Chapter 105 - A Gamble That Knows How to Win

“Catch him!”

The enemy soldier’s shout rang out, and naturally, they began chasing like mad.

Encrid glanced back, then subtly changed direction.

RATTLE.

A heap of dirt poured down where he had just been about to pass.

It was not a sign the tunnel was going to collapse.

Just a symbol of bad luck.

‘No, I guess my luck is good today.’

After all, one quarrel had only grazed his head and gone by, so he could call it good.

The tip of a long spear, held diagonally forward, scraped over the top of the burrow.

The enemy soldiers began running with terrifying speed.

They had fought one battle, but...

‘Not enough to drain my stamina.’

If there was a problem, it was only that they had no light source.

Pin was a Ranger, a former Pathfinder said to see the path with eyeballs on the soles of her feet.

There was no chance she would fall flat because of the darkness.

The same was true for Encrid.

All this time, he had been moving while imitating Pin’s steps.

Even if it was not perfect, it meant he could roughly guess the shape of the ground through the soles of his feet.

Besides, how many times had he come and gone along this path?

If he still fell and smashed his nose after all that, it would not be a problem of talent, but proof that he used his head as a helmet rack.

Encrid also happened to have an excellent memory.

For various reasons, Pin and Encrid could run through the darkness without issue.

“Fuck.”

Only Torres was having trouble.

Every time he stepped into a hollow, he flinched in surprise.

Still, his athletic sense was exceptional, so he quickly found his balance and ran.

WHOOSH.

The sound of torches.

SCRAAAPE.

The occasional sound of spear blades scraping against the ceiling of the burrow.

HUFF, HUFF!

Other than that, it was a chase filled only with harsh breathing.

Pin and Torres had the lightest bodies here, but that did not mean they could raise their speed enough to shake them off.

So it felt as if they might be caught at any moment.

As they ran like that, moonlight began to shine ahead of them.

It was the entrance. The entrance to the Smuggler’s Hole.

Pin ran up the slope first and threw one crossbow behind her.

Since it seemed better to use it as a throwing weapon than simply abandon it, Encrid picked it back up and hurled it with all his might.

The man chasing close behind saw it and brought the shield he had turned to his side forward.

CRACK!

Perhaps it was not made of particularly sturdy material, because bits of wood flew through the air as the crossbow bounced away.

It slowed the pursuit a little, but not meaningfully.

He had only thrown it to help Torres, whose steps were falling a little behind.

Torres saw that, looked at Encrid, and nodded.

It was a look and a nod of thanks.

‘Taking time for gratitude in the middle of this.’

Pin got outside first, and Encrid also placed his hand on the hole at the top of the slope and pulled himself up.

As dirt dust showered down, Torres ducked his head low.

“Wait.”

Torres suddenly spoke, drew a dagger with his left hand, and drove it into the earthen slope, then turned his body diagonally backward.

‘Oh, this is another new one.’

He leaned his body against the half-slanted wall and flicked his hand backward.

Because he could not support himself with only his feet, he drove in one dagger to hold his balance.

Then he threw a dagger.

‘This is another first.’

It was something Encrid had not seen in the todays he had repeated.

Since the repeated today was not exactly the same every time to begin with, it was not particularly surprising.

With a sharp whiz, the dagger flew backward.

THUD! THUD!

Even after throwing away their torches, the enemy soldiers blocked the incoming daggers with their shields just fine.

“These bastards.”

The two soldiers who blocked the daggers spat harsh curses.

Their eyes shone blue, and it did not seem they would kill them gently if they caught them.

Of course, Encrid had been caught before.

And being caught could hardly be called a good end.

He would be skewered on spearpoints.

Or have a blade lodged in his head.

In truth, there was no kind of death one could welcome.

“Crazy.”

Seeing the daggers blocked, Torres clicked his tongue in disbelief.

Even with torchlight and moonlight shining, it was still dark there.

They blocked that?

Soldiers like that could not be trained with any ordinary level of drilling.

After seeing the enemy soldiers block the daggers, Torres was certain.

‘They’re Border Guard level.’

Which meant that if they were caught, they were dead.

Even if Encrid, right beside him, was reaching out a hand to him.

‘No good.’

“How many do you think you can take?”

He asked as he clasped the hand.

“If I meet them separately, I think I can handle all of them, but if they come packed together like that, well.”

Encrid was saying he had no answer either.

And yet, strangely, there was only a faint sense of tension on Encrid’s face.

Why is this guy so relaxed?

Torres thought that as he diligently climbed up.

