The Imperial Supreme Commander Has Returned - Chapter 17

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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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The Imperial Commander Returns — Episode 17

“The final exercise,” Delram murmured, gazing at the forest before him.

He’d undergone countless drills in recent days.
Methods for infiltrating the Barbarian Settlement undetected.
Techniques for locating enemies in hiding.
Ways to subdue an opponent in silence.

Tactical knowledge came the same way.
How to gauge enemy numbers at a glance—by observing their formation and spacing.
How to estimate supplies from a storehouse’s size. How to read the signs before enemies began construction.

But the training period was only three days.
So the instructors harbored no grand illusions.
If a person could master everything in one session, would they really be human?

So this training was more of an introduction.
The message was clear: these are the kinds of missions the Special Forces Unit undertakes. Choose your specialty and refine it through endless practice.
Each squad had its own area of focus, and once you joined one, you began advanced training from scratch.

‘So the records themselves don’t really matter that much…….’

But even that had limits.
Take Search Training, for instance—finding hidden enemies.
Most soldiers needed about twenty minutes to locate them all.

Delram’s time?
Fifteen seconds flat.
Practice or not, it was a record that made eyes bulge out of their sockets.

And this wasn’t a one-time fluke.
He’d topped every single exercise over the three days.
With times that utterly eclipsed the competition.

Murmur, murmur.

That’s why the training ground was swarming right now.
They were all other Special Forces members.

‘In the Special Forces, your teammates’ strength is everything.’

Normally the Special Forces Unit moved in squads.
An average squad had eight members.
With numbers that small, individual ability became critical.

So what if you ended up with one subpar teammate?
Your survival rate plummeted exponentially.
But if a highly skilled squad member joined instead—

‘The odds of coming back alive skyrocket.’

In that light, Delram was exactly the kind of ally you needed.
Though he’d apparently expressed interest in reconnaissance and infiltration work.
But love moves mountains—offer the right incentive and a specialty can shift!

That’s why they were all drooling.
Trying to poach him for their own squads.

‘Eyes boring into me again.’

Click.

Delram smiled faintly as he opened the locket.
By now it had become half a habit.
Opening the locket before tackling something important, or before finishing a task—it had become a ritual for him, a kind of ceremony.

His mother’s portrait came into view above the locket.
Mother… I can scarcely remember her face anymore.
Her warmth, her scent, her voice—all had grown hazy.
Like so many comrades who had died before.

“Whoosh.”

Delram closed his eyes and drew in a breath.
As always, a crisp fragrance curled through his lungs.
But something felt different.

‘Hmm?’

This time, he caught an additional scent beneath the usual one.
The rich smell of a forest blanketed in dew at dawn.
The deep odor of leaf rot after autumn faded and winter passed—fallen leaves piled thick, decomposing, leaving only the bare branches as trace of what once was.
It was the scent of dark earth.

“Delram, is something the matter?”
“No, sir. Nothing at all.”

It was probably nothing.
Delram closed the locket and headed into the forest.

The final day of three days of training.
It was time for Hide and Seek.

The method was simple.
In thirty minutes, the Unit Commander would come looking for him.
Delram had to remain hidden until then without being found.

The passing time was five minutes.
Since the forest was so small, it would be difficult to last any longer than that.

‘Let’s see what we have here…’

Delram scanned his surroundings quickly.
An artificial forest.
Naturally, there were no cave-like hiding spots, and even if there were, they were certainly trapped—entering one would only make things worse.

‘Then I’ll just have to make one myself.’

The plan was straightforward.
Though the area was small, the undergrowth was thick enough that he could dig a shallow trench in the earth, then cover it well with the excavated vegetation.
In short, a makeshift bivouac.

It seemed hopelessly crude.
But when time was short.
And when there was nowhere else to hide, nothing served better.

From hearing to smell, touch to sight.
Forests were places that clouded a person’s mind.

‘And this time, I have something to rely on.’

