Chapter 227

After looting all the good stuff, Do-Jin mobilized the resistance members to collect the remaining equipment. They had already been fired up after having successfully lured the enemy into a trap and won the engagement. When they saw the military base reduced to rubble, they completely lost their minds.

“WOOOOO!”

“You sons of bitches from the Consul! You walked around with your chins up like you owned the world! Look at you now.”

They kicked the corpses at their feet and screamed themselves hoarse.

“Commander! If we search every corner, there will definitely be more of those bastards hiding!”

“Let’s find every last one and kill them all,” he replied.

“Yeah. If not now, when the hell are we ever going to get to hold their lives in our hands?”

Drunk on victory, the once-oppressed fighters finally let the brutality they had buried in their chests spill out.

Do-Jin frowned hard as he watched them and shouted at the commander, “We don’t have time for this stupid shit. Get control of your people and move. If you want to sit around here and get surrounded so you can all die together, then go ahead and keep screwing around.”

The commander had already been boiling inside while watching his undisciplined troops. The moment Do-Jin snapped, he exploded.

“You useless pieces of shit! If you are going to call this a revolution, then act like it! Stop acting like a bunch of bandits and get your asses over here and get to work!”

He gathered his troops and followed after Do-Jin.

“Put on what you can and take as much gear as you can carry.” Do-Jin pointed at the equipment he had deliberately left intact for looting.

“Uh... ah... What?” The commander made a noise that barely qualified as human speech.

What Do-Jin was pointing at wasn’t just regular equipment. It was magitech armor designed for magitech armored units, along with weapons built specifically to match that armor.

“C-can people like us even use this stuff...?”

“You can use it to a certain extent. If it were completely unusable, do you think I would tell you to take it? Stop wasting time with stupid questions and start moving.”

“O-okay!”

Led by the commander, the resistance members climbed into the magitech armor. Once suited up, they took whatever weapons they could carry: swords, spears, axes, and shields sized for armored soldiers, along with a few magitech rifles built for them. There were exactly five rifles, making it clear they were prototypes built before mass production fully began.

Unless there is another production line somewhere else, it is going to take them a long time to rebuild mass production.

Judging by the situation, they had stormed in right before the new weapons went into full production. The timing couldn’t have been better.

“Thirty seconds. We pull out in thirty seconds, got it?”

If the timing on the way in had mattered, then the timing on the way out had to be just as precise. Even with such a brutally tight deadline, the commander didn’t argue.

“Enough looting. Get ready to move out!” the commander shouted.

Compared to the first time they had stripped weapons on day one, what Do-Jin had shown today went far beyond overwhelming. It was on a completely different level.

This is not just a chance for us. This is a chance this country will never get again, Do-Jin thought.

At his signal, the resistance fighters pulled back all at once. They made sure any extra equipment they couldn’t carry was thoroughly destroyed so nothing usable remained.

Even if rushed reinforcements show up, their quality will not be much better. There’s no reason to fight battles that are not part of the plan.

From the opening clash to the looting, Do-Jin wrapped up the entire operation in a brutally short window, disengaging from Rumanus just as quickly as they had besieged it.

The resistance fighters who had become infantry in exoskeleton suits used their enhanced strength to carry other members on their shoulders and backs. Their movement speed was something a normal human unit could never match.

Since their base had never been far from the border gate to begin with, it didn’t take long to reach the boundary that separated Rumanus from the outside. The soldiers at the gate post stared in shock as a group that looked like magitech armored units came charging in, kicking up clouds of dust.

“W-what the hell is that?” one of them uttered in disbelief.

Rumanus didn’t have a fully built magic communication network covering every corner, so the situation hadn’t been properly relayed yet. Even if they had known, it wouldn’t have changed much. A small border post never had the firepower to stop a group that included nearly twenty people equipped on the same level as magitech armored units.

Breaking through the border gate didn’t even require a real fight. The enemies, having already lost their will to fight, stepped aside on their own. Do-Jin and the resistance fighters smashed through anything that got in their way and pushed straight out of Rumanus.

It was nothing like their previous escape, when they had slipped out like rats crawling through a hole. This time, it was a destructive, unapologetic withdrawal that left nothing intact behind them.

***

In some ways, the Consul’s Residence of the Rumanus Republic was even more imposing than a traditional king’s castle. It was a structure that served as the very heart of the republic’s military functions.

There, Kate was walking down a corridor inside a building with an excessively high ceiling. In her hands, she carried documents meant to be reported to Altos. After already skimming through the top file, which had the words “Top Secret” stamped across in red letters, Kate found it hard to believe what she was reading.

Is this... really happening?

Since the revolutionary forces had escaped from Rumanus, Altos and Kate had completely lost contact with them. They had been worried about what might have happened after the escape. It turned out that all that stress had been for nothing. The classified documents detailed an attack on a military base on the western border that had taken place two days earlier.

It was already a relief that they managed to steal weapons and escape safely that day. But now...

