Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 148

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 148.
Two Blades, Four Names (32)
The moment I recognized the familiar ring of that name, I understood.
From Trabaches. Then were these men sent by Blado?
“Who are you! Did my uncle send you?”
“Good deduction, but think a bit further ahead.”
The ropes came at me again in a dazzling display of movement. I concentrated with all my might, deflecting one, leaping over another, severing a third. As I cut through them, I felt the rope’s material was even tougher than a steel-leather whip.
Since my weapon was a sword, I needed to close the distance to strike my opponent, but that proved nearly impossible. When I forced myself forward a few steps, the rope’s end seemed to turn its head, then flew toward my back and pierced through with a sickening thud. Despite wearing light armor, it tore through effortlessly.
“Ah!”
Convulsions wracked my body, but I immediately parried the other ropes and retreated. There was no time to examine the wound.
I leaped again to evade the snares. One rope barely grazed my knee as it passed.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Isolet. The woman called Marinov was dragging Isolet by her bound feet toward the water’s edge.
Only then did I notice that Marinov’s arms possessed musculature rarely seen even among men. Isolet had no chance against such raw strength.
Gritting my teeth, I charged again. My back throbbed painfully, but I refused to yield to mere pain.
Yet fighting ropes instead of a person meant I could land no meaningful blow on my actual opponent.
I tried to advance toward Isolet, but the living ropes blocked my path once more. Since gaining confidence in swordplay, this was the first time I’d faced an opponent I couldn’t handle.
I severed several rope ends, but new ones immediately erupted forth, their numbers multiplying.
One strand burrowed from below, coiling around my ankle and tearing the flesh. After barely cutting it free, blood spattered across the grassland in scattered drops.
I never imagined the lack of a ranged weapon could be so fatal. Unlike when I fought at Silver Skull, there was no question of restraining or unleashing my true power—I had to use everything I had just to block all four rope strands. But there was nothing after that.
“Come on, come on, get in there. Is it too cold for a bath?”
Marinov kicked Isolet’s bound feet, pushing her into the river, then waded in herself and dragged her deeper into the current.
Isolet said nothing, struggling with all her might to escape Marinov’s grip. But the situation was dire. If only she still had her swift blade, cutting through those ropes would have been trivial.
The one fortunate thing was that the muscular woman, occupied with capturing Isolet, couldn’t attack. For whatever reason, these assassins seemed to have orders to capture us alive, not kill us.
“This mission where I can’t kill—it’s so infuriating!”
Shouting thus, Marinov forced Isolet’s body mercilessly into the water. As they grappled, water splashed everywhere, and Marinov frowned and tilted her head back—and in that instant, everything changed.
I couldn’t see it, but at that moment Isolet, still held by the wrist, drew her legs up between her arms and thrust upward, then wrapped her legs around her opponent’s neck with a knee strike. It was an acrobatic feat no ordinary person could imagine.
“Ugh, what are you doing!”
Marinov, losing her balance, fell into the water, and as Isolet tumbled in with her, their tangled forms finally freed her wrist.
“This—this can’t be!”
Marinov, hampered by her water-soaked clothes, couldn’t move quickly. I thought she’d gotten up, but suddenly water sprayed before her eyes, and through it came a flash of blade, thrusting forward.
Marinov fell back into the water, twisted her body, and quickly reached out to grab the pole that had been resting at the water’s edge.
But in that moment, Isolet’s blade, aimed at her heart, pierced clean through her shoulder.
“Ahhh!”
Marinov wore no armor. Blood fountained out, staining the river, but Isolet pressed on without hesitation, striking the woman’s arm in rapid succession.
“You—you damned brat, how dare you!”
The moment Marinov’s pole emerged from the water, Isolet saw it too. It wasn’t a pole at all. A massive axe blade was concealed at its end, hidden beneath the water.
Now Isolet had no doubt. These weren’t mere bandits—they were true assassins, operating on an entirely different level.
The flying axe blade met Isolet’s second sword. But Marinov, weakened by her earlier wound, struggled to rise, fixing Isolet with bloodshot eyes.
The wound itself mattered less than the fact that she’d been wounded at all—it filled her with unbearable rage.
“You dare wound my body? Orders mean nothing—I’ll kill you in one stroke!”
Isolet’s two blades answered that challenge. A true battle erupted. It was a classic clash of speed against strength.
One combatant was already wounded. Yet Marinov wielded that massive axe with a single hand, deflecting Isolet’s swift strikes repeatedly.
The opponent’s weapon was so heavy that a single collision might shatter her blade, so Isolet could not afford to press recklessly forward.
In this unplanned battle, the chant that demanded a clear mind and focused spirit proved, unfortunately, of little use.
“Tonda! Damn it, are you still struggling? All this time and you can’t finish a single brat, yet you claim to be the third wing?”
“…”
Tonda was a man of few words, but when Marinov cursed, his speed quickened. Sweat beaded across my forehead.
I already bore wounds in several places. Though Isolet had inflicted a grievous injury on Marinov, prolonging this fight risked both of us being captured.
Yet Isolet drove through the terrifying sweep of the axe and carved another wound into Marinov’s ribs.
