WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: HidingTurtle
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◈ How the Child of Prophecy Survives ◈
Chapter 16: A Fierce Squirrel Crouching in the Grass
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“What on earth happened in there?”
The military faction cadets led by Ferdinand had to work carefully on their tactics before facing Ernst’s Allied Forces as the Imperial Army.
“Who knows? They won’t tell us a thing.”
But they could get no information about Ernst’s “hunt” or the carnage that had taken place in the forest.
During the preparation stage, Ferdinand had left Ernst and three nonhereditary noble cadets deeper in the forest, taking everyone else with him to wait near the entrance. In other words, only some of Wilfried’s noble faction cadets and the three nonhereditary noble cadets with Ernst knew what had happened inside.
“That was my mistake. I didn’t think about how our allies would become our next enemies.”
Ferdinand regretted throwing away a valuable chance to learn the enemy’s tactics. But regret would not help them now.
“We’ll have to advance carefully, watching for traps and ambushes.”
“Are we splitting our forces? Or concentrating them at one point?”
“...”
Ferdinand raised his head slightly and looked at Ernst, who was eating with the other cadets some distance away.
Ernst had proved himself in the last mock battle. At least for now, he was a far more powerful predator than Ferdinand or Wilfried. Senior Instructor Thomas Koller had even changed several rules to stop Ernst from completely dominating.
“...”
“...”
Ernst had been talking a little awkwardly with the other cadets as he ate. His restless eyes wandered over his surroundings and met Ferdinand’s gaze. The two boys looked at each other for a moment, then returned to their own business.
“First, I’ll assign five cadets to guard the flag.”
“Five?”
“...No. That’s not right.”
Ferdinand, who had intended to leave five cadets to guard the flag, thought for a moment and changed his tactics.
“Only one cadet will guard the flag.”
“Isn’t one too few?”
“No, one is enough. Krieger will never leave the forest.”
Ferdinand spoke with confidence. In truth, however, he could not have explained what that confidence was based on. It was nothing more than instinct.
Ferdinand considered how to use the remaining eighteen cadets, including himself. Just a few more would have been nice, even five more. Eighteen might sound like a lot, but it was far too small a force.
‘...Right. This is the Empire’s current situation.’
Ferdinand, the eldest grandson of Second Corps Chief of Staff Heinz Hartmann, suddenly understood. Recalling the stories his grandfather had told him, he realized that their current difficulties were the same ones the Imperial Army faced on real battlefields.
After a moment’s thought, Ferdinand devised a plan based on his grandfather’s accounts of actual battles.
“We’ll divide our forces in two. One group will cross through the center of the forest, and the other through the right.”
Ferdinand decided to split them into two groups of nine.
“I’d expect Krieger to be ready for that.”
Koch spoke cautiously. Brandt also seemed to want to say something, but after ruining their tactics with a reckless charge in the last battle, they could not bring themselves to speak.
“Yes. That’s why we’ll all enter through the center at first. We’ll split up once we’re inside. The right wing will circle wide outside the forest and attack the enemy’s flank.”
“...Will that work? The longer we stay in the forest, the worse things get for us. More importantly, I’m not sure we can find our way through it.”
After some hesitation, Brandt voiced their concerns. Ferdinand did not dismiss Brandt’s words just because they had made a serious mistake. He looked at them earnestly and answered.
“What’s on our right now was on our left in the last battle. Brandt, you remember the way, don’t you?”
“I-I do remember, but...”
Brandt was no fool. Above all, having trained to become a soldier since childhood, they had made a considerable effort to memorize the route through the forest.
“Good. Brandt, take the right wing. Yours will be the main attack. I’ll lead the center myself. While I draw their attention, move around to their flank and rear and finish them.”
“...Really? I mean, well...”
“Brandt.”
Ferdinand called the discouraged cadet’s name firmly. When Brandt looked at him, his large, intense eyes gleamed as he spoke in a low voice.
“You have to do this. If you make another mistake, those of us drawing the enemy’s attention in the center will die for nothing. One mistake in training is enough. In a real battle, even one is too many.”
Ferdinand gripped Brandt’s shoulder tightly with a hand so large that it hardly seemed to belong to a boy of fourteen. His voice was rough from puberty, but he made an effort to keep it low as he spoke reassuringly.
“So that mistake was your last. You won’t make another one this time.”
People were creatures who could repeat the same mistake over and over, then go on to make it yet again. Ferdinand knew that too.
