Chapter 34
“Is it the Second Prince?”
“It doesn’t seem so.”
At Smith’s irritated response, the hunter with the sharpest eyes in the group craned his neck.
“I can’t be certain due to the distance, but…”
“But?”
“It appears to be the Bolshevik ducal family.”
It would be hard to mistake the rippling red amidst the lush green that looked as deep as the blue sea.
As soon as he finished speaking, the hunters exchanged glances.
They were experienced and skilled enough to serve those of royal blood.
With a massive beast capable of crushing people with a single swipe of its paw before them, and now the First Prince, Third Prince, and the Bolshevik lady all gathered…
It was a sudden and extremely dangerous situation, but they were trying to find a way out somehow.
“First, we should guide the Bolshevik group away from danger, then…”
But Smith only half-listened to the solution proposed by the most experienced hunter in the group.
His mind was racing with a single thought.
From the moment he heard that the one approaching from the left was none other than Riina.
The black tiger, and Riina.
The danger and the target.
These two things were spinning in his mind.
He never knew creating a point of contact with Riina would be this difficult, not until she declared the engagement off.
He knew for certain it wasn’t just a matter of her being upset, but he had told everyone that, so it had to be that way.
Otherwise…
As he recalled his past that was nothing before being with Riina, Smith’s eyes flashed.
Yes. Hadn’t they said a crisis is an opportunity?
Sometime in the past, he had asked Riina:
“Why on earth do you love me?”
He couldn’t understand Riina, who clung to him professing love for someone who had nothing but royal blood, who was just a prince.
Among the many things Riina had said then, there was one:
“…because I feel you’ll protect me.”
Riina had said she felt he would protect her.
That was probably a common wish of anyone in love.
Smith’s eyes gleamed.
‘Whatever it is, she doesn’t like it anymore.’
The image of Riina pushing him away, colder than a glacier, followed.
It shouldn’t matter.
Whatever the problem was, if he could save her in an extreme situation…
‘Turn crisis into opportunity.’
“Pardon? Your Highness?”
“Tell me.”
“Yes?”
“What are the chances of surviving unscathed if the black tiger goes berserk here?”
The hunter who had been talking at length about how to escape without provoking the black tiger blinked.
But he soon answered Smith’s following question, and Smith’s decision was quick upon hearing the answer.
No matter how dangerous that black tiger was, it had been captured as prey after all, and the hunters who caught it were stationed here now.
In the worst case, it should be entirely possible to throw others as food and escape with just Riina.
In Smith’s eyes, as he gripped his bow so hard it might break, he saw Einar who had pulled Riina so close to him.
He had left that guy alone, thinking he was just wandering around smiling without a thought.
Who knew he’d be holding a knife to his back before he knew it.
‘You’re nothing without Riina either.’
As Smith’s lips twisted, his bowstring sang.
And now.
The mild pain starting from the arrow lodged in its shoulder was enough to wake the black tiger from its languid state.
-Thwack!
-Whoosh!
More arrows flew in succession.
These arrows were not meant to hit the black tiger but to change its direction, so most of them just struck the ground.
“Grrrr!”
The black tiger flared its nostrils and its eyes flashed wildly.
It knew annoying things had been coming one by one and now swarmed in a group.
But it didn’t want to leave its spot where there was a pleasant scent, so it had just been ignoring them.
-Crunch!
As the black tiger rose and stomped its foreleg, the ground caved in and the grass beneath was crushed.
The next moment, as an intense scent wafted up, the black tiger’s eyes began to glitter even more aggressively than before.
“ROARRR!”
With a roar that shook the earth, the black tiger’s body vanished from people’s sight for an instant.
“Aaaaargh!”
A moment passed, and one of the First Prince’s hunters screamed, but it didn’t last long.
The black tiger paid no more attention to the one it had trampled and immediately crouched again.
“Wh-where is it!”
“Arrows! Shoot arrows! It’s turning to dodge…!”
