Chapter 62
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 62
Chapter Title: The Bait
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Bel, with a pipe in his mouth, immediately sat down at the small desk inside the barracks. A staggering amount of paperwork was piled on his desk, and Bel wrestled with it for some time.
I carefully unpacked my things so as not to disturb Bel’s work. All I had brought into the barracks was a small notebook, a slightly thicker book, and a few pieces of chocolate, but placing them on the small shelf next to the bed somehow made it feel like this bed was entirely my own.
“...The report on yesterday’s wounded and dead still hasn’t come in.”
As I lay on the bed, staring blankly around the barracks, I heard Bel’s voice. Naturally, he wasn't talking to me.
“What, the captain didn’t submit the report? Six dead, eighty-one wounded. Two missing.”
Grisha, who had been lying on her bed with her eyes closed, answered in a dry voice.
“Cause of death?”
“One from excessive bleeding. Two from stab wounds. Two others died instantly when their torsos exploded… and one was likely a suicide.”
They discussed people dying without the slightest change in their expressions. After she finished speaking, Grisha closed her eyes again, while Bel gnawed on his pipe and returned to his paperwork.
“...”
Despite the grim conversation passing between them, the atmosphere in the barracks remained unchanged.
That fact made me even more uncomfortable.
It seemed that after a long war, the two of them no longer felt any particular emotion about someone’s injury or death.
“Bin, I’m sure I told you I don’t expect any particular heroics from you. And you, in turn, questioned why I wasn’t sending you back to the capital like the others.”
After about thirty minutes of that uncomfortable yet placid atmosphere, Bel suddenly spoke to me as he organized a stack of documents in his hand.
“You did, didn’t you?”
“You have one thing the others don’t.”
“...And what’s that?”
“Value.”
Huh?
Value?
...What kind of value?
“Your fame is known throughout the continent. The genius who will save the world, the second coming of the Sword Saint, and all that nonsense.”
“Well… yes.”
“And that fame hasn’t just spread among the people of the continent. Those damn Overlords out there have likely classified you as a top-priority threat.”
“...”
I fell silent for a moment, then swallowed hard. I had a rough idea of what he was going to say next.
“What do you think your life is worth? Enough for four Overlords to risk revealing themselves on the battlefield?”
This conversation is taking a strange turn.
“When I first heard you were being assigned to this front, I was honestly at a loss. This battlefield is too much for a greenhorn who hasn’t even fully matured. I even considered writing to His Majesty to ask him to reconsider. But then, a good idea came to me.”
Bel stood up from his desk and picked up the chair he had been sitting on. He carried it over to my bedside.
“Do you know the current state of the war in Vellaland?”
A strange pressure began to tighten around my chest and throat. In his eyes, visible between strands of his jet-black hair, swirled a deep anger and a sharp desperation that no ordinary person could comprehend.
“The enemy’s forces are pushing our front line back three paces a day. They’re slowly eliminating every variable, grinding down our supplies and our morale. At this rate, we’ll have to completely abandon the Vellaland front within a month.”
Those were the eyes of a man cornered on a cliff’s edge.
“Our enemies don’t suffer from mental illness, nor do they require food. And their numbers swell every time one of our own dies.”
Bel took hold of the pipe in his mouth. A faint, almost chilling smile played on his lips.
“Strictly speaking, this isn’t a battlefield. It’s a slaughterhouse. We’re just waiting for our day to die, like stupid cows and pigs.”
‘Damn, this is intense. It's like a criminal interrogation.’
While one part of my mind was having such leisurely thoughts, I clicked my tongue.
The effects of [Calm] were so remarkable that even when an exceptional mage like Bel intentionally set the mood, I wasn't the least bit overwhelmed.
You could search this entire world and find few as strong as Bel.
The fact that my mind was still running this clearly even when facing him meant I probably wouldn't freeze up in fear no matter who I met.
…Well, I didn’t expect to be testing the limits of [Calm] like this again.
“Well, this place being treated as a slaughterhouse ends as of yesterday.”
He continued, lightly tapping my chest with the end of his pipe.
“Bin, what do you think is needed to kill the Demon King and his demons?”
“I don’t know.”
“A monster that surpasses an overwhelming genius.”
Bel spoke, the tip of his pipe still pressed against my chest.
“Ultimately, the war only ends when the Demon King and his demons are dead. No matter how many Overlords we kill, no matter how many high-ranking lords we slay, it’s meaningless if the Demon King and his demons just create more. You agree with that, don’t you?”
“That’s true.”
“The Demon King and his demons. One is a transcendent being, the other is a monster of slaughter personally crafted by that transcendent. Both are monsters in a league of their own. To kill them, we need a monster of a comparable level.”
He continued speaking calmly.
“We have the Sword Saint, but no matter how great he is, he can’t face both the Demon King and his demons at the same time. So, for us to win this war, we needed one more monster on his level.”
*Crackle!*
A faint spark flared from the head of the pipe Bel was holding. He put the pipe, now nothing but ashes, to his lips and took a deep drag.
“But then, some kid who came out of nowhere, an orphan, fights an Overlord and survives. Then he catches a young dragon and goes around extorting high-ranking lords? And the rumors say he’s a lump of pure talent who’s never once learned magic.”
