Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 2 - Opportunity (1)

Chapter 2 – Opportunity (1)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Jungrang County

A great crowd had gathered in the marketplace.

The woman selling snacks from a stall, the man carefully carrying water buckets, the children running about with their friends, and even passing pedestrians all turned their eyes in one direction.

A long procession was cutting through the middle of the town street.

-Creak. Creak.

The wheels of a heavy barred wagon were rolling.

Inside the wooden bars visible between the escorting government soldiers were prisoners with their hands and feet bound.

“Look at that.”

“Good grief. They’re covered in blood.”

Their faces were gaunt and full of wounds, as if they had suffered harsh torment.

Their white prison clothes were stained red.

Perhaps because of that, the mood of the town as it watched the transfer procession was extremely ugly.

Then, after the procession had gone on for a while,

someone picked up a stone from the ground and threw it into the barred wagon.

“You filthy vermin!”

-Thud.

“Urk!”

The prisoner, with his hands and feet bound, could not dodge the stone and was hit directly.

The prisoner writhed in pain.

Seeing that, some of the passersby began grabbing things and throwing them as well.

-Thud thud thud.

The prisoners inside the bars had no choice but to take the blows.

“Wicked bastards!”

“Damn lowborn scum!”

“Take this and die!”

Not a single one of the government soldiers escorting them tried to stop it.

Rather, they merely watched with mocking smiles.

That had been the intention of a public prisoner transfer from the beginning.

It was to proclaim their crimes to the whole world.

“Hm.”

A middle-aged man was looking down at them from the second-floor window of an inn.

As he sat neatly and sipped tea, the official in government robes seated across from him asked in puzzlement,

“What is it?”

Those below were criminals.

The man before him was not the sort to feel easy pity toward prisoners.

The middle-aged man looked at one particular wagon.

Unlike the other prisoners, one of them was imprisoned alone.

It was a prisoner whose chest and abdomen were reddened through his prison clothes.

“He’s young.”

The prisoner sat upright with wild, tangled hair.

Half his face was covered by his disordered hair, but even at a glance he was clearly a boy.

He looked no more than sixteen or seventeen.

‘… About the same age as the Young Master.’

Seeing that young prisoner made him suddenly think of the young master he served.

Then he shook his head.

What did age matter when it came to crime?

The official looking at him spoke in an unusually serious tone.

“It is hard to say before the sentence is carried out, but however he looks, he committed the gravest crime among them.”

The middle-aged man asked, puzzled by those words,

“What do you mean by that?”

“That brat you just called young is the vilest one among the prisoners transferred here this time.”

“The vilest?”

The middle-aged man could not hide his surprise.

What could be so vile about that young prisoner?

“… Did he harm people?”

For the authorities, the worst crime was treason.

But traitors were publicly escorted under their stated charge, so that could not be it.

If so, there was only one worst crime left.

Murder.

“That is right.”

At the official’s answer, the middle-aged man let out a faint breath.

To ordinary commoners, murder was a grave crime,

but to martial artists like himself, killing and being killed were things that happened often enough.

The official clicked his tongue as he looked at him.

“Tsk, tsk. I suppose it does not strike you very deeply, being a martial man and all.”

“Killing and dying are commonplace on our side.”

-“I am sure they are. But if you knew what that brat really was, even you would…”

Thud.

Before the official could finish speaking, a stone flew straight at the boy’s head inside the bars and hit him cleanly.

The people around stirred.

Blood was flowing from the boy’s head.

But unlike the other prisoners, the boy gave not the slightest movement or groan of pain.

“That young bastard is viciously tough.”

“Doesn’t it hurt? His head is like that, so how…”

At that sight, a strange light also entered the middle-aged man’s eyes.

‘That brat…’

Someone who had trained internal power or undergone harsh training could endure pain to some extent.

But that boy was an ordinary civilian.

Yet even after being struck in the head hard enough to crack it open, he did not let out a single groan.

-He did not even twitch.

That was certainly hard and vicious.

Sshk.

When the flowing blood wet his hair, the boy tilted his head back, as though finding it cumbersome.

At that, the face hidden behind his hair was revealed.