Despite its massive size, the black tiger was moving at an invisible speed.
“Aaaah!”
“No!”
Screams rang out and someone swung a hunting knife at the black tiger, but it was already gone from that spot.
The black tiger’s roar split the wind for a long time.
The mixed smell of iron and blood, and the subtly sweet scent of grass that followed, were fueling the black tiger’s aggression.
“The net! The steel net!”
“It’s too late! We should lay steel traps instead!”
The black tiger was rampaging so quickly and dangerously that even the hunters who had caught it once before were shocked and fumbling.
At the edge of this chaos.
The First Prince, who had been unable to go anywhere with the black tiger in the center, swallowed hard as the black tiger leaped.
“Huh-huck!”
The First Prince was startled, but his training hadn’t been in vain as he didn’t collapse or faint on the spot.
He started running in the exact opposite direction from where the black tiger had jumped.
And Jane, left alone.
She didn’t run in the opposite direction from the black tiger without looking back like the First Prince.
Nor did she just scream or faint.
She just stared intently at one spot without blinking.
One day in the past, the woman who raised her had lamented while combing Jane’s hair:
‘I worry because you obsessively dig into anything you set as a goal until you’re satisfied.’
That statement was half right and half wrong.
Jane dug obsessively into everything, but she didn’t do things that would worry the woman who raised her.
She had no intention of living stupidly like the woman who claimed to have raised her.
Amidst the screams and shouts, Jane calmly examined her original target alone.
Should she go or not?
What she was trying to get her hands on now was part of an extremely important goal worth risking her life for.
“I have no choice but to go.”
Jane’s palms were cold with fear and tension, but she slowly wiped them on her skirt.
Rushing over there now would be nothing short of madness.
Fleeing while the black tiger wasn’t paying attention to her would be the wisest decision.
However, conversely speaking.
Wasn’t this a heaven-sent opportunity precisely because the black tiger wasn’t paying attention to her?
Even as she heard the beast’s roar tearing through the wind, Jane gritted her teeth.
“I… can’t miss this chance.”
An ingredient that can only be obtained here, at this time, in this place.
She had worked tirelessly and searched everywhere for a way to achieve her goal of returning to her rightful place.
And finally, barely finding a method, she couldn’t wait another year just to button up the first step!
Jane instinctively forced strength into her trembling legs and sprinted towards the ingredient clearly visible even in the undergrowth the black tiger had trampled.
“ROARRR!”
The massive beast’s cry tore the sky and shook the earth, but Riina didn’t even blink.
She frowned as she watched Jane blindly rush towards where the black tiger was, knowing it was madness.
There must be something over there.
Riina’s icy blue gaze followed Jane.
Jane seemed to be digging for something, sitting where the black tiger had been, as if oblivious to everything around her.
They weren’t close enough to see exactly what she was doing, but they couldn’t get any closer either.
“My lady!”
“My lady, this way!”
The guards were faithfully carrying out their assigned roles, trying to lead Riina in the safest direction possible.
If she were to push them aside and approach Jane from here…
Whatever she did would likely lead to the worst outcome, but there was a difference between dragging others into that worst-case scenario and not.
Before her regression, Riina would have stopped at nothing to find out what Jane was doing.
That’s how conscious and obsessed she was with Jane, who had entered as her ‘shadow.’
But the reason she was here now wasn’t because of ‘Jane’ as an entity, but because of Becky who seemed to be connected to her.
So there was no need to do something as drastic as pushing the guards off a cliff just to check on Jane.
“Ugh.”
“Hey, be careful!”
A guard who deflected a stray arrow clenched his fist, and Riina moved as one with them, matching their steps.
Of course, she was still keenly observing her surroundings.
Her indifferent blue gaze swept over the First Prince fleeing with his back turned, Jane rushing towards where the black tiger was, Smith staring intently at her, and searched for traces of someone who wasn’t here.
After surveying and feeling out even the unseen surroundings, Riina asked:
“Are there signs of any other groups nearby?”
