Chapter 221: A Tale of the Past, The Pied Piper of Hamelin - 7
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 221: A Tale of the Past, The Pied Piper of Hamelin - 7
A fierce battle erupted between one hundred and one. The outcome wasn't hard to predict. The one had the advantage.
Nicholas’s longsword, specialized for cutting, had a long reach and covered a wide arc. It was a weapon, a form of Qi Art, specialized for dealing with a large number of weaker opponents. Befitting of a Chief Instructor, one might say.
However, this forest was filled with thick, untouched trees. Though he sometimes cut through them to advance, his strength was steadily being depleted.
And then there was this.
Fweee!
“Re! Lux!”
“Pascal!”
The children, moving in perfect unison at my command, were proving to be more difficult opponents than Nicholas had anticipated.
When I blew the whistle, Standard Magic rained down on him. Light and wind. Arcane powers that the Military State had tailored to its own needs, stripping them of their mystery, were now fired at Nicholas.
“You little brats!”
Nicholas took a step forward and unleashed a drawing slash. The complex tangle of vines, which had taken so long to grow, was severed in an instant.
Thwack! At the same time, the children who had been blocking Nicholas with logs screamed and were sent flying.
But Nicholas’s expression was far from satisfied. He should have split everything in a single blow, from the logs they used as shields to the children lined up behind them. But something sticky had clung to his blade, dulling its edge.
“How do you like it? We soaked those logs in pine resin boiled with ivy, then wrapped them up tight. Resin has a tendency to stick to living things, so you won’t be able to get it off easily, even with Qi Art.”
It was a minor trap, prepared for the possibility that he might try to cut through the logs.
My original plan was to cover his entire body in resin to weaken him, but it only got on his blade. A pity, but it couldn't be helped.
Just as Nicholas was about to finish off the fallen children, I intervened. The moment my dagger aimed for him, his resin-caked longsword flashed.
Toward me.
“Haha! As I thought, you have no intention of dying, do you? Of course not!”
A trajectory formed in his mind. A single strike meant to slice me in half at the waist. I couldn't block it, but I never intended to get close in the first place. With a smirk, I feigned a step forward, then pulled my leg back and retreated a good distance.
The tip of his sword grazed the air just in front of my waist. Knowing it wouldn't connect, I felt no fear.
A brief standoff. During that time, the children who had been in danger quickly fled. The situation was back to square one.
“…Impressive, Huey. The more I see, the more I regret this. Why make such a foolish choice?”
Nicholas clicked his tongue as he watched me dodge his attack without batting an eye. His lament held a sliver of sincerity.
To him, the ability to cut in at the perfect moment and disrupt his rhythm was a skill only someone who truly understood combat could possess.
In reality, I was just reading his thoughts and constantly looking for openings.
Well, whatever. If he saw me as a threat, all the better.
“Ahaha! You know me! I learn everything well, but I can never go beyond that! In other words, I’ve already peaked in life!”
“Exactly! If you miss this chance, you’ll be stuck at that level forever! You’ll end up like me, a colonel who couldn't become a general officer, forced to run from his own men!”
They say a soldier who fails to earn his star falls ill. Of course, many people work diligently in their given positions, but Nicholas, who had felt the limits of his talent sooner than anyone, had become all the more obsessed with it.
In his eyes, I must have looked like a fool who possessed outstanding talent but was throwing away his chance.
“Accept it, even now! If you just agree, everything will be resolved! If we both keep our mouths shut, we can make it so this Anathema never happened!”
He was right. The strongest person among the one hundred and forty here was me. Without me, these children, who were barely holding on as it was, would crumble like a disorganized mob.
In fact, a few of them were already looking at me with worried eyes, wondering if I might betray them.
But.
“Nicholas. If you’re going to do this, why not give it a try yourself? Why is it always you on the testing side? The one issuing the ordeals? Why is it always our job to risk our lives to achieve the impossible?”
A longsword has a long reach and a wide radius, but that very fact limits its trajectory. No matter how much Qi he imbued it with, a tree that had protected itself from wild beasts for years wouldn't easily reveal its rings. If his longsword got caught on a tree, it would be stuck just the same.
Wary of his blade, I moved to a position that would give him the most trouble and shouted.
“Fight against an insurmountable trial, just like they are! That’s the real deal. Just ordering people around without risking your own life or overcoming any hardship yourself… isn’t that just you being a condescending old man?”
“You insist on being a fool to the end!”