“What the—! Why is this so troublesome? This isn’t what I was told at all!”
Marinov recalled the message he had received from Ryusno and Yurichi through the sorcerer Jonggenal. The targets were merely “ordinary young boys,” and capturing them would be child’s play, they had said.
Ordinary young boys? These were the ones they meant? That was too much of a joke!
Yet the tide of battle gradually turned in Marinov and Tonda’s favor.
The wounded Marinov and the unchanted Isolet were evenly matched in skill, but I struggled against an opponent wielding an unfamiliar weapon, my wounds multiplying.
Only now did I truly grasp that everything I had learned was how to fight opponents with swords. I, who had originally been from the Continent, had grown complacent living on this sparsely populated, narrow Island, accepting its ways.
On the Island, swords fought swords. But I had forgotten that Continental enemies show no such restraint.
Splash—water touched my feet. Pushed back, I was already at the riverbank. I tried to focus my mind against the ropes that clouded my vision. But my sight only grew hazier.
Then, a moment later, I sensed that the blurred vision was not merely from exhaustion.
A new scent reached my nostrils—a thick, acrid smell of burning. I was not the only one who noticed.
“What—is that fire?”
Marinov shrieked in a shrill voice to distract Isolet, quickly swinging his axe to strike at her arm.
But Isolet, far from startled, moved with even sharper precision, driving her blade straight into his wrist.
“Aaah!”
Fire erupted in the Reed Field behind us. The field stretched so vast that I could not see where or why the flames had started.
But the fire spread slowly and fiercely, soon scorching my back with heat. Though Isolet, soaked through, fared better, I found myself trapped—ropes before me, flames behind.
It was then.
“This way!”
A new voice rang out, and several bundles of burning reeds, tied like sheaves, fell before the battling pair.
The ropes caught fire. Whether due to their special composition, they did not snap immediately, but the man Tonda hesitated and began to reel them in.
“Boris! Come on!”
The voice knew my name.
As Tonda gathered the ropes, a gap opened. I glimpsed several figures—men and women—gesturing from within the burning Reed Field. They wanted me to go there?
Isolet grasped the situation first.
“Follow them!”
With that, she charged through the flames into the Reed Field.
As expected. The fire clung only to the reeds surrounding our clearing. Beyond lay ground soaked with water, where the flames could not spread.
Soon I followed, but my clothes were dry, so I had to brush away the embers. Someone shouted.
“Now, run without delay!”
We bolted through the reeds without time to see our rescuers’ faces.
The reeds grew so tall that stooping even slightly hid me completely. Behind us, flames and smoke tangled together, our movements hidden from sight.
However, Boris’s movements were exceedingly painful due to the various wounds he had sustained.
“Over here!”
The moment he burst through the reeds, he found more than ten men gathered with pickaxes, plows, and shovels as if they intended to till the very earth itself.
Only then did he have the chance to see the face of the person who had guided them here. A woman with long hair pinned up, holding a pole, smiled brightly as she looked at Boris.
It was Hebetica, the boatwoman who spoke in the southern dialect.
“It’s been a while. You’ve grown so much?”

By the time they arrived at the village following Hebetica, evening had already fallen.
As before, a bonfire blazed in the center of the village. The familiar sight of men gathered around it, drinking and making noise, was equally recognizable.
He went first to have his wounds treated. Upon entering a house where dried medicinal herbs hung in abundance, Grandmother, who had been brewing medicine, washed his wounds and applied poultices made from crushed herbs, molding them into round shapes against his skin.
Boris didn’t fully understand, but the wound on his back must have been more serious than he realized—Isolet’s complexion shifted slightly as she examined it.
During the urgent moment, he hadn’t noticed, but the wound on his back throbbed intensely with even the slightest movement of his arm. He managed with difficulty to put his upper garment back on.
When he stepped outside, Hebetica, who had been waiting, gestured for him to come to the bonfire. There, another familiar thing awaited him.
“Here, eat this. It’s from the Corn Field that you and that mischievous gentleman protected together.”
Eating corn freshly roasted over the fire was no simple task. After struggling for some time, Boris and Isolet looked at each other’s faces and found that both their mouths had turned equally black. The two burst into laughter simultaneously.
The men offered them drink. Surprisingly, Isolet, who had not touched alcohol since arriving on the Continent, asked for a cup and drank it. Her face flushed slightly, and she smiled at Boris.
She seemed entirely unaware that the sight of that smile made his heart sink.
“It’s a good place.”
Boris nodded, wetting the tips of his fingers—slightly burned from the corn—with his tongue.
Reflecting on it, he hadn’t actually stayed in this village for very long. It had begun with that embarrassing incident in the frozen river and ended with the ridiculous struggle over the Corn Field—his stay had been brief.
What remained most vividly in his memory was the smell of the aged wine that Nauplion had drunk so prodigiously.
It wasn’t until long after leaving the village that he realized how precious wine was in such a cold land where grapes did not grow.
“Well, congratulations on traveling with a pretty young lady instead of that uncouth gentleman, but where on earth did you leave him?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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