Chapter 298. Youngwoo Strikes Back 1
One of them was fastening a noose to a branch that stretched over the alley.
The cord was so thin it was almost invisible.
He looped it over the branch, pulled the end tight, and tied the knot.
Then he tilted his head to judge the height, stepped back a few paces, and checked it again.
At that moment, someone lifted him from behind.
"Ghk—"
A cry rose to his throat, but he suppressed it.
The habit of making no sound moved before thought.
The instant he tried to turn, a chill touched the back of his neck.
It was his own cord.
Several nearly invisible loops caught his neck, beneath his jaw, and around his shoulder all at once.
As his body rose into the air, the cords slid into position and tightened.
"Kek… kek…"
He grabbed at the line choking him with both hands.
His fingers slipped.
That was the kind of material it was.
Against skin, it bit in.
When grasped by hand, it slipped free.
Once caught, it was difficult to loosen.
It was a tool he himself had chosen to trap someone else.
The Salmak killer thrashed in midair, caught in his own noose.
His toes scraped uselessly above the snow.
His fingernails clawed at the back of his neck.
Before long, the strength left his body.
As he sagged limp, a foul smell spread beneath him.
He had soiled himself completely.
One of his companions appeared sometime later.
The man who was supposed to return had not come back, so he had likely come to see what was wrong.
He saw the body hanging in the air and hurried toward it.
The moment he reached up to lower his companion, his own body jerked upward.
This time, it was a cord hanging from the branch beside him.
Another noose set by the very man who had just died tightened around his neck.
He too was hauled into the air.
"Khk."
He struggled violently.
The thin cord cinched tight and dug into his flesh.
He tried to seize it.
Then he reached for the sword at his waist.
But suspended in the air, he could not put proper strength into anything.
His hand clawed at empty space searching for the scabbard, while his feet kicked above the snow.
The second assassin did not last long either.
The very method he trusted, the trap left by his companion, the invisible cord—
all of it took his life.
Silence settled over the alley once more.
Only the snow at the ends of the branches trembled for a moment before falling in a soft rush.
2
Another man was digging into the ground with a shovel and placing something inside.
It looked like a sharp iron caltrop.
Whatever had been smeared across the points carried a chilling blue sheen of poison.
The man covered the trap with a thin board, sprinkled earth over it, then spread loose snow across the top.
The snowfield looked exactly as it had before.
The instant someone stepped on it, the spikes would punch through the sole of the shoe and drive upward.
The man studied his work for a long while.
He checked for traces, matched the height of the surrounding snow, and finally erased even his own footprints.
Then he carefully stepped backward.
At that moment, someone caught his ankle.
His body lurched.
His foot dropped.
Into the trap he had made only moments before.
He had not stepped there of his own accord.
His leg had been dragged into it.
The sharp iron spikes punched through his shoe and drove into the sole of his foot.
"Hk."
He swallowed the scream and yanked his foot free.
Too late.
Dark red blood seeped from the small punctures in his sole.
The edges of the wounds quickly turned bluish.
He dropped to the ground and clutched his foot.
His fingers began to tremble.
Then they stiffened.
A rigid cold climbed from his calf to his thigh and then into his waist.
It was a poison that hardened a living body almost like rigor mortis.
No.
This could not happen.
He clenched his teeth and tried to look behind him.
He wanted to see which bastard had grabbed his ankle.
But no one was there.
Only his own footprints and the faint traces of the trap he had dug remained in the snow.
He could not die like this.
Not so pointlessly.
Not from his own trap.
Not from his own poison.
He struggled for roughly a quarter of an hour.
He scraped at the snow with his elbows and clawed at the frozen earth with his fingernails.
But his body kept hardening.
His breath caught in his throat.
Only his eyes continued moving until even they finally stopped.
A short while later, another companion came looking for him.
He saw the fallen body and approached carefully.
He knew where the trap had been placed, so he watched the snow and moved his feet with care.
He was clearly avoiding the place he knew he had to avoid.
And yet his foot suddenly dropped.
This time it was the second trap buried beside the first.
He had known only the location of the first.
Salmak's assassins did not tell even one another everything.
That distrust now opened its mouth beneath his foot.
The iron spike punched through his shoe.
He collapsed in exactly the same way as his dead companion.
The same poison began climbing through his body.
The two men stiffened side by side in the snow.
The traps Salmak had hidden to kill others had swallowed Salmak's own men.
The poison they had concealed made no distinction between friend and enemy.
Snow began falling again, slowly covering both the traps and the bodies.