༺ 𓆩 Chapter 6 𓆪 ༻
「Translator — Creator」
᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃
Two hundred years ago, the Vanargand mountains range had served as the Empire’s southern bulwark, an impenetrable wall against the outside world.
Even when the Pontus Archipelago was nothing more than a rabble of sea-scavenging pirates, even when they rose to power and sent wyvern-riders to challenge the Empire itself, these mountains never once permitted an incursion.
Now, the range had flipped its purpose, its snow-laden peaks and frozen slopes swelled not to protect the Empire, but to keep its ashen hordes from spilling into the Military State.
“This way.”
Perhaps because it was still early February, the cold bit deeper.
They huddled tighter against the biting winds that slashed across their faces like knives. But if there was a silver lining, it was the lack of snowfall, allowing their warhorses to push forward without hindrance.
“How long can the horses hold out?”
"They're a breed that can last up to two weeks at most, but I can't be certain since hay hasn't been properly supplied."
“Lovely.”
Ain Krieg grimaced at Arditi Günther’s reply.
Their supply situation was worse than he thought. Still, at so point along the ride, his gaze had shifted, drawn again and again to Günther’s back as she led the way ahead.
'Talent the Sentinels would love. If she weren't a daughter of the Günter family, she might have been my superior.'
He had no idea what her personal convictions were.
But outwardly, she carried herself more like a soldier than most he had ever t.
'On the other hand, those ones...'
Lieutenant Langier, nearly horizontal in the saddle, snoring into her horse’s mane with her wolf ears twitching in sleep.
Second Lieutenant Eugene Hailt, trailing silently behind them like a ghost, the sheer absence of sound from him bordering on unsettling.
'Major Günther was right.'
Ain Krieg wasn’t a fool.
How could he not know that the mont the specialist officers he'd led out were annihilated, the fortress would collapse imdiately?
But even so, he had made his calculations.
‘Even if it’s not a Dual Number but a Triple Number, for it to wipe out an entire squad ans it’s not your run-of-the-mill freak. Still, specialist officers should at least be able to retreat if it goes south.’
And if they couldn’t?
Well, that was a sha. But so be it.
After all, anyone too fragile to survive this had no place in the restructured 13th Special, god, what a na, Cerberus Brigade.
If he had only wanted to preserve his own life, he could’ve stayed in the Intelligence Bureau, grown old filing reports, and one day shot a bullet into his skull out of sheer boredom.
And yet, he had left.
Seven years ago, he returned, choosing to carry the burden of a family he had once abandoned.
Why?
'Because I had to.'
There was no other answer.
He had to.
“Brigade Commander!”
However, his thoughts couldn't continue long.
Arditi Günther had spoken up, her breath fogging in the cold as she pointed toward a cluster of corpses collapsed in the snow.
Hnnnnghh—!!!
The horses whinnied, halting at once and the riders dismounted.
Ain Krieg stood before the corpses. Rier Yung, arriving behind him, crouched to examine their faces and dog tags.
“Private Yodan and Private Perron, both are from Doggins’ squad.”
“Cause of death?”
“No visible trauma or signs of corrosion. They most likely got separated, lost their way, and froze to death.”
As chaplains of the Atonent Order often doubled as dics, his judgnt could be trusted.
Ain Krieg gave a small nod.
“Recover the tags. Mark their location on the map and prepare the bodies for retrieval.”
“Understood.”
This ti, even Arditi Günther offered no disagreent.
In this harsh mountain range, if the location was marked, bodies could be retrieved even months later.
“Brother Eugene, lend a hand.”
“..............”
At Rier Yung’s request, Eugene Hailt silently pushed off from the tree he had been leaning on and helped place the bodies into the burial sacks.
With a brief pause in movent, Ain Krieg took the mont to light a mana cigarette and quietly scanned the area.
“It’s cold.”
Whoosh—!!!
His breath ca out as a pale fog, and the landscape of the forest sharpened in clarity.
Was alien the right word?
Or would bizarre be better?
Everything was ashen; the snow blanketing the land softened the impression sowhat, but every now and then, the wind would scatter that fragile white, revealing the ashen flesh beneath.
The trees. The running stream. The soil. The air. The sky...
Everything looked as though the world had been stripped of its light. It tugged at the instincts, whispering a sense of wrongness, of sothing profoundly unnatural.
Then Arditi Günther approached him.
"Is this your first ti outside the fortress?"
“Hardly. Just not in the north.”
Seven years in the Intelligence Bureau.
The Empire’s domain had once been vast, so vast that one didn’t need the Vanargand Mountains to encounter the beings of Ashes. They were everywhere.
A brief silence passed between them.
At last, Günther spoke, her voice quiet.
"...If it really is a Dual Number, we have no chance of winning."
Numbers.
The classification system for the monsters that marched with blind hatred against mankind ever since ash consud the continent.
Each was ranked — Single, Dual, and Triple.
But in truth, 99% of what the Military State’s forces encountered today were Triple Number-class. Her fear wasn’t unfounded.
“Doggins’ squad may have been regular infantry, but they were elite. Even when they faced No. 822, the Ashen Wolf, they all ca back alive.”
In other words, the thing that slaughtered them now had to be sothing far beyond.
“The Vanargand Mountains… no longer belong to Cerberus.”
Two centuries ago, the Cerberus Brigade had slaughtered Singale Numbers and Dual Numbers that poured into the mountains like wildfire.
That Cerberus Brigade was gone.
