Chapter 187
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 187
I entered the Japa Trading building and began making my way up.
Rustle.
Sensing a presence, I silenced my steps and drew my auto-tracking pistol. I activated my auditory vision for the first time in a while, scanning for enemies in my blind spots.
My auditory vision wasn't sharp enough to replace my sight entirely—it’s not like I was doing something as extreme as converting my spinal fluid into coolant. Still, just seeing their outlines and positions was a huge tactical advantage.
Two of them.
I spotted two intruders around the corner ahead. I opened my eyes.
The duffel bag on my back was as still as an inanimate object. Even on the verge of combat, Ragnata remained perfectly quiet. Like me, she was holding her breath, concealing her presence.
It was only natural. If she got in my way, I’d wring her neck. Ragnata was only alive because I was feeling merciful.
I poked just the muzzle of the auto-tracking pistol around the corner. Its built-in computer instantly identified the two intruders and calculated a lethal trajectory.
They didn't even notice I was there. There weren't many warriors in this universe who could react to a bullet fired from outside their field of perception.
Wait for it...
I listened to the gunfire and explosions echoing throughout the building. When a sufficiently loud blast finally rang out, I pulled the trigger.
Bang! Bang!
The tracking rounds curved elegantly, punching straight through the eye slits of the intruders’ helmets. It was a level of precision that even an Imperial Guardsman couldn't match unless they were a master marksman.
"You carry an expensive weapon," Ragnata said with a low whistle.
"Not worth the price. It’s only good as a backup."
"But it suits you perfectly. It saves you the mental energy and focus of aiming. Mastering a skill outside your specialty requires a disproportionate amount of effort. Besides, you wouldn't use a gun against a truly formidable opponent anyway."
For a moment, I wondered if bringing her along was a mistake. Her insight was unnerving. She saw right through me as if she’d known me for years.
I walked over to the fallen intruders and examined them. Their gear was uniform, like soldiers. While not all mercenaries were a mismatched mess, something about this felt off.
A multi-species mercenary group with standardized gear...
Lacking information, I couldn't reach a conclusion. Just then, Ragnata chimed in.
"Eavesdrop on their comms. See what language they're using."
I pulled the helmet off one of the intruders. It was a Saura, a reptilian species with tough, scaly skin. My first time seeing one up close.
— Kese, alta! Ord thea.
An unfamiliar language crackled from the helmet's speaker. Not being well-versed in alien tongues, I held it out to Ragnata.
"That's Tajirun. Sauras are generally dim-witted; it's difficult for them to speak another species' language without a translator, let alone Tajirun, which is notoriously hard to learn. If I'm right, the other one is also communicating without a translator."
I checked the other intruder's helmet. I could tell this one's species without even removing it; its massive build was impossible to hide completely, even in a combat suit. A Crawler.
The same language flowed from the Crawler's helmet. I didn't know many Crawlers, but Boyan’s father, Regor, had lived in Border City for years and never spoke a word of the human tongue—though that might have been by choice.
"A Saura and a Crawler communicating in Tajirun... They must be the Menoa Elite Guard. A foreign legion, or to be more precise, a military force like the Janissaries or Mamluks of old Earth."
I gave her a blank look, not understanding the reference. Ragnata elaborated.
"...Slave soldiers. The private army raised by the Tajirun's Menoa family."
So the Menoa family was the house Japa was from.
"You knew that off the top of your head, so they must be famous. It’s not like you’re some expert on the Tajirun."
I stepped over the corpses and continued up the stairs.
"Menoa is a family whose primary business is human trafficking. Because of that, they have a peculiar tradition other Tajirun families don't. They select children with potential from their 'merchandise' and train them as private soldiers. Despite being slave soldiers, their loyalty is absolute, as they are treated as well as they are brutally trained."
The explanation sounded familiar. It reminded me of the Imperial Guard. In truth, forces conscripted or selected like the Menoa Elite Guard or the Imperial Guard were common.
"For all their fame, they don't seem that strong."
"The truly exceptional children are sold for high prices, not kept as soldiers. The commanders of the Menoa Elite Guard, however, are on another level. I hear they’re so outstanding they’re even treated as members of the family."
The more I heard, the more familiar it sounded.
...Like me?
Humble origins. Selected for my talent. Accepted as a member of the family.
I guess I wasn't the only special human in the universe.
"The Tajirun are a merchant species. Do they rent out their private army as mercenaries?"
"The Tajirun are known for being vile and cunning, but they despise violence. Their bodies aren't suited for combat, and they prefer to resolve most situations peacefully. There are a few businesses they won't touch, and the mercenary trade is one of them. In that market, the Tajirun are strictly consumers. In any case, for the Menoa family to send their private troops... Japa must be their mortal enemy."
Ragnata was useful. Whatever her reasons for cooperating, for now, she was freely providing the information I lacked.
Japa is from the Menoa family but was exiled for some reason. The family tried to kill him, but they later signed a non-aggression pact. Today, that pact was broken, and they attacked him again.
I had the full picture now.
First... Lapis's safety.
I hoped Lapis had evacuated in time, but she could have been in the maintenance room or attacked in her sleep.
As I advanced, I found the stairs had been severed by an explosion. This wasn't the intruders' work. It was a bomb Japa had planted in advance. I tried other routes, but the paths to the upper floors were all destroyed or blocked. Each one was in a calculated, strategic location.
"Ugh..."
The bodies of intruders caught in the traps were scattered everywhere. I personally finished off the grievously wounded who were still breathing.
I reloaded the auto-tracking pistol I’d used for the finishing blows and looked for another path. I could have forced my way through, but I wasn't keen on getting caught in an ally's traps.
Besides, advancing slowly and applying pressure from the rear would help the overall battle.
Has Japa been living with bombs planted all over the building? How could he do something so insane...
The thought that I’d been walking on top of explosives this whole time was chilling.
Inspecting the collapsed stairs and blocked paths, I blinked. I knew the Japa Trading building like the back of my hand.
As the pieces clicked into place, my thoughts raced.
An internal map of the building formed in my head. As I studied the blocked passages, I saw a detour. The intruders, entering from all directions, would be bottlenecked, forced to gather on one specific floor.
No way...
I looked up at the ceiling. The floor directly above was used entirely as a banquet hall.
With most of the building’s passages blocked, the invading forces had no choice but to trickle upwards in single file. If they tried to ascend sequentially, they’d be picked off one by one.
If I were their commander, I’d gather everyone in the banquet hall to regroup, forge a new path, and then ascend to the upper floors simultaneously.
And that was exactly what Japa was counting on.
Vrrr!
I hastily drew my Hwagwang Yedo. Ragnata looked puzzled by my sudden movement. Brilliant as she was, she didn't know the building's layout and couldn't predict what was about to happen.
Screeech!
I used the Hwagwang Yedo like a plasma cutter, driving the blade into the floor and slicing through it with brute force.
Soon, I'd carved a hole large enough for a person to pass through. The severed steel rebar and concrete sizzled with residual heat.
Whoosh!
I tossed the duffel bag down first and jumped in after it. Directly below was a pantry.
Thud!
I landed, immediately grabbed the duffel bag, and rolled to the side.
Should I go down one more floor?
Maybe this was all just baseless paranoia. No, I couldn't doubt myself. My intuition had saved my life multiple times. It would save me again.
I knew Japa. I knew this building's layout. I could feel a "certain intent" in the placement of those blockades. There was no room for doubt.
My eyes darted around the room and landed on a refrigerator. I flung it open. It was packed with food from Japa's franchises.
Crack!
I ripped the refrigerator drawers out. Then I stuffed the duffel bag containing Ragnata inside and slammed the door shut. She seemed to understand what was about to happen.
As for me...
BOOOOOOM!
An explosion erupted, on a scale incomparable to anything before. Of course it was—it was powerful enough to vaporize an entire floor.
Boom! Crash!
Explosions went off in rapid succession.
No one would expect a massive cluster of bombs planted in the middle of a building. The slightest miscalculation in its design, or any flaw in its construction, would have brought the entire building down.
Screeech!
I ripped a steel table bolted to the floor and held it over my head to shield myself from the falling debris. If an entire floor was blown away, the impact would affect the two or three floors above and below it.
Creeeeak!
The entire building shuddered as cracks spiderwebbed across every surface. It groaned, shook, and crumbled.
Rumble!
A fierce shockwave tore through the pantry. My ears rang, deafening me to anything but the roar.
Crash! Thud! Bang!
Debris rained down endlessly on the table I held. Before long, I was buried in a small tomb of rubble.
Only after a long while did the aftershocks subside, leaving thick, gray concrete dust hanging in the air like a smokescreen. Every breath was like sandpaper scraping my throat.
Whir, whir.
Cranking up the output on my prosthetic arm, I shoved the table and the rubble clear. The place was a total disaster, as if an earthquake had hit.
If it was this bad down here, two floors below, the floor where the explosion actually occurred must be a horrific sight.
Clack!
I ripped open the refrigerator door.
"You said the Tajirun were non-violent and preferred peaceful solutions?!" I snarled, taking my frustration out on Ragnata. "That was one hell of a peaceful solution!"
"There are always exceptions. Judging by your extreme reaction, that was a trap designed by Japa."
I slung the duffel bag over one shoulder and climbed up the mound of debris.
The building didn't collapse. He calculated this when he built the place.
Stepping over the rubble, I returned to the floor I had just escaped from and looked up. The explosion had happened on the level directly above.
Clatter, thud.
The ceiling's outer panels had completely collapsed, revealing a thick metal plate dividing the floors. Unlike the other levels, a single, seamless sheet of metal had been inserted between them.
Groan, creak.
The plate hadn't shattered; it was merely dented and warped. It had to be a special alloy ordered specifically to absorb explosive shock. Looking at it, the banquet hall was likely encased on all sides—ceiling, floor, and walls—with the same material.
It’s like setting off a bomb inside a sealed metal box.
The force of the blast would have been magnified exponentially. Few could have survived such a trap. It was audacious. Incredibly audacious.
I saw Japa in a new light. I’d suspected it before, but he was far from the self-preserving type typical of the Tajirun. He was more than willing to take massive risks when it counted.
Crunch, snap.
I forced my way up the debris-choked stairs and onto the floor where the explosion had occurred. Smoke and stone dust drifted through a crimson ruin of death.
"Even for a great family like Menoa, this must be a significant loss. An entire unit has been vaporized," Ragnata remarked. With every step, my boots kicked a severed limb or squelched in spilled entrails.
From a quick visual estimate of the torn body parts, I figured about eighty intruders had been on this floor.
Counting the casualties in other areas, the enemy must have raided the Japa Trading building with a force of about a hundred.
Slide.
I set the duffel bag down and drew the Hwagwang Yedo once more. As if absorbing the ambient heat, the blade's thermal glow sharpened along its edge.
Hummmm.
My eyes fell upon an artificially created pile of corpses—a mound of flesh shaped as if to shield someone from the blast.
Twitch, twitch.
The mound of flesh squirmed. As the charred bodies on top shifted aside, fresher, blood-red corpses were revealed beneath. Each layer peeled back exposed bodies that had taken less of the blast's direct impact.
"Ugh..."
A wounded survivor, just alive enough to groan, crawled out from the pile. I ignored him.
Mangled corpses, less damaged corpses, grievously wounded survivors. And at the center of it all, of course, was the "survivor."
"Like a Matryoshka doll," Ragnata muttered from behind me.
Vrrr.
A figure stood up from the very heart of the mound. He was panting heavily, draped in the bodies of his soldiers. In the shadows of his face, his eyes shone with a bright blue glow.
That had to be Lucaus of the Menoa family—a prodigy of violence who had risen from a lowly slave to the inner circle of House Menoa.
"I'll give you ten seconds," I said, pointing the Hwagwang Yedo forward. Every fleck of stone dust that touched the blade evaporated with a sizzle. "Catch your breath. You have to avenge your men, don't you? They practically scrambled over each other to die for their commander. Such dedication."
Japa’s Equesian mercenaries would be on their way down soon. I intended to finish this before they arrived. I wasn’t about to let anyone else have him.