Chapter 223

They sent Altos and the others out. Do-Jin sat alone across from the boss while dozens of resistance members surrounded them.

“I am the commander of the Rumanus Free Revolutionary Army,” said the masked man.

The introduction came out stiff and formal, and although only his eyes showed, his voice and stare made it obvious he was well past forty.

“Name’s Do-Jin. I’m from the Empire and I am...” He trailed off and raised both the adventurer pendant and the Elthomagia emblem in turn.

The commander’s eyes twitched. “So you are a mage from the most famous tower.”

Even in a land starved of magic, Elthomagia was a well-known name. On top of that, with mages recently coming over from the Empire, they had already been investigating that side. It made sense that he recognized it.

After tapping his fingers on the table in silence for a moment, the commander spoke again. “I will be blunt with you. We have put our lives on the line for our homeland. That means we live on a knife’s edge every day. We are in no position to easily trust someone like you who suddenly appeared.”

Do-Jin nodded. “That’s only natural. I get it.”

“I’m not looking for your understanding. But I will take it.” His voice was dry, with no trace of gratitude in it.

Do-Jin lifted one corner of his mouth. “It looks like you’ve got a real pain in the ass to deal with. An unidentified mage with an unknown background shows up here and the one who brought him in happens to be a prince so you can’t even kill him.”

Just hearing that a resistance group was working with a dictator’s son made it a headache.

“You know, I just hate wasting time talking in circles, so I’ll be blunt as well. I have zero interest in helping you overthrow your country,” Do-Jin said, short and simple.

The commander gestured for him to continue.

“I came here because of the mages aligned with the Consul.”

“I just said I’ve heard about them.”

“Well, they’re the people I’ve been chasing personally.”

“Personally? Why is that?”

Do-Jin paused for a moment, then continued. “They destroyed something I deeply cared about. From a mage’s point of view, I also don’t feel like letting people who break every taboo in the book run around freely.”

“That still doesn’t sound like enough reason to cross dangerous territory all the way from the Empire.”

“There were hundreds of kids and hundreds of their parents too, and hardly any of them still had all their limbs. We never managed to save the kids who kept crying for their mothers.”

The commander was visibly shaken. It wasn’t a story he could openly dismiss as a lie. “My condolences.”

Do-Jin met his eyes and stated, “You’d want to get rid of the people strengthening the Consul as fast as possible, and I want the same thing. If you already have a plan, I’ll help. If you don’t, I’ll work with you starting from the planning stage.”

“I understand your situation. But believing you so easily is difficult. Too many lives are at stake, fuck. Honestly, I don’t even know what the right call is.”

That was when a resistance member entered the room. He glanced at Do-Jin, then leaned in to whisper into the commander’s ear, “Regardless of your personal judgment, the prince has sent word not to treat the mage as an enemy. He says that if things go wrong, we could suffer losses close to total annihilation.”

The commander tried not to show it, but the muscles in his jaw twitched slightly.

Is he really that dangerous?

To be fair, watching him stay calm in places where people usually lost limbs or died made it clear he was no ordinary mage.

Damn it. Maybe keeping him constantly busy is safer than letting him sit around doing nothing.

That was the moment Do-Jin’s first day in the resistance truly began.

***

After the controversial full military parade, the Rumanus Free Revolutionary Army was on edge.

Fear spread through the entire organization that hiding and quietly building strength would only let the power gap between them and the Consul grow wider with every passing day. That fear lit a fire under their resistance activities and pushed them toward more aggressive terrorist actions.

“We hit the armory tonight.”

And, of course, the day Do-Jin made contact with the revolutionaries happened to be the same day they planned the raid. It was sudden, but not entirely unexpected.

Once he chose to work with a resistance group, it was only natural that the quest line would veer into terrorism eventually. They couldn’t charge straight at the people standing next to the Consul from the start, so following a step-by-step chain of linked quests was the proper route.

So far, this is fine. This part is still fine. But the problem is equipment.

“Boss! Two of the rifles are dead! The Mana stones look defective!”

“It’s Commander, you bastard. And what do you mean defective? Do you know how hard it was to get our hands on them?”

Their main weapons were Mana Muskets with long barrels. Among magitech firearms, they were obsolete junk. They were outdated and underpowered even by low-end standards. On top of that, they only had forty-eight in total, and two of those already had faulty mana stones.

The commander personally checked one of the muskets, working the mechanism with a series of loud clicks, and scowled. “Damn it. We went through hell to get these, and this is what we end up with.”

Altos rushed in at that moment and spoke up. “Commander! This operation is suicide. I told you this already. We need to lie low and wait until we find a better way.”

The commander set the defective musket down. “Prince... Sorry, you hate being called that. Either way, you think I don’t know this is insane? But I also know that waiting isn’t giving us any answers.”