Yet even after Brandt’s disastrous mistake, Ferdinand offered them his unwavering trust. Brandt had made that mistake once, so they would not make it again. It was a remarkable show of faith for a boy his age.
“All right. Hartmann, I swear I won’t make another mistake this time.”
Deeply moved, Brandt made that promise to Ferdinand. This time, and from now on, they would never endanger their comrades through a hasty decision or make their sacrifices meaningless.
“Good. That solves one of the problems Brandt raised. The other was that a long battle in the forest would put us at a disadvantage.”
Even as Ferdinand lifted the discouraged Brandt’s spirits, he made sure not to overlook the other problem they faced.
He was already quite used to leading a group and taking charge as other people’s superior.
“This one won’t actually be that much of a problem.”
This time, Ferdinand sounded very confident himself.
“Krieger can’t take part in the fighting, and he has very little time to prepare. Don’t let his shadow swallow you up. The others are just like us. No, most of them are far worse than us. All they can do in the forest is lie in ambush where Krieger tells them to. They probably won’t even manage that properly.”
Ferdinand knew that, by ordinary standards, he was the most capable cadet in his year. But even he was not particularly better than the others when fighting in a forest. Could the Allied Forces cadets really carry out Ernst’s instructions perfectly and set up an ambush?
An ambush was far harder than people thought. Ernst would predict exactly where the enemy would pass. But could all those cadets really lie motionless on damp soil crawling with bugs, waiting for the enemy to come?
“We just need to advance carefully and overwhelm them with firepower. Ernst can only be in one place at a time, and all he can do is command. I doubt he can control that rabble well enough to stop us from attacking on two fronts.”
Ferdinand settled on his tactics. But the entire plan was incomplete, uncertain, and cowardly, relying on the fact that Ernst could not fight in person.
Ferdinand knew that himself, which made him feel a desperate need to find a way to deal with Ernst. The other cadets probably felt the same.
Ernst was only forbidden from fighting in today’s mock battles. In other words, the next time they held a mock battle, that lunatic would race all over the forest like an unbridled wild horse, hunting cadets.
‘What a valuable experience.’
Ferdinand gave a small inward laugh. Yet merely thinking about that moment was enough to make cold sweat run down his back.
“They’re definitely having a strategy meeting.”
Robert spoke in a knowing voice as he watched the military faction cadets huddle together and whisper. But since anyone could plainly see that they were having a strategy meeting, his manner came across as rather playful.
“So, Professor Ernst, our next commander, what incredible plan have you got in that head of yours?”
As Robert turned to Ernst, the cadets around them looked at him too.
Remembering Robert’s warning, Ernst felt a little uneasy under the attention of cadets whose names he still could not remember.
“We’ll do the same thing as before. Only this time, we have more people and I can’t fight myself, so we’ll make the defense a little stronger.”
“Can you do it?”
Wilfried cut in with an unusually sharp question the moment Ernst finished speaking. But he was not particularly tense or angry.
“The commanding, I mean.”
Wilfried had learned all too painfully how threatening Ernst was as an individual warrior. But that did not necessarily make him a good commander.
When it came to strategy and tactics, Ernst might already be an excellent commander. But had he developed his ability to handle troops, the foundation of all those things, to the same degree?
Robert was Ernst’s only friend at the academy. Sadly, that one person was also the full extent of his friendships anywhere.
Handling troops? Ernst blurted out things that should never be said to Wilfried’s face. How could someone like that be good at handling people?
But Ernst did not find this problem particularly difficult.
“If you have a problem with my tactics, you’re welcome to say so. As long as you can suggest a better alternative.”
“...”
Ernst was currently the only irreplaceable first-year cadet, and no one could challenge his confident words.
Having followed his father’s teachings and shut the other cadets up, Ernst nevertheless glanced at Robert for a reaction. Unlike his usual self, he added in a slightly uncertain voice.
“...But yes, tactics aside, commanding might be difficult.”
Then Ernst looked back and forth between Wilfried and Robert. His strange gaze filled them with an unease they could not explain, and he gave them a slightly awkward smile. It reminded Wilfried of the smile Ernst had worn after the massacre in the forest, sending a shiver through his entire body.
“Robert and Wilfried will command the troops.”
“Me?”
“...”
Startled, Robert pointed at himself. Wilfried also stared at Ernst, looking stunned.
