Chapter 7: Terrorism Always Happens on the Academy Enrollment Train (5)
“Guuhk…… hkk…… krk…….”
“It’s fine. You won’t die.”
“Just kill me…….”
“Don’t say such things.”
Ivan whispered affectionately as he trickled potion down over Hugo’s body.
Each time the viscous, cold liquid touched his skin, Hugo’s body twitched and a small scream leaked out.
Ivan understood this man’s feelings precisely. One of the things most hated by the majority of soldiers grinding away on the front line is the healing potion. (You can gauge its standing from the fact that healing potions rank right after mess rations, senior enlisted, commanders, generals, and the enemy.)
He himself had in fact been forcibly administered a healing potion when his forearm had nearly come off.
Just cut the damn arm off instead!! Gyaaaagh!! Don’t say such things, Sir Petrovich. Your body is a treasure of our nation! Who handles a treasure like this!!!
That was an experience from his younger, still-unseasoned days. After that horrific experience, Ivan made every effort to avoid sustaining large wounds.
Because a healing potion induces pain at precisely the same level as a certain vicious medication that requires digging all the way back into his Kim Seon-woo memories to recall. That cursed truth serum’s name is, of course, Alboth*l.
Thanks to that, Ivan was able to discover a new value in the healing potion during his Annihilation Corps service.
A healing potion inflicts pain on the level of pouring salt onto a burn.
But the wound is healed without fail.
Which means that even during the process of re-healing a wound inflicted mid-interrogation, the interrogation can continue.
It was, in a word, sustainable interrogation. His fellow agents in the Annihilation Corps at the time had been appalled at Ivan’s idea. (But sadly there is no Geneva Convention in this other world, so prisoners had no human rights.)
“I—I don’t know…… don’t know…… anything more…… anything……! It’s true…… it’s true…… so please stop…….”
“More useless than expected.”
“Spare…… no, kill…….”
“No, you have to live.”
You’re the tutorial boss.
Glug-glug-glug.
Ivan poured out more potion to shut the man’s mouth and rose to his feet.
He had learned that the criminal group that commissioned the train attack from this fellow wore thick coats, were adult males, and had perception-hindering spells laid over their faces.
It is currently January. Naturally, that means it’s the season when adult males go about in thick coats.
Nor could he determine nationality from manner of speech or accent. He hadn’t anticipated that this fellow was a bumpkin who couldn’t even distinguish such things.
A wasted effort. Ivan clicked his tongue and scanned his surroundings. The train was still quiet. That wasn’t a bad thing.
Princess Esidis is still fighting.
Had Princess Esidis been defeated, the bandits would have come pouring out of the train. Failing to find gold bullion, they’d have gained a noble with a hefty ransom instead.
The fact that nobody had emerged from the train yet was, if anything, proof of Esidis’s safety.
Just as Ivan was rising to head toward the train with that thought—
—in that instant, Line-of-Fire Detection sent a violent warning to the space between his brows.
Between his brows?
No—toward his entire face.
Fwoooo—
With a sound of the wind tearing.
Kabooooooom—!!
A boulder that came flying in like a shot put scraped past the spot where Ivan had been standing an instant before.
Ivan swiftly flung his body clear of the lines of fire that followed in succession. Bang, bang, bang! Boulders came down precisely in his wake.
“Come out.”
Judging from that throw: a powerhouse beyond expectations.
Which meant the assessment that the opponent also knew Line-of-Fire Detection.
Since it was plain the fight would have to be dragged into close quarters regardless, the opponent would have to reveal himself too.
The captain’s a real monster!!
Had he dismissed the words of a Line-of-Fire-Detection-less flunky too readily? Was this fellow here not the captain after all? Then he’d wasted good potion for nothing.
Ivan glared coldly at the man walking toward him from a distance and thought.
“So you’re a fellow with some skill.”
A middle-aged man with a solid frame packed with corded muscle came stomping over, growling.
Killing intent horrific enough to make one’s whole body prickle came swirling in.
