Chapter 7
“Urgh… Hngh… Ghh…”
“It’s all right. You won’t die.”
“Just kill me…”
“Don’t say that.”
Ivan whispered gently as he poured a healing potion over Hugo’s body.
Each time the cold, viscous liquid touched him, Hugo’s body jerked and a small scream escaped his lips.
Ivan understood exactly how the man felt.
Healing potions were among the things frontline soldiers hated most. Their ranking just below field rations, senior soldiers, officers, commanders, and the enemy showed how infamous they were.
Ivan himself had once been forcibly treated with a healing potion when his forearm had nearly been torn off.
‘Just cut the arm off instead! Aaaaaagh!’
‘Don’t say that, Sir Petrovich. Your body is a treasure of our nation!’
‘Who treats a treasure like this?!’
That had happened when he was still young and inexperienced.
After that horrific experience, Ivan made every effort to avoid suffering major injuries.
Healing potions caused pain comparable to a particularly vicious drug buried deep within his memories from when he had been Kim Sunwoo.
Naturally, the name of that accursed truth serum was AlXchil.
Thanks to that, Ivan had discovered a new use for healing potions during his service in the Extermination Unit.
A healing potion inflicted pain comparable to pouring salt over a burn.
But it also healed the injury without fail.
That meant any wounds inflicted during an interrogation could be healed, allowing the interrogation to continue.
It was, in every sense, sustainable interrogation.
Ivan’s fellow agents in the Extermination Unit had been horrified by the idea.
Unfortunately, the Geneva Conventions did not exist in this world, so prisoners had no human rights.
“I-I don’t know… anything else… I really don’t…!”
“You’re even more useless than I expected.”
“Spare me… No, kill me…”
“No. You have to live.”
Because he was the tutorial boss.
Drip, drip.
“I’m telling the truth… So please stop…”
Ivan poured more potion over him, silencing the man, then rose to his feet.
He had learned that the criminal group who commissioned the train attack had worn thick coats, consisted of adult men, and had used facial-recognition obstruction spells.
It was January.
Naturally, it was the season when adult men wore thick coats.
He had also failed to determine their nationality from their speech or accents.
He had not anticipated that Hugo would be such a country bumpkin that he could not distinguish such things.
A complete waste of time.
Ivan clicked his tongue and surveyed the area.
The train was still quiet.
That was not necessarily a bad sign.
‘Princess Eshidis is still fighting.’
Had Eshidis been defeated, the bandits would have come pouring out of the train.
Even if they failed to find the gold bars, they would at least have obtained a valuable noble hostage.
The fact that no one had emerged from the train actually proved that Eshidis was still safe.
Just as Ivan rose to head toward the train—
At that instant, his line-of-fire detection sent a violent warning toward the center of his forehead.
His forehead?
No.
His entire face.
Whoooosh—
The sound of the wind being torn apart rang out.
BOOOOOOM!
A boulder came flying like a shot put and tore through the spot where Ivan had been standing only moments earlier.
Ivan instantly launched himself aside, escaping the succession of incoming trajectories.
Boom! Boom, boom!
The boulders crashed down precisely after him.
“Come out.”
The fact that his opponent could throw them like that meant he was far stronger than expected.
In that case, the other man probably understood line-of-fire detection as well.
Since it was obvious the fight would have to become close combat, his opponent would eventually have to reveal himself.
The captain is a real monster!
Had Ivan dismissed the grunt’s warning too lightly simply because the man could not use line-of-fire detection?
Was Hugo not the real captain after all?
Then Ivan had wasted a perfectly good potion.
He stared coldly at the man approaching from the distance.
“You’re fairly skilled.”
A solidly built middle-aged man covered in densely packed muscle strode toward him with a growl.
A murderous aura so terrible that it made Ivan’s entire body tingle surged through the air.
“But daring to lay a hand on my niece was foolish, considering your abilities.”
His niece?
Was the girl related to this man?
How troublesome.
Ivan clicked his tongue, holstered his pistol, and gripped his axe with both hands.
“You had better know something.”
“Enough bullshit. Come. I’ll kill you.”
The man ground his teeth and raised his own axe.
In the next instant, the two men collided.
Whoooom—CRACK!
Eshidis clenched her teeth as she heard the fingerboard of her violin twist.
“Just hold on a little longer, Kkangkkang!”
A violin was not designed for striking things.
That was true of most musical instruments.
Electric guitars were the exception. They were completed by smashing them against the stage.
Thus, whenever Eshidis swung the delicate wooden string instrument, its soundboard splintered and its fingerboard warped as it slowly fell apart.
However, Kkangkkang—Violin the Second—refused to let its memories and friendship with Eshidis go to waste.
Each time Kkangkkang was swung, something else tended to break as well.
Usually the skull of an adult man.
“Y-You crazy bitch! What the hell is she?!”
“Where are the gold bars?! Hey! What happened in the cargo car?”
“There’s nothing there! We were tricked!”
The bandits wanted to flee.
There were no gold bars, the army would clearly pursue them after they had blown up a train, and the insane woman in front of them was beating people apart with a violin.
Eshidis also wanted to run away.
She could feel Kkangkkang’s life fading more clearly with every passing moment.
She was terrified of fighting.
And she had no idea where she was.
Thud!
Crunch!
Kkangkkang harvested yet another bandit’s teeth before finally reaching the end of its life.
Eshidis stared mournfully at the fragment of violin fingerboard left in her hand.
“Kkangkkang… you were a magnificent instrument.”
“Crazy bitch! That crazy bitch!”
“Shouldn’t we run? This isn’t the time to fight!”
“Damn it! You think that woman’s just going to let us leave?”
“Argh! What the hell is the boss doing?!”
