WeTried Translations x Flame Comics
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 110: 16. The Person Who Travels Abroad to a Conflict Zone During Vacation (2)
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* * *
Step, step. Footsteps echoed along the walls of the underground waterway.
Ivan idly surveyed the underground passages, which had become thoroughly familiar by now, then asked, “Can we finish this during vacation?”
“What?”
“I asked whether it’s a mission we can finish in about a month and a half.”
Ivan sighed as Enrika tilted her head in confusion. She might have gotten this position through her Hero Party connections, but Enrika was still a full-time professor in the Knight Department.
Yet she had suddenly disappeared during the semester under the pretext of carrying out an operation, and was still missing when vacation arrived. If she had not been part of the Hero Party, she would have been dismissed long ago.
She had no sense of professional responsibility whatsoever. Ivan was the university gardener, so he had an obligation to come to work during the semester. University gardeners even got paid.
“If you mean the distance, that won’t be a problem. If you mean completing the mission itself, that depends on what we do from here.”
“The distance matters more. It’d take at least a month to reach the Sky Mountains... Andgrund, even on foot.”
“If we went on foot, sure. But three or four days should be enough.”
Only three or four days to Andgrund, the dwarves’ mountain realm at the end of the Northern Front.
Did that mean she had chartered an air warship? Ivan frowned at Enrika. She gave him a sly chuckle.
Being a sensible person, Ivan did not indulge the antics of a woman nearing two hundred years old.
“You’re no fun. It’s strange, Disciple. I always taught you to keep your composure and never forget to joke around, so how did my best disciple end up with this personality?”
“I learned well.”
“You really do know how to get under someone’s skin. Fine.”
Grumbling, she rounded the bend in the waterway. Ivan immediately frowned. He heard people nearby.
Five, perhaps? There was also the sound of machinery running, along with scents that did not belong in an underground waterway.
Oil and gunpowder. The distinct smell of the military.
“Now, here’s the answer!”
Enrika spread her hands with a broad smile. Beyond the bend, armed soldiers stood guard before a certain “door.”
An imposing iron door stood there, utterly out of place underground. Had Ivan not come with Enrika, he might have thought a dungeon had opened.
“A door.”
“This is where those dwarves broke in last time. It was only a crack back then, but we couldn’t just leave it alone. Who knows what might come through next? So we made a few modifications.”
Enrika waved at the soldiers, who crisply saluted her.
“It’s all right if we go in, yes?”
Instead of answering, the soldiers silently opened the door. Judging from their discipline, they were from the Northern military. Ivan frowned and stepped through.
Then he stopped immediately.
-Clack, fwoooosh....
-Clank, clank, clank.
“Ta-da! A dwarven armored railcar!”
“Are you out of your mind? You connected dwarven railways all the way from Pritchenkaya to Andgrund?”
“Oh, don’t make such a fuss over something like this. If things go well, this will be our trade route. If they don’t, it’ll be our invasion route.”
Enrika smiled with a fierce gleam in her eyes. At that moment, a low, grumbling voice came from atop the railcar.
“Could you spare a thought for the ears of the dwarf hearing this?”
“Ah, I should introduce him too. That’s Tirvil Eilbari! Say hello.”
“So you’re the reinforcements? Shadowblade made such a fuss, saying you were essential support for this mission and had to be brought along.”
A dwarf poked his head out through the railcar window and narrowed his small eyes as he looked Ivan over.
After studying Ivan’s face for a long moment, the dwarf tilted his head.
“It seems you’ve come alone?”
“I’m enough.”
“...Your confidence is admirable, but do you understand that our nation’s fate is at stake? If it weren’t for Shadowblade’s reputation, this would be taken as an insult.”
“An insult.”
Ivan snorted and climbed aboard. It had the plain, functional construction typical of dwarven machinery. Dwarves understood the aesthetics of steel, so Ivan rather liked their equipment.
He sat inside the railcar and turned toward the dwarf.
The dwarf gave a dismissive snort and began operating the instruments. Soon, with a rumble, the railcar began moving, its body shaking the entire tunnel.
Ivan watched the mine tunnel rush past and considered the word.
An insult.
At the very least, the dwarves no longer needed to feel insulted by me. I had already filled that ledger so thoroughly back then that there was no room left to add another page.
Looking back on it, the Allied Kingdoms force that most often, and most fiercely, encountered dwarven special operations units in the field had always been the Annihilation Unit.
