For a moment, silence fell. In the sewer, only the sound of water trickling could be heard.
“Now.”
Ta-tang! Tang!
“Gaaaah!”
The man with a bullet buried in his chest collapsed helplessly.
“Ghk! Enemy attack! Twelve o’clock!”
“Cover!”
As befitting elites, the moment their point man went down, they immediately returned fire. Pipes burst, and rusty water sprayed in every direction.
And there was no way that would work.
“Attempting to flank from the right! Two of them!”
When Hanna read the flow and shouted—
Taang—!
I looked at the [Minimap] and scattered bullets with precision.
“Keok!”
The jaw of the man trying to flank us was blown off.
‘Analyze status.’
[Target: 1st Division Special Duty Unit Squad Leader]
[Status: Panic, cognitive dissonance, extreme fear]
[Emotion: Fuck, what the hell is going on?! How do they know every move we make?! Are they using magic or something? Why does every head we stick out get shot through?!]
It had to be driving them insane. They were getting beaten down the moment the fight began. No matter how elite they were, it was no different from fighting against an impenetrable wall.
And in this kind of situation, the tactic they would choose was obvious.
“Damn it! Throwing grenade!”
From the darkness came the sound of a metal pin being pulled.
“Behind the pipe up front, Seraphina!”
“Yes!”
The moment I called out the position, Seraphina unleashed the mana she had gathered.
Shwaaaak!
The mana bullet that left her muzzle traced a blue-white arc. The enemy’s body it pierced was literally pulverized. The grenade he had been about to throw dropped right into the middle of their formation.
Kwaaaaang—!!
“Gaaaaah!”
Spray and fragments struck the ceiling of the sewer. It seemed as if the enemy offensive had weakened, but that was an illusion.
“O-on top of the right pipe! Enemy!”
“Guards, cover the right! Müller! What are you doing, turn your muzzle!”
The clumsy guards hurriedly turned their guns, but they were half a beat too late. Just as the enemy who had come down along the pipe was about to pull the trigger of his submachine gun—
Ta-tang!
I put a ventilation hole in his head first.
Splash!
The corpse went limp and plunged into the filth. Rotten sewer water and crimson blood splashed up, wetting my cheek and uniform.
“Hic! Th-thank you, Lieutenant Colonel!”
“Shut your mouth, you idiot! Keep your eyes forward! Another one’s coming on the left pipe!”
Wiping the filth from my face with my sleeve, I kept pulling the trigger. I changed magazines, forced the terrified guards’ heads down, and shot dead every enemy attacking from blind spots.
‘……Fuck.’
As I fired madly while drenched in blood, a hollow laugh suddenly escaped me.
When I thought about it, it was truly absurdly contradictory. I’d possessed a body in a game world, decked out with absurdly broken cheat skills, and was pretending to be some munchkin powerhouse.
Yet at every decisive moment when my life was on the line, I always ended up like this.
Hero of the Ashen Forest? The Miracle of Rosenheim?
No matter how they propped me up with grand titles like the Empire’s rising star or war hero, when the lid was opened, there wasn’t a shred of romance or style to be found.
My reality was always nothing but rolling around in the gutter, cleaning up the shit left by my clueless subordinates—an endlessly shabby, foul-smelling business.
Tatadadang—!
“Kheok!”
In the end, I read even the last man’s location with the [Minimap] and turned him into a beehive.
His body collapsed as it was and splashed into the filth.
“Clear. No abnormalities up front.”
Thus, between the shattered fragments of cement, blood and sewer water mixed and spread, and the already narrow, sealed tunnel became a sea of blood so vile it was hard to breathe, filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder and the stench of blood.
Watching that sight, I felt all the more intensely what it was that I was doing.
[Name: Josef]
[Emotion: God, this is madness! If I fall away from that man’s back, I’m dead!]
[Name: Müller]
[Emotion: F-fuck, how the hell did he make that shot just now?]
[Name: Elise]
[Emotion: The Lieutenant Colonel is always… in battlefields like this….]
A filthy slaughter that stank, was filthy beyond belief, and had not even a hint of romance to it.
In other words—
My specialty.
*
The sewer after the battle was bizarrely quiet. Only the intermittent sound of dripping water and squelching filth broke the silence.
“Front, complete silence. First defensive line cleared.”
Along with Hanna’s report, I confirmed that the red dots around us had completely disappeared from the [Minimap] at the edge of my vision.
“Search them. Magazines, grenades, first-aid kits. Take anything useful.”
As soon as my order fell, this time my subordinates approached the pools of blood without delay and began unfastening the enemies’ ammunition belts and rummaging through their pockets. Even the inexperienced embassy guards had become a little quicker on the uptake now. Though they were still nowhere near acceptable.
In the meantime, I kept checking the [Minimap], looking for the route to the closed trading company Josef had mentioned.
“Lieutenant Colonel, we’ve taken everything we can.”
After a few minutes, we were ready to move. We replaced our magazines and hurried our steps. There was a high chance our position had been exposed in the firefight just now, so we couldn’t delay any longer.
Our direction was toward the mouth of the Londinium River. The underground storage of the former Imperial Trading Company, where there should be facilities for communicating with the homeland.
