On My First Day Undercover, the Organization Collapsed - Chapter 428

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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First Day of Infiltration, The Organization Was Destroyed — Episode 428
Who else would do it?
The day of the operation drew near.
Ziel Steelheart had left with the students.
“That subordinate Gilbert is still here.”
“No matter. I’ll put him to sleep with my Secret Arts.”
The Secret Arts practitioner leading the operation possessed a Secret Arts that dominated the flow of human mana.
Not quite high-level like Rob O’Connor, but easily among the upper tier of mid-level practitioners.
“Good. We move. Swift subjugation and retreat. And remember this — Rob goes to the Secret Arts User Association, and we must return. That’s how we pull it off.”
“Understood.”
Their plan was straightforward.
Kidnap Rob, then have him transported to the Association through a contact they’d arranged in advance.
Then come back and hold the line.
As if nothing had happened.
Rob would become a man who fled while Ziel was away.
It was a flawless plan.
“I’ll handle Ziel Steelheart’s subordinate.”
“Understood. But, um, there’s something bothering me.”
All eyes turned to the Secret Arts practitioner who’d spoken.
Everyone tensed, wondering if this was a doubt serious enough to halt the operation.
“……Won’t we just keep working here anyway? Until the territory reconstruction is finished?”
“…….”
“…….”
Damn.
Blinded by vengeance and resentment, they’d forgotten for a moment.
Whether they spirited away Rob O’Connor or not, the fact remained — they still had to work here.
“…….”
Secret Arts were an inborn gift.
They had little to do with intelligence.
“……Look, let’s handle Rob O’Connor first. Our situation…… might resolve itself naturally once we’ve got him.”
“And if it doesn’t……?”
“…….”
But they couldn’t stop now.
“Ziel Steelheart has just left with the students.”
“Good.”
The timing was perfect.
There was only one small problem.
“But it’s different from what we knew — Gilbert went with them, and someone called Kelvin stayed behind.”
“Kelvin?”
“From what we heard him saying, he’s some former mercenary who made a name for himself in the Western Region.”
“Hmm. He’s probably skilled enough, but…….”
“He’s not a problem for us.”
The pride of the Secret Arts practitioners ran deep.
In fact, some were entertaining dangerous thoughts.
That even if they faced Ziel Steelheart himself, they could handle him if they pooled their strength.
It wasn’t an unreasonable thought from their perspective.
The Secret Arts practitioners’ greatest weapon was information asymmetry.
So little was known of them, and they guarded the secrets of their power so absolutely, that opponents had no idea how to prepare against them.
Even if Ziel Steelheart were a fellow Secret Arts practitioner, such thinking wouldn’t change much.
“I’ll handle him the same way.”
“Understood.”
The plan was set.
Now it was time to move.
The Secret Arts practitioners stirred swiftly, before dawn broke.
Ziel Steelheart had set out with the students in the early morning, and everything was unfolding in their favor.
Or so they believed.
“W-Wait! You can’t!”
Until that mercenary Kelvin blocked their path.
“…….”
“……Damn it. We’re screwed.”
The Secret Arts practitioners exhaled in unison.
The plan had always been simple: kidnap Rob without anyone noticing.
The moment someone caught wind of it, everything would fall apart.
“Subdue him, please. I’ll handle the memory erasure.”
“Very well.”
But there was still one card left to play.
After subduing him, tampering with his memories.
The fact that Kelvin had lost his memory might raise suspicion on its own, but it was far better than being discovered outright.
“Let’s try it.”
One of the Secret Arts practitioners approached Kelvin.
And he activated his technique.
“Hah.”
A low hum filled the air.
The mystical power gathered in his palm flew toward Kelvin.
“That should do it.”
Fortunately, he didn’t counterattack.
With this done, surely they could breathe easy now….
“…What?”
What was this?
Why wasn’t he reacting?
Normally, someone whose mana had been suppressed would at least panic, or more typically crumple in agony.
But Kelvin merely stood there, staring blankly in their direction.
‘O-once more….’
He cast again.
The result was identical.
Then Kelvin spoke.
“H-hey, Secret Arts?”
“You—what are you….”
Kelvin cut him off with a grin.
“M-Master is the greatest.”
“…Master?”