Earthy, no, what could now be called pitch-black smoke flowed from Bel’s lips.
“The appearance of an unexpected variable. A variable we desperately needed, and one our enemies cannot tolerate.”
Bel slowly raised his head and looked up at the ceiling of the barracks. It was covered in soot stains and faint patches of mold.
“You are the bait.”
Bel introduced me to an identity I never knew I had.
I barely managed to suppress the urge to quip, ‘And here I thought my name was Bin, with the family name Gyeong.’
…[Calm], this thing is so effective it’s a problem.
“Once you start showing your face on the battlefield, the Overlords will reveal themselves accordingly. To them, killing you will be more important than taking the land of Vellaland.”
Even to my non-expert eyes, the situation in Vellaland didn’t look good.
The Overlords were hidden somewhere deep, while their subordinate regular Mazoku and high-ranking Mazoku slowly tightened the noose around the front line.
Every day, thousands of Mutants fall to the soldiers’ blades and are sent to hell, but the number of Mutants flooding the battlefield exceeds tens of thousands.
Day by day, the front line was slowly being pushed back, one or two meters at a time.
No catastrophic damage had occurred. The generals, Grisha and Bel, were alive and well, and the supply lines were functioning properly.
But that was all. This battlefield was steadily falling into the hands of the Mazoku.
“We will use you as bait to lure the Overlords into our formation, then we’ll snatch them up nicely.”
“Even if you draw out the Overlords, do you even have a way to kill them?”
Surprisingly, my next line wasn't, ‘Use me as bait? What nonsense.’
…[Calm] is a god, and I, under its protection, am invincible.
“You’re quite composed. Did you expect this?”
Expected it? Not a chance. The truth was, my constitution simply made it impossible for me to get scared or flustered.
“...Of course.”
Well, if it works, it works, right?
“A sharp one, I see. Anyway, you asked about a way to kill the Overlords?”
“You do have one, right?”
The Overlords weren't just Mazoku with command abilities. They were commanders and, at the same time, the most skilled combatants among the Mazoku.
While it varied by individual, the military power of an Overlord was generally considered to be on the level of a ‘general’ like Bel and Grisha before me.
So, even if they were lured out, I was doubtful if the current regular army had the ability to capture them for certain.
“I can’t answer that yet. It’s a matter of security.”
In this situation, most people hearing that answer would wear a look of disbelief and leave immediately.
He was going to use my life as bait, yet he couldn't even share the details of the operation. Who in their right mind would entrust their life to such a headstrong and arbitrary commander?
“It’s a bit much to say this on the day we met, but trust me. I’m not the kind of fool who bets his life on a losing…”
“Alright, I’ll do it then.”
Despite it all, I gave a brisk affirmation.
“...Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
There was no grand reason for it.
It was simply because I knew what kind of person Bel Artois was.
Bel was certainly a ruthless man without a shred of mercy in his actions, but all his actions were for the greater cause of ‘victory in the war.’
And that same Bel had said that I was a necessary variable to win this war.
Whether I was a genuine genius or not didn't matter. What truly mattered was that Bel evaluated me as such.
As long as this misunderstanding wasn’t cleared up, Bel would not let me die, no matter what.
…Even if the situation devolved into the worst-case scenario, Bel would probably try to protect me by trading the lives of all his soldiers.
Because he was a man for whom ‘victory in the war’ was paramount.
For better or worse, that was the kind of person Bel Artois was.
“You just can’t tell me, but there’s definitely a way, right? You said ‘yet’… which means you plan to tell me someday. What the hell, I’ll trust you this once.”
Bel should be grateful that I’m someone who has played this game for thousands of hours.
Otherwise, how could I know that the man before me was a ‘meticulous and brilliant soldier’ and so easily agree to trust him?
“...Unexpected. For you to trust me so easily. It’s your life on the line, you could think about it more carefully.”
“No need. My mind’s made up.”
Thinking about it rationally, I didn’t have any other choice but to trust Bel anyway.
It’s not like I had a brilliant plan to turn the tide of battle, nor did I have the ability to escape this battlefield and survive right now.
As I’ve said before, isn’t it far more rational to play Russian roulette with a revolver that has at least one empty chamber than with a semi-automatic pistol?
I simply chose the revolver with one empty chamber.
“I’ll trust you without any conditions. In return, when I ask you to trust me later, you’ll trust me just once, General. Without any conditions.”
Besides, by readily agreeing to trust him under these ridiculous conditions, I could also put him in my debt.
To some, it might seem meaningless. We didn't sign a contract, nor did we have official witnesses.
Nevertheless, this debt could be put to important use in the future.
It would be an opportunity for the real power in this army to form a positive impression of me.
It didn’t matter if the abstract promise of ‘trusting me without any conditions when I need it’ was actually fulfilled.
Simply having this man hold a positive impression of me brought countless advantages.
“...Alright. When the day comes that you need my help, I will trust you without any conditions. I promise.”
Bel paused for a moment before giving his reply.
The desperation that had filled his jet-black eyes was now gone without a trace.