Seraphina and Erika took the rear, while Hanna watched the front with me as we groped through the darkness.
How long did we walk like that? Hours had passed since we began pushing through sewer water that rose to our knees.
“Lieutenant Colonel. If we climb up the drainage pipe ahead, it connects to the basement of the warehouse the Minister mentioned.”
Hanna pointed in a direction as she reported. At last, it was the exit. Color returned to the faces of Minister Josef and the guards, including Müller.
“F-finally….”
“We’re saved. If we just transmit the code from here, a submarine will come rescue us!”
Everyone cheered and tried to hurry toward the drainage pipe ladder.
“Wait. Stop.”
But I blocked their path and raised my hand.
“What is it, Lieutenant Colonel? The exit is right in front of us!”
I narrowed my eyes. The pattern on the [Minimap] floating in one corner of my vision had begun to change ominously.
Hanna’s complexion also turned pale and stiff.
“Lieutenant Colonel. The riverside exit is…….”
“Scale.”
“……At least a company, no, more than that. And…… there’s a heavy mana reaction. In other words, machinery…… something like armored vehicles.”
Hanna’s report matched the information on the [Minimap] perfectly.
Above the main drains and manholes leading to the riverside, hundreds of red dots were densely arrayed. On top of that, according to Hanna, some among them were highly likely to be armored vehicles mounted with heavy machine guns.
“Fuck.”
A curse slipped out before I knew it.
The rebel command wasn’t stupid. They had already calculated that important figures would try to escape through the sewers toward the river or port.
Breaking through that kill zone with our meager armaments?
‘Suicide.’
The moment we went out the exit, the heavy machine guns waiting there would turn us into chunks of meat. [Bullet Time], [Minimap], or whatever else—before overwhelming mass and firepower, they were nothing but tricks.
“We’re changing routes. Turn back.”
“L-Lieutenant Colonel Jaeger! What on earth is going on?”
“The exit is blocked. The riverside the Minister mentioned has already been sealed off in layers by them.”
“Th-this damned……!”
Minister Josef placed a hand against the wall in despair.
There were no options. I gave up on a reckless breakthrough and led my subordinates deeper into the sewer, beyond the reach of the enemy search net.
And so, trapped in a stalemate—
A full day passed in the wretched gutter.
*
A huge reservoir in a closed-down old water purification facility.
With the water dried up and the place relatively less damp, we made it our temporary safe zone.
“Haa…….”
Erika, leaning against the wall, let out a deep sigh. Her red twin tails were a mess of dust and filth, and even her sharp golden eyes were marked with deep fatigue.
“Half a day has already passed. They’re camped out above, and we’re trapped like rats.”
“Save your strength instead of complaining, Erika. We don’t know when an enemy search team might come down again.”
Seraphina chided her, but she too looked clearly gaunt against her pale skin. Her officer’s dress uniform had long since turned into a rag.
The embassy guards were already taking turns dozing fitfully while trembling, and Minister Josef was staring only at the floor with a vacant expression.
‘Analyze status.’
[Name: Müller]
[Affiliation: Imperial Ministry of Foreign Affairs Embassy Guard]
[Status: Hunger, on the verge of exhaustion, extreme fear]
[Emotion: Please… save me. I want to go home….]
In particular, the low-ranking soldiers’ mental state was reaching its limit. It was only natural, since they had gone a day without food, endured an atrocious stench, and were tormented by the fear of not knowing when they might die.
Food: zero. Drinking water: zero. Ammunition: precarious.
Literally a limit situation.
‘I can make food and water with Material Conversion, but….’
Yesterday, when I synthesized improvised explosives in the basement, I had pushed my mana circuits quite hard. If I performed another miracle on the level of creating something from nothing here, I would obviously collapse while coughing blood.
On top of that, if I openly produced bread and water in this cramped sealed room, even someone as good at running his mouth as me would have no way to come up with a reasonable excuse.
And on top of that, Minister Josef was here. Fundamentally, he was someone whose mouth I couldn’t shut. In other words, I couldn’t use the same methods I’d used to browbeat my subordinates in Rosenheim.
‘I’ll hold out without using it as much as possible. If we really reach the limit, then I’ll have no choice but to use it…….’
If it came to that, I might have to reveal that I had awakened mana and make up a story around it.
‘……Shall I take a look outside?’
Thinking that perhaps an opening had appeared, I scanned the [Minimap] in one corner of my vision.
And my hopes were betrayed splendidly. The red dots on the surface still occupied the key locations and showed no sign of moving.
The only fortunate thing was that there were no search teams rummaging through the sewer like yesterday. Perhaps the damage from the previous engagement had been significant, because they only circled fixed routes and did not come deep inside.
Then I took my eyes off the [Minimap] and closed them.
‘……Shared Vision.’
[Skill ‘Shared Vision (Lv.1)’ is activated.]
[You are receiving the visual information of the designated target (‘Sidney Wellesley’) in real time.]
Bzzzt—
Along with a ringing in my ears, Sidney Wellesley’s vision overlapped on my retinas.
‘So you were alive.’