Free Web Novel“KIIIII—!”
“Don’t make a sound, you idiot!” ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
I shoved Cane inside my sleeve and wrapped internal energy around my feet. The instant I vaulted over the wall, a wandering martial artist shouted.
“There! Over there!”
“Don’t let her get away! She’s worth a thousand taels of silver! That way! Get her!”
Judging by the voices, there were at least two of them chasing me. And from the speed at which they were closing in behind me, they didn’t seem like third-rate drifters.
Could I handle them?
My heart slammed wildly in my chest with anxiety. I tore off the straw rain cape and frantically searched through my sleeve, pulling out whatever poison my hand touched first.
I didn’t have time to check what it was. I hastily opened the pouch and scattered the powder, and the man who had already been right on my back immediately covered his mouth, coughing.
“Cough, hack! It’s poison!”
“Good thing we brought antidote pills.”
Even in the thick cloud of poison fumes, the wandering martial artists did not panic much. Instead, they swung their swords at me.
I tried to dodge, but I couldn’t even see the path of the blade. The hem of my trousers was sliced away, and a scorching heat flared across my thigh.
Grinding my teeth, I used the moment my vision was blocked to crawl into a clump of grass higher up the slope.
Fear froze all the blood in my body.
Tang Jung hadn’t worried for nothing when he said I lacked real combat experience.
Real combat was nothing like sparring. Forget the amount of internal energy I had—the sticky, suffocating killing intent made my whole body lock up.
My lips trembled as I forced myself to move. By then, the wandering martial artists who had taken antidote pills were already following after me.
“Where did the little thousand-tael prize go?”
Through the sound of grass brushing in the wind, I heard footsteps mixed in.
My body tensed with strain. I took a slow breath and slipped my hand inside my sleeve. The cool touch of the throwing knife snapped my mind clear.
I would only get one chance. If I wanted to live, I had to pierce my enemy’s throat swiftly and precisely.
Holding my breath, waiting for an opening, I threw the knife at the man closest to me.
CLANG!
“You damned bitch...!”
The man instinctively raised his sword and knocked the knife aside with gritted teeth. The knife only grazed his arm before bouncing away, failing to leave a deep wound.
Damn it.
“There?”
The man, now aware of my position, started charging at me like an evil spirit, blood dripping from his arm.
Every blink made the narrowing distance send my heart into more violent convulsions.
Poison. I have to use poison.
I fumbled frantically through my sleeve, but the man was faster.
“Trying little tricks, are you?”
The man leaped in a single bound and drove his fist into my stomach. Pain turned my vision white.
I staggered backward, trying to rise in a hurry, but my body would not obey.
The taste of blood flooded my throat. There was no question—I had taken internal damage.
“Why not stop making this troublesome and sit still? Looking at you, you don’t seem to have any real combat experience anyway.”
Snickering, the man crouched in front of me and met my gaze.
“If a girl uses poison arts, does poison flow through her body too? I’m curious.”
“Don’t touch her carelessly. Even if she got cast out, she’s still Tang blood. If one of those lunatics has kin harmed, three generations come swarming for revenge.”
“Is that so. What a waste.”
Smacking his lips, the man grabbed my face with his filthy hand.
I bit down hard on the tender flesh inside my mouth. I couldn’t just sit here and take it.
When my breathing turned ragged, he let out a crooked laugh.
“That’s a vicious look. Feeling wronged?”
Yeah. I do feel wronged, you bastard.
At that instant, Cane sprang out of my sleeve and slashed at the man’s eyes with his forepaws.
“AAAGH!”
The man screamed, clutching both eyes.
CRUNCH!
I bit down on his fingers with all my strength too. I clenched my jaw until flesh tore and bone snapped. At the same time, I twisted the snake’s head on the earring.
SSSSSS—
Poison fumes sprayed into the man’s face, and I heard the sound of his skin burning away.
“AAAAH! You crazy bitch!”
I spat out the severed finger, and Cane came running back and climbed onto my shoulder.
Grinding my teeth, I ran in the opposite direction.
Maybe my insides had been jolted loose, because my stomach hurt as if it were being ripped apart. Bitter retching kept rising into my throat.
When I glanced back, I could see the shadows of the wandering martial artists floundering inside the hazy poison fumes.
“What the hell? Poison again? Cough! Cough! Does anyone have an antidote pill?”
“We used them all earlier. Kang-il, are you all rig— What the hell, this bastard’s finger got bitten off?”
“Get back! His skin’s melting!”
The wandering martial artists seemed torn between chasing me and dealing with the poison first.
The cut on my thigh burned like fire. When I lifted my robe, thick red blood was spreading across it.
I bit down on my molars and tore off a strip of my sleeve, wrapping it tightly around my thigh. I had a bad feeling the muscle might already be damaged, but there was nothing I could do about that now.
If I wanted to get out of their grasp, I had to keep moving.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I plunged into the forest.
*****
Four days passed.
By then, after wandering the forest without properly eating or drinking, my stamina had been worn down to the absolute limit.
The food pouch Tang Juhee had packed for me had been lost long ago.
“Kii?”
Cane, who had picked up the poison pouch I had dropped, let out a small cry as if asking whether I was all right.
My body, exhausted beyond measure, no longer moved the way I wanted it to. My head felt dazed, as if fog had filled it.
I staggered forward, moving mechanically. My thigh, where the wound had split open again and again, no longer had any feeling in it. It seemed the nerves had been damaged.
I rubbed at my dry, gritty eyes and looked around. Far off, I saw a small shack.
Would there be someone there? Could I ask for help?
If I were being honest, I wanted to grab anyone at all and beg them to save me.
If I begged hard enough, maybe at least one person...
There’s no way anyone would help.
Biting my lip, I forced down that weakening thought.
