Arena

Boom-

A single gunshot could be heard through the night.

Along with the right wheel of one carriage, the soldier that was resting his back against the wheel was blown to smithereens.

“It’s the enemy!”

“Dammit, he’s here again!”

“Report damage and guard your surroundings!”

The transportation troops of the Aman Empire had to wake up in the middle of the night and get ready for battle in a fluster.

Sylph returned after checking whether there were any enemies following us.

“You’ve returned?”

Cha Jihye, who was sleeping inside the sleeping bag, welcomed me.

As starting a fire would let the enemies discover our whereabouts, she was in the darkness all the time. It seemed she hadn’t slept until I came back.

“I’m back.”

“Please get some sleep. We’ll be moving throughout the day too.”

“Okay.”

I unsummoned the Neilson R3 and crawled into the sleeping bag.

“…This isn’t your sleeping bag.”

“Oh, my mistake.”

“You can make such a mistake?

“Actually, it was because I was afraid that I was going to freeze to death if I sleep alone.”

I slept while hugging her.

After twitching, she seemed to have given up and started sleeping after a sigh.

‘I guess that marks the end of the 4th day.’

This was the fourth day they started to battle against the transportation troops.

During that time, I have achieved in killing 4 corrupt examinees, as well as 10 carriages.

It may look easy as it was a one-sided attack, but the enemies were scouting farther and farther so it was getting harder to approach them, because there may be some corrupt trainees among the cavalry that were doing the scouts.

I wanted to kill more of those corrupt examinees, but their camouflage was getting better and better. It seemed that they were preparing themselves against me.

The Chinese examinees, in particular, were very careful not to reveal their hair color.

I then changed plans and told Sylph to aim at people using the words ‘examinee’, ‘exam’, ‘karma’ and other Earth-related words. 𝒇𝘳𝐞𝚎𝓌𝑒𝑏𝒏𝑜𝙫ℯl.c𝚘𝒎

However, I only took out 3 with that strategy. 2 were corrupt examinees, while 1 seemed to be a dark magician.

After that, they never used those words, so it was very hard to differentiate them from normal soldiers.

Lee Chang-wee was bold and revealed himself, but as he was clad in very good magic armor, it was hard to get any damage on him.

Above all, Lee Chang-wee had met me before.

Since he should have gotten the pathfinder skill to at least beginner lv 1, there was no way he was unaware of my direction.

This could also be seen from the fact that the enemies were scouting towards my direction.

‘Isn’t there a good method?’

I was doing plenty well right now, but it was getting harder and harder to approach them.

The number of the Eyes of the Abyss was also increasing as well.

I also increased my distance and was shooting from a 7km range. It just became that harder to approach them.

‘I wonder what happened to the battle at Laman City.’

According to Dana, the Arend Royal Army camped themselves in front of Laman City two days ago.

Other than that, the examinees prepared an infiltration plan since yesterday, and I was waiting for the news about it. Whether it succeeded or not, they should have contacted me about it after all.

At that moment, my hands, wrapped around Jihye’s waist, suddenly felt something.

Jihye spoke as she gently rubbed my hands.

“Go to sleep.”

“How did you know I wasn’t sleeping? I don’t snore.”

“Your breathing is different.”

Is it because we spent a lot of time together? How quick to catch.

I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

***

Lee Chang-wee sat on a rock and embraced the darkness of the night.

In the middle of the silence, he closed his eyes and concentrated.

Kim Hyunho’s current location was to the north-west.

From how there was no change in the direction, he should be sleeping somewhere right now.

He thought about attacking at night, but from how he escaped very quickly and fought back through sniping, it seemed that he used the elementals as night guards.

‘How meticulous of him to sleep two or three hours at a time. There must be a time limit to summoning the elementals, so he should be moving in consideration of that.’

Lee Chang-wee was very careful as well.

He ordered that no one should use words that only the Second Advent Association and the corrupt examinees would know about.

Not only that, he also extrapolated that the duration of Kim Hyunho’s elemental summoning time was around 10 hours from his activity time and sleep time.

He put people on guard according to the information he had gathered, and damage was being minimized as time passed.

This was a splendid achievement considering that the enemy could attack from 5 kilometers away.

And this was considering that their side didn’t have any good long-range attack methods.

Despite that, he could not deny the fact that the procession was getting delayed.

Kim Hyunho was also aiming more towards destroying the carriages rather than slaying the corrupt examinees or dark magicians.

‘From this, we can see that his objective is to delay the procession.’

Was he planning to make his allies more advantageous by delaying supplies?

But to say that was the case, he was too focused on this side.

Right now, there should be other troops transporting goods from the capital.

They were also very small in scale as they were prepared to get attacked.

However, if his objective was to obstruct the supplies, then he shouldn’t be just focusing on this side where there were numerous dark magicians and corrupt examinees.