“Of course, I’ll still be in overall command. So, well, it’ll be a really small unit, but I’ll be the company commander and you two will be platoon leaders.”
“Wilfried is one thing, but why me? I’m nobody.”
Robert the nobody, rather than Wilfried, who was one thing, challenged Company Commander Ernst.
“Then who should I put in charge?”
“Uh...”
At Ernst’s question, Robert looked around. He soon realized, to his surprise, that Ernst’s decision was quite sensible.
Wilfried aside, there was no one fit to give orders as a platoon leader. More precisely, no one else could command without causing problems.
Ernst’s platoon was an even mix of the military faction, the noble faction, and nonhereditary nobles. If someone from the military faction took command, the noble faction would object. If someone from the noble faction took command, the military faction would object. And both sides would object to taking orders from the nonhereditary nobles they had treated like servants.
But Robert was Ernst’s only friend. Thanks to that, he had remained a step removed from the factional fighting. He had never served another cadet, either. And despite his unstable position, his excellent social skills had already helped him build reasonably friendly relationships with many cadets.
“I told you. You can complain, but you have to suggest a better alternative.”
“This is... Good God! This is ridiculous! Until a few days ago, the only tactics I knew were charging and retreating!”
“But now you know all the basics, my pupil Robert.”
“Damn it! Professor Ernst! Was this your scheme all along? So you could use me as your tool?”
“No, I was worried you’d get expelled...”
“Oh, right. You were.”
An awkward moment passed. Thanks to Robert, Ernst felt less pressure, and he addressed everyone in a slightly more relaxed voice.
“Does anyone have a problem with that?”
Naturally, no one voiced a complaint. They could not suggest a better alternative.
‘This is a much greater opportunity than I thought.’
Wilfried, in particular, realized how valuable this experience was and decided to follow Ernst’s orders.
Simply getting another chance to command would be good experience. But he would be carrying out ambush tactics in the forest under none other than Ernst’s direction. If he paid attention and learned, every lesson would become a valuable asset.
“They’re already done eating. Let’s hurry up too.”
Ernst spoke as he watched the military faction cadets get up after finishing their meals. They could not enter the training ground early during the meal break, but they still needed time to digest their food and warm up. They should not eat too slowly.
* * *
“Good. Send them in.”
After the break ended, the cadets ran to their positions on Thomas’s orders. Ferdinand’s Imperial Army cadets gathered in front of their flag to wait, while Ernst’s Allied Forces cadets entered the forest.
“Watching them from here makes me really uneasy.”
One of the Imperial Army cadets spoke as they watched the enemy enter the forest.
“You’re not uneasy. You’re scared.”
Ferdinand corrected the cadet firmly.
“N-No, I’m not scared...”
“Is that so? I am.”
“...Hartmann?”
Ernst had been the first to run into the forest and had vanished in an instant. Ferdinand searched for a trace of him, then watched the enemies confidently following him into the trees.
“This isn’t some game of soldiers. If that first battle had been real, we’d all be dead. And only a quarter of Rabid’s soldiers, who were playing the Imperial Army, would have survived.”
“...”
“This is what happens on real battlefields. We could be sent into our first battle and die there. All of us.”
Ferdinand turned his large, intense eyes on the other cadets. A certain resolve filled his gaze and his words.
“So stop acting like children and take this seriously.”
The cadets swallowed hard and nodded. They had been excited at the thought of freely shooting down enemies with their superior weapons. Only now did they realize that this was training for real combat.
Time passed very slowly. At least, that was how Ferdinand’s Imperial Army cadets felt. Hadn’t the instructor said the preparation time would be shorter? Why was it dragging on like this?
“How much time is left, sir?”
“Hmm... It’ll begin soon.”
“Oh, no...”
The Allied Forces cadets, on the other hand, were struggling against the lack of time. Deploying troops in a forest with such complicated terrain took a great deal of time. In a real battle, they would surely have learned the terrain of the area they occupied. Their commander would only have to tell them where to go.
But in this confusing forest, Ernst was the only person who could accurately predict the enemy’s approach. He had to run around and position the troops himself, leaving the Allied Forces cadets with an unfairly short amount of time.
Ernst ran constantly through the forest like a squirrel, deploying his troops. Once each group was in place, he left them under the command of his platoon leaders, Robert and Wilfried.
“When does it start?”
