Cold. Sleepy. Hungry.

One-Eyed Ghost ran along the exact route taken by Sect Master Dokgo, who had raced ahead of him.

He was running nearly at full speed, but Sect Master Dokgo’s lightness art was quite literally on another level.

As he moved deeper into the Assassin Guild, the number of horribly mutilated corpses only increased.

Most appeared to have died either from having their heads severed in a single sword strike or from excessive blood loss.

The Forward Scouts who occasionally appeared tried to ambush him, but One-Eyed Ghost was far beyond their level to begin with.

When One-Eyed Ghost unleashed saber qi ahead of him, the assassins springing out from every direction fell to the floor as dismembered corpses.

‘There’s no end to them.’

By now drenched in blood, One-Eyed Ghost deflected and blocked the endless ambushes before efficiently sweeping his blade through every assassin who appeared.

As he headed farther in, a tremendous racket, apparently from a pursuit squad that had picked up his trail, came from behind him.

But One-Eyed Ghost ignored the chill at his back and simply kept running. For now, saving his sister took priority over dealing with all these assassins.

If One-Eyed Ghost remembered correctly……the prison where they kept slaves, captives, hostages, and the like was somewhere underground beneath the Guild.

He knew neither the exact location nor the route, but with the single-minded determination to save his younger sister, One-Eyed Ghost kept charging forward, slaughtering and cutting down the assassins crawling out like insects.

Once One-Eyed Ghost had made his way fully inside the Guild and headed toward the lower levels, a dark, ominous presence slowly gathered at the end of a long corridor.

The assassins who appeared this time were neither as weak as the ones One-Eyed Ghost had just killed nor strangers whose faces he didn’t recognize.

An assassin who had once been a fugitive and had tried to escape alongside One-Eyed Ghost long ago, only to be caught, stood blocking the corridor with his subordinates.

One-Eyed Ghost lowered his blood-soaked straight saber toward his lower right and stared directly at the man.

“……Crimson Eye. Step aside.”

Crimson Eye literally meant a person with a red eye. Sure enough, his lone eye was so bloodshot and filled with red veins that the name suited him perfectly.

Crimson Eye glared at One-Eyed Ghost with his sole remaining eye and spoke in a heavy voice.

“……One-Eyed Ghost. Have you lost your mind? You brought your assassination target here and attacked the Guild?”
“……”
“How the hell do you plan to clean up this mess? Surrender to us while you still can. That’s the only way to keep you alive.”
“Crimson Eye.”

One-Eyed Ghost regarded Crimson Eye with an utterly emotionless gaze. His hollow voice followed.

“I’m going to live according to my own will from now on. Move. For the sake of all the years we’ve known each other, this is my final warning.”
“Is betraying the Guild truly what you want?”
“It is.”
“……I understand.”

After hearing the answer, Crimson Eye drew a strangely curved saber from his waist, and the other assassins all drew their swords at once.

Crimson Eye looked at One-Eyed Ghost with a strange mixture of anger, killing intent, and sorrow in his eye. After a brief silence, he spoke.

“Then this is my will. You will not pass through here. If you want to save your sister, kill me first.”
“Do we really have to take this this far?”
“……One-Eyed Ghost. What tomorrow is there for an assassin?”

One-Eyed Ghost gave a slight nod.

“……You’re right.”

Shwaaaaaang!

In an instant, One-Eyed Ghost and Crimson Eye both accelerated, charging toward each other and colliding in the middle.

Their blades clashed without pause. The contest between curved saber and straight saber was dead even.

Whenever Crimson Eye swung his curved saber along bizarre trajectories, One-Eyed Ghost calmly blocked his attacks before unleashing a vicious saber art and instantly turning to offense.

But that lasted only a moment. When Crimson Eye’s subordinates closed in and filled every blind spot, One-Eyed Ghost pushed off the ground and retreated more than a full step.

The assassins saw the opening and rushed in with their swords thrust forward……but an opening obvious enough for anyone to see was never an opening in the first place.

The instant the assassins came frighteningly close, One-Eyed Ghost spun his body once, unleashed a blast of palm force with his left hand, and sent a vertical blast of saber qi forward with his right.

Puaaaaaaaaak!

The red saber qi carved straight through the assassins’ bodies, sending sticky blood spraying upward like fountains.

Perhaps because they were assassins to their very bones, none of them screamed. The sounds of their bodies being severed became their only dying words.

