WeTried Translations x Flame Comics

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 114: 16. The Person Who Travels Abroad to a Conflict Zone During Vacation (6)

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* * *

Andgrund, strike east and attack west, Day 3.

03:50.

“How long has it been?”

“Exactly three hours. You really did not use an alert spell, right? How can someone sleep to within seconds of the exact time?”

“Training. Repetition. Mastery.”

Ivan answered as he opened his eyes.

Northern Closed Mine Shaft No. 12. Since it did not intersect with any other mine shafts on the map, it lay outside the patrol routes. It was an excellent location for a hideout.

Ivan clenched his fist and wrapped mana around his muscles, adjusting his condition. It felt no different from tightening the strings of a loosened instrument.

If neural acceleration was controlled with extreme precision, it could force the body into an awakened state. Aside from the sleep essential to sustaining life, fatigue was little more than a disruption of the senses.

Only after shaking away the fatigue still clinging to his mind did he rise. Lucia watched him with concern.

“Let’s rest a little longer before we go...? From today on, you’ll have it rough for a while...”

Lucia trailed off as they recalled the operational outline.

The core of strike east and attack west was that those assigned to each front had to draw as much enemy attention as possible with everything they had.

The dwarven main force did not need to make an effort. Simply arming themselves and advancing toward enemy territory was enough of a display of force.

Ivan and Enrika were different. Alone, they had to cause the same level of chaos as a legion.

Enrika, through the Hero Party’s infamy.

Ivan, through the Black Widow’s infamy.

Enrika was already infamous enough. Ivan, who had been considered dead, needed far more than an ordinary battle to make his name known within enemy territory.

That was why Ivan’s operation, beginning at dawn on the third day, was filled entirely with planned engagements until its conclusion.

“I’ve rested enough.”

Ivan crunched through the Nutrient Bar Lucia handed him, then silently rolled up his sleeve and held out his arm.

Lucia studied the dark circles beneath his eyes for a long moment, their expression sorrowful. Then they sighed and muttered.

“Men. Honestly.”

-Crunch.

Lucia’s fangs sank into Ivan’s forearm. A tingling pain ran through him as he felt his blood being drawn away.

Lucia could replenish their energy through meals as well as blood, but compact rations were more useful during an infiltration operation. As long as one was healthy, blood could be produced in any quantity.

Ivan adjusted his mana, forcing his heartbeat harder and raising his blood pressure. The amount of blood flowing from his forearm sharply increased.

After the brief rest, Ivan took a bottle of healing potion from inside his coat.

“...”

He stared at the transparent glass bottle for a moment, then turned away and pulled off the cap.

A good agent, when necessary, poured healing potion over even their own arm with their own hand. With a sizzle, the bleeding wound closed.

“Let’s move.”

“Yes... Tell me if you’re tired.”

“Quiet.”

“Yeees... Senior.”

* * *

Before even half a day had passed, eight outposts, twenty-five guard posts, and forty-seven mine shafts had fallen silent.

The incidents occurred in the rear region farther north of the northern industrial district, where Andgrund’s rebels had established their main base, bordering the outskirts of the Sky Mountains.

Word that the sentries had disappeared never even reached central command. The absence of information darkened part of the tactical map like the Black Death.

The command headquarters had been on edge over the threat of all-out war in the southern combat zone. Only that afternoon did it begin to grasp the situation, after receiving news brought by a dwarf.

“He’s here!! He... He’s come back!!”

The sentry who had run in bleeding from a severed shoulder died after saying those words.

The answer to command’s question, Who is “he”?, arrived thirty minutes later with another sentry.

“He’s... He’s still alive...!! At the Northern Gate... There’s no one alive beyond the Northern Gate...!!”

That sentry also died from blood loss from a severed shoulder.

It took another ten minutes for the investigation to determine that the two sentries with matching injuries had been dispatched to the Seventeenth Outpost, known as the Northern Fifth Gate.

