Flying Dragoon Thirteenth Unit (4)

Even with my memory, I couldn’t recall the exact date the Wild Hound Ghost swarm hit.

But I could narrow it down.

It happened to the unit right before us—Platoon Six—on a day we were slated for the afternoon patrol, meaning they were out in the morning.

We took the afternoon slot once every four days. So if I just stayed ready for that window about two months after I arrived, I could more or less pin it.

Knowing the day and being prepared are different things.

I didn’t have the power to take on a horde alone, and I didn’t have the standing to move the whole unit.

Which left only these people.

The kind of comrades who might just believe me if I claimed an immortal appeared in a dream and told us to stop a ghost tide.

Bae Jonggwan barreled in bare-chested, bouncing hounds away like pebbles, roaring with laughter.

“Wahahahaha! Light! Too light!”

He looked like he was living his dream.

Me, I’d lost weight, hadn’t hardened my body like Bae yet, and was short on mass—so I wore a steel vest to bulk up and shoulder-checked the hounds.

I hated resorting to something this brutish, but we had to shove the pack off Platoon Six’s line.

As the horde washed back and a gap opened, I shouted to their troopers:

“What are you doing?! Fall back—now!”

Captain Won Cheongwon snapped out of it and bellowed:

“Retreat! Full speed!”

Then he himself ran to my side and shouted:

“Are you Seven? You fall back too! That number is madness!”

No one knew that better than me.

Charging from range let us sweep their flank once—but once they all fixated on Jonggwan, he’d be forced to a standstill and swarmed.

But I hadn’t come here betting only on Bae.

I yelled:

“Sayoung! Your turn!”

From the rear, Bi Sayoung came sprinting with a curse.

“Damn it! You’re making me do this insane thing?!”

He used his blazing speed to skim past the hounds Jonggwan had off-balanced—

—while slapping their cheeks in a blur.

Chchchchchchchchack!

Red streaks dotted the faces he struck.

Bi Sayoung had cut his own palm and smeared them with blood.

Hounds had two defining quirks. First: once they fixated, they chased to the end. The Alliance even drilled us to bait them with two-person teams. Second: they went rabid for human flesh and blood.

They were built to prioritize eating us.

Sayoung had marked himself with bait they could not ignore.

The hounds he slapped—now wearing his scent—snapped upright and tore after him like a pack, mid-grades included.

“KYAAAAAA!”

“KIIIIII!”

“GRRAAAA!”

With some thirty hounds stampeding after him, Sayoung screamed and ran.

“AAAAAAGH! Seonu Jiiiin! You bastard!”

I let his profanity roll out one ear and grinned.

Everything was proceeding to plan.

He’d be scared, sure—but he was the Bijong Sect’s top disciple, and he’d trained body-lightening to death for a month. He wasn’t going to get caught by Wild Hound Ghosts.

…Probably.

Which meant while Sayoung dragged their eyes away, we only had the remaining twenty or so to deal with.

Not easy, but with the mid-grades lured off, not impossible.

I said to Won Cheongwon:

“Captain Won, come with me—let’s draw the rest.”

He stared, startled, then nodded and plunged first into the knot.

Qingcheng’s Wongong Fist spun like a vortex, batting hounds away.

Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!

Stylish work—worthy of Thirteenth Unit’s second true pugilist after Captain Seol Pung.

But neither of us knew how long we could last in there.

All we could do was pray Lady Cheong-yeon thinned their number fast.

“KIAAAAA!”

I snatched a lunging hound in a clinch and heaved it back, then dove in deeper.

Time for the Thirteen Storm Strikes I’d drilled in duels with Captain Seol Pung to prove their worth.

“Huaaah!”

Ba-ba-ba-ba-bap!

I whipped hands and feet, smashing the wave of hounds, shoving and shouldering them.

When I couldn’t stop one, I body-checked with the steel vest; when I ran out of hands, I used my whole frame to sling them aside.

I wasn’t Captain Seol Pung—I had no weapon qi to crush them. This was all I had.

Beating, grabbing, hurling bodies, I glanced to my comrades—

—and caught Bae Jonggwan snatching a hound’s arms out of the air.

“Lady Cheong-yeon! Got one!”

“Got it.”

Even ringed by enemies, I couldn’t help smiling.

