The Imperial Supreme Commander Has Returned - Chapter 25

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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 25

“Double time! This is a Forced March!”
“Abandon Covert Movement! Sound doesn’t matter now!”

The Special Forces Unit changed pace.
Until now they’d moved with painstaking care, spending hours erasing every trace of their camps. Those niceties were gone.
They’d