Do you remember when Delram first felt the Wind at the training grounds?
From that moment, much had changed within him.
His body grew lighter, faster.
He moved as though riding the wind itself—free, unencumbered.

Through that process, Delram had come to understand something.
A third force—neither Mana, nor Aura, nor Divine Power.
The fact that such a thing lay dormant within his own body.

And not long ago, another change had come.
It was during his fight with the barbarian warrior.

On the very edge of death, the force had stirred into being—
and Delram had channeled it through his spear and released it.
That was the Silent Thrust.

It was tremendous progress.
To consciously recognize the force he’d only vaguely sensed before.
And then to take it one step further—to actually wield it.
Delram had named the force Wind.

‘The name is a bit juvenile, but… only I know about it anyway.’

He was aware the designation was childish.
But nothing fit as perfectly as that single word.

The ability of Wind was straightforward.
It granted him command over wind itself—literal wind.
He could conjure a gentle breeze or stir the sand scattered on the ground.
In combat, it was virtually useless.

But applied with ingenuity, everything changed.
The Silent Thrust was one such application.
He carved a path of wind through empty space, then drove his spear through it.
All resistance vanished from the blade’s edge.
The dead barbarian warrior had demonstrated the results quite clearly.

‘It’s a formidable power.’

The problem was that he had no idea why he possessed it.
Did the Luminary God secretly grant it when he returned?
Then again, just when he was exhausted and about to rest, the god had him running around again…
If the god had any conscience at all, it owed him at least this much.

But no matter how he examined it, that didn’t seem to be the case.
He wasn’t even certain the Luminary God had orchestrated his return in the first place.

‘I have no idea.’

In any case, Delram had studied Wind while bedridden.
The result: he discovered its applications were virtually limitless.
He could reduce sound when moving his body.
Or he could even cut off his own presence and scent.

Particularly those three: sound, presence, scent.
These accounted for nearly eighty percent of concealment itself.
Thus, even if Delram’s Camouflage was somewhat crude, wielding Wind would make it no easy task for the Unit Commander to discover him.

‘Twenty minutes of hiding should do it.’

Delram thought this as he pulled out a small spade.
After choosing his spot, he drove the blade into the earth.

Thump, thump.
“Hm?”

The sensation in his hands felt strange.
The soil was digging far too easily.

Normally, grass-choked ground like this had root networks burrowed so deep into the earth that digging proved difficult.
Besides, since this was bivouac work, minimizing damage to the surroundings was paramount.

It should have taken considerably longer.
Yet―

‘It’s as if the soil itself is yielding to me.’

But that couldn’t be.
Delram dug on, wondering if this ground was simply unusual.
He worked until the depth was roughly half his body’s length.

Then he lay flat and carefully camouflaged his lower half with grass.
Of course, he’d already disposed of the excess soil with cunning.
Cover it with Green Cloth on top, and he was finished.

Finally, he stretched out his breathing and closed his eyes.
He’d blocked out every possible variable.
But that meant he never knew.

-……?
Waddle-waddle.

A mole passed by his side.
An exceptionally plump mole at that.

* * *

The Knight Order’s exclusive Training Ground.
Any true knight ought to stake her life on training.
Yet surprisingly, the Training Ground stood empty.

The reason was simple.
It was for secrecy’s sake.

Most knights came from noble families.
Each house naturally passed down its own unique swordplay.
So to openly practice it in the Training Ground?
That was as good as announcing it to the world, inviting someone to exploit it.

Whoosh―! Whoosh―!

But there was always someone who didn’t care about such things.
Rubian, the female knight.
Rubian prized Physical Training above all else, and so spent most of her days here in the Training Ground.

Today was no exception.
I’d been out since dawn, Training Greatsword in hand.
Then came a hundred overhead strikes in succession.
After that would be slashing, then thrusting.

Rubian, who’d been training for some time, suddenly glanced up at the sky.
Time dragged — this was already the third time today she’d checked.
The sun hung midway through its arc.

‘It should be finished by now, shouldn’t it?’

