Chapter 32: The Resistance - 7
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 32: The Resistance - 7
The tools were prepared. The ending was set. All that remained was to give a magnificent performance.
Now then. Shall we begin?
“I know. I know everything. I know how vile you are, how you drove promising young people to their deaths with your terrible lies and deceit.”
“Don’t make me laugh!”
“Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma. Even you yourself, Kanysen.”
His head whipped around toward the direction of my voice. I heard a tch of frustration from Kanysen as he lost his target. After glancing around fruitlessly, he turned and began to narrow his search, scanning his surroundings with far greater care.
There wasn’t much room to hide. The closer he got, the harder it would be to move. I had to finish my preparations before then.
“They were all doomed to die the moment they came down here, weren’t they? If the operation succeeded, they would have been blown up with Tantalus and buried beneath the Abyss. If it failed, they would have been met by the Military State’s pursuit squads and killed. The Resistance was dead the moment they set foot in this place.”
“We were prepared for that! Don’t you dare disrespect our resolve!”
“Hah. Disrespect it? You’re the one who disrespected their resolve.”
A smirk touched my lips as I calmly laid bare the truth I had read from his mind.
“You didn’t let them decide for themselves. You drove them into a corner where they had no other choice.”
‘It’s foolish to answer such sophistry. Let him keep talking. I need to focus on the sound and pinpoint his location.’
Kanysen stopped responding. He might tell himself he was staying quiet to find me, but my mind-reading ability saw through to the feelings buried beneath.
He was growling desperately, trying to hide the truth that was about to spill from my lips.
It wouldn’t be long now. I carefully slipped out from under the cabinet and spoke, making my voice echo off the wall lined with instrument panels.
“You had the ability to break through the Military State’s encirclement and escape, didn’t you? You had time to hide in a supply box, right? With that much leeway, while it might have been impossible for you, Kanysen, who already had a warrant out for your arrest, the others who were still unknown could have feigned ignorance and pretended to be ordinary citizens.”
Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Gamma.
They were only in the planning stages of a terrorist act. On the surface, they were just ordinary, naive young people. They held subversive ideas, yes, and perhaps one of them might have been unlucky enough to be captured when the mass arrests began, but who could say for sure?
Yes. They could have survived.
“But you didn’t save them. No, you were the one who drove them to their deaths. You were the one who was exposed, so why did they have to flee with you?”
“Nonsense.”
“What if you hadn’t told them you were ‘exposed’ while you were running away? What if, instead of ordering them to gather and flee, you had ordered them to conceal the evidence and wait for the next opportunity, telling them the operation had failed? What if you had told them to save themselves and leave you behind?”
“Nonsense!”
“What if you hadn’t presented the path to death as their only option when they didn’t know what to do? If you had hidden in a safe house instead of infiltrating the supply depot where there was no escape, couldn’t they have survived?”
He was wavering. Breaking. Crumbling.
Kanysen’s steadfast will, his mind armed with a noble spirit and chivalry, was collapsing before his own guilt.
I was the trumpeter of his conscience.
The words came from my mouth, but it was his own ideals that were truly eating him away.
His wounds gouged open, Kanysen lost his composure and screamed.
“No! They are all warriors. They were all willing to sacrifice their lives to achieve our great cause! Don’t you dare insult them, you dog who grovels before our oppressors!”
“You are the one insulting them, Kanysen. They sought to achieve their desired future by paying with their lives. Joining your suicide mission wasn’t on the list of things they were willing to pay for.”
CRASH!
Kanysen hurled a steel pipe with all his might. Imbued with a powerful aura, it slammed into something. A pile of haphazardly stacked debris collapsed at once, and a broken plank of wood shuddered.
“Shut up!”
As if he couldn’t bear to hear my voice any longer, Kanysen shouted, making random noises.
And I, being the kind soul that I am, always felt the need to add one more thing when told to shut up.
“Once you were subjected to the Military State’s random questioning, you were a dead man anyway, Kanysen. Sooner or later. Whether by your own hand or by theirs. The moment those soldiers rang your doorbell—no, the moment the Military State’s high command planned their large-scale inspection—there was no way to save you.”
“What do you know?!”
I know everything.
