Chapter 77 - Common Sense for Academy Festivals (7)

"You would... strip me of my post?"

"You broke your oath of loyalty."

"My oath of loyalty?! Does this country dare demand any more loyalty from me? No. No, Ivan. Even your loyalty... This country does not deserve our devotion."

Ivan did not converse with madmen. He was a rational person. His training had included nothing about psychological counseling. Persuading and treating lunatics was a psychiatrist's job. (There were none in this world.)

He calmly raised the muzzle and aligned his sights. His armament consisted of one pistol and twenty rounds.

His opponent was a superhuman, and a fairly well-trained one at that. Naturally, pistol rounds would do nothing to him. But there was a reason pistols were standard equipment for the Extermination Unit. Even in a situation like this, there were still ways to use one.

"You have no intention of listening. Have you been brainwashed?"

"Pavel."

"Yes? Ready to talk now?"

"No."

Ivan gauged the angle of Pavel's wrist around the spear shaft and spoke.

"We weren't taught to talk before a fight."

Pavel ground his molars at those words and glared at him.

Here it came.

Without shifting his stance, Ivan changed his aim with nothing but a turn of his wrist. The spearhead sprang forward, shooting straight at his head.

SHRAAAK!

With a roar that tore through the air, the spear said to have ripped through a dragon's throat hurtled toward him. But he knew its trajectory.

Watching the spearhead, Ivan turned his wrist. His muzzle pointed three inches ahead along its path. He had no need to take careful aim. Within ten meters, he could shoot without even considering his firing stance or his target's relative speed.

BANG!

CLANG!

Sparks flew from the spear's tip. Knocked off course, the blade scraped through empty air and withdrew.

It was only natural. Even a 9 mm pistol round carried 400 joules of kinetic energy. Stripped of complicated engineering equations, it simply meant a bullet's impact could easily alter a spearhead's trajectory.

Assuming it hit.

"What the...!"

Shooting the spearhead to divert an attack? That was no different from intercepting an incoming arrow with another arrow!

"Let's see how long you can keep that up!!"

Pavel drew his spear back, grinding his teeth.

Yes, it was possible with extraordinary concentration, good eyes, and sufficient finesse. But he couldn't keep it up forever. The technique required luck and timing. The slightest error, and the spearhead would rip through Ivan's throat unimpeded.

Yet there was no fear in Ivan's eyes. Not even now, as he danced on a blade's edge with his life at stake.

"Nineteen times."

The number of rounds remaining. Meaning he could succeed exactly that many times, once with each shot. Yet he spoke not with confident conviction, but as though stating a simple fact. With those words, Ivan took a step forward.

Three meters separated them. His stride was always seventy-eight centimeters, no matter the circumstances. Four steps would take him within reach. In that time, Pavel could launch at most seventeen attacks across the gap.

In other words, he had more than enough.

Ivan never rushed. He stepped forward, his eyes on the spearhead and the wrist holding its shaft. Trying to dodge Pavel's attacks would only introduce variables. Instead, he entrusted his defense entirely to a single pistol.

One step. His body unguarded, openings everywhere, he stood tall as if inviting an attack at any moment. And stepped forward.

"How dare you!"

SHWIIISH!

CLICK, BANG!

Sparks flew from the spearhead.

SWISH! SHRAAAK!

CLICK, BANG, BANG!

The upward sweep at his waist. The downward thrust at his thigh. Again and again, their paths twisted away, striking empty air before withdrawing.

One bullet at a time, leading the spearhead with perfect accuracy as it moved too fast even for Pavel himself to see. Precise. Flawless.

This was no human feat. Only then did it occur to Pavel.

"Is this... the skill of the Hero's Party...!"

"What are you talking about?"

CLICK, BANG!

Five strikes came with the next step. Shooting every one of them with pinpoint accuracy, Ivan took another.

"If any of those people from the Hero's Party were here, you wouldn't still be standing."

Even Gilles Vert, who by a dispassionate assessment had been their weakest combatant (a debatable point), could have butchered Pavel in a single breath. Techniques for facing a superhuman with nothing but a small firearm such as a pistol were merely desperate survival skills that second-line units like the Extermination Unit had been forced to learn.

Pavel gave a hollow laugh, his face full of a madman's arrogance.

"You crazy bastard."

