Chapter 135 - To Push Forward

Like a recurring nightmare, faint images of unrelenting snow and trees appeared in my vision. They were simply illusions, but felt real to me.

I dashed forward with my head down, not forgetting to be completely silent.

Several voices rang out from behind me.

"Where did he go?"

"Gah, you stabbed me!"

"Split up, now!"

Many sets of footsteps rang out from nearly every direction, meaning it was going to be pretty hard to escape this situation. Some of them were rapidly approaching my direction and would see me sooner or later.

I saw a faint vision of a tree and ducked behind it, just barely dodging their watch.

"Damn, he isn't here!"

"We should continue anyway, the killer may be further down."

I continued running forth so as to not be caught by the people behind me, but that was when I heard footsteps gradually approaching from my front.

Like last time, the guards approached from both sides, surrounding me. There was no way I was going to recklessly teleport like last time. That meant I had to think of how to escape this situation now.

There was no way backwards, or forwards. Going down simply meant I cornered myself further. That meant only one option remained.

Going upwards.

Although I had a little bit of experience climbing, that wasn't the case for doing it silently. Unfortunately, there was no time to learn and so, I simply had to do it by intuition.

I bent my knees ever so slightly before leaping upwards.

I grabbed onto one of the strange partitions within the houses. The hold was far from the greatest, but I was used to climbing with bad holds. However, while I was confident I could climb up, I didn't believe it would be fast enough to get out of sight.

Several random thoughts flashed through my mind and because of the limitation of time, I picked the one that seemed the most feasible.

By straining my abs, I threw my legs up towards the other side of the wall. This alleyway was just a little bit wider than my height with my hands raised. However, by sticking out my toes, my body was suspended on its own, albeit barely.

My legs began trembling, but I still lifted one upwards and caught onto the side of the wall. At the same time, my hand moved up for a new foothold.

The moment they felt somewhat secure, I moved my other foot and hand, catching up.

Like that, I began to walk up the walls.

Every part of me wanted to take this slower. The walls weren't exactly made to be climbed, making them very slippery. On top of that, this was my first time trying something like this.

However, there were only a few seconds.

If I didn't make it at least out of their direct vision, they would see me.

As if things couldn't get any worse, there was also the need to be silent. Anxiety seeped into my heart, rapidly accelerating my heart rate. My confidence was at an all-time low.

But then, I remembered how I was before.

The way I teleported at the very last second without a single ounce of fear. Although I didn't want to dance that closely to the edge of death, there was a certain truth in that kind of mindset.

What was the point of being nervous, especially when it mattered most?

I can imagine the purpose of the emotion called nervousness, was to make me aware of the threat before us, or how much it mattered.

But I could already logically come to that conclusion, so wasn't it worthless?

Instead of being scared, it was better to perform to the best of your ability.

...However, that was easier said than done.

My steps were still slow and shaky. I was simply too afraid to rush it for fear of making too much noise. From what I could tell, the guards would arrive in just five or so seconds. There was no time to hesitate, yet that was the very thing I did.

In a flash, I saw myself before the farm. The very thing that caused me so much pain, but was also an obligation to come back to. It was as though I entered a dream.

There was a hoe in my hand, while the field itself wasn't tilled.

And so, without so much as a question as to why, I got to work.

I raised the hoe, slammed it down, then pulled it back.

After taking a few steps forward, I continued this process.

This farm was a place where I had been alone. A place isolated from the rest of the world.

And because of that, there were no distractions, no feelings, and no need for emotions.

The only thing left, was a job to do.

And I planned on doing that job.

Somehow or another, my hands and feet scaled up the wall naturally. There was no sense of hesitation, no sense of urgency, just a desire to do my best.

When I learned to walk through the snow silently, there was a pattern. Fast when starting the step and slow when stopping. Along with that was a natural curve in how I walked, to nullify the sound of snow.

In the end, I instinctively replicated that. Although only the tips of my shoes touched the wall, they still followed that natural curve, as did my hands.

And before I knew it, the guards had arrived in the alleyway.

Unfortunately, while I got out of their direct vision, I wasn't able to completely get out of sight. If I had gotten rid of my hesitation earlier, I could've directly gotten on top of a house.

However, there was no time to lament now. I needed to be as still as possible.

But that was quite hard.

My limbs began to tremble simply because of the difficulty of keeping this position. Yet, before panic settled in, I saw myself at the farm once more.

It reminded me that there was only one thing I needed to do.

To push forward, and do what I could.

Thus, I raised the hoe once more to continue.

My muscles gradually began to relax while tensing to maintain my position. It was a strange contradictory situation that I never knew was possible.

Almost like a cat that was both dead and alive at the same time.

However, the absurdity of the situation flew right past me. After all, it wasn't related to moving onwards.

A listless expression remained on my face, like a statue that looked longingly in the distance.

The guards filed into the alleyway and ended up pausing before they reached the middle.

Normally, I would be nervous. No, I would nearly be breaking down from the fear. But instead, I closed my eyes.

The guards stopped to talk to one another.

"The killer isn't here, it seems."

"Yes. Quickly search the rest of the place, and be careful!"

"No need to tell our squad. We personally saw how badly those people were killed. No wonder we were sent out to patrol."

With that, the guards moved out of the alleyway and continued their search elsewhere.

I didn't bother checking with my eyes to see if they all left, because I trusted my ears. I didn't even let out a sigh of relief.

Instead, I continued to move up the side of the wall, eventually reaching the top of the house. Without any hesitation, I threw my feet up and pushed hard against the wall with my hands.

With a bit of stumbling, I landed on the roof of a house.

The wood gave in easily under the weight of my step, making a few creaking sounds, but I slowly retracted it, keeping the sound to a minimum.

I climbed up the house because that realization came to me a little earlier on. There were no guards up here, so moving around would be rather easy.

Unfortunately, there were also some drawbacks that naturally came from it. For one, the only way to make it to the other houses would be leaping from roof to roof, which would be hard to conceal.

A newfound problem was the squeaky wooden boards, but it shouldn't be too hard for me. Although it was too hard to make absolutely no sound, the clatter of their armor would be more than enough to mask the slight squeaks.

I gradually made my way to one side of the house. My eyes were still glued to the ground and the ground below was barely visible in my peripheral vision. After waiting for the guards to disappear, I leaped to another roof.

After visualizing the path from the palace to the shop, I continued to hop across roofs until eventually, I was standing on the roof of the shop itself.

I casually hopped down, as there were no guards patrolling the streets right now. Then, I pushed open the door to the shop.

....So I could buy some paper.