WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Little Prince in the Ossuary

Chapter 84

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Night by the Lake (2)

The force heading to Salinas Dam was set at 35 men, not counting Gyeoul. Twenty-seven from 1st Platoon, Charlie Company, one medic, three engineers, and four tank crewmen. The vehicle lineup was nine Humvees and one tank. It was a lot of vehicles for that many troops, but fortress command was making allowances for Gyeoul. If manpower was low, firepower had to make up for it. The tank was part of that same logic.

Gyeoul had stubbornly tried to turn down the tank, but they assigned it to him anyway, almost by force. The regimental combat team commander said:

"I want to minimize the chance of losing you."

To the boy, it sounded less like personal affection and more like practical calculation. In this world, if Gyeoul died, at least a hundred million people would be shaken. By now, there were few Americans who did not know him.

Gyeoul sat in the leaders Humvee's gunner seat. He needed to keep watch himself. Conditions were too harsh to hand it off. Record-breaking rain and water mist had slashed visibility to almost nothing. With the naked eye, it was hard to see even 100 meters ahead. Gyeoul had an edge, with eyesight correction from 「Firearms Mastery」 and instinctive correction from 「Combat Sense」 and 「Survival Instinct」.

The road south kept breaking apart. Bomb craters had become pools, and many sections had collapsed where the ground turned soft. In some places, muddy torrents cut across the road.

When Gyeoul spotted one, he raised his hand. Stop signal. The gunner in the next vehicle passed it back. The column halted in sequence. Spacing was tight, but they had been moving slowly anyway, so there was little risk of collision.

One person from each vehicle got out and moved up toward the leaders. They were maintaining radio silence. Gyeoul jumped down from the roof and pointed at the torrent.

"Doesn't that look risky?"

About 20 meters of road had collapsed, and water was running through the gap. Several flows were merging there. Where they collided, the surface buckled and churned. Rain and wind filled their ears, but the rushing water still came through loud and clear.

Platoon leader Jeffrey nodded.

"Yeah. Depth isn't the issue, but I'm worried the current might sweep the vehicles."

Like Jeffrey said, depth was not the issue. You could estimate it from the roadside trees still holding against the flow. Around one meter. Every vehicle had chimney-like snorkels, so they could cross even if water rose to the roof. The tank had no snorkel, but it could still handle up to 1.2 meters without extra gear.

The current was another story. Gyeoul stepped closer and dipped his hand into the water.

'Hard to tell.'

With crew, gear, ammo, and cargo combined, a Humvee weighed just under three tons. It could easily be swept away. Better to put the tank in front. A U.S. M1A2 weighed over 60 tons. It would hold.

Gyeoul said:

"How about we put the tank first, then link each vehicle with winches before crossing?"

"I was just about to suggest that."

Jeffrey gave a crooked grin. He could no longer speak as casually as before. The boy officer outranked him now. Still, for all his formal wording, his attitude had barely changed. Gyeoul preferred that. Much better than soldiers who froze up like they were standing before a general every time they saw him.

Watching the tank move to the front with its turbine roaring, Gyeoul thought:

'At least dragging it along paid off.'

The tank had a rear tow hook built for exactly this kind of situation. The Humvees did too. Gyeoul pulled out the Humvee's winch line and hooked it to the back of the tank. He climbed back into the gunner seat and waited. After several relays, word came back that the last vehicle was secured. Finally, Gyeoul signaled the tank commander to move. He saw the commander say a few words over the intercom.

The column started forward slowly. With eleven vehicles linked together, speed differences would cause trouble.

The heavy tank entered the water at an angle. Better to push diagonally against the current than expose its side to it. Then Gyeoul's vehicle entered. Harsh, dangerous vibrations shook through the frame. They drifted sideways bit by bit, then jolted as if catching on something. Proof that they were being pulled tight from both front and rear.

Foam boiled up in thick bubbles. Countless droplets leaped toward Gyeoul. Dirt grit stayed where he wiped his face, but not for long. The rain hammered down too hard.

'Can he even see ahead?'

