Chapter 43
An Academy Field Trip Is Guaranteed to Be Attacked (7)
He extended his mana and spread it evenly through every corner of his nervous system.
Holding his breath, he attuned himself to the sensation of mana flowing through his blood vessels.
Creak.
Senses he normally would not have perceived awakened.
Time split into fragments. He felt the tip of his index finger pulling the trigger and even detected the faint friction of the spring twisting inside the firearm.
This was the battlefield of superhumans.
Bang—!
He fired.
At the same moment, he opened his eyes.
The flame bursting from the muzzle illuminated the dark tunnel for a brief instant.
That was why he had heightened his senses.
It was to prevent the sudden flash from blinding his eyes after they had fully adjusted to the darkness.
The stimulated optic nerves sent a stinging pain through his eyes, but it was fine.
He was accustomed to this much.
The silhouettes of three people remained imprinted on Ivan’s retinas like afterimages.
“A gun! There’s someone else here!”
“Damn it, where was he hiding?!”
The figure leaning against the wall was Oskar.
The two short figures slowly approaching from farther down the tunnel were dwarves.
At the moment of firing, Ivan confirmed sparks bursting near the head of one dwarf.
He’s wearing standard dwarven infantry equipment.
Ivan immediately shifted his aim and charged forward.
“He’s coming! Get ready!”
The dwarf in front shrieked.
Judging by the afterimage still lingering on Ivan’s retinas, the dwarf was armed with a two-handed axe.
Standard dwarven infantry equipment consisted of absurdly heavy plate armor that covered the entire body like a golem.
It was thick, grotesque armor that would not even crack under most attacks.
Aside from a handful of weak points around the eye slits and joints, it offered nearly absolute protection against external blows.
That’s why I brought a sword.
That was why he had not brought an axe.
No matter how hard he struck with one, it would not even leave a crack.
During the old war, dwarves had once survived while buried beneath an entire mountain range.
Even massive boulders crushing down on them had failed to break through the durability of their armor.
A martial technique had been developed specifically to deal with enemies like them.
Scrape!
“Ha! Human! That won’t work!”
The blade scraped across the surface of the plate armor, throwing off sparks.
The sword rebounded, accompanied by a long rush of displaced air.
Whoosh!
Ivan immediately perceived the direction and speed, then ducked.
A huge axe blade carved through the air just above him.
He let the momentum pass, raised his left hand, and fired again.
Bang—!!
This time, he shot toward the other dwarf behind the first.
Sparks flashed from the muzzle, and the dwarf’s form became visible once more.
His stance.
His balance.
The weak points in his armor.
The sneer on his face.
Even the long gray beard extending beneath his chin.
Ivan immediately straightened his sword and stabbed with lightning speed.
Clang!
“You bastard!”
The dwarf roared.
The strike had precisely targeted a joint.
It was so accurate that one would scarcely believe it had been performed in total darkness.
But this was not enough.
Thinking so, the dwarf swung his axe again.
Whoosh—!
Ivan dodged once more.
Clang.
He struck the same place again.
It was a mechanical repetition of the same process.
The armor’s weak points were the joints, reinforced with chain mail and gambeson.
Those layers already provided considerable protection against blades, but not enough to withstand the sword strike of a superhuman.
So once more—
Clang!
“That technique...! Were you on the battlefield ten years ago?”
“Do you think that was all?”
The answer slipped out before Ivan could stop himself.
He smirked.
The Kim Sunwoo within him was screaming that it had been twenty years.
Whatever his emotions, his hands continued doing what they needed to do.
Bang—!
He fired again.
Using the brief flash to secure his vision, he stepped backward to avoid the dwarf approaching from behind and swung his sword.
Clang.
The chain snapped.
Ivan had been the one who first invented this technique.
Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Petrovich.
He had been a captain back then.
The technique was called Dwarf Peeling.
“Grrrgh...!!”
Clang! Crash!
At last, the dwarf’s pauldron tore free.
As the impact sent Ivan’s blade rebounding upward, he naturally released the hilt and immediately reached for his waist.
He drew a dagger from the sheath at his belt and drove it into the exposed flesh of the dwarf’s shoulder.
Not even a single breath had passed.
Stab!
“Gaaaaagh!!”
A shoulder wound was fatal to a warrior.
It was no different from losing an arm.
The movements of the dwarf wielding the two-handed axe visibly slowed.
But there were two enemies.
The second dwarven warrior finally closed the distance and swung his weapon.
“Stop!!”
Whoosh—!!
Ivan dodged the weapon once again and raised the pistol in his left hand.
This time, he aimed carefully, steadied his breathing, and fired.
Bang—!
“Gaaaaaaagh!!”
The bullet struck the hilt of the dagger embedded in the dwarf’s shoulder.