Behind them, one of the spearmen displayed a skill similar to Torres’s.

WHOOSH.

He had thrown a shortsword like a throwing knife.

Nice skill too.

Encrid thought so as he drew his sword and knocked it aside.

The shortsword’s blade caught around the middle of his own blade.

CLANG! THUNK!

The deflected shortsword buried itself deep in the ground to the side.

The blue blade reflected the moonlight and the torchlight rising abruptly from below, shining red and blue.

“Hurry.”

That was Encrid’s single word after knocking away the sword.

Torres’s movements grew even faster.

“Out!”

Pin, who had emerged first, cranked the pulley of her one remaining crossbow with a rattle, fixed the string, and shouted.

As Encrid and Torres moved left and right, Pin pulled the crossbow’s trigger.

A quarrel fired with a thrum and vanished into the hole where shadows flickered from the torchlight.

Since it was not a repeating crossbow, one shot was the limit.

They did hear a thud, but there was no time to check whether it had buried itself in someone’s head or been blocked by a shield.

“Run.”

This time, Pin spoke first and moved.

Encrid and Torres followed after her.

Torres was in the middle, and Encrid was at the rear.

Their direction was toward the campsite where the main force had originally been stationed.

Pin’s mind spun nonstop as she ran.

‘Where do we go?’

Toward the main force?

What if this was a trap they had laid on purpose?

But if they headed for the riverside, wouldn’t there be Aspen Rangers there?

No, to begin with, if they moved while making this much noise, they would become targets for beasts and monsters.

A dozen or so ghouls, they could somehow deal with.

But what if, through sheer bad luck, they ran into ones that had formed a swarm?

Facing beasts or monsters that had formed a swarm with a small number of troops was suicide.

Beasts and monsters that simply moved in groups and beasts and monsters that had become a group called a swarm, known as a colony, were entirely different matters.

As a Ranger, she knew the ecology of beasts and monsters well.

‘What’s the worst-case scenario here?’

Getting caught.

Beasts and monsters would have to be considered afterward for now.

“To the campsite.”

Encrid put an end to Pin’s worries.

She glanced back.

She saw Encrid following at the very rear.

All three of them were panting, but his eyes and the corners of his mouth looked strangely relaxed.

‘Why?’

Why did he look relaxed?

Ah, his mouth was closed.

Even while running like this, he was not gasping.

Even she was starting to run short of breath.

Wasn’t he armed more heavily than her?

He even had a longsword at his waist, yet he looked relaxed while running like that?

Pin could not ask why he had chosen that direction.

She simply had to judge.

Encrid did not interfere any further with Pin’s decision.

Because no matter where they went now, it would feel like they were doomed anyway.

‘She’ll figure it out.’

She would probably follow Encrid’s words and head for the campsite.

And as much as possible, she would retrace the path they had come by.

That was a Ranger’s habit, retracing a path judged to be safe.

He knew that because he had already experienced several todays.

As they ran back that way, Encrid’s hands began moving busily.

He undid the sword, scabbard and all, from his belt, then began swinging it left and right while running.

More precisely, he stabbed the sword toward the ground and then lifted it up.

TAP, SWING, TAP, SWING.

Flat stones floated into the air along the sword moving with its scabbard.

Using the sword like a club, Encrid knocked them backward.

“Hmph!”

More than five spearmen had chased close behind.

They were the fast-footed ones even within the unit.

The one standing at the front among them snorted.

It was laughable that they were trying to block his path with something like flat stones.

Without even raising his shield, he thrust his spear shaft forward.

There was no need to dodge.

It was a move meant to knock it away without killing his speed.

TAK.

The spearman thought it had gone as he intended.

If not for the long, strange, curving shadow that rose into the air as he knocked away the stone, there would have been no problem.

SWISH!

“Agh!”

It was a snake.

A snake had been clinging flat beneath the flat stone.

“Fuck!”

The spearman hurriedly drew his shortsword and swung it.

SLASH!

The snake’s body was cut apart.

It was not a beast.

But it was venomous.

Among them, one spearman had bad luck.

As the viper sprang out from beneath the stone, it wrapped around his shin, and the snake that slipped between his boot and armor bit hard into his leg.

It was not a deadly poison, but along with the pain came a tingling numbness in his leg.

The spearman who had been bitten in the leg took out a dagger and stabbed the head of the snake biting him.

THUNK.

Blood and yellow fluid flowed from the mouth of the thing he had killed that way.

“It’s a viper!”

The soldier tore apart his dagger sheath, made it into a cord, and tightened it above his calf.