Gyeoul wondered about the driver's view. Glancing down below the turret, he saw split muddy currents covering half the windshield. The driver could not stay seated. Half-standing, he strained to see forward. Gyeoul shouted:

"You don't need to drive by sight! Just hold direction and speed! If the heading changes, I'll tell you!"

"Ah, yes. Understood."

Even after sitting back down, the driver stayed tense. He had trained many times to ford rivers inside a vehicle, but real operations were always different from training.

Still, the crossing ended quickly. The following vehicles came out of the muddy flow one by one. The farther back they were, the more unstable it got. They had less pull from behind, or none at all. From halfway across, they started getting shoved off line. Vehicles already on land kept pulling steadily to compensate.

At last, the final vehicle crawled onto dry ground. They strained hard while reeling in winches, but they still completed the crossing without major trouble. Gunners in each vehicle waved and cheered. Gyeoul did not like the noise, but he said nothing. The destination was still far away. Even if something heard them and gave chase, all it would find were track marks.

They unhooked and moved out again. Mud was everywhere, but speed barely dropped. That was the engineers' doing. Before departure, one engineer had suggested mounting snow gear on the Humvees. It was labeled snow gear, but he said it would work just as well in mud. Gyeoul accepted. The Humvees removed their wheels and installed triangular tracks in their place, Mattracks. With more ground contact, weight spread out, which reduced the chance of sinking into mud.

They almost never ran into mutants. Even when they did, they simply ignored them and kept driving.

'Average speed should be around 20 kilometers per hour...'

Under a sky where daylight was fading, Gyeoul unfolded the map without lights. With roads twisting constantly, choosing the route was the commander's job. Investing in 「Map Navigation」 had become unavoidable. To Gyeoul, it was a mixed-bag skill. Definitely useful to have, not something you desperately missed without it.

'Still better than taking the wrong road.'

He had stockpiled plenty of experience resources, so he could afford this much spending. Distant landmarks were hard to make out, and the roads curved endlessly, so there was no more important skill at the moment.

Soon the column entered a familiar road. It was the route to the Black Mountain sawmill. An abandoned village came into view ahead. The village was Creston, a tiny settlement only three blocks by three blocks. Gyeoul decided to punch straight through. When he passed the hand signal, the following vehicles seemed briefly rattled. They had clearly expected a detour.

Even so, the radios stayed quiet. His order to maintain radio silence was being followed.

Instead, a senior man in the front passenger seat asked:

"We're really going through the village? What if they're in ambush?"

Gyeoul said:

"There may be mutants, but not an ambush. How would they know we were coming?"

A few might jump out, he thought.

The noise of Humvees and the tank was washed out by rain and wind, buried under thunder. Mutants suffered the same visibility loss as humans. So it happened exactly as Gyeoul expected. The first mutant to spot the column only noticed them after the leaders vehicle had already entered town. It burst out from the first house at the village entrance, jaw stretched wide.

"Kya- [thud!]"

The cry meant to call other mutants, a long howl, was cut off by one low, dull gunshot. The bullet shattered its teeth and punched in. Before it finished staggering down, the boy officer's lead vehicle passed right by.

"Pick up speed."

He ordered the driver and sent a hand signal. The column accelerated. Noise rose. The number of mutants bursting out around the village was meaningless. Gyeoul shot a few and ignored the rest. Gunners in the following vehicles handled stragglers with their own skill. Not as clean as the boy. A few three-round bursts, then full-auto if that was not enough.

A few mutants chased to the end and got swept away in shallow muddy flow. Vehicles could push through by weight, but mutants were not much heavier than humans. Different story for them. Even a current only a few centimeters deep could kill someone. The mutants went down as if something had grabbed their ankles, flailed, and were dragged off.

Soldiers starved for laughter clutched their stomachs and laughed.

By the edge of Black Mountain, full night had fallen. No stars. Total darkness. Eight kilometers of mountain road still ahead. Gyeoul considered this the most dangerous stretch.