I repeated the thought to myself and continued speaking, changing my position to evade his pursuit.
“But you always wanted your life to be spent on something meaningful. You wanted to offer your life for a greater honor. To be caught in a random inspection, have your terror plot exposed, and be killed after a futile resistance… such a pathetic and meaningless future was never part of your grand plan. Was it a lust for honor, or was it a desire for revenge? Unwilling to die alone, you recklessly called your comrades and tried to force the plan through.”
“I said shut up! Don’t talk as if you’ve read my mind!”
I was only saying what I had read from his mind, yet he himself was the one getting hurt.
It wasn’t surprising. The one who hurts you the most is often your own unsatisfactory self.
“Hiding in that supply box, your only path forward was to infiltrate Tantalus. With Tantalus empty after the prison break, the security checks wouldn’t be too strict. The only problem is, a neutralized Tantalus holds no value as a target for a life-or-death terror attack.”
It was only natural. A group dissatisfied with society would only attack a prison if they needed the people inside. Whether to recruit the prisoners or to release them and strain the government’s administrative capacity, it was only possible if there were people inside.
If he had thought Tantalus was still operational, attacking it would have been a decent choice. Whether they could escape or not was another matter.
But to put it another way…
“Kanysen. You were wise enough to know that a mass breakout had occurred at Tantalus.”
A prison with no prisoners…
“And yet, you tried to persuade the other Resistance members to carry out the attack.”
…is not worth destroying.
“Even though you knew it was worthless, you pushed that thought aside. You kept repeating to yourself how grand a target Tantalus was, what a symbol it represented for the Military State, as if to brainwash yourself inside that cramped, dark supply box. All to deceive them, and yourself.”
Therefore, Kanysen had deceived them. He persuaded them to join him, knowing full well that Tantalus was a worthless target. Instead of making a heroic speech about becoming a decoy so they could escape and plan for another day, he demanded they offer up their lives.
Not for their country,
nor for justice.
“He asked them to die for him.”
“Shuuut—up—!”
Rage consumed his reason. He now ran without a second thought. Weaponless, he tore through the debris with his bare hands, chasing me in a straight line. He was driven by a single-minded purpose: to beat me to death and shut my babbling mouth.
The stronger one’s self-love…
The more one believes in their own nobility…
The higher and sturdier the walls around the ego, the more vulnerable it becomes to an attack from within.
“What does the likes of you know?! They didn’t hesitate to give their lives to bring down the Military State! That will remains unchanged! If we can bring down Tantalus and leave even a small mark in the history books! If future generations can remember us! Isn’t that enough?!”
Kanysen flipped over a desk with both hands and shoved a fallen cabinet aside as he charged. He tore at steel beams as if they were tree branches, heedless of the wounds on his own hands. He was now rampaging in every direction, determined to demolish all the debris. His indiscriminate charge forced me to keep retreating.
“I won’t give you a clean death. I’ll catch you and tear you limb from limb with my bare hands!”
The taunt was a success. Whether this was a gain or a loss, I couldn’t tell.
He’s too worked up. Maybe I should calm him down a bit.
“Ahaha. Calm down, mister. What’s the big deal? You just asked others to sacrifice their lives for you. It’s a common thing. The Military State does it all the time! You hated the Military State so much that you ended up just like them! Hahahaha!”
“I’ll start by ripping that mouth of yours apart! I’ll mince your tongue! Let’s see if you can still chatter after I’ve gouged out your lungs!”
Oh, dear. If he catches me, it’ll be a human slaughterhouse. I wonder what grade of meat I’d be. I’m suddenly curious.
In any case, humanity’s greatest weapon is reason. The moment he lost his was my chance for victory. I took a packet and a single card from my pocket, concealing them in my hand.
Once again, I only had one chance.
Well, for me, it was always just one.
I measured the distance. As he overturned a pile of debris, our eyes met over an empty bookshelf. I showed a flicker of surprise and turned my back. An explosive sound followed as he violently knocked the bookshelf over and pursued me.
I leaped, ducked, and ran. Behind me, Kanysen, cloaked in Qi Deflection, charged like a tank, deflecting everything in his path. A chair with a broken leg flew through the air, and a shattered lamp bounced like a ball before disintegrating. Clang, crash. The sounds of chaos erupted in real-time. Just getting grazed would mean serious injury.
