WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 11: The Morning Star (1)
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When Ivan thought of the Hero, Maximilian, one memory always came to mind first.
It was the bet to split the sky.
It started like this. Maximilian got to his feet with the same idiotic look on his face as always, then swung his sword with bright, carefree energy.
-Whooom.
-Whoooom...
-Swish!
-Scrraaaape!!
Perhaps the fool had attained some sudden enlightenment, because he abruptly split the sky apart.
Literally, the sky.
With a single slash, the clouds were carved to pieces and shoved aside, a raging gale came surging in, and a tremendous roar shook the earth.
As Ivan had said once before, the Hero Party was, at its core, an assassination squad.
The sort that slipped deep into enemy lines to target the head of the Demon King’s army, buying time with the lives of soldiers who were still falling on the front even now.
Which meant they absolutely should not have been doing anything that loud.
“Have you really lost your mind?”
Enrika cried out in disbelief and hurled a dagger at the Hero. Maximilian only smiled like an innocent fool and took it head-on. Naturally, the blade struck his bare skin and bounced right off.
“Why not just run around shouting while you’re at it? ‘The hope of the Allied Kingdoms is right here!’ It suits a Hero, doesn’t it? Hm?”
Beolgreen spoke in an icy tone while rapidly finishing his spell. Then he immediately sat cross-legged and began detecting the demonfolk closing in around them.
Meanwhile, Gilles Ver. The aristocratic knight wore an openly provocative smile and swung his sword.
-Scrraaaape!!
“You idiots really come in pairs!!”
The clouds Maximilian had cut were scattered into even smaller pieces. Gilles Ver brushed back his hair with a refreshed grin.
“Looks like I ended up cutting more. Good enough for loosening up.”
“Um... your wrist is so loosened up it’s broken.”
“Sorry, Patricia. Put a heal on it.”
“I think that phrasing is a little insulting....”
After watching that spectacle for a while, Einar let out a short laugh, rose to his feet, and lifted his axe.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t do it.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t....”
“Men of Droan live by leaving their marks upon the world.”
“What kind of nonsense is that all of a sudden? Put the axe down before you talk.”
Despite Enrika’s wary warning, Einar did not so much as glance her way as he strode forward.
“No matter how much one cuts the sky, nothing remains behind. But what if I could leave everlasting proof that Ulrik’s son, the great Einar, once stood here?”
“No, wait, hold on. Listen when people are talking...”
-Kwaaaaaang!!
Declaring his grand ambition, Einar raised his axe high and then,
split the mountain in front of them clean in two.
They wasted a whole week after that fleeing from the Seven Dragon Generals and the Demon King’s army as they came pouring out like a kicked hornet’s nest, but the Hero, the man called Maximilian, only laughed and said this.
“I split the sky.”
“I split more of it.”
“Ahem, I split a mountain! Surely cutting something with form is a nobler feat than cutting something without form?”
“Babbling out words that sound difficult doesn’t make you smart, little boy.”
“Old hag.”
“You trying to die?”
Ivan did not know why Maximilian had been so obsessed with the sky. But he remembered that ridiculous escape with perfect clarity.
That day, what Maximilian had probably wanted to see as he carved through the night sky was this.
Even between the loathsome black clouds wrapped around the Demon King’s domain, the morning star was still there in its place, shining on, merely hidden from sight.
That was the kind of place the Hero Party had been, a den full of lunatics, madmen, psychopaths, and paranoiacs.
And among them, the Hero was the most insane of all, and the one who had shone brightest.
Gilles Ver, who had wanted to stand above everyone else, had been invested as the Defender Duke of the Tilles Royal House.
Einar, who had wanted to leave behind great achievements, conquered his homeland and built the first unified kingdom in Droan.
And the Hero, Maximilian, had probably only wanted to confirm that hope still remained.
That was why Ivan did not like the Hero.
He merely admired him.
Even after the man had turned his back on the world and gone into seclusion, Ivan still did.
“Did he retire because he found hope, or....”
Did he let it go because no matter how much he cut away the black clouds, he could no longer see the morning star?
It had been more than four years since that cheerful man disappeared. The world still remembered the Hero, but it was slowly forgetting the individual called Maximilian.
Ep. 5. The Morning Star
Two weeks passed in the blink of an eye. It vanished before he knew it, even though it did not feel like he had done much besides rest, which made Ivan think of terminal leave as he watched the scenery sliding past outside the window.
He was on the way to Tilles. And this time, he was not alone.
He was traveling with five men who kept nervously watching his face.
-Wow, a terror attack really happened! How did you know? You nailed the time, date, and place exactly!
They were agents from the Krasilov Counterintelligence Command. Dmitry, that aggravating junior of his, had foisted this lot on him.
When Ivan returned after stopping Aesidis’s terror attack, Dmitry had seized his hand and swung it around in noisy excitement, as though apologizing for doubting him.
But the bastard’s eyes had not been smiling at all.
Naturally.
A man who had spent four years living quietly in retirement, half like a vegetable, had suddenly predicted a terror attack against a state dignitary. That alone was a problem.
Anyone else might have gone, “Wow, that’s amazing!” and let it slide, but this one belonged to the Krasilov Counterintelligence Command. He was even a senior officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Investigation Headquarters.
So his eyes were plainly saying this.
-You planted someone, didn’t you? Come on, be honest. I’m genuinely curious. How did you manage to build an intelligence network without us noticing? Care to pass along the know-how?
Without an appropriate explanation, Ivan would have to endure endless suspicion and verification from now on. The process of solving the academy’s formula could not be explained without a monopoly on information.
