30 Years Have Passed Since the Prologue - Chapter 44

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Chapter 44: 9. Academy Field Trips Always Get Attacked (8)

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* * *

Dwarves had darkvision. They had originally been a race that lived holed up underground, so it was hardly strange.

It did not mean they could see through darkness as clearly as broad daylight, but they could still make out objects relatively well in the dark.

That was why Astuk could see the man approaching.

‘...A large dwarf?’

Astuk was confused!

* * *

“Isabelle.”

“M-Mister?!! How did you get in here...?!”

“Are you hurt?”

Ivan walked over and stopped beside Isabelle. He clicked his tongue, then placed a hand on her shoulder.

“N-No! I’m fine!”

“That’s good. Then stay right here and don’t move.”

Protecting important personnel was part of the Annihilation Unit’s basic training course, but that did not mean he could guarantee perfect safety in the dark.

Before a fierce battle, it was important to know the protected person’s location at all times.

Ivan was an exceptionally efficient man, of course, so he did not consider how those words might sound.

‘I’ve seen this before... It’s one of those things that happens all the time in romance novels!’

Isabelle’s head spun. The tension suddenly drained from her, and she let out a breath.

Her legs trembled. Fear came crashing down on her late. Maybe it was the suspension bridge effect, but she could not help relying on a man who had appeared in the face of death.

And then there were the words, “Stay right there.”

Like a knight from some tale telling her to wait until he returned from slaying an ancient dragon.

‘This is a confession. Oh, honestly. What a problem.... Well, what can I do? I shouldn’t accept right away, so... Yeah. I’ll ask if he has time this weekend first. As a reward.’

Isabelle was confused!

* * *

A pistol in his left hand, a longsword in his right. Five daggers hung from his waist, and an axe was slung across his back.

After quickly checking his weapons, Ivan began walking forward.

They were afraid. Ivan drew a quiet breath.

There were several signs common to all living creatures. Hormonal mechanisms were one of them.

Physical enhancement through mana and the extreme increase in nervous system efficiency brought about a number of chain reactions. One of them was heightened sensory perception.

Take the sense of smell. It allowed one to catch even the faintest scent drifting through the air.

That meant one could detect even the volatile body odor produced as secreted sweat evaporated. In the realm of superhumans, it was an extremely important indicator.

It allowed them to read their opponent’s emotions.

This primitive premodern society did not yet have a word for hormones, but people were built the same way. Their body odor changed subtly with their emotions.

It became a physical indicator of emotions such as killing intent, fear, and affection.

Cortisol was secreted when living creatures felt fear. That distinctive scent seeped thickly from among the dwarves.

“Are you afraid?”

“Bullshit!”

Astuk clenched his teeth. The bastard was alone.

War was ultimately a fight of morale. Once they were overwhelmed in spirit, they could hardly fight at all.

Instinctively, Astuk had classified this fight with Ivan as a war. Ignoring that fact, Astuk raised an axe.

“Annihilation Unit. You cursed bastards... I’ll kill you and honor the souls of my comrades who went on before me!”

“They all said that.”

Astuk needed a moment to understand those words.

They all said that?

A chill ran down Astuk’s spine.

It was a calm confession that Ivan had heard those words many times, and killed every person who had said them.

Astuk raised his axe with a grim expression. At Astuk’s movement, everyone in the shield formation raised their weapons at once.

Clack, clack.

The heavy scrape of metal echoed through the tunnel.

Ah, how nostalgic.

Memories of the previous battlefield where he had faced dwarf shield formations in tunnels.

It had been during the Mine War.

Ivan raised his sword as he thought of it. A narrow indoor passage with limited visibility, dwarves filling the whole corridor. A horrific formation that axes and bullets could not penetrate.

Back then, he had not been alone. Other unit members had always been by his side to support him.

They were gone now. A deep sense of loss settled over Ivan as he tightened his grip on his sword.

Still, these were not the army from those days. At most, there were around thirty of them. Even counting generously, there could not be more than fifty, a small infantry force.

And he was no longer Captain Ivan Petrovich from those days.

Ten years had passed since the Mine War.

Ivan had gained ten years’ worth of experience.

* * *

-Bang!!

It began with a shot. Its purpose was to threaten them and secure his field of vision at the same time.

In his slowed perception of time, where space seemed to tilt and fragment, Ivan sprinted forward.

A stationary dwarf shield formation was like a turtle. Sturdy, dull, and slow. That was why speed had to be the foundation of his tactics.

“He’s coming!!”

A frightened voice echoed through the tunnel. It was familiar.

Dwarves usually belonged to the demonfolk army’s rear infiltration teams, and operations like that provided the ideal environment for the Annihilation Unit.

That was why the Annihilation Unit had always been named as the individual unit that killed the most dwarves during the war.

-Clang!

His welcome was a sword strike. The direct downward blow was a feint. Before the dwarf at the very front could even react, Ivan lightly struck their shoulder plate.

That dwarf’s weapon immediately thrust toward him. Ivan turned his body aside, dodging it by listening only to the sound of air being torn apart.

He shut his eyes and counted the seconds. Ivan knew his exact number of steps.

One stride was eighty-six centimeters. Isabelle was five steps behind him.

The formation’s leader was seven steps away. The formation was thirteen steps wide.

The area in which he could move was seventeen steps.

-Clang!!

Weapons poured toward him in an instant. Ivan dodged them as he slipped inside, then struck once.

