30 Years Have Passed Since the Prologue - Chapter 12

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Chapter 12: The Morning Star (2)

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* * *

The express train departing Saint Matilene in Tilles and arriving at Pritchenkaya in Krasilov passed through four military zones.

Once as it passed the Tilles 3rd Royal Guard Division, once as it crossed the northwestern border.

Then once through the Krasilov Border Defense Division, and once as it passed Pritchenkaya Defense Headquarters.

The front lines against the demonfolk were close enough that the area was blanketed with an absurdly thorough military presence.

By process of elimination, that meant there were only three possible places for a terrorist attack. Out of the roughly thirty stations this train passed through, only those three had no reinforcements within a day's distance, sparse populations, and difficult terrain.

‘One.’

The train carrying Ivan and Isabelle passed the first ambush point.

No suspicious figures tried to interfere with the tracks. No magic bandits rode alongside on horseback, raining down magic or artillery fire.

‘Two.’

The train sped through the second ambush point as well.

After staring out the window, Ivan sighed and sat down.

A few hours later, the train passed the third ambush point in silence.

‘What...?’

The train had now crossed the Krasilov border. If it kept going straight, it would reach Pritchenkaya within a day.

All that remained was the plains and one mountain range. It would pass through a forest along the way, but a division-sized force was stationed nearby.

That meant an attack should no longer be possible, no matter how hard someone tried. Ivan anxiously ran a hand over his pistol.

‘Was I wrong?’

Hadn't the tutorial been standardized as a train terrorist attack?

Then had Aesidis simply been terribly unlucky? Or had the tutorial in the original game been designed differently for every character?

He had expected each character to follow their own unique story, but the opening couldn't be too different. This was supposed to be an academy story.

It had to be. It had to be.

Ivan bit his lip. What was he supposed to do if he had misjudged things again?

If this wasn't even an academy story, did this damned other world have an ending at all?

Should he kill himself? Was there any answer other than suicide? He couldn't judge the ending if he couldn't predict the genre.

The worst possibility was...

If the ending belonged only to the protagonist.

What if the previous war, that conventional Hero RPG, had been this world's true nature?

Wasn't the Hero's retirement decisive proof? Why had the Hero chosen to withdraw from the world? Had that been the man's ending?

Then what of the world left behind?

What about us?

No, what about me?

What should I do?

Ivan's thoughts twisted into an increasingly tangled knot. No. He hated this. He didn't want to remain in this fucking world any longer.

He wanted to rest. He wanted to let go of everything and leave. He wanted to lie in a soft bed in a comfortable home with working heating, wrap himself in a microfiber blanket, and sleep for a week.

He wanted to order everything he wanted to eat and gorge himself until he burst. He wanted to talk with people who spoke Korean, about games, novels, films, dramas, and variety shows.

Death, poverty, hunger, and fear were everywhere.

Even so, this damned premodern fantasy world barely had a concept of welfare or leisure.

He didn't want to live here anymore.

“Ghk... ngh...!”

The man seated beside him turned pale and let out a strangled whimper.

The thick killing intent leaking from Ivan's body was spreading like poison. Yet Ivan, no, Kim Seonwoo, had no presence of mind left to get himself under control.

It grew sharper, denser, and so concentrated that it could actually harm someone.

As Kim Seonwoo's panic steadily intensified...

The train passed through a tunnel beneath a mountain and crossed a bridge over a valley. Then the carriage jolted with a deep boom.

It was a warning.

-BOOOOM!!!

-Screeeeeech!!

-RRRRRUMBLE!!

The explosion did not stop at destroying the tracks. It collapsed the entire bridge, and the train helplessly slid down with it. The body twisted, its momentum sending the whole carriage spinning.

As his body lifted and the world flipped upside down, Ivan instinctively seized the luggage rack to steady himself and scanned his surroundings.

Between the violently spinning interior and the scenery sliding past beyond the windows, he grasped the situation precisely.

The train was falling.

It was passing through the mountain range west of Pritchenkaya.

The train was falling.

There had been a terrorist attack.

The tutorial wasn't over.

I wasn't wrong.

There was still an ending left.

A smile slowly spread across Ivan's dry face inside the falling carriage. Slowly, then deeply.

He forcefully shoved the useless Kim Seonwoo, still trapped in panic, beneath his consciousness. It was time to do what needed to be done.

Fear, hatred, and confusion did not help with a mission. People liked to say that the head should be cold and the heart hot, but that was wrong.

The Annihilation Unit taught its soldiers differently. Keep your head, your heart, and even your fingertips cold.