“Stooop—!”
As Kanysen ran, he snatched the back of a nearby chair and hurled it at me. It flew with a terrifying sound. Having foreseen it with my mind-reading, I barely managed to duck before the chair could smash the back of my head. The chair back flew over me, the sound of it cutting through the air making me dizzy.
“I’m really going to die at this rate.”
I rounded a corner and hid behind a wall. Instead of running to create distance, I held my breath and pressed myself flat against it. I could hear his thumping footsteps approaching.
I read his thoughts. Consumed by rage, Kanysen was closing in fast. I focused my mind, using my telepathy to gauge his distance.
Two steps.
One step.
And now.
I aimed the gun at the shadow that faintly appeared and fired.
BANG!
“Hup!”
At the sound of the gunshot, Kanysen flinched, instinctively raising a hand to his eyes. It was a primal reaction. In the instant his body froze, I threw the gun aside and shot out from the corner like a lightning bolt. Pouncing on him, I brandished the card hidden in my hand. It grazed my wrist and transformed into a sharp skewer.
I put the full weight of my body into the thrust. Kanysen’s eyes widened.
“Take this. This is the skewer that killed Delta!”
The sharp point aimed for his temple. It wasn’t a perfect strike, but it was the best I could manage. And that strike…
‘Just as I expected. A cheap trick!’
Kanysen saw it all clearly with his wide-open eyes.
His right hand shot up and seized my fist. He gripped it as if to crush it, twisting its trajectory, then bent my wrist, forcing me to drop the skewer. Simultaneously, his other hand grabbed me by the collar and slammed me against the wall. I felt my body lift off the ground, and then my entire back hit the hard wall.
“Keuk!”
My throat was being crushed. I quickly grabbed his arm, but it wouldn’t budge. It was like stone.
Kanysen muttered with a grim face.
“After all that talk, I trust you’re prepared to die.”
“Kuh, wai-t. Gack.”
“I can’t hear you. Where’s that leisurely attitude you had before?”
“Keuk, keuk.”
I can’t talk if you don’t let go, you bastard. I desperately tapped the hand clamped around my neck. After a series of taps, Kanysen loosened his grip as if to say, let’s hear it then.
Ah, I can finally breathe. I gasped for air and said.
“And… ta-da!”
“What?”
It was a good script. I smiled brightly and raised both my arms.
“Pickpocketing successful. Look at your left wrist! I’ve stolen something very important from you!”
‘Pickpocketing? Left arm? What other trick is this?’
Despite his thoughts, his gaze naturally shifted to his left wrist, the one grabbing my collar. It couldn’t be helped. Whether you tell someone to look or not, the moment they become aware of it, they have to look.
Kanysen looked at his left sleeve with a puzzled expression.
So, you’re finally looking this way. Oh, I’m so excited.
I shouted with elation.
“Your freedom!”
His left sleeve was torn. Through the gash in his clothes, Kanysen’s bio-receptor was exposed.
A personal Arch-Avatar, a device created by converting biological information into mana. It was a symbol of the Military State’s control, but for that very reason, it was a terminal the Resistance had to have engraved on them to avoid inspections.
And stuck into that terminal…
was a single packet.
Kanysen muttered with a dumbfounded look.
“A clothing… packet?”
It wasn’t an ordinary Clothing Packet. It was an item stored in a place like a prison, alongside a warden’s uniform packet. The packet I had been so delighted to find had…
a symbol in the shape of chains drawn on it.
‘A straitjacket packet!’
Panicked, he tried to pull the packet out, but it was too late. The packet forcibly drew mana from the bio-receptor. Recognizing the avatar, the packet began to vibrate.
It unraveled, thread by thread, and wrapped around him like thousands upon thousands of snakes.
The arm choking me released its grip. I landed on the floor, rubbing my sore neck. Kanysen was putting up a futile resistance against the straitjacket enveloping him. Of course, it didn’t last long. A trap designed for individuals, one of the Military State’s worst inventions created to control people, was something an ‘ordinary’ strongman like him could never break free from.
I gave him a deep bow and said.
“Upgraded pickpocketing: picksocketing! A grand success!”