WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Asakusa
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◈ Veteran of the Northern Front ◈
Chapter 9: Escort Mission (2)
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After the Great Invasion, the Empire truly went to hell, and countless lords and heroes began running wild.
Three figures stood out among them.
Jeg, the Iron-Blooded Lord.
Yulia, the Pirate Empress.
Arhan, the Wise King of the East.
Markus... no, Marcus was one of Wise King Arhan's two great pillars. In game terms, he was a top-tier talent you absolutely could not afford to miss.
His abilities as a commander and his spearwork on the battlefield were famous even among players.
‘He looks blunt, but he values loyalty more than his own life. A truly great man.’
He was like Guan Yu's equivalent in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
‘I knew Marcus had served on the Northern Front, but the story never gave an exact time, so I had half given up.’
I never dreamed he would appear so openly before me.
‘This is fate!’
I had to recruit Marcus.
Wasn't he the man who turned Arhan, once nothing more than a back-alley thug, into a king?
His future potential went without saying.
More importantly, he was an exceptional talent who could immediately make up for my squad's lack of combat strength.
‘Getting recruitment authority from Berun was a masterstroke.’
At any other time, recruiting him would not have been easy.
Every unit naturally wanted to bring in decent recruits, regardless of era or place.
But...
‘What can you bastards do about it?’
I had the recruitment authority Berun had granted me.
Bringing him in would be easy as pie.
‘Well, I can't guarantee Marcus will open up just because I put in the effort, but...’
If we built camaraderie together, then what?
The squad commander becomes his big brother, and that big brother becomes his lord. Isn't that how it goes?
Besides, this would be good for Marcus too.
Originally, Arhan was like a certain Mr. Liu from Romance of the Three Kingdoms. He would be driven from his territory, wander around pretending to be a retainer, and only gain a proper foundation after turning forty.
In the story, Marcus suffered alongside him and wasted all his youth.
‘Marcus is far too good for a back-alley thug like Arhan.’
Fifteen days after falling into this world, I felt greed for talent for the first time.
Just thinking that I could bring Marcus in if I safely completed the escort mission made my motivation soar.
“We leave in two days, so time is short. You'd best prepare quickly.”
“Yes, sir!”
After receiving some brief instructions through Mac, I returned straight to the barracks and informed my squad that we had been assigned an escort mission.
In a way, I was bringing them work, so I worried they might dislike it. It turned out to be needless concern.
“An escort mission?!”
“Does that mean we're leaving the unit?”
“Wow! How long has it been since we got fresh air?”
Penal soldiers could not leave their unit without a special reason.
Though we would still be traveling within the Northern Front, they were delighted simply to be going outside the unit.
And so, two days later, my squad and I were up and moving early in the morning.
Pellon was assigned to oversee this escort mission.
Since we were somewhat acquainted, I greeted him first.
“I look forward to working with you.”
“...Berun has spoken of you, so I'll trust you for now. But if you attempt to desert, I will not let it pass. Keep that in mind.”
“Yes, sir. Please don't worry.”
If I deserted, I would be wanted throughout the Empire and chased by mercenaries after the bounty on my head until I died. Why the hell would I desert?
Unless the Great Invasion was set to break out tomorrow, I had no intention of deserting.
“You must return to the unit with the penal soldiers before sundown, so hurry.”
Under Pellon's orders, we immediately pushed through the snow-covered road.
About five hours passed.
After traveling through a straight forest path lined with thin, scraggly bushes, the rendezvous point came into view.
“Sir Pellon, there they are!”
“Yes. Looks like they arrived first and have been waiting.”
A group stood in the middle of the forest road.
They were soldiers from a rear unit, escorting the penal soldiers.
Pellon stepped forward as their representative and greeted them.
“I am Pellon, regular soldier squad commander of the Third Penal Soldier Unit. Are you the escort unit from the rear?”
“That is correct. I am Genn, squad commander of the Rear Support Unit.”
“Support Unit? Did the escort officer not come personally?”
“The escort officer had other business, so I have been made responsible for this escort.”
“I see.”
Pellon nodded, then looked at the tarps tightly wrapped around the barred wagons and asked in puzzlement.
“But why are those escort wagons covered with tarps?”