‘Then what is your objective?’

Although Lee Chang-wee didn’t know what method he was using, Kim Hyunho had access to an incredible amount of information.

It didn’t seem as though he was in contact with other examinees, but he was incredibly detailed in learning about the movements of the Empire.

It was strange that he knew exactly what route they were taking the troops to.

‘It’s not like they could use a satellite here, so it must be some magical device.’

Never did he imagine that a genuine satellite was looking down from above them.

In any case, Kim Hyunho’s objective no longer seemed to be just obstruction.

‘I don’t know what kind of intelligence system he has with him, but he knew beforehand that we were disguised as soldiers. That is also why he attacked with his rifle from the beginning and didn’t straight up use his elementals.’

If he attacked knowing that there were forces here that would hunt him instead, then his objective was to…….

Lee Chang-wee abruptly stood up.

Then, he woke up a middle-aged dark magician that was disguised as a military officer.

“Ugh, what is it?”

The middle-aged dark magician woke up and asked in a fatigued voice.

“We’ll ruin everything at this rate.”

“What do you suddenly mean by that?”

“What if his aim is not to obstruct the supplies, but us?”

“What?”

Lee Chang-wee had the urge to murder this man in front of him that didn’t understand dwhat he was saying.

“He’s going for a hard battle in order to delay us from going to Laman City.”

“So his aim is not the supplies but us?”

“Yes.”

“Why would that be?”

“Urgh, you should understand at this point. It’s obvious that the Arend kingdom is going to attack Laman City.”

“Ah…….”

Seemingly awkward, the middle-aged dark magician’s face reddened and he stuttered as he spoke.

“Even if that is the case, the orders we received from His Majesty the Sultan was to safely transport the supplies to Laman City. What can we do other than moving our procession?”

“We will have the minimum amount of dark magicians that can guard against elementals and the rest of us should run to Laman City.”

“Unacceptable! If so many of us leave the procession, then the troops here will be annihilated by him. Do you know just how enormous of a quantity we are transporting here?”

‘Urgh, what a douche.’

He suppressed his urge and refuted.

“Hey, didn’t I just say it? That his aim is not to delay the procession, but to delay us? If his aim is us, then he will not be able to hold himself up with the troops here. He will be following us.”

“But that is just a vague speculation.”

“Vague?”

“In any case, I will follow His Majesty’s orders.”

“Us separating ourselves from the procession and going towards Laman City IS TO PROTECT the procession. Don’t you still get it?”

“I understand what you mean. And precisely because of that I am disagreeing.”

Lee Chang-wee became very angry, but just took a step back with his fists clenched.

No matter how angry he was, he could not afford to kill a high-class dark magician of the Association.

If he killed that man, the rest of the dark magicians would turn against him, ruining even more things.

‘Should I leave the dark magicians here and just depart with the Chinese examinees first? No, I need the support from the dark magicians.’

It was just as he was thinking about it.

Boom-

It was that same gunshot.

Along with that

Plop!

Someone’s head exploded into bits.

‘Did he wake up? The direction didn’t change though!’

Lee Chang-wee had a look at the one that was killed in surprise.

…It was that middle-aged dark magician that he was talking to until now.

A coincidence?

No.

Lee Chang-wee analyzed the situation.

‘He’s also aware of my pathfinder skill. How smart.’

The direction the bullet came from wasn’t the north-east, where Kim Hyunho should be staying.

He probably let the elemental hold the rifle and sent it somewhere else to snipe.

‘He died because of me.’

He probably sent Sylph to spy the area and spot anyone that used words like ‘examinee’.

‘However, it saw that it was me.’

Sylph knew that he had protection on him, so changed the target to whoever was talking to him.

In the end, it killed the middle-aged dark magician as soon as the conversation was over and Lee Chang-wee stepped away from him.

‘It even managed to shake off the Eyes of the Abyss.’

However, Lee Chang-wee was smiling. He wanted to thank Kim Hyunho instead.

‘How thankful. That dude was so stuck-up and our enemy got rid of him for me.’

Lee Chang-wee quickly rounded up the situation, and secretly called the dark magicians and the examinees for a meeting.

As the middle-aged dark magician was gone, the conversation was much smoother this time.

“Three magicians and I will remain behind, while the rest of you should move to the destination first. If you hide yourselves using magic, you should be able to fool him.”

“Can we fool him? He’s watching us.”

“He’s not watching us, but me. He will not find out if I stay behind.”

Just as Lee Chang-wee was using the pathfinder skill to mark him, Kim Hyunho was marking him in the same way as well.

Lee Chang-wee was certain from that shot just now.

‘He is watching me, as I’m the only one he can recognize. If I don’t move, he’ll also be fooled.’

He was incredibly smart.

Like that, everyone other than three dark magicians moved ahead after using invisibility magic.

This happened in the middle of the night.