Another Secret Arts practitioner stepped forward then.
“I’ll erase the memory right away.”
But despite his confidence, it didn’t work.
The mana that flew at him simply scattered before Kelvin.
“What in the…what is this?”
Thud.
Kelvin brought both fists together across his chest.
“You lot—all of you—now it’s over.”
The Secret Arts practitioners understood.
Things had gone terribly, catastrophically wrong.
* * *
Had Kelvin actually intended to kill them, it would have been a one-sided slaughter.
It was five Secret Arts practitioners against one man with a mercenary’s background.
“Quite the commotion so early in the morning—more training?”
“I always heard the lord’s subordinates were formidable, but this is something else.”
“Wait, aren’t these Secret Arts practitioners? Did they finally get tired of sitting around?”
Roused earlier than usual by the sounds of conflict, the territory’s residents gathered to watch.
The defeated Secret Arts practitioners couldn’t lift their heads.
Not because they’d been knocked unconscious.
‘I’m mortified—absolutely mortified!’
Supposedly skilled practitioners of the Secret Arts, and they’d been utterly demolished by a single man of mere mercenary stock!
They hadn’t just been beaten.
They’d been thoroughly thrashed.
Completely one-sided.
‘Why didn’t the Secret Arts work? How could this happen?’
The principle was simple enough.
The bracelet Kelvin wore.
It temporarily dispersed any and all mana directed at the wearer’s body!
The catch was that the wearer themselves couldn’t use mana either, and it carried considerable risk.
But the bracelet’s wearer was Kelvin.
Even setting aside mana, his strength and speed surpassed ordinary knights by a considerable margin.
That was the reason.
‘What do we do?’
‘Shh, quiet for now. I’m thinking. We erase the memories of everyone here…….’
‘What nonsense!’
One way or another, it was definitely finished.
“P-performance confirmed.”
Kelvin gazed at the bracelet with a rueful grin, disappointed.
“T-training impossible.”
Weak—terribly weak.
By Kelvin’s standards.
The Secret Arts practitioners appeared to have conditioned their bodies after a fashion.
But they were slower than the students.
And so Kelvin reached a conclusion.
“S-Secret Arts easy.”
Secret Arts were not something that could be explained by simple mana or magic alone, though they too sprang from mana—that fundamental force underlying all life.
Therefore, once mana was completely nullified, it stood to reason that Secret Arts would have no effect whatsoever!
It was yet another reason why Secret Arts practitioners could not dominate the world.
Of course, the practitioners knew this.
They understood that their power originated in mana, and that affecting mana itself rendered their arts virtually useless.
But…….
Even knowing it, few could actually prepare a defense against it.
‘Secret Arts are easy…….’
‘Our reputation…….’
‘We’re really finished…….’
In any case, it was truly ruined.
The plan had failed.
In truth, there were a few other ways to have managed it.
They could have played along smoothly with Kelvin’s words and baited him into a preemptive strike.
Or they could have observed the situation longer before acting.
The problem was thinking of it only now.
“Kelvin, sir!”
Rob O’Connor, their target, came rushing over with his Security Guard subordinates.
“What in the world is happening…….”
“F-first strike, aimed, at me.”
“……Secret Arts practitioners? Attacking you?”
“First strike, hostile, confirmed!”
Rob exhaled a long sigh.
“What were they thinking…….”
Not knowing the details, Rob could only sigh.
Whatever had happened, one would have to be mad to lay hands on the Lord’s subordinate!
‘Then they must be mad?’
Rob pulled out a book.
It was the Security Guard Manual that Ziel had handed him just yesterday, before leaving.
“Let me see…… Here it is.”
Rob nodded as he turned through the pages.
“When a person belonging to the Territory is attacked: binding, then imprisonment! And depending on the severity of the offense, maximum punishment…… execution?”
Execution!
The Secret Arts practitioners’ ears heard nothing else after that.
* * *
Ziel, Gilbert, and the students had returned.
The students’ condition was deplorable.
“I’m dying…….”
“Celia was the one who suggested coming here to play, wasn’t she…….”
“I’m going to kill Celia…….”
Hell Training!
They were paying the price for gathering under the pretense of training during the break and doing nothing but playing.
To be honest, it wasn’t entirely clear why one should pay a price for playing during vacation, but they were paying it nonetheless.