There was little trace of his initial ferocity now. Ivan deflected three spear strikes with bullets and came to a firm halt.

At last, four steps.

They were too close for Pavel to draw back his spear and strike. Seven bullets remained. But Ivan no longer needed the pistol. Against a superhuman, a pistol was a form of armor: a tool used to defend against their attacks.

And so.

CLICK

"...?"

He discarded the pistol. As armor that allowed him to close the distance, it had served its purpose.

Confusion crept into Pavel's eyes. Ivan regarded him with his deep-set gaze and slowly raised a fist.

Bullets did not strike superhumans. Line of Fire Detection was an instinct that took precedence over everything else at all times. There was no need to advertise when he would attack. Even the fleeting interval between detection and firing was fatal in a battle between superhumans.

WHOOSH!

Ivan's fist cut through the air toward Pavel's blankly staring face.

TAP, TAP-TAP!

Pavel hastily blocked, striking Ivan's wrist. Ivan had expected it. The spear techniques were his family's secrets, so Ivan had needed to see them first. But their hand-to-hand combat was standard military doctrine. Ivan had learned the same martial art as Pavel.

He could predict the defensive moves each attack would draw. And anything predictable was merely another external factor a trained agent could exploit.

SMACK, THUD!

The first blow drove into Pavel's chest. Coughing, he gasped for breath and set his stance. At some point, he too had dropped his spear and begun fighting with his fists.

Wise. At this range, wielding a spear was no different from using a staff.

Before Pavel could recover his stance, another blow.

THWACK!

"Ghack!!"

Once in the chest, once more at the waist. Ivan pushed aside the hand raised to block with his palm, then drove a fist through the gap. Once in the jaw.

Choking gasps escaped Pavel. His lungs, unable to absorb the impacts, were struggling to draw breath.

Ivan's eyes read Pavel's condition. He could infer what was happening beneath the surface, inside his body. In the realm of superhumans, hearing and touch grew so acutely sensitive that the instant a fist connected, that collision revealed what would happen within an opponent's body.

THWACK!

The faint sound of breaking bone. A groan bubbling up from within. The sensation of his opponent's muscles twisting, centered on Pavel's right upper arm as it slowly ceased to function.

In the instant the blow paralyzed the nerves of his right hand, before he could recover his stance, Ivan struck again.

THWACK!

A blow to the jaw. As Pavel's head rocked and his mind briefly shorted out, the next hit followed. Ivan knocked aside a hand flailing up to defend him, then snaked his fist through the gap for another blow.

More than a dozen clean hits, accumulated one after another.

THUD, THWACK, THUD!

"Ghack! Stop! Ghhh...!!"

Pavel stumbled backward, his hands flailing. Ivan followed. If he could still speak, he was not yet fully disarmed.

He drove his fists home. A superhuman's body was itself a weapon. Until Pavel was completely incapacitated, Ivan could not afford to let his guard down. Complacency was the deadliest enemy an agent faced. Ivan had not been trained to grow complacent.

THWACK! THUD! THUD!

The accumulated impacts made Pavel's legs buckle. He staggered, struggling to keep his balance. Which meant his lower body was open.

SWISH!

Ivan hooked his leg and tripped him, then straddled him and seized his face. He slammed it down with all his strength.

BANG!

BANG, BANG!

Feeling Pavel's mouth cough beneath his hand, Ivan hammered his head against the ground. Soon, blood coated his entire palm. Pavel vomited blood from the repeated impacts, then went limp.

At last, he was incapacitated. Satisfied, Ivan shook off his hand and stood.

CLICK

He retrieved the discarded pistol and was approaching Pavel's head when—

"The Great King...! Ghack!! The Great King was murdered...!!"

Pavel shouted, spitting blood-tinged saliva. Ivan stopped before raising the muzzle and silently looked down at him.

"Do you still not under... Ghack! Damn it! Don't you understand?! The Great King... The Great King was murdered!"

"Yes. The Seven Dragon Generals..."

"No!! This country wanted the Great King dead! You stubborn fool!! An intelligence failure? Idiot...! Prizhenkaya's War Intelligence Bureau...!! It wasn't that they couldn't give us the information! They chose not to!!"

Still holding the pistol, Ivan took a moment to gather his thoughts. The War Intelligence Bureau was the predecessor of Counterintelligence Command. In other words, the old military department responsible for foreign intelligence before the Extermination Unit was founded. Not a particularly capable organization, but hardly an incompetent one...