According to the report, not long after their escape, the revolutionary forces had launched an attack on a military base near the western border. They didn’t just win but achieved an overwhelming victory, killing even General Dignos, a man who had risen to his position purely through military strength.

They said he had retired because of illness...

What shocked her even more was that the revolutionary forces had seized magitech armored unit equipment from that location. Even Altos and she herself had been unable to access information related to magitech armored units and Chimeras.

There is no chance this was a coincidence. They attacked because they knew that place was producing or stockpiling magitech equipment.

The question was how they had found out, and the answer was obvious.

It must be that mage.

Was it intelligence gathering? Or was it some kind of insight? Either way, it was extraordinary. And that wasn’t all. Even described generously, the Rumanus Free Revolutionary Army was far from an elite force. Calling them a ragtag group would have been far more accurate. ℴ

Yet only a few days after that mage joined them, they had captured a secret production base guarded by a stationed general. On top of that, just yesterday, a resistance strike force led by twenty magitech armored units had infiltrated through another border checkpoint and attacked a supply base.

That had happened less than twenty-four hours after they captured the base and seized the equipment. The intervals between each incident were incredibly short.

With that mage’s participation, the revolutionary forces had rapidly risen into a true threat to the republic, moving in ways that could only be described as unpredictable and impossible to pin down.

Who are these four mentioned at the end though? They must be connected to that mage, but...

As Kate walked down the corridor, she thought of the so-called Four Bastards of the Devil, listed at the end of the report as having caused the greatest damage.

As she looked up, Kate saw the Consul walking straight toward her. His expression was nothing but grim and dangerous. She immediately pressed herself against the wall and snapped into a rigid salute.

Naturally, the Consul passed by without acknowledging those who saluted him. Not wanting to risk being noticed for even a split second by that murderous glare, Kate lowered her eyes and kept her gaze fixed on the floor.

Then, in her lowered field of view, Kate saw a pair of pure white feet. They brushed lightly against the hem of an equally pure white robe. The feet themselves were as pale as the robe and just as beautiful.

Are they barefoot? Wait, was there someone walking behind the Consul?

With clothing that striking, how had she failed to notice before? That thought crossed her mind as Kate unconsciously lifted her head. Then their eyes met. A woman walked behind the Consul, her head tilted back at an unnatural angle, a chilling smile on her lips.

She was beautiful. It was the only word that seemed appropriate for her. She looked young enough to be called a girl, and her skin was unnaturally pale. Yet the smile she wore stirred something deeply primal and terrifying. The fear was so overwhelming that Kate forgot how to breathe.

The woman tilted her head forward. In that instant, Kate’s vision blurred, and the Consul and the woman were suddenly far away. She had lost consciousness for a brief moment.

“Guh...!”

Kate clutched her chest and forced herself to breathe again. She had almost died. At least, that was how it felt instinctively. It felt as though her heart could stop at any moment, as if someone had reached into her chest and closed a hand around it.

It is her.

If a woman like that had been standing beside the Consul, there was no way rumors wouldn’t have spread by now. She had to be one of the mages who had come from the Empire. The excitement Kate had felt because of the mage who joined the revolutionary forces instantly went cold. What kind of people had the Consul brought into this country?

I need to get moving.

This wasn’t the time to stand here shaking in fear. Kate forced her legs, which felt numb and paralyzed, to move.

Moving carelessly will probably make things worse right now, but...

Even so, she had to find something she could do here. At the very least, she needed to be ready to try something when the massive waves finally began to crash down.

***

At the same time, Do-Jin’s group was preparing for another attack. While they waited for their target, Theresa looked a little too excited. Somewhere along the way, she had even put on a dark mask. Put simply, it looked ridiculous.

“We seriously look like full-on bandits now, right?”

“It’s giving Zorro[1] vibes.”

Do-Jin honestly wanted to ask what the hell she was on about. Now that he thought of it, she had pulled weird roleplay stuff like this since the first time they met. Theresa seemed to really enjoy getting immersed in whatever role she decided to play.

“Seriously...” Even Soso, who had long since gotten used to Theresa’s antics, couldn’t accept the full-on robber mask. She let out a deep sigh that came from the bottom of her chest.

Soso had already tried to pull off the mask earlier, but Theresa had layered an invisibility-enhanced helmet over it, making it impossible to remove.

While they were distracted by Theresa’s nonsense, their wait finally came to an end. Among the line of wagons approaching in the distance, Do-Jin caught the flicker of mana rising into the air.

He spoke to his party. “They’re here. The three wagons at the very back are the ones carrying the mana stones.”

At that moment, Do-Jin’s group was preparing to hijack the mana stone shipment heading into Rumanus. Domestic production of mana stones there was negligible. Even if there were other production facilities, disrupting the mana stone supply would throw every plan into chaos.

If they are trying to rebuild their production base, then it is even worse for them. They will need even more mana stones in that case.

Do-Jin moved. And just as expected, the Rumanus Republic lost a massive shipment of mana stones that day.

1. Reference to The Mark of Zorro, the classic tale of a masked swordsman fighting corrupt powers. ☜