North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 50

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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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50. Thunder

They were crossing the Wasteland when it happened.
The sun hung low. The western sky burned crimson. The sunset drenched the entire Wasteland in blood-red light—as if forewarning what was yet to come.
Harku muttered under his breath.
“This sunset reeks of blood. Looks like the kind you see just before war.”
Garkan shot back.
“You and your ominous words.”
The patrol unit led the way. The bound prisoners followed behind.
Harku grumbled.
“Hey, this rope’s pulled way too tight. My wrists are going to bleed.”
Garkan sighed.
“Bear with it. The chief told us to endure.”
“Endure what? If we’re going to be captured anyway, shouldn’t we at least get a look at their swordplay before they take us? Giving ourselves up this easily feels wrong.”
Taikan spoke quietly.
“Keep quiet. They’re listening.”
One of the patrol members glanced back.
“Shut it! For a prisoner, you’ve got a lot to say.”
Harku bared his teeth in a grin.
“Ah, yes. My apologies.”
But his eyes did not smile. They held the glint of someone who could snap that man’s neck at any moment.
Ailak spoke softly.
“Restrain yourself.”
“Yes, yes. I’m restraining myself.”

Then.
Ailak’s eyes narrowed.
The scent on the wind had changed.
Horse sweat. Human sweat. And blood.
The ground trembled faintly beneath them. The thunder of hooves. Hundreds of them. No—thousands.
“Stop.”
The patrol captain turned to look back.
“What is it?”
“We’re being ambushed. They’re closing in from all sides.”
The patrol captain laughed derisively.
“Don’t talk nonsense. Don’t even think about running.”
“Fool. Feel the ground beneath you. It’s vibrating. Hundreds of hooves—you truly don’t hear that?”
Garkan stepped forward.
“The chief speaks truth. I feel it too…I’m certain. They’re coming from the north.”
“Shut up!”
The patrol captain dismounted and approached Ailak.
Then the kicks began. Ailak’s ribs. Once. Twice. Three times. Blow after blow.
“Keep your mouth shut. You’re in no position to talk, prisoner.”
Ailak fell to the ground, then slowly rose.
His eyes had changed.
The cold gaze now burned with fury. Something feral stirred awake behind those grey irises.
“You mock me for going quietly?”
His voice was low—like a growling wolf.
The patrol members flinched.
The killing intent radiating from the bound prisoner was no ordinary threat. The air itself had turned glacial in an instant. With each breath, white vapor curled from his mouth. A midwinter chill descended despite the height of summer.
One patrol member asked in a trembling voice.
“C-Captain, he’s…”
“Silence!”
The patrol captain glared at Ailak.
“Listen well. If you try anything, I’ll kill you where you stand.”
“Consider yourself warned.”
Ailak spoke low.
“These hoofbeats… they’ll trample you in a single breath. I told you plainly enough. You simply didn’t listen.”
The patrol commander laughed mockingly.
“A prisoner dares speak thus—”
The words never finished.
A shrill whistle cut the air.
Dozens of arrows eclipsed the sky.

It came like thunder.
The shadow of arrows swept across the Wasteland, and for a moment the shafts and sunset burned the same crimson.
One patrol member raised his head.
The last thing his eyes held was a sky red as blood.
From all sides, Majeon cavalry poured forth.
From behind hillcrests, from between boulders, from dried brush—they had crept in, breath held. A perfect ambush, closing in so silently that sound itself seemed to betray them. They had muffled the thunder of hoofbeats beneath the wind’s whisper.
Wild dogs encircling their prey.
Three hundred strong.
Not one hundred. Not two hundred. Three hundred.
Black eagle standards whipped in the wind. The wild dogs of the North Sea. Those who savored plunder and slaughter.
Majeon.
The wild dogs had returned. To finish the hunt.
Serian’s breath caught.
“It’s Majeon…!”
Ailak nodded.
He had expected as much.
Majeon was relentless—they had pursued from the North Sea to the Central Plains themselves. They would never relent here. The only surprise was the timing. To be ambushed while shackled to the patrol.
But it hardly mattered. They were marked for death regardless.
The first arrow punched through a patrol member’s throat.
Blood erupted like a fountain. The horse shrieked and collapsed, and its rider tumbled with it to the earth.
A second arrow lodged in another soldier’s chest. He wore no armor. The shaft pierced his heart, and he fell from the saddle like a puppet with its strings cut.
Third. Fourth. Fifth.
Arrows rained down.
“Circle Formation! Form a Circle Formation!”
The patrol commander barked the order. His soldiers dismounted and formed a ring, positioning horses as shields before them, drawing their blades. Back to back they stood.
Fifteen of them.
Five were already dead—those cut down by the opening volley. They had fallen without warning, without a moment to resist.
“Charge!”
The Majeon cavalry surged forward.
A black wave.
Three hundred against fifteen. More than twenty times their number.
The outcome was already written.
Spears tore through soldiers’ chests. Blades severed necks.
“Ahhhhh!”
“Help…!”
Screams tore free. Blood sprayed. In an instant the formation shattered.
The patrol commander fought with terrible fury, cutting down two Majeon soldiers in a single breath—the swordwork of a first-rate martial master, worthy of his rank. Yet even his skill was immaculate.
But the numbers were too great. His martial prowess was worn away like stone against the tide, relentless and inevitable.
Within moments a spear pierced his shoulder—one among dozens aimed at him. A blade cut his leg, and another spear drove into his back.
The patrol commander dropped to his knees.
Blood spilled from his lips.
His vision blurred, and the last thing he saw was a spearhead descending. Then there was nothing.