An hour to confirm that none of the emergency reinforcements sent to the Seventeenth Outpost had returned.

Another hour passed before reports arrived that the detachment sent to the Fifteenth Outpost had disappeared.

Thirty minutes to realize that all contact had been lost with everyone who had gone north beyond the city.

Only after the last survivor from a dispatched unit collapsed foaming at the mouth, gasping, “Corpses... Corpses...!” did the command headquarters of the northern munitions factory district finally recall a wartime maxim chillingly similar to this.

A tactic that deliberately severed intelligence assets and paralyzed an entire region so thoroughly that its victims did not even realize information had been lost.

A tactic that slowly robbed the enemy of their ability to operate in the field by pushing their terror to the limit.

It resembled them too closely.

“But they should all be dead...?”

The command staff murmured in fear, before realizing that the first report they had received was, He’s come back.

“Available forces... What available forces do we have?!”

“Every unit except the slaves has marched toward the forward lines! There are only engineers left in this city!”

This was not a war leisurely enough to leave combat troops in the rear, on the far side of the front.

The command stared down the long railway running from the munitions factories to the front and made the most accurate judgment it could despite its terror.

“Send couriers to the necromancers! Tell them the Black Widow is here!”

“B-but we aren’t certain!”

“And if we aren’t? Are you saying we should wait until we confirm whether he really is the Black Widow before we send word?!”

Only after the couriers departed did the command manage to gather the engineers of the factory district, forcing itself to appear calm.

“The enemy is few in number.”

Naturally. Moving a force of any significant size through the exterior of the mountain range to infiltrate the rear exceeded Krasilov’s logistical capabilities.

If they truly wanted all-out war, there was no need to infiltrate the rear at all. They only needed to deploy the northern legion already stationed there and advance together with Andgrund’s forces.

Those lurking beyond the darkness of lost information could not be more than a small strike team.

“This isn’t something only the Annihilation Unit can do. Get a grip! This is the only choice a small force has when it infiltrates the rear!”

The information control and isolation they were suffering were not some special trick only that dreadful Annihilation Unit could perform.

Rather, even the mighty Annihilation Unit had no other tactical option available to it.

Sufficient numbers alone could overturn the nature of warfare. Most great strategies and tactics throughout history began with committing sufficient numbers, at the right time, in full.

Therefore, a small strike team had no answer other than tactics like this if it wished to threaten a larger force. Viewed from the opposite direction, the situation became simpler.

Bring superior numbers into a frontal clash and overwhelm the enemy through sheer force of numbers.

Unless one possessed personnel like the Seven Dragon Generals, numbers would surpass quality once the scale grew large enough.

So.

“Prepare for a pitched battle. Clear the city outskirts and open the gates. Gather every armed force except the goblins, and bring every firearm!”

The enemy’s specialty was wearing its foes down.

The tactic dwarves preferred most was to form up tightly enough that they could not be worn down.

If they simply waited, the necromancers, their eyes red at the thought of the Black Widow’s return, would arrive. All they had to do was hold out long enough.

An unorthodox stratagem had to be met with orthodox tactics.

This time, they would kill the Black Widow. The dwarves rose to their feet, wearing courage over their fear like masks.

* * *

Andgrund, strike east and attack west, Day 4.

13:20.

“Wow...”

Lucia lay flat at the edge of a cliff and quietly gasped.

Stairways ran between mine shafts that filled the cliff face like a honeycomb, lined with countless railings.

Goblin slaves moved like ants across the lower stairs, each dragging a load.

-Fwoosh.

Black smoke surged up from deep underground. The dwarven munitions factory district lay beneath them.

Andgrund was often described as an underground city. That was a common mistake made by those who lived on the surface. This was not a city. It was a world in itself.

Unlike humans, who built structures upward from the ground, underground dwellers had no limit to vertical construction.

