The Soviet Hound (1)
The easternmost promenade along the Thames Estuary, where the river emptied into the North Sea, was a rather pleasant place for a stroll.
The water flowed out into the North Sea, and the location was the easternmost tip, yet it was named Southend—a testament to the British people's disastrous sense of naming.
"A witch... A witch, is it?"
The more I chewed on it, the more I realized there couldn't be a more fitting word. For a dying old man's final words, what he babbled actually struck a chord.
It was the materialists of Moscow who had picked this fight first. Since they were the ones who started the witch hunt, I had no choice but to respond with a commie hunt.
It was going to be a long, drawn-out war.
After strolling for about twenty or thirty minutes where the river met the sea, I returned to the car. Naturally, I took the back seat, while Pavel sat in the driver's seat.
"What about the CCTV locations?"
"I've mapped them out, milady. It will be virtually impossible for them to confirm that we took the A13 between London and Southend."
Unless someone had a personal camcorder, the state-run CCTV systems dominating this era were still entirely analog.
Therefore, even after the Ministry of Magic or the Metropolitan Police Service realized a high-ranking commie was dead, pinpointing my Mercedes S-Class would be an impossible task.
The camcorder footage of the commie hunt was currently transferring to my laptop. The data transfer speed was painfully, agonizingly slow.
Moments like this made me desperately miss smartphones.
It had already been a month since I was thrown into this unasked-for time travel. I had always believed there was no life after death.
Yet, here I was, with my mind perfectly intact, given a second chance in the body of this slender girl. It was still hard to believe.
To make matters worse, in this second life, the Soviet Union had never collapsed and was still spreading its crimson influence across the globe.
There were plenty of other minor differences from the world I knew, but this was by far the biggest.
If there was any saving grace, it was that magic and relics still existed in this world.
Even though history had been warped halfway out of shape, I—Yerina Bronska—had successfully adapted to my second life.
The proof lay in the fact that, after inheriting the 'syndicate' left behind by my father, I had successfully completed a succession process akin to a major surgery where one's limbs were shattered and reassembled.
Those within the shelter of the syndicate, which had barely been brought back on track, now fully recognized me—armed with legitimacy, authority, and sheer capability—as their undisputed second leader.
Of course, it hadn't been entirely bloodless.
I had never expected to perfectly piece back together a syndicate that Stalin and his godforsaken bastards had crushed using the full might of the state.
I had to find solace in the fact that, immediately after my father was brutally murdered, I had somehow patched up a schism that had seemed absolutely inevitable.
"..."
My eyes began to drift shut. No matter how much I pushed this teenage... no, child's body, there were bound to be limits.
On top of that, I had spent the last month staying up all night pulling urgent paperwork, and just now, I had personally gone out to bury the last visible commie.
It was only natural that exhaustion would catch up to me.
Rubbing my eyes, I called out to my subordinate in the driver's seat.
"Pavel."
"Yes, milady?"
"When are we expected to arrive?"
Pavel briefly mapped out the route in his head before replying.
"About forty minutes, milady."
Navigational systems existed in this era, but it was still a time when human labor was far cheaper than technology.
Considering that Pavel, like me, was still largely ignorant of the geography of Southeast England, his estimate likely had a very wide margin of error.
"Wake me up when we arrive, then. It's better to get some sleep while I can."
I knew all too well what kind of visions might unfold at the boundary of consciousness and unconsciousness if I gave in to sleep, but right now, I welcomed even that.
Pavel replied, his voice laced with concern.
"Waking you is the least I can do... but will you be alright?"
It was a natural worry for Pavel to have, as he knew exactly what happened to me whenever I fell asleep ever since we arrived in the British Empire.
I gave a slight nod.
"I'll be fine. It's only a quick thirty or forty-minute nap."
"If you say so, but..."
"Besides, we'll be up to our necks in work starting tomorrow. Once we begin monitoring the movements of the Ministry of Magic and the Metropolitan Police in earnest, I'll probably forget all about it anyway."
