Chapter 5 - A Terrorist Attack Always Strikes the Train to the Academy (3)

Igorevich Station was a small, quiet country stop. It stood in a modest village that served as nothing more or less than a border checkpoint between Krasilof and Droan.

As such, only a limited range of passengers got off here. Local residents or freight distributors. That was about it.

Which meant...

'Sloppy.'

The three men scattered around the station were plainly suspicious.

First, the man in the corner of the waiting room, glancing at the clock as he read a newspaper. He looked as if he were checking the time for his train, but he wasn't. He had already let three trains go by.

Next, the man nodding off with his arms crossed. He, too, appeared to be passing the time innocently, but that wasn't the case. Every time Ivan rose to visit the restroom or the newspaper stand, he furtively opened his eyes to watch him.

Last, the man selling dried vegetables in a corner of the waiting room. By this point, it was almost laughable. Not only had he sold no vegetables to anyone inside, but who would buy vegetables in the waiting room of a deserted country station in the first place?

The clincher was that Ivan, born to tenant farmers, could tell what condition those vegetables were in. They hadn't been dried for long-term storage. They had simply been left out so long that they had shriveled up.

Ivan moved his hand beneath his newspaper and gripped his pistol. A glance at the clock showed nine. The arrival of Princess Esidisi's train was drawing near.

Well, he ought to make sure.

He slowly rose, folded his newspaper, and headed toward the trash can. On the way, he slid the muzzle of his gun precisely beneath the nape of the dozing man's neck.

"!!"

"Quiet."

The man started in horror and tried to reach inside his coat with his right hand, only to freeze at the touch of the cold muzzle.

Good. One pistol inside the left side of his coat. His almost immediate reaction suggested training, too.

"H-hey, what are you doing over there!"

"Stop!"

The other two men in the waiting room shouted simultaneously and leaped to their feet.

Ridiculous. Ivan's pistol was concealed by his newspaper. To anyone else, it would have looked as though he had merely placed a hand on the back of the man's neck.

In other words, the three were working together.

But he needed one last check, just in case. Elizaveta might have sent agents despite his insistence that he needed no support.

"Where does your loyalty lie?"

"W-what?"

If this man were Elizaveta's agent, loyal to the royal house of Krasilof, he would never have answered that question with another question. It was one of the first questions asked not only by the Extermination Unit, but by intelligence agents in government service.

It meant the same thing as a frontline soldier shouting, "Halt! Move and I'll fire!" It was the first question that had to be answered, even with a lie—and perhaps the last.

So this fellow was nothing more than a mercenary working for pay.

BANG!

A bullet shot from the muzzle and severed the man's cervical spine. He crumpled in Ivan's grip without even a chance to react.

"Shit!!"

"Shoot! Shoot that bastard!!"

The vegetable seller and the newspaper reader scrambled up, drawing pistols from inside their coats.

This meant several things.

One, they were working together.

One, they were sloppy.

One, they did not serve the Krasilof monarchy.

And one last thing: they had never faced anyone who qualified as truly powerful.

BANG! BANG!

The reflexively fired bullets skimmed past Ivan's shoulder and the side of his head.

Their aim was good. Mercenaries, then. But their ignorance of "Line of Fire Detection" made them very cheap mercenaries.

As they adjusted their stances to fire again, Ivan was already swinging his axe at the vegetable seller while aiming his pistol at the newspaper reader.

SLICE! BANG!

"Aaaaargh!!"

The man whose wrists had both been severed in a single stroke collapsed with a hideous scream. The other, struck squarely between the eyes by a bullet, never even managed to cry out.

Ivan approached, wiping the blood from his axe blade on the fallen vegetable seller's coat.

"Is this all of you?"

"Ghh... ngh... Where did a monster like you..."

"Monster...?"

Ivan tilted his head, briefly wondering whether he had misheard. A monster? For something this trivial?

Wasn't that an absurd thing to say for men who had intended to make an enemy of Einar the Berserker? Had Einar come in person, there wouldn't even have been a fight. That lunatic would have sliced apart the entire waiting room in one stroke.

"They never... never said anything about this...!"

The bleeding was severe. Once the ulnar and radial arteries running through the wrists were severed, death within five minutes was assured without proper measures to stop the bleeding. With both hands cut off, it would be worse still.