No matter how tall a tower humans raised, it could not compare to the dwarves, who excavated the earth and built within it. Each city sector completed during the era when Earthweb Excavators were common rivaled Pritchenkaya in scale.

Mine shafts spread out from the city districts like tangled roots. Countless goblins still swarmed through the shafts where mining continued.

A vast underground cavern, innumerable other races moving through it, machines roaring loudly, enormous rails, and the heat pouring from factories that produced military supplies.

Lucia stared down at the sight with their mouth hanging open, then turned to Ivan.

“A-are we really going in there? Th-the difference in numbers is... It’s kind of extreme, isn’t it?”

“We don’t have to fight all of them.”

Ivan looked over the city sector and checked his weapons once more.

He had already slaughtered well over several dozen dwarves on the way here. The number had reached three figures, and that was only counting the detachments he had dealt with. Perhaps ten dwarves had been deliberately allowed to escape during the engagements.

Having sent that many back, the enemy should have realized by now that the radio silence near the northern gates had been engineered by an infiltration force.

“It’s... a trap, right?”

“Yes.”

Ivan’s assigned objective for this operation was to assassinate Aviditas’s remnants.

Without knowing where they were hiding, the surest method Ivan could choose was resentment.

Aviditas’s remnants hated Ivan more than anyone else in the world. He was the one who had killed their master.

So he would declare it openly to those who were surely gathering troops, if only to desecrate Ivan’s corpse.

-I’m still alive.

-I’m here.

They would never endure it. The lackeys once commanded by the Lord of Desire would never endure such temptation.

Rather than Ivan seeking them out, he would make them come to him. That was part of the grand strategy.

To do that, he needed to inspire enough terror for their rear units to request support from those necromancers.

That terror would make them hunker down. Just as they were doing now.

“If there is a certain chance of victory, a trap can sometimes become an opportunity.”

“...What?”

“Setting a trap means gathering all available strength in one place. Lucia, a trap carries too great a risk if it fails. From their perspective, this will be a decisive gamble.”

To Ivan, the city of munitions factories looked like a turtle drawing into its shell, like a beast raising its spines. It was growling in fear, desperately covering that fear with ostentatious courage.

It would have been worse if they were scattered. Fighting an urban battle among local forces spread out in ambush would have been a nightmare for him.

That was why he had to force them into a pitched battle. The fear attached to his reputation would make it possible.

The tactics chosen by the dwarves in that city were not truly their own choice. Deliberately induced emotions were narrowing their options.

As he had reflected before, encirclement was sometimes a tactic that even a small force could employ, as long as the information delivered to field troops in real time could be controlled at the right level.

Ivan flipped open his pocket watch and checked the time. By now, Enrika should have begun earnestly searching for the Secretary’s son.

There were five locations where the Secretary’s son was expected to be imprisoned. Assuming she searched every sector, it would take roughly three days.

Aviditas’s lackeys could not be wiped out before then. At the same time, Enrika’s rescue operation could not take place while Aviditas’s lackeys remained alive.

Two agents operating on opposite sides of the mountain had to accomplish their objectives at precisely the same time, without even the slightest error in timing.

It was like a three-person, four-legged race while blindfolded and standing on their hands. Of course, Ivan and Enrika were the sort of people who could walk on their hands in step, even while blindfolded.

“Send word to Enrika. Point C7-A. Begin ‘Antlion Pit.’ Estimated completion time, seventy-two hours.”

“Yes, Senior. I’ve sent it. Any other orders?”

“Stay close behind me. Keep quiet.”

And, if possible, do not die today.

Ivan swallowed those final words and threw himself off the cliff.

When Aviditas’s lackeys arrived, facing all of them at once would be nearly impossible, even for Ivan.

So from this point on, he had to reduce the enemy’s numbers as much as possible while preserving his own strength for the final battle to come.

It was difficult.

It was also something he had done before.

A properly trained agent should not feel burdened by doing again what they had experienced once before.

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Footnotes:

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