Nicholas broke away from me and ran toward the other students. As planned, a few of them quickly scattered, but two who were slow to react were torn apart.
They weren't even cut by a sharp edge. Their bodies were ripped asunder by the brutal slash. The resin on the blade, born from the body of a plant, had the rare experience of seeing the inside of a human body.
A child standing nearby screamed. They were still too young to simply ignore a friend’s death.
Just as Nicholas was about to slice the throat of the screaming child, I lunged at his back.
“I’ll make you a promise, Nicholas! If you truly want me to devour them all, then push through my interference, kill everyone else but me, and take their blood! If you can overcome that hardship and achieve such a feat, then maybe I’ll make a more ‘rational’ decision!”
If he could overcome all these trials and feed me their blood just to make me into a greater talent, if he could do that with unwavering will, well, I wouldn't have much of a choice then.
But Nicholas, as if he’d been waiting for it, immediately thrust his sword at me. The blade aimed at my neck was filled with clear killing intent.
It meant only one thing.
“Hahaha! Of course! You don’t want to overcome any hardships yourself, do you!”
I cackled as I parried the blade. It was heavy. My body slid backward.
Nicholas clicked his tongue and replied.
“…I do not negotiate with reactionaries.”
“What a pathetic excuse. Giving up before you even try because you think you’ll fail. Is that your limit?”
Steadying my crumbling stance, I brushed my hair back from my forehead and muttered.
“Ah. I get it now. You’re all talk, saying you’d give your life for the Military State. In the end, you have no will or passion to achieve anything yourself. You just sit on top and demand that your subordinates meet your expectations.”
Clashing swords with him, I had heard enough of his thoughts.
He had high expectations but gave up quickly. He tried to manage costs efficiently. He was the ideal educator the Military State desired. He had no qualms about sacrificing anyone.
But in the end, he lacked the courage to risk his own life. He didn't have the confidence to put himself through an ordeal.
“Ah, how boring. You have the resolve to use one hundred and sixty-one lives, but not the resolve to risk your own to do it.”
“…Do you think I would fall for such a taunt?”
“It’s not a taunt, it’s an objective evaluation. Phew, I’m glad I fought back. A boring story needs a plot twist, after all.”
Snap. The word “boring” struck a nerve. The veins on Nicholas’s head bulged as if they would burst.
Enraged, Nicholas raised his longsword above his head and charged at me.
“You should have accepted my will! If only for your own survival!”
“One minute you’re calling me a talent who will bring glory to the Military State, the next you’re falling for a simple taunt. How fickle.”
I put the whistle back to my lips and issued another command.
The longsword aimed for me. I circled around a tree, using it as a shield. The blade, thrust like a spear, shattered the bark and shot out from an angle, but I had already read his thoughts and dodged it with a simple turn of my head.
It’s hard to catch someone who can read minds. Nicholas was growing impatient as I dodged one decisive attack after another.
Magic, spears, rocks, and snares rained down on his back as he focused on me.
The best way to give a person courage is to guarantee their safety. Iron bars give one the courage to approach a beast; a shield gives one the courage to advance.
It was the same for the children.
Snares, magic, ropes, logs, and spears. Armed with distance, they kept pressing Nicholas from a range where he couldn't reach them. Shiati, who was once a melee combatant, and Kerapald, who had aspired to be a Mage Officer, played their parts particularly well.
“You… you brats…!”
It was an awkward space to swing a longsword. But he couldn't just throw away his weapon. As long as he couldn't completely cover his body with Qi, he too would be injured if a blade struck him. These were children who had learned the basics of Qi Art at the secondary military school; if they all rushed him with blades, even Nicholas would be in danger.
In a moment of carelessness, Nicholas’s foot sank into a pit filled with resin. As he lost his balance, a snare flew toward him. Nicholas thrashed about wildly, but the human hunt grew more persistent and tenacious.
Yes, just like hunting a great-horned deer.
“You brats!”
In the end, he decided to deal with the annoying distractions first instead of the elusive me. He kicked off a tree and tried to leap away. The moment I read that thought, I held two daggers in a reverse grip and slashed at his ankles. Though they didn't touch his skin, the blades glowed faintly crimson for a moment.
Blood splattered. His pant leg tore, and blood flowed out.
I couldn't use it for long due to the lack of volume, but for a brief moment, I too could imbue my blades with Qi.
“Ugh! Huey, you…!”
Changing his posture now would be too great a loss. He accepted the loss and leaped toward the most bothersome group, the spearmen led by Shiati.
