WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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Chapter 220: A Story of the Past, Pied Piper of Hameln - 6

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Chief Instructor Nicholas came to the camp with only his closest adjutant. He must have run here without caring that this was a dangerous forest, because broken branches and leaves clung to his clothes and hair. At a glance, he looked like a model educator who put his students' safety above all else.

The truth was nothing like that.

'The kids are in tatters. There aren't many left. Dead beasts over there. It looks like a success... but something is wrong.'

After seeing the devastated camp, Nicholas hurried over to the trainee who looked the least injured. The girl standing where I should have been was Siati, a former combat officer candidate.

"Trainee Siati. Give me a brief report of what happened."

She must have been stunned that Nicholas had really come, just as I said he would. Siati, who had been standing there blankly, gave him a formal salute. Then she lowered her gaze and mumbled.

"...We drifted here and set up camp. But there was pheromone bait hidden beneath this camp. It was probably a trap hunters made to catch beasts. When it opened... enraged beasts attacked us."

She was terrible at acting. Good thing I told her to stare at the ground and mumble. At least she could pretend she lacked the strength to answer.

'They know about the bait? They were supposed to be swept away by beasts without ever knowing why. No, more importantly, it isn't time yet. Why did the bait activate already? Then...'

Nicholas looked around. The camp was filled with bloodstains and traces of death. Blood splattered across the trees, while roughly covered pits that looked as if something had been buried in them seemed to tell the whole story of the tragedy that had just occurred.

Enough blood had been spilled according to his plan...

Yet the one sight that mattered was missing.

'Why isn't Hui here? Don't tell me...'

Fearing that all of this might have been for nothing, Nicholas immediately pressed Siati.

"Hui. Where is Trainee Hui?"

Nicholas was looking for me without even a word of preamble. That alone made it clear who this graduation exercise had been prepared for and who had prepared it.

Siati, who had taken on the acting role, lost her composure. Her mind bleached white with rage, she forgot even my advice and glared at Nicholas.

"...Why are you calling for him first? Several students are missing right now, and some are buried under there! Why are you asking about Hui first?!"

It was a fiercer response than I had expected. If Nicholas sensed something strange in her attitude, things might become troublesome.

But Nicholas was also under pressure, worried that his painstaking plan might have fallen through.

"Isn't it obvious? Hui is...!"

He still had enough sense not to mention the taboo, so Nicholas barely regained his composure and chose his words carefully.

"He's the top student of his year, a talent certain to enter the military academy, and the leader of this graduation exercise. What's wrong with looking for him so I can receive a proper report?"

"Hah, I see. So it doesn't matter if some of us die...!"

"Trainee Siati! I regret what you have experienced, but you are currently disobeying my order to report. Do not test my patience."

At Nicholas's shout, Siati bit her lip hard, lowered her head again, and began reciting the lines we had prepared.

"Hui... sacrificed himself for us."

"...What?"

Nicholas was the architect. He had prepared this stage, written the script, assigned roles as he pleased, and envisioned the story's ending.

Yet no matter how meticulously he planned, once the curtain rose, he was only a spectator. Nicholas wanted this play to unfold exactly as planned, but sometimes a play betrayed its architect's expectations and showed something beyond the script.

Siati spoke the rehearsed lines to the man who had stepped onto the stage.

"While we were responding to the sudden beast attack, Hui realized before the rest of us that it had happened because of the pheromone bait. While investigating the camp, he found the bait somewhere. He hugged the box to his chest, screamed, and ran toward the river. All the beasts attacking us... followed Hui. We stayed behind and gathered the survivors."

"What...?! Hui became the bait himself?"

"Yes."

Siati clasped her hands behind her back and bowed her head deeply, as if trying to hide her devastated expression. Nicholas's hands trembled as he struggled to accept the situation that had escaped his expectations.

The play had left his hands. Reality had betrayed his hopes. Because he had held such great expectations, Nicholas felt an awful sense of defeat.

When confronted with an ordinary failure, Nicholas chose denial.

"That's impossible! Hui isn't that kind of person. Someone as cunning as Hui would never sacrifice himself for you!"

"...What?"

"To take first place over Historia and Lankart, it isn't enough to be simply outstanding! You have to be clever enough to win even those two over and use them! That position can only be reached by earning people's trust while staying cunning! Hui accomplished that. Someone like him would never sacrifice himself for the likes of you!"

Nicholas looked around with bloodshot eyes. The surviving kids could not even meet his gaze, gripped by the fear drilled into them. Chief Instructor Nicholas's presence was that frightening.

