The Emperor Has Returned

Chapter 106 – For Freedom (2)

“...You mean a night operation? You even want us to go on a search?” one of the members of the punishment unit asked suspiciously.

The night operation was dangerous in itself, but a raid was worth giving a try. However, the location the punishment unit would need to go to was an area where the enemies were fiercely searching. Considering that their target was a dragon which the rebels from the northeast were particularly resentful of, any and all personnel the enemy had available must be actively searching even in this moment.

The members of the punishment unit remained silent upon hearing Juan’s suggestion to head right into such a dangerous area.

“Yes,” Juan replied in a calm manner.

One of the prisoners gritted his teeth. The prisoners were already aware that the punishment unit was treated as nothing more than a dog. The punishment unit was designated and deployed to only the harshest and most difficult areas to protect even at the front line—but they were constantly monitored, deemed untrustworthy by the allies, and their achievements weren’t acknowledged.

And now they had been told to break through two thousand enemies with less than fifty troops. Such an order was no different than being told to commit suicide.

“Are you coming with us as well, Sir?” one of the members who asked a question earlier opened his mouth again.

Juan took a closer look at the man’s face. He had a shaggy beard, dark eyebrows, and appeared to be the unofficial leader of the punishment unit.

“What’s your name?” Juan asked.

“My name is Hury Hate, Sir.”

“Hury, I’m not a knight. I’m just a commander who will be leading the punishment unit, as I’m a prisoner as well,” Juan said as he showed Hury the handcuffs on his wrists. “I don’t have much time to explain. You’re not planning to go in there and pick up a dead body, are you?”

Juan turned his back and beckoned without explaining further plans. There were no operational explanations. The only explanation the punishment unit was given was to enter the enemy camp to retrieve Horhell before sunrise—that was all.

“Crazy bastard,” one of the members of the punishment unit said out loud.

However, Juan didn’t even bother to look back. Hury followed Juan as he had no choice. The members of the punishment unit looked agitated, but they had no other choice but to follow the orders. No one complained despite their frustrations—they all knew that they would be executed immediately if they disobeyed the order.

“Mr. Hury,” one of the members of the punishment unit whispered in Hury’s ear. “Are we actually going to follow that guy?”

“That’s the only thing we can do in this situation. It’s basically a suicide mission, but we were put in the punishment unit for such purposes anyway,” Hury answered.

“Most of us here owe our lives to you, Mr. Hury. If you decide to follow him, it would only be right for the rest of us to follow him as well. But if anything happens to you, Mr. Hury…”

Hury looked back at the other members of the punishment unit, who were exchanging anxious glances with each other, with a brooding look on his face.

The member continued, “...then we will have to think about other options. At least I don’t want to die following a kid who is blinded by his ambition for honor.”

It was only natural for the punishment unit to be nervous about following Juan, since Juan was only a young man who was slightly extraordinary in the eyes of the members of the punishment unit.

“I respect your opinion Asha—after all, you’re the one who’s responsible for everyone in the punishment unit if anything happens to me. But let’s not worry too much. There’s no way Duke Henna will abandon Horhell and his dragon. She must be pushing us to save them for a reason.”

Asha remained silent and nodded her head.

Hury continued to walk behind Juan in silence and spoke. “We have no choice but to trust this guy right now.”

***

The soil crumbled down helplessly on every spot that had been stepped on. The devastated land that was contaminated by salt and mana was filled with only red thornbush; however, it was unknown where the thornbush came from.

Upon walking along the dark mountain path, Hury contemplated whether or not he should revise his thoughts about following Juan. A humming song sang by the traitors was heard in the pitch-black darkness. When fighting the war, songs of the similar melodies as right now filled the battlefield. These were the songs hummed by anyone that had been encroached upon by the Crack. The members of the punishment unit covered their ears with painful expressions; they had been trying to forget about the songs for a long time.

