North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 71

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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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71. Just Once

Where the southern road bent into a curve.
The dirt along the verge was soft and rutted, traced by hoofprints.
Six riders moved along the path.
Behind Garkan’s saddle, the Bear Fur bundled there rose thick as a padded quilt.
Garkan rested his knuckles against his ribs in a gentle rhythm—rest, release—while the Bing Cheol Swae, lashed tight beside his saddle, swayed quietly with each step.
“How much farther to the next inn?”
Harku’s throat was parched; he rubbed at his neck as he spoke.
“Half a stage.”
Taikan answered tersely from behind.
His gaze drifted beyond the curve. His fingers, resting on the bowstring, lay slack and easy. Not tense. Unguarded.
“Half a stage, then.”
Harku clicked his tongue softly.
“Every day a new stretch of road appears. How vast is the Central Plains? Won’t we wear away before the road does?”
“Don’t hope for that. We go even if we die.”
Taikan let out a thin laugh.
“Even if we wear away and vanish, the road won’t end. And still we go. It’s not pretty to hear, but I could use some prettier words about now.”
“There aren’t any.”
Taikan replied.
“There’s no trick to it. If there were a way, lying would be fine.”
“Are you worn down already?”
Garkan snorted.
It was meant as a jest, of course. But the group did not laugh. Their shoulders only loosened a fraction. Worn down—yes, they were, even if they wouldn’t admit it.

How many days had passed since they left Go Geom Mun? The count dissolved even when he tried to tally it on his fingers. His head felt untethered, clarity hard to hold.
The grass along the verge had withered to a sallow yellow in the midday sun. The smell of earth rose hot through the dry stalks.
The sky was a pale ash-gray. Even the clouds looked smeared, as though bleached by the light.
Aelak’s gray eyes reached beyond the curve.
The direction they had to go—he was pulling hard on the reins of will alone.
Martial schools and sects he had set foot in: too many to count.
Small sects at the frontier, bandit clans on the roads, toll houses by rivers, gate keepers in the mountains. Fourteen places since leaving Go Geom Mun.
In none of them had anyone recognized Karani’s eight scars.
Not the blade marks burned by friction, not the point where seven sword-strikes converged, not the flesh torn open by sonic force. Each time he showed the shapes carved into Karani’s body, he received only a shake of the head.
Fourteen silences.
Aelak’s fingers went rigid on the sheath.
With each deepening of that silence, its ill weight pressed harder on the company.
A battlefield stripped of terrain.
The longer the silence stretched, the more this weather—nothing like the North Sea—bore down on them. They would bleed freely in a fight against strong martial skill, but this cursed heat…

The sunlight grew steadily heavier.
Spring in the Central Plains was scorching to a northerner.
Garkan’s Bear Fur was soaked with sweat; a dark streak ran down his shoulder. Harku’s bare scalp had taken on neat striations of dust and perspiration. Serian lifted her sleeve to cool the nape of her neck. The small dagger at her belt flashed in the light.
They were strong against martial force, weak against the elements.
Hardened by the North Sea’s bone-cutting winds, they had no defense against the Central Plains’ flesh-roasting sun.
“This heat is the enemy.”
Garkan slipped his knuckles inside the Bear Fur to wipe away sweat.
“Strip it off. We have to leave all our ways behind. Harku took his off long ago.”
“If I take this off, I feel like I’m walking around in nothing but underclothes. Won’t you remove yours too?”
……
Aelak said nothing.
It was hot, yes. But the leather he wore had been touched by Karani’s hands.
In every seam of that leather lay the trace of her stitches. He knew the place without needing to trace it with his fingers.
“Come on, take it off. Keep wearing that and you’ll get heat rash all down your back.”
Harku jabbed him in the ribs.

Garkan fell silent.
He wanted to strip off his robes and tie them to his horse like Harku, but the chieftain wasn’t removing his. If the chieftain could bear it, how could a subordinate complain of heat?
Only Aelak’s gray eyes remained as cold as always, even in the midday sun.