Chief Instructor Colonel Nicholas. Hamelin was only one part of the territory under his authority. He was the chief instructor overseeing elementary and middle schools throughout the southwestern region.

It was no coincidence that Historia and Lankart had entered Hamelin at the same time. Chief Instructor Nicholas had gathered them here after noticing their talent from their days at elementary citizen school.

He was an exceptional figure who had risen to chief instructor because even the upper ranks believed only someone with Nicholas's ability could accurately assess students.

His rank, ability, and accumulated experience were on an entirely different level. Even if every child here entered the higher military academy, none of them would come close to Nicholas.

Crushed by Nicholas's savage presence, the kids lowered their heads. His furious voice fell over them.

"You should have sacrificed yourselves instead! If someone had to die, it should have been you! Why did you survive?!"

He was the chief instructor who had arrived after they barely survived a threat to their lives. Some of the kids wanted to believe this was all a terrible nightmare. They wanted to hope that the military state had not abandoned them, that there had been some misunderstanding.

But Nicholas's words trampled even that faint hope.

"So you tried to kill all of us?! For Hui alone?!"

Siati raised her head sharply, filled with defiance. What she saw was Nicholas smiling eerily.

"...I see. So you noticed... this test."

His face looked half-consumed by madness. Siati staggered back in fear, while Nicholas twisted his lips and head strangely as he glanced at the roughly covered pits.

"How did you find out? Did you discover bedrock while digging graves for the dead?"

"Y-you think I'd tell you...?"

"I haven't asked what you know yet, Trainee Siati. If you wish to deceive someone, learn to erase the facts you know from your mind...."

As he spoke, he gestured to the adjutant following behind him. The adjutant pressed his lips together and followed Nicholas.

"Of course, you will have no further use for that lesson."

Chilling killing intent turned toward Siati and the other kids. Like frightened chicks, they huddled behind Siati. There were over thirty of them, but they did not look like they held the advantage.

"Secric."

"Yes, Chief Instructor."

"I will bury them all. Assist me."

Shing.

The adjutant named Secric drew his military sword. The sword once used to give orders to the children turned its blade toward them.

Siati read the killing intent coming from it and shouted.

"What is this...?! Don't tell me you intend to kill us all, Chief Instructor!"

"You were fated to die anyway. The method has only become a little more troublesome."

Nicholas answered coldly as he drew his own long sword. Dark aura rose from the hilt, coiling around the blade like flames. He meant to execute the unplanned survivors.

The kids gradually retreated, but behind them was the river. To get away, they would have to jump into the river or get past Nicholas.

Both were nearly impossible.

"Try running. If there's anywhere in this military state you can run to."

Nicholas and his adjutant walked after the kids as they stumbled backward. Every step was full of resolute killing intent.

Then he stepped on a trap.

"Surprise, Chief Instructor!"

Just before he put his weight on that foot, I kicked my way up from the collapsed tent. Nicholas was startled by my sudden appearance and could not react to the trap.

A hidden snare immediately caught his ankle. The snare trap that had been made to bring down even a great-horned deer had caught him...

The difference was that he was a human holding a weapon.

"Hup!"

The long sword moved with a speed that did not suit its length. Slash. The snare at ankle height was cut apart in an instant. The remaining force of the strike carved a long line into the ground.

But one trap was never enough.

"Surprise two."

That snare was connected to something else. As the rope snapped, a long log that had been precariously propped up fell toward the back of Nicholas's head. It cut through the air with a heavy whoosh.

But it was too slow for someone trained in aura.

"Pathetic."

Iaijutsu.

The enormous log was cut apart in one strike. The chain of traps had been broken.

If he had dodged to the side or below, he would have experienced surprises three, four, and five in order. I didn't expect him to simply cut it. A colonel was still a colonel, even rotten.

"Well, I still got one of you."

I drew my dagger. Blood gushed from the side of Secric, the adjutant.

"Guhk!"

"Now, now. Please lie down for a moment."

The adjutant, who had not reacted as quickly as Nicholas, was dragged by the snare until he slid right in front of me. They instinctively protected themselves, but I slipped past their guard and drove my dagger into their side.

Even weak aura was still aura. The blade lodged between their collarbones. Blood ran down the dagger, seeped into the dirt... and flowed somewhere.

"Y-you, Hui...!"

"Shh. Food for my body. Stay still. If you die, the blood won't come out properly."

