WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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Chapter 176: Alliances and Maneuvering (11)

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After the public execution, the many stages that stretched across half a day became a test in themselves. How long would his stamina hold out? How long could he maintain his focus?

The process was not always rational. From the start, it was partly meant as entertainment.

'Or maybe it reflects how the Lieutenant General sees the state of her subordinates.'

Their homeland had fallen, humanity was in danger, and life as refugees in a potential enemy state offered no clear future. They had to be desperate just to find even a little enjoyment. The apocalypse felt by those of high rank, who lived in relative comfort, could not help but differ from what those below them felt. For better or worse. How much sanity were they keeping? Empty, tedious days dragged on amid fear and anxiety.

Gyeoul knew. He knew the helplessness that came when everything felt like fixed fate. He knew how easily it could break the human heart.

Emotion moved people. How many people could stay rational when their hearts were starved?

So even if it was a moment of vulgar entertainment, if it stirred their hearts even a little, that was enough. Perhaps this was one strand of the naval lieutenant general's true thinking.

Of course, the main purpose was still to verify Kurt Lee.

She had said she believed her son's testimony, but the Lieutenant General would want to see him for herself.

The final stage was a fight that would continue without limit for as long as Gyeoul wanted. It was a chance to demonstrate his hand-to-hand ability. They told him he could face several opponents at once if he wished. Show them his literal limits.

"Do you have that many death row inmates?"

That was Gyeoul's question before the fight. The aide-de-camp had softened compared to the morning, but the voice that clashed with Kurt Lee's rough appearance still drew disgust from him.

"Of course not. Discipline in the fleet has not collapsed that far. The same goes for the civilians. Given the state of the world, civic standards are a mess, but our situation is still better than the other fleets."

"Then?"

"Most of them committed minor crimes and are hoping to be pardoned. Next are those challenging for better treatment. There are also fools who simply want attention. Of course, there are some mixed in who deserve to die."

At his signal, armed soldiers dragged the prisoners out in a line. Their bound hands and feet clanked with every step. What stood out was how sturdy they looked. The test had only been set recently, and these were not bodies made by feeding them well for the past few days. Even assuming they had been chosen from among the prisoners, it was hard to accept.

"Remember these faces."

The aide-de-camp said,

"These men are the worst of the lot. From the left, serial murder, selling human flesh, pedophilia..."

The faces introduced by crime instead of name looked abnormal from the eyes alone. Something about them could not be defined by the five senses. This was a world with many human-shaped monsters besides the walking plagues.

"I do not know how long you will remain standing, but I hope you hold out at least until all of them have gone up."

The order that followed was to give them pain befitting their crimes.

The intent was clear. He would see their faces only briefly. During the long fight, if they were sent out one by one at random, how many would an exhausted Kurt Lee recognize?

"Let me ask one more thing."

"What is it?"

"Why are they so healthy? They look as if they have been eating well for a long time."

Disgust deepened on the aide-de-camp's face. It was not aimed at Kurt Lee.

"I hear unidentified corpses are found in the detention facility from time to time. I think you know what that means."

"And you left that alone?"

"The dead were men who had to die anyway. Being locked up together is a punishment in itself."

"It saves ammunition too." The end of that added remark sounded suspicious. Gyeoul guessed there was more to it than that. Today alone was proof. If they killed Gyeoul, they would be pardoned. If they only injured him, their sentences would be reduced.

'This test probably did not come out of nowhere.'

There must have been similar matches in ordinary times as well. Individuals or groups, people tended to keep doing what they were used to.

The naval lieutenant general's words came back to him. There is no place in my fleet for unnecessary people. That coldness could not have been aimed only at Major Ju Wei. In an environment where prisoners would keep appearing, in a situation where even keeping decent people alive was already a burden, what use would a general imagine for prisoners?

Public punishment had a demonstrative effect. It frightened people by showing them what happened when they committed crimes. Turning it into entertainment had its own advantages. Across twenty-six apocalypses, Gyeoul had witnessed many similar cases.

Whether it had actually worked was another question. There were points that made it hard to say yes or no. Gyeoul, though, leaned toward shaking his head. It was hard to expect violent spectacles to have a purely positive effect on people whose minds had been worn down.

While he thought, preparations finished.

Since firearms were not being issued, one sergeant entered the testing ground to take charge of control.

Gyeoul called out ten people from the start. He did not intend to drag this out. He had been told he could quit whenever he wanted, but it would be better to end it by running out of people to fight.

