Chapter 8

This was a story from Ivan’s days serving in the Extermination Unit.

There had been commanders in the Demon King’s army known as the Seven Generals.

Each had gathered under the banner of their respective race, staking the fate of their entire people on the war. In truth, it would not have been an exaggeration to call each of them the “Hero” of their own race.

Before the Hero Party appeared, the Allied Kingdoms had been swept aside with humiliating ease.

There had been no helping it.

The demon races were physically superior to humans in nearly every respect, and they had mobilized entire peoples in pursuit of conquering the world.

The war against the Demon King’s army could, in other words, be described as a war between humanity and every other race.

Driven onto the defensive, the strategists of the Allied Kingdoms proposed a solution.

‘If we want to break the unity of the demon races, we need a decapitation operation rather than a frontal war.’

They would throw the Allied Kingdoms’ soldiers into battle and force them to hold the front at any cost.

Meanwhile, they would dispatch “assassins” to kill the Seven Generals and shatter the enemy’s cohesion.

The demon races were little more than a loosely bound collection of tribal states ruled by the strongest.

Once the Seven Generals were removed, the commanders beneath them would each covet the empty positions and descend into internal conflict.

It was sound reasoning.

From a broader perspective, the Hero Party had been nothing more than an assassination squad.

They were thrown into certain death, yet always returned alive.

As a result, they became the sort of people even the kings of the various nations could not easily touch.

That was why Ivan disliked the Hero Party.

They were far too similar to the reason the Krasilov royal family had decided to dissolve the Extermination Unit.

We were blades too sharp to keep drawn in an age of peace.

With intelligence reports detailing the expected arrival schedules of the Hero Party’s sons and daughters in hand, Ivan had been enjoying a pleasant stretch of leisure.

The timeline he had devised was perfect.

First came Eshidis, whom he had rescued a few days earlier.

Next was Isabel, daughter of the Hero Maximilien.

She belonged to the Kingdom of thales and was scheduled to depart during the first week of February.

A few days after her would come Oskar, son of the Knight, Gilles Ver, likewise departing from thales.

There was no need to worry about those two.

thales and Krasilov had maintained reasonably good diplomatic relations even before the war, and the two kingdoms were close enough that there would be plenty of time to respond to any train attack.

As for Elpheira, daughter of the Mage, Veolgrin, she would not be arriving by train at all.

Veolgrin’s homeland was an island beyond the Black Sea.

The Calion Archipelago.

She would be crossing by warship, which made her safer than any of the others.

Krasilov had no ice-free port, so she would probably travel through thales, but someone arriving aboard a warship was hardly likely to come without attendants.

Finally, there was Lucia, Enrique’s disciple.

She belonged to the Kingdom of Krasilov.

That meant she had probably already arrived somewhere in the capital.

There would be no problem checking on her briefly at the very end.

In fact, Ivan did not particularly feel any desire to meet her sooner.

In other words, if he casually dealt with the two freshmen’s train attacks in February, the remaining incidents would be minor enough to resolve themselves without his direct involvement.

The train attacks were tutorials in the first place.

After what had happened with Eshidis, he was now completely certain of that.

There was no reason for him to take direct action again before the entrance ceremony.

Therefore—

‘I want kimchi stew.’

Ivan’s unfocused eyes abruptly sharpened.

The lingering consciousness of Kim Sunwoo was crushed beneath Ivan’s identity and vanished, leaving Ivan alone as he turned around.

A small child was clinging to the outside of the window.

“Since when have you been there…?”

“Since you started muttering that you wanted to eat kimchi stew, Director!”

“This is the third floor.”

“I’m famous for paying close attention in class!”

“…Was wall-climbing ever part of our curriculum?”

Ivan walked straight to the window and opened it wide.

He lifted the grinning child and carefully set her down inside the room.

“I won! You know that, right?”

“Don’t compete over things like that. Use the hallway next time. It’s dangerous.”

“Aww, but I have to do at least this much just to beat you!”

Saint Vasilisha Orphanage had a game with a long and storied tradition.

Approach the orphanage director without being noticed.

It was wildly popular among the children.

Ivan was, after all, a mysterious man who could catch a ball thrown at the back of his head with one hand without even turning around.

No matter how quietly they crept, it was nearly impossible to hide anywhere near him.

Despite his stern and intimidating appearance, the taciturn, sharp-featured man was remarkably harmless.

For children, who judged people more by their actions than their looks, he was one of the finest playmates imaginable.

“I’ll make you a cup of cocoa. Drink it, then go.”

“Okay!”

Ivan did not discourage the game either.

After all, the children would need some way to make a living once they graduated from the orphanage.

