Chapter 65 - Old Ways Carried On (3)

It did not matter that he knew nothing of horsemanship, or that he was not seated in a saddle.

"Aaaaargh!"

"Get on your horses, now!"

NEIGHHH!

When the boy looked, he was already upon them, and after he swung his sword, he had already swept past.

World and world.

The two, connected by aura and horn, were advancing toward the same place even if they were looking in different directions.

'This is it!'

Vlad grinned broadly as he felt the wind brush past his face.

The pitch-black one's pulse beat through his entire body.

Feeling a fierce heartbeat that seemed twice as massive as his own, Vlad swung his sword.

To set this enormous heart ablaze, it would need more blood.

"Try laughing like you did before!"

Every time the pitch-black night swept past, the barbarians' blood spread thickly through the air.

Those who had come down to the ground, blinded by spoils, never mounted their horses again.

"That thing let a man ride it!"

"... He even rejected the young master!"

The barbarians, who had been busy plundering the merchants, were flustered when they saw Vlad rapidly closing in.

It was partly because he was so fast, and partly because the force of the sword he was swinging was so ferocious, but what startled them most of all was the fact that the one they had been chasing all this time had let a person ride him.

The only ones who could ride a son of the steppe born with a sacred bloodline were those like themselves, children of the same steppe.

But the common sense they had believed in so firmly was now being shattered by Vlad, who was mounted atop the pitch-black one.

"Do not hand a child of the steppe over to some imperial brat!"

At the sight, as if something of theirs had been stolen from them, the barbarians gnashed their teeth and spurred their horses on.

With the feeling that not only their pride but even their souls had been trampled, the barbarians abandoned even the glittering gold coins and began chasing the boy.

Though they were barbarians who had only been driven back by the empire, there was still one final line they could not give up.

'They're following!'

Vlad, who had been cutting down the plunderers, was flustered when he saw them suddenly rushing toward him.

Since they had broken away from the procession, he had achieved his intended goal, but the way they were gradually surrounding him was a situation too difficult for an inexperienced boy to handle.

----!

While Vlad hesitated, unable to make a decision, the barbarians had already begun encircling him as he ran.

The barbarians' gazes stabbed in sharply.

Trapped in the midst of more than ten men, Vlad gritted his teeth and prepared himself for the malice to come.

"Get off that horse right now, brat!"

"That is not a horse you dare ride!"

Even amid the men's gazes stabbing into him like daggers, Vlad did not shrink back.

"... What business is it of yours whether I ride this guy or not!"

I will do what I want to do.

I crawled all the way up here for that, and the likes of you have no right to stop me.

"Bullshit, you bastards."

"Kill him!"

Seeing the boy's eyes burning blue, the barbarians thrust their swords from all sides as if they had been waiting for it.

"...!"

Vlad hurriedly tried to raise his aura and fight back, but before he knew it, the men's swords were only flailing far ahead of him.

"Huh?"

NEIGHHH!

Vlad was not fighting alone.

The pitch-black one, subtly slowing his speed, evaded the swords the barbarians thrust out in an instant.

THUD! CRASH!

Then he began roughly shoving aside the barbarians' horses running beside him, tearing apart the encirclement they had created.

The pitch-black one, too, had a debt to repay them.

----!

A white horn visible only in the boy's world, where they were connected to each other.

The pitch-black eyes that began to shine along with that horn started giving the surrounding horses an irresistible pressure.

It was a force impossible to believe had come from an herbivore.

"Whoa, whoa!"

"Damn it! He's got our rear!"

Vlad, who had been in the position of being trapped inside a huge net, had somehow torn through it and burst out, taking a place behind the barbarians.

It was a position only a pursuer and predator could take.

"Throw the lassoes!"

While Vlad was flustered by their positions reversing in an instant, some of the barbarians quickly began throwing the lassoes they held.

They were the lassoes carved with sorcery, the same ones they had thrown last night to capture the pitch-black one.

NEIGHHH!

Seeing the lassoes filled with malice he could not withstand, the pitch-black one began to cry out.

He remembered the night sky from that day, when lassoes had come flying at him from every direction.