Once Jonggwan had a grip, even a mid-grade couldn’t break free. We’d tested it over and over on patrol.

And even if it kicked, it did no good. Without claws or teeth, it couldn’t pierce Jonggwan’s hardened body.

So all it could do was gape and scream.

“KIAAAAA!”

That was Cheong-yeon’s cue. She slipped in and drove sword aura into its mouth—

—through the palate and into the brain. Quick. Clean.

Three breaths per kill. We’d drilled this on every patrol; at this point, our little crew worked like veteran craftsmen.

We’d even begun leaving one hound alive during attacks to practice and test things.

To be precise, Cheong-yeon did.

She wanted experiments.

How well did Bae’s external arts check hounds? How tough were my and Sayoung’s skins now?

You could only do that with the lowest-order ghosts.

Outside their tough hides, Wild Hound Ghosts were little more than feral beasts.

Sooner or later, new types would appear—and this would stop being easy.

But for now I could say it with confidence:

No one in the Thirteenth Unit handled hounds better than our team.

“Huaaah!”

I spun, flinging bodies, feeding the occasional one toward Jonggwan, and dug deeper.

From here on, it was an endurance fight.

Storm Sabre Pung Yang and the six pinnacle captains arrived at a scene… that was hard to parse.

Bi Sayoung, shrieking, circled the jungle with thirty-plus hounds on his heels. Won Cheongwon and Seonu Jin were locked in a death scrum inside the pack.

And Bae Jonggwan and Cheong-yeon, processing hounds one by one like artisans on a line.

They stared for a heartbeat—then snapped to and charged.

With sword qi and sabre qi, even mid-grade hounds were no more than fierce animals to them.

Watching sword qi halve hounds and fist qi pop skulls, I finally let out a breath.

No one else knew, but in my last life, except for Captain Won Cheongwon, all of Platoon Six died in this swarm.

This time, the disaster was ending with minimal loss.

A few days later, afternoon training.

“Ugh. The smell.”

Smearing on the external-arts liniment, Bi Sayoung grumbled as always.

“Pitch-black, goopy, and it reeks. No wonder people don’t want to learn this.”

He carped, but kept slathering himself. Bae and I traded small smiles.

Since the hound swarm, he’d trained with surprising enthusiasm.

He could feel his growth—and now others recognized it, too—so he was fired up.

Just… the mouth never stopped.

“Look at them. All those gawkers—if it weren’t for this sludge, they’d be begging to join.”

I answered:

“Mmm. From what I’ve seen, people only make up their minds after what comes next.”

Several members from other platoons were watching from a distance.

Not just today—crowds had grown these last few days.

The swarm’s fallout.

Word spread that Captain Won and I had used fists and grapples to survive inside a mob of twenty-plus; now people were seriously considering learning grappling and strikes.

Best choice? Hit pinnacle fast and manifest weapon qi. But wanting that was like wanting to get rich by dinnertime.

If you couldn’t kill hounds yet, you could at least improve your odds of living—so there was no reason not to learn.

Command staff were reportedly debating it in meetings.

Interest in external arts rose for the same reason.

Witnesses swore Bae and I had blasted hounds away with body slams. What used to be “quack strongman tricks” was getting a second look.

Of course, they’d flinch at the suspicious liniment—and when Bae, grinning like a happy deviant, started thwack-thwack-ing split bamboo on our backs, most of them fled….

Still, a few were keen.

“Hey, friends! Hard at it again!”

Waving with that long-armed silhouette—Platoon Six’s Captain Won Cheongwon.

“You put that stuff on every day? Put it on and I can do that ‘Adamantine Flying Star’ thing? Let me just—”

He was a true pugilist and had fought alongside us, so his interest was genuine.

Everyone around him… less so.

Vice-captain Gong Jonghwa hurried up, seized his ear, and towed him away—offering us a neatly modest smile.

“Heehee—pardon us!”

“Aaagh! Vice-captain, why?! I really want to try it!”

Then Six’s troopers burst out of nowhere, hoisted a limb each, and carried him off—calling back to us:

“Keep it up!”

“Looking dashing in mud!”

Thirteenth Unit’s jolliest, tightest platoon—of course.

Even if all that cohesion currently served to restrain their own captain.

After the whirlwind of Sixth Platoon passed, Third Platoon came by.