The officers stirred in their seats. Some seemed impressed by Kurt Lee's spirit, while others frowned. He is being reckless. Is this possible? He has been impressive so far, but this will be difficult, won't it? Since the bulletproof glass had been removed, his enhanced senses easily caught their conversations.

It was not difficult. Gyeoul could overpower a Beta Ghoul with raw strength. Even though he was not in perfect condition, he still had more than enough strength left to face humans. Gyeoul thought,

'You do not need ten people's worth of strength to face ten people.'

The sergeant controlling the prisoners raised a hand. It paused briefly at the top, then dropped with crisp precision.

He had to avoid being surrounded.

The moment the match began, Gyeoul broke through the left side. Broke through meant exactly that. Leg strength beyond human limits, abnormal acceleration over a short distance, and the mass of his whole body crashed into one person. Defense was meaningless. Thud! With a heavy impact, the face of the man sent flying twisted. Probably breathing trouble.

He turned the recoil from the collision into rotation. Using one foot as an axis, he spun hard and thrust out his right foot. Crack! The sensation of bone breaking traveled back from beyond the point of impact.

Unlike mutants, humans had fear.

Fear turned a crowd into scattered individuals.

They could not have been trained as a group, but even accounting for that, they had little sense of solidarity.

He had expected as much. Hadn't the prisoners been eating one another in prison? It did not seem as if things would be much better outside the prison. This was a floating city where both humans and humanity rotted together.

「Insight」 affirmed Gyeoul's judgment. As long as people like this were thrown together without discrimination, their group action would inevitably be clumsy. Each of them was nothing more than another person's opportunity. In the end,

"Go die!"

When one of them charged, the rest rushed in without order. Yet even then, none of them wanted to be hit first, so their speeds slowed in different ways. That much space was enough to slip through. The space widened each time he drove in a new fear.

The fight continued like that. It was clearly different from fighting mutants.

Whenever a death row inmate he had marked came up, Gyeoul abandoned restraint.

Crunch!

A blow close to wasteful. The pedophile's jaw shattered. Gyeoul struck it again and drove it into the man's throat. The prisoner flailed as his own flesh and bone blocked his airway. The officer corps applauded without restraint.

The newcomers lost more and more will as time passed. They had watched from the beginning, and Gyeoul had shown no sign of exhaustion. A few who had volunteered to challenge him even forfeited.

Despite the warning that it would be unlimited, the fight came to an awkward end at the forty-first person.

Would Lieutenant General Xieru truly be satisfied with this?

He heard the answer the next day from Tan Guosheng.

"Mother was very pleased. She said you did even better than expected."

Well. If the true Kurt Lee, once confirmed in person, had fallen below expectations, she had probably been prepared to let him die.

Even if the price the Lieutenant General had paid seemed large, once the goods and zone promised to Orca Black were excluded, all that remained was the watch and Major Ju Wei. The former could be recovered after Gyeoul died, and the latter was someone the Lieutenant General herself had described as difficult to use or discard.

If practical gains could be claimed later, trust could be given first. That was the old cunning of a general.

"She said she liked that you understood what she meant and acted on it even without her spelling it out. Something about feeling as if she had met a kindred spirit."

There was no lie in the way he laughed. Then he shared his own impressions. He said he was happy that other people had also come to evaluate Kurt Lee in their own ways. Gyeoul nodded.

"That is good. At the very least, there should be no one left who doubts Lieutenant Colonel Tan's statement."

"...Yes. There is no point hiding it from you."

Tan Guosheng, who did not deny it, seemed like an even better person than before. It also meant he trusted Kurt Lee that much. That was a good thing. After all, he was the person most likely to inherit authority if something happened to Lieutenant General Xieru.

'It would be impossible in peacetime, but this is effectively a privatized military group.'

From the soldiers' point of view, there might have been less resistance than expected. Gyeoul knew of an incident where a Chinese general used the military for personal revenge and got off with a written reprimand. He needed to be careful about generalizing, but it was useful as a reference point.

Where had he heard that? Gyeoul searched his memory, but could not recall the occasion. Even before death, it had been an age when information came in through all kinds of routes.

Tan Guosheng said, "It is true that the way people look at me has changed. There were fools who slandered me, saying I ran away to save myself and then colluded with some rootless mercenary to keep telling lies. They knew nothing about what I went through, or how proud and brave the dead were... Anyway, I owe you once again."

When he said the dead had been brave, Gyeoul sensed a strange stain.

No one lived without rationalizing themselves. The difference was only in degree.

"I hope you will not speak as if you owe me a debt every time. We are comrades, are we not?"

