The Time for Persuasion (1)
A flag fluttered in the mist. Hurtlocker rubbed his eyes and craned his neck until it ached, staring up at the banner. The familiar emblem bore words written in Trude script.
Named after the ancient hero.
The moment Hurtlocker recognized it, understanding struck him.
Ah. This is a dream.
“Hurtlocker. I’ll be back soon, so wait for me.”
Soldiers heading off to war. As a rough hand tousled his hair, Hurtlocker realized exactly what this moment was.
It was that day.
The weather, the composition, the scene—everything matched that exact day.
The day the 1st Company was annihilated, save for a single survivor.
He had to say something. He had to tell them not to go. That if they left, they would all die.
“Uwaaah…!”
But what came out of his mouth was nothing but incomprehensible gibberish. No matter how desperately he moved his lips, the result was the same.
“Don’t worry. We’re the unbeatable heroes, aren’t we? We’ll definitely come back.”
“Aaaah…!”
Even until the moment ‘that person’ turned around and walked away, Hurtlocker couldn’t stop him. His arms and legs had frozen uselessly in place, refusing to move.
All he could do was watch as hundreds of soldiers marched in perfect formation toward their doom.
The soldiers waving at him. The ones pulling funny faces, trying to make him laugh and reassure him…
When he was young, he hadn’t understood. But seeing it again like this in the dream, it finally made sense.
They had known they were marching to their deaths.
“Ah… Aaaah…”
Only now did he understand why those vicious humans who always dragged him along to do odd jobs during battles had left him behind that day alone.
They had gone to die.
Following orders.
For their country.
For their people.
A sacrifice for the greater cause.
Watching the column grow smaller in the distance, Hurtlocker felt a long-forgotten sense of powerlessness. The helplessness of being unable to do anything. In this frail child’s body, there was nothing he could…
“Huuuuurgh…!”
At that exact moment, Hurtlocker jolted awake from the dream.
Cold sweat had beaded across his forehead. As if he’d suffered a nightmare.
If I saw ‘that person’ again, shouldn’t it have been a happy dream?
“Damn it.”
Hurtlocker rose from the bed, steadying his breathing before washing his face. It was strange. To dream of the past so vividly.
After that battle, the Siegfried Company had been wiped out. All but one man.
As the last Siegfried, Hurtlocker had inherited the unit’s name as his surname. Then, with astonishing speed, he awakened and began operating as an assassin—eventually becoming known as a one-man company.
That weak, helpless boy had transformed into a tactical weapon who dominated battlefields in just a few years.
“What a stupid dream.”
Assigning meaning to dreams was foolish. With that thought, Hurtlocker wiped the memory from his mind.
He had a lot to do today. Construction site labor in the morning, washing dishes at a restaurant in the afternoon… His part-time jobs were piling up. All because he had bought protective suits and gas masks to enter the Wist Forest, nearly bankrupting the intelligence bureau’s finances.
He couldn’t even buy an antidote afterward because none were available on the market at the time. In the end, he had no choice but to purchase the ridiculously expensive equipment, which now sat useless and took up space.
To make matters worse, after taking a full blast of mana energy, their durability had dropped so much that he couldn’t even sell them secondhand.
Still… I did save Schluss Heinkel.
Even after spending all that money, if it meant saving Schluss Heinkel, maybe it was worth it. Emilia had begged him so desperately not to kill Schluss that he had no choice but to keep the man alive.
Huh? Why am I suddenly angry?
The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if he should have let the bastard die after all. Why did Emilia protect that guy so fiercely? Was that son of a bitch sweet-talking their Emilia?
Heat surged through Hurtlocker as he flung the door open.
“……?”
The person standing before him, wrapped in a veil, was the first thing he saw. His immediate thought was how they weren’t overheating in that getup.
“Kingheart. I have a request for you.”
“What…?”
