen to go to previous/next chapter.