“I will try to pull some strings. Weapons, intelligence, anything. I will find something.”

“We have already waited as long as we can. Think about it. If Chimeras and magitech units get deployed to all major strongholds, we won’t be able to move at all.”

“If we want proper weapons before that happens, this is the only option left.”

The Rumanus Free Revolutionary Army’s plan was simple. They would hit an armory that looked relatively easy to loot, secure high-quality weapons, and arm the members who had staked their lives on the revolution. Then, they would attack more important facilities and abduct key figures.

They would also obtain information related to Chimera production and magitech unit manufacturing, which had recently become the core of the Consul’s growing power, and destroy the production base itself. Step by step, they would escalate the chaos inside Rumanus, draw in like-minded people who saw what was happening, and grow their forces.

In the end, they are aiming for the freedom ending.

Just then, one of the members kept fiddling with a malfunctioning musket until it finally exploded in his hands.

“Aaagh!”

Watching that, it honestly looked like they were going to trip on the very first step and die on the spot.

I guess it can’t be helped. They were supposed to get their act together later, but the Cult of Ruin stuck itself next to the Consul and pushed them into this mess.

They were people who had failed even after the situation had fully matured. Now they were trying to force things forward before they were ready, so of course they looked like a disorganized mess. That kind of half-baked desperation was only natural.

And, to be fair, Do-Jin bore a small part of the responsibility for this mess. The snowball of trouble he had built by screwing over the Cult of Ruin again and again had rolled all the way here.

Putting responsibility aside, if these people all charge in and blow themselves up in a suicide run, that becomes a problem in its own right.

The quest needed to flow smoothly to reach his real targets, the Cult of Ruin bastards, but if things collapsed right at the start, it was game over.

Do-Jin let out a sigh and walked over to the commander. He picked up the musket the man had set down.

“What are you—”

Do-Jin opened the mana stone cartridge and removed the faulty stone. Then he took a high-quality mana stone from his inventory and slotted it in, triggering the device with a sharp activation sound.

“If the problem is a bad mana stone, then you just replace the damn stone,” Do-Jin said.

“That’s easy for you to say. In this country, people like us can’t get our hands on Mana stones easily.”

“Well it just got easy.”

When Do-Jin dumped around fifty mana stones out of his inventory, everyone in the room stared with their eyes wide open.

“Does this fit your manpower?” Do-Jin asked.

“No, we have a lot more than that,” the commander answered, his eyes still locked onto the stones.

“Then put thirty more people to work. They can help plant the bombs.”

This time, mana stone bombs spilled out of Do-Jin’s inventory.

The commander stared at the new pile for a while before asking carefully, “What do you mean bombs...?”

In Rumanus, mana stones were controlled almost like narcotics, so a mana stone bomb was a completely foreign concept to them. To the commander’s eyes, they just looked like oddly carved mana stones with different patterns and colors.

“They are mana stones processed to explode. If they take enough force, they go off.”

The entire group took several steps back. Seeing that, Do-Jin let out a dry laugh. These were the same people who had pointed guns at him earlier, yet now they were backing away from a pile of rocks like scared children.

“Relax. They are high-grade and stable models. As long as you handle them with care, they won’t just randomly blow up.”

The commander swallowed hard. “Y-you’re really giving us these?”

People said everything in the world had a price, and trust was the same. In a country where even having money didn’t guarantee access, explosives like these were more than enough to buy real trust.

“I told you. I want those bastards dealt with as fast as possible. For that, I wouldn’t hesitate to invest hundreds of times more than this. Now, start selecting the people who will be placing these. I will teach them how to use them.”

“All right.”

Do-Jin quickly got to work teaching these future terrorists. Calling it teaching was generous because all they had to do was plant the bomb, get some distance, and then throw another bomb near the planted one, triggering a chain reaction.

“Don’t get greedy. Go in fast and only take what you can carry. And use this,” he explained.

Do-Jin then handed out spatial pouches he’d been carrying to manage his inventory. Compared to a real inventory, they were trash. The capacity and weight limits were nothing special. Still, a small pouch acting like a large backpack was better than nothing.

It would have been nice to have more.

They were absurdly expensive, so even Do-Jin only carried three.

From the rebels’ perspective, who were in a truly desperate situation, Do-Jin felt like rain in the middle of a drought as he kept pulling out exactly what they needed as if by magic. If they had not forced themselves to hold on to their doubts, they might have ended up trusting him completely without realizing it.

Their commander eventually realized something. “We need to... rewrite the operation.”

With Do-Jin’s intervention, a raid that had been very likely to turn into a suicide march was completely reworked. That same night, the Rumanus Free Revolutionary Army achieved a victory, and for once, they did it without a single casualty.