Unaware that their boss was currently being crushed between a muscular old monster and a special-operations officer, the bandits muttered among themselves and slowly backed away.
That was a mistake.
Einar the “Slaughterer’s” daughter resembled her mother in many ways, but when it came to anger, fighting spirit, and combat ability, she took entirely after her father.
To the warriors of Droan, a comrade-in-arms was as close as a sworn sibling.
Eshidis could not allow the death of her longtime companion, Kkangkkang—two years old, and technically an instrument—to be in vain.
She gently stroked Kkangkkang’s remains, then slowly straightened her back and rose.
“Kkangkkang, I’ll never forget your sacrifice. Thank you for everything… and I’m sorry.”
“I’ll hold that crazy woman off. You lot run.”
“Brother!”
“Go! At least some of you have to survive!”
At the bandit’s shout, the remaining men turned and fled all at once.
With tears in their eyes, they ran toward the main camp where their boss was supposed to be.
After watching them leave, the bandit turned toward Eshidis with a determined expression.
“This is a misunderstanding, miss.”
“…Huh?”
“We had absolutely no idea you were aboard this train. But if you spare me, I’m willing to testify in court. Krasilov is a nation governed by law, isn’t it? Please let me live!”
The bandit threw down his weapon, dropped to his knees, and shouted.
It was a wise decision.
At that very moment, the bandits who had fled were sweating profusely between an enraged huscarl and an enraged Extermination Unit officer.
“You think bringing a few more lackeys will change anything?!”
“…There are more survivors than expected. It makes no difference.”
The two men, who had been hacking axes into each other’s bodies, simultaneously shouted at the bandits rushing out of the train.
“Eshidis! What happened to the woman aboard that train? There should have been a young blonde woman. Is she safe?”
“My niece! Is my niece safe?!”
At the man’s shout, Ivan froze for a moment.
Wasn’t this man his nephew?
Ivan glanced at Hugo, who had been knocked unconscious by flying debris during the fight, and groaned.
No wonder it had seemed too difficult.
For an early tutorial, the man standing before him was far too elaborately designed as a boss.
Ivan had wondered whether he was intended to serve as a Soulslike-style refund barrier, but even then, he had far too many attack patterns.
There was simply no way a beginner could defeat him.
In that case—
‘A train attack in an academy story can never kill the protagonist, because a helper appears to save them.’
Was this man the helper?
And the actual tutorial boss fight was probably designed to teach the player how to handle multiple opponents by fighting a handful of grunts who escaped the train alongside one incompetent boss.
Ivan sighed and put away his axe.
The blade was so badly chipped that he would have to discard it.
Weapons were consumables anyway, so it was not a serious problem, but he still could not help feeling disappointed.
“Wait. Weren’t you working with them?”
“I don’t know what gave you that idea.”
The man narrowed his eyes as he sheathed his own weapon.
“You were pouring a healing potion over that bastard.”
“Hmm.”
Explaining that it was an Extermination Unit interrogation method would be excessive.
There was no convincing way to explain it anyway.
Ivan shrugged.
“There was something I needed to learn.”
“Tch. You should’ve said that first.”
He had not exactly been given time to explain.
While Ivan stared at him with a conflicted expression, the man broke into a broad smile at the sight of a woman energetically climbing out of the train.
“Niece! Esi! You’re safe!”
“Ugh—Uncle?!”
Ignoring the man as he ran off, Ivan glanced at the terrified bandits staring at the surrounding area, which looked as though a bomb had gone off, and clicked his tongue.
The target was unharmed.
The helper possessed more than enough strength to protect her until she reached Yansk University.
And Ivan himself was someone who could not afford to be noticed by the target.
His position would become troublesome if his identity were exposed, and Eshidis had met him before.
It had been seven long years ago, when Eshidis had been little more than a fifteen-year-old child.
Even so, there was still a chance she remembered him.
He had obtained all the information available here.
Ivan turned around and withdrew.
***
Eshidis, eldest daughter of Einar the Berserker.
Arrived in Krasilov.
One huscarl, presumed to be an agent dispatched by Droan, accompanying the target.
Target’s safety successfully secured.
After urgently sending a short encrypted telegram to the Eastern Palace, Ivan boarded a train bound for the capital.
It had been an exhausting day for such meager results.
“Esi, do you happen to remember someone named Ivan?”
“Uncle Ivan?! Yes! Of course I do!”
Eshidis’s face immediately brightened at the familiar name, only for her head to droop gloomily a moment later.
“He was such a wonderful man… Kind and handsome…”
“I’m not sure about that, but anyway.”
The man frowned as he continued walking.
Beneath an improvised palanquin made from a torn-off train door, five or six terrified bandits carried Eshidis on their shoulders.
Careful not to let her hear him, the man muttered quietly.
“I distinctly heard he died two years ago.”
The man’s fighting style had seemed familiar because it was identical to that of Krasilov’s special-operations forces.
And the way he wielded an axe had felt strangely recognizable because it resembled Brother Einar’s technique.
There was only one Krasilov soldier who had learned axe fighting from Einar and fit that description.
Reserve Ivan Petrovich.
More precisely, Ivan Petrovich of the “Hero Reserve.”
He had been one of the candidates deemed capable of filling a vacancy in the Hero Party if one ever arose.
But Ivan had supposedly died alongside one of the Seven Generals during the extermination campaign that followed the Demon King’s death.
The man regretted that Ivan’s bushy beard, the shadowy forest, and his own rage-blinded state had prevented him from examining the man’s face properly.
Still, judging by appearances, he seemed to be working for the royal intelligence service.
If they both remained active in the capital, they were bound to meet eventually.
When that happened, he would make the man shave.
The huscarl shrugged and continued walking.
The capital was a week away on foot.
And so, Yansk University’s two “freshmen” began their journey aboard the train-palanquin!