Chapter 220: A Tale of the Past, The Pied Piper of Hamelin - 6
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 220: A Tale of the Past, The Pied Piper of Hamelin - 6
Chief Instructor Nicholas arrived at the camp with only his most trusted adjutant. He must have run without a second thought for the dangers of the forest, as his clothes and hair were covered in broken twigs and leaves. At a glance, he looked like a model educator who prioritized his students' safety above all else.
The reality, however, was entirely different.
‘The children are a mess. So few of them left. The corpse of that beast over there. It seems like a success… but something’s off.’
Seeing the disastrous state of the camp, Nicholas rushed over to the trainee who looked the most composed. The girl standing where I should have been was… Shiati, the former combat officer candidate.
“Trainee Shiati. Give me a brief report on what happened.”
She seemed surprised that Nicholas had actually shown up, just as I’d said he would. Shiati, who had been standing there blankly, gave Nicholas a perfunctory salute, then lowered her gaze to the ground and mumbled.
“…We were stranded, so we set up camp here. But there was a pheromone lure hidden beneath the camp. It was probably a trap set by hunters to catch beasts. When it opened… the enraged beasts attacked us.”
Her acting was terrible. I was glad I’d told her to just stare at the ground and mumble. At least she could pretend she was too exhausted to even speak properly.
‘She knows about the lure? They were supposed to have been swept away by the beasts without knowing why. No, more importantly, it’s not time yet. Why did the lure activate so early? In that case…?’
Nicholas glanced around. The blood-soaked camp was filled with nothing but the traces of death. The blood splattered on the trees and the hastily covered pit that looked like a shallow grave seemed to tell the whole story of the tragedy that had just unfolded.
Enough blood had been spilled according to his plan… but the most crucial element was missing.
‘Why isn’t Huey here? Don’t tell me.’
Gripped by the fear that this had all been for nothing, Nicholas immediately pressed Shiati.
“Huey. Where is Trainee Huey?”
His attitude, asking for me before anything else, made it certain. It was clear who this graduation exercise had been prepared for, and by whom.
Shiati, the actress, lost her composure. Her mind went white with rage, and forgetting my advice, she glared at Nicholas.
“…Why are you asking for him first? So many students are missing, and some are buried right under our feet! Why, of all people, are you asking for Huey?!”
It was a more vehement response than I had anticipated. Things would get a little complicated if Nicholas sensed something was off about her attitude.
However, Nicholas was also psychologically cornered, anxious that his master plan might have gone up in smoke.
“Isn’t it obvious? Huey is—!”
He still had enough sense not to mention the Anathema, so Nicholas barely regained his composure and chose his words carefully.
“He is the top of his class, a talent whose admission to the Military Academy is guaranteed, and the leader of this graduation exercise. Is there a problem with me seeking him out for a proper report?”
“Ha, right. So you don’t care if a few of us die…!”
“Trainee Shiati! I express my condolences for what you’ve been through, but you are currently disobeying my order to report. Do not test my patience.”
At Nicholas’s roar, Shiati bit her lip hard, lowered her head again, and began to recite her prepared lines.
“Huey… sacrificed himself for us.”
“…What?”
Nicholas was the architect. He had prepared this stage, written the script, and cast the roles as he pleased, drawing out the story’s conclusion.
But no matter how meticulously he planned, from the moment the curtain rose, he was merely a member of the audience. Nicholas must have hoped the play would proceed as written, but sometimes, a play betrays its creator’s expectations and presents something that transcends the script.
Shiati delivered the lines we had rehearsed to the man who had just stormed onto the stage.
“While we were dealing with the sudden beast attack, Huey realized a step ahead of us that this was all happening because of the pheromone lure. He must have found the lure somewhere while investigating the camp. He grabbed the box, let out a scream, and ran towards the river. The beasts that were attacking us… all followed Huey. We stayed behind to tend to the survivors.”
“What…?! Huey became the lure himself?”
“Yes, sir.”
Shiati clasped her hands behind her back and bowed her head deeply, as if to hide her devastated expression. Meanwhile, Nicholas’s hands trembled, unable to accept a situation that had deviated so far from his expectations.
The play had slipped from his grasp. Reality had betrayed his hopes. Having held such great expectations, Nicholas felt a terrible sense of defeat.
Faced with an ordinary failure, the method Nicholas chose was…
Denial.
“Nonsense! Huey isn’t that kind of person. A cunning boy like Huey would never sacrifice himself for you lot!”
“…Excuse me?”
“To take the top spot from Historia and Lankart, you can’t just be outstanding! You have to be willing to turn even them into your pawns. It’s a position you can only reach by being cunning while earning people’s trust! Huey managed that. A boy like him would never sacrifice himself for the likes of you!”
Nicholas’s bloodshot eyes scanned the surroundings. The surviving children, conditioned by fear, didn’t dare meet his gaze. Such was the terrifying pressure emanating from Chief Instructor Nicholas.