You could tell from a long way off.

Their captain was Tang Yeo-eun—the Tang Clan’s Sword Phoenix.

Her cool, incisive beauty looked like it shed its own light from within a crowd.

The troopers and hangers-on behind her seemed like afterimages.

“It’s Lady Tang.”

“Third Platoon.”

“Waaah… as expected.”

Despite ourselves, our eyes slid her way.

We saw that face every day—but it stunned every time.

I’d love to claim—pure bias—that our vice-captain Na Seoyu was the most beautiful, but if you had eyes you would admit defeat.

The only close comparison might be Lady Zhuge Seoyul, the Sword Phoenix of the Jegal clan.

Just then, a broad-shouldered man behind Tang Yeo-eun broke rank to amble over with a grin.

“Good to meet you! I always see you in passing—about time we said hello!”

Third’s vice-captain, Myeong Sahyeon. He openly admitted he served as her vice-captain because he adored her—bold to a fault.

Beloved by all, he handled most of the people-work Tang disliked, making him Third’s de facto captain.

With an easy smile, he said:

“To be honest, I thought you were wasting your time.”

Fair. In my past life, even I thought that of my friend.

“But you proved me wrong—proved the training had value.”

He folded his hands and bowed an apology.

“So I wanted to say I’m sorry—for looking down on you, even if only in my heart.”

True to reputation—big-hearted.

We returned the bow and told him it was nothing.

He leaned in, mischief in his eyes, and lowered his voice:

“Between us—if there’s a chance, I’d like to learn some external arts from you. But I hesitate… my goddess likely wouldn’t approve.”

From ahead, Tang Yeo-eun called back:

“Vice-captain! Are you coming or not?!”

He flinched theatrically, then whispered with a grin:

“See? Contrary to appearances, my goddess is quite possessive. I’ll be off. Until next time.”

As he turned, I grabbed his sleeve without thinking.

“Vice-captain Myeong!”

“Hm?”

“I… no. Take care. I hope we train together soon.”

“Haha! Thank you! Me too!”

He jogged back to Tang Yeo-eun, who waited with a weary look. I watched them with a heavy gaze.

A sigh slipped out.

In my last life, he died.

By Tang Yeo-eun’s blade.

Soul-Seized by the Blood Demon Cult, turned into a puppet—she had no choice.

I wanted to warn them—but I didn’t know when or how it would come.

Only that she killed him with her own hands, and that afterward she unraveled.

People thought it’s one-sided—that he chased her.

Apparently not.

After she slew the man she loved, she never truly recovered—and for reasons I still didn’t understand, one day she became Captain Ma Yugyeom’s woman.

Almost like a plaything.

At the very end, when Ma Yugyeom defected to the Blood Demon Cult, she broke in despair—sobbing as she fell. That image still burns in my mind.

She was not the flawless ice goddess she appeared.

As I stared after them, Bi Sayoung snickered.

“What’s this? Jin, do you fancy Lady Tang? Give it up. Unfulfilled longing rots the heart.”

I smirked and shook my head.

“Please. Me pine for Lady Tang? I don’t fancy being stabbed by a legion of her devotees. I just… want to talk to her.”

Truthfully, I did have a reason.

The Iron Ghosts would appear soon—immune to sword qi and fist qi.

We would need Lady Tang’s help to deal with them.

But I had no connection to her, and I was still thinking how to even start.

Sayoung misunderstood and grew solemn.

“Huh? For real? So deep in love that just speaking to her would be enough? You’ve been holding back for the team’s sake?”

That wild leap actually threw me.

“M—no. That’s not—”

“What? Truly? Jin, you’re in love with Lady Tang?”

Bae Jonggwan boomed it out—and I should have known.

Words without legs travel a thousand li. Kill the rumor early—or it kills you.

Before I could, our platoon’s Cheon Jueun ran up to say hello—and blurted, eyes wide:

“Did you hear?! Young Master Seonu is in love with Lady Tang!”

She’d said it to Na Seoyu and Cheong-yeon—who had walked right up behind her.

The world went white.

“N-no! Miss Cheon, Vice-captain Na! That’s not—”

My protests died when I saw Na Seoyu’s pitying eyes.

“Uuugh…”

Unable to tell the real reason, I could only glare helplessly at the sky.