They were the healthiest, bravest, and most threatening of the children, as they could handle a bit of Qi. The trained among them responded to his charge.
But before a colonel, they were nothing but puppies. Forgetting my order to roll away the moment Nicholas approached, one boy tried to block with a hastily made wooden spear. A massive slash descended upon the spear shaft.
“Idiot! Look out!”
Shiati, who had dodged faster than anyone, was startled and shoved him with all her might.
But it was too late. Or rather, it was a meaningless gesture that only brought about a greater loss.
Because along with the boy’s body, Shiati’s right arm was also severed.
Her right arm, caught in the trajectory of the longsword, was lopped off and flew into the air. Beyond her detached limb, the boy’s eyes, split open from the shoulder, slowly lost their light.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
A scream tore through the air, whether from her friend’s death or the pain in her arm, it was impossible to tell. Clutching her right arm, which was gone below the elbow, Shiati fell to her knees.
Even though he could have finished Shiati right then, Nicholas held his sword ready to strike backward at any moment instead of swinging. Even after killing a student, he was still only wary of me.
In other words, this situation was bait to lure me out.
I deliberately made noise as I approached slowly. Nicholas’s brow twitched.
‘…He’s calm. As expected, he’s on a different level from the others. If he approaches so cautiously, I should aim for the others.’
“Oh, really?”
I had already confirmed that Nicholas had no intention of letting me live. The students and I were now in the same boat. Nicholas himself had made it so.
In that case, I would play along with his expectations. I called out Shiati’s name and rushed forward, as if my previous composure had all been a lie.
“You too, in the end… are just a child.”
I read Nicholas’s thoughts. His pity for me had gradually faded over the course of the fight. What he felt now, exhausted and harassed, was only fatigue, annoyance, and resentment toward me.
If you had just listened to me, you wouldn't have had to die, he thought, drawing a trajectory in his mind.
A slash, drawn in a dark light, originating from the hilt of his sword.
I was at the end of that trajectory. A surprise attack aimed at my back.
But, wasn't he underestimating me a little too much? To telegraph his swing so openly?
“I’m the top student, you know!”
In an instant, I drew up all the Qi in my body. Perhaps due to the influence of Gluttony, a turbid but fierce light swirled around my dagger. Maybe because it was power gained through death, it seemed to have a faint crimson glow.
But since it was inside my body, it was my power. I unleashed it. The daggers in my hands caught the massive longsword that was trying to split me in two.
Claaaaang. A heavy clang.
My arms trembled, and the daggers twisted on their axes. It felt like every bone in my body was screaming.
Still, it was a good thing I’d applied the resin. Thanks to it, the blade didn't slip, and I avoided being split in half.
I steadied my creaking arms and gave a triumphant smile.
“Both Historia and Lankart were below me. You hit a wall when you faced those two, didn't you, Chief Instructor? So, did you think I’d be easy? I ranked at the top in both written exams and practicals, you know.”
“…What meaning does that have?”
Nicholas put all his strength into his waist and swung his arms even more fiercely.
“When you lack the most important thing—power!”
What I felt was pure power. He intended to crush my defense with brute force. It felt like the tip of a windmill was pushing me back. The misaligned dagger let out a piercing scream.
It was too much power to withstand. To break through this situation, I pulled out another trick.
“Set, Re. Fahrenheit.”
I scraped the resin with my fingernail. Flames erupted along the adhesive, which was covered in dry grass. The longsword was engulfed in fire. The large, long torch was menacing, but in reality, the situation was more disadvantageous for Nicholas than for me.
The flames obstructed his vision, and the melted resin stuck to his longsword. He couldn't expect any sharpness from it now.
At that moment, I scraped the burning resin with my dagger and flicked it. Straight at Nicholas’s eyes.
“Cheap tricks!”
Like a seasoned soldier, Nicholas didn't make the mistake of closing his eyes. But the constantly flying bits of burning resin were a bit of a burden even for him.
To avoid giving me an opening while dodging, Nicholas retrieved his longsword and stepped back.
I shouted loudly.
“I won’t let you get away! Fight, Nicholaaaaas!”
I stayed in the corner of his vision, sticking to him. I kept shouting, hammering at his eardrums. I threw away the dagger in my left hand, its axis already broken. Instead, I drew up mana with my left hand and fired off a series of spells.
As I threw everything I had at him, Nicholas was pushed back by the momentum. One step back became two, and two became three.