And within the Annihilation Unit, the strike team with the finest wartime maxim record had always been Team Seven, led by Ivan.
So the dwarves should have been proud instead.
The most effective weapon against dwarves in this age, after the war had ended, was now heading out to support their civil war.
The Annihilation Unit was coming.
From then until now, Ivan Petrovich alone had been an Annihilation “Unit.”
* * *
What was the advantage of a vampire and an Annihilation Unit agent traveling together?
They did not need time to eat. (That was not true.)
Ivan could substitute Nutrient Bars for meals, while Enrika could live off blood packs. Even without a transfusion pack, Ivan could help replenish her blood as long as he had enough Nutrient Bars.
“Where’s Lucia?”
“A hostage.”
Enrika answered as if it were nothing. Ivan quietly nodded as well. Well, they did need a hostage.
An agent from the Hero Party, and one from Krasilov, where the war had been fought most fiercely, had left to call reinforcements from her homeland.
The dwarves had to consider the possibility that the returning reinforcements might immediately become an occupying force, so naturally they would take a hostage.
Ivan accepted it calmly. A hostage in the heart of enemy territory was in an excellent position to gather information. Just as expected of Enrika’s disciple. This would be good training.
“Lucia will get some training out of it too.”
Enrika understood Ivan’s look and smiled in agreement. Before they had been comrades, they had been teacher and disciple. Before they had been members of the Hero Party, they had been partners carrying out operations in the same field.
On top of that, Enrika was a vampire who had spent more than two hundred years acting as an intelligence agent among people. Whenever Ivan saw the wisdom unique to the elderly, he was suddenly reminded of something.
Why did elves never grow up, no matter how old they got?
Ivan thought of Beolgreen and Adel, then shook his head.
Clank, clank.
The railcar sped along the tracks at an incredible pace, fast enough to make human railways look laughable. Since it had no roof, the wind thoroughly disheveled the two passengers, but they could treat this much wind as a spring breeze across the fields.
When the conversation lapsed again, Ivan stared at the tracks and sank into thought.
Mana lamps stood at regular intervals along the rails.
He calculated the speed by working backward from the distance between the lamps, the length of the railcar passing between them, and the time it took to pass.
Then he added the time traveled at that speed. As any trained agent would, Ivan always counted time down to the second, allowing him to estimate the current time in Pritchenkaya.
Whenever the railcar changed direction, he unfolded a map of the Northern Front in his mind and traced their route.
The locations of Northern military garrisons, supply lines if the railway were used as an invasion route, and the personnel needed to assault the underground of Andgrund.
He passed the time with useless thoughts like those.
On the third day after leaving Pritchenkaya, the railcar finally reached the terminus of Andgrund’s underground railway.
* * *
“Shadowblade has arrived?”
“Yes, Comrade! Comrade Tirvil has just stopped at the Grand Junction!”
“Let’s go at once. What kind of remarkable reinforcements could she have brought at such a critical time...!”
Nabelun Wolfrondil, head of the Organizational Secretariat of Andgrund’s State Council Secretariat, strode ahead with a grumble.
Countless dwarves gathered around him. Members of the State Council’s Political Bureau, Secretariat, and Policy Bureau. Nearly every one of those not currently deployed across the region had assembled here.
That was how serious the matter was. Such was the weight of employing “Shadowblade” Enrika as a mercenary.
The thief of the Hero Party. An assassin, one of the six who had slaughtered the Demon King. Since the Demon King’s death had been the greatest reason the demonfolk lost the war, those six had practically ended the previous war themselves.
Now, in this era. If news reached demonfolk society that they had invited the Hero Party to end their civil war while barely scraping by in the borderlands and watching the Allied Kingdoms’ reaction, the dwarves would be finished.
What if other demonfolk warlords invaded the mountain range devastated by civil war? Would they have any future at all?
Even within the State Council, there had been fierce disagreement over the matter.
“But we have no choice but to drink the poison.”
Nabelun gritted his teeth and muttered.
The Chief Secretary’s son had been kidnapped. The apostles of the Seven Dragon Generals were personally lurking behind the civil war.
If they lost this civil war, there would be no future. The dwarves would become puppets for the necromancers, those corpse scavengers, and be sent forever into battlefields where victory was impossible.
If they would die either way, should they not at least make a choice that benefited their people, even a little? Better to live as humanity’s vassal state than die as the limbs of necromancers.
Krasilov could never conquer the entire territory of the dwarven underground republic. Its national power did not reach that far. Even if they established relations from a somewhat unfavorable position, their chances of survival would be higher.
