Chapter 77
Chapter 77
-----------------------------------------------------------------
>Translator: Lord First
>Chapter: 77
>Chapter Title: The Price of Betrayal
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
*
“You're... relieving me of my post?”
“You have broken your oath of loyalty.”
“An oath of loyalty?! Does this country dare demand more loyalty from me? No, it doesn't. Ivan, even your loyalty... this nation is not worthy of our devotion.”
Ivan doesn't argue with madmen. He is a rational man. His training included no instruction on psychological counseling. Persuading and treating the insane is the job of a psychiatrist (a profession that doesn't exist in this world).
He calmly raised the muzzle of his gun and aligned the sights.
His armament: one pistol, twenty live rounds.
His opponent was a superhuman, and a well-trained one at that. Naturally, pistol rounds would be useless against him.
But there was a reason the Annihilation Squad's standard-issue gear included a pistol. It meant there was still a way to use it, even in a situation like this.
“You have no intention of listening. Have you been brainwashed?”
“Pavel.”
“Yes, are you ready to talk now?”
“No.”
Ivan spoke, gauging the angle of Pavel's wrist as he gripped the spear shaft.
“We were not taught to talk before a fight.”
At those words, Pavel ground his teeth and glared at him.
*He's coming.*
Without moving from his spot, Ivan simply flicked his wrist, changing his aim. The spearhead shot forward, aimed straight for his head.
*Screeeech!!*
With a roar that tore through the air, the spear said to have pierced a dragon's throat lunged at him.
But he knew its trajectory.
Ivan watched the spearhead and angled his wrist. The muzzle pointed three inches ahead of the blade's path.
He didn't need to aim properly. At a distance of under ten meters, Ivan's shooting didn't even require him to consider his stance or the relative speed of his target.
*Bang—!!*
>*Clang!!*
Sparks flew from the tip of the spearhead. Its trajectory warped, and the blade scraped empty air before retreating.
It was to be expected. Even a pistol round—a 9mm bullet—carries 400 joules of kinetic energy. Setting aside complex engineering calculations and thinking simply, a single bullet's impact could easily distort the path of a spearhead.
Assuming, of course, that one could hit it.
“What in the...!”
Changing an attack's trajectory by shooting a spearhead? That was no different from intercepting an incoming arrow with another arrow!
“Let's see how long you can keep that up!!”
Pavel gritted his teeth and readied his spear.
Yes, it was a possible feat—if one had incredible concentration, a good eye, and sufficient skill.
But he couldn't do it forever. It was a technique that required luck and timing. An error of a single inch, and the spearhead would tear through Ivan's neck without resistance.
Yet there was no fear in Ivan's eyes, not even in this moment as he danced on a knife's edge with his life on the line.
“Nineteen times.”
The number of bullets he had left.
Implying that he could succeed precisely once for each remaining shot.
Not with brimming confidence, but with the tone of someone stating a simple fact.
Ivan spoke as he took a step forward.
The distance was three meters.
Since his stride was always exactly 78 centimeters, it would take him less than four steps.
In the time it would take to cross that distance, Pavel could strike a maximum of seventeen times.
In other words, he had more than enough.
Ivan never rushed. As he took a step, his gaze was fixed on the spearhead and the wrist that held it.
Trying to evade Pavel's attacks would only introduce variables. So, he entrusted his defense entirely to the single pistol in his hand.
One step. His body was an open target, full of openings, his posture upright as if inviting an attack. He stepped forward.
“How dare you—!!”
*Swhiiiish!!*
>*Click, bang—!!*
Sparks flew from the spearhead.
*Swish! Screeech!!*
>*Click, bang, bang—!!*
A strike sweeping up toward his waist, another plunging toward his thigh.
Again and again, their trajectories were twisted, striking empty air before being drawn back.
Aimed at a spearhead that even Pavel himself couldn't track with the naked eye. One shot at a time, precisely ahead of its path.
Precise. Flawless.
This was not a human skill. Only then did Pavel remember.
“Is this... the skill of the Hero's Party...!”
“What are you talking about?”
*Click, bang—!!*
With the next step came five strikes.
He shot every single one of them down, taking another step.
“If any member of the Hero's Party were here, you wouldn't even be standing right now.”
Even Gilles Vert, who was coldly assessed as the weakest in terms of raw power (a debatable point), could have slaughtered Pavel in a single breath.
This meant that knowing how to fight a superhuman when armed with only a small firearm like a pistol was nothing more than a desperate survival technique that second-line units like the Annihilation Squad had to learn.