Having barely finished deploying his troops, Ernst was panting and suffering from a headache after running nonstop through the forest. The upperclassman training assistants knew how hard he had worked. Even though his face was twisted in a frown severe enough to seem rude, they did not point it out.
“Well...”
Baaang!
“Now.”
The upperclassman had been trying to work out the time, but answered Ernst upon hearing the sharp gunshot. Ernst grimaced and immediately started running toward the forest entrance.
“He’s not supposed to take part in the fighting.”
“He’ll figure it out.”
The training assistants sounded a little worried as they watched Ernst race away. But they trusted that he would not attack the enemy directly and returned to their assigned positions.
“...”
“...”
Then they froze as their eyes met those of the Allied Forces cadets crouching in the places where they were supposed to hide.
“Sir, we’re waiting here under Ernst’s orders.”
Wilfried addressed the upperclassman calmly.
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find somewhere else.”
The training assistants’ hiding places offered good cover and a view of the overall situation. Naturally, Ernst would never overlook such excellent positions.
Their hiding places were so well concealed that they were difficult to spot from the outside, and they had plenty of space. There was nowhere better.
“Where do we go?”
“Ah, well...”
Having lost their hiding places, the training assistants could only look around blankly, like beavers whose homes had been torn down.
“Sir, if you stand there like that, you’ll give us away.”
Robert also spoke to the upperclassmen with an awkward smile. In the end, the training assistants trudged toward the Allied Forces’ red flag.
“...”
“Let’s go farther back.”
There, they met other training assistants who had likewise lost their hiding places to the cadets Ernst had stationed in ambush around the flag. They had no choice but to head deeper into the forest together.
“Could the Imperial Army actually lose this?”
“Then we’d witness the Allied Forces’ historic first victory.”
The training assistants cautiously considered the Allied Forces’ chances. The Allied Forces had never won even once at the Imperial Military Academy.
In fact, this first mock battle exercise was the Allied Forces’ first and last chance. From the next exercise onward, the Imperial Army would know the terrain, giving them a far greater advantage.
More importantly, starting with the next mock battle exercise, the Valtlacher enrolled in the Imperial Military Academy’s Special Training Department would join the training.
On a battlefield, the power of a Valtlacher was absolute. They could block even real bullets with telekinesis and push straight ahead. What could mere wooden projectiles fired from crossbows possibly do?
In other words, Ernst was on the verge of achieving the seemingly impossible: winning as the Allied Forces in his first mock battle exercise since entering the academy.
“That will be difficult.”
“...I-Instructor.”
The person who had contradicted them was Senior Instructor Captain Thomas Koller, who appeared behind them.
Despite having raced through the forest immediately after signaling the start of the exercise, this large, powerfully built soldier had gone completely unnoticed. He had made so little noise that the training assistants had not noticed him even when he came right up behind them.
Thomas had once fought the Allied Forces and learned how they fought. He had been forced to learn, barely surviving to see the end of the war. Now he led the training assistants deeper into the forest, moving as silently as a cat.
“There’s far too little time, and Krieger can’t take part in the fighting. Even I couldn’t win under these conditions.”
The battle was so unfair that even Thomas had no confidence he could hastily deploy this Allied Forces rabble and defeat Ferdinand’s Imperial Army.
“Instructor, honestly, isn’t this a little too cowardly?”
One training assistant spoke cautiously. The first mock battle exercise had an educational purpose, but it was also ideological training meant to inspire faith in the Empire’s overwhelming power and loyalty to His Majesty the Emperor, who had created it all.
But even so, placing so many restrictions on the Allied Forces just to make the Imperial Army win was absurd.
Any other instructor would have exploded in anger at the training assistant’s words, or issued an icy warning. How dare they complain about a mock battle meant to teach them the Empire’s greatness?
But they could ask Thomas as many questions as they liked. Unlike the other instructors, he was a real soldier who had experienced a real battlefield and returned alive.
“Cowardly? Will you say that in a real battle too?”
“...Well...”
“In a real battle, you’ll face things far more unfair than this. You might get pinned down in the middle of enemy territory with your supplies cut off, chewing bark and bugs and drinking your own piss as you fight. Then, when reinforcements finally reach you, they might declare you all deserters and execute every last one of you.”
“...”
“That didn’t happen to me. I wouldn’t be here if it had. Though I have eaten bugs and drunk piss.”
Thomas gave a short laugh as he recalled the past. But even he could not tell whether it was truly a laugh.