Krasilov would not be able to publicly announce diplomatic relations with the dwarves, either. Why would Krasilov share the many benefits the dwarves could offer with other countries?
Therefore, the State Council had made the most rational choice available at this moment.
They would establish diplomatic relations on unfavorable terms in exchange for receiving Shadowblade Enrika and elite Krasilov troops as reinforcements.
They would rescue the Secretary’s son and end the civil war.
Nabelun decided to think of nothing else. Everything was for the party and the people. If they perished like this, the lofty ideals of Averagism would be crushed between the shriveled fingers of corpse scavengers.
“Long live Comrade Secretary! I report our return!”
“Yes, you’ve worked hard. Where is Shadowblade?”
“Over there, getting off.”
At the terminus of the Grand Junction, Nabelun frowned at Enrika, who was waving at them. He strode over and looked around.
No matter how hard he looked, there were no elite Krasilov troops in sight.
There were only two humans here. Humans could not exactly hide among dwarves.
“Why are there no reinforcements? Does Krasilov take this crisis as a joke? Are they truly so foolish that they don’t know Aviditas’s lackeys will follow this railway and burn your country the moment we collapse?”
“Whoa, calm down, Dwarf.”
“How dare you call me that!”
“Calm down and listen. Look around. Does it seem like I came alone?”
“You brought along one attendant! What, vampire, did you need a concubine to help you in bed?!”
Nabelun’s beard trembled as he pointed at the man beside her.
The fellow had sharp eyes and a beard that was decent enough, so he seemed like one of the few humans who knew anything about style. But what use was that in war?
Enrika burst into giggles at Nabelun’s words.
“A concubine, Ivan. Not a spy... a concubine! Kk, kkh...!”
“These people are serious.”
“I know! That’s why it’s funny...! When I came, they couldn’t stop fretting over me. But I bring you, and all they have to say is that you’re a concubine.... Kkhk, kk!”
Enrika spread her hands toward the red-faced Nabelun.
“Let me introduce him. This is Ivan Petrovich. You know him, right? Think carefully. The Woodcutter, the Executioner, ‘Little’ Ivan. What else was there? Disciple, what other nicknames did you have?”
“A name the dwarves would know...”
Ivan considered it for a moment. It would be better to introduce himself by one of their slurs than a title humans used.
Fortunately, he did not need to make an effort to remember. Nabelun dropped his staff with a clatter and staggered backward.
Silence followed. An odd stillness spread among the dwarves, who had looked ready to charge at him in anger moments ago.
The sound of people swallowing. Their shallow breaths. Faces turning pale.
Then Nabelun whispered as if lamenting.
“Black Widow... Ivan?”
The Annihilation Unit, like every intelligence organization, was not well known to the public. Their missions and operations were never shared with ordinary legions or civilians.
No matter what struggles they endured, no matter what hardships and tragedies flooded their path, “humans” could not easily know. They only categorized them as an untrustworthy, suspicious branch of the military.
Yet, like every intelligence organization, the Annihilation Unit was more famous among its enemies than its allies.
Especially among the dwarves.
Especially Major Ivan Petrovich.
“I heard... you were dead....”
When news of Ivan’s death and the purge of the Annihilation Unit spread through dwarven society, the relief the dwarves felt could not easily be described.
There was even a song still used to frighten young dwarves.
[If you are left alone at the end of a deep mine shaft, Black Widow will come for you.]
So, amid that vague terror, Nabelun muttered softly.
“Was that saying true...? That Black Widow could assassinate death itself...?”
“What does that even mean...?”
Ivan frowned. (Enrika laughed until she could barely breathe.)
* * *
Word spread throughout Andgrund that the being who had “assassinated” Aviditas had now joined their side.
The citizens could not help feeling a strange sense of forbidden excitement.
They anticipated revenge against the dwarven rebels and necromancers, those bastards they wanted to tear apart.
At the same time, they felt guilt, as if they had summoned the Demon King with their own hands.
Without facing anyone’s suspicion or obstruction, Ivan successfully entered Andgrund.
* * *
“My disciple is more popular than I am! Is it because your beards look alike?”
“Enrika. You could die.”
“That’s really terrifying!! As expected of Black Widow! Don’t be left alone at the end of a mine shaft. Black Widow will come for you~!”
Enrika sang the strange children’s song while laughing, then patted Ivan on the back.
* * *
Footnotes:
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