WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 220

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A Story of the Past, Pied Piper of Hameln - 6

Chief Instructor Nicholas came to the camp with only his closest adjutant. He must have run here without caring that the forest was dangerously wild, because his clothes and hair were covered in broken twigs and leaves. On the surface, he looked like a model educator who put student safety first.

In reality, it was the exact opposite.

'Children in tatters. Only a few left. Beast corpses over there. It looks like success... maybe. Something is off.'

After seeing the devastated camp, Nicholas hurried 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 on what happened."

She seemed shocked that Nicholas had really shown up, just like I said he would. Siati gave him a formal salute, lowered her gaze to the ground, and mumbled.

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

Her acting was terrible. Good thing I told her to keep looking down and mumble. At least she could fake being too exhausted to answer properly.

'She knows about the bait? They were supposed to get swept away by beasts without even knowing why. No, more than that. It's not time yet, so why did the bait activate already? Then...?!'

Nicholas looked around. The camp, smeared with blood, was filled with signs of death. Blood splashed across the trees, and the roughly covered pit, as if something had been buried there, seemed to show exactly what kind of slaughter had happened moments ago.

Enough blood had been spilled for his plan, but the most important thing was missing.

'Why don't I see Hui? No way.'

Anxiety rushed over him, fear that all this effort might have been for nothing, and he immediately pressed Siati.

"Hui. Where is Trainee Hui?"

The way he looked for me first, without a word of preamble, proved everything. Who this graduation practicum had been prepared for, and who had prepared it.

Siati, playing her part, lost her composure. Her mind bleached white with anger, and she forgot even my advice as she glared at Nicholas.

"...Why are you calling him first? How many students are missing right now, and several are buried under this! Why are you calling Hui first?!"

It was a far more emotional reaction than expected. If Nicholas sensed anything strange in that attitude, things could get troublesome.

But Nicholas was also mentally cornered by fear that his all-in plan had collapsed.

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

Still, he had enough sense not to mention the taboo, so he barely reeled himself in.

"He is top of the grade, a talent almost guaranteed admission to the officer academy, and the leader of this graduation practicum. What issue is there with me looking for him for a smooth report?"

"Hah, right. So it doesn't matter if a few of us die...!"

"Trainee Siati! I express regret for what you have gone through, 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 line we had prepared.

"Hui... sacrificed himself for us."

"...Hm?"

Nicholas was the architect. He prepared this stage, wrote the script, cast roles as he pleased, and drew the ending he wanted.

But no matter how meticulous the plan, once the curtain rose, he was only an audience member. Nicholas wanted this play to unfold exactly as written, but sometimes a play betrays the architect's expectations and shows something beyond the script.

Siati gave him the line we had rehearsed in advance.

"While we were responding to the sudden beast attack, Hui realized before anyone else that this happened because of pheromone bait. While searching this camp, he found the bait somewhere, hugged the box, screamed, and ran toward the riverbank. The beasts that were attacking us... all followed Hui. We stayed behind and gathered the survivors."

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

"Yes."

Siati clasped her arms behind her back and bowed her head deeply, as if trying to hide her devastated expression. Meanwhile, Nicholas trembled, unable to accept this turn of events.

The play had slipped from his hands. Reality betrayed his expectations. Because he had expected so much, the defeat hit him even harder.

And when ordinary failure arrived, Nicholas chose one response.

Denial.

"Impossible! Hui is not that kind of bastard. A sly bastard like Hui would never sacrifice himself for you!"

"...What?"

"Historia and Rancart. To take first place between those two, it's not enough to simply be outstanding! You need to be cunning enough to turn even those two to your side and use them. You need to win influence while playing smart. Only then can you reach that position! Hui did that. Someone like him would never sacrifice himself for trash like you!"

Nicholas swept the area with bloodshot eyes. The surviving children, conditioned by fear, did not dare meet his gaze. The pressure Chief Instructor Nicholas gave off was that terrifying.

Colonel Nicholas, Chief Instructor. Hameln was only one part of what he oversaw. He was the chief instructor in charge of elementary and middle schools across the southwest region.