Pavel gave a hollow laugh, his face filled with the arrogance of a madman.
“You lunatic.”
The initial ferocity was now gone. Ivan deflected three spear thrusts with his bullets and stood his ground.
Finally, the fourth step.
A distance too short to deliver a proper strike, even if he retracted the spear. He had seven bullets left.
But from now on, he wouldn't need the pistol. Against a superhuman, a pistol was a form of defense—a tool used to parry their attacks.
And so.
*Click.*
“...?”
He dropped the pistol. As a defensive tool for closing the distance, it had served its purpose.
Confusion flickered in Pavel's eyes. Ivan watched him with a deep, somber gaze and slowly raised his fists.
Bullets couldn't hit a superhuman. Their ability to sense killing intent was an instinct that activated above all else.
There was no need to telegraph his attacks. In a battle between superhumans, even the momentary momentum between detection and firing could be fatal.
*Fwoosh—!*
Ivan's fist cut through the air, aimed at the face of a stunned Pavel.
*Thwack, thwack!!*
He hastily blocked the attack, striking Ivan's wrist. Expected. While the spearmanship was a secret family art that Ivan had to observe to understand, the hand-to-hand combat was standard issue. Ivan had also learned the same martial arts as Pavel.
He could predict the defensive forms based on the attack trajectories.
Anything predictable was merely an external factor for a trained agent to exploit.
*Thwack, thud!*
The first blow slammed into Pavel's chest.
*Cough.* Pavel gasped for breath and took a stance. At some point, he too had set down his spear shaft and was fighting with his fists.
A wise move. At this range, swinging a spear was no different from using a staff.
Before Pavel could even steady himself, Ivan struck again.
*Thump!!*
“Gah!!”
Once to the chest, again to the waist, he pushed aside a blocking arm with his palm and drove his fist into the opening, striking the chin.
*Gak, keuk!* Breath that couldn't be drawn was squeezed out of him. His lungs, unable to absorb the impact, were causing him to suffocate.
Ivan's eyes read Pavel's condition. He could deduce what was happening inside his body, beyond just its outer form.
In the realm of superhumans, his extremely heightened senses of hearing and touch allowed him to infer what would happen to his opponent's body the moment his fist made contact.
*Thump!!*
The faint sound of a bone breaking, a groan bubbling up from within. The sensation of his opponent's muscles twisting, centered on Pavel's upper right arm as it slowly ceased to function.
In the brief moment the nerves in his right arm were paralyzed by the blow, before he could regain his posture, Ivan struck again.
*Thump!!*
A blow to the jaw. In the brief shock as his head snapped back, the next strike landed.
He flailed, raising a hand to defend. Ivan slapped it aside and thrust his fist through the gap like a snake.
An accumulation of more than a dozen clean hits.
*Thud, thump, thud!*
“Kugh! Stop! Ugh...!!”
Pavel flailed his arms and retreated. Ivan followed. The fact that he could still speak meant he wasn't fully neutralized.
He drove his fist in again. A superhuman's body was a weapon in itself, so he could never let his guard down until his opponent was completely incapacitated.
Indeed, carelessness was an agent's deadliest enemy. Ivan had not been trained to be careless.
*Thump! Thud! Thud!*
The accumulated shock caused Pavel's legs to give way. He staggered, struggling to keep his balance.
In other words, his lower body was now wide open.
*Whoosh!*
He swept Pavel's legs out from under him, mounted his chest, and grabbed his face. Then, with all his strength, he slammed it down. *Bam!*
*Bam, bam!*
Feeling Pavel choke beneath his hand, he smashed his head against the ground. Like hammering a nail.
Soon, he felt blood pooling in his palm. Pavel, having coughed up blood from the repeated impacts, went limp.
Neutralization successful. Ivan wiped his hands with satisfaction and stood up.
*Click.*
He picked up the pistol he had dropped and was approaching Pavel's head when...
“The Great King...! *Cough!!* The Great King was murdered...!!”
Pavel shouted, spitting out a mouthful of bloody saliva.
Ivan stopped, his hand frozen in the act of raising the pistol, and simply stared down at Pavel.
“Don't you get it... *cough!* Dammit! Don't you see! The Great King... He was murdered!”
“Yes. The Seven Dragon Generals...”
“No!! This country wanted the Great King dead! You dense fool!! An intelligence failure? How stupid...! The Pritschenkaya War Intelligence Bureau...!! They didn't fail to give us the information—they chose not to!!”
Ivan stood with the pistol in his hand, gathering his thoughts.
