Chapter 12 - Morning Star (2)

The express train from Saint Matilene in Thilles to Prizhenkaya in Krasilof passed through four military zones in all: first, the area held by Thilles's 3rd Guards Division; then the northwestern border; then Krasilof's Border Defense Division; and finally Prizhenkaya Defense Headquarters.

Having been so close to the front against the demons, the region was blanketed with troops to an almost oppressive degree.

By process of elimination, that left only three stations where an attack was possible. Of the thirty-odd stations along the route, only those three were sparsely populated, surrounded by rugged terrain, and more than a day's journey from reinforcements.

'One.'

The train carrying Ivan and Isabelle passed the first potential ambush site. No suspicious figures tampered with the tracks, and no mounted bandits rained down spells or cannon fire.

'Two.'

The train sped through the second potential ambush site as well. Ivan looked out the window, then sighed and sat down.

Several hours later, in silence, the train passed the third potential ambush site.

'What's going on...?'

The train had now crossed Krasilof's border. If it continued straight on, it would reach Prizhenkaya in a day. All that remained was a stretch of plains and a single mountain. There was a forest along the way, but an entire division was stationed nearby.

Which meant that from here on, an attack would be impossible even if someone tried. Ivan anxiously stroked his pistol.

'My prediction was wrong?'

Weren't all the tutorials supposed to involve a train attack? Had Esidisi simply been spectacularly unlucky? Or did the “original” game have a different tutorial designed for each character?

He had considered that each might follow a unique storyline, but it would be difficult to structure the opening that way. This was an academy story, after all.

It was supposed to be. It had to be.

Ivan bit his lip. What should he do if he had misjudged things again? If this wasn't even an academy story, did this goddamn other world have an ending at all?

Should he kill himself? Was there any other answer? Without knowing the genre, he couldn't identify the ending.

The worst possible scenario was...

That the ending belonged to the protagonist alone.

If the previous war—a classic heroic RPG—had been the true nature of this other world, wouldn't the hero's retreat into seclusion be decisive evidence? Why had the hero chosen seclusion? Had that been his “ending”?

Then what about the other world left behind?

What about us?

No, me.

What was I supposed to do?

Ivan's thoughts grew increasingly tangled. No. No, he couldn't stand it. He didn't want to stay in this fucking world any longer.

He wanted to rest. To drop everything and leave. To lie on a soft bed in a comfortable home with central heating, wrap himself in a microfiber blanket, and sleep for a week.

He wanted to order everything he craved and eat until his stomach burst. To talk about games, novels, films, dramas, and variety shows with people who used the Korean alphabet.

Death and poverty, starvation and fear were everywhere, yet even the concepts of “welfare” and “leisure” were vague. He didn't want to keep living in this goddamn premodern fantasy world.

“Eek... ghk...!”

The man seated beside him went deathly pale and let out a strangled groan. Thick, clinging killing intent seeped from Ivan like poison. But Ivan—no, Kim Seonwoo—had no presence of mind to rein himself in.

It grew sharper and sharper, so dense and concentrated that it could actually hurt someone.

As Kim Seonwoo's panic mounted, the train emerged from a tunnel beneath the mountain and began crossing a bridge over a valley. It jolted with a rumble. A warning.

BOOOOOM!!!

SCREEEECH!!

RUMBLE!!

The explosion did more than destroy the tracks. It brought down the entire bridge, sending the train slipping helplessly into the depths. Its body buckled, its forward momentum spinning the whole carriage round and round.

As his body rose into the air and the world turned upside down, Ivan reflexively seized a luggage rack to steady himself and instinctively surveyed his surroundings.

Amid the tumbling compartment and the scenery sliding past the windows, he took precise stock of the situation.

The train was falling.

It had been passing through the mountain range west of Prizhenkaya.

The train was falling.

There had been a train attack.

The tutorial wasn't over.

I wasn't wrong.

There was still an ending ahead.

Inside the falling carriage, a smile spread across Ivan's barren face. Slowly. Then deeply.

He forcibly shoved the useless, still-panicking Kim Seonwoo beneath his consciousness. It was time to deal with “what needed doing.”

Fear, hatred, and confusion did nothing to help a mission. People often spoke of keeping a cool head and a warm heart, but they were wrong.

The Extermination Unit taught this: keep your head, your heart, and your fingertips cold. Like Krasilof's brutal winters. Like its endless nights. Cold, silent, meticulous.

