Rip Them Apart in the Night
The rain had stopped. It was past two in the morning.
The facility disguised as a resort villa near the lake in the south — where the bastard child had been held — was shrouded in a faint mist that strangled the horizon. A common condition this time of year, which meant the guards and knights were patrolling with extra vigilance against any possible intrusion.
And right between one patrol and the next, in the twenty-second gap during the shift change, Kka-chi and the Twisted Tail Clan slipped through like a knife between the ribs.
A deafening, thunderous explosion that shredded the mist. Sapper-grade explosives blew the villa's reinforced iron gate clean off its hinges, swinging it wide.
"Enemy contact!"
"What the hell — what the — !"
The guards rushed in alarm, but what came first was the rats — the rat beastmen hiding in the fog, unleashing a torrent of submachine gun fire.
Some thirty-plus troops plunged into the garden simultaneously, screaming and spraying rounds in every direction. The guards had no choice but to cower behind cover.
"Emergency! Multiple hostiles!"
"They're all armed with firearms!"
"Summon the knights and the mages! We can't hold them off with our numbers alone!"
The situation was, without exaggeration, a disaster. Visibility was nearly zero. Because of that, neither the intruders' shapes nor their positions could be seen — all that flickered in the gloom were the flames leaping from gun muzzles. The one mercy for the guards was that the attackers' marksmanship was spectacularly bad. The vast majority of their bullets sailed uselessly into the garden floor or the open air. A complete and utter mess of a firing discipline.
Of course, the guards had no idea this sloppy shooting was entirely intentional.
"Sir Knights! Knights, hurry!"
The guards returned fire, keeping the enemy at bay while urgently summoning the knights. Before long, knights and mages began running toward the garden.
"Get the VIP out! Quickly!"
The core of the villa — the bastard child — was ordered to be escorted by the maids into the secret passage and evacuated. Then they rushed toward the garden.
By the time they arrived, the gunfire had vanished with suspicious precision. The only shots still echoing were the guards' own, fired blindly into the empty fog as if the enemy might still be lurking.
"Where are the enemies? Where did they go?"
"O-over there! By the front gate!"
The knights raised their Ora Blades and charged forward. The mages wrapped their arms in flame, preparing to burn anything in their path, and advanced.
But when they reached the position where the enemies had been, all they found were spent cartridge casings scattered everywhere — and an open manhole cover.
The knights and mages's eyes went wide. They could feel it in their gut — it was a trap.
"Get the VIP! Bring the VIP quickly! ..........."
And just as they spun around in a panic, a second explosion rang out from roughly a hundred meters from the villa.
The knights and mages's faces went pale. But it was far too late.
"Aaaaagh!"
The amount of explosive was exquisite. It wasn't the kind that would collapse the passage in an instant — it was calibrated to shatter only the supporting pillars, causing the ceiling to buckle and cave in. Enough time to flee, but enough to seal the way back. The perfect speed for barely dodging.
The majority of the maids who had been following the bastard child were cut off, trapped behind the collapse. Only three remained at the child's side until the end.
But even those three wouldn't last long.
"We have to protect the VIP! Get the guns! ......."
The maids scrambled to draw their sidearms — but before they could, a hole ripped open in the ceiling with a sharp crack.
And through that hole, a tear gas canister — a sickly blue — dropped into the secret passage, filling it with choking fumes.
No gas masks, obviously.
"Hck! .......Cough!"
The three maids and the bastard child were unconscious within ten seconds. The moment their collapse was confirmed, rat beastmen poured down through the hole — Kka-chi and his rats — and lifted the child carefully into their arms.
"Move quickly."
Using each other's tails like ropes, they transported the ten-year-old child through the ceiling hole. Then the rat beastmen sprinted through the underground tunnel at terrifying speed, racing far, far away.
Ten seconds after they'd fled, the last sapper charge they'd planted detonated once more, completely burying the underground passage in rubble and making investigation impossible.
"The VIP! Where is the VIP! ......Goddamn it!"
The knights and mages arrived a full thirty seconds after everything was over.
All they found at the scene were two things: maids coughing in panic, and dirt that had poured in from the collapsed underground passage. Nothing more.
***
Kka-chi's smug expression made me let out a bitter laugh.
"Clever."
It wasn't a compliment — but Kka-chi smiled wider when I said it.
"Thank you. It was a flawless operation — the kind the entire long-tail race will talk about for generations, beyond even the Twisted Tail Clan."
Among humans it was a negative word, but among rat beastmen, "clever" was a compliment.
After hearing the full account of the incident, I and Kka-chi, along with the five battalion commanders and the adjutant, all turned our gaze simultaneously to a handsome young boy sitting quietly in one of the cargo compartments.
He looked about ten. The boy had a face that would make plenty of women swoon when he grew up — but in direct contrast to his sculpted features, his eyes were completely dead.
"He didn't even scream once when he woke up. Even when rat beastmen were crawling all over him. His body's fine, but his soul seems like it's broken somewhere deep down."
I approached the boy cautiously. I knelt and met his gaze. He lifted his head and looked at me.