“Well... the North is cold, so we put them up to keep the penal soldiers from freezing to death during the journey.”
“Hmm. I see.”
As I listened to Pellon and Genn speak, I frowned without realizing it.
Genn's strangely stiff expression.
An inexplicable sense of unease ran down my spine.
‘Guys with something to hide always wore faces like that in my previous life too.’
Wondering if I had missed something, I looked around.
A snow-covered forest road.
Six wagons, their interiors hidden by tarps.
Ten soldiers here to hand people over to us.
There was nothing particularly strange... no, wait!
‘Six wagons?’
As I remembered it, there were fewer than twenty recruits coming this time.
One escort wagon could hold around eight people.
Three wagons should have been enough.
And there was something strange about the number of escorts from the rear too.
Genn had brought only about ten soldiers.
Excluding the wagon drivers, that meant only four of them were keeping watch around them.
Even if this was the rear, where the threat of barbarians was low, they would never organize their personnel so carelessly.
‘Could it be...’
Staring at the tightly covered wagons, I recalled one possibility from the game.
Slave trafficking.
In Song of the Empire, there were events or routes that could occur at certain probabilities.
It was easier to think of them as rare chance events.
Slave trafficking was one of them. Corrupt officers colluded with slave traders to divert penal soldiers and sell them.
‘In the game, the chance of slave traders diverting penal soldiers was about 10 percent.’
It was the sort of thing that happened only rarely if you were unlucky, so most players did not pay it much attention. Yet breaking through those low odds was not enough. I was experiencing it in reality now, and it felt different.
There was a sense of plausibility I had never felt while playing the game. More precisely, I could understand a little better why these bastards did this.
‘To slave traders, penal soldiers who had committed crimes and been dragged to the front must have looked like unclaimed money.’
Most penal soldiers were strong, healthy men too.
They probably could not easily pass up the chance to sell them at a high price.
‘Now that's a creative economy.’
If I had accepted the wagons without a second thought and headed back, the men bribed by the merchants would have appeared, killed us, seized the wagons, and made it look like barbarians or bandits had attacked us.
Once we had accepted the handover, it would have been impossible to hold Genn and the rear unit responsible, even if something happened.
It would have been the perfect crime...
‘Pick someone else to fool, you idiots.’
No matter how carefully they had planned, they could not fool the knowledge I had accumulated through years of gaming, or the sharp eye I had developed in the army.
“Everyone, take up your weapons!”
“Sir??”
“Stop dawdling and move!”
If this was all my misunderstanding, Pellon would severely reprimand me.
Unfortunately for them, that did not seem likely.
Genn reacted the instant I finished speaking.
“Damn it! They caught on!”
At his shout, dozens of people emerged from the snow.
Their clothes were mismatched and they carried all kinds of weapons. They were undoubtedly bandits or mercenaries hired by slave traders.
“What is this...?”
Pellon was startled by the sudden turn of events. Normally, I would have explained more calmly, but there was no time to reassure him. I decided to show him through action instead.
I drew the hand axe I had gained while subjugating barbarians before and hurled it with all my strength at the nearest enemy.
Thud!
The man's head burst apart before he could even react.
When their comrade fell before their eyes, the enemies who had charged forward so boldly faltered.
Meanwhile, Pellon came to his senses at the sight of blood staining the snow red.
“...Ubel, can you briefly explain what is happening here?”
I answered by tearing away the tarp covering one of the wagons.
Inside were women and children, people who could never be penal soldiers. Their mouths were gagged, and their bodies trembled.
“This is...!”
“Slave trafficking. It seems that supervisor colluded with slave traders to divert penal soldiers along with other slaves.”
Half the people trapped in the wagons were penal soldiers.
The rest appeared to be slaves who had been separately kidnapped or illegally traded.
“So what you said was true. Hoo...”
After taking a deep breath, Pellon gave his orders with a grim look in his eyes.
“Everyone! Prepare for battle! Eliminate those bandits who undermine the Empire's discipline.”
“Yes, sir!”
The soldiers quickly took up battle positions. The mercenaries darted their eyes around awkwardly at the sight.
It was not strange.
Mercenaries were people who moved for money.
If their plan went wrong or their lives were in danger, naturally they would run.
