WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 32: A Night of Counting Stars (6)
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* * *
There might have been fantastical stairways reaching into the sky, but an air warship had nothing of the sort. Humans did not have wings, either.
That made infiltrating an air warship extremely difficult, even if it was floating motionlessly in the sky and its crew had completely let down their guard in the middle of the night.
Yet they had to infiltrate that air warship, threaten its captain, and deal with the entire crew without anyone dying.
“Warships at sea are often compared to fortresses. An air warship could rightly be called a fortress in the heavens.”
Oswald said this with a gentle smile. He was not wrong, but it was still irritating.
“That bastard thinks he’s a real elf.”
“I am a real elf. Can’t you see my ears?”
“Wow, you’ve fallen completely, pointy-ear. Brother! I’ve got a brilliant idea!”
Eugene grumbled and shot up his hand. Ivan motioned for him to continue, and Eugene proudly puffed out his chest.
“That pointy-ear can use [Feather Step]!”
“How many times do I have to tell you that I use Mind Sorcery? Are humans just slow learners?”
“Wow, he really has become a pointy-ear. What kind of party includes a mage who can’t even use Feather Step? Brother, let’s go grab anyone from the Magic Department. Preferably someone from Destruction, the school of destructive magic.”
“[Mental Breakdown].”
Purple mana swirled around Oswald’s fingertips, and Eugene’s eyes went slack.
Drool dripped from his mouth as he lowered his head.
Silence fell over the clubroom.
Useful. Ivan nodded.
“We only need to wait until evening.”
“Is the warship suddenly going to land in the evening or something?”
“No. The people who need to go to the warship will show up.”
The Krasilov monarchy had given the warship three days to leave. That had been yesterday.
Then, yesterday evening, Elizaveta had threatened to shoot it down if it did not leave within a day.
The captain must have been anxious. The entire monarchy might begin military action as soon as tomorrow, and even if it did not, the captain would assume Elizaveta planned to pull something before the day was over.
That meant the captain had to contact the Crown Prince by today. It was the only way to turn the situation around.
They would not be able to move during the day. With the Counterintelligence Command in place, all of Pritchenkaya was within Elizaveta’s sight.
That meant evening, at the earliest. Night, after the sun had set.
“Even if the Crown Prince’s side contacts the warship, how are we supposed to get in among them?”
“They will use a carriage with a levitation spell.”
“That’s what I mean. Are we supposed to ask them to make room for us in the carriage?”
“No.”
Ivan looked over Oswald, who was watching him suspiciously, Yuri, who was still nervously reading the room, and Eugene, whose mind had gone blank. Then he spoke to Yuri in a grave voice.
“If you had to carry one of us, who would you choose?”
“Me...?”
“Other than me. Which of those two would you carry?”
Yuri looked at the two young men with trembling eyes. One was a pretty-boy playboy, and the other was a squinty-eyed hypnosis character.
The squinty-eyed hypnosis character had even proven his abilities by casting a hypnosis spell on the pretty-boy playboy.
Yuri bit down hard on her lip before barely managing to answer.
“Y-Eugene... I’d rather....”
“You’d rather...?”
Ignoring Oswald, who flinched with a wounded look, Ivan readily nodded.
“Then I’ll carry Oswald.”
“But why are we suddenly carrying people?”
“Because we’re going to hang from it.”
The air warship floated roughly eight hundred meters above the ground. It was absurdly low compared to ordinary aircraft on Earth, but in this premodern world, it was an impossible height for a person to reach.
Even with Earth’s highly developed civil engineering, eight hundred meters was Burj Khalifa territory. Only the tallest building ever constructed could reach that high.
Any other means of travel supported by a levitation spell would be spotted in advance if it approached that altitude.
To infiltrate without being seen, they had no choice but to hide beneath the carriage that the Crown Prince faction sent to make contact.
The question was whether they had the strength to hang beneath it.
Oswald obviously could not do it, and Eugene was not exactly reliable. No matter how skilled he was with a sword, he was still a priest.
Yuri, on the other hand, was the top student in the Knight Department. Other than Mord, she was considered the strongest freshman in practical combat. Carrying one person while hanging on for around ten minutes should be possible for her.
“You speak as if you have infiltrated an airship while hanging in midair before.”
“Fortunately, I have done something similar.”
“What kind of life have you lived? Ah, I don’t really want to know.”
Ignoring Oswald, Ivan stood up. There was much to prepare.
“Bring warm clothes and enough weapons, then come to the Astronomy Spire of the Magic Department.”
Every season in Krasilov except summer was not much different from winter. The year went through light winter, summer, midwinter, and damned winter.
Hanging from a carriage while flying eight hundred meters up in the middle of the night would be extremely cold. The transmigrators shuddered as they considered Ivan’s words.
* * *
Ivan and the transmigrators lay waiting on the spire’s rooftop from evening onward. Only after the sun had fully set did they finally rise, stretching their stiff bodies.
Their hands had gone numb with cold. The transmigrators sighed and worked feeling back into their hands and feet. After a long while, Ivan finally raised his head.
Once darkness had fallen over the area, a small light flickered for an instant among the streets, made even darker by the shadow of the massive warship.
“Get ready.”
Ivan rolled his shoulders once and pulled out an axe. He spun the rope tied to it, then extended it straight out to judge the distance.