When he had obeyed his superior’s orders and executed surviving soldiers from his own side, the familiar recoil of his Valt gun against his fingers had felt exactly the same as when he shot the enemy. That sameness had felt so strange that he still could not forget it.
“More importantly, this is for Krieger’s sake too.”
“...Krieger’s, sir?”
“Yes.”
Thomas casually dropped into a seat in a suitable spot and had the training assistants sit beside him. They might seem like large, frightening upperclassmen to the first-years, but they were still only boys of sixteen or seventeen. Thomas addressed them calmly.
“If we leave Krieger as he is, he’ll become even more of a beast. He won’t develop. He’ll simply grow.”
The spot Thomas had chosen gave them a rough view of the training ground that served as the battlefield, though they could not see all of it. Ferdinand’s Imperial Army was entering the forest.
“He won’t become an officer who leads soldiers and directs a war. He’ll become a monster that wanders the battlefield, following the smell of blood. Because he has the ability to do exactly that.”
Thomas took a small, tightly sealed packet from inside his clothes and shared a little of its contents with each training assistant. It was dried fruit.
He popped a piece of the sweet dried fruit into his mouth and continued.
“We train officers. Not battlefield monsters. We can’t let Krieger experience running wild alone and wiping out the enemy here. He needs to devise tactics to overcome unfair conditions, trust other people, put his life in their hands, and experience a valuable defeat.”
“...I thought you’d say that winning was all that mattered, sir.”
One training assistant sounded uneasy in response to Thomas’s serious words. Thomas turned to him with an unreadable smile.
“You can’t always win. Sooner or later, you’ll lose in some way. When that happens, you can’t just give up and die because you don’t know how to lose properly, can you?”
Thomas, who had experienced as many defeats as victories, chewed and swallowed his dried fruit, then silently watched the forest that had become a battlefield.
‘Now, Ernst Krieger. Neither the duke’s fourth son nor the chief of staff’s eldest grandson is your equal yet. At least at this moment, you’re the best of those green boys. Can you accept the defeat forced into your hands and learn a valuable lesson from it?’
Thomas asked the question inwardly as he recalled Ernst’s restless black eyes, those hunter’s eyes.
Thomas knew. Men like Ernst were the ones who broke down before long on the battlefield. Not because they were weak, but because they were too strong. Because they gave up their humanity and became monsters far too easily.
Having once turned himself into a monster amid the madness of war, Thomas loathed such people. Naturally, he loathed himself too.
But Ernst was still only a green boy. As an instructor, it was Thomas’s responsibility to set him right while there was still time.
* * *
“Good. We’ll follow the plan. Brandt, I’m counting on you.”
“Don’t worry. Stay safe.”
Having entered the forest safely, the Imperial Army cadets split into two groups as planned. Brandt led their cadets farther to the right.
“Stay alert. From here on, we don’t know when or where the enemy might attack.”
Ferdinand warned the cadets. They all took his words seriously and crossed the forest with grim expressions.
“...”
Ernst watched all of it from hiding.
He had not had time to build traps. He had simply run here as fast as he could to scout.
It was fortunate that Thomas could not see this. Had he witnessed Ernst’s outrageous behavior, he would have slapped his forehead and dragged him out.
What kind of company commander took an order not to fight as a reason to run through the forest gathering information himself, without a crossbow, breastplate, or helmet?
Snap.
Ernst gripped a branch and used his thumb to press his nail-trimming knife into it, scoring it before snapping it off. An Imperial Army cadet at the rear turned at the faint sound, but could not spot Ernst lying hidden in the undergrowth.
Once they had gone, Ernst rose without a sound and began racing through the forest. He needed to reposition his troops to stop Brandt’s flanking attack.
Snap. Snap.
As he ran, Ernst gripped branches and used his knife to score and snap them into uniform lengths for simple traps.
He had already predicted Ferdinand’s entire route. Others might not see it, but Ernst, who was used to forests, could clearly see that invisible path. Unless people made a conscious effort to change their route, they naturally followed invisible paths that met certain conditions.
Brandt’s route, on the other hand, was unknown even to Ernst. He did not know how wide a detour Brandt would take, and he had been given too little time to learn the terrain.
As Ernst raced through the forest, his restless eyes kept moving, gathering information and working out his next move in the hunt.
Anyone who saw them would have recognized the eyes of a predator that had caught the scent of blood.
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