Anyone capable of deceiving Ivan’s senses would probably never starve, no matter where they ended up.

After sending the beaming child away, Ivan returned to his peaceful leisure.

There were still a little over two weeks before Isabel boarded her train.

Until then, he was free.

Or so he had once thought.

That was before one of the children was suddenly abducted.

“Hey, I asked what organization you belong to.”

“No, I don’t think you gentlemen understand. If our director finds out about this, you’re going to be in serious trouble!”

“Would you look at this brat? Anyone listening would think we were the ones who got kidnapped!”

Krasilov’s capital, Pritchenkaya, was one of the largest cities on the continent.

Naturally, every city had dark districts collectively known as the “backstreets,” and Pritchenkaya likewise contained several slum districts.

Even among the gangs and outlaws of the backstreets, there were those who stood apart.

They were the desperate degenerates classified as “assassination organizations.”

If someone stabbed another person with a knife, they would naturally face the judgment of the law.

The higher the victim’s status, the more severe that judgment tended to become—but the payment also rose accordingly.

An assassination organization, therefore, consisted of people who believed that as long as they got paid, it did not matter if they gambled their lives on a single strike and vanished as dew upon the execution ground afterward.

Assassins who emerged stylishly from the darkness, eliminated only their target, and disappeared like something out of a film did not exist in reality.

“So who the hell is your director?”

“I-Ivan Petrovich! Y-You’ve heard the name, right? You have, haven’t you?”

“What? Ahahahaha!”

Of course they had heard the name Ivan.

They had heard the surname Petrovich as well.

Ivan was one of the most common given names in Krasilov, and Petrovich one of the most common surnames.

Even the late king, renowned as a wise and benevolent ruler, had been named Ivan.

It was roughly the same as asking, “Hey, do you know my buddy John Smith?”

The low-ranking members of the Pritchenkaya backstreet assassination gang burst into laughter.

Then a low voice echoed from the darkness of the alley.

“Wait.”

The gang members flinched, lowered their weapons, and stepped back.

Along the path they opened, footsteps rang out.

Tap. Tap.

A man emerged.

“Who did you say?”

“I-Ivan Petro… Petrovich.”

The man looked the captive up and down for a moment, then broke into a broad smile.

“That audacious brat said he was retiring, yet he’s been building an assassination corps behind everyone’s backs?”

To outsiders, the children of Saint Vasilisha Orphanage—who treated sneaking up on Ivan without being noticed as a traditional game—could certainly appear that way.

Especially to the foremost expert among experts.

To the man most knowledgeable in all humanity regarding such matters.

To Enrique, the “Shadow Blade,” it could hardly have looked like anything else.

Ivan had spread false rumors of his death, retired cleanly, and claimed he intended to begin a new life.

Hah.

A dog might abandon its old habits before the Extermination Unit ever did.

Enrique grinned and nodded.

Ivan Petrovich had now been identified as the leader of an evil organization that collected orphans and trained them as assassins!

“He’s… the orphanage director…”

“A student seems to have been kidnapped?”

“Yes, Director. Um…”

“Who?”

Ivan had memorized the personal details of all roughly three hundred children under his care, including the graduates.

Priscilla.

No surname.

Seventeen years old.

A war orphan.

Her parents were unknown.

He remembered finding her begging near a military encampment after she had been abandoned during the war.

She was mischievous, but fundamentally spirited and talented.

Even though she was approaching graduation age, Ivan had never been particularly worried about her.

Lately, she seemed to have been wandering around in search of employment.

“Who took her? Where and when?”

“We don’t know exactly, but only the coat Priscilla had been wearing came back… This is a threat, isn’t it?”

“Probably.”

Ivan accepted the coat from the teacher and examined it carefully.

Loose threads around the sleeves.

A badly worn collar.

One button hanging so loosely that it looked ready to fall off.

He flipped through it without finding anything noteworthy.

Then his hand suddenly stopped.

There was an ordinary handprint.

A muddy one, faint enough to go unnoticed unless someone examined it carefully.

Within the dirt mark, around the heel and center of the palm, lay the faint impression of a scar.

A cross-shaped scar branded into the palm.

There was only one group whose members carried such a mark.

“Enrique.”

It was the insignia of that ill-tempered man’s organization.

No one would be stupid enough to kidnap an orphan for money.

This was either a provocation or a warning.

Or perhaps…

A summons.

Ivan realized he would have to revise the schedule he had deliberately pushed to the very end because he wanted to avoid this meeting more than any other.

Enrique, the Shadow Blade.

Or, put another way—

The Grandmaster’s summons.

After all, the Extermination Unit had been Enrique’s creation.