Chapter 32
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 32
With that thought, he lifted the chin of a man who was still breathing. His right eye was gone, his left matted shut with blood. Through the crusted eyelid, their gazes met.
Or rather, the moment Oscar felt their eyes meet, the life drained out of the man.
“Your Excellency, Combat Team 2 reports they’ve captured the mercenary corps’ unit commander.”
Oscar let go of the dead man’s chin and lit another cigarette.
Through the hazy smoke, his piercing blue eyes seemed to flicker, holding a cold, metallic glint. With a voice to match, Oscar gave the order.
“Bring him here.”
*
Immediately after witnessing the Chairman’s death, the man with the snake tattoo had led his subordinates back into the fray. A chill had crept up his spine, knowing that no one from the main force had been able to prevent the Chairman’s death, but the sight of his countless allies had made that fear recede like the tide.
In the end, victory would be theirs. With the Chairman dead, he even began to think he could take his place. But that thought crumbled as quickly as a sandcastle.
The men in black suits were all silent.
The mana that erupted from their hands swept through the mercenaries like a tidal wave of explosives. In their wake, only a mountain of corpses remained.
There was no mercy.
It was clear that no one would be leaving this manor alive tonight.
By the time he came to his senses, he was running for his life. In the end, he was cornered like a dog and captured by the Wolves.
His mouth was forced open and a cloth was shoved inside. His heart pounded as if it would explode.
He was dragged, almost crawling, down a corridor carpeted with the bodies of his fellow mercenaries.
“Ugh, mmph, mmph!”
They were dragging him to the slaughterhouse.
“Mmph, mmph!”
His instincts screamed.
Don’t let them take you. It would be better to have your throat slit right here!
His frantic struggling ceased the moment he reached the room he had just labeled a slaughterhouse.
In the middle of the room stood a man.
The four hounds that had fed on the Wolves were on their backs, fawning at his feet. With his hands thrust in his pockets, the man idly stroked their necks with the toe of his shoe, occasionally pressing down with enough force to make the dog beneath his foot writhe.
Whimper.
The sound of a dog whining for its life brought him back to himself. He was already tied to the same chair where the Wolves had been butchered.
Only then did the man who had been crushing the dog’s neck turn to look at him. Beneath a fringe of dark hair, he saw piercing blue eyes.
One of the dogs, its neck crushed under Oscar’s foot, trembled and convulsed before going limp. The other dogs shivered but did not dare to flee.
The mercenary’s entire body trembled.
Marquis Reinhardt approached slowly. He couldn’t bring himself to look up at the man who stood before him like the grim reaper himself.
Just then, the cloth that had been brutally stuffed into his mouth was pulled out. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted down from above.
“Looks like it was the dogs’ feeding time.”
A low voice settled over him. Along with the smoke, an extreme terror seeped deep into his lungs, making him feel faint. His teeth chattered uncontrollably.
A deep, low laugh grazed his cheek.
“S-save me…”
Thud.
With a blank expression, Oscar mercilessly slammed the man’s head against the back of the chair.
Thud. Thud. Thudthudthud.
He slammed the man’s head again and again, hard enough to shatter bone and rattle his brain, stopping just shy of unconsciousness to let him catch his breath.
Then, with a face far too composed for someone who had just beaten a man to the brink of death, he spoke.
“If you want to get out of here alive, think carefully before you speak.”
“Ugh, uhh…”
“The one who sees the world even with their eyes closed.”
“Hngh… Yes…?”
As the man, drooling bloody saliva, lifted his head, Oscar gave a slight nod. In that instant, the mercenary knew instinctively that one of his paths to survival had just vanished.
“Who rooted out the spies?”
His body trembled violently. Words spilled from his quivering lips.
“I-it wasn’t… discovered from within!”
His speech was slurred, his mouth likely shattered. Those piercing blue eyes were more terrifying than anything he had ever seen.
“That’s why I’m asking. Who did it?”
Even the man’s strangely calm tone was petrifying.
“It was the Chairman’s ordersh!”
“Besides the bastard who’s already dead.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but no coherent sentence would come out.
A brief silence fell. Oscar carelessly pulled off his gloves and threw them to the floor.
In the blink of an eye, his chance of survival had completely vanished. Realizing this, the man’s body jerked as if he were having a seizure.
“Th-the King! We did as the Royal Palace ordered—”
“I know about the King. Who in the palace?”
“…”
“…”
“…Your Excellency! Pleashe save me, mmph, mmmph, mmph!”
Just as he was about to scream for his life, one of the Wolves shoved the cloth back into his mouth.
