30 Years Have Passed Since the Prologue Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Morning Star (6)

“Do you imagine I’d turn traitor just because you spare my life!!”

This was what Ivan heard while pinning one of Aiphelos’s shoulders with his knee and exposing the wound site.

“Ha! You mean to try torture? Fine, go ahead! I am Aiphelos, Centurion of His Excellency the 6th Dragon General’s Guards Infantry Division!”

This was what he said while Ivan pressed around the wound site to widen it and opened the torn area of his chest.

From the moment the healing potion began to tip, the voice of the once-defiant fellow began to waver.

“Hydrochloric acid……! You vicious…… guuuuurgh……!! Cursed…… human…… scum……!”

Ivan did not correct the misunderstanding. But inwardly he was impressed. It was a wound that had completely torn open one lung. Merely imagining what it would feel like to have healing potion poured over that made Ivan’s chest sink heavily.

Fortunately, he had no memory of entrusting himself to a healing potion with a wound of that magnitude.

Because when he had taken his gravest injury, he had lost consciousness. He’d heard he was practically bathed in potion, but even had he not already been unconscious, he would have blacked out in that instant.

“Guuurgh……. Uughk……. It’s…… useless……”

At this point Ivan was genuinely impressed. The fragmented lung would be knitting together haphazardly with residual healing potion pooling inside it, and merely enduring that situation was astonishing.

But soon he snorted.

“Remember me…… I too shall not forget you. Even in the next world!”

Crrunch!

Eyes glinting with grim resolve, the fellow bit down on his tongue. A horrific crunch, crunch sounded. At that point Ivan withdrew the potion and sighed.

“Is it because he’s a man who fought in the field. He still believes in this superstition.”

“Mmbf……?”

“A person does not die from severing their tongue. People aren’t built that frail. A person who cannot move has only one means of taking their own life to begin with, and that is cardiac arrest.”

For whatever reason, the superstition that biting through one’s tongue allows a grand and honorable suicide was widespread across the world.

Astonishing. Had they seen someone accidentally commit suicide while eating?

People who work as professional agents, like Ivan, always harbored that question.

The more “valorous” the warriors, knights, and generals who rampaged on the battlefield, the more susceptible they were to such superstitions. Presumably because grandeur and glory are what they consider “romance.”

After looking down at Aiphelos with pitying eyes for a good while, Ivan let out a deep sigh and checked the remaining volume of healing potion.

This was his last bottle, and less than a third remained.

“This way the pain will only be prolonged. I have no desire to torment you, Centurion. This is a medical act, and this draught is healing potion.”

“Mmbf…… ngk……!”

“Stop. The wound will open further.”

He forced open the man’s mouth, poured in every last drop of the remaining healing potion, and clamped the jaw shut. The man seemed to be trying to spit it out somehow, but soon his eyes went slack.

The half-severed tongue steeped in healing potion, and it went down the esophagus in gulps and spread through his body.

Healing potion treats only external wounds. Drinking it would be unlikely to confer any particular benefit. Not unless one had a perforation in the stomach or esophagus.

Of course, if one were suffering from esophagitis it would heal cleanly along with the sensation of the entire esophagus burning, but that’s beside the point.

“Mmbff……”

“Do you have the strength to speak now?”

“Poison Spider Petrovich……”

“Hm……?”

Aiphelos, eyes unfocused, began to mutter blankly.

He shifted his gaze to glance at the beard covering the whole area beneath Ivan’s nose—

—then lifted his eyes to examine the brow and forehead.

“I heard…… you were dead…… this method…… ngk…… hk…… Annihilation…… Corps…… so that’s it…… that’s it……”

So he was a fellow who had operated on the battlefield directly during the war.

Ivan narrowed his eyes.

“Why did you take the field yourself? Your circumstances can’t be good enough to throw away a man of your caliber like a consumable.”

A Centurion is nothing more than the lowest-tier commander.

Which is to say, common manpower they had in rotting abundance. Naturally not an important figure.

But that was during the war, when the demonfolk’s full strength was still intact.

After the Demon King and most of the Seven Dragon Generals died and the remaining stragglers were torn apart and driven out of the world—

—several years had passed since the arena opened in which they all pursued their own ambitions according to the logic of power.

A Centurion of that era is, now, a precious “active-duty officer.” The verified sort, in both martial force and command ability.

“Not anymore…… cough! Not anymore.”