To survive the materialists of Moscow, I didn't have the luxury of leisurely looking back at the past.
To solidify my position as an absolute hunter rather than the prey, and to avoid repeating the mistakes of my past life, I had to ruthlessly reprioritize.
Thus, the past was merely reference material; it could never dictate my direction.
There was no way to exact revenge on the people who had stabbed me in the back and caused this bizarre phenomenon of post-death time travel.
How could I point a blade of vengeance at people who didn't even exist in this world? The blade that my syndicate and I forged had to always point toward the future.
As the wide waters of the Thames Estuary flowed past the left window, I picked up the wooden box resting on my IBM ThinkPad.
With a soft click, the wooden box popped open, revealing a hand mirror resting on a bed of velvet.
This was the precious relic that had kept my second life from ending in vain the moment it began. I suppose the universe wasn't cruel enough to let me die twice.
Whether by coincidence or fate, it had handed me an object from the very field I knew best, so I had no choice but to put it to excellent use.
As I held the hand mirror closer, a face that still looked remarkably young stared back at me.
My fluttering platinum blonde hair and ruby-red eyes were exactly as they always were.
"..."
Come to think of it, the very first memory I had of this body looked just like this.
Before I even had a chance to examine my face properly, I looked around to find a shattered metal door sprawled across the floor.
Beyond the door stood four or five soldiers, their high-grade gear immediately giving away their elite status.
One of the armed soldiers was even holding a rocket launcher.
Judging by the door's thickness, which looked to be over fifty centimeters, they must have blasted it repeatedly from a distance. The shattered furniture and ruined interior, violently scattered by the backblast, stood as proof.
Even though my legs were completely powerless, leaving me collapsed on the floor, something immediately caught my eye. Beyond the door lay a middle-aged man, blood pouring from his chest.
The moment I registered his presence, my heart began to hammer wildly against my ribs. A suffocating, burning rage crackled deep within my chest.
Noticing my fixed gaze, one of the armed soldiers spoke up, his tone dismissive.
"That is your father. A man who committed countless sins, including embezzlement and treason. We have executed him in accordance with the solemn command of the three hundred million citizens and the Council."
My head turned toward the speaker of its own accord. The thick, sticky malice oozing from behind his balaclava was sickening.
My heart hammered independently of my will, and my blood pressure soared through the roof. The surging adrenaline was actively hindering my ability to think straight.
Yet, even in this moment, my instincts as a mage suppressed the panic, bringing a flash of cold, calculating reason.
Piecing together the clues from the face reflected in the mirror on the floor and the body I could see below my line of sight, I realized that the body my mind now inhabited was female.
Is this even magically possible?
No. That was the wrong question.
Regardless of whether it was magically possible, the fact remained that my body had become female. The 'why' and 'how' were no longer important.
Instead, the question I asked myself was whether I could still use magic.
The answer came instantly. Yes, I could.
Meanwhile, the soldiers lined up beyond the door were undeniably hostile. Thus, the next question came rushing in.
Can I take them all down with a single spell?
That was impossible. I might manage to handle one or two, but after that, their rifles would open fire far faster than I could cast.
Whether I liked it or not, I had to keep my ears open. I could hear them whispering and snickering.
They were on guard, but it was clear they didn't view me as a serious threat.
And why would they? To them, I was just a helpless girl collapsed on the floor, unable to even stand.
"What do we do with the girl?"
"The General Secretary wants her alive. Her legitimacy is unrivaled, so confiscate her relics, neutralize her, and transport her to Moscow."
Relic. Though the language was different, it was a term I knew. It seemed that even in this sudden, chaotic hellscape, the fundamental laws of the world hadn't changed.
As I listened to their conversation, my eyes met those of one of the balaclava-wearing soldiers.
Regardless of my mind spinning to find a way out, it was only natural instinct to tremble before a physically imposing enemy armed with automatic weapons.
But then, the man whose eyes had met mine muttered as if possessed.