The answer as Kurt Lee seemed acceptable, because the young naval lieutenant colonel laughed again.

"Thank you for saying that."

Gyeoul changed the subject.

"Where are we going now? You said escort, but I was not told the details."

Since the test had been held so close to the conference, Gyeoul had expected time to rest. In reality, he had been called as soon as the day changed. Escort duty for Lieutenant Colonel Tan Guosheng. Yet there were no concrete details. Not even where they were headed. They had not requested any special weapons either.

"Ah, no need to be tense. We are moving within the grounds. It is a normal escort, even if it is called an escort."

"The grounds?"

"Mm. This must be your first time. Our destination is Ship 854."

"What kind of ship is it?"

"An ocean electronic reconnaissance ship. Its name is Sirius. A fine vessel. It has a radar capable of tracking ballistic missiles, as well as plenty of other observation equipment. It is one of the reasons America cannot carelessly fly fighters near the bay."

Sirius. The very intelligence-gathering ship infected by the Trojan horse.

With fresh tension, Gyeoul examined Tan Guosheng again. Had he missed some hostility? Had Lieutenant General Xieru noticed something? Even if she had noticed, there should have been no way for her to realize Kurt Lee was the source. While all sorts of thoughts flashed through his mind, Tan Guosheng gave him a simple reason.

"I meant to tell you after we arrived, but knowing in advance will not make it any less impressive. We have prepared a new means to destroy the bridges of Alameda Island."

"Is that so?"

"To tell the truth, we had been preparing it for some time, but we could not obtain one essential part. But ahead of the conference, Rear Admiral Lei Yanlie's side showed a forward-looking attitude, you see. We were able to fill in the missing piece."

Gyeoul narrowed his eyes. Was that person the insider the CIA had recruited?

It was a plausible guess. Given that they had grasped Lieutenant General Xieru's tendencies, there was a chance they had been asked to improve relations as preliminary groundwork for a potential collaborator.

"Mother was very relieved. She said we would be able to establish our position before attending the conference."

"That makes sense. It adds that much more possibility to the outlook the Lieutenant General has laid out. It will be easier to persuade the other generals too."

"Yes. We must succeed."

Tan Guosheng muttered, then changed his tone.

"Anyway, success or failure aside, I thought you had to see it. Mother felt the same. You have earned that right."

Gyeoul tilted his head slightly. Maybe there was no need to be tense. Since they had obtained a missing part, he could guess what this new means was. It matched something among the information the CIA had gathered. It had been given to Gyeoul as well, in the form of materials and a briefing.

============================ Author’s Note ============================

#Qin Weijiang

The anecdote mentioned in the main story about the general who used the army for personal revenge centers on Lieutenant General Qin Weijiang, the current deputy commander of the Nanjing Military Region. At the time of the incident, he was commander of the 27th Group Army. Readers may have heard of it too. A story circulated online about him receiving unfair treatment at a hotel, calling in his unit, and wrecking the place.

#Q&A

Q. Gliese581: @How many hours does it usually take you to write one chapter? + If you are a full-time writer, I am curious how many hours a day you spend writing.

A. The thing is, it is hard to average. One chapter can be done in as little as five hours when it goes quickly, and when it goes slowly, it can take more than twenty hours.

Lately, because of symptoms from a herniated disc in my neck, I cannot sleep properly, so my work time keeps getting interrupted, which makes it even worse.

Still, if I had to make a rough estimate... I think it is at least over eight hours.

Q. Kikeros: @I do not know if this is a good habit or a bad one, but for some reason the lieutenant general in your description and Gyeoul's face as he looks at her make me think of the confrontation scene with the Joker in The Dark Knight, so it makes me grin. The end of this story is a happy ending, but I hope there are more bad endings for the people who go too far in the plot. Grin.

A. Please look forward to a good ending for everyone. Haha.

Q. A-eu Dongdongdari: @Wow, this is so much fun. These days, there is nothing this good on Noble.

A. Thank you. May you be blessed.

Q. LewdDemonF: @Was the woman who ate the child also a former officer? If not, rather than grouping them together in the narration as high-ranking officers, I think it would be better to describe it as there being many officers among them.

A. She is a former officer. It is because she abused power.

Q. DragonChicken: @Reading through this all at once, I was wondering if you know a roguelike game called Cataclysm? The atmosphere and traits feel similar, so I wanted to ask, haha.

A. I am not sure... Is it a game released on Steam? The only Cataclysm I know is the Homeworld expansion.

Footnotes:

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