WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 54: 10. Stalker vs Stalker (9)

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* * *

One common misconception was that rain weakened scents. Raising even one dog would be enough to correct that minor misunderstanding.

Rain dulled the sense of smell, not body odor. And a summer shower was nowhere near enough to damage a superhuman's senses.

Naturally, getting wet intensified body odor. It would happen if distilled water were dripped onto a laboratory mouse in a sterile room, so it went without saying that it would be worse in this premodern world of hygiene.

On top of that, the person Ivan was tracking was a man from Droan who had run on foot for days and nights before arriving in the city.

Leaving aside Droan's particular disregard for public health, foreigners were always easier to identify by scent.

"The Foreign Ministry Residence...?"

Ivan stared down the trail of body odor and muttered in disbelief.

There were three places illegal immigrants should never visit, even by Earth's standards.

A rural employment office offering suspiciously high wages.

A regional factory, farm, or any other workplace with an oddly large number of people from their homeland, especially if the job involved a field.

And finally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As with all such lists, the final item was the most important. The first two only ended with you being exploited nearly to death, but the final option treated the actual enforcement as official business.

In South Korea, illegal immigrants were neatly sent back home. Generous Krasilov would offer two choices in this case.

1. Go home and be killed by your king.

2. Follow their laws and be killed by them.

Put more nobly, they offered the remarkable options of repatriation and citizenship. In this world, dead citizens were still citizens. They still had to pay taxes.

Krasilov's Foreign Affairs Office was a massive ministry, combining South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the military that answered directly to the crown and belonged to neither the Palace Administration nor the Military Administration, and a police force for foreign nobles. This world had no laws based on personal nationality.

What was more, the Foreign Minister was Crown Prince Alexander, eldest son of the current king, Kirill II.

"This is... too sloppy."

Ivan frowned.

By all reasonable judgment, Crown Prince Alexander was the cause of the mess currently unfolding in the capital.

That bizarre missing royal, whose location was unknown, must have colluded with the Capital Royal Guard command to smuggle dwarves into the country.

The targets were probably the children of the Hero Party, which meant the goal was discord or chaos throughout the Allied Kingdoms.

He had made several strategic plays with a single move. Alexander had to be an exceptionally skilled chess player, which made this situation strange.

Even in South Korea, a Foreign Minister's life would not be safe if he sheltered foreign terrorist infiltrators in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In Krasilov, it would be guaranteed. The man would die.

Ivan rolled his shoulders once, then tied a rope to his axe.

It had been a while since he had infiltrated a central government ministry.

Not that he had never done it.

During his active service, he had carried out almost every special operation with infiltration in its codename. The Demon King's castle was the exception.

* * *

At that moment, Pritchenkaya was suffering from righteous civic activists plotting bombings, national separatists kidnapping VIPs, and armed communist bandits waging guerrilla warfare. They were literally communist bandits. They were dwarves, after all.

Two groups should have been the first to suppress this chaos before it spread, the Capital Royal Guard Division and the Counterintelligence Command.

The Capital Royal Guard Division appeared to be under Alexander's influence, considering it had permitted the armed communist bandits' attack.

Which left Ivan with one thought.

What on earth was the Counterintelligence Command doing?

There was a reason that reasonable question could not be answered immediately. Almost all Counterintelligence Command agents had split into two groups and were carrying out affairs of state at different locations.

"This, this is... treason...!"

"Treason?"

Dmitry and the Counterintelligence Command agents were currently occupying the commander's office of the Royal Guard Division.

He sat with his legs crossed in the commander's plush chair, a high-quality cigar from the desk drawer between his lips.

Scrape.

The adjutant standing beside him quickly cut the end of the cigar and lit it with mana at their fingertips. The tobacco glowed with a hiss, and thick smoke scented with almonds and vanilla drifted into the air.

"Do you even know what treason means?"

"You, you people... What you're doing...!"

"No. Treason is a charge handed down to defeated failures. An attempt is a revolution. If it fails, it is treason. If it succeeds..."

He took a deep drag, then slowly exhaled.

The lieutenant colonel's vivid blue eyes gleamed through the smoke.

"It is a royal decree."

"How dare you! How dare you rebel bastards...!"

"You dare speak of rebellion in front of us. You are quite brave, Brigadier General."

Dmitry gave a short laugh and crooked a finger. The adjutant placed a heavy pistol in his hand.

Holding the pistol, Dmitry tapped the table. Two reports and one copied manuscript lay on it.

"This is the survey report your people prepared after the dwarf terrorist attack on the outskirts of Pritchenkaya. This is the perimeter watch log you wrote over the past month. And this..."

He picked up the manuscript with a faint smile.

"This is something we obtained by accident. A copy of confidential telegram records."

"How did you...?"

"When something is labeled confidential, it is our job to wonder what it contains."

Dmitry smiled and flipped through the copied telegrams.

