WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
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◈ The Martial Alliance Rulebook Archives ◈
Chapter 51: The Pursuers (4)
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For a moment, the battlefield fell silent.
The guest retainer grappling with the bandits, Iron-Headed Fire Axe standing between Murong Sung and me with a vile grin, all of them.
By the time my heart had beaten twice, sound returned.
“Arrrgh!”
Only then did pain strike the bandit, drawing out a scream.
Even that did not last long. The thing that rose from the shadows swallowed the bandit's head as the bandit clutched the forearm, the part beyond the elbow still faintly remaining.
Crunch.
It sounded like someone biting through the cartilage of a chicken leg or a piece of pork belly. With that crunching sound, it began eating the bandit from the head down.
A red, ominous aura rose from the creature after it devoured the Three-Headed Chicken and a person.
Is this how Anomalies grow stronger when they consume a human's Essence, Qi, and Spirit...?
Yet the aura was far more violent than I had expected. The change seemed to come not just from eating an ordinary person, but from swallowing that bizarre chicken head as well.
‘Damn unorthodox sect bastards!’
I looked at it.
Its torso resembled that of a goat. Or rather, if I had to describe it, goat was the closest comparison. Its shaggy, fur-covered body, dulled by dust and dirt, could hardly be compared to anything else.
Its limbs, though, were different. Its many-toed feet bore something halfway between hooves and claws, while the limbs between its feet and torso resembled human arms and legs.
‘No, should I call it an ape?’
They were packed with muscles too bulging and grotesquely throbbing to belong to a person.
Then there was its face. Of the seven apertures animals usually possessed, two ears, two eyes, two nostrils, and a mouth, the mouth had by far the strongest presence.
It was impossible to tell whether the fur covering its entire face and hanging around it in a wild circle was hair, a mane, or an extension of the fur on its body. Its ears were difficult to spot.
On closer examination, there were clearly hollowed areas resembling eye sockets.
But those could not be its eyes.
The flesh around the holes kept flaring, making them seem more like nostrils.
Its long, split mouth held two rows of sharp fangs.
Its eyes were not on its face. I was certain now. I had read its rulebook.
A Human-grade, Wu-class Anomaly.
(@삽화 NovelPia EP.51 image 1: 2d46e180fb42)
Paoxiao.
Its eyes had to be found not on its face, but on its shoulders. Between its forelegs and shoulders, eyes blinked amid grotesquely protruding muscles.
“What is that?!”
The bandits were the first to break. They began fleeing in a panic.
“Stop! Don’t run!”
As far as I could tell, we had a fair chance. If everyone gathered here joined forces, this was not an Anomaly we could not defeat.
It was not even Earth-grade!
“Damn it! Everyone, let’s go!”
Even Iron-Headed Fire Axe seemed frightened by its appearance and joined the retreat.
‘Damn. Is this what the special physician meant? The phenomenon where one’s will crumbles before an Anomaly’s presence?’
This was bad. Perfect cooperation was too much to hope for, but if a group centered on a Peak-realm master could draw its attention while another attacked from behind, we could slit its throat here!
It was already too late to stop the fleeing bandits. I shouted at the punitive expedition, who were too stunned to even block the bandits’ escape route.
“Get a hold of yourselves! If you don’t, we’ll all die!”
[Young Master Murong!]
I even browbeat Murong Sung, the commander, through voice transmission. Having finally broken free of his surreal paralysis, he began moving and rallied the guest retainers.
Paoxiao, already chasing after the bandits, rapidly closed the distance between them. Damn it.
If they were wiped out because they could not shake off the Anomaly’s influence and fight properly, we were next.
I looked around. Some guest retainers still stood there with vacant expressions, unable to regain their senses.
“Move quickly. While its attention is fixed over there!”
I recalled the rulebook. True to its goat-like appearance, it moved exceptionally well in mountains and forests. The shade of the trees would make it easy to lose track of it in the woods. We could not fight on terrain favorable to the Anomaly.
We watched the Iron-Steel Stronghold men flee.
[Take me with you!]
“Hey, Jangpal? You’re alive...”
One of the fleeing bandits heard a comrade’s voice and turned around.
The contents of Paoxiao’s rulebook flashed through my mind.
『2. If you hear someone calling for you in a companion’s voice, do not respond.』
They should not have done that.
The thing behind them was not the bandit who had been eaten.
It was Paoxiao.
『It speaks in human voices.』
Crunch.