Chief Instructor, Colonel Nicholas. Hamelin was just one small part of the area under his charge. He was the Chief Instructor overseeing all the elementary and secondary schools in the southwestern region.
It was no coincidence that Historia and Lankart had both ended up in Hamelin. It was because Chief Instructor Nicholas had gathered the two of them, who had shown promise since elementary citizen school, in this place.
He was a man of exceptional ability, having risen to the position of Chief Instructor because even the high command believed that only someone of his caliber could accurately evaluate students.
His rank, his ability, his accumulated experience—they were on a different level. Even if every student here made it into the Advanced Military Academy, none would ever come close to reaching Nicholas’s level.
Cowed by Nicholas’s fierce demeanor, the children lowered their heads. His furious voice rained down upon them.
“You should have been the ones to be sacrificed! If someone had to die, it should have been you! Why are you the ones who survived?!”
This was the Chief Instructor who had arrived just after they had barely survived a life-threatening crisis. Some of the children wanted to believe this was all a terrible nightmare. They had hoped, against all odds, that the Military State hadn’t abandoned them, that there had been some misunderstanding.
But the words Nicholas spat out trampled that last shred of hope.
“So you were trying to kill us all?! For that one kid, Huey?!”
A surge of defiance made Shiati snap her head up, but what she saw was Nicholas wearing a chilling smile.
“…Oho. I see. You all… figured out what this test was about.”
His face was half-submerged in madness. As a terrified Shiati faltered and stepped back, Nicholas twisted his lips and head bizarrely, glancing at the hastily covered pit.
“How did you find out? Did you discover the stone slab while digging a grave for the dead?”
“D-Do you think I’d tell you…?”
“I haven’t yet asked what you know, Trainee Shiati. If you want to deceive someone, you should erase what you know from your mind…”
He then gestured to the adjutant following him. The adjutant’s lips were set in a firm line as he followed Nicholas.
“Of course, it’s not like you’ll have any use for that lesson anymore.”
A cold killing intent was directed at Shiati and the other children. They huddled together behind Shiati like frightened chicks. Though they numbered over thirty, they hardly seemed to have the upper hand.
“Sekrik.”
“Yes, Chief Instructor.”
“I’m burying them all. Help me.”
Shing. The adjutant named Sekrik drew his saber. The saber, once used to issue commands to the children, now turned its blade toward them.
Reading the murderous intent emanating from the blade, Shiati cried out.
“What is this…! Don’t tell me you’re going to kill us all, Chief Instructor!”
“You were all fated to die anyway. The method has just become a little more troublesome.”
Nicholas replied coolly, drawing a long sword of his own. A dark Qi, like a flame, erupted from the hilt and enveloped the blade, ready to eliminate the unplanned survivors.
The children gradually backed away, but behind them was the river. To escape, they would have to either jump into the river or get past Nicholas.
Both were next to impossible.
“Go on, try to run. If such a place even exists in this Military State.”
Nicholas and his adjutant walked toward the slowly retreating children. Each step was filled with resolute killing intent. As he walked, he…
Stepped on a trap.
“Surprise, Chief Instructor!”
Just before his foot landed with its full weight, I burst out from a collapsed tent. Startled by my sudden appearance, Nicholas failed to react to the trap.
In the next instant, a hidden snare snatched his ankle. The snare trap, made strong enough to take down a great-horned deer, had caught him…
The only difference was that he was a human holding a weapon.
“Hup!”
The long sword moved with an agility that belied its length. Swish. The snare at his ankle was instantly severed. The remaining force of the sword strike carved a long gash in the ground.
But it wasn’t just one trap.
“Surprise number two.”
That snare was connected to something else. The moment the rope was cut, a long log that had been precariously balanced came swinging down, aimed at the back of Nicholas’s head. Whoosh. A heavy sound echoed.
However, for a man who had mastered Qi, the attack was far too slow.
“A pathetic trick.”
A single, swift draw. The massive log was sliced in two. With that, the chain of traps was broken.
If he had dodged to the side or below, he would have experienced surprises three, four, and five in succession. To think he’d just cut through it. I guess a colonel is still a colonel, even a rotten one.
“Well, still. I got one of them.”
Flick. Whoosh. I drew my dagger. The adjutant called Sekrik spurted blood from his side.
“Kegh!”
“There, there. Just lie down for a bit.”
The adjutant, not as quick to react as Nicholas, had been dragged by the snare and slid right in front of me. He instinctively tried to protect himself, but I slipped past his defense and plunged the dagger into his side.
Even a faint Qi was still Qi. The blade lodged itself between his collarbones. The blood flowing down the dagger seeped into the dirt… and headed somewhere.
“You, you, Huey…!”
“Shhh. My nourishment. Stay still. If you die, the blood won’t flow as well, you see.”