“But to dare think of laying a hand on my niece. Foolish, for the ability you possess.”
His niece. This fellow’s blood relative? This has become a nuisance.
Ivan clicked his tongue, stowed the revolver, and gripped an axe in each hand.
“I hope you know something.”
“Nonsense…… Come. I’ll grant you death.”
The man ground his teeth with a grinding sound and raised his own axe to meet him.
In the next instant, the 2 men collided.
***
Fwoooosh—! Crunch!!
Esidis clenched her teeth as she listened to the sound of the violin’s fingerboard twisting.
“Fiddle, hold on a little longer!”
A violin is not made for striking things. As is true of most instruments. (The electric guitar is an exception. It is completed by striking the stage.)
Accordingly, this delicate and fragile wooden string instrument crumbled slowly with every swing of Esidis’s arm, its top plate splintering and its fingerboard twisting.
But Fiddle (the violin, age 2) never let the memories and friendship shared with Esidis go to waste.
Every time Fiddle was swung, various things broke. Chiefly the skulls of adult men.
“C-crazy bitch!! What is that woman!!”
“Where’s the gold bullion! Hey! What’s the situation in the freight car!”
“There’s nothing!! We’ve been had!”
The bandits wanted to run. There was no gold bullion, they’d blown up a train so it was obvious the army would come after them, and the mad woman before them was beating people to bursting with a violin.
Esidis wanted to run too. She could feel Fiddle’s life ebbing away vividly with every passing moment, fighting was frightening, and she had no idea where she even was.
Thwack! Crrrack!
When Fiddle harvested another bandit’s teeth and at last reached the end of its life—
—Esidis, clutching the fragment of fingerboard left in her hand, moaned in wretchedness.
“Fiddle…… you were a fine instrument…….”
“Crazy bitch, crazy bitch!!”
“Shouldn’t we be running? This isn’t the time for us to fight!”
“Damn it, you think that woman’s going to just watch us walk away?”
“Aaargh! Where the hell is Big Brother and what’s he doing!”
Unaware that Big Brother was at that moment getting crushed between a muscle-bound old freak and a special operations officer, the bandits murmured and edged backward.
That was a mistake.
Because the daughter of “the Slaughterer” Einar resembled her mother in many respects, but at the very least her “rage,” her “combative spirit,” and her “fighting ability” were the spitting image of her father.
To the warriors of Droan, a comrade-in-arms is like a sworn brother. She could not let the death of her longtime comrade Fiddle (2 years old, an instrument) be in vain.
She stroked Fiddle’s remains with a gentle motion, then slowly straightened her back and rose.
“Fiddle, I won’t forget your sacrifice. Thank you always, and I’m sorry.”
“I’ll hold that crazy bitch off. The rest of you run.”
“Big brother!!”
“Hurry! At least you lot have to get out alive!”
At the bandit’s shout, the remaining stragglers all turned tail and began to flee. Squeezing out tears, they headed for the main camp where Big Brother would be.
Sparing them a glance, and with everyone gone, the bandit turned to Esidis with a resolute face.
“It’s a misunderstanding, my lady.”
“……Huh?”
“We had absolutely no knowledge of the fact that my lady was aboard this train. But if you spare me, I’m willing to testify in court. Krasilov is a nation of laws, is it not? Please spare me!”
The bandit threw down his weapon, dropped to his knees, and shouted. It was a wise course of action.
Because at that very moment, the bandits who had fled were breaking into a cold sweat between an enraged Housecarl and an enraged Annihilation Corps officer.
***
“You think bringing along a few more flunkies changes anything!!”
“……A lot of them survived. But nothing changes.”
The 2 men, who had been struggling and burying axes in each other’s bodies, shouted simultaneously at the sight of the bandits pouring out of the train.
“Esidis—what happened to the woman who was aboard that train? There should have been a young blonde woman. Is she safe?”
“My niece!! Is my niece safe?!”
Ivan faltered for a moment at the man’s shout.
Wasn’t the niece this fellow here?
Ivan glanced at the man who had been knocked unconscious by shrapnel during the fight and groaned.