“What is this song?” Juan asked while straightening his back, as if he had no intention of hiding even when they were performing an infiltration operation.

“It’s a song that worships and idolizes the master of the Crack. Everyone sings the song with their names in the lyrics,” Hury answered.

“Names?”

“Everyone who serves the Crack is given new names, and no one gets the same name.”

Juan nodded his head.

“I remember hearing it in Durgal too,” Juan muttered to himself and continued walking.

Meanwhile, Hury was overwhelmed with concern upon seeing the members of the punishment unit moving all at once. To Hury, the sound of fifty people moving at the same time in the middle of the night felt as loud as the mounted troops.

Hury had suggested the strategy of dividing the punishment unit into groups and dispersing them for an efficient search, but Juan had turned his suggestion down—instead, Juan made sure that everyone was moving together at once.

Although they were in a dark forest, there was a high probability of getting caught by the enemies when fifty people were moving as one big group.

‘It will only be a matter of time before we get caught.’

Hury looked at Juan with concern in his eyes. Moving in one group would be advantageous in a battle against a small number of troops, but there were over two thousand enemies. Hury closed his eyes; he had a feeling that the punishment unit would be wiped out as soon as the battle began. In that situation, scattering the troops in different groups would give the members of the punishment group a higher chance of surviving rather than keeping everyone in one big group.

At that moment, Juan stopped moving. Hury wondered why Juan had stopped walking all of a sudden, but soon covered his mouth with his hands upon noticing what Juan was looking at.

A group of seven rebels was rummaging through the area around them. Fortunately, it seemed like they would pass by as long as the punishment unit stayed still, since they were walking on a path located on a lower level than the punishment unit.

However, Juan had no intention of letting them go.

“Let’s fight,” Juan said.

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s a good opportunity.”

Upon listening to Juan and Hury’s conversation from behind, Asha gritted her teeth and tried to charge at Juan, but Hury hastily stopped Asha and looked at Juan with serious eyes. Juan was smiling, but he didn’t appear to be joking. Hury patiently waited, but Juan didn’t bother to explain to them why they must fight against the enemies who hadn’t even noticed them.

“I won’t wait long since we don’t have time,” Juan said.

Then, Juan picked up a stone from the ground and threw it toward the rebels without hesitation. Before Hury could even stop Juan, the neck of one of the rebels snapped and he collapsed to the ground with a thud.

Along with that, the strange song stopped as well.

Hury no longer had the time needed to make the best judgment. Hury charged toward the rebels as fast as he could, and pierced the necks of one of the rebels with his spear. Before the rebels could even grasp the situation they were in, Hury quickly twisted and broke the neck of the enemy standing next to him.

When Hury turned his head, he could see Asha cutting off the head of another enemy with a dagger and Ranhal, a wolf Beastman, biting the neck of one of the rebels while crushing the head of another rebel by stepping on it.

Six of the rebels were dead in a blink of an eye, including one that Juan killed. The last of seven rebels was standing a little farther away from the punishment unit with his eyes widened and mouth dropped open.

Ranhal dropped the rebel in his mouth and ran toward the last rebel, but it was clear that he would only be able to reach after the rebel screamed and alerted the rest of the rebels.

Hury bit his lips.

In the next moment, Hury was smashing the head of the last rebel into a tree. A loud cracking sound rang throughout the mountain, and the sound of the strange songs that had been echoing throughout the entire mountain until just a moment ago stopped in an instant.

Juan grinned at the sight.

‘As expected.’

Then, Asha ran wildly toward Juan. Grabbing Juan by his collar, Asha scolded him in a low and sharp voice.

“You son of a bitch. Do you want to get all of us killed? Or are you that desperate for honor and fame?”

“Get your hands off me,” Juan looked down at her and whispered.

But Asha didn’t listen.

“Do you even know what it means to infiltrate and search? I grew up in the northeast so I know nothing about the empire. But even I know what that is. But you just…”

Juan didn’t speak twice as he knew that there would be no point in doing so.