In that instant, gasps slipped from the mouths of the nearby onlookers.

The official was the same.

“Hoh.”

Though his face was wet with blood, his beauty could not be hidden.

He was tall and fine-boned, and his features held a strange charm.

What was unusual was that, in a certain way, his impression even looked gentle.

“How could someone with a face like that do such things…?”

The official sounded puzzled.

The middle-aged man was staring fixedly at the prisoner boy with a deeply shocked face.

“Why are you acting like that?”

At the question, the middle-aged man flinched and shook his head.

“… It is nothing.”

“Nothing?”

He was pretending to be calm, but just a moment ago he had clearly looked as if he had suffered a shock.

The official was about to ask again why that was,

when the middle-aged man stood up from his seat.

Then he said,

“Thank you for the tea. It seems an urgent matter has come up, so I must be going.”

“Come now, I haven’t seen you in a long time…”

“I am busy, that is all. Next time we meet, I will treat you to a grand night at Wolhyang Pavilion.”

“Wolhyang Pavilion? Ahem.”

At those words, the corners of the official’s mouth twitched.

What man would dislike being taken to the most luxurious pleasure house in the county?

Toward dawn, around the Hour of the Ox,

in the underground floor of the forbidden prison building of the Jungrang County office.

Most of the imprisoned convicts had fallen asleep,

and even the guards protecting the forbidden prison were dozing, leaning against the walls.

Among them, there was only one person who was not asleep.

It was the prisoner boy with wild hair.

The boy imprisoned in the forbidden prison was staring blankly at the wall.

‘…’

It had been four days since he woke after thinking he had died.

A great many things had happened in that time.

It was fortunate that he had miraculously survived,

but when he woke, he found himself imprisoned as a convict.

Worse still, even the date of his public execution had been set.

The punishment was death by dismemberment.

It was an execution in which his arms and legs would be tied to separate wagons and torn apart.

‘… A fitting punishment, perhaps.’

He had killed many people cruelly, enough to be called the Sickle-Killing Ghost.

No matter what the punishment was, it would have been hard for him to escape a death sentence.

And yet in the boy’s eyes there was no regret, nor any visible anxiety.

Instead, his mind was crowded with something else.

[What? Martial arts? Hey, brat. Did you happen to run into a martial artist?]

That was what one of the prisoners transferred with him had told him.

Because of that, the boy was finally able to answer a question he had carried for some time.

‘A martial artist…’

He had heard of them sometimes when he followed Grandfather into the village.

They were said to be able to run as fast as a horse and, by cultivating something called qi, surpass the strength of ordinary people.

What he had only heard as rumor was real.

That man had cornered him in an instant.

‘… Even if I meet him again, the result will be the same.’

No matter how much he recalled it without sleep, he could not think of a way to kill that man.

Even if he launched a surprise attack or set a trap, would it really work?

From the beginning, that was a monster wearing a human face.

‘Are all martial artists really that strong?’

If so, avenging Grandfather might become a distant dream.

After all, no matter how much he struggled, it would mean facing something he could not kill.

After sinking into thought for a long while, the boy suddenly recalled one thing.

‘Martial arts.’

There had only been one difference between that man and himself.

The difference between having learned martial arts and not having learned them had created that result.

Then the conclusion might be simple.

‘I need martial arts.’

If the conditions were the same, the result could change.

It felt as though he had finally found some kind of answer.

But there was one problem.

‘No, are there two?’

First, he had to get out of here.

If he remained like this, he would be subjected to death by dismemberment and die with his limbs torn apart.

Second, how could he learn martial arts?

‘Who would teach me?’

He had to find someone who could teach him martial arts, but even how to find such a person was vague.

And even if he somehow got out of here, he was still a prisoner.

If he escaped, a wanted order would certainly be issued.

In that case, who would be willing to teach martial arts to a wanted convict like him?

‘… One problem piled on another.’

His head grew complicated again.

It made him think anew that Grandfather’s warning had been right.

Even if it was for revenge, he should not have so easily revealed the nature he had kept hidden.

‘Did I only dig my own grave?’

-Even if he realized it now, it was already too late.

The result had already happened.

The one fortunate thing was that, despite his being alive, that man still did not seem to know it.