The vegetable seller's face was already deathly pale, his jaw trembling. Ivan sighed and searched inside his coat. The man had no hands, so he had to do it himself.

A scrap of tissue, a few copper coins in a worn pouch, no identification, naturally, and a small instrument panel with an odd button. The magic emanating from it was faint. Probably a signaling device.

"You'll die in three minutes unless the bleeding stops. Where are the others?"

"B-by the tracks..."

"How many?"

"Fifteen... Y-you can't do anything alone...! I'll, I'll help! S-save me! They're all armed, a-and our boss is there too. He's a real monster!! Spare me and I'll d-distract them!!"

The vegetable seller trembled as he struggled to shout. He wanted to live, of course. Anyone watching their own blood gush out in real time would be driven out of their mind.

Ivan nodded. The vegetable seller's face visibly brightened.

"You were left here to signal your 'boss' if anything unexpected happened. You're the scouting team."

"Y-yes! I'm useful! Really useful!"

This man hadn't known that Line of Fire Detection existed. His boss was likely on much the same level.

"Were you told who was on the train?"

"Th-they said it was carrying gold bullion...! A freight train carrying trade goods from Droan to Krasilof, that's what they s-said...!"

"Understood."

"Y-you're sparing me, right? I answered everything you asked! I didn't lie!!"

"No. There was a lie in there."

"No! There really wasn't!!!"

Ivan looked down at him coldly.

"You said you were useful."

"What...?"

These men were merely bandits working for a pittance. Torturing them would yield no information.

If he was going to torture anyone, it would be the boss. At least he could find out who the man was connected to.

CRUNCH!

Ivan rose, swinging his axe down into the man's head.

CRACK!

The man's body went limp.

He clicked the receiver's button and gauged the direction in which the line of magic flickered.

Not far.

Ivan wiped his axe blade on the hem of the man's coat and secured it at his waist.

It was three minutes past nine. If the train ran on schedule, it would arrive at this station at ten.

Within fifty minutes, a terrorist attack would strike the train.

Which meant...

"Plenty of time."

Ivan gave a faint chuckle and dealt with the bodies. Five minutes was enough to remove the bloodstains and signs of combat. Eliminating traces had been one of the most important parts of Extermination Unit training.

* * *

There was a reason Ivan had taken his time.

According to the academy formulas, a train attack could never harm "the protagonist and the main characters." When the train was attacked, the protagonist would escape safely with someone's help and reach the academy without further trouble.

Ivan had never intended to prevent the train attack in the first place.

'This is a tutorial.'

Ivan was running through the forest. Whenever the receiver's line of magic grew faint, he pressed the button again to check the direction of the signal.

'A tutorial is the stage that helps a player get used to the game.'

That must be why they had hired such incompetent bandits for a plan to ambush none other than "a child of the Hero's Party." It was designed to ease the player into combat in the low-level zone.

At first, Ivan had wondered which member of the Hero's Party would be the "protagonist." He soon deduced the answer.

All of them.

They were all protagonists. Every one of these children of the Hero's Party.

Suppose a player was creating their first character in a game. They would inevitably be offered "archetype" characters, each with a unique storyline within the setting. Crucially, they would all have different traits or classes.

Isabelle, the hero's daughter. Mage and warrior multiclass.

Oscar, the knight's son. Knight.

Elpihera, the mage's daughter. Mage.

Esidisi, the Berserker's daughter. Presumably a bard and Berserker multiclass.

Lucia, the rogue's disciple. Rogue or assassin.

When a player chose one of these characters, they would have to deal with a "train attack" as their tutorial.

That was why Ivan had turned his thoughts in a different direction.

'If every character's tutorial has a train attack in common, I can identify the terrorist group in advance.'

Once or twice might not leave a trail, but commit the same act six times, and they were bound to be tracked down.

Racing through the undergrowth, Ivan clicked the receiver's button once more. This time, he sensed the line of magic flicker from very close by.

'Leave the tutorial to the protagonist. I'll eliminate the variables.'

He wouldn't stop the train attack. Its occurrence was a "constant," after all. Preventing it beforehand might simply cause trouble to erupt in some other form.

Instead, he would identify whatever group had orchestrated the attack. Then he would find its traces at the academy and eliminate it.

Avoid open warfare, conduct intelligence operations behind the lines, and exterminate threats. That was the Extermination Unit's way.