The Extermination Unit officer suppressed his presence and quietly vanished amid the chaos of the carriage. Stepping off a railing, treading on a luggage rack, batting aside the tumbling heaps of baggage. Up, up, up.

* * *

Isabelle's last memory was a string of fragmented words.

Her body flung through the air. Her vision shaking wildly. A torrent of agony.

Shattered windows and a deluge of earth.

And the carriage, crumpling and tearing apart.

And one more thing.

“Gasp!”

Isabelle opened her eyes, drenched in cold sweat. Darkness surrounded her. It had happened while she was watching the sunset and the conifer forests of Krasilof slip past.

She sat up, pain stabbing through her. The compartment was buried in earth. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, she could make out the mound of soil that had poured through the broken window.

And then, the sound of dripping water.

DRIP. DRIP.

A faint sound of harsh, labored breathing.

“Are you... hhh... are you awake... my lady?”

“Sir August...?”

A man stood before her.

No. He was pinned in place.

One arm was buried in the earth, and a long steel rod protruded from his side. The dripping came from the blood falling from his mouth, his nose, and his waist.

“Why...?”

He had thrown himself in front of her. He had used his body to stop the rocks that would have struck her, taking the falling wreckage of the train on his back.

She stared at the knight in horror. He wore the same affable smile as always.

“My lady. Run... ngh...! You must run... The attackers will come. This was aimed at you... hhh...!”

“Stop, stop! A-answer me! Why...? Why would you do that? Are you a fucking idiot?”

Isabelle glared at the knight, her eyes trembling.

“Do you actually think my father would be furious if I died? He wouldn't! He doesn't care about anyone!!”

“I know.”

The knight smiled weakly. Who in Thilles didn't know about that strange man, who had abandoned his wife and child to shut himself away deep in the mountains, allowing no one near him?

At first, people had thought he had left to recover from the wounds he had suffered killing the Demon King. Later, they began whispering that the Demon King had warped the hero's mind. Before four years had even passed, they were beginning to forget him.

From the moment he killed the Demon King—no, perhaps even before that—the hero had ceased to be an individual. The man named Maximilien had faded away beneath the title of hero. Now only his deeds and legends echoed hollowly.

“You hate me.”

“I do.”

“Then why...?”

“Because you are the hero's daughter.”

Even as he lay dying, the man's eyes shone with uncanny clarity. Despite the circumstances, Isabelle laughed in disbelief.

“I'm asking what that has to do with anything. Do you think my father cares one bit about that ‘daughter’ of his?”

“No, my lady. I never gave a thought to whether Maximilien cared.”

But the hero's daughter...

“Because one individual was able to plant hope in the hearts of all humanity. Because I lived through those times alongside him. And... because it means that even so great a man is still a ‘person,’ someone who leaves descendants behind and fades with time.”

Maximilien was human, too. A proposition anyone could agree with, but a sentence no one could truly comprehend.

Isabelle, however, was different. She was human. She grew angry, envious, sad. She was a young girl starved for affection.

Her very existence meant that the hero, too, was ultimately human. And conversely, that meant a human being, by virtue of being human, could become a hero.

That was what he believed. Even if he loathed Isabelle as a person, he could not help affirming her existence. She was hope.

The last seed the hero had left behind. Its very blossoming symbolized hope in this age, when those left after the war were rebuilding their ruined homes. Hope that could bloom even in these ravaged times.

Not hope for conscripts fighting the Demon King, but hope for ordinary individuals living from day to day. If the hero himself had been called a symbol of victory, then his flesh and blood was a symbol of rebuilding. A symbol of an age beginning anew.

That was why he had thrown himself in front of Isabelle despite hating her. He was a knight of Thilles. A man who could put aside his personal feelings for a greater cause. He, too, was an ordinary citizen who yearned for humanity to rebuild.

“Admirable.”

When the knight finished speaking, an arm burst from the mound of earth that had poured through the carriage window.

THUD.

The arm groped about in the earth for a while, then smoothly withdrew. Cold late-winter night air brought a refreshing chill into the compartment, and blue moonlight seeped through the opening.

“Knight, what is your name?”

“Dian August. And yours?”

“Ivan Petrovich.”

The mound of earth crumbled, and a man stepped into the compartment. Moonlight at his back, he cast a long, dark shadow.

“Do you want to live?”

“If possible.”

“This will hurt.”

Ivan tore the cap off a healing potion.