Naturally, he stopped in place.

And naturally, the steps of the rest faltered as well.

Fuck, a viper.

Sneaky bastards.

The poisoned soldier clenched his molars and looked ahead.

Even during that time, Encrid was performing what amounted to a trick, knocking stones away with the scabbard.

At first, it had been a stone with a viper attached.

Afterward, ordinary thrown stones were mixed in too.

But if they did not have the knowledge to distinguish them...

They had no choice but to avoid or knock away every single one.

“You son of a bitch.”

The commander who had followed behind also saw the situation and glared.

They had been just about to catch that wildcat-like woman.

“Run while blocking with your shields!”

His judgment was effective.

Stone or snake, they could not stop soldiers who exposed only their eyes and blocked with shields.

Of course, Encrid had not dreamed of defeating them with something like vipers either.

‘The things I learned from Henri are coming in handy.’

He had heard that there were vipers under the ocher-colored flat stones.

And since they happened to be passing along this path, he used it.

It was very useful.

He had taken one down and slowed the steps of the rest.

“Hoo, hoo, why the campsite?”

Around the time the steps of the enemies chasing them slowed, Pin adjusted her speed, drew up beside him, and asked.

Torres must have been curious too, because he also came closer.

Encrid glanced back and said,

“Hoo, to deal with those numbers, we need allies too.”

At those words, Pin’s expression crumpled.

“Hah, ha, it’s already empty there. My unit moved positions.”

Pin misunderstood.

Torres misunderstood as well.

Encrid pretended to be surprised and said,

“Even so, we can’t change course now. We’ll skirt the campsite and decide our direction again.”

Now he naturally dropped formalities and even took the lead.

Pin and Torres knew there was no answer either.

Now they had no choice but to go.

The backs of their heads prickled.

Before they knew it, the men chasing them had caught up again, breath steaming as they narrowed the distance.

They could run while keeping their rows and files like that?

It was fascinating.

How well trained did elite soldiers have to be to make something like that possible?

Only after seeing that did Pin realize the identity of the opposing unit.

“Fuck, I think they’re those Gray Dog bastards.”

Gray Dog, the gray hound unit.

The name more familiar to the ear than that was Persistent Lovers.

In many ways, they were people with deep ties to Encrid as well.

Mitch Hurrier had belonged to that unit.

And they had even sent him the gift of a Whistle Dagger, wrapped in the form of a Half Fairy.

It meant the enemy were elites on par with the Border Guard.

It was a fact he already knew, but Encrid spoke as if surprised.

“Ah, really?”

The only problem was that even that somehow sounded strangely relaxed.

Neither of the two besides Encrid had the spare attention to care about that.

The stronger the opponent, the better.

Inside, Encrid thought that.

Before this today, there had been seventy-eight todays.

What had Encrid done all that time?

Against dozens of elite soldiers, he had developed his moment-by-moment judgment.

He had also thrown needless questions at the man named Roger to dig out information from him.

He was pouring out everything he had learned that way now.

All three began to increase their speed.

Seeing the men chasing behind them, strength naturally entered their legs.

“Hoo! Hoo! Hup!”

Beside him, Torres ran while controlling his breathing.

“Dis... hoo... gusting bastards!”

Pin was the same.

Seeing her even run her mouth in the middle of it, it seemed she really did hate those bastards quite a lot.

On the path toward the campsite, Encrid deliberately took a detour.

Pin noticed, but she did not add anything.

In a situation like this, it was only natural that she should go first, enough for there to even be a slogan that the Ranger goes first.

But Encrid took the front so calmly.

He went first.

Then what was she supposed to do?

She had no choice but to follow.

That was how they reached the campsite.

The burrow they had dug, now covered with dirt to erase its traces.

A few trees standing blankly to one side and several small mounds.

And on the opposite side, there was a sight they had not expected at all.

AAWOOOO!

It was a pack of werewolves.

“Oh, fuck!”

Monsters, and more than twenty werewolves at that, monsters they could not be certain of beating even if they met them in perfect condition, were gathered in a pack.

Seeing that the one standing at the front was leading them, they were creatures that had outright formed a colony.

‘Ah, the worst.’

At that moment, Pin almost gave up on life.

Torres’s eyes were busy trying to grasp how the situation was unfolding.

Only Encrid, truly only he, was steadying his breath for what came next.

‘This is the turning point.’

Half of it was a gamble, but the repeated today had made sure the gamble did not remain a gamble.

In other words, it was a gamble that knew how to win.

Encrid stepped forward in order to win.