“What?”

“Did you think we’d persist only with operations plainly destined to fail……? The Alliance…… your indolence…… hnngh…… sickens…… me……”

When they had attacked Esidis, the demonfolk had hired mercenaries while concealing their identity.

Presumably sympathizers remaining inside the Alliance had assisted. And that had failed spectacularly.

Afterward, they realized this operation had collapsed before it even began. Their tail had already been stepped on before the operation was executed.

We cannot simply trust the sympathizers. There is a spy among us.

Judging themselves outmatched in the intelligence war, they now had to send someone trustworthy. Because it absolutely had to succeed.

Whatever the case with the others, one person — the Hero’s daughter alone — absolutely had to be killed.

But at the same time, failure had to be accounted for. Send too important a figure and fail, and the damage would be uncontainable.

So Aiphelos was a touchstone.

A commander of exactly the right level — capable of succeeding at most operations, and whose loss through failure wouldn’t cost much.

Ivan looked down at Aiphelos with bitter eyes. This fellow had volunteered while knowing his own valuation precisely.

Because even if the operation succeeded, he must not return alive if traces were to be erased.

However long past the war’s end this peaceful era might be, there is no method of committing terrorism near Prichenkaya and returning alive without a trace.

In the fact that he had walked into deadly ground with death in mind from the outset, Ivan felt a powerful kinship.

He let out a deep sigh.

“There won’t be a next attack, then. Since you failed.”

“……”

“Talking to myself. You needn’t answer.”

Ivan sat down beside him and looked up at the sky. Beside him he could hear Aiphelos’s ragged breathing.

“When you failed and were discarded, they’d be able to say it was merely terrorism perpetrated by ‘a small faction of radicals.’ Your superiors will explain it that way to the Alliance too.”

“……”

“Because of your existence, the Alliance’s guard will already have risen to its peak. Naturally they won’t do anything so idiotic as scheming a second attack.”

“……”

“Is there something you want?”

“What…… do you intend to do with me……?”

“You have 3 choices remaining.”

To be detained as he is and dragged to Prichenkaya.

He would then receive the gracious hospitality of the Krasilov Counterintelligence Command. On charges of attempted assassination of a state figure.

After which the Counterintelligence Command would fabricate this fellow’s superiors as “the Crown Prince’s faction” and launch a political offensive.

Naturally severe torture and magical seals would be applied.

Or, to be released as he is and return home.

The Krasilov Counterintelligence Command would attach a tail to him.

However swiftly he fled, there is no way to return intact from the vicinity of Prichenkaya to his own encampment.

Accordingly, even if he made it back alive, he would face this suspicion:

A traitor who joined the enemy to save his own skin.

He’d plainly be shunned among the demonfolk, or interrogated by them and executed.

But lastly.

“Do you understand your situation?”

“Kill me.”

“You have been abandoned by your own kind. You can neither go back nor go forward. The only place left is the next world.”

Ivan gripped his axe and raised it. Slowly, taking a firm hold of the fellow’s horn.

Aiphelos shut his eyes tight and murmured quietly.

“Though ye wander the valley of death.”

“Fear not. For I comfort ye.”

The Demon King’s Prayer. One he had heard far too many times.

In the days when the Demon King lived, the last words of all demonfolk were generally identical.

They died longing for the Demon King. Fanatically.

Accordingly, Ivan knew the next verses as well.

“I am the Cross Star of the darkest night.”

“I am the lighthouse of the storm-tossed sea.”

“I am your cradle, and your fortress.”

Fear not. For I comfort ye.

Ivan whispered while gripping Aiphelos’s horn.

“Are your parents still alive?”

“……What?”

“If not, I operate an orphanage.”

“What in the world are you saying……”

“I take in war orphans with nowhere to go. Without distinction of nation or race.”

4 years ago, when the Demon King died. When Ivan resolved to retire, the order handed down by his superiors was as follows.

Go and kill a Seven Dragon General.

It meant go and die. It was an order issued to every member of the Annihilation Corps.

Of the Annihilation Corps, which had consisted of 8 strike teams in total, only a single strike team survived after that order.

After he succeeded and returned, Elizaveta had wept as she stamped her seal on his retirement application. Live without ever being seen again. Live as though dead.

That she was sorry she couldn’t block the order. That he had come back alive, and for that alone she was grateful.

That even when the names of all those who went before were forgotten, the honor of all who departed would be eternal.