It was no coincidence that both Historia and Rancart entered Hameln at the same time. Chief Instructor Nicholas had gathered them here after spotting their talent back in civic elementary school.

He had become chief instructor because even higher ranks judged that someone with Nicholas's ability was needed to evaluate students accurately.

His rank, ability, and accumulated experience were on another level. Even if every child here entered the officer academy, none would reach even his heels.

The children shrank under his savage force and lowered their heads. Nicholas's furious voice thundered over them.

"You should have been the ones to die! If someone had to die anyway! You should have died instead! Why are you alive!"

He was the chief instructor who arrived after they barely survived a life-and-death crisis. Some children wanted to believe all of this was a terrible nightmare. They wanted to hope the military state had not abandoned them, that maybe there had been some misunderstanding.

But Nicholas's words crushed even that sliver of hope.

"So you were trying to kill all of us?! For that one bastard Hui?!"

Siati snapped her head up in outrage, and what she saw was Nicholas wearing a chilling smile.

"...Oh. I see. So you all noticed what this test was."

His face looked half-drowned in madness. Siati, terrified, staggered back, and Nicholas twisted his lips and neck strangely as he glanced at the roughly covered pit.

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

"Y-you think we'll tell you...?"

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

Then he gestured to the adjutant behind him.

"Of course, you won't need that lesson anymore."

Cold killing intent turned toward Siati and the other children. They huddled behind Siati like frightened chicks. There were over thirty of them, but it did not look like an advantage.

"Sekrik."

"Yes, Chief Instructor."

"We'll bury them all. Help me."

Shing. The adjutant named Sekrik drew his military saber. The saber once used to issue commands to students turned and pointed at those same students.

Siati read the killing intent from the blade and shouted.

"What is this...! Do you really plan to kill all of us, Chief Instructor?!"

"You were fated to die anyway. The method only became slightly inconvenient."

Nicholas gave a cold reply while drawing his own long sword. Dark energy climbed from the hilt and wrapped around the blade like flame, meant to execute survivors who were never supposed to remain alive.

The children kept backing up, but the river was behind them. To escape that way, they had to jump into the river or get past Nicholas.

Both were nearly impossible.

"Run, then. If this military state has any place where that can work."

Nicholas and his adjutant walked forward as the children shuffled backward. Every step was filled with firm killing intent.

Then he stepped on a trap.

"Surprise, Chief Instructor!"

Right before his weight settled on that foot, I kicked off the collapsed tent and jumped up. Nicholas was too startled by the sudden appearance to react to the trap.

The hidden snare caught his ankle. It was the same snare trap we had made strong enough to drop a great-horned deer....

The one difference was that he was an armed human.

"Hup!"

His long sword moved too fast for its length. With one sharp slice, the snare at ankle height was cut instantly. The leftover force of the slash carved a long line into the ground.

But that was not the end of it.

"Surprise two."

That snare had been connected to something else. The instant the rope was cut, a long log that had been slung above dropped toward the back of Nicholas's head. A heavy whoosh cut the air.

But for someone trained in energy arts, it was too slow.

"Pathetic trick."

One draw. The big log split in a single strike. The trap chain ended there.

If he had dodged sideways or downward, he would have hit Surprise 3, 4, and 5 in order. Didn't think he'd just cut through it. Even rotten, a colonel was still a colonel.

"Well, still. We got one hit in."

Smirk, whirl. I pulled out my dagger. Blood burst from the side of his adjutant, Sekrik.

"Kgh!"

"Easy now. Lie down for a bit."

The adjutant wasn't as quick as Nicholas, so the snare dragged him right in front of me. He protected himself by instinct, but I slipped through his defense and drove the dagger into his side.

Even weak energy was still energy. The blade lodged between his ribs. Blood ran down the dagger, soaked into the dirt, and headed somewhere else.

"Y-you, Hui...!"

"Shh. Nourishment for my body. Stay still. If you die, the blood doesn't flow as well."

Leaving the adjutant behind, not dead yet but slowly heading there, I held the dagger upright and greeted Nicholas.