Genn saw this and shouted desperately.
“What are you doing?! Do you all want to die? Do you think they'll just let you go? There's no going back! The only way is to bury every last one of them!”
The mercenaries could simply flee, but Genn, as the person in charge of this affair, could not.
He pointed at me and my squad.
“Look at those bastards' shoulder insignia! They're all penal soldiers!”
The mercenaries' eyes lit up when they saw that a third of the escort unit consisted of penal soldiers.
They seemed to have concluded that they had a fair chance.
‘It isn't entirely wrong.’
We stood on a forest road wide enough for around ten grown men to pass through. With barren trees and snow-covered grass on either side, it was practically an open plain.
The enemy had around sixty men, while our escort unit had only thirty.
A third of us were penal soldiers, little more than meat shields in their eyes. The mercenaries likely thought they could win without much difficulty.
‘Yes.’
If we had been ordinary penal soldiers, that would have been true.
“Ubel's ten-person squad.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Raise your shields and form a circle.”
All the harsh training had paid off. Even in this sudden situation, my squad, including Max, moved without wavering and formed a circular shield formation.
Normally, they should have followed Pellon's orders.
But they had worked with me for all this time.
It was better for me to command them directly than leave them to someone else.
Perhaps Pellon understood that, because he simply nodded at me without a word.
‘All right, then. I have his unspoken permission.’
Now, all I needed to focus on were the enemies rushing at us.
“Kill them all!”
“We only need to tie down the regular soldiers, so take care of the penal soldiers first!”
Wary of Pellon and the regular soldiers, the enemy fixed their eyes on my squad and me.
They seemed to plan to eliminate the weaker side first, then use their numerical superiority to deal with Pellon and the regular soldiers.
‘These bastards really think we're nothing.’
It seemed they needed a painful lesson.
“Everyone, wait calmly.”
My squad, armed with newly supplied shields and weapons, waited with determined expressions for the enemy to come close.
When the distance narrowed to within ten paces,
“Now. Throw!”
As if they had been waiting for it, they took the hand axes at their waists and threw them.
Whoosh!!
The thrown axes flew toward the enemies with fierce force.
Their skill was lacking, so not all of them hit.
Still, five out of nine axes embedded themselves in enemy bodies. That was no small amount of damage.
The mercenaries following behind were startled as their comrades collapsed before their eyes, and that was a grave mistake.
“Throw again!”
Crunch!
Red flowers bloomed across the white snowfield.
Because so many had hesitated, two more axes struck their targets than before.
“You damn bastards...!”
The mercenaries realized they would get nowhere like this and began to charge boldly.
‘Did they decide that once they broke through the shields and forced close combat, they would have the advantage?’
If I had to judge, it was quite the correct choice.
‘Even though we are holding our formation firmly, the enemy has the numerical advantage. If it turns into a melee, our chances of losing are high.’
However...
‘Who said I'd let them get close?’
I decided to show them why shields and spears were so frightening in combat with cold weapons.
“Thrust.”
Gaps opened in the shields, and spears shot out. The enemies recoiled in horror.
“You cowardly bastards!”
Some particularly agile mercenaries got close to the shields and threatened my squad, but I dealt with those men personally.
“Get lost, you fucking bastard!”
I raised the great axe used by the barbarians and brought it down hard as if splitting firewood.
One mercenary gave a smirk and raised his shield.
He seemed to intend to block my attack, then strike at the opening.
Sorry, but you were wrong from the moment you assumed you could block it.
Bang!! Crunch!
The axe, carrying monstrous strength, did more than shatter the shield. It smashed the head of the man who had been sneering.
After crushing his head along with the shield in a single blow, I grabbed the neck of another mercenary following behind and casually twisted it.
Crack!
“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
The mercenaries who had been charging while shouting curses froze as they watched a person's neck turn like a doll's.
A silence settled over the battlefield.
One by one, the enemies, pale-faced, began voicing their impressions of me.
“Crazy...”
“M-monster!”
Calling a person a monster was a bit harsh.
I was merely a kind soldier who wanted to complete his service.
Footnotes:
“Creative economy” is an ironic use of a Korean political slogan, used here to mock the criminals' scheme.
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