Or perhaps he knew and simply left him alone because he was going to be executed anyway.

It was while he was sinking into one thought after another.

Suuuu.

A faint sound came from somewhere.

The boy turned his body.

Feeling that something was strange, he held his breath and focused on the sound around him.

‘What is that?’

Just as he was wondering,

something caught his eye.

A faint haze, like a thin mirage, was creeping up and spreading from beneath the right side of the forbidden prison where he was confined.

-The boy’s eyes narrowed.

‘Is there a fire?’

For a moment he wondered whether the prison building had caught fire.

But that suspicion soon vanished.

If it were a fire, there should have been commotion.

Instead, it was too quiet.

And then,

thud, thud.

He heard the sound of something falling over.

Judging from the direction, it seemed to be where the guards had been stationed.

‘This is…’

The creeping haze had already spread into the forbidden prison cell where the boy was.

A faint scent brushed the tip of his nose, and several herbs came to mind.

‘Saururus… angelica… valerian…’

He had spent a full ten years gathering and cultivating herbs with Grandfather.

The boy, who was frighteningly sensitive to scents, immediately recognized what herbs were mixed into the faint smoke.

‘… A sleeping incense.’

Valerian and that other herb were plants that induced sleep.

With such a mixture, anyone who breathed this smoke would not wake for about two shijin.

-But the boy was different.

‘The blend is sloppy.’

Perhaps Grandfather’s mixture would have worked,

but because he had steadily built up resistance to all kinds of herbs since childhood, a sleeping incense of this level would not put him to sleep.

‘Hm.’

The boy judged that something was happening.

Sleeping incense had been spread through the government prison in the dead of night, when everyone should be asleep.

Leaning against the wall, he focused on the sounds.

Ssk, ssk.

He could hear someone moving while suppressing their presence.

It was a sound too faint for an ordinary person to notice, but it reached the boy’s ears.

-‘Who is it?’

Someone had spread sleeping incense and come inside.

That meant they had entered with a purpose.

-Soft footsteps moved here and there through the prison.

‘What are they trying to do?’

He could not tell who had broken in or why.

Then the footsteps headed toward his cell.

The boy lowered his head and deliberately pretended to be asleep.

Ssk, ssk.

The footsteps stopped in front of his prison cell and did not seem to intend to move.

‘Could it be…?’

Click.

The sound of the prison lock opening followed.

‘… Was it me?’

-The target was clearly the boy himself.

At that, several thoughts passed through his mind.

That man might have come all the way into the prison to dispose of him after realizing he had not died.

But would there be any reason to seek out someone who was going to be executed anyway?

-‘It does not matter.’

Whatever the purpose, it had become certain that they were targeting him.

The boy kept his breathing as even as possible.

So that they would not realize he had not succumbed to the sleeping incense.

Ssk, ssk.

He heard the sound of someone entering while hiding their presence once more.

An intruder who had slipped inside carefully.

His eyes were closed, yet he could feel that the person was right in front of him.

Tap.

The intruder lightly nudged him with a foot.

It seemed to be to check whether he had truly fallen asleep.

The boy relaxed his body and did not move.

-Perhaps convinced that he was asleep, the intruder suddenly lifted the hair covering the front of his face.

The intruder’s evenly flowing breathing stopped for a moment.

‘…’

He could feel emotional agitation.

Because Grandfather had taught him about the emotions of ordinary people, the boy was acutely sensitive to the mental state of others through their expressions, movements, and breathing.

-‘This is my chance.’

Such agitation was an opportunity to strike an enemy.

-In one motion, the boy violently raised the wooden restraint binding both his hands.

Thud.

“Ugh!”

The intruder, completely off guard, was struck in the jaw and staggered back.

The boy did not miss that instant and tried to bring the wooden restraint down onto the intruder’s head.

But at that very moment, the intruder kicked the boy in the abdomen.

Thud.

And as he was knocked backward, the intruder rapidly tapped points on his chest with his fingers.

Tap tap tap tap.

At once, his body stiffened and would not move.

As he wondered what kind of phenomenon this was, the intruder muttered in disbelief,

“How are you not asleep?”

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