The instant One-Eyed Ghost landed, the sound of cutting wind came from ahead. Crimson Eye closed the roughly six-meter distance in a single burst and charged in, swinging his curved saber with ferocious momentum.

At last, it was finally one-on-one.

From time to time, the two assassins unleashed killing moves that could have landed decisively, but their martial prowess was too evenly matched for either to suffer a fatal wound. The fight continued to drag on.

The curved saber twisted strangely like a serpent and came sliding toward him, but each time, One-Eyed Ghost answered directly with thunderous saber strikes and blasts of palm force.

Neither man exchanged a single word as they stubbornly drove their blades at each other with the sole purpose of killing.

It was only natural. Neither assassin had ever been talkative, and neither had been taught how to feel.

Yet whenever their sabers locked and they found themselves face-to-face……a tangled mass of complicated emotions seemed to surge between them through their gazes.

Hundreds of emotions mingled within each man’s lone eye, and as if refusing to be swept away by them, Crimson Eye and One-Eyed Ghost swung their weapons with even greater ferocity.

When the straight saber and curved saber, both wrapped in power, collided and released a wave of force, the impact drove both assassins far apart, where they stood glaring fiercely at each other.

Apparently having suffered a minor internal injury from forcing his internal energy too hard, Crimson Eye spat out a mouthful of blood-tinged phlegm and unexpectedly spoke.

“……Wouldn’t it have been better if we’d just let ourselves drift through life?”
“……”

Hearing Crimson Eye’s words brought the insolent young Sect Master Dokgo’s words back to One-Eyed Ghost’s mind.

‘……If the life you want is that of an idiot slave, I’ll respect that.’

One-Eyed Ghost let out a deep breath that might have been exhaustion from the fight or a sigh of exhaustion from life itself, then spoke wearily.

“I’m not a slave, Crimson Eye. What meaning is there in living like an insect?”

Crimson Eye let out an awkward laugh, like a man smiling for the first time in his life.

“A slave…… There’s something I’d like to ask.”
“Ask.”
“Maybe……if our lives had been a little different, could the names people called us have been different too? Something like heroes instead of slaves.”
“I don’t……want to be anything like that.”
“……Is that so.”

Shiiiiiiiiik!

Still chuckling lowly, Crimson Eye sprang forward and thrust his curved saber toward One-Eyed Ghost’s right arm.

The attack was clearly intended to take his arm rather than strike his dantian or heart.

One-Eyed Ghost stomped down once, created distance, and unleashed a saber wind forward.

But the saber wind was torn to pieces by red saber qi the instant it appeared.

The vicious saber qi that had destroyed the saber wind then rushed toward One-Eyed Ghost at arrow-like speed.

This was Crimson Eye’s decisive strike.

And apparently he had scraped together every last bit of his remaining power and poured it into that single attack, because the red hue of the saber qi was far deeper than before.

One-Eyed Ghost happened to be airborne, leaving him no way to evade.

If he couldn’t avoid it, then the proper response was to meet it head-on. That was the assassin’s martial art One-Eyed Ghost had learned.

One-Eyed Ghost stared at the enormous saber qi flying horizontally toward him……

and likewise poured as much internal energy as he could into the straight saber in his right hand before drawing it vertically through the air.

Reddish-gray saber qi surged forward, and when the two blasts met in midair, they crossed in the shape of a cross and produced a tremendous explosion.

Kwaaaaaaaaaaaaaang!

Amid the thick cloud of dust, the saber qi that emerged through the haze belonged to One-Eyed Ghost.

His saber qi tore through the red saber qi with fierce momentum, continued onward, wrapped around Crimson Eye’s body, and struck him head-on.

Crimson Eye took the saber qi across his entire body and was sent flying into the distance before he had any chance to react. As expected, there was no scream.

A brief silence followed. Breathing heavily, One-Eyed Ghost slowly walked to the end of the corridor, where he found Crimson Eye embedded in the wall with blood pouring from his chest.

“……”

Hearing One-Eyed Ghost’s footsteps, Crimson Eye slowly raised his head. One lone eye met another.

The silence stretched on beneath a strangely complicated atmosphere……until Crimson Eye coughed blood from his mouth and barely managed to speak.

“……You’re going to save your sister?”

One-Eyed Ghost silently stared at Crimson Eye. Sometimes silence served as an affirmation, and this was one of those times. Crimson Eye lowered his head and continued in an unguarded voice.

