Chapter 14: Morning Star (4)
Bang—! Bang—!!
Each time an intermittent report sounded, he could feel the enemy scattering in confusion.
That wasn’t simply because their state of training was lacking. If anything, the more elite they were, the more unavoidable it became.
Because when ambushed, any normal officer gauges the enemy’s numbers by the frequency of their attacks.
Judging by the intervals between reports, the enemy is one man, or a small handful at most.
That much was self-evident. But the problem was that in this forest, the reports weren’t coming from a single direction.
Once from the east, bang. Turn your troops that way and all that remains in that direction are a few corpses.
While scattering your troops in bewilderment, once again from the west, bang.
At about this point, what the commanding officer would be thinking was obvious. The enemy is dispersing a small force to herd us in.
An accurate judgment.
Unless the opponent is an Annihilation Corps field commander.
Click.
Feeling the forest air thick with tension, killing intent, and rage, he slowly raised his revolver. Up ahead, 3 soldiers were holding torches and scanning their surroundings.
The action of the frightened, or of the enraged. From a distance there was no difference between the two.
Ivan exhaled long—
—then half. Setting his abdominal pressure and bearing down firmly.
He leveled the front sight’s tip at the target, calculated the distance, and raised it 5 notches.
Smooth as flowing water, through “learning” closer to instinctive movement.
All of this, 0.3 seconds.
Wide-open blue eyes, both scanning the surroundings rapidly. The spacing of the 3 soldiers, the differences in their heights, the degree of their distance from him.
When the calculation was complete, he filled his field of view with the farthest one.
Discharge.
Bang—!
At the moment of discharge he lowered the gun and gripped his axe. No need to confirm the kill. They’d tell him.
“Damn it! Inov’s been hit!”
“Where are you! Come out! Damn you!!”
Bounding swiftly over the treetops to the next position — the torches they were waving about were themselves excellent target designators.
Lighting a fire in a forest gives far too much visibility. Of course, without torches the forest was dark enough that nothing would be visible at all, but that was their problem, wasn’t it.
They shouldn’t have picked a night like this.
Fundamentally, a night raid is a genuinely, genuinely difficult undertaking. It presupposes a commander of exceptional ability and a perfect state of training across every soldier.
Even such men would hesitate before an ambush conducted at night in a forest — a foreign nation’s forest, at that. Probably about a third of them had dropped out immediately after being committed to the operation.
In that case, the enemy’s total strength is around 50.
Judging by the degree of the enemy’s dispersal and the squad-level scale of the dispersed groups, that was about right.
Standing above the head of a torch-bearing soldier, Ivan thought this, gripped his axe, and drove it straight down.
Krrash!!
“Aaaaghh!!”
A cowardly one. Even though the man actually struck by the axe hadn’t managed a single scream.
But he seemed to have been properly trained, judging by how he raised his gun the instant Ivan appeared.
Ivan bent low. The finger trembling on the man’s trigger pressed in.
There was no aiming process. At this distance it was meaningless, and besides, the man had no presence of mind for it.
Meaning he’d fallen into panic and would simply shoot first.
But that couldn’t be allowed.
“D-diieee!!”
Letting those words pass, he put force into his thighs. The tendons on the back of the man’s hand stood taut.
In that instant, Ivan, having already closed the distance in a single bound, was swinging his axe.
In one stroke the right shoulder and the nape broke simultaneously. Literally, broke.
A blow carrying violent force, then a rapid twist of the body into another blow. And another.
3 axe strokes accomplished within half a breath. No one in this place could open their mouth any longer.
“Hoo.”
Ivan rolled his shoulder with a crack and holstered his axe.
He picked up the gun this nameless soldier had been holding, aimed it skyward, hooked a fine thread to the trigger, and looped it over the tree beside him.
Tuck the gun into the corpse’s chest and fix it firmly, and the job was done.
Since a shot had been fired, someone would come looking here.
The instant they touched this corpse the loaded gun would discharge, and amid the bewilderment the command would misjudge Ivan’s position.
The delay in field information reaching command, the restricted visibility of a dark forest, the terror of unfamiliar surroundings, the confusion of information, allies steadily dwindling.
The more capable the enemy, the easier they are to deceive.
Ivan thought this as he ran along the treetops.
Which meant — this was strange.
The enemy’s condition was far too capable for something called a tutorial.
Dian August was presumably an NPC who assists Isabelle’s tutorial and then exits.
Ivan narrowed his eyes.
In this situation, had he not been here, could Isabelle really have escaped this forest alive on her own?
Given an enemy with ample firearms, well-trained troops, and capable command—
—this was not a level of danger a child barely 20 could overcome.