Hurtlocker’s pupils dilated instantly. Only the Crows knew the name Kingheart. Since it had never been revealed to outsiders, there was no chance this was someone impersonating a Crow.
“What’s the request?”
“Read the commission yourself.”
A rolled-up sheet of paper was thrust toward him. Hurtlocker carefully unfurled it and checked the contents—
Idiot.
“What the hell?”
Utterly bewildered, he quickly lowered the paper. The veiled man had already vanished.
“This… what the…”
That wasn’t all. Suddenly the entire scenery around him began to shatter. With a soft crumbling sound, the world collapsed like falling puzzle pieces. Once every fragment had fallen away, only nothingness remained.
A completely white, empty world.
Stranded alone in its center, Hurtlocker squeezed his eyes shut.
It’s still a dream.
“Huk!”
The moment he realized it, Hurtlocker snapped back to reality. This time it was unmistakably real. The mana that he hadn’t felt at all before was now circulating through his body.
The only problem was—
“Fuck…”
A sack had been pulled over his head, and his arms and legs were bound. No matter how hard he struggled, the restraints showed no sign of loosening. Some trick had been used to suppress the mana inside his body as well.
How the hell had it come to this?
As Hurtlocker carefully retraced his memories, a familiar voice reached his ears.
“Nice to see you again, Kingheart. It’s been a while.”
“……!”
It was a voice he knew all too well. A voice that made him want to shove the speaker into a cesspit and drown him.
It was Schluss Heinkel.
***
“Schluss! Let me go right now!!!”
“Haa…”
A sigh escaped before I could stop it. All because of the man currently writhing in front of me with his limbs tied.
To explain how the situation had reached this point, I had to go back a few hours.
“Hello~ Special delivery here~”
“……”
I had been resting in the mansion when I opened the door. A beautiful boy in uniform stood there. Out of habit, I used Inquiry to examine his identity. The moment I did, my face twisted into a frown.
“Jin. What are you doing in that form?”
“Ah…”
It was Crow Jin. So this time she had disguised herself as a man. Come to think of it, it occurred to me that Jin could probably experience every kind of sexual encounter without limitation. Damn. What the hell was I even thinking?
“How do you always notice right away?”
“You have a scent. A very distinctive one.”
“What?!”
I had to hold back my laughter as Jin lifted her own arm and sniffed it. She must have thought I was serious.
“I don’t smell anything…”
“Just tell me what you want. Before my attendant arrives.”
“Tsk. The request. I completed it, so you need to come.”
“What request?”
“Why are you pretending to have forgotten? You asked me to find Kingheart.”
“……”
She was right. I had completely forgotten. I had commissioned her because I thought I should meet Hurtlocker alone someday. Since I assumed it would take a long time, I had erased it from my mind entirely. But with midterms right around the corner, I was busy right now.
“Today’s impossible. Bring him next week.”
“Wait, what… If I do that, the kid will die of dehydration.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve got him tied up in the basement right now. You want me to clean up his shit and piss, feed him, and give him water until next week? Nope. Even with extra pay, I’m not doing that.”
“……”
I couldn’t help but get angry. What the hell? I asked her to arrange a meeting, and this crazy bitch had gone and kidnapped him, tied him up, and locked him away. As footsteps approached from behind, Jin handed me a note.
“Here’s the address. Kill him or save him, it’s up to you. I’m never going back there.”
“……”
If she had tied Hurtlocker up, she would have suppressed his mana as well. In that case, he would never be able to escape on his own. If I didn’t go, he would either starve, die of thirst, or drown in his own filth.
Damn it…
Now that I thought about it, Jin was a bottom-tier Crow who could give even Henderson a run for his money. I never imagined that her playful personality would come back to bite me like this.
“You can even change into a man. You have quite the unique tastes.”
Irritated, I muttered the words at Jin’s back. The reply that came back was ridiculous.
“I’m a woman, you idiot.”
“……”
Jin stuck her tongue out at me, then spun around and left. Wait, that was a woman…?