Unless someone had a hobby of making their own life miserable, who would help a blood-soaked martial artist being chased down?
And even if such a person existed, I couldn’t trust them. They would only be helping because they had some ulterior motive.
So I couldn’t trust anyone. The only thing I could trust was myself.
I slapped my cheeks and forced myself onward.
One step. Then another.
The shack I limped toward looked as though it had been abandoned for years, its roof half-collapsed.
It was doubtful it could even keep off the dew for a single night, but this was no time to be picky.
Painkillers wouldn’t work. Wound medicine wouldn’t work either. The only method left was to absorb the spiritual energy of the spirit pill Tang Muheok had tossed to me like some gesture of generosity. To do that, I needed to hide somewhere even a little safer.
When I looked back, I could see the marks where my leg had dragged through the brush.
From halfway on, I had not even been able to erase my trail. Any skilled hunter would find me in no time.
Even if I hid in the shack, I would only hold out there for a little while.
I looked silently at Cane. His glossy black fur, once sleek and shining, was now a mess of dust.
He was a spirit creature that understood human speech, and a precious black sable at that. If he stayed with me, he wouldn’t meet a good end either.
“Cane. Go now.”
“Kuung.”
“You can’t stay with me anymore. Run far away.”
Cane blinked his large eyes, then bit down on the hem of my clothes as if refusing.
“Go. Hurry!”
When I shouted and shoved him away, Cane whimpered and backed up. I curled in on myself as I watched his retreating back.
He was a clever little thing. He would live well wherever he went. This was better for him, and better for me too.
The half-collapsed shack smelled rotten. But I had no room to care about choosing a hiding place.
Like an injured animal crawling into its den, I dragged myself into the narrow shack.
The rough grass and gravel scraped and bruised my skin, but my half-numb body could barely feel pain anymore.
At that point, I was barely clinging to consciousness as it was.
Sniffling, I slipped a hand into my clothes.
I was afraid this body would not be able to absorb the spirit pill properly, but if I was going to die whether I ate it or not, then trying was the only right choice.
With shaking hands, I pulled out the spirit pill. I did not even have the strength left to bring it properly to my mouth, and it slipped from my fingers.
The spirit pill rolled across the dirt floor and became caked with soil. I reached out stubbornly and shoved it into my mouth.
Dirt crunched between my teeth, but I swallowed the dirt along with it. I had to eat it. Even if I died from taking it, I still had to take it.
Tears streamed down my face as I folded my legs into a cross-legged seat. No matter how many ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) times I wiped at my eyes with my sleeve, my vision stayed blurred.
But even crying was a luxury. If I still had enough strength to sit there and cry, then every last bit of it had to be poured into circulating my energy.
Because Tang Jung was not here now to guide me.
And Deokju was not here to stand guard over me either.
Biting down on my lip, I began to circulate my energy—and in that instant, the force of the spirit pill that had slid down my throat went berserk.
Something was wrong.
The force of the Ten-Thousand-Poison Pellet I had not fully digested collided with the energy of the new spirit pill, tangling the flow of my internal energy into utter chaos.
Move!
Move!
Move, damn it!
I clenched my teeth and struggled to control the flow.
My nails dug into my flesh, and drops of blood pattered down.
But instead of heading into my dantian, the spiritual energy struck at the meridian channels all through my body and ricocheted wildly in every direction.
An unbearable force tried to devour me whole.
Burning pain exploded through my entire body. It felt as though I had been swept into a storm-lashed open sea.
THUD!
THUD!
Every time the uncontrolled spiritual energy tore through me, my meridian channels twisted and scattered my internal energy apart.
I felt nausea rise, and then a hot lump of blood surged up my throat. It felt as if my organs had been wrung inside out.
My body, unable to withstand the repeated shocks, collapsed limply.
I clawed at the dirt floor, trying to push myself up, but no strength entered my limbs. My consciousness kept fading.
Instinctively, I knew.
Ah. So this is the end.
The death I had struggled so desperately to avoid had climbed on top of me and was closing its hands around my throat.
A sound escaped me, something between a laugh and a sob.
Maybe all of this had been fated from the beginning.
I had tried so hard to act as if I were fine, as if none of it touched me, but I was an outsider.
The role this world had given me was that of an extra who had not even been mentioned in a single line of the novel.
If fate would never change, then now, at least, I wanted release from the pain that felt as though it were tearing my whole body apart.
The moment I was about to give up on everything, I heard a sharp cry.
“KIIK! KII!”
Cane was roaring at the top of his lungs, as if demanding to know what the hell I was doing.
Why did that idiot come back?
I sobbed. I was upset because Cane might get hurt too. At the same time, I was glad he had returned.
I had been driven out of the clan. I had been left alone. But dying here by myself in a place like this...
It was lonely.
And then—
From far away, I sensed someone’s presence. At the sound of a powerful martial artist’s footsteps, I held my breath.
“Furball. Are you telling me to go in here? It’s too cramped.”
“Kyuu! Kii!”
“All right, all right. Wait a second. Is your master really inside this? One tap and it’ll collapse. I think I’ll have to strip the roof off...”
“Kyak!”
“A tiny thing like you’s got a nasty temper. I told you to stop rushing me.”
Chuckling, the martial artist strode closer.
CRAAACK!
With a loud crash, dust and grit poured down over my face.
Maybe he had ripped the roof off the shack, because the sting of harsh sunlight touched my skin. The intense stimulus made tears spill from my eyes.
I forced my eyelids open. In the light, I saw the figure of someone looking down at me.
“Oh? I thought some Sapa bastard who got stabbed had rolled in here, but it’s not that at all. Who might this young lady be, dying in a place like this?”
“...I don’t want... to die.”
“You don’t want to die?”
That was the last thing I remembered saying.
Then everything went black as I lost consciousness.