But he retreated no further.
“Every single one… nothing but cheap tricks…! That is your limit! Whatever you face in the future, you will quickly reach that limit…! Though for you, there is no future!”
The dagger I swung, the magic I fired—they were all pathetic. At best, the dagger thrusts imbued with my squeezed-out Qi were the only real danger.
After focusing and analyzing my attacks, he realized that nothing I used was truly powerful. He was about to steady his stance and push forward with pure strength again.
However.
“You’ve retreated too far back, Nicholas.”
Thunk.
Three spears pierced his back, the back of his knee, and his waist. Then, the ropes used to build the raft wrapped around his limbs. A force that bound him in an instant.
Through it all, a voice on the verge of breaking could be heard.
“You… die…”
A sharp dagger plunged into Nicholas’s shoulder. It was Shiati. Even with one arm lost, she had been consumed by fury and charged in with a dagger.
They were all children who had received military training, after all. When an opportunity arose, they seized it. They had the talent and the skill for it.
“You… losers! How dare you!!”
Even as ropes bound his limbs and blades tore at his body, Nicholas stubbornly held on. He grabbed a rope with one hand and used his Qi to plant his feet on the ground, trying to break free from all the restraints at once.
But he didn't budge.
There were over a hundred students. But since there was a limit to how many could fight at once, those not participating in the battle were all standing at a distance, holding the ropes. When the trap or snare teams succeeded in binding Nicholas, twenty of them would gather and pull with all their might.
A tug-of-war is ultimately a battle of numbers and weight. An honest contest where strength is added in proportion to the weight applied. Even if he used his Qi Arts to grip the earth and twist his body, he couldn't overcome this difference.
“Grrgh…!”
There was only one way. He had to cut through them one by one with his scorched, resin-caked, and dulled longsword.
All while blades were digging into his body from every direction. It was a virtually impossible task.
Virtually impossible. As that thought crossed his mind, Nicholas’s heart grew frantic.
‘Wait. I’m… going to die?’
Finally. It took long enough. Nicholas pictured his own death. In this life-threatening crisis, he was forced to remember his own predicament.
This desperate situation. A crisis he believed would never befall him until it was right upon him. His mind raced.
But it was too late.
“Goodbye, Chief Instructor Nicholas. I put what you taught me to good use. I never thought you’d volunteer to be a teaching aid at the very end.”
“Huey, Huey! Wait! If you kill me here!”
Ignoring his words completely, I muttered softly in front of him.
“You looked up to those better than you and despised those who were lacking. Hamelin was the perfect place to satisfy that vanity of yours. You reveled in the position of guiding students more talented than yourself, and you loved your title of Chief Instructor so much. I wonder what it was like for you to witness the sight of the abandoned talents you despised coming together to achieve a great feat. It might just be the perfect end for you.”
“Killing me is insubordination! And that’s not all. Not only did you not keep quiet about the Anathema, you even attacked me…! The military authorities will try to bury this! By killing me, you’ll be crossing a river you can never return from!”
You should have said that before you crossed the river yourself. It’s so anticlimactic that even the children who just stabbed you with spears aren't wavering.
Anyway.
“But I will grant your wish. Time for Gluttony.”
Nicholas, who at first didn't understand what I meant, widened his eyes when I held out my Bio-receptor.
The Arch-Avatar is a kind of template that conforms to the body. It can form things on top of the body. It’s usually used for Clothing Packets… but what he had given me was a packet-type tattoo.
The blood spilled during the battle resonated with that tattoo. Pools of blood from all over the ground flowed up my feet and seeped into my Bio-receptor.
Really, the Military State does some strange things.
“With the gift you gave me, I will devour your memories, your energy, your experience—all of it. Just as you so desperately wished.”
“N-No! I still have things to do…!”
“Does anyone get eaten because their only purpose is to be eaten? It just… happens.”
Yes. This was just a result. If you’re the one who forces a result, you should at least be able to accept the result that appears.
“No—!”
So he wouldn't disgrace himself further, I put a period to his life, plunging my dagger into his unresisting neck.
As if to cut off his final thought… that if he was going to die anyway, he didn't want to be devoured by Gluttony.
His thoughts ceased. The dagger mark on his neck was a period that ended his words, his thoughts, his life, and his very existence. Chief Instructor Nicholas’s life ended here.
What he left behind, after half a lifetime dedicated to education, was this:
A hundred children filled with hatred.
And my own Qi, increased by a tiny speck.
That was all.