Chapter 7 - A Terrorist Attack Always Strikes the Train to the Academy (5)

“Ghh... Hh... Ghrk...”

“It’s all right. You won’t die.”

“Just kill me...”

“Don’t say that.”

Ivan whispered tenderly as he drizzled potion over Hugo’s body. Every time the cold, viscous liquid touched him, Hugo flinched and let out a small scream.

Ivan knew exactly how the man felt. Healing potions were among the things most soldiers who had slogged through the front lines hated most. (Their standing was clear from the fact that they ranked right after army chow, senior soldiers, commanding officers, commanders-in-chief, and the enemy.)

In fact, he had once been forcibly dosed with a healing potion when his forearm had nearly been torn off.

[“Just cut the arm off instead!! Aaaaargh!!”]

[“Don’t say that, Sir Petrovich. Your body is a national treasure!”]

[“Who treats a treasure like this?!!”]

That had been in his younger, less experienced days. After that horrific experience, Ivan had done his utmost to avoid serious injuries.

Healing potions caused exactly the same level of pain as one particularly vicious medicine he had to dig back into his memories as Kim Seonwoo to recall. The name of that accursed truth serum was, of course, Albo-7 Solution.

Thanks to that, Ivan had discovered a new use for healing potions during his service in the Extermination Unit.

A healing potion caused pain on par with sprinkling salt on a burn. But it always healed the wound.

Which meant he could continue an interrogation even while treating the wounds inflicted during it.

Truly sustainable interrogation. His fellow agents in the Extermination Unit had been appalled by the idea. (Sadly, however, this other world had no Geneva Conventions, so prisoners had no human rights.)

“I-I don’t... know... anything... anything else...! Really... I swear... so stop...”

“You’re even less useful than I expected.”

“Spare me... No, kill me...”

“No. You have to live.”

He was the tutorial boss, after all.

TRICKLE.

Ivan poured on more potion to shut the man up, then rose.

He had learned that the criminals who had commissioned the train attack were adult men wearing heavy coats, with recognition-obscuring spells on their faces.

It was January. Naturally, that meant it was the season for adult men to walk around in heavy coats.

He couldn’t identify their nationality from their speech or accents, either. He hadn’t anticipated that this bumpkin wouldn’t know how to tell such things apart.

A waste of time. Ivan clicked his tongue and surveyed his surroundings. The train was still quiet. That wasn’t a bad thing.

‘Princess Esidisi is still fighting.’

If she had lost, the bandits would have come pouring out of the train. Instead of finding gold bars, they would have acquired a noble worth a hefty ransom.

The fact that no one had emerged yet was, on the contrary, evidence that Esidisi was safe.

With that thought, Ivan straightened to head for the train.

At that very instant, Line of Fire Detection sent a violent warning to the space between his eyebrows.

Between his eyebrows?

No. His entire face.

WHOOOOSH—

With the sound of air being torn apart—

KABOOOOM—!!

A boulder hurled like a shot put swept through the spot where Ivan had just been standing.

Ivan sprang away, dodging successive lines of fire.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Boulders slammed down with unerring accuracy, tracking his movements.

“Show yourself.”

Judging by those throws, his opponent was stronger than expected. That meant they would know about Line of Fire Detection, too. Since it was clear this would have to come down to close combat anyway, they would have to reveal themselves.

[“The boss is a real monster!!”]

Had he dismissed that too readily because it came from a grunt without Line of Fire Detection? Was this fellow at his feet not the boss, then? That would mean he had simply wasted precious potion.

Ivan thought this as he coldly watched a man approach from the distance.

“You’ve got some skill.”

A solidly built middle-aged man with bulging muscles strode forward, growling. Horrific killing intent swirled around him, enough to make one’s whole body prickle.

“But to dare lay a hand on my niece. Your stupidity outstrips your skill.”

A niece or nephew? Was he related to this fellow? How troublesome.

Ivan clicked his tongue, put away his pistol, and gripped an axe in each hand.

“I hope you know something.”

“What bullshit... Come. I’ll kill you.”

Grinding his teeth, the man raised his own axes to meet him.

An instant later, the two men clashed.

* * *

WHOOOSH! CRUNCH!!

Esidisi gritted her teeth at the sound of her violin’s fingerboard warping.

“Hang in there a little longer, Fiddle!”

Violins were not made for bashing things. Like most instruments. (Electric guitars were an exception. They achieved their true purpose when smashed against a stage.)

Thus, with every swing of Esidisi’s arm, this delicate, fragile wooden string instrument slowly broke apart, its top plate crumbling and its fingerboard twisting.

But Fiddle (violin, age two) would never let the memories and friendship it shared with Esidisi go to waste.

With every swing of Fiddle, other things broke as well. Mostly the skulls of adult men.

“C-crazy bitch!! What the hell is she?!”

“Where’s the gold?! Hey! What about the freight cars?!”

“There’s nothing there!! We’ve been duped!”

The bandits wanted to run. There was no gold, the army was bound to come after them for blowing up a train, and the crazy woman before them was beating people open with a violin.

Esidisi wanted to run, too. She could distinctly feel Fiddle’s life ebbing away with every moment, fighting frightened her, and she had no idea where she was.

THWACK!

CRACK!

When Fiddle harvested another bandit’s teeth and finally breathed its last, Esidisi let out a desolate groan, clutching the fragment of fingerboard left in her hand.

“Fiddle... You were a fine instrument...”

“Crazy bitch! Crazy bitch!!”

“Shouldn’t we run? This isn’t the time to fight!”

“Damn it, you think she’ll just let us leave?”

“Aaagh! Where the hell is the boss, and what’s he doing?!”

Unaware that their boss was currently collateral damage in a fight between a muscle-bound old monster and a special-operations officer, the bandits murmured among themselves and edged backward.