"Do you remember why the Great King had to take to the front himself?"

"Repeated defeats had undermined royal authority..."

"Yes! Even if he couldn't be a victorious monarch, he had to reclaim some authority as a warrior king! Those nobles, those swine, were ready to abandon him at any moment!"

Pavel cried out as though the words were blood torn from his heart.

"Kirill... Kirill, that son of a bitch...! He meant to restore the crown's fallen authority through the dignity of a former king who had died valiantly rather than surrender!!" "..."

"The Great King was murdered. By the son he cherished most! Even now, even knowing that, do you think this country has the right to demand our devotion? Ivan... 'Little' Ivan!! Think of your name!! You said you would make me answer for betrayal?!"

Pavel staggered to his feet.

"Then let me ask you. How will you make this country answer for its betrayal...!"

Without realizing it, Ivan lifted his eyes. A towering statue looked down on him. The statue of the former King, Ivan the Conqueror.

"It's not too late, Ivan Petrovich. Take my hand. I have comrades who share my cause."

Ivan slowly closed his eyes. Pavel's voice was tangling his thoughts.

Ah.

Demon remnants were stirring underground. A royal had betrayed the nation and disappeared. The fractured kingdom's nobles lurked beyond the city, each harboring ambitions of their own.

The member states of the United Kingdoms no longer regarded one another as allies. This was a world of rival monarchs carving out their domains, schemers locked in secret struggles, nations exhausted by war, and rampant famine.

Four years had passed since the hero killed the Demon King. Thirty since Ivan had fallen into this world. Peace still meant nothing more than a joke. No, perhaps it never would.

A king killed by his son, and the men who had served before Ivan, who had given their lives to protect that king. Countless conscripts who had taken up arms with only the hope of keeping demonic fangs from their families. Built upon their corpses, this country's foundations remained so terribly precarious.

["I have been a hypocrite all my life. You, too, must live as one."]

At that moment, the Great King's statue whispered to him. In the last voice he remembered hearing from the Great King.

Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, was it?

Ivan opened his eyes and looked around.

People were fleeing. Fighting had broken out. Intruders from who knew where were attacking the festivalgoers. Within the slow flow of time, Ivan surveyed his surroundings.

A festival. Yes, this country had recovered enough to hold a festival.

The smell of roasting meat filled the streets at least once a week. Every morning, smoke from baking bread rose through chimneys in every alley of Prizhenkaya. Such an age had come. Even if conspiracies, intrigue, invasions, and terror still lurked beneath the city's shadows.

The war had ended, and this country was slowly coming back to life. Just as the former King had wished.

Prizhenkaya was rising.

["If enough lies are gathered together, might they not one day reach the truth?"]

Even if the sights of this city, the expressions of women preparing meals, the faces of men heading to work, and the smiles of citizens forgetting the war were all lies. Even those lies were the very thing the former King had wished for all his life.

Perhaps the Great King had known of his son's betrayal. Perhaps he had thought it for the best and accepted death with a smile. There was no way to know.

Yet if there was one thing Ivan could be certain of, it was this. As he had reflected once before, the Great King would have looked down on today's Prizhenkaya with satisfaction.

Injustice and corruption could be rooted out. What mattered was the sight of every citizen living in that city free from the threat of war and famine. Forgetting the war, no longer merely surviving the day, but walking toward tomorrow with a smile.

And so, the truth born of all that hypocrisy...

["Live, and carry on my hypocrisy. Will you promise me?"]

This resolve to root out the malice lurking in the nation's shadows, so that the Great King's ideals would no longer be hypocrisy.

["Yes, Your Majesty. I give you my word. I shall see it done."]

["Then that is enough."]

The Great King's death, their sacrifices, had not been in vain.

That was enough.

"I believe you."

"Ivan...!"

"But I do not agree with your methods."

Ivan slowly approached and seized Pavel by the collar.

"My loyalty remains with the Great King, Pavel. Your methods will only make his death meaningless."

"Kirill is unfit to be king! He has no right to our loyalty!"

"Yes. But the royal bloodline continues."

Still gripping Pavel's collar, Ivan raised his head. Toward the university's main building in the distance. Toward Elizaveta's office.