The dagger was knocked away and vanished into the darkness of the tunnel.
The dwarf, whose shoulder had been forcibly torn open, screamed and collapsed.
Ivan spun and repositioned himself.
He released the pistol and drew another dagger from his waist.
Shing.
The sword he had thrown into the air earlier was only now beginning to fall.
Ivan caught the hilt precisely in midair and swung again.
Clang!
He drove Dwarf Peeling into the newly arrived dwarf.
In that moment, while calculating breath and time, he moved like a storm.
He drove the blade in, twisted it, and stripped away the armor one layer at a time.
Precisely.
Stitch by stitch.
With the exacting precision of a surgeon performing an operation.
Against two dwarves with darkvision, in pitch-black darkness where nothing could be seen even an inch ahead.
He used both hands simultaneously.
He dismantled their armor, drove daggers into the flesh exposed beneath it, threw the sword in his hand into the air, fired his pistol, caught the descending blade, and swung it again.
“What... is this...?”
Oskar stared with his mouth hanging open and swallowed a groan.
Only moments earlier, he had resolved to fight to the death and perish without disgracing his chivalry.
Now, a monstrous figure had appeared before his eyes and was slaughtering the unknown enemies.
“The sounds are almost overlapping.”
This lay outside the bounds of common sense.
The sounds of the sword swings came so close together that they nearly overlapped.
That meant the interval between strikes was unimaginably short.
How could movement like that even be possible?
Oskar laughed weakly.
If that man were the attacker, I’d have no choice but to die.
The battle ended in an instant.
The unknown man who had charged in at the sound of the first gunshot returned before two full breaths had passed, carrying the heavy scent of blood with him.
“Can you actually see anything?”
Humans did not possess darkvision.
Only races such as dwarves and demons did.
In other words, the question also meant, Are you human?
“You don’t need to see in order to fight.”
“Ha...”
“Is your leg injured?”
“Yes. Embarrassingly enough, it broke when I was caught in the collapse.”
“You still have the orbs, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then remain here and wait quietly.”
The man turned and began to leave.
Oskar hurriedly raised his head.
“Wait! Please wait! May I at least ask your name?”
“Ivan Petrovich.”
“Where are you going? If there’s anything I can do to help, I will!”
“A student should focus on his studies.”
Oskar heard the man chuckle in the darkness.
The departing footsteps stopped, then returned.
Ivan placed a hand on Oskar’s head.
“I never liked your father, but it seems he succeeded in raising his son. Oskar, son of Gilles Ver. What you did was admirable.”
“...You know my father?”
“If that man still remembers me, then we are friends.”
The man turned away once more.
This time, he left without looking back, walking silently into the darkness.
The steady footsteps receded into the distance, heading somewhere beyond the tunnel.
Isabel sat motionless in the darkness.
Fortunately, she had fallen without suffering any serious injuries, but she was not foolish enough to move recklessly through a place where she could not see anything.
“They’ll cancel the exam, right? They won’t fail me like this, will they?”
That was her only concern.
It felt as though four hours had already passed, but she could not even begin to estimate how much time had actually gone by.
Step. Step.
Isabel’s head snapped up.
She heard footsteps.
Had the rescue team finally arrived?
Isabel sprang to her feet and shouted.
“Over here! There’s someone here!”
“What is your name?”
“Isabel! Wait, are you going to decide whom to rescue based on their name?!”
“Found her! Target secured! Call the commander!”
“Huh?”
Target?
Commander?
Isabel’s head spun as she suddenly realized what was happening.
The earth had abruptly collapsed, torrents of soil had poured down, and now she was trapped in a tunnel so dark that she could not see an inch ahead.
And now they were saying “target” and “commander.”
Could this possibly be...?
“Seriously! I’m so sick of this!”
Again!
Another terrorist attack had taken place in this forest, and this time she herself was the target.
How many people had been caught up in it?
How many had been sacrificed?
Isabel ground her teeth.
Considering they had said they had found the target, and that they had only appeared long after she had fallen into the trap, this could not possibly be an incident that had involved only one or two people.
Soon, the sound of heavy footsteps filled the tunnel.
Step. Step. Step.
A group was approaching her.
They advanced silently, without even murmuring among themselves.
Trained soldiers.
They must also possess darkvision or have cast a spell that granted something similar. Otherwise, they could not move as a group through a tunnel this dark.
Isabel raised her sword upright.
Her eyes burned with fury.
She was done allowing others to sacrifice themselves in her place.
She was sick of living burdened by guilt toward those who had died for her.
So, to release this anger that had nowhere else to go, she drew in a deep breath.
“I am Isabel, daughter of Maximilien and Marie, a knight of Thales! State your name!”
“A fine display of spirit.”