"How dare you!"

But this time, the boy was dealing with the part the pitch-black one could not resist.

From Vlad's closed left eye, the world he had been holding inside began to flow out.

"You bastards are still fighting dirty to the end!"

Vlad engraved the lassoes flying in from every direction into his sight, then began swinging his sword at the exact moments.

It would have been different if they had thrown them from various angles, but the boy had already taken their rear, and the hastily thrown lassoes were only flying toward the front of the boy.

SLASH!

Along with a shining flash, the barbarians' sorcery was cut apart in vain.

Together with the human malice that the pitch-black one had been unable to do anything about.

"This one uses aura too!"

"The brat was a knight too!"

Seeing the flustered barbarians, the boy and horse smiled fiercely.

"Is it my turn now?"

The unadorned sword held in the boy's hand began to tremble.

The night sky, faster and sharper than the barbarians, was descending upon them from behind.

* * *

AAARGH!

The horses are frightened!

"..."

Another group was facing them outside the procession.

The old man and the leader of the barbarians within that group turned their heads at the strange screams coming from behind them, as if neither could say who had moved first.

"Vlad?"

"... Well now."

They were barbarians who had spent their whole lives chasing and hunting someone.

But in the scene before them now, they were instead the ones being chased.

By a blond boy swinging a sword together with a pitch-black horse.

"Hold him here!"

Sensing that the situation was not normal, the leader of the barbarians ordered the group that had followed him to deal with Lamund, then quickly dashed toward the place where screams were flying.

"Where do you think you're going, you bastard!"

Lamund realized that he was trying to move toward Vlad and hurriedly tried to follow, but with a mere draft horse that had been pulling a cart, he could not catch up to the man who had burst forward in an instant.

The remaining group blocked Lamund's path and held him back.

"What is going on!"

The leader of the barbarians rushed toward his fleeing subordinates.

What he saw there was shocking.

"Ageh... Lord Ageh!"

One of his bleeding subordinates saw Ageh come running and flailed the only arm he had left.

"Damn it!"

His subordinates had somehow been reduced by half.

And behind them came the blond boy and the horse of sacred blood he had set his eyes on.

Seeing a sight he had never even imagined, Ageh, the leader of the group, widened his eyes.

"How dare this bastard!"

At the sight that made his blood boil just by looking, Ageh nocked an arrow.

A cold arrow shot out toward the boy, who gave off his own presence even from afar.

At the same time, the pitch-black one's ears pricked up.

----!

"Agh!"

Vlad grabbed the pitch-black one's mane as he suddenly tilted, and without realizing it, pressed his body close.

WHOOSH!

A chilling sound of wind brushed past his ear.

It was the sound made by the arrow Ageh had fired as it pierced through the place where Vlad's head had been moments ago.

Vlad quickly raised his head and glared in the direction the arrow had come from.

A barbarian man whose hair was tied with cords of every color, unlike the other barbarians.

"You bastard, you're the one from before!"

Remembering the man with cold eyes who had shot an arrow at him from atop the hill, Vlad ground his teeth.

"...!"

Ageh, too, could only be dumbfounded as he looked at the horse that had dodged his arrow.

He had known that a horse born with sacred blood was no ordinary creature, but he had never imagined it would be to this extent.

'We have to catch them here!'

The boy and the sacred horse.

Seeing them, complete because they were together and destined to grow even stronger because they were young, Ageh felt a chill run down his spine.

He had to break their momentum here and now.

"Surround them at once!"

"But Lord Ageh!"

"I will finish it!"

Ageh's eyes began to blaze as he looked at the boy.

Along with them, so did the tattoos engraved all over his body.

Ageh's world, engraved with the barbarians' sorcery, was rising over his skin.

Once again, the formation tightened.

"Fine, come at me!"

And through that gap came a man charging in.

The eyes of the boy and horse looking at him flashed sharply.

At a distance close enough for them to see their own reflections in each other's eyes, the two roared fiercely as if they had been waiting.

"Die!"

"Drop dead!"

Sword clashed against sword, and eyes burned into eyes.