And so.

“If you have any thought of merely surviving, you can cast off yourself and live forgotten, as though dead.”

“I have no right to that.”

“Everyone has that right. Loyalty and faith do not stand in for your life.”

If you wish it, I’ll shatter your horn. It will be the last chain binding your body.

But if you desire it, I’ll bring the axe down a little lower.

That is the last choice by which one may live like a person, or depart like a person.

At Ivan’s words Aiphelos closed his eyes.

He let out a deep sigh.

Then drew short, quick breaths again.

“I want…… to live.”

“Well decided.”

Crack!

One more person was added to St. Vasilisa Orphanage’s roster of children.

Orphan, 50s, of demonfolk origin.

***

After the assassination of Esidis failed, the demonfolk’s threat level increased by a wide margin.

Which is to say, in other words, that Isabelle’s tutorial had been designed to be this difficult because of Ivan’s own actions.

And that meant—

The tutorials do not proceed simultaneously.

It was not a game in which each character must resolve their event at the same point in time upon creation; rather, there was a difference in timing between the events each starting character experiences.

Ivan stroked his chin and sank into thought.

The demonfolk are not something like an AI that simply moves as programmed.

As with everyone in this world, none of them is any sort of NPC.

Even events proceeding according to cliché can, in the end, meet fluid conclusions depending on variables.

In that case, what is there that can be anticipated? What ought to be done?

Ivan turned his gaze to Isabelle.

She was looking at the survivors with sad eyes.

Keeping these ones alive and getting them graduated.

Because this other world is an academy story. Because it has to be. Even if there is no player, no character, no NPC. Because that one thing at least must not change.

There’d be time enough for stray thoughts afterward.

“Mister.”

“Hm.”

“If I hadn’t boarded this train today, those people’s families…… the people who were on this train, they’d have lived, wouldn’t they?”

Because the dead, too, are surely no mere NPCs sacrificed in a cut scene.

Probably, yes.

Ivan gazed at the dimly brightening night sky and answered.

“Do you know how many people the Hero killed?”

“……Pardon?”

“Including indirect casualties, it’s possible to estimate at least 30,000 a year. That’s the number who died shoved onto battlefields they were certain to lose, in order to support the Hero’s operations and draw the Demon King’s Army’s attention.”

A Hero’s Party is fundamentally an assassination squad. For killing the Seven Dragon Generals and the Demon King.

Which meant that to make them let their guard down, one had to hand them a no-lose hand on other fronts.

As a basic grand strategy of feint east, strike west, there was an era in which defeat was compelled on other fronts to support the Hero’s Party’s infiltration.

“Everyone present at the time knew that fact. The Hero, myself, even the soldiers at the very front.”

“……”

“And yet the Hero smiled even in those moments.”

Because otherwise — if he imagined his own failure, if he lamented his own inadequacy—

—if he were crushed under his own burden—

—then the lives of all those who had died solely for him would be fading away in vain.

So the Hero smiled instead. Even in an era with so little hope that one had to split the sky to find the Morning Star.

Because he himself had to appear as hope to everyone.

Because the moment he collapsed, the United Kingdoms were finished.

“Look.”

Ivan raised his hand and pointed at the sky.

In the east, dawn was breaking. Staining the sky deep blue.

In the west, the moon had already hidden its face. But at that far edge too. Off in the distance.

Even in the brightest hour, the Morning Star is shining.

Just as it still shone in the darkest night.

“Ah……”

“That is the star your father bore in those days, and the star you have now inherited. A Hero does not mean the strongest.”

“The most…… valorous……”

“Yes. The one who does not kneel to any burden and does not lose their smile in any moment — that is what we called a Hero. So now you must become the Hero for those people.”

Looking at the survivors gathered in their grief, Ivan pressed down on her head.

“Maximilien’s daughter, Isabelle. Lift your head and straighten your back. The grieving receive pity, but the one who always smiles is followed by admiration. Hold hope, stand up, and live recalling gratitude before guilt at someone’s sacrifice. Live proving to everyone that the sacrifice was not in vain.”

Like the Morning Star. Not losing its own light even beside the most brilliantly shining moon.

Shining plainly even beside the rising sun.

As a symbol of hope, just so.

Isabelle gazed blankly at Ivan, then came to herself and said:

“Have you any thought of shaving that beard, by chance?”

“None.”

Ivan answered with distaste.