No wonder it had felt too difficult.
For an early tutorial, the man before him was an excessively engineered boss.
He’d wondered whether the fellow was serving as a refund-prevention speed bump like in a Soulslike, but even for that there were far too many patterns. There was simply no way a beginner could win against this fellow.
In that case……
A train assault in an academy story can never kill the protagonist. Because a helper appears and lends aid.
So this fellow was the helper.
And the tutorial boss fight was presumably designed to acclimate one to many-on-one combat by taking down a few flunkies who escaped the train along with a shoddy boss.
Ivan sighed and stowed his axes. They were badly nicked and had reached the point of needing to be discarded. Weapons were mostly consumables anyway so it hardly mattered, but the regret was unavoidable.
“Hm, hold on. You weren’t with them……?”
“I don’t know why you’d have that misunderstanding.”
The man narrowed his eyes and stowed his weapon along with Ivan.
“You were pouring healing potion on that bastard.” “Hm.”
Explaining that it was the Annihilation Corps’ interrogation method would be excessive. There was no way to make it convincing either.
Ivan shrugged.
“There was something I needed to learn.”
“Tch. You should have led with that.”
He wasn’t given time to explain it.
As Ivan looked at the man with a sour expression, the man broke into a broad grin at the sight of a woman bounding energetically out of the train.
“Niece!! Esi!! You’re safe!!”
“Bleh, Uncle?!”
Ignoring the man dashing off, Ivan glanced at the bandits, cowed by surroundings wrecked as though a bomb had gone off, and clicked his tongue.
The target was safe, and the helper had ample ability to protect the target until she reached St. Yansk University.
And he himself was a figure who must not be spotted by the target. He was in a position where it would be troublesome if his identity came out, and Esidis was an acquaintance.
It was the distant past, 7 years ago, and in those days Esidis had been no more than a kid barely fifteen. Still, there was no telling whether she might remember Ivan.
He’d secured all the information obtainable here. Ivan turned around and withdrew.
***
The eldest daughter of the Berserker Einar, Esidis.
Arrival in Krasilov confirmed.
1 Housecarl (presumed) dispatched as Droan’s deployed agent.
Target security secured—success.
Sending a single short encrypted telegram to the Eastern Palace as an urgent dispatch, Ivan entrusted himself to the capital-bound train.
For what he’d gained, it had been an exhausting day.
***
“Esi, do you happen to remember a fellow named Ivan?”
“Mister Ivan?! Yes! Of course!”
Esidis, who had brightened instantly at the welcome name, soon dropped her head despondently.
“He was such a good person…… kind, and impressive…….”
“I wouldn’t know about that, but in any case.”
The man frowned and moved along.
Beneath a makeshift palanquin fashioned from a train car door, 5 or 6 terrified bandits were bearing the thing on their shoulders.
The man muttered quietly, taking care that Esidis atop the palanquin wouldn’t hear.
“I definitely heard he died 2 years ago.”
He’d thought that fighting style looked familiar, and it was the spitting image of Krasilov’s special operations units.
He’d thought the axe work was strangely familiar, and it resembled Brother Einar’s axe work.
If you say a fellow belonging to Krasilov who learned axe work from Einar, only one man fits exactly.
The Reserve, Ivan Petrovich.
More precisely, the “Hero’s Reserve,” Ivan Petrovich. One of those deemed acceptable to insert should a vacancy arise in the Hero’s Party.
That fellow was known to have taken one of the Seven Dragon Generals down with him in mutual destruction during the annihilation campaign that unfolded after the Demon King’s death.
Between the shaggy beard, the shaded forest, and his eyes rolling back with rage, he’d had no chance to properly examine his opponent’s features—that was his regret.
Well, at a glance the man seemed to belong to the royal intelligence organization, so if he operated in the capital he’d surely run into him once.
He’d get him a shave then. The man shrugged and moved along.
A week’s walk to the capital.
St. Yansk University’s 2 “new students” begin their crossing by train-palanquin!
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