California Route 229, running north-south through the mountains, was a narrow single lane. The broad Humvees and an even larger tank had to pass with extreme care. On top of that, they were running without lights. Humvee drivers relied entirely on the narrow field of view of night vision. The tank had built-in infrared surveillance, but it was not clearly better.

Even without enemies, the environment itself was an enemy. Black forest on both sides was manageable, but once cliffs and steep slopes appeared, the tension never let up. Even Gyeoul, who had the most composure to spare, could not relax. The drivers had it worse.

Muddy runoff from higher ground made the road hard to see. Soil had filled the road, so it was no longer level, and naturally sunken spots were now filled with water, making them look flat. One small mistake could send a vehicle off into the wrong place.

Speed dropped below walking pace. The speedometer needle barely climbed past two or three ticks. The driver kept stopping to judge where the road still was, then creeping forward again. They also had to stay alert for rockfall.

Did we choose the wrong route? Gyeoul decided they could not keep going like this and halted the whole column. He signaled that nobody needed to get out, climbed down from the turret, and tapped the driver's shoulder.

"I'll get out and guide us. Just follow me."

The driver recoiled.

"What? That's too dangerous! Didn't you see those mutants earlier? If you get swept away here, we won't even find your body! You could step into a pit and go under!"

"Don't worry. I'll hook a winch line to my belt. If it looks dangerous, pull."

The Humvee winch motor could handle 6,000 pounds, 2.7 tons. Pulling one Gyeoul back would be nothing. Even so, the driver and another soldier shook their heads.

"Damn it, then what about rockfall? I'll do better, so please stay inside."

"Please listen to him, Lieutenant-nim. At this pace, mission completion is still possible. The dam is not going to collapse over one or two hours. And even if it does, there is nothing we can do. Between losing the dam and losing you, losing you is the bigger loss."

No point arguing further. They needed to save time. Gyeoul shook his head.

"This is a command decision. I won't hear objections."

Orders were absolute. No one argued after that.

Still, the senior soldier looked stricken, all of it pure worry for the boy officer. Gyeoul appreciated the feeling, but said nothing more and stepped down.

Splash. Shrrrr.

Shallow current split around his heels. Water came up to around halfway below his ankle bones. He felt a soft sideways pull. Not enough to be dangerous.

Gyeoul pulled out the winch line. He drew plenty of slack and hooked the end to his belt. Snap, snap. He tugged hard to check the connection.

That was not for his own sake.

The two soldiers in the Humvee were still watching him. Their eyes were hidden behind night vision, but they looked as if they were not blinking.

The boy smiled and waved. The driver lowered his forehead onto the wheel. The soldier now in Gyeoul's gunner seat stared up at the cloud-choked sky. His shoulders sagged.

This was not simple reckless bravado. With 「Survival Instinct」 at genius level and grade-10 「Crisis Detection」, the odds of dying here in an accident dropped sharply.

'Not to zero, though.'

Some risk had to be accepted. Viewers in the other world would probably like this level of tension. Gyeoul stepped into the water and started running slowly.

============================ Author's Afterword ============================

#KakaoTalk Between a Friend and the Author

Friend: Ah

Friend: I want to eat something damn delicious.

Friend: Something that gives you strength, like meat.

Author: Damn delicious meat

Author: Dog meat.

Friend: This kind of guy being a novelist...

#Q&A

Q. NeoGGM-nim: @FirstComment. Happy bday. No gift. Just kidding, I'll give you a support coupon. I was gonna give it to RiceBreaker but got lazy so I put it here instead. (This comment has a lot of typos.)
A. RiceBreaker... tremble tremble...

Q. YureongSwagyul-nim: Wow, we have the same birthday... so cool. Happy birthday! Eat something tasty and cheer up :) You really should eat good food on your birthday. Personally, I think it's a pretty fitting birthday date since it's right before Liberation Day. Holiday!!
A. In the end I ordered pizza and ate alone. I liked Vins Jamsil branch because the pizza was not salty, but somehow it keeps getting saltier... Why does outside food keep getting saltier? They say it's to sell more drinks and alcohol, but this feels excessive.

