Climbing the Tower with Multidimensional Avatars - Chapter 172

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Episode 172. The Tower – Western Train (6)

I picked up the AK-47 from the attackers instead of the low-accuracy revolver or Henry rifle.
There had been four of them, so four guns total.
“Take these.”
I tossed one each to Bogard, Quan, and Diana—all of whom lacked long-range combat abilities.
I’d considered giving one to Elliott, but a scholar unfamiliar with firearms was better off staying protected than fumbling with an unfamiliar weapon.
I checked for extra magazines.
“Eight full magazines. The two of you with AK-47s can each take four.”
I replaced the nearly empty magazine with a fresh one and stowed the remaining magazines in my Inventory.
“Su-young, how far away are the enemies?”
“About three sections.”
“That’s too close. No time for strategy—we need to protect Elliott first. Cover yourself with the blanket and hide behind that corner chair.”
Elliott obeyed without complaint, wrapping himself in the canvas and crawling beneath a corner chair.
Bogard watched and spoke up.
“Wouldn’t it be better to send him to the next car?”
“There might be enemies in the next car too. That’s why Kong and Quan—please check the forward sections as well.”
As I said this, I sent my mage’s eye toward the rear car.
If some innocent person fled to our position and got shot by mistake, I’d never sleep easy again.
The darkness made it hard to see, but the silhouette of the gun in their hands resembled an AK-47.
“They’re coming soon.”
At Lee Su-young’s word, we took positions behind chairs, ready with our abilities and weapons.
In the tense silence, I could hear my own heartbeat—then suddenly the door burst open and a gun barrel thrust through.
The moment gunfire erupted, friend and foe alike pulled the trigger.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
As gunshots exploded in rapid succession, the wooden chairs we’d used for cover shattered, sending splinters flying in all directions, while the Fire Wind that Lee Su-young had sent to the rear car breathed flame upon the attackers.
The enemies, suddenly caught in crossfire, panicked and turned their guns backward—only to collapse, bleeding from wounds as they fell.
In the cramped space, the firefight left casualties on both sides.
“You bastards—!”
Then one of the attackers, bleeding profusely, yanked the pin from a grenade, hurled it at us, and ran back through the door.
The narrow doorway meant only a few at the front took direct hits; those behind had sustained wounds but could still fight.
“Aagh! Grenade!”
Everyone screamed and ducked, but I threw myself through the air and caught the grenade mid-arc.
Then I hurled it back toward the rear car.
A grenade takes about five seconds to detonate after the pin is pulled.
The enemies panicked as the grenade came flying back at them.
I used magic to grab the blankets scattered around us, layering them in the air to seal the doorway, then threw myself flat on the floor.
Boom—!!
Basic military training includes grenade-throwing instruction at boot camp.
After the drills, live practice is conducted, typically in deep water pits to cushion the blast.
During my training, one recruit mistakenly threw a grenade at the pit’s cliff wall instead of into the water—the explosion sounded exactly like this.
The blankets I’d layered at the door were shredded by shrapnel from the grenade; several layers were reduced to tatters.
But they’d absorbed enough of the impact that fragments didn’t reach us.
“Urgh—ugh!”
Lee Su-young, who’d sent her slime to the rear car, saw the carnage and gagged, squeezing her eyes shut.
“Unsummon the slime.”
“Yes…”
Su-young’s face had turned pale from witnessing such horror.
At least the darkness of the rear car meant she hadn’t seen it in full detail.
“Lord, what kind of nightmare is this.”
Bogard, exhausted by fighting humans rather than monsters, collapsed into a chair with a groan.
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
Elliott apologized to us, though none of this was his fault.
“Once morning comes, the train will have to stop.”
“With something like this happening, stopping the train is the least of our concerns. This will probably be front-page news.”
I pushed myself up from the floor and headed toward the rear car.
“What are you going to do?”
At Kong’s question, I answered bitterly.
“At least we should clean this up. What fault is it of the railway staff who’ll have to clear away such brutality?”
No great guilt—they were trying to kill us—but still, I bear responsibility for what my returned grenades wrought. I’ll handle the cleanup.
When I reached the rear car, groans echoed from scattered corners.
“Diana! There are still survivors!”
At my cry, Diana rushed over and unleashed her Holy Power.
Paradoxically, because I’d thrown the grenades back, the one closest to the returned explosives had become a human shield—a miracle that saved all but one.
In the narrow train car, they’d been retreating in a near-single file, and the blast had detonated low, near the floor rather than at head height, which made all the difference.
“We need to conserve Holy Power, so just stabilize them enough to survive.”
“Hehehehe, understood. I don’t care for racists either, so I’ll just make sure they don’t die of sepsis.”
That’s Diana for you.
The survivors would almost certainly live the rest of their lives with disabilities, but survival itself was a mercy they scarcely deserved.
They’d reaped what they’d sown.
In fact, Diana’s presence here was nothing short of divine providence for them.
Looking carefully, I found twelve intact rifles despite the damage, magazines loaded with ammunition, a handful of grenades, and several high-explosive bombs.
I’d better swallow—no, confiscate—these for myself.