"Are you going to kill me?"
The tone that came out of this child's mouth was the kind only a wretched human who'd tasted every bitterness and sweetness of life — or some old bastard at the end of his rope — could produce.
"No. I kidnapped you because I needed you, but I won't keep you locked up long. When the time comes, I'll let you go. You'll be able to go back to where you lived......"
The boy shook his head firmly.
"Keep kidnapping me. Please."
"What?"
"I don't want to go back to where I was. Not ever. It doesn't matter who you are. I'll follow you."
That was another absurd thing to say.
"You know who I am and you just casually say you'll follow me?"
"Whoever you are, it'll be better than where I was."
"I might be a bad person."
"If you were, you wouldn't be having this conversation with me. And you don't look like someone who'd use me as leverage to threaten my father. If you're going to threaten him, it's better for me to stay alive longer. My very existence can shake the south."
My eyes narrowed at the sharp words. This boy seemed to know his own identity.
"You really don't want to go back home?"
"Yes. You're going to use me, right? Go ahead. In exchange, just promise me a few things."
"What?"
"Tear my father apart. Until it hurts. I want to see the look on his face when he regrets everything and suffers."
What kind of life did this kid live to say something like that? He seemed to have a complicated backstory, but I didn't push it right now.
"Don't worry about that. Whether you want it or not, you're going to be torn apart. That's the position you're in."
"Go tell them my name. The fact that you know my name is the most certain proof that you have me."
"What's your name?"
"My name is Ramore. Just thinking about the look on my father's face when you say that name makes me happy."
I ground my teeth and watched the boy. No — Ramore said it like that. I looked down at the boy for a long moment, then nodded.
"I'll put you to good use. Thank you."
"Can I ask one more thing?"
"What?"
"Food. I want to eat. Real food with actual meat in it."
I glanced at the adjutant.
"Any leftover rations?"
"There's more than enough. Don't worry about feeding the child."
"Good. Adjutant. Do me a favor."
After finishing the conversation, I stepped out of the cargo compartment where Ramore had been sitting.
Kka-chi and Labelt-chi, the ones who'd pulled off this insane feat, were smoking near the engine car of the Behemoth armored train.
"Mm! .......Hmm! Chiik! .......I didn't know tobacco this good existed."
"It's military-grade. Damn good stuff. If you join the army, you can smoke it too."
"What unit is going to accept us as soldiers? Don't talk nonsense."
I cut in on their banter.
"If you want, I can make it so you can join the Hellhound Brigade."
Kka-chi's eyes went wide. His goatee trembled.
"That doesn't sound like a joke."
"It's not a joke."
I glanced toward the cargo compartment where Ramore had been and smirked.
"You're small and weak. But you're sharper and craftier than anyone else. As intelligence operatives, you couldn't be better suited. If you manage to reach the north successfully, I'll make you members of the brigade. You'll be a great asset to the north."
The goatee trembled again.
I knew why he was reacting so emotionally. All beastmen were sensitive to recognition — but among them, rat beastmen were especially so. That was something I'd learned living alongside Labelt-chi, the second battalion commander, for a long time.
"Prove that what I said isn't empty. When we go to Rubheim Marquis's domain next time, you're coming with me. Kka-chi. Let's go tear everything apart together. Boldly, by my side. Let me give you the right to speak as a member of the brigade."
"Of course we will. Thinking about how those pig bastards in the south made us suffer — we're going to tear them apart as thoroughly as possible. But first, there's something important."
I already knew what it was.
"You want to hide Ramore, right?"
"If they don't know where Ramore is, the threat becomes more powerful."
"And hiding things is what you do best, isn't it? Take Ramore with you. And make sure they can never find him at Rubheim Marquis's estate. Can you do that?"
Kka-chi smirked.
He pulled out a pouch containing the equivalent of one million crowns and held it up.
"Long-tail folk are everywhere. If we use them, we can move the blonde brat all the way to the north without anyone noticing. Don't worry. I'll entrust him to the most reliable handlers. The question is....... Colonel Volka. Can you trust me?"
Ramore's existence was critically important to me right now. And going forward, if I wanted to keep blackmailing the south, Ramore had to stay alive. That was the question — could he entrust something this important to me? — but I gave the same answer I'd given when recruiting Mogant the wolf beastman.
"The money to tear Rubheim Marquis apart using Ramore as leverage isn't mine. It's for you and your long-tail kin. Money to rebuild the north. Money to build homes for your people. Money to pave roads so you can walk the surface without bowing to anyone's eyes."
"......"
"So I believe you'll get Ramore to the north safely. I trust you, Kka-chi."
Every single rat beastman of the Twisted Tail Clan, gathered around Kka-chi, had goatees trembling.
I smiled.
"Night falls. Sleep well tonight. Eat well. Rest well. And tomorrow — we head south."
The railway tracks stretched on beyond the train station. At the end of that line lay the domain of Rubheim Marquis.
The long, long preparations were finally over.
"For the north and for the rat beastmen — let's tear them apart."