Why……? Is annihilating the enemy not the tutorial’s clear condition?
There are occasional cases like that. Games where you have to learn the controls while fleeing from an overwhelming enemy.
But how? And to where?
Considering the remaining distance to Prichenkaya, the probability of a naive kid who can’t even find her bearings escaping the forest safely would converge on 0%.
Ivan didn’t stop moving even amid his confusion.
There’d be time enough to puzzle over it once the situation was resolved.
***
“Captain, we’ve been hit again. This time all 3 were reportedly carved up by an axe.”
“Well now. This is……”
The man stroked his chin and made a low sound.
It felt like facing a tiger.
A hunting method that starts with the weak and works methodically inward, closing on the group’s throat.
The countermeasure was simple. Concentrate the troops and be done with it.
But that couldn’t be done. His objective was the “Hero’s daughter.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to gather the men now, even at this point……?”
“Fool. That’s precisely what those out there want.”
The enemy is few. Only natural.
Had they met a counterattack in force, they wouldn’t have used such a laborious method.
Suppose a highly elite small strike force is currently scattered through that forest.
Bang—!
Another report. This time from the west.
And then immediately after—
Bang—!
This time from beyond the north.
The reports were gradually drawing closer to his own position.
“They already know where we are.”
“Sir?”
“They already know this place is the command post! Idiot! Don’t you see?”
“Ah, yes. That’s, that’s true, but…… then why haven’t they attacked us directly……?”
Wouldn’t it be far simpler to strike the command post and then hunt down the panicked troops one by one?
Why were the enemy going to such laborious lengths?
That was because—
Bang—! Bang—!
At the end of 2 reports heard from different directions, a flash of shock struck the man’s mind.
“Give me your gun.”
“Sir? Ah, yes!”
He snatched the man’s gun and fired into the air. Bang—!
The man, who had frozen in place for a moment, soon let out a growling voice.
“It’s one man.”
“But Captain, the direction of the reports—!”
“Damn it all, cheap tricks!!”
Crrrunch!
The man crushed the gun in his hand and barked:
“They’re our reports! That bastard killed our men and set the discharge timing! A simple trap any child could rig, and we missed it!”
The man hurled the gun’s wreckage to the ground and drew his sword.
“He fired the first shot and observed our reaction. To see whether we had Line-of-Fire Detection! Our reaction was far too quick. Damn it!”
Ordinary soldiers reflexively look for cover the instant they hear a report.
But not the command post. Because their captain possessed Line-of-Fire Detection.
The moment a report sounded, he’d immediately gauged its direction and dispatched a pursuit party. That was the fatal error.
“What reason would there be not to strike here immediately! Either he lacks the confidence to face us, or he’s in a position where dragging things out would be a problem. What reason would a man trained to that level have to think that way? Eh?”
“B-because he’s alone……”
“Yes! Damn it all. The reports were bait from the start! Gather every man! Damn — I didn’t want to face that Hero bastard’s daughter myself……”
The scar carved across the man’s face twisted.
The Hero’s daughter. Even resembling the Hero by half, a monster’s offspring is a monster.
He remembers the Hero. He remembers that incarnation of absurd violence.
However young she is, one must not let one’s guard down. Because back then, the Hero too had been a young man of barely 30.
The man rolled his shoulders and stepped forward.
“I’ll face that girl myself. Gather the men and bring me the bastard in the forest.”
“Yes, Captain!”
***
“Are you the Hero’s daughter?”
Isabelle stood beneath the moonlight, looking straight at the man who had emerged from the forest.
Behind her sat people huddled together, steeped in terror.
A cluster of people gathered before the campfire, shivering in the cold and looking at her.
Isabelle shook her head. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and forcibly twisted the sword that hung heavy in her grip, regripping it hard.
“No.”
She opened her eyes. Moonlight lit the surroundings dimly. The man’s silhouette came into slightly clearer view.
It was her first time fighting with her life on the line, and her first time fighting with someone else’s life on her back.
But it was all right. Because this was “right.”
“I am the daughter of Maximilien and Marie.”
Not the Hero’s daughter, but a daughter of a person and a person.
With that meaning.
The man standing before her smiled slowly.
Horns crowning his head thrust up toward the sky.
Demonfolk. Isabelle swallowed. Her first time facing demonfolk, too.
“Admirable.”
The man nodded and adjusted his grip on his sword.
“I am Aiphelos. Of His Excellency the 6th Dragon General’s Guards Infantry Division. Centurion.” “Isabelle. Of Tiless. Knight.”
A night wind rose. The coniferous forest shivered with a rustle. Bang, a report sounded faintly far off.
The 2 of them sprinted toward each other.
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