The Special Forces Unit’s training ran for three days.
The fourth and final day typically wrapped up around midday.
Unless something unexpected happened, the last trial should’ve concluded by now.

Swish, swish.

Rubian carefully wiped the sweat from her skin with cloth.
She pressed her nose to her forearm and sniffed, but all that came back was the scent of exertion.
Satisfied, she left the Barracks.

“Mmm~”

She was even humming — wholly unlike herself.
A few of her comrades from the Knight Order spotted her from afar and started to approach, only to slowly retreat again.
Because whenever Rubian acted this abnormally, this inexplicably cheerful — well, trouble always followed.

According to legend, it was the same on that day.
The day her former fiancé went astray.
The day she’d put that man on the training grounds under the guise of a sparring match, then pummeled him like ground meat until he was half-dead.

‘A charming creature, really.’

But Rubian, blissfully unaware of the reputation she’d earned, smiled to herself.
The boy she’d brought back from the battlefield.
Young as he was, the more she thought of him, the more she found herself drawn to him.

Not as a man, of course.
How could someone not of noble birth carry themselves with such knightly bearing?
It was pure admiration — respect born from one blade-wielder to another.

“Hmm? What’s everyone gathered about?”

She’d arrived at the Special Forces Unit’s training ground.
But something was off.
At the far end of the outpost, there was a small wood — the site of the final trial.
And there, a crowd of Special Forces members had congregated.

“Ah, Knight-Commander.”
“The boy’s training still isn’t finished?”
“No, he’s completed everything. He’s in the final Concealment trial now.”
“Concealment — that’s where one member hides in the forest while the others search them out, yes?”
“That’s correct, ma’am.”

Rubian was familiar with the exercise.
Each of the Special Forces Unit’s drills was designed with considerable practical application, so the Knight Order strongly encouraged its members to train in them as well.
Of course, since they were combatants wielding Mana, they underwent versions of far greater difficulty than the standard soldier’s regimen.
But the fundamentals remained the same.

‘The best time on record was ten minutes, wasn’t it?’

The forest was barely a hundred meters across in any direction.
Though the trees and undergrowth were densely packed, such a small area meant that a thorough search would turn up anyone hiding there.
So why were they all gathered here like this?

“Surely not…?”
“Yes… We still haven’t found him.”
“How long has it been since he entered the forest?”
“Two hours now…….”
“And you searched for him yourself?”
“I did.”
“You—the Unit Commander of the Special Forces Unit—couldn’t find him?”
…….
“I don’t know whether I should worry about the future of the Special Forces Unit and the kingdom’s army, or marvel at that boy’s abilities.”

The barb struck home; the Unit Commander’s face flushed crimson.
Now she understood why all the Special Forces soldiers had gathered in front of the forest.
They’d searched and searched without success, so they’d called everyone in.
Simply asking him to come out would be easier, but pride wouldn’t allow it—instead they planned to comb through the entire forest with sheer numbers.

“Why don’t we search together once more?”
“Very well.”

Rubian entered the forest alongside the Unit Commander.
Even as she did, she found herself in genuine admiration.
Most people couldn’t last ten minutes out there, yet he’d managed two hours!
No matter how she looked at it, the numbers made no sense.

In fact, it was the sort of thing that might raise suspicions.
‘Could he have slipped out of the forest altogether?’

But it didn’t seem like something Delram would do.
The way he’d led his comrades even as a barbarian, the way he’d sacrificed in their place.
The deeds that transcended a barbarian warrior, even volunteering for the Special Forces Unit!
The boy had always been scrupulously honest.

‘Well then…….’

Rubian drew upon her Mana.
Intermediate-level Mana surged to life, sharpening her senses.

It was slightly underhanded, but she needed to hurry.
She had prepared a proper meal in her own quarters to celebrate Delram’s completion of training.
But what if it got cold?

That’s why she had to find him as quickly as possible.
She was determined to have the boy taste her home-cooked meal.
While it was still piping hot!

Rubian’s eyes kindled with determination.

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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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