Q. AgeOfPhoenix-nim: Happy birthday. One hundred thousand years ago... how does everyone live that long. If childlike innocence gets too old, doesn't it go bad? Use it fast and recharge with a new one. Haha. RedCap made sweet potato pizza first. Then at some point Pizza Hut had it, then every pizza place had it. I guess food has no patents. RedCap got a raw deal... that's what I think.
A. Childlike innocence has no expiration date. Being able to gain ancient innocence from fairy-tale books like the Necronomicon is the same idea. / I almost ordered RedCap, then thought, well, old favorites are old favorites, and ordered Vins... I stepped on a landmine.

Q. Cheongnyuryeon-nim: @Happy birthday! My family once forgot my birthday too, and only the PC at the internet cafe congratulated me. . (crying)
A. Outrageously, my computer did not congratulate me on my birthday. It must be because it's a 40,000-year-old junker.

Q. 3ppoo-nim: @If it's Vladimir... Putin!!!
A. Vladimir is not always Putin. :)

Q. Dohwawon-nim: @Happy birthday. When I think of paper books, I have this dream. A dream that more people might read my writing, not just on Joara!
A. Well... if we use light novels as an example, I hear books that reach a second printing are rare. Even though first-print contracts have dropped from 3,000 copies to 1,500 these days. Times have changed. Honestly, if they had not, I could never have dreamed of becoming a full-time writer. Haha.

Q. ChicStreetCat-nim: @Congrats, love you
A. I will keep trying to write novels worthy of that love. Thank you.

Q. Parae-nim: @It would be cool if something like that giant dragon thing from Dead Space 3 was hiding in a reservoir
A. That would be too surreal. Isn't that one reason Biohazard keeps getting less fun?

Q. JangbaekGeosa-nim: @!! Happy birthday, but how does an Outer God celebrate a birthday?^^
A. I read the winds and the star clusters I have piled up all this time.

Q. MasterKalsolum-nim: @Since it's a birthday over 40,000 years old, congratulations with 4 coupons. I'll add one more each time you age another 10,000 years.
A. Wait, why not 40,000 coupons? At that level, I could buy a Hanwoo gift set over 50,000 won, a dried yellow corvina gift set, a cosmetics gift set, even try some Korean-style entertaining and improper solicitations.

Jokes aside, thank you. Readers really are better than friends.

Q. ToothbrushWithRice-nim: @Author-nim, I started wondering about the game system you built. First, this is the basic premise. It was mentioned that NPCs in the game answer in forms the user unconsciously wants, right...? Anyway, something like that. So let's assume someone is truly desperate. 1. Let's say person A is deeply immersed in this Virtual Reality game, to the point that it feels real and they think of an NPC they met in-game as their companion. 2. A and that companion NPC loved each other and even reached the point of promising marriage. 3. Then suddenly A's wife gets kidnapped by a psychopath. 4. What the psychopath wants is simply A's despair. Someone like that cannot be negotiated with. 5. In the end A and the psychopath face each other, and the psychopath puts A's companion between them and starts talking to see A's despair. Of course the gun is pointed at the companion's head. Then the psychopath gives a little setup and, as planned, tries to kill A's companion. What I want to ask is this exact moment! In a situation this desperate, the man's mind would hold nothing but please save her, right? Then would this psychopath fail to kill the woman regardless of game progression? Also happy birthday, author. Kind of a weird question, but I could not think of anything else while washing dishes at my part-time job. This is long, can it even be posted?
A. You misunderstood. It does not respond to unconscious expectations, it reads unconscious predictions. "The other person will act like this" is a prediction, while "I hope the other person acts like this" is an expectation. Those are different.

You also need to account for the gap between conscious desire and unconscious prediction. Unconscious processes operate separately from conscious expectation. It is a reflexive mechanism that cannot be consciously controlled.

On top of that, interference from the second and third modules also applies, so responses become even more varied.

Q. RGZ95-nim: @Since mutants can learn by watching survivors, things like that really might be possible... creepy.
A. If it's creepy, then good. That means the author is writing a creepy novel.

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