But.
‘Crass.’
There was no need to reveal anything. Authority was born from mystery. Ivan had no intention of going out of his way to dispel their suspicions that he had some secret transnational intelligence organization backing him.
And so this was the result. He had been given five clumsy agents as “support.”
Ivan let out a short sigh. Had he really come all this way only to end up playing orphanage teacher again?
At the sound of that sigh, every one of the agents flinched.
“Lord Petrovich, is there perhaps something troubling you...?”
“All of you.”
Ivan decided he might as well whip them into shape while he had the chance.
Recruit training was not his responsibility, but if intelligence work here was going to be this sloppy, how was a man whose actual homeland was South Korea supposed to retire with peace of mind?
To begin with, why were intelligence agents all wearing matching clothes? What exactly were they trying to signal?
And with the seats this empty, why were they huddling together so tightly that anyone could tell they were suspicious?
This was intolerable. Granted, their real objective was information on Ivan, but that was still intelligence work, wasn’t it?
He could not let this pass.
“Listen carefully.”
And so began the lecture of a bored orphanage director, former Annihilation Unit operative, eighteen-year military veteran, man with experience conducting operations alongside the Hero Party, and veteran with a record of killing one of the Seven Dragon Generals.
There were eighteen hours left before reaching Saint Matilene, capital of Tilles.
Time froze solid for the agents.
* * *
“Is he really not coming...?”
Until the moment she boarded the train bound for Krasilov, Isabelle kept sweeping her gaze across the platform.
The higher hope rose, the worse disappointment crashed down.
And though disappointment was all she ever seemed to get, she still searched the crowd with hope in her heart.
Carefully, one by one, with the anxious thought that maybe he might be hidden among them.
-Pshhhhhhh!
Even by the time the train let out its long burst of steam, the person she had been waiting for never appeared.
“Miss, please do not worry. That gentleman is always thinking of...”
“Thinking of me? Yes, maybe.”
Isabelle answered coldly and turned her head away, sharply slapping aside the hand that had been patting her shoulder.
The neat, polished knight the Tilles Royal House had attached to her as an escort officer stepped back with an awkward smile.
Idiot. Moron. Worthless fool.
A loathsome animal that could not even manage to get angry when insulted, that forced a smile and pretended to be fine even when offended.
To Isabelle, most people were animals. Not in the biological sense, but in the sense that they were nothing more than beasts.
‘Father.’
Her memories of Maximilian, the Hero, were faint. The Hero spent most of his time on the battlefield, and during all that time she remained at court with her mother.
Whenever the Hero’s fame rose higher, the expressions of the people who approached her grew simpler.
All they wore were kindly smiles from people who wanted to win favor with a future central figure.
Naturally. If one assumed the Hero really would defeat the Demon King,
then once the Demon King died, the entire political order would begin revolving around the Hero. They said an individual could not defeat a collective, but if one person possessed power and achievements enough to overwhelm a collective, then even a nation would eventually become attached to that individual.
And so the Tilles Royal House worked hard to win her favor. Since they had no way to approach the Hero directly, that was their only option for making themselves look good to him.
No matter what cutting abuse she spat at them, no matter what insults she hurled, they only smiled.
As though they were all attending a masquerade ball, every face she saw wore the exact same expression....
That was not exactly healthy for a child’s emotional development.
“Get lost. I don’t even want to see your face.”
“But, Miss, I....”
“Shut up.”
At Isabelle’s words, the knight faltered and stepped back. Still wearing a gentle smile, he bowed and left the compartment.
Finally alone, Isabelle muttered with a bitter smile.
“Idiot.”
Just before he closed the door, when he turned his head and turned away from her,
she saw clearly the knight’s expression twisting like that of an evil spirit.
As Hero's Bloodline, Isabelle possessed senses far beyond anyone else’s. She could catch even the briefest change in someone’s expression at a glance.
That was why she had turned out like this. Because she had learned far too early that everyone around her found her unsettling.
And so.
“Moron....”
Mocking herself, she sank into her seat.
A girl who knew no way to express herself except by lashing out and ridiculing others.
A self-destructive madwoman who could only relax after finally seeing other people get angry.
Someone with such a severe hunger for affection that she believed only other people’s hatred was sincere.
A child with separation anxiety, forever waiting for and resenting a father she could barely remember anymore.
That was the diagnosis she had given herself.
* * *
“We should be heading out now, Lord Petrovich.”
“You’re still using the word ‘we.’ Are you planning to brag that you all came together?”
“Uh... ah... um....”
“Did I not tell you that your words should be precise, your actions decisive, and your true intentions hidden in the deepest place?”
“Uuugh... th-that is....”
Without exception, every agent was screaming inwardly.
‘Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry!! You said this gentleman was incredibly taciturn!!’
‘You monster, Petrovich!!’
‘I hate you, Ivan. Forever....’
Faced with the looming threat of an eighteen-hour lecture followed by additional refresher training for special duty personnel, the agents went pale, offered hurried farewells, and fled.
Their assignment was to protect Oscar, son of the knight Gilles Ver.
Ivan had thrown himself into training them half to shake off the shackles Dmitry had strapped onto him, and the other half out of genuine sincerity. Watching Isabelle board the train from the station platform, he thought:
‘Lucky.’
He had killed two birds with one stone, shaking off the Counterintelligence Command agents while protecting Oscar.
Feeling as though he had thrown off two lumps of baggage, Ivan boarded the train in a much lighter mood.
Footnotes:
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