WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 87: 14. The King's Silence (5)

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* * *

The moment Ivan saw the name Edelplat Coenwulf, he thought of the front lines in a coniferous forest on a freezing winter night.

Back when he had only just been assigned to the Royal Guard, in those inexperienced days.

* * *

There was one thing he always felt when going on operations with foreigners.

These bastards had names that were far too difficult.

It was funny. Ivan had lived in the Sinosphere for over twenty years, so Krasilov's naming conventions and those of other foreign countries should not have felt all that different to him.

But humans were adaptable creatures. After living for over a decade in this fantasy-Russia world, foreign names had become harder for him.

At least Krasilov was a world where diminutives were common. People who knew him usually called him Vanka. Even before that, Ivan was not a particularly difficult name to begin with.

Yet whenever he dealt with foreign troops, especially nobles, his tongue felt as if it froze every time he had to say their names.

“Dame Coenwulf.”

It was a deep forest. A winter night in a snowy coniferous wood, where the stench of blood hung thick in the air from every direction.

Ivan took a step forward with a measure of tension and fear. More than ten years had passed since he had fallen into this hellish world, but the front lines he encountered far from civilization were still frightening.

Even so, he moved forward. He was Royal Guard. Fear could not be his motivation.

“You came?”

“Yes. The search results...”

“You needn't tell me. It means there are no more remnants in this forest, doesn't it? I know.”

“...Pardon?”

“Elves have sharp ears, Ivan. Sometimes, when we listen closely, the sounds we hear go beyond the realm of the material world. The forest told me there are no more demonfolk.”

What kind of bullshit was that? Had senility caught up to her?

Ivan quietly lowered his head and grumbled to himself. Internally, because elves had sharp ears.

“You're full of complaints?”

“You misunderstand.”

“Oh, I heard it all. You're wondering why I sent scouts out for two hours in this cold if safety was assured, aren't you?”

“...”

Ivan rubbed his numb hands beneath his thick gloves and forced his mouth shut. He felt as though a string of curses might slip out otherwise.

He was a rational man, so he did not criticize a monster that could cut a person's throat more easily than breathing.

It was absolutely, categorically not because he was afraid. He was Royal Guard, and the Royal Guard never felt fear.

“I needed time to meditate.”

“You mean... meditation?”

“Yes. The realization one encounters at the end of martial training, on a quiet night in the forest. I needed a moment to sink into thought while facing the corpses of those I cut down. The moment when I realized that I, too, might become like them someday, that my life had only been deferred until I stood before someone stronger than myself.”

Definitely senility with regressive symptoms.

He was freezing to death. All he could think about was returning to camp, warming himself by the fire, and grilling a Nutrient Bar.

Quiet? It was winter. Winters on the northern front were brutal. Blizzards always swept through this area like storms during winter, just as they were now.

The wind cutting at his ears and the noise of snow lashing the coniferous forest could not possibly qualify as a quiet, sacred night.

Ivan tensed.

‘If a deranged elf with dementia is also a master swordswoman, could I really stop her?’

Being a levelheaded man, he instantly determined that he could not. He clasped his hands and answered politely.

“Unlike a lowborn creature such as myself, elven warriors may attain enlightenment through such sudden realizations. But the weather is foul. I think it would be better for you to return to camp and ease your battle fatigue.”

“Yes, let's do that. A night walk is a fine experience too.”

Crazy elf.

Ivan was a cultured citizen of the twenty-first century who hated racism, so he did not hate elves. Conversely, in this primitive world, elves belonged to a hated race.

Still, he was human too, and whenever he saw those flashes of madness that elves occasionally displayed, it was hard not to feel bile rising in his throat.

Of course, he had to endure it. Unlike logic and law, force was truth in this place. What a primitive world.

* * *

Ivan came out of his reverie.

Did elven medicine have a treatment for dementia? It might, considering they were a long-lived race. They were a race that could suffer from senility for centuries. No, that was ridiculous.

Ivan looked over the list with worried eyes.

One-Eyed Adel.

Her jet-black hair had fallen softly like animal fur, and her golden eyes had resembled those of a bird of prey. She was the dashing figure who had laughed as she said she had given one of those eyes to one of the Seven Dragon Generals.

When the legion under her command had been exposed to an ambush by one of the Seven Dragon Generals, she had faced that commander alone and returned alive after losing an eye.

That was astonishing. Everyone knew that no one in this world could dare face them alone.

Adel was someone who had accomplished that impossible feat. Her legion had escaped with minimal losses.

Her other epithets, Ascendant Knight, the Queen's Great Warrior, Victor, and Punisher, were merely secondary.