“I’m sorry I stood in your way. Since I got to die by your hand, I have no regrets. I’ll go on ahead, so you come a little later. Thank you for keeping me company when we were in the same situation. Take care.”

With those words, Crimson Eye stopped breathing. Those few brief sentences became his final words.

One-Eyed Ghost reached out and closed Crimson Eye’s sole eye……then suddenly remembered the time they had spent together.

There weren’t many memories of laughter, but even so, there had been plenty of moments when Crimson Eye was beside him.

Bitter emotions somewhere between anger and desolation, something different from simple grief, washed through One-Eyed Ghost’s heart.

“……I’ll avenge you. Rest in peace.”

That was the best One-Eyed Ghost could do. But there was no time to lose himself in sentiment.

With no telling when a pursuit squad or more Forward Scouts might catch up, One-Eyed Ghost dragged his exhausted body and mind down into the deepest underground levels of the Guild.

Only after reaching the lowest level, where almost no light penetrated……did countless cells made of iron bars come into One-Eyed Ghost’s view.

There was one strange thing. Every guard watching over the prison had been brutally killed.

Most had been hacked apart by some kind of sharp weapon, and judging by the shapes of the wounds, they appeared to have been killed by a saber with an unusual blade.

One-Eyed Ghost examined the guards’ wounds and realized that the assassin who had killed them all was Crimson Eye.

As far as he knew, Crimson Eye was the only expert within the Bloodland Assassin Guild who wielded a curved saber.

Apparently……the only reason Crimson Eye had stood in One-Eyed Ghost’s way had truly been so that he could die by the hand of his one and only friend.

A sigh carrying a mixture of emotions escaped One-Eyed Ghost.

“……I’ve gone and put myself in debt to a dead man again.”

Crimson Eye had hated the Guild just as One-Eyed Ghost did, so it wasn’t strange that he had helped the rebellion.

Even so, there was nothing he could do about the bitterness lingering in his heart.

One-Eyed Ghost quieted his footsteps and walked slowly, checking the faces of the prisoners one by one.

Women made up the largest group, followed by children, the elderly, and then able-bodied men.

Apparently, this really was a prison used to hold slaves, hostages, and captives.

One-Eyed Ghost’s jaw tightened as he wandered through the enormous prison, consumed by anger and desperate hope.

His anger was naturally directed at the entire Guild, while all of his desperate hope was focused on his younger sister, So-yu.

He wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to worry anymore. That nothing would happen to her. So please, just let her be safe.

Wrapped in those hopes and countless fears, One-Eyed Ghost wandered through the pitch-black darkness for a long time.

“……Brother?”

At the sudden sound of a young voice, One-Eyed Ghost reflexively snapped his head around.

The prison was so dark that not even a trace of light reached it, making it impossible to see her, but One-Eyed Ghost still recognized the voice without difficulty.

It was the very voice he had recalled dozens of times each day so that he would never forget it.

The moment he heard the voice of the younger sister he had not seen in so long, the person he had wanted to see more than anyone at every moment, One-Eyed Ghost hurriedly turned and grabbed the bars.

“So-yu! It’s your brother! Are you there? If you can hear me, answer me!”

First came the clatter of what sounded like iron shackles. Then a small figure crawling awkwardly toward him became clearer as it entered the faint light.

The clearer the figure behind the bars became, the more One-Eyed Ghost’s expression changed with every passing moment.

It was as though every emotion, joy, anger, sorrow, and delight, came crashing all at once across the face of a man who had lived so long having forgotten how to feel.

And the moment a frail, haggard young girl emerged beneath the faint light……the emotions surging through One-Eyed Ghost’s chest like waves were instantly dyed with overwhelming relief and joy.

One-Eyed Ghost embraced the small body of the girl behind the bars, no, the younger sister he had not seen in so long, and buried his face against her.

“So-yu. I’m too late. I’m far too late. Don’t forgive your brother. Hate me as much as you want. Thank you for staying alive. Thank you for being alive……”

The man who had lived his entire life casting aside his emotions finally shed tears of sorrow and joy for the first time.

Perhaps because of that, One-Eyed Ghost’s back, which had always seemed nothing but fearsome, now looked utterly forlorn as his shoulders trembled faintly.

And with her tiny hands, So-yu tightly held those faintly trembling shoulders, comforting a man’s entire life.