* * *

I’d thought the fighting would keep me awake, but exhaustion had other plans.
I sat beside Bogard and asked, “By the way, did the North and South make any treaties during the Civil War? I’m not American, so I don’t know much about American history.”
Bogard closed his eyes as if retrieving a memory.
“Let me think… From what I learned, around April 1865, General Lee, commander of the Confederate Army, signed the surrender documents at Appomattox in Virginia. After that, the Northern Military arrested any stragglers who refused to surrender or tried to escape.”
I wasn’t sure what month it was now, but the rapid sunset and crisp air suggested late winter or early spring.
“Virginia isn’t that far from the capital, is it?”
Our starting point had been West Virginia to begin with.
But our destination lay beyond West Virginia and Kentucky, into the far reaches of Tennessee.
“Well, Lincoln never even became president before he was killed, so what does it matter if the surrender location changed?”
That was fair enough.
“Since Virginia and Tennessee aren’t separated by great distance, they’ve clearly run much farther. But what I’m more curious about is how those bastards even knew we were on this train.”
Bogard’s question hung in the air. I stared at the men bound and unconscious in the corner.
“That’s the mystery. Unless… they had some kind of location tracker…”
Bogard and I turned to Elliott simultaneously.
“Why are you both suddenly looking at me?”
“We need to search you for a moment.”
At Bogard’s intimidating words, Elliott flinched. I smiled reassuringly.
“It’ll only take a quick look. We’re just checking your clothes for anything unusual. Just stand for a moment and we’ll handle it.”
At my words, Elliott rose awkwardly.
As Bogard and I searched him, everyone watched to see what we were doing.
“Found it. Damn—there really is a location tracker.”
I extracted a small device the size of two fingers from his belt.
Lee Su-young looked shocked when she saw it.
“Isn’t a location tracker just GPS? GPS sends signals via satellites to determine position, right? Without satellites in an armory, it should be impossible to use, shouldn’t it?”
“GPS is a global positioning system via satellite, but if we’re only talking about ranges of tens or hundreds of kilometers, a simple radio transmitter and receiver would work fine. It’s basically like a radio.”
In modern times, there’d be so much signal interference everywhere that range would be limited, but in this era with no competing signals, it wouldn’t be hard to pinpoint the location. Especially since we knew the departure and destination points—predicting the route and finding the transmitter’s position would’ve been simple.
“Who gave this to you?”
At my question, Elliott’s pupils trembled.
“Now that you mention it, the people assigned to escort me told me to change into inconspicuous clothes so we’d blend in…”
Bogard laughed hollowly.
“Looks like there was a spy among your escort. Could even be that there’s a spy in the Northern Military too.”
At Bogard’s words, Elliott went pale.
“That… that can’t be!”
“Betrayal from a comrade is always the most devastating.”
Elliott sank to the floor. Kong gazed at the location tracker and spoke.
“Now that we know about it, we should just destroy it.”
Bogard and I spoke in unison.
“What a waste.”
“Why destroy it when we can use it?”
Now that we knew of the tracker’s existence and had secured it, we could toss it onto another train or leave it in a city we passed through. Not only would they lose track of us, but we’d send them on a wild goose chase instead.

I discussed with Bogard and Elliott, examining the military maps they had, about which route to plant the location tracker.
I expected considerable disagreement, but our opinions aligned surprisingly well.
A civilian passenger train was out of the question—these madmen had stormed in shooting indiscriminately.
A military transport vehicle would have to do instead.
By ruling out elements that could cause civilian casualties and approaching the problem with maximum efficiency, our consensus became inevitable.
“Ah, that explains it—you’re from Korea, the country that’s produced legendary RTS pro-gamers. You must be good at games.”
“That’s a racial stereotype. And I’ve never actually played that game.”
“What? You’ve never played that famous game?”
Bogard stared at me as if shocked.
That game came out in the nineties, after all.
No matter how popular it apparently was in Korea—treated almost like a folk pastime—it wasn’t something someone my age would typically play.
A railway staff member cautiously poked his head in, checking whether the gunfight had ended.
He seemed puzzled by why our car was so brightly lit without any lanterns on, but he wanted to verify our identities.
Elliott, the only one among us who had an official identity in this world, stepped forward to verify our identities and explain the general circumstances.
Though “general circumstances,” it was mostly fabricated—we had a classified mission, after all.
After hearing from Elliott that these attackers were robbers targeting us, the staff member looked troubled, then politely requested that we leave the train at the next station, offering to refund our tickets.
From the conductor’s perspective, it was only natural to want to dispose of the disaster we’d brought aboard—along with the robbers.
The passengers in our car fortunately had no injuries, but they trembled with fear after the gunfight; some in the rear cars had been wounded and driven further back by these men.
Being driven back had actually spared them from the grenade’s blast—a blessing in disguise—but those displaced passengers had no way of knowing that.
In such circumstances, if Elliott hadn’t been a high-ranking official, the conductor would likely have kicked us off without refunding a single coin.
We received our refund immediately and were expelled from the train, then promptly handed the location tracker to a military transport vehicle and left the city at once.
This station wouldn’t be selling us tickets anymore.
Fortunately, there was a carriage service to the neighboring city, so we could catch a train there and continue to our destination.

(To be continued in the next installment)

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————