Leaving the adjutant, who was not dead yet but was slowly approaching it, behind me, I held my dagger upright and greeted Nicholas.

"Hello, Chief Instructor Nicholas."

"How... No."

His gaze darted between me, Siati, and the trap beneath his feet. In that brief moment, he read something in my smile. Touching his face, he spoke in a trembling voice.

"...Is that it, Hui? You knew everything. And you made a foolish choice...!"

"A foolish choice? That's a strange thing to say."

"You only had to stay still! I committed the taboo, and all you had to do was take the deaths of the failures while pretending not to know! I bore everything and did it for you...! How could you refuse that?!"

How could I refuse? Like this.

At my signal, the kids who had been hiding below the riverbank climbed up all at once. There were over a hundred and forty of them. Holding makeshift spears made by tying daggers to branches, they joined us, their bodies trembling with rage and fear.

"That's how I refused."

The number of kids swelled in an instant. Most of them looked at Nicholas with hatred. Nicholas muttered blankly.

"You saved... almost all of them."

"Almost all of them? Seventeen precious lives died. That's a huge loss to me too."

Nicholas did not seem to agree with my assessment.

"Seventeen! Far too few. Far too few! Your aura hasn't grown at all!"

"You should praise me. Even though my aura barely grew, I can easily put down a great-horned deer and one adjutant."

I smiled and spun my blade. The blood clinging to it was no different from the blood the kids wounded by horns and claws had spilled as they died.

Was it Gluttony's influence? Perhaps because I had stabbed him myself, something seemed to be seeping into my body. Dark, polluted, murky energy rushed through my bio-terminal and into the spaces between my veins.

In terms of its absolute amount, that energy was insignificant... but for someone born with only a hair's breadth of aura and mana, it was large enough for me to feel clearly.

Still.

"Ptooey. It tastes awful. You strutted around after preparing something this pathetic? I'd rather smoke a mana cigarette. At least that tastes good."

Nicholas could not understand this sequence of events. He could not understand the script that had gone wrong, or my very existence after escaping from beneath it.

He asked with a dazed expression.

"Why, Hui?"

"Why do you think, Nicholas?"

"You are weak. With that aura, with that mana, you will never rise beyond a certain point. You are exceptional at handling the abilities given to you, but your innately low aura and mana will bind you for the rest of your life! I was trying to remove your shackles!"

Amazingly, even after I had betrayed his trust and stabbed his adjutant, he was sincerely appealing to me. As if it were a shame that a talent like me had made such a foolish choice.

"To command others, you need the minimum qualifications. Those are authority and strength. No matter how outstanding you are, if you lack strength... you can accomplish nothing. You of all people, who have felt the limits of your own body more than anyone, should understand!"

"Of course I understand, Chief Instructor. How could I not?"

Nicholas was sincere. Even as chief instructor, he could not commit a taboo lightly. He had watched my abilities for three years, identified what I lacked, and desperately wanted me to become a greater person. For me and for the military state.

But that...

Even if it was for his country, it was fundamentally still a wish directed toward another person. Like spare money he handed out charitably after building up everything he needed for himself.

Ordinary people might be grateful even for that spare money, but I was a mind reader. A scrap of feeling could not move me.

"Still, Nicholas, you wrapped up your feelings so nicely that you seem to have missed the truth. Your sincerity only comes out when you're sitting safely somewhere warm and full, doesn't it? Isn't that awfully shallow and cheap?"

In a way, it was an obvious thing to say.

I read thoughts. There was no unit to measure the size of a heart, but as a mind reader, I often compared the size and depth of emotions as best I could.

As a result, naturally, Nicholas's feelings from outside the stage were lighter than the lingering emotions of even one dead child.

But that was not something I could explain. Tch.

Nicholas did not understand even half of what I said, but he shouted confidently.

"This was a test for you as well! To secure a larger victory, soldiers must be sacrificed! I took risks and set this in motion, but you let petty affection cloud your judgment!"

"Really? Then I'll give you a question about securing a larger victory. It doesn't have to be only you who sets the questions, does it?"

I walked slowly. Vines and tree roots crunched beneath my feet. The terrain had changed completely after people had been moving through it so often over the past few days. Broken branches, trampled earth, holes dug everywhere, and rope traps filled the area.

We had enough of a chance.

"Die for me instead of these tasteless kids, Nicholas. Offer your blood for me. Then I won't destroy the military state...."

At least step onto the stage fairly. Move me with that much feeling.

"Only as much as you're worth, though."

Footnotes:

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