As they rounded another bend, an inn appeared beside the road.
A weathered signboard read that it was run by someone named No—the Nogunjeon inn.
The distance was roughly a li. On horseback, they could reach it in a single gallop.
Yet for an inn, it was far too quiet. No sound of people anywhere. By this hour, it should have been bustling with drinkers.
A single dry cloth hung limply from the eaves without a breath of wind to stir it. The stable quarter, too, was nothing but silence.
That was when Arko’s brow creased.
His nose, hardened by the frozen ice of the north, twitched with the breeze. A scent he knew well—one his keen sense of smell recognized unmistakably.
A drug used by cowards.
Arko spoke in a low voice.
“There’s an inn there, but we won’t find rest. That smell—it’s a drug used by men who deal in shameful things.”
Arko’s nose tracked the wind’s direction. The current carried the scent from one place only—unmistakably from that inn.
“You’re certain?”
“I am.”
“The smell’s coming from the inn itself?”
“It is. The wind comes from the inn, and so does the scent.”
“What sort of shameful things are you talking about?”
Serian asked.
“A drug the weak use against the strong. A drug a man uses on a woman. That sort of thing.”
“On a woman?”
“It clouds the mind. Leaves her conscious enough—but renders the body compliant.”
“The Midhon Drug?”
“That’s what I believe it is.”
“Could it be another poison?”
“Would I fail to distinguish such things? Serian, I am a Poison Spirit.”
Arko wiped his nose sharply, one finger still hooked through the cord of his medicine pouch.
The word “Midhon Drug” struck all their minds at once.
The inn ceased to look like an inn.
Their gaze naturally turned toward it.
Now that they looked… they could see them. Figures scattered among the grass and stone shadows. Gradually, the outlines of those surrounding the inn came into focus.
Nearly thirty of them.
None ventured inside. None prepared to flee. They were standing watch.
Taikan tilted his ear.
He caught the furthest one among them, then swept inward, counting. He caught every speck of movement.
Whisper.
The sound of grass being crushed—not wind.
“Thirty total. Fifteen at the main entrance, ten in the stone shadows, five at the rear stable.”
“Their weapons are swords. Swordsmen? Same weight, same form, same color. I see no marks that would identify a sect…”
“Martial masters or bandits?”
Garkan asked, his mouth tightening.
Martial masters and bandits were utterly different. Bandits—even a hundred of them—wouldn’t warrant concern. But if these were martial masters…
“Their Qi is malicious. Depravity, killing intent, the stench of it—everything about them reeks of filth. I’d call them martial masters, but…” Arko paused. “They’re defiled.”
“Then they’re Sapo Forces.”
Men who wielded martial power to kill. Men who used it to threaten, extort, and coerce. Men who would embrace any technique of martial arts, however vile, so long as it broke someone’s will.
“The real problem is what’s inside. That scent your brother caught—I think he was right. Something’s happening in there.”
There was no doubt. Even a fool could see it. Something was unfolding inside that inn. Someone had been dosed with the Midhon Drug—someone strong, or a woman, someone whose mind had been scattered into darkness.

Aelak withdrew his gray gaze.
“It’s not our concern.”
Short. Absolute.
“Chieftain.”
Garkan straightened in his saddle.
“We leave?”
“We do.”
“Understood.”
“It’s hot out here. Stretch your legs before we go.”
Harku let the words fall.
“It’s not our affair,” he said.
“I heard. I understand.”
Those who turned their backs were not struck down. And they did not meddle in matters that occurred on the road. They never interfered at all.
Since first setting foot in the Central Plains, it had been a principle that never wavered.
None of them had ever abandoned that principle. Never once had it shaken.
Aelak slowly turned his horse’s head.
The shoulders of the party followed, turning as one.
But one person—she did not turn her horse.

Serian turned her horse’s head to the side, blocking Aelak’s path.
Her slate-gray eyes looked up at him.
There was no softness in them. No hesitation.
“If the Midhon Drug was used, the woman is likely being violated right now.”
Her hand rested on her belt—ready to unfasten it at any moment.
“Chieftain.”
……
“Let me go alone. Like last time. Just wait for me a moment. Only once.”
……
“It will end quickly. I’m not weak.”
Serian’s eyes gleamed with fierce light—and with urgency. The Midhon Drug had already been used. If a woman was suffering its effects, she was likely being assaulted even now.
For the women of the Fukku Tribe, chastity is life itself.
It is for this reason that Fukku women so often took their own lives alongside their husbands.
“They are not bandits. They are warriors. It will not end quickly.”
“I’ll make it end quickly.”
Her tone had softened, but her slate-gray eyes had not.
Aelak stood motionless as stone for a long moment.
The scent of Midhon Drug drifted once more on the wind.
His gray eyes turned toward the inn, but what he saw was not the inn.

Thirty years ago, on a cliff above the Ice Sea.
A woman looked up at him from below the precipice.
“You have to come. I’ll wait for you.”
That is what she had said.
He could not raise his hand.

Another face overlaid that memory.
Serian. As if she had become Karani, she had never left his side.
All this time, she had endured hardship without complaint, serving him without asking for anything. She had scarcely ever heard him speak, yet she followed him in silence.
‘Then.’
He did not speak the word ‘repayment.’ It was simply a concession.
“Only this once.”
He spoke at last.
A single word. Short and heavy.
Beside him, the Bing Cheol Swae hummed softly. The Ssang A Do gave a metallic click.
“Yes. I understand! Just this one time!”
Serian received his words with a bright smile.
“Thank you.”
“Only this once, Serian.”
“I know.”
“Arko, Harku. Go.”
A brief command. A command that carried weight.
“Should we not go as well?”
Garkan, who had begun to dismount, settled back into his saddle as he spoke.
“Arko and Harku. Go.”
Aelak repeated himself, making his intent unmistakable.
His calculation was complete. He had already assessed those standing before the inn—their martial skill, their momentum, their combat strength. And he had factored in two more fighters.
“Since you’ve promised to end this quickly, that’s what we’ll trust you to do!”
Harku accepted the command.
Harku checked the haft of the Ssang A Do with both hands. The corner of his mouth curved slightly upward.
“We’ll save the poison for another time.”
Arko chuckled and spoke. He reckoned such opponents were hardly worth more than a poison dagger.
“We don’t know who’s inside the inn, but… we’ll bring them out alive. That’s the job.”
Arko added this as an afterthought. His gaze turned once more toward the inn.

Serian drew the Eunseol and reversed her grip on the blade.
“Let’s go.”
Serian said lightly.
“That works for me too.”
Harku laughed briefly.
“Don’t laugh.”
Garkan’s voice came from behind.
“Can’t we even smile?”
“These bastards… they’re not to be taken lightly. Sharpen your wits and strike hard.”
“Always worrying. Let’s move!”
The three of them charged forward.

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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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