Chapter 185: let her use it

The rain didn’t stop when the sun came up. It just turned into a flat, gray light that made the old coal refinery ruins down by the lower bank look like a row of broken black teeth. The river fog was so thick it rolled straight through the smashed brick window arches of the main boiler house, leaving a layer of oily condensation over the rusted machinery and the stacks of rotted cedar ties.

Jun-ho sat on a low, iron structural beam near the center of the floor. His large rubber boots were tucked back against the metal casing, his left hand gripping the handle of The Ash Remnant. The solid black blade rested flat against the concrete floor boards, its matte surface absorbing the thin gray light from the ceiling gaps without a single reflection.

Eun-bi was standing five paces away, her back pressed against the thick brick of a support pillar. She had her green field radio balanced on top of her canvas bag, the copper wire trailing down to a piece of old water pipe she had jammed into the dirt to serve as an anchor. Her face looked small under the cheap yellow hood, her cheeks white from the chill coming off the mudflats.

"They just passed the lower sandbar," she said, her voice dropping into a quiet, raspy murmur that didn’t travel past the brick archway. She clicked the radio dial once, the static letting out a low, uneven hiss before going silent. "Two auxiliary boats from the third district detail. They aren’t running their sirens, but the mana signature from the engines is pulsing every four seconds. Min-ah is using a wide-area pulse catalyst to map the structures along the bank."

Jun-ho didn’t lift his head. "She always liked the expensive tools."

"She has six heavy enforcers with her this time, Jun-ho," Eun-bi said, her fingers working the small silver dial on the green box until her nails gave a tiny click against the plastic. "Not the hired muscle heads from the subway terminal. These are the main office recruits from the Sun God second line. They have reinforced steel plates and short cross-bows with tracking loops. If they drop a line around this boiler house, they can seal the windows with a three-layer stone barrier in less than thirty seconds."

"The barriers are thin," Jun-ho said. His voice was steady, perfectly flat in the damp room.

Inside his chest, the vast, frozen ocean of the Ash Monarch mana was moving in a slow, deep circle, keeping his skin warm despite the cold draft leaking through the floor boards. He looked down at the corner of his eye, where the silent gray lines were waiting.

[Level: 9]

[Mana: 1260/1260]

[Active Trait: Ashen Domain (Ready).]

"You talk like you’re reading a laundry list," Eun-bi muttered, her sharp eyes narrowing as she looked at his bare arm. "You have a twenty-million-won bounty sitting on your jacket thread, and the girl who spent seven years learning how you breathe is currently steering a guild boat toward your boots. Aren’t you even a little bit angry?"

Jun-ho slowly uncurled his fingers from the black handle, looking at the fine gray soot that had settled into the lines of his palm. "I was angry on Friday night. On Sunday morning, when the doors closed, the anger turned into something else. It’s like looking at an old receipt for a tool that broke the first time you used it. You don’t get mad at the shop; you just don’t go back to the street."

Eun-bi stayed quiet for a moment, her shears clicking softly against the metal loop of her belt. She looked out through the smashed brick window at the yellow mist rolling off the river, her face softening just a fraction before she pulled her regular, grumpy public-sector mask back over her features.

"She’s going to use the blood-scent tracker first," Eun-bi said, her voice turning softer, more human than it had been in the car. "The one Chang-sik used at the scrap yard. Min-ah took the log files from the station master’s desk before the auditors arrived. She knows you didn’t leave the district through the turnstiles."

"Let her use it," Jun-ho said.

He stood up from the iron beam, his large rubber boots making a heavy, solid thud on the wet concrete. He didn’t look like a legendary hunter; his gray undershirt was frayed at the shoulder, and his trousers were stiff from the dried river grease. But as he lifted The Ash Remnant with his left hand, the air inside the circular boiler house gave a low, microscopic hum—a sound so deep it made the water puddles near the foundation ripple in perfect, rhythmic circles.

A sudden, sharp rasp cut through the quiet room from the green radio box.

"—Target area reached. Interception Unit 3, drop the anchor lines by the old slipway. The blood-scent is strongest near the main boiler foundations. Enforcers, deploy the chain nets. Do not give the vanguard room to use the bar."

Min-ah’s voice sounded thin through the tiny speaker, but the calculation inside her pitch was exactly the same as it had been on Sunday afternoon.

Jun-ho walked two paces toward the open brick archway that faced the river slipway. The yellow fog outside was shifting, the dark shape of the first guild boat visible through the trees, its single yellow light cutting a sharp lane through the mist.

Eun-bi grabbed her canvas bag, her bare fingers catching the frayed thread of his sleeve as she stepped up right next to his shoulder. Her skin was shivering from the wind, but her sharp face was set in a hard, stubborn line. "The mages are setting up the circle on the grass line. I can see the purple staves from here."

"Stay behind the iron boiler casing," Jun-ho told her, his dark eyes locking onto the center of the approaching boat. "When the domain opens, the velocity drops. Their arrows won’t reach the wall."

"Just don’t miss the line this time, idiot," she whispered, her fingers slowly releasing his sleeve as she backed toward the dark corner of the room, her shears clutched loose but ready in her hand.

Jun-ho stepped out into the gray light of the open threshold, the blunt tip of his black iron sword resting easy against the concrete floor boards as the gray text boxes at the bottom of his eye began to count down the final meters until the first strike.