Clang, screech! The sound of his longsword driving beneath the elbow of the frontmost dwarf.

Clack, clack. The scraping noise of the heavily armored dwarves moving together.

Behind his closed eyes, the images of his enemies that had been imprinted on his retinas when he fired distorted.

He mapped and analyzed each surrounding sound, constantly correcting their positions and stances in real time.

“You monster!!”

He heard that just as he flayed one dwarf and cut off an arm.

A monster. Ridiculous. Ivan knew what real monsters looked like in battle.

-Crack!

Ignoring the horrific scream of the dwarf whose arm he had cut off, Ivan spun and moved two and a half steps sideways.

One dwarf was just raising an axe to bring it down. Ivan drove a dagger beneath the gap at the back of that dwarf’s neck, then took another step and a half to the right.

-Crack!

The next dwarf thrust forward with a war hammer. Ivan let the heavy sound of it splitting the air pass beside his head, lowered his stance, and drove in his longsword.

Crack. The already chipped longsword broke.

He had expected it. From the moment the fight began, he could feel the blade wearing away through his fingertips.

So he did not panic. Ivan was used to that level of durability.

“He dropped his weapon!!”

No, he let it go.

Ivan ducked his head and moved two steps sideways. An axe lay precisely at his feet. It was the weapon dropped by the first dwarf whose arm he had cut off.

The moment Ivan picked it up, he twisted his waist to evade the next attack and raised his left hand.

Aim, steady his breathing, fire.

-Bang!!

“Gaaah!!”

The broken longsword had sunk its teeth into a gap in one dwarf’s armor. A perfect pinpoint shot. Like hammering a chisel, it blew open the dwarf’s chest.

Ivan threw the pistol into the air and ran forward. He caught the discarded war hammer in his left hand and turned.

One hand rose above him, the other stretched to the side.

Then both came down in a crossing blow.

-Boom!!

The dropped axe embedded itself in one dwarf’s helmet, and the hammer, swung with perfect precision, smashed into the same dwarf’s head.

The strength drained from that dwarf’s body, and as the dwarf staggered and fell, Ivan threw the hammer and caught his pistol from the air.

Without aiming, he fired straight ahead at the commander five steps away.

-Bang!!

This time, he opened his eyes. The state of the battle entered his sight once more. As the pistol’s muzzle flash faded, he closed his eyes again and drew the altered shield formation in his mind.

The noise of the battlefield, the enemies’ body odor, their positions engraved beneath his retinas. The sensation of wind brushing against both cheeks.

The Battlefield of Superhumans, between one breath and the next.

Ah, how nostalgic.

Ivan recalled it once again as he ran.

The human body was frail. Even a dagger less than three inches long could incapacitate someone.

Close-quarters combat was always a crossroads between life and death, fought with one’s life on the line.

In the midst of it, in a clearly disadvantageous situation, at the center of enemy lines.

He had forgotten this sensation of charging toward the heart of the enemy. In the four years since his last battle, he had not faced anything that could truly be called combat.

That was why Ivan felt something like nostalgia on this familiar battlefield.

Ivan was an extremely objective man, so he thought there was something wrong with him.

The feeling stood out even more in ordinary life. Among people who laughed and chatted like everyone else, he even felt isolated.

But here, in this moment where lives flickered out, he could be someone needed.

He still lived in war. He hated the battlefield, longed for ordinary life, and yearned for home.

Breathing in the scent of his missed comrades, Ivan counted his steps.

One more step.

The formation’s “head” was eighty-six centimeters ahead.

* * *

What was Astuk supposed to feel in the face of a madman who faintly smiled as he slaughtered Astuk’s comrades?

With every breath, another comrade fell.

Stop him, kill him, no! Don’t! My arm! Aah!

Their screams could not even become full words. Only death cries rang out across that battlefield, while the Annihilation Unit’s madman continued his work in silence.

Broken armor flew over their heads. Torn limbs and droplets of blood scattered through the air.

It was a storm. A disaster that no individual could resist.

It swept through them, wielding weapons, gripping them, and charging onward.

At last, even when he abruptly arrived before Astuk’s eyes, his breathing had not changed from the beginning.

“I am... Astuk, senior captain of the Third Battalion, the Webmaker Engineer Corps directly under the Fifth Dragon General. What is your name...?!”

“Ivan Petrovich.”

“...Ha....”

Astuk nodded.

He had heard Ivan was dead.

Right. So that was it. Ivan was alive. If so, Astuk could understand why Ivan had entered this forest at precisely the right moment.

“That beard. Were you copying us?”

“...?”

Ivan’s face twisted for the first time.

Ivan was an exceptionally cool-headed man, but he would never overlook an insult to the late king.

Instead of answering, he swung the axe held by an unnamed soldier.

* * *

“You can move now.”

“I think my legs gave out.”

Isabelle laughed as she heard Ivan’s footsteps approach.

It was a battle whose intensity she could clearly feel from the sound alone. Even though she had only stood still right behind him, it felt as though the heat of battle had reached her.

Honestly, it had been overwhelming.

She stretched both arms out and said,

“Carry me.”

If her legs had given out, it was more efficient to carry her than wait for her to walk.

Ivan was an efficient man, so he silently offered his back.

Soon, warm hands wrapped around the back of his neck.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“You worked hard.”

“Yes.”

“Today’s a little difficult, but could I buy you dinner tomorrow evening?”

Ivan was currently an undercover agent of Counterintelligence Command.