That was a mistake.

The daughter of Einar, “The Slaughterer,” took after her mother in many ways, but in “rage,” “fighting spirit,” and “combat prowess,” at least, she was her father’s spitting image.

To the warriors of Droan, a comrade-in-arms was like a sworn sibling. She could not let the death of her longtime comrade Fiddle (two years, an instrument) be in vain.

She gently stroked Fiddle’s remains, then slowly straightened to her feet.

“Fiddle, I won’t forget your sacrifice. Thank you for everything. And I’m sorry.” “I’ll hold the crazy bitch off. You run.”

“Boss!!”

“Go! At least you lot should get out alive!”

At the bandit’s shout, the remaining men turned and fled as one. Eyes brimming with tears, they headed for the base where their big boss would be.

After a glance at their retreating backs, the bandit turned to Esidisi with a resolute expression once everyone had gone.

“There’s been a misunderstanding, miss.”

“... Huh?”

“We had absolutely no idea you were aboard this train. But if you spare me, I’m willing to testify in court. Krasilof is a nation governed by the rule of law, isn’t it? Please let me live!”

The bandit threw down his weapon and dropped to his knees, shouting. A wise decision.

At that very moment, the bandits who had fled were breaking out in cold sweats between an enraged Huscarl and an enraged Extermination Unit officer.

* * *

“Do you think bringing in a few more grunts will change anything?!”

“... Quite a few survived. But that changes nothing.”

The two men, who had been battling away, driving their axes into each other’s bodies, shouted simultaneously at the sight of the bandits rushing out of the train.

“Esidisi. What happened to the woman aboard that train? There should have been a young blonde woman. Is she safe?”

“My niece!! Is my niece safe?!”

The man’s shout gave Ivan pause.

Wasn’t this fellow his nephew?

Ivan glanced at the man who had been knocked unconscious by debris during their fight, then groaned.

No wonder. He’d thought this was too hard.

The man before him was far too overdesigned a boss for an opening tutorial.

Ivan had wondered whether he was a Soulslike-style roadblock meant to prevent refunds, but even for that, he had too many attack patterns. A beginner had absolutely no way of beating him.

In that case...

‘Train attacks in academy stories can never kill the protagonist. Because a helper appears to assist them.’

So this man was the helper.

And the tutorial boss fight had probably been designed to familiarize the player with fighting multiple enemies at once by taking down a few grunts who had escaped the train and one pathetic boss.

Ivan sighed and put away his axes. Their edges were so badly chipped that he would have to throw them out. Most weapons were consumables anyway, so it hardly mattered, but he couldn’t help regretting the loss.

“Hmm, wait. You weren’t with them...?”

“I don’t know what gave you that idea.”

The man followed Ivan’s lead and put away his weapons, narrowing his eyes.

“You were pouring healing potion over that bastard.”

“Hmm.”

Explaining that it was an Extermination Unit interrogation method would be going too far. Nor did he have any way to make it convincing.

Ivan shrugged.

“I had things to find out.”

“Tch. You should’ve said that first.”

He hadn’t given Ivan time to explain.

As Ivan gave him a disgruntled look, the man broke into a broad grin at the sight of a woman bounding out of the train.

“My niece!! Eshi!! You’re saaaafe!!”

“Gah, Uncle?!”

Ignoring the man as he ran off, Ivan glanced at the bandits, who were terrified by surroundings so thoroughly destroyed that a bomb might have gone off, and clicked his tongue.

The target was safe, and the helper was more than capable of protecting her until she reached Jansk University.

And Ivan himself must not be seen by the target. He was in a position where having his identity exposed would be troublesome, and Esidisi knew his face.

It had been seven long years, and Esidisi had been no more than a little kid of fourteen or fifteen back then. Still, she might remember him.

He had secured all the information he could obtain here. Ivan turned and withdrew.

* * *

Esidisi, eldest daughter of Einar the Berserker.

Arrived in Krasilof.

One Huscarl (presumed) dispatched as Droan’s agent.

Target’s safety successfully secured.

Sending a brief encrypted telegram to the eastern palace as an urgent dispatch, Ivan settled aboard a train bound for the capital.

An exhausting day for so little gain.

* * *

“Eshi, do you happen to remember a fellow named Ivan?”

“Uncle Ivan?! Yes! Of course!”

Esidisi’s face lit up at the welcome name, only for her to lower her head dejectedly a moment later.

“He was such a good man... Kind, and wonderful...”

“I’m not so sure about that, but anyway.”

The man walked on with a frown.

Five or six terrified bandits were shouldering a makeshift palanquin fashioned from a torn-off train door.

Taking care that Esidisi, seated atop it, wouldn’t hear him, the man muttered under his breath.

“I’m sure I heard he died two years ago.”

He had thought the fighting style looked familiar; it was exactly that of Krasilof’s special-operations troops. And the strangely familiar axe work had resembled Brother Einar’s.

There was only one fellow from Krasilof who had learned to wield an axe from Einar and fit the bill.

Ivan Petrovich, the Reserve.

More precisely, Ivan Petrovich of the “Hero Reserve.” One of those deemed suitable to fill a vacancy in the Hero’s Party.

But the man was supposed to have died taking one of the Seven Dragon Generals down with him in the extermination campaign after the Demon King’s death.

It was a shame he hadn’t had a chance to study his opponent’s appearance properly, what with the bushy beard, the shadowy forest, and his own blinding rage.

Well, at a glance, the fellow had seemed to belong to the royal intelligence organization. He would probably run into him at least once while operating in the capital.

He could make him shave then. The man shrugged and walked on.

The capital was a week away on foot.

Jansk University’s two “freshmen” began their journey by train-palanquin!