Leaving the adjutant, who wasn’t dead yet but was slowly approaching it, I raised my dagger and greeted Nicholas.
“Hello, Chief Instructor Nicholas.”
“What on earth. How. No.”
Flick, flick. His gaze darted between me, Shiati, and the trap at his feet. In that brief moment, he seemed to grasp something from my smile, and he touched his face with a trembling hand.
“…I see, Huey. You knew. You knew everything. And you made a foolish choice…!”
“A foolish choice? That’s a strange thing to say.”
“All you had to do was stay still! I was the one who committed the Anathema; you just had to pretend you didn’t know and reap the deaths of the failures! I shouldered everything for you…! How could you refuse such a thing?!”
How could I refuse? Like this.
At my signal, the children who had been hiding below the riverbank rose up in unison. There were over one hundred and forty of them. Each held a makeshift spear—a dagger tied to a branch—and joined our side, their bodies trembling with a mixture of anger and fear.
“This is how I refused.”
The number of children had swelled in an instant. Most of them were glaring at Nicholas with hatred. Nicholas muttered stupidly.
“You saved… almost all of them.”
“What do you mean, almost all of them? Seventeen precious lives were lost. That’s a great loss for me, too.”
Nicholas didn’t seem to agree with my opinion.
“Seventeen! That’s not nearly enough. Not nearly! Your Qi hasn’t increased at all!”
“You should praise me. Even though my Qi has barely increased, I can still take down a great-horned deer and an adjutant with ease.”
I smiled brightly and spun the dagger. The color of the blood on it was no different from that shed by the children who had died from horns and claws.
Was it the effect of Gluttony? Perhaps because I had stabbed him directly, I felt something seeping into my body. A dark, sullied, murky energy surged through my Bio-receptor and into my veins.
In terms of absolute quantity, that energy was insignificant… but for me, who possessed only a hair’s breadth of Qi and mana to begin with, it was a distinctly noticeable amount.
However.
“Ptooey. This is awful. You were strutting around for preparing something like this? I’d rather smoke mana herbs. At least those have some flavor.”
Nicholas couldn’t understand the situation. He couldn’t comprehend the altered script, nor my very existence, which had broken free from it.
He asked with a bewildered expression.
“Why, Huey?”
“Why indeed, Nicholas?”
“You are weak. With that Qi, with that mana, you will never be able to rise above a certain level. You are excellent at wielding the abilities you have, but your congenitally low reserves of Qi and mana will be shackles that bind you forever! I was trying to free you from those shackles!”
Amazingly, even now, after I had betrayed his trust and stabbed his adjutant, he was pleading with me in earnest. As if it were a waste for a talent like me to make such a foolish choice.
“To command others, you need a minimum qualification. That is dignity, and power. No matter how brilliant you are, if you lack power… you can achieve nothing. You, of all people, who must have felt your own limits more keenly than anyone, should have understood!”
“Of course, I understand, Chief Instructor. How could I not?”
Nicholas was sincere. No matter his position, even a Chief Instructor couldn’t commit an Anathema so lightly. He had observed my abilities for three years, identified my shortcomings, and desperately wished for me to become a greater person. For my sake, and for the sake of the Military State.
But… that was all it was. No matter if it was for the country, it was fundamentally just a wish projected onto another person. Like spare change offered out of generosity after one has taken care of their own needs.
An ordinary person might be grateful for even that spare change, but I am a mind reader. I am not moved by leftover sentiment.
“But, Nicholas, you’ve wrapped your intentions up so nicely… but the truth is, your sincerity only comes out when you’re sitting somewhere safe, warm, and well-fed, right? Isn’t your heart a little too light, a little too cheap?”
In a way, it was obvious.
I read thoughts. While there’s no unit to measure the magnitude of a heart, as a mind reader, I’ve made a habit of comparing the size and depth of emotions.
The result, naturally, was that Nicholas’s heart, standing outside the stage, was lighter than the lingering regret of a single dead child.
But that wasn’t something I could explain. Tsk.
Nicholas, who hadn’t understood half of what I said, declared proudly.
“This was a test for you as well! To achieve a grand victory, soldiers must be sacrificed! I took a risk and set this in motion, but you let your judgment be clouded by petty sentiment!”
“Is that so? Then I’ll give you a problem about grand victories. There’s no rule that says only the Chief Instructor gets to ask the questions, is there?”
I walked slowly. The crunch of vines and roots under my feet echoed. The terrain had changed so much from people moving about these past few days. Broken branches, trampled earth, holes dug here and there, a place filled with rope traps.
My chances of winning were more than enough.
“Instead of those tasteless children, please die for me, Nicholas. Offer your blood for me. If you do, I won’t destroy the Military State…”
At least have the decency to step onto the stage with me. Move me with that much heart.
“...I’ll spare it a fate worth one life. Yours.”