For a moment, everyone felt a sharp chill run down their spines. All the members of the punishment unit around Juan instinctively straightened their backs, and those who were weak fell on their butts before they knew it. No one in the punishment unit could move their body, and felt a strange feeling of their bones being tickled.

Asha showed the strongest reaction among everyone in the punishment unit. Asha, who was making eye contact with Juan, couldn’t take her eyes off of Juan and collapsed while clutching her chest while foaming at her mouth. No one in the punishment unit knew what had just happened in front of their eyes.

Then Hury quickly approached Asha and checked her pulse after lying her body straight. After checking Asha’s breath and pulse, Hury urgently tried to resuscitate her. It was only after a while that Asha gasped and began to breathe again. Cold sweat dripped from Hury’s forehead.

“I hope you have learned your lesson,” Juan whispered coldly.

Juan’s lesson was clearly communicated to everyone. The punishment unit realized that Juan could simply kill them all with ease, even if he couldn’t use mana or use a weapon.

“...I think it would be best for us to retreat from here as soon as possible, since there was a loud noise during the fight earlier. The rebels will be here soon to check where the sound came from,” Hury replied calmly with his head lowered in front of Juan.

Juan looked at Hury who had given his advice without a single word of complaint—no emotions could be seen on Hury’s face. Juan just walked past Hury instead of answering.

Asha was still lying on the ground as she tried to catch her breath, and Hury quickly helped her up. Ranhal, a wolf Beastman, hid his tail between his legs and approached Hury.

“Mr-Mr.Hury. D-do you know what that was just now?”

“Hmm,” Hury wiped the sweat off of his forehead while murmuring. “It was an extremely strong murderous intent.”

“M-murderous intent? There is no way that was simply something as simple as murderous intent, right? It felt as if he could kill everything in the world. It’s surprising that Asha is still alive even after directly facing that murderous intent.”

Being a beastman, Ranhal was much more sensitive to such things compared to the others. In particular, beasts were sensitive to murderous intent more than anything. It was only natural for Ranhal to be fearful.

“Human beings are somewhat insensitive to it… but the murderous intent that he released in that moment was enough to frighten all living creatures. I bet even the demonic beasts would tuck their tails and run away.”

Hury continued to walk silently instead of answering Ranhal. He could easily tell that Juan was much more powerful than what he had thought. However, it was not clear what purpose Juan had in bringing the punishment unit here and putting them at risk.

For the time being, Juan was quietly listening to the murmurs behind him. Everyone in the punishment unit was full of resentment and hatred toward Juan, but no one dared to speak against him due to the ‘something’ that Juan had just shown them.

Forcing others with fear was rather easy, but this only intensified the distrust that the punishment unit felt toward Juan.

Nevertheless, Juan remained calm—in fact, Juan wanted them to feel even more doubtful and resentful. The deeper their distrust, the greater the effect was when it was all overturned.

***

Horhell wiped off the blood on his cheek. Horhell figured that he must have broken his ribs, considering the wheezing sounds that constantly came out of his mouth regardless of his will. Horhell’s left arm was broken as well, but that didn’t matter to him as long as he could still breath and hold a sword. Besides, he had managed to kill the little boy in front of him anyway.

Horhell dragged the body of the boy who no longer struggled into the gap between the rocks. The boy, who was even younger than Juan, witnessed the moment in which Horhell’s dragon fell to the ground.

It didn’t matter to Horhell whether the little boy was digging for wild vegetable roots or looking for firewood in the mountain. Horhell slit the little boy’s throat even before the little boy could properly understand what was happening. If Horhell had hesitated, he wouldn’t have been able to stop the little boy from screaming.

Horhell felt no guilt. Horhell already had numerous experiences of killing children even younger than this little boy and burning houses filled with the cries of infants.

Amidst the silence, Horhell decided to forget about the little boy he had just killed.

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