All that remained were defeated soldiers, hiding behind a centuries-old fortress, awaiting disbandnt.
“You’re persistent.”
Ain Krieg responded to her remark with an absent smirk.
But her expression was serious.
And rightfully so.
Though she had followed him as a soldier obeys her orders, if he truly intended to engage a Dual Number in combat, that was where she would draw the line.
“It’s not that I value my life so dearly. I’m just asking you to look at the reality.”
Black eyes t ash-gray ones.
“I don’t know why you’ve chosen to invoke the na ‘Krieg’ again after seven years. I don’t want to know. But whether your reason is pity, bravado, or ambition, I won’t stand by if it ans throwing my subordinates into the at grinder.”
“Arditi Günther.”
“The Günther family follows Krieg. But a stray dog, when abandoned long enough, may just bite its master.”
Arditi Günther, like Ain Krieg, the last scion of her house, looked up at him, her voice calm and asured, her gaze razor-sharp.
“Is extermination still your goal?”
The weight of her heavy lance rested along her back.
Would its point be turned on him, depending on his answer?
Ain Krieg found himself wondering that, as he flicked the last bit of his mana cigarette onto the snow and stepped toward her.
“That’s not what matters, Major.”
“…What?”
“You should want to know, why I ca back to this cursed northern wasteland after seven years.”
And then he whispered.
"I'll tell you specially. My objective is simple."
Günther’s eyes widened.
"To return to the Empire."
She opened her mouth to respond, so mix of disbelief and outrage, but before a word escaped, Krieg’s lips curled into a half-smile.
As if on cue, all around them, weapons were drawn.
—SKREEEE
—HRAAAAGHH!
Dozens of ashen lights flickered in the bushes, and soon a series of ashen beasts rushed into the small forest clearing where they stood.
The end for those swept by ash was one of two things.
To die and crumble into nothing or to beco one of them, hollowed, twisted, enslaved.
“Speak of the devil and he shall appear.”
Ain Krieg murmured the words with a smirk, now back-to-back with Arditi Günther as they faced the approaching swarm of monsters.
Triple Number. No. 822.
The Ashen Wolves.
There was nothing left of a living wolf’s grace or primal vigor here.
What rushed toward them were abominations, creatures of ignorance and oblivion, like taxidermied corpses wrapped in the dust of decades, dragging limp forelimbs like broken marionettes.
Facing those pitiful beasts that rely danced on invisible strings of sothing learned, or of the transcendent sothing that caused this calamity, Ain Krieg kept in mind the black case strapped to his back.
If he set his mind to it, he could easily slaughter dozens of wolves.
Bang—!!!
The magic bullet from his drawn revolver spat fire, and the wolf's body that had been stretching to tear Ain Krieg's face apart exploded in midair.
'Let's see their skills.'
His eyes glead as he stared at the flesh pieces scattering through the air and falling chaotically like rotting, crumbling flower petals.
༒︎
Even in the Military State, where firearms and magitech pioneered by isters had beco the new norm, there remained one battlefield class that could never be dismissed: the specialist officers, led by the knights.
In a world where soldiers digging trenches and pulling triggers from behind fortress walls had beco mainstream.
Yet how could knights continue their lineage?
The answer was simple.
Because their destructive power still far surpassed anything a common soldier could unleash.
CRACKK—!!!
SSHHHH—!!!
With a grotesque sound, flesh warped with ash and gore split open and tore apart.
“O wretched and defiled creature, return to the ash from whence you ca!”
Rier Yung, swinging a fist wrapped in rosary beads, crushed the wolves like water balloons bursting under pressure.
“…Yaaawn.”
Lieutenant Langier lazily deflected a wolf’s claw with the slanted draw of a curved hwando, a straight-edged saber from Hwanguk, and let out a wide yawn as she squared off with the remaining monsters.
‘Not bad.’
Watching this, Ain Krieg revised his evaluation of her a little.
For a Grade 6, her composure was remarkable. She showed no fear of battle and moved with more confidence than most fresh-faced Grade 5 officers he had seen.
'But that's all.'
She was leagues below Rier Yung, who was casually obliterating wolves with every swing.
Arditi Günther, anwhile, exceeded even his expectations.
THUNK—!!!
Using her increasingly thickened heavy lance as both weapon and shield, she deflected the fangs of two wolves, then calmly impaled them both in one smooth, rciless thrust, killing them before they could even cry out.
But the real surprise ca from Eugene Hailt.
“.............”
He hadn’t touched the sniper rifle strapped to his back.
Instead, he moved with a crude combat knife gripped in reverse, slicing into the throats of charging wolves with terrifying efficiency.
Occasionally, he’d dispatch a straggler with a well-placed revolver shot, more as an afterthought than necessity.
Watching it all, Ain Krieg, who himself was picking off wolves with clean shots to the forehead, couldn’t help but let out a small, incredulous chuckle.
'Look at these?'
Major Arditi Günther and Sergeant Rier Yung were expected results.
But Lieutenant Langier and Second Lieutenant Eugene Hailt were showing combat power beyond expectations in various ways.
BANG—!!!
Finally, when the last wolf's brow was pierced.
Ain Krieg looked around at them breathing slightly roughly and called out cheerfully and slyly.
“Good start, wouldn’t you say?”
Naturally, the only reply ca from Rier Yung, gentle and mild as ever.
“People usually call this kind of start bad luck, Brigade Commander.”
END σϝ CHAPTER
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