WeTried Translations x Flame Comics
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
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Chapter 153: At the End of the Rebellion (1)
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Let us turn back time for a moment, to ten days earlier. Krasilov, Pritchenkaya, Saint Yansk University, the dean’s office.
-Tap.
-Tap.
-Tap.
-Crunch.
The nib of a solid-gold fountain pen crumpled, soaking the desk with ink. The attendant standing nearby flinched at the sight but did not dare move.
Even if they were severely beaten for disrespect, they could not step before their sovereign now.
A dreadful killing intent filled the room, so dense that even the mana lamps illuminating the royal office seemed dimmed by it.
After a silence thick enough to make breathing difficult, Elizaveta shifted her dry gaze.
Toward the man kneeling before her with his head lowered.
“Is it true?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Pavel’s voice was grave. It held none of his usual joking tone, sounding more like the voice he had possessed back then.
At this moment, he was not the man who tossed out foolish jokes about promotion and glory. He carried the gravity expected of the commander of the Royal Guard.
That made Elizaveta’s fingertips tremble all the more.
The disaster in the Vernini Mountains. The disappearance of Ivan Petrovich Yermof.
A terrorist attack targeting Gilles Ver was suspected. More than forty enemy dragons had been visually confirmed, while the enemy’s ground forces remained unknown.
At the same time, Tilles’s Three Counts had launched a coup. They were presumed to be behind the attack. Their forces were estimated at no fewer than twenty thousand, and perhaps as many as one hundred thousand, considering Tilles’s wartime mobilization capacity.
The Tilles Royal Family could muster at most seven thousand troops in Saint Matilene. Depending on when battle began, only around half that number could realistically be expected to fight.
‘Tilles has fallen.’
The instant she read the report, Elizaveta’s cool mind swiftly reached its conclusion. She had to assume the country’s fall was a fact, then calculate what Krasilov stood to gain.
Unless Krasilov intended to wage war against whoever seized the next regime, making enemies of them was the worst possible choice. Winter was approaching.
Krasilov could not survive the winter without trade. That had always been true, but it had become even more so after the war against the demonfolk. The nation was now facing a threat to its very existence.
Since Krasilov had no ice-free ports, all trade had to pass overland. The Allied Kingdoms’ largest trade railway line began in Tilles.
Unless Krasilov could conquer Tilles, it could not oppose Tilles’s next royal house. At least not until winter had passed.
‘Vanka was... caught up in it.’
But.
Every part of Elizaveta that was not cold, every part reason could not rule, kept turning that fact over and over.
Nothing else.
“Pavel.”
A sovereign’s judgment had to serve only the safety of the nation. That was common sense. Elizaveta had lived that way as well, and her hands had been soaked in hot blood more times than she could count.
But.
At that moment, every feeling within Elizaveta that was not cold sobbed in the deep darkness. Machiavelli’s The Prince was only words on a page. Human emotion was not.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
The commander who had lost the last of the Royal Guard answered in a low voice.
Their intentions were one.
“We will mourn at a more fitting time. Rise.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
When Pavel raised his head and stood, blood stained the corner of his mouth. He had bitten through his lip. Elizaveta stared at the mark for a moment, then lifted her head.
She could not afford to waste even a moment in silence. By the time she lowered her gaze again, the corners of her eyes had dried.
Mourning could come later. This mattered more.
“Before Vanka’s body grows cold, bring me their heads. We will soothe Vanka’s soul with their blood. This winter will be harsh.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“After that, I will finish the mourning I have postponed. Will you join me?”
“Gladly, Your Highness.”
“Go. Tell Count Valika to begin preparations at once. I will give him one day to prepare for deployment. The troops must be assembled in two days, cross the border within five, and before ten days pass, I will take their heads myself.”
With every sentence, the sovereign’s fury made the office hum. A cold teacup rattled softly. Mana stirred in response to her rage, lightly tossing her hair.
Pavel bowed deeply and withdrew.
Left alone, Elizaveta finally looked at the report filled with cold sentences. Clear drops fell, one after another, onto the paper blurred with spilled ink.
“Ah... ah...”
The attendant and royal guard officer quickly turned to face the wall. The ruler of Krasilov showed tears only before the Lord.
“Ah... ah. Vanka, Vanka...”
Lord.
Is this not too cruel?
Is there still more You can take from me?
“Without fail, without fail... I will...”
I will avenge you.
Within the darkened office, the eyes of Krasilov’s ruler shone alone.
Ten days later, she would finally reach Saint Matilene.
Ep. 24. At the End of the Rebellion.
-Kwaaaang!!
-Aaah!!
The encampment shook. Soldiers scattered in panic whenever artillery shells came crashing down.
Tilles was called the nation of knights. That was not a simple figure of speech. It did not merely describe their politics or system of rule.
Tilles’s strongest force was its cavalry, and even in the war against the demonfolk, Tilles’s cavalry had proved it by charging across battlefields without retreating.
Yet, as was common with feudal estates, most of Tilles’s infantry were only conscripts. Even the standing army, no matter how enthusiastically trained, was nothing particularly impressive.
Tilles’s battles revolved around pitched engagements, which meant cavalry had always ruled the battlefield. Cavalry clashes determined the course of war.
Krasilov was different.
-Kwaaaang!!
Krasilov regarded soldiers as expendable. That was similar to Tilles. But beyond that, Krasilov determined victory or defeat not through the triumph of a select few, but through the deaths of the overwhelming many.
It did not matter if a handful of superhumans survived. Their combat doctrine centered on how many more enemy infantrymen they could kill.