The ropes attached to the two axes were tied around Yuri’s and Ivan’s waists.
After confirming that Yuri was carrying Eugene, Ivan slowly drew back his arm.
“It’s coming.”
The transmigrators swallowed nervously. Ivan was staring directly at some point in the pitch-black night sky where nothing could be seen.
Mana flowed through Ivan’s muscle fibers in finely tuned currents.
Oswald, riding on Ivan’s back, silently marveled at that precise arrangement.
“You go first.”
“What? Y-yes... Hrk?! Aaaaaah!”
-Whoooooosh!!
Ivan threw the axe without waiting for Yuri’s answer. The hand axe cut a clean line through the night sky.
The rope tied to its end jerked once, and Yuri, tied to the other end, was yanked away as if she had been caught by a hook.
In an instant, Yuri’s silhouette vanished into the darkness.
“Hold on tight.”
“W-wait. I’m not mentally prepared yet... Wait, wait, maybe we should think this over agai...!”
-Whoooooosh!!!
“Ughaaaaaah?!”
As the ground rapidly fell away and brutal wind slapped against his cheeks, Oswald screamed with foam at his mouth.
The terror of death, the ringing in his ears, the sensation of suddenly being dropped into the sky.... What was I thinking? I actually called this a plan...! Oswald instinctively clutched Ivan’s shoulders and wailed.
“Urgh...! Uuugh...! Ack...! Huh...?”
The tremendous noise battering his ears abruptly stopped.
Oswald looked around in a daze and found Yuri and Eugene beside him, pale as sheets.
They were hanging from a carriage wheel.
“Uh...? Uhhh...?”
“Wow....”
The spire they had jumped from was far away in the distance. They had crossed that distance... by throwing hand axes? They stared at Ivan with fresh disbelief.
“But won’t this get us caught?”
“Of course it will.”
Ivan could already hear the commotion inside the carriage.
The people inside were not deaf. The carriage had suddenly lurched under the added weight of four people, and the axes had struck it dead on. There was no way they would not notice.
For now, there was no need to worry. They could not open the carriage door or look beneath its wheels through the windows. That would only last a little while, though.
The moment they reached the deck, they would be surrounded. Crown Prince Alexander himself was probably not aboard, but they had ambushed a carriage carrying his envoy. Naturally, they would be attacked.
In other words, stealthy infiltration had been impossible from the beginning.
Once the transmigrators realized that, they looked at Ivan in stunned silence.
“Then what do we do now?”
“Endure.”
“Huh?”
Ivan stared into the night sky and slowly pulled the axe from the carriage.
The air warship was gradually drawing closer beneath the clouds.
After confirming that the lights guiding the carriage’s landing point were glittering on the deck, Ivan hooked Oswald onto the carriage wheel and hung on with one hand.
Then he aimed the axe he had pulled free and tilted his head slightly.
“Come on, you’re not abandoning us, are you? You’re abandoning the Korean Patriotic League, brother? No friendship?”
Ignoring Eugene’s stumbling nonsense, Ivan drew his arm back and circulated mana.
The conditions had made stealthy infiltration impossible from the start.
In that case, was it not right to strike east and attack west? Of course it was. The Annihilation Unit had always followed the doctrine of causing confusion among the enemy just before infiltration.
Not quite discarded cards, but decoys to draw attention.
There were two nobles among the transmigrators, one a high-ranking noble from the military, and one elf.
Even if they were attacked, they were not people who would be summarily executed. If only students showed up, there was a good chance it would be dismissed as a childish prank.
That was why Ivan had told them not to kill any crew members. He had to prevent the situation from becoming a fight to the death.
“I’ll come find you soon.”
“No, wait, brother...? Brother!!”
-Fwoooooom!!!
Ivan hurled the axe toward some point in the night sky. The powerful recoil jolted the carriage once, and when the transmigrators opened their eyes again...
Ivan was gone. He was already flying through the darkness of the night like an arrow.
“He looks like a crazy flying Santa Claus. He doesn’t even need Rudolph.”
“Ahahaha.... What do we do now?”
“What else?”
Eugene clenched his teeth as he watched the deck draw closer.
“We clear the quest.”
If the quest reward was worthless after all this, he would find some way to kill that bastard Status Window.
* * *
Ivan hung beneath the warship’s waterline, clinging to an axe embedded in a gunport.
Rough wind swept past his ears. He felt the floating sensation beneath his feet, and far below, the city lay scattered like grains of sand.
If he fell, he would die. No, it was high enough that not even fragments of his limbs would remain.
“Hup.”
-Crack!!
Hanging there with one hand, Ivan twisted his waist to build momentum and slammed the gunport.
-Crack! Crack! Crack!
-Creeeak!!
It shook dangerously, as if he might fall at any moment, but he continued without expression.
Steadily. Like chopping wood while standing on solid ground.
Soon, the wooden gunport collapsed, leaving a hole large enough for one person to enter.
-Weeeee-oo! Weeeee-oo! Weeeee-oo!
Warning lights flashed wildly inside, and the crew came rushing out.
The distraction succeeded.
Ivan nodded without emotion and threw himself through the dark gap in the gunport.
Now, at last, the woodcutter had arrived.
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Footnotes:
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