Oscar turned slowly and ordered the men.
“Make him just like them.”
So that living would feel no different from being dead. So that death itself would be a mercy.
Then, he glanced at the hounds cowering in the corner, not daring to even breathe, and smiled grimly.
*
The mercenary corps’ main force was, quite literally, annihilated.
Oscar walked along the path the Search Team had cleared for him. The bodies had been removed, but the blood remained, and the inside of his shoes grew damp. Amid the foul stench and the metallic tang of blood, he found himself putting another cigarette to his lips just as Simon, who had gone to search the manor’s documents, returned.
“Anything useful?”
“It seems they collected all the important documents when they killed their leader. We’re interrogating those involved about how they found the Spy Team, but they all insist it was the Chairman’s order.”
“…”
Oscar took another drag from his cigarette. Simon, who had been staring at its glowing red tip, continued with the information he had just received.
“The translation of the identification papers and Abel’s report have arrived.”
The sharp, piercing blue eyes finally turned to Simon. Wary of Oscar’s mood, Simon took an envelope from his coat and held it out.
“First, the translation of the identification papers.”
Amid the thick stench of blood, Oscar unfolded the paper.
“They say the identification papers appear to be authentic official documents from Danguk. She seems to be from a collateral branch of a fairly well-known family there, and there’s nothing particularly problematic about the papers themselves. However…”
“However?”
“They said the name Seo-ah is a bit unusual. It’s from a place that uses ideograms, so each character has its own meaning. The character ‘ah’ can mean ‘to love,’ which is understandable, but the character ‘seo’ apparently means ‘to forgive.’”
“Forgive?”
An image of Seo-ah, who had steadfastly refused to meet his eyes, flashed through Oscar’s mind.
“Yes. The nation of Danguk has a particularly strict naming culture, to the point where they have separate childhood names and official names. Given that, it’s highly unlikely a noble family would give a child a name with the meaning ‘to forgive.’”
Listening to Simon’s explanation, Oscar stared blankly at the translated document.
Seo-ah. So, her name translates to something like ‘forgive and love’?
How strange.
Then again, was that the only strange thing about her?
“…Are you coming?”
Are you coming? What did she mean? Where?
She had asked him with eyes that looked like they would burst into tears at the slightest touch. He couldn’t know what lay behind that gaze, but for his part, he found those tear-filled eyes perplexing.
That strange question, the likes of which he had never heard in his life, made him uncharacteristically chew over the past.
“When will you be coming?”
It was like a question asked by one who was left behind to one who had departed. To see in those tearful eyes a blind faith, laced with anxiety, as if she were telling him she would wait for his return…
Perhaps it was because of a past experience.
A moment from a past he thought he had erased, but which apparently hadn’t been.
For some reason, he thought he could smell rain.
Oscar smiled coldly and shook his head. But even so, that absurd question remained, a small fishbone caught in his throat, pricking at his nerves.
The train window, the half-open curtain, the way she turned her head in surprise. The curve of her ear, bathed in sunlight.
Ignoring the fragments of memory that surfaced of their own accord, Oscar handed the translation back and put the cigarette to his lips again.
“A strange name doesn’t matter as long as the Pelfe Bank has no issue with it. And it’ll be even less of a problem once Abel Sting marries her.”
“Yes, well, that is true.”
Simon put the translation away and handed over the report from Abel.
As Oscar opened Abel’s report, he thought of the ones he usually received.
It had been about five days since he’d parted ways with the woman. Things should have progressed quite a bit by now. I seduced her like this, she fell for it like that, we’ll probably have sex around this time, or we already did. Therefore, the marriage plan is as follows.
Something like that should have been written in extensive detail.
I wonder if she looks at him with those same eyes in bed. He suddenly recalled the night he had watched her, hidden in the shadows. Her eyes, which had pleaded with some unknown being as she wept, had never quite managed to find the light.
As his thoughts about the woman took a strange turn, Oscar flipped open the report with a cynical sneer.
And yet…
As he read, Oscar’s eyes reflexively narrowed.
Market sightseeing.
The entry next to it was even more absurd.
…Pancakes: 5,200 Kerte
It wasn’t just pancakes. Sausages, candy, coffee…
With the cigarette still in his mouth, Oscar turned to the next page. It was the same. The next page, and the page after that, all detailed the woman’s identical activities.
The only difference, if any, was that Abel’s fury, palpable in the heavily pressed script, seemed to be growing by the day.
Judging by this report, for the past five days, the woman had woken Abel up at the crack of dawn and spent the entire day roaming the market, eating sausages, coffee, candy, and pancakes.