Therefore, in Krasilov, artillery was the god of the battlefield.
“Reaper Battery. Second Corps. Count Valika has chosen a side.”
Ivan muttered as he watched the artillery fire pouring over the hill. He glanced once at his lord, who was looking down on the encampment from the hilltop, then forced strength back into his weakened legs.
Chaos had already swallowed the area around him. The command staff was in disarray, and soldiers were scattering with screams.
They needed to send cavalry. They needed to retreat. They needed to fight back. They needed to return to Saint Matilene and make a stand. Countless arguments flew through the command post.
It was too late. Unlike knights with Line-of-Fire Detection, artillery fire was divine punishment falling from the sky to infantrymen. They could not sense it coming, and the instant they noticed it, they died. The manner of their deaths was horrific enough for their allies to witness with their own eyes.
Their deaths were ostentatious, like a cavalry charge. Since artillery deaths were concentrated solely among the infantry, the infantry’s morale was being shattered in the most literal sense.
“Do you think the city walls will stop their cannons? Fools!”
“But they can minimize our losses!”
“You idiots! If our rear is attacked after Jean Beltua has cut off our supply lines, we will be completely isolated! We have to settle this in a pitched battle!”
“Your Highness! The rear’s morale has collapsed! Discipline is gone! If we fight a pitched battle now, we can never stand against that wicked woman!”
“I know! That is why we must retreat now!”
Saint Matilene stood before them. The throne, and the beginning of a great royal line, were right before their eyes.
Why did Krasilov have to interfere at this exact moment? Every last one of their corps should have been bogged down on the Northern Front.
Etouan ground his teeth and turned his horse.
“Gather as many soldiers as possible. Winter is almost here! Once we raise an army again and begin a pitched battle, those bastards will starve to death all winter!”
“Yes, Your Highness!”
Etouan and the command staff rode away.
Or rather, they tried to.
Until a throwing knife flew in and struck one of the nobles in the command staff squarely in the chest. The noble fell from the saddle with a choked gasp, a dagger lodged in their chest.
“What...?”
Etouan abruptly stopped. A chilling killing intent squeezed his heart. Stiffly, Etouan turned his gaze.
Death was staggering to its feet.
“How...? How are you able to move...?”
“You should have killed me more thoroughly.”
A man who had lost enough blood that he should not have had the bare minimum needed to live, bleeding from several arrows and long spears lodged in his body, was still standing there with one arm raised at him.
Etouan unknowingly staggered back.
-Move again and you’ll die.
Ivan ignored Kim Seonwoo’s words. Kim had become awfully talkative ever since hope came into view. Ivan was a sensible man, though, so he did not listen to the murmurs whispered by trauma.
-You have to live. You cannot risk your life. If you are prepared to die, at least stake it on our fight. Not on complete strangers or a foreign country.
Did demonfolk classify humans by nationality?
-What?
Or did the Hero save humans based on nationality?
-You mean we should become Heroes?
Not we. Me. I made a promise.
I promised that bastard Gilles Ver.
“Kill him! Kill that man now!”
“I’ve heard that often.”
Ivan raised his sword upright before him.
“And I’m still alive.”
From the bloodstained side of the polished blade, which hid half his face, Kim Seonwoo murmured.
-Your story was not supposed to be like this.
Enrika said I could return home only after I unfolded my own story.
-That story...
It was always me. Not you, me. From the moment Kim Seonwoo no longer wanted to turn the page, it was always by my hand that I saw blood, touched corpses, killed people, cut down demonfolk, and killed gods.
And if I had only realized it now.
-The prologue...
Ended thirty years ago. More than half the pages of my life had already turned, and my story had begun anew.
The Hero Party’s story was not my long prologue. Every story I shared with them was my story.
Kim Seonwoo fell silent. Neither agreeing nor denying it. As always.
Ivan was a sensible man, so he felt no satisfaction at having won an argument with himself.
He simply raised his sword.
He cut down the approaching knights. Even his remaining scrap of mana was enough. Fortunately, he had not managed to die yet.
“Do not run, Etouan de Grandmartel.”
“You will not leave this place alive!”
Etouan spurred his horse forward. Ivan’s legs were not suited for running in their current state. He could not chase down a galloping horse.
Raising his sword, he spoke.
“Your son was brave in the face of death, at least.”
“...What?”
Etouan stopped his horse. He stared blankly at Ivan.
-Kwaaaang!!
An artillery shell struck nearby, exploding in a red flash.
“Did no one tell you of your son’s final moments?”
“That boy is in Krasilov... at Saint Yansk University...”
“Have I not introduced myself?”
Ivan leveled his sword and gave a small salute with it. It was the perfect etiquette a Tilles knight might show, thick with mockery.
“I am Colonel Ivan Petrovich Yermof of the Krasilov Counterintelligence Command. I handle domestic intelligence and personally led the hunt for spies at Saint Yansk University. Your son is still at the university, of course.”
Because he could not return home even in death.
At Ivan’s words, Etouan gripped his sword with a trembling hand. Shock, disbelief, fury, grief. Fragments of countless emotions crossed his face.
“I will kill you.”
What remained at the end of those emotions was not a retreating rebel leader. Only a father who had lost his son remained, growling as he clutched his sword.
Ivan nodded and raised his own blade.
“You had better do it right this time.”
-Kwaaaang!!
Another artillery shell crashed down beside them.
Taking it as their signal, Etouan and Ivan charged at one another.
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Footnotes:
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