A moving dueling arena made of horses circled around them.

'Damn it.'

With the sword, he could manage.

That was what Vlad thought after clashing with Ageh.

In the eyes of the boy, who had fought absurdly strong opponents until now, the steppe warrior named Ageh was an opponent he could sufficiently take on.

But the problem was that he was currently mounted on a horse.

["You don't have a saddle. The longer this goes on, the worse it is for you."]

As the voice said, the boy, unable to borrow the strength of tools, would only become more disadvantaged the longer the current situation continued.

Feeling the boy's thighs gradually trembling, the pitch-black one tried to stabilize his upper body as much as possible and reduce the burden, but the malice surrounding them from all sides was interfering with that.

["... You have to break out!"]

'How!'

Vlad desperately turned his head around, trying to find a place to escape.

But all around him were barbarians, and this time, even the pitch-black one could not easily tear through the encirclement.

"And you claim to ride a sacred horse when this is all you amount to!"

Because Ageh's momentum, right beside him, was suppressing both the boy and the horse.

"...!"

At that moment, Vlad's sight caught Lamund following behind them.

He was hidden by the barbarians, but Lamund's gleaming forehead was recognizable even at a distant glance.

'Aside from a few warriors, they are not men who can dare face a knight. You only need to kill the mobility unique to barbarians.'

There were words the experienced knight had told him.

That as long as barbarians were knocked off their horses, they could be dealt with.

Looking at Lamund following behind him and the encirclement with no way out, Vlad's eyes shone a deep blue.

"You said you were born on horseback, right?"

"What?"

Ageh could feel Vlad's momentum change distinctly.

Even the corners of the boy's mouth were rising higher and higher.

"I've been stuck down in the gutter all this time."

The boy born in the back alleys of Soara had never once escaped the mud.

"In other words, if I came this far for you, you should do what I want at least once too!"

In other words, the boy was used to mud fights.

Because he had been born there.

"You cra...zy bastard!"

Ageh was flustered when he saw those ferocious eyes leap from the horse and come at him.

"Get down here, you bastard!"

Vlad recklessly grabbed Ageh atop the galloping horse.

At the boy's action of throwing his whole body in as if to say they should die together, Ageh was greatly flustered and could only twist his body.

He swore he had never in his life experienced such an absurd attack.

"Grk!"

The barbarian warrior crashed to the ground because of the boy's action, which was practically the incarnation of unpredictability.

Immediately afterward, violent pain crashed over his back.

"...!"

Watching the ground draw closer and closer in blackness, Vlad thought of the old man's gleaming forehead.

In that fleeting instant, Vlad recalled the sight he had seen that day and mercilessly pushed aura into the shoulder that would be the first to touch the ground.

He had not learned it, but he had seen it and felt it.

"Hngh!"

Amid the thickly rising cloud of dust, the boy's left shoulder touching the ground was glowing faintly.

* * *

"You... you!"

Lamund, who had arrived late, was horrified when he saw the boy up ahead, clutching the barbarian leader as he tumbled to the ground.

Even for a knight with a sturdy body, if he fell like that, there would be no guarantee he would survive.

But when the thick dust cleared, the sight that entered Lamund's eyes was completely different from what he had expected.

"... I am Ageh of the Budaat Tribe."

The boy, raising the unadorned sword with blood flowing here and there.

And the barbarian warrior pinned beneath that boy.

"I have no name to tell the likes of you."

The boy had learned.

That to speak one's own name proudly, one had to move with honor.

The barbarian man pinned beneath him was nothing more than a bandit who had plundered and killed the people of Bayezid.

"..."

Lamund was left speechless at the sight before his eyes.

The boy's left shoulder was still glowing faintly.

Seeing the aura shining within Bayezid's armor, battered and burst all over, Lamund swallowed hard.

"... What am I supposed to do if you steal it before I even teach you, you bastard?"

Everyone there was looking at the boy.

The boy who rode a sacred horse according to the old tradition of the barbarians.

The boy who wore Bayezid's old tradition and imitated his aura.

Within the boy's world, two old traditions were being carried on.