Whew. Thank goodness. I was starting to worry that I had gotten slightly excited looking at a man. Ah… that’s beside the point.
Anyway, returning to the present—
“No matter how much you torture me, I won’t say a word! Do whatever you want! There’s nothing you can get from me! Go ahead and scramble my brain with magic and turn me into a vegetable!”
Hurtlocker kept shouting nonstop. Was this room soundproof? Since Jin had prepared the house, it was probably safe, but I worried for a moment. With that booming voice of his, it felt like he could punch straight through soundproofing.
“Hey, hey. My ears hurt. Knock it off.”
“Stop wasting time and just do it! You damn imperial lapdog, Schluss Heinkel!”
“Aren’t you tired? Here, have some dumplings.”
“……”
I yanked the sack off his head and shoved a dumpling toward him. I had bought them on the way, so they were still piping hot. He blinked rapidly at the sudden brightness, but his eyes locked onto the dumpling before they even reached me.
“Are you trying to humiliate me?! You think I’d fall for something as trivial as dumplings?!”
“Shut up and eat.”
“Mmph! I get it! This is food torture!”
“For fuck’s sake. Then drink some water too.”
“This is water torture…! Urgh!”
I fed him dumplings and stuck a water bottle in his mouth, yet he still had plenty to say. I was starting to wonder if conversation with this guy was even possible. A creeping anxiety told me this was only going to create more misunderstandings.
“Feeling a bit more energetic now, huh?”
“Don’t think something like this will win me over! Schluss Heinkel!!!”
“Ouch. My ears.”
Right. This bastard had always been full of energy. Feeding him dumplings had only made his voice louder. I should never have done that.
“Shall we have a little talk?”
“We have nothing to talk about. Ah! That list! What did you do with the list of our agents you obtained?!”
He claimed we had nothing to talk about, yet immediately started asking questions. How shameless. Maybe I should beat him a few times first.
“I threw it in the sewer. Didn’t you hear that from the traitor?”
“Don’t lie!”
“I’m not lying.”
“Then give me proof that you’re not lying!”
“……”
Yeah. I knew the conversation would go this way. This guy held absolute distrust toward me. The road ahead already looked bleak. And yet I had to turn someone like this into an ally by the end.
“After that list was made, has any agent from the kingdom’s intelligence bureau been captured? If I had intended to keep it, I would have handed it over to the imperial police long ago and received a medal. Don’t you think?”
“T-that’s… You left it on purpose to threaten us, didn’t you?!”
“Haa… Fine. Yeah, sure, let’s say that’s true. Then shouldn’t you listen to me even more carefully? Dozens of your comrades’ lives are in my hands.”
“……”
Only then did Hurtlocker’s mouth finally close. Maybe I should have started with this from the beginning.
“Ready to talk now?”
“…Yeah.”
“Good. You know about the civil war that broke out in the southern colony, right? Make sure the kingdom doesn’t support the rebels.”
“What? That’s not under the intelligence bureau’s jurisdiction! There’s nothing we can do about it!”
“Making it happen anyway is your job. If you don’t, both Eric and Emilia will die. Just like Iskandal.”
“……!”
Hurtlocker’s eyes widened. At the same time, veins bulged across his face.
“You bastard! So you did see the list! You knew Emilia was one of our agents! Then why the hell do you keep her so close?! What are you planning to do with Emilia?!”
“I plan to use your neck as a leash. If you don’t want to see Emilia sprawled in the street with all her limbs torn off, you’d better obey me quietly. Don’t speak of today’s events to anyone. That includes Eric Faust, the intelligence bureau chief who runs the café and bar. You understand, don’t you?”
“……!”
Hurtlocker’s pupils shook wildly, completely lost. I should have done it this way from the start. Why hadn’t I thought of using Emilia as a hostage sooner? After barely surviving death several times, had my personality grown impatient? It seemed I no longer cared about the means as long as I achieved the end.