In that interval, Ailak moved.
He twisted his wrist, drawing the rope taut. Internal Power surged through him. The icy aura of the North Sea Ice Seal Divine Art froze the bonds.
Crack.
The frozen rope shattered.
“Free yourselves.”
Garkan, Harku, Taikan, Arko, Serian.
In moments, all six stood unbound. From the first blow to the last, the battle had taken less than two breaths.
Harku rolled his wrists.
“Ah, much better. Now I can truly breathe again.”
They quickly retrieved their weapons from the pack animals. The patrol had confiscated them, but they remained tied where they’d been left.
Ailak lifted the Beommyeongdo.
The familiar grip settled into his palm. A blade as cold as the ice of the North Sea, as swift as its wind.
A sword that thirsted for blood.
Harku grasped the Twin Curved Blades and bared his teeth in a grin.
“At last.”
“Let’s go.”
Ailak charged toward Majeon.

A slaughter began—the mirror image of everything that had come before.
The Beommyeongdo blazed. Black light swallowed the sun. Cold radiated from the blade’s edge.
The sword hungered for blood.
Martial skill honed across thirty years. A proper battlefield at last, after three decades of waiting.
The first sweep brought down three men. Heads separated from bodies. The second sweep felled five more. Waists cleaved through.
The third sweep claimed seven. Necks flew.
Ailak carved a path through the cavalry ranks. Like lightning. Like wind.
Corpses piled in his wake. Corpses piled in his wake.
“What is that thing!”
“It’s a monster!”
The Majeon soldiers surged toward him.
Ailak swept his foot across the ground.
Ice essence radiated outward.
The soldiers’ movements stiffened. A moment of paralysis. Bone-deep cold. The North Sea Ice Seal Divine Art’s chill froze the very air. The horses screamed and buckled. Their riders lost their seats.
In that instant, the blade flashed four times.
Twenty men fell.
It had been the same thirty years ago. Frost-covered grass beneath Ailak’s feet crumbled to powder—grass of the Central Plains, but it sang with the voice of the North Sea. Rime bloomed at each footprint. Every step was a handful of winter.
The Majeon soldiers recognized that winter.
On the battlefield, Ailak became a wolf. A wolf stained with ice and blood. The more enemies surrounded him, the colder he grew, the faster he moved. Mercy had no place in him.
Terror kindled in the Majeon soldiers’ eyes.
‘That’s no human. It’s a ghost. An ice ghost.’
“R-run! Retreat!”
The Majeon soldiers fell back. But there was nowhere left to go.

The battlefield had become hell.
Harku’s laughter rang out across it.
“Haha! Now that’s a fight!”
The Twin Curved Blades danced. Blood fountained. In Harku’s wake lay only corpses—more than thirty.
Garkan’s Ice Chain cut through the air. Bone cracked each time the chain wrapped around an enemy’s throat.
Taikan worked in silence, loosing arrows. One bolt to each target. Not a single miss. When his quiver ran dry, he drew his sword and charged.
Arko’s Poison Smoke took to the wind. Wherever the vapor touched, soldiers collapsed, foam at their lips.
Serian hurled Ice Needles. Her trembling hands had stilled without her noticing. Faces from that village flooded her mind—the child who had died with hands outstretched, the mother who had tried to shield it. Her Ice Needles flew sharper still.
Six faced three hundred.
Over a hundred fell in seconds. In time barely long enough to breathe. The remaining two hundred recoiled in terror. They dared not approach. Fear had seized them.

“W-withdraw!”
Someone shouted the order.
“They’re not human!”
The soldiers began to flee. They turned their horses and bolted.
Ailak did not pursue. He did not hunt the fleeing. It was the law of the North Sea warrior. To strike down one who turns their back is cowardice.
The one who killed Karani—that was the true prey.
Majeon was merely a pebble in the path.
He steadied his breathing and surveyed the ground around him.
The battlefield was a sea of blood. Red soaked the Wasteland. Corpses of Majeon soldiers and patrol members lay tangled together.
Murim Alliance patrol.
Completely annihilated.
All twenty were dead.
Some were so mangled by spear and blade that their forms were barely recognizable. It was brutal. The savagery of Majeon laid bare for all to see. Majeon had always been this way—whether enemy or ally, once they killed, they destroyed utterly. It was the nature of wild dogs.
The patrol captain’s corpse caught his eye. Three spears protruded from his back—driven in by Majeon’s hand. He had turned to flee, and his exposed back had been his death.
Ailak gazed down at the body in silence.
“I warned them. They simply didn’t listen.”
Serian drew near.
“What do we do? These people…”
“There’s nothing we can do. We didn’t kill them.”
Garkan spoke up.
“What now, then?”
“We head for the Murim Alliance. The plan doesn’t change.”
Ailak gazed toward the south.
“Let’s go. The main body of Majeon will be here soon.”
The group mounted the horses they had seized from the patrol—six beasts in all.
They began riding south, toward the Murim Alliance, toward the place where Karani’s enemy waited.
Behind them, the horn of Majeon sounded long and mournfully.
Harku glanced back over his shoulder.
“Killing a few of them feels good.”
Garkan replied.
“We dropped about a hundred. Not a bad warm-up.”
“Still leaves a thousand more, doesn’t it?”
Ailak spoke.
“Doesn’t matter.”
The pursuit from Majeon continued. It seemed endless. And yet… fear was not what he felt.
He would find them. That was certain.
And he would kill them. Karani’s enemy. He would kill them without fail. He had sworn it.
The Beommyeongdo sang once, long and clear, from its sheath. Ailak’s hand swept across the grip, stilling that voice.
The setting sun stretched six shadows far across the road to the south.

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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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