"Hello, Chief Instructor Nicholas?"

"How. How did. No."

His eyes flicked from me to Siati, then to the trap at his feet. In that brief moment, he read something in my smile, touched his own face with a trembling hand, and spoke.

"...I see, Hui. You knew everything. And you made a foolish choice...!"

"A foolish choice? That sounds odd."

"You only needed to stay still! I committed the taboo, and you only had to pretend not to know and reap the deaths of failures! I carried everything and did it in your place...! How could you refuse that?!"

How could I refuse it? Like this.

When I gave the signal, children who had been hiding below the riverbank climbed up all at once. There were over one hundred forty of them. Each held a makeshift spear, a dagger tied to a branch, and they joined this side while trembling with fear and rage.

"I refused it this way."

The number of children swelled in an instant. Most of them were glaring at Nicholas with hatred. Nicholas muttered blankly.

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

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

Nicholas clearly did not agree with me.

"Seventeen! Not nearly enough. Not nearly! Your energy didn't increase at all!"

"Praise me. Even with barely any increase in energy, I still sank a great-horned deer and one adjutant with ease."

I smiled and spun the blade. The color of the blood on it was no different from the blood the children spilled while dying under horns and claws.

Was it the effect of Gluttony? Maybe because I stabbed him myself, something seemed to seep into my body. A dark, filthy, muddy force rushed in through the biometric terminal and slipped into the gaps of my blood vessels.

Its absolute amount was tiny, worthless even, but for me, who had only a hair's breadth of energy and mana to begin with, it was big enough to feel clearly.

Still.

"Ptui. This sucks. You strutted around after preparing only this much? I'd rather smoke mana herb. At least that tastes good."

Nicholas couldn't understand what was happening. Not the script that had gone off track, and not my very existence slipping out from under it.

He asked with a dazed expression.

"Why, Hui?"

"Why do you think, Nicholas?"

"You are weak. With that energy, with that mana, you can never rise above a certain level. You are excellent at handling what you are given, but your innately low energy and mana will shackle you forever! I tried to remove your shackles!"

Amazingly, even now, after I betrayed his trust and stabbed his adjutant, he was still sincerely pleading with me. As if it were a waste that talent like me had made a foolish choice.

"To handle others, you need minimum qualifications. That is authority and power. No matter how brilliant you are, if you lack power... you can achieve nothing. You, who felt your own limits more than anyone, should have understood!"

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

Nicholas was sincere. Even as chief instructor, he could not commit a taboo lightly. After observing my ability for three years and identifying what I lacked, he genuinely wanted me to become greater. For me, and for the military state.

But that... no matter how much he said it was for the nation, it was still just a wish directed at someone else. Like spare change handed out generously after building yourself up first.

An ordinary person might still be thankful for that spare change, but I was a mind reader. Spare feelings didn't move me.

"Still, Nicholas, you wrap your heart in pretty packaging, but your true sincerity only comes out when you're safe, warm, and full, sitting comfortably, right? Isn't your heart way too light and petty?"

In one sense, that was obvious.

I read thoughts. Feelings had no measurable unit, but as a mind reader, I still compared their depth and weight in my own way.

And naturally, the result was this. Nicholas's feelings, standing outside the stage, were lighter than even the lingering trace left by one dead child.

But this wasn't something I could explain. Tch.

Nicholas didn't understand even half of what I said, yet he shouted proudly.

"This was also a test for you! For strategic victory, soldiers must be sacrificed! I took risks and carried this out, but you let personal sentiment ruin your judgment!"

"Really? Then let me give you one strategic-victory question. You're not the only one who gets to set the questions."

I walked slowly. Vines and roots cracked under my feet. Too many people had moved through here over the past few days, so the terrain no longer looked natural. Broken branches, trampled ground, pits dug everywhere, rope traps all over.

Our odds were more than enough.

"Instead of those tasteless children, die for me, Nicholas. Offer your blood for me. Then I won't destroy the military state...."

At least step onto the stage on equal terms. Move me with that much heart.

"Just one person's worth. Yours."

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