"The recipient is Crown Prince Alexander. As for the main report... Oh. Plans for construction work and field exercises were prepared to conceal the excavation noise of a dwarf engineer battalion heading underground toward the capital? How thorough."

"I-it's a frame-up! It's a frame-up!"

"Did you mean adventure? That great adventure of bringing demonfolk into Pritchenkaya. You have a far greater sense of adventure than expected. You should not have become a soldier."

Dmitry quietly looked down at the blood-soaked brigadier general, who was kneeling on the floor and sobbing.

With his cigar still in his mouth, Dmitry asked casually, "Where is the real Crown Prince Alexander right now?"

"The real...? What are you talking about? His Highness the Crown Prince is naturally at the Western Palace..."

"We should take a lesson from you in cutting loose ends. How did you carry out such a complicated plan without exposing even one location?"

Dmitry rose with a bitter smile. Slowly, he raised the pistol and aimed it at the brigadier general.

"Before carrying out your sentence, I have one question."

"Spare me. I, I know nothing. It's a frame-up, a frame-up. Let me see Her Highness the Princess... Ah, no! No, let me see Your Majesty!"

"Where does your loyalty lie?"

"W-what are you saying? Naturally, naturally with this country... with the great Krasilov Royal Family...!"

Click.

Bang!

Dense smoke, entirely different from cigar smoke, scattered from the muzzle. The brigadier general's mouth closed.

Dmitry handed the gun to his adjutant, put on gloves, and turned away.

"Record this. By royal decree, the death sentence of the traitorous faction that plotted to throw the nation into disorder has been carried out."

"Yes, Lieutenant Colonel."

"What about the fake Crown Prince?"

"Teams Two and Five have successfully subdued the Western Palace."

"And Team Three?"

"Fifteen minutes ago, they successfully protected the former sovereign from a terrorist attack by the 'traitors.'"

"Good. The explosives in the city?"

"Team Four has confirmed every placement site and the amount planted. Lieutenant Colonel, shall we issue the order to disarm them...?"

"No, that will not do."

Dmitry opened the commander's office door and spoke softly.

"There must be fireworks for an accession ceremony. If those fools want to blow up Pritchenkaya, let them."

"...Then the people at the blast sites..."

"Evacuate the civilians. There is no need for pointless bloodshed. The explosion matters, not the damage."

The foreigners were the criminals who planted the bombs.

The person who hired them to blow up Pritchenkaya was Crown Prince Alexander.

The Crown Prince had intended to seize the throne amid the chaos in Pritchenkaya. That attempt had been successfully stopped. Afterward, the Crown Prince had vanished without a trace, and the king, shocked by his son's rebellion, had transferred power.

Since all of that was based on fact, the Counterintelligence Command only needed to announce it to the citizens and the international community.

"What about the children of the Hero Party...?"

"That was Senior's job from the start. Do not interfere. Colonel Petrovich hates people intruding on his area of work."

There was only one missing piece in this affair.

A woodcutter.

The finest field agent produced by the Annihilation Unit during the war, Ivan Petrovich, would set it in place.

That settled everything. Dmitry smiled faintly, his heart lighter.

* * *

Aesidis barely opened her eyes, trembling as pain pulsed through her head.

The dark interior was bleak... Like a prison... No, it was an actual prison.

What was this? Why had she been captured? A prison...? What crime had she committed...?

Aesidis, who could look to the heavens without a speck of shame, felt wronged.

"You're awake, Esi?"

"B-Bella! And Mr. Oscar is here too?!"

She spotted the two of them in a corner of the cell and broke into a bright smile. Of course!

"You came to rescue me!"

"No, we were captured too."

Isabelle and Oscar answered with helpless smiles.

* * *

So the Tilles lot had been captured too.

Ivan clicked his tongue as he looked down at the injured, unconscious Dian.

Dian had been found in an interrogation room on the second floor of the Foreign Ministry Residence.

Unlike Mord, Dian had not suffered a fatal injury. That was fortunate. It meant there were no traitors in Tilles.

If Tilles had been involved in this affair, Dian would never have been taken alive. To silence them, they would have had to kill them.

Ivan clicked his tongue again and opened the interrogation room door.

The Counterintelligence Command needed training.

How could they call themselves a domestic intelligence organization when there were this many holes in their protection of state guests?

Ivan was deeply disappointed. Back when he was active, something like this could never have happened.

As countless training plans for the Counterintelligence Command crossed his mind, he walked onward.

Squelch, squelch.

The corridor of the Foreign Ministry Residence was lit by broken, flickering mana lamps.

Blood and rainwater pooled across the floor, making a wet sound beneath every step.

Along the shortest route to the top floor, the remains of every armed person who had tried to stop Ivan flickered red beneath the lights.

Without even breathing hard, Ivan silently walked down the corridor.

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Footnotes:

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