“Adel is entering the tournament.”

“That's what I'm saying, sir. Wow, I haven't seen her in ages. She's still going strong, right?”

“She must be, if she's pulling something like this. Who put her up to it?”

“Pardon?”

“Adel would not have submitted an application with her own hands. Who entered her in her place?”

“Miss Grikenkos.”

“Beolgreen...”

Ivan frowned.

Elphihara would not suddenly decide to ruin the tournament, so this could only mean Beolgreen had put her up to it.

Why would Beolgreen involve himself in this country's internal affairs?

Was he looking for traces of Alexander? If so, Ivan could understand it to some degree.

Elizaveta's political enemies almost certainly belonged to the faction that had once supported Alexander.

“Did Her Highness give any further orders?”

“No, sir.”

“I see.”

The Princess's final command had been a single sentence.

Win overwhelmingly.

Then that was what he would do.

A good agent made various plans to prepare for failure in an operation. Fallback objectives, least-bad objectives, things like that.

But Annihilation Unit agents did not.

They did not ask what they should accomplish after failure to minimize losses.

If failure threatened them, they only prepared for how they could succeed.

Everything else was secondary. The Annihilation Unit knew no failure other than death. Until they died, they had not failed, and if someone wanted to stop their operation for good, there was only one way to do it.

Kill them.

That was how they had been trained.

Ivan closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and sank into thought.

Two days remained.

He began devising a way to defeat Coenwulf.

* * *

“Finished... finished... I did it...”

She had burned herself out.

Elphihara collapsed to the floor, dark circles hanging heavily beneath her eyes.

She had borrowed her father's wisdom, reverse-engineered ancient relics, examined every spell she already knew one by one, and rebuilt their operating principles from the ground up.

At last, she had completed it.

“C-can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

-I hear you perfectly. Remarkable.

Before her stood a suit of full-body plate armor with graceful lines. It shone alone amid the countless magitech components scattered messily around her.

How many high-level spells had she embedded in that armor? How many mana stones had been consumed as its power source?

“It, it'll only operate for two days. Would you like to take it for a test run?”

-There's no need.

The armor nodded with a clatter. Its visor was pulled low, leaving it completely expressionless, but Elphihara somehow felt as though it was smiling.

-You truly are the daughter of Beolgreen, that old fox. Astonishing. If this technology had been completed just twenty years earlier, you could have saved so many people.

“Y-you're praising me too much! It can only work for a few days... It was only possible because I made it with a short, decisive battle in mind from the beginning.”

-Humble too. The only things you inherited from your father are his looks and talent. You're blessed.

The elves had a form of magitech called remote communication.

It was a technology commonly used among elves, and with somewhat more refined techniques, it could project even a blurry afterimage.

It was a high-level spell that could link terminals across vast distances, even from this land to faraway Kallion.

Then, if one installed more mana terminals and manipulated their directionality differently, it opened a new horizon.

By controlling the input and output structure for sound, it became possible to input and output only particular stimuli.

To put it more simply, it meant one could create a remotely controlled golem with real-time control.

Only blurry afterimages were visible, movement was delayed by several seconds, and precise control was impossible due to a golem's inherent sluggishness. It could only be used for about two days as well.

Even so, she had built an environment where someone in Kallion could operate in Krasilov.

-The movements... There is some delay.

“I-I couldn't help that. I'm sorry...”

-No, this is enough. You could write a thesis on this and earn your degree immediately, so why are you worrying about that?

“Hehe, thank you...”

A great knight known as one of the Privy Council's few “fixers” solely through her skill, a knight who had not suffered a single defeat in hundreds of years.

How many honors had followed in the wake of her accomplishments? Her very life could be categorized as a history book and a tactical manual.

Yet someone like that was smiling warmly at a young elf like her.

Elphihara lowered her head with a loose, melted expression.

The excitement unique to a scholar who had achieved a tremendous academic accomplishment and the exhaustion of grueling work after days without sleep washed over her at the same time.

Because of that, she failed to hear the quiet whisper that reached her ears.

-I wonder how much that little one has grown. I am looking forward to it.

Edelplat Coenwulf smiled as she manipulated this unfamiliar metal body and raised a longsword.

It was late at night, the day before the tournament.

* * *

The festival began.

It was lavish, as though meant to erase the chaos that had blanketed Pritchenkaya over the past few days.

Elizaveta spared no expense from the royal treasury. She held feasts, invited nobles, and fed the citizens until they were full.

And at last, the tournament was held.

* * *

Footnotes:

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