For what it’s worth, they’d just come from desperately fighting among the magical beasts.
Because Ziel was there, there were no deaths—not even seriously wounded. Yet everyone had brushed against the edge of oblivion at least once.
His training was that brutal.
Even knowing that their teacher’s presence meant they wouldn’t actually die, the crisis had felt terrifyingly real.
“Rest now, all of you.”
“Thank you…”
“Twelve hours rest, then training resumes. You’ll return to the Academy with me.”
……
“And we proceed with Security Guard training as well. Instructors, prepare yourselves. That’s all.”
Ziel refused to let the students truly rest.
“So we’re like butterflies who’ve flown straight into a spider’s web, is that it?”
“Maris, you’re the moth.”
“Why me! Celia’s the one who insisted we come early! A fire moth! God, forget it. I don’t care anymore. Let’s just leave things as they are.”
They were too exhausted to muster the energy for another argument.
But elsewhere.
Ziel had somewhere else to be.
“Kelvin.”
“Y-yes, Master!”
It was to where Kelvin had locked away the Secret Arts Users in the temporary prison.
All of them wore Mana Blocking Bracelets on their wrists.
Unlike the ones the Security Guards wore, these were custom pieces that could never be removed by the wearer’s own will.
“Z-Ziel Steelheart… Lord.”
They all flinched the moment they saw him, their eyes darting away.
They had good reason to.
“Well done, Kelvin.”
“V-very easy!”
Ziel had briefed Kelvin beforehand.
So he’d made the preparations.
Kelvin—strong enough to fell most enemies even without mana.
Besides, when mana was blocked, the body lost its power.
That made this a job only Kelvin could do.
“Do they fit?”
“Quite w-well.”
“Then have them train while wearing the bracelets for half of each day.”
“M-Master-level… training?”
“That’s right.”
A bonus solution to boot!
Ziel turned his gaze back to the Secret Arts Users and uttered something chilling.
“You’re all sentenced to death.”
“D-death? Execution?”
“That’s the law of this territory.”
“But we’re Secret Arts Users!”
“Does that excuse you from capital punishment?”
“If you execute us, the Association will not take this lying down!”
Ziel answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“I’ll win.”
Simple as that.
Even if all of them rushed him at once, it would make no difference.
Ziel could employ the same method Kelvin used, and besides—he had no mana to suffer a penalty in the first place, making it almost irrelevant.
Not that he needed that method to triumph anyway.
“You’ll all face execution.”
The Secret Arts Users began to sense that things were spiraling badly out of their control.
Execution.
The word—one they’d never seriously contemplated in their lives—started to fill their minds, and their bodies trembled.
‘We’re finished.’
Their opponent was Ziel Steelheart.
A hero of the Empire.
He enjoyed the Emperor’s favor, and his strength defied measurement.
They could have grasped this truth earlier, but pride and arrogance as Secret Arts Users had blinded them.
Now, confronted by the stark reality, there was only one course of action left.
“P-please, spare us! We were wrong!”
One quick-witted Secret Arts Practitioner cried out first, and the rest followed suit.
“We’ve done wrong!”
“W-we’ve committed a terrible mistake!”
They were wailing and carrying on without end.
‘Worth watching,’ Ziel thought.
Gilbert, observing the scene from the side, found it genuinely rare—the kind of spectacle one rarely witnessed in a lifetime.
When would he ever see it again?
These proud, secretive Secret Arts Practitioners, reduced to weeping and frantic desperation.
Truthfully, executing people for attacking a few folk from the Territory defied all common sense.
Like most laws, the outcome naturally varied depending on who stood before the judge.
But their judge was the Boss.
Mercy had no place before him.
‘Is he planning to swallow up the entire Secret Arts User Association under this pretext?’
If he executed one or two as an example and let the rest live while issuing a warning to the Association…
“Then I’ll give you a chance to live.”
That was when Ziel made his proposal.
“We’ll do anything!”
The Secret Arts Practitioners cried out in unison.
Ziel nodded at their response and answered.
“You’ll work here.”
“Pardon?”
“For life. Those who accept cannot return to the Association.”
……
Ziel laid down a dreadful condition and asked.
“Who will do it?”
Of course, there was no choice.

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