Like Krasilov's brutal winters. Like those endless nights. Cold, quiet, meticulous.

The Annihilation Unit officer silently vanished amid the chaos within the carriage.

He stepped onto the railing, climbed onto the luggage rack, and shoved aside the tangled piles of baggage.

Up. Up. Up.

* * *

The last thing Isabelle remembered was a scattered sequence of fragments.

Her body being thrown through the air. Her vision shaking wildly. Agonizing pain sweeping over her.

The shattered window and the earth pouring in.

The train's body crumpling and tearing apart.

And one more thing.

“Gasp!”

Isabelle opened her eyes, drenched in cold sweat. Darkness surrounded her. The incident had happened just as she was admiring the conifer forest of Krasilov passing by beneath the evening glow.

She pushed herself up, pain stabbing through her body.

The passenger compartment had been buried in earth. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could make out the mound of soil that had poured in through the broken window.

Then came the sound of droplets falling.

Drip. Drip.

Huff. Huff.

Ragged, shallow breathing.

“Are you... huff... conscious, miss?”

“Sir August...?”

A man stood before her.

No. He was pinned there.

One arm was buried in the soil, and a long piece of rebar protruded from his side.

The dripping sound came from the blood falling from his mouth, nose, and waist.

“Why...?”

He had thrown himself in front of her to protect her. He had blocked the falling rocks with his entire body and taken the impact of the train's falling debris on his back.

She stared at the knight in horror. As always, he wore a warm smile.

“Miss. You need to run... ngh! You must run. The culprit will come for you. This was aimed at you... huff...!”

“Stop, stop! A-answer me! Why...? Why did you do something like that? Are you really an idiot?”

Isabelle glared at the knight with trembling eyes.

“Did you think my father would be angered if I died? No! That man doesn't care about anyone!”

“I know.”

The knight smiled weakly. Who in Tilles didn't know? That strange man who had abandoned his wife and child, shut himself away deep in the mountains, and refused to allow anyone near him.

At first, people had thought he had left to recuperate from the wounds he suffered after killing the Demon King.

Later, they began whispering that the Demon King had twisted the Hero's mind.

Before even four years had passed, they had begun to forget the Hero.

From the moment he killed the Demon King, no, perhaps even before then, the Hero had not been a person.

The man named Maximilian had faded beneath the title of Hero. Now only his achievements and myths echoed hollowly.

“You hate me.”

“Yes.”

“Then why...?”

“Because you are the Hero's daughter.”

Even as he lay dying, the man's eyes shone with an unnaturally clear light.

Even in this situation, Isabelle laughed as though she couldn't believe what she was hearing.

“What does that have to do with anything? Do you really think my father would spare even a coin's worth of concern for his daughter?”

“No, miss. Maximilian's concern never entered into it.”

But she was the Hero's daughter.

“One person had been able to plant hope in the hearts of all humanity. I lived through those days myself. And... even a great man like that left descendants and faded with time. That means he was a person.”

Maximilian was a person.

It was a statement anyone could agree with, yet one no one could truly understand.

But Isabelle was different. She was a person. She grew angry, felt jealousy, and grieved. She was a young girl suffering from a lack of affection.

Her very existence meant that the Hero, too, was ultimately human.

And conversely, so long as someone was human, they could become a Hero.

That was what he believed. Even if he hated Isabelle as a person, he had no choice but to affirm Isabelle's existence. She was hope.

The last seed left by the Hero, its very sprouting symbolized hope in this era, when those left behind after the war struggled to rebuild their shattered foundations.

It was hope that could bloom even in these ruined times.

Not the hope of conscripts fighting the Demon King, but hope for ordinary people trying to live from one day to the next.

If the Hero himself had been called a symbol of victory, then the Hero's bloodline was a symbol of reconstruction. A symbol of an era beginning anew.

That was why he had thrown himself forward despite hating Isabelle.

He was a knight of Tilles. He was the kind of man who could abandon the individual for the greater cause. He was also an ordinary man who desperately wished for humanity's reconstruction.

“Splendid.”

When he finished speaking, an arm suddenly burst from the mound of earth that had poured in through the window.

The arm groped through the dirt for a while, then slowly slipped free.

The cold late-winter night air swept refreshingly through the compartment.

Bluish moonlight streamed in through the opening.

“Knight, what is your name?”

“Dian August. And yours?”

“Ivan Petrovich.”

The earth collapsed away as a man stepped into the compartment.

Moonlight at his back, a long black shadow stretching before him.

“Do you want to live?”

“If possible.”