The War Intelligence Bureau was the predecessor to the Counter-Intelligence Command... in other words, the old military department in charge of foreign intelligence before the Annihilation Squad was founded.
They weren't an especially competent group, but it would have been hard to call them incompetent either...
“Do you remember why the Great King had to go to the front lines himself?”
“His authority was shaken by repeated defeats...”
“Exactly! Even if he couldn't become a victorious monarch, he had to at least reclaim his authority as a warrior king! The nobles back then, those pigs, they were ready to abandon the Great King at any moment!”
Pavel shouted, his voice laced with agony.
“Kirill... Kirill, that bastard...! He wanted to restore the crown's tarnished authority with the dignity of a predecessor who died a valiant death in battle!!”
“...”
“The Great King was murdered. By the son he cherished most! And still—still you think this country deserves our loyalty? Ivan... 'Little' Ivan!! Think of your name!! You asked me the price of my betrayal!?”
Pavel staggered to his feet.
“I ask you. This country betrayed us, so what, then, is the price for its betrayal...!”
Unconsciously, Ivan raised his gaze.
A colossal statue was looking down on him.
The statue of the former king, Great King Ivan.
“It's not too late. Ivan Petrovich. Take my hand. There are comrades who share my cause.”
Ivan slowly closed his eyes. Pavel's voice was a tempest in his mind.
Ah.
The remnants of the demons were stirring in the depths.
The royal family had betrayed the nation and vanished.
The nobles of the fractured kingdom, each harboring their own ambitions, lurked beyond the city.
The member states of the United Kingdom no longer saw each other as allies.
It was a world of feuding warlords, schemers' secret battles, a nation exhausted by war, and rampant famine.
Four years had passed since the Hero killed the Demon King.
Thirty years had passed since he had fallen into this world.
Peace was still nothing more than a joke. Or perhaps it always would be.
A king killed by his own son, and the seniors who had given their lives to protect that king.
The countless conscripts who had taken up arms for the simple wish of keeping the demons' fangs from their families.
The foundation of this nation, built upon their corpses, was so terribly fragile.
*"I have been a hypocrite my entire life, so you, too, must live as one."*
In that moment, the Great King's statue whispered to him.
In the last voice of the Great King that he could remember.
Hypocrisy. So it was hypocrisy.
Ivan opened his eyes. He looked around.
People were fleeing. There had been a fight. Intruders from an unknown origin were attacking the festival-goers.
In the slowly flowing river of time, Ivan calmly surveyed his surroundings.
A festival.
Yes, this nation had recovered enough to hold a festival.
The smell of grilling meat filled the streets more than once a week.
Every morning, smoke from baking bread rose from the chimneys in every alley of Pritschenkaya.
Such an era had arrived. Even if conspiracy, secret strife, invasion, and terror lurked in the city's shadows.
After the war, the nation was gradually reviving. Just as the late king had wished.
Pritschenkaya was rising again.
*"If enough lies are gathered, might they not one day reach the truth?"*
Even if the city's scenery, the expressions of the women preparing meals, the faces of the men heading to work, and the laughter of citizens forgetting the war were all lies...
...still, even those lies were the very thing the late king had desired his entire life.
Perhaps the Great King had known of his son's betrayal. Perhaps he had accepted death with a smile, believing it was for the best.
There was no way to know.
Still, if there was one thing he could be sure of...
...it was that, as he had once recalled, the Great King would be looking down on the Pritschenkaya of today with satisfaction.
Injustice and corruption could be eradicated.
What was important was the sight of all the city's citizens, free from the threat of war and famine, forgetting the war and not just surviving day by day, but walking toward tomorrow with a smile.
Therefore, the truth created from that collection of hypocrisy was...
*"Live, and carry on my hypocrisy. Do you promise me?"*
This idea—to root out the evil lurking in the nation's shadows so that the Great King's ideal would no longer be a hypocrisy.
*"Yes, Your Majesty. I give you my word. I will see it done."*
>*"That is all I ask."*
The Great King's death, our sacrifices—they were not in vain.
That was enough.
“I will believe your words.”
“Ivan...!”
“However, I do not agree with your methods.”
Ivan slowly walked over and grabbed Pavel by the collar.
“My loyalty still lies with the Great King. Pavel. Your methods will only make his death meaningless.”
“Kirill is not fit to be king! That man does not deserve our loyalty!”
“I agree. But the royal bloodline continues.”
Still gripping Pavel's collar, Ivan lifted his head.
Toward the university's main building in the distance.
In the direction of Elizaveta's office.
*