A heavy voice came from the distance.
“Senior Captain Astuk, Third Battalion of the Fifth Brave General’s direct command, attached to the Well Maker Engineering Corps. In terms you would understand... yes. I suppose the equivalent would be a commander of a thousand.”
The instant she heard that, Isabel remembered Eiphelos, the centurion.
The demon officer Ivan had taken into custody.
Her fight against him had been a true battle to the death.
If his rank had been centurion, and if demon military ranks were determined by strength...
Then this one is stronger than he was.
Isabel pressed her lips together.
A commander of a thousand would not literally be ten times stronger than a centurion, but it was obvious that the difference in combat ability would still be considerable.
And he was not alone.
A whole group was approaching alongside him.
Her vision was also severely restricted.
Restricted was too mild a word.
She could see absolutely nothing.
Am I really going to die like this...?
She was not afraid.
From the moment she had taken up a sword, death had always been something she was prepared to face.
She thought of her father.
Maximilien would not have shown fear even in a situation like this.
Therefore, at the very least, she could not show fear of death before demons.
She was a knight of Thales.
And she was the Hero’s daughter.
Among the prices she had to pay for the many privileges she had enjoyed, there was no such thing as the right to feel fear.
There was only duty.
The duty to remain resolute even in the face of death.
“Come! I, Isabel of Thales, will die standing today!”
“...Comrade. How old did you say that one was?”
“Yes, Comrade Commander! That child turns twenty this year!”
“We are revising the plan. Kill her without fail. We cannot afford to leave future trouble behind.”
Any demon who had reached the rank of commander of a thousand would remember the Hero Party.
Even if they had never encountered them directly, to demons, the Hero was the very embodiment of death.
Encounter them, and you died.
Approach them, and you died.
Fail to flee the moment you heard rumors of them, and you died.
They were a natural disaster.
Worse, they were an unpredictable one.
The Hero Party’s movements had been classified at the highest level among the Allied Kingdoms, so they had always launched surprise attacks deep within enemy territory.
No matter how many tracking parties were sent after them, none ever returned.
They had concealed their position with absolute thoroughness.
The Hero Party, who had reigned as the terror of the demons, had ultimately slain the Demon King.
Then the war ended.
Unfortunately for the demons, that meant they had never been given a chance to overcome their trauma of the Hero.
Therefore, this young girl displaying courage impossible for someone her age...
She had to die.
They had to return with her severed head.
They needed to show their comrades back home that even a symbol of terror could not escape death.
“Then try to kill me! A knight of Thales never falls alone!”
Isabel wanted to run.
She wanted to collapse where she stood.
She was only a young woman who had barely turned twenty.
But she could not.
Not when she remembered the many people who had died in the train attack that day, and the classmates who had now been caught in this attack.
She had no right to despair before the death approaching her.
I do have one regret.
She definitely regretted never getting to go on a date with that man.
Thinking about it now, the feelings she experienced whenever she thought of him were clearly more than simple affection.
That made it all the more regrettable.
She could have expressed herself a little more.
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
“...?”
A rhythmic sound came from beyond the tunnel.
Tsk. Tsk.
A short noise made by clicking the tongue against the front teeth.
What is that sound?
Astuk narrowed his eyes in thought.
That noise echoing through the tension and silence just before battle felt strangely familiar.
He was certain he had heard it somewhere before.
Rhythmic tongue-clicking...? A human using echolocation?!
The instant the memory surfaced, several deductions followed in rapid succession.
There is only one group of humans trained well enough to use echolocation in combat.
That group was secretly raised by the Krasilov monarchy during the last war.
And this is Krasilov...
Astuk jolted in alarm and raised his weapon.
If the Hero Party had embodied the terror of death...
Then that group had embodied the terror of the night.
They had made even demons with darkvision fear the darkness.
Assassins personally trained by Enrique, the Shadow Blade.
For them, questions such as when, where, and how were meaningless.
They completed their objectives literally anytime, anywhere, and by any means necessary, then vanished like shadows in the night.
“The Annihilation Unit! Those accursed monsters still exist?! Comrades, raise your weapons! Stay alert!”
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
The rhythmic sound echoed through the tunnel.
Then it abruptly stopped.
Silence descended heavily over the surroundings.
The dwarves, who had seemed ready to charge at any moment, formed a defensive formation and crouched firmly in place.
Isabel swallowed and looked around.
She still could not see anything, but she could at least tell that something about the enemy had changed.
The Annihilation Unit...? What is that...?
It was a name she had never heard before.
But the dwarves clearly knew it well.
Only moments ago, they had sounded as calm as though they were out for a stroll.
Now, their entire presence had instantly frozen and sharpened.
And then—
Click.
A heavy metallic mechanism shifted.
Bang—!
There was light.