Paoxiao seized the bandit who had stopped fleeing with its left arm, curled its free hand into a loop, and drew the person upward from the feet.
Like peeling a grape with force and dumping only the flesh into its mouth, Paoxiao poured the entrails and blood spilling from the person’s mouth into its own.
Shock spread through the group. Pretending to remain calm, I opened my mouth.
I had to steady them somehow. I had to make them see it as an opponent they could fight.
So they could exercise a martial artist’s right.
The first thing was to tell them its name. The unknown was frightening when it had no name, but once it was named and placed within a framework of understanding, it could be overcome.
“That thing is called Paoxiao.”
“P-Paoxiao?”
“The characters differ from the Paoxiao that means an animal’s roar, but it has a habit of making strange sounds.”
Slowly and repeatedly, I continued explaining.
I had to hammer Paoxiao’s rulebook into the punitive expedition’s minds.
“The first rule for dealing with it is to put down any coins and jade. It can detect the scent of copper and jade remarkably well, and it likes to eat them.”
What it liked best was people, but there was no need to say that. Two of Iron-Headed Fire Axe’s subordinates had already been eaten.
Murong Sung threw away the jade token and other items he carried.
“Second, it can speak in the voices of those it has eaten. Let’s establish a password among ourselves.”
It was a countermeasure drawn from games like Simon Says that I had encountered on Earth. We would choose a specific password and refuse to follow any words that did not begin with it.
I turned to Murong Sung.
“Murong. Murong will do. Unless a sentence begins with the word Murong, thoroughly ignore any voices you hear from a blind spot.”
I reconsidered the accounts of Records Officers who had encountered Paoxiao. They all said the same thing...
“Its weakness is its foreleg shoulders... That sounds rather strange. In any case, its eyes are embedded in its shoulders.”
The eyes were weak points not only because blades pierced them easily, but also because they were its primary sensory organs.
“It has a keen sense of smell, but if you are not carrying copper or jade, it cannot distinguish things quite so well.”
One of Murong Sung’s guest retainers asked, “D-Does the Martial Alliance know that things like that exist?”
“Not everyone does.”
I explained by comparing them to spirit creatures such as dragons. Spirit creatures were difficult to believe in, but old records of inner cores and wish-granting pearls proved they existed.
There were divine spirit creatures, while there were also monstrous beings that harmed the mortal world like demonic practitioners. This was a half-true, half-fabricated explanation that such beings were what stood before us.
Murong Sung, still looking flustered, spoke with apparent admiration.
“As expected of the Formation Array Research Department...!”
“Let’s get out of here quickly. The forest is its battlefield.”
With everyone’s agreement, we began moving to leave the forest. Then Murong Sung stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
“Research Officer Yeok. After it ate someone, it gave off a more ominous aura. Does it grow stronger the more it harms people, like a demonic practitioner?”
“It does.”
“We must chase Iron-Headed Fire Axe!”
“At first, I intended to join forces with them too. But they’ve already run away...”
“That is not what I mean!”
Murong Sung said that throwing away his jade token had made him realize something, then voiced his chilling deduction.
It could smell copper and jade, and it enjoyed eating them along with people.
Iron-Headed Fire Axe had blocked the path through Iron-Steel Mountain and kept robbing people. Could the stronghold possibly lack coins and jade rings?
“We are quite far from Iron-Steel Mountain’s main stronghold now, but they will try to return home...”
If Paoxiao ate Iron-Headed Fire Axe’s group, caught the scent of Iron-Steel Stronghold, climbed up to the bandit fortress, and began a massacre...
It would be a disaster.
“Damn it.”
Murong Sung was right.
The pursuit group’s mission had changed. Before Iron-Headed Fire Axe’s group returned to Iron-Steel Mountain, we had to hunt down and kill Paoxiao somehow.
‘We are chasing Paoxiao, which is chasing Iron-Headed Fire Axe.’
What a twisted situation. Damn that Anomaly.
“B-But, Young Master Murong. We have no way to track it.”
One of the guest retainers stared blankly into the darkness.
I took a deep breath and inhaled its scent. It smelled like under-bled mutton, thick with gaminess.
“Follow me.”
It was quite foul, but not so bad that I could not eat it.
Author’s Note
The Paoxiao in the AI illustration differs somewhat from the description, such as its double rows of teeth, but the AI kept going on strike, so this was the best I could do...
Paoxiao is a monster from the Northern Mountains Classic of the Classic of Mountains and Seas!
Footnotes:
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