"But, you know... isn't she a bit too good to just hand over to Moscow right away...?"
"...?"
I saw a chilling, mist-like haze billowing from his head—more precisely, from the exact spot where his brain was located.
Not through the physical sight of my eyes, but through the vision of a mage reading magic.
At the same time, my instincts as a mage immediately identified the nature of that spreading haze. Even though no spell had been cast, his mind was beginning to be localizedly corrupted.
In this case, the 'why' and 'how' were crucial. This anomaly might just be the key to my survival.
The man who appeared to be the commander barked at him.
"You dumbass. I don't care how starved you are, does it make any sense to let your dick do the thinking in the middle of a mission?"
Whether it was a blessing or a curse, the commander seemed to still have his wits about him.
But listening to the excuse of the man with the fogged brain, he was still displaying a crude, stubborn obsession.
"Come on, think about it. You have to admit she's a rare beauty. Besides, we wiped out all the syndicate members on our way in, so there's no one left to bother us anyway."
As their bickering dragged on, questions naturally began to form in my mind.
What the hell is this guy talking about? Was the elite status I had assumed from their gear actually a sham?
Regardless of what I thought, the soldier who had locked eyes with me kept prattling on.
"Especially those red eyes. Aren't they unbelievably beautiful? Just look her in the eye, and you'll change your mind."
Unable to resist his subordinate's urging, the commander finally looked directly into my eyes.
And then...
"Look into her eyes...?"
The same mist began to billow from the commander's head. Soon, it spread to the heads of the remaining soldiers as they, too, locked eyes with me one by one.
My fear gradually gave way to bewilderment. The fact remained that no spell had been cast.
As far as I knew, a magic that could corrupt the human mind so effortlessly was entirely unheard of.
Yet, when I pieced all the circumstantial evidence together, the explanation that made the most sense was that some kind of magical mental manipulation had been inflicted upon them.
"Yeah... I think you might be right. Since there's no one to bother us, why don't we all take a turn and enjoy ourselves...?"
The commander, who had possessed some semblance of sanity just moments ago, muttered.
As a raw, greasy lust practically seeped through their balaclavas, I felt a sharp sense of incongruity.
Red eyes?
It was definitely strange. Human eyes couldn't naturally be red unless they had albinism, and judging by my reflection in the mirror, I was no albino.
Then the conclusion was obvious.
The magic resides within my body.
My instincts as a mage whispered to me.
I didn't know the mechanics, but I could use this moment of weakness, while their elite discipline was dulled, to turn the tables.
As for how exactly I would do that, I already had a plan.
Thanks to the knowledge from my past life, I realized exactly what the mirror reflecting my face was.
It was Spiegel, the powerful national relic that Germany took pride in. Its effect was so overwhelmingly powerful that the common noun for 'mirror' had simply become the relic's name.
I had no idea why Spiegel, which was supposed to be somewhere in Berlin, was here among these Russian-speaking men, but it couldn't deceive my eyes.
Pushing myself up from the floor, I slowly walked out the door.
The five lunatics, still under the influence of the mental fog, didn't even point their guns at me as I moved. Instead, they were entirely occupied with unbuckling their belts and fumbling with their trousers.
The view outside the door wasn't much different from what I had glimpsed earlier.
A shattered mahogany table, a charred and broken Macintosh computer, and a half-torn world map hanging precariously on the wall.
Right in the center of the map, the Soviet Union sat proudly, having never dissolved into the Commonwealth of Independent States, its massive territory still colored a brilliant, blood-red—just like my eyes. It was clear this world was vastly different from the one I knew.
"..."
By the time I looked down at the middle-aged man sprawled on the floor, a sudden surge of emotion welled up from the depths of my chest, just like before.
I slowly raised the mirror in my hand toward the men who had quite literally lost their minds.
And then, in the very next instant—
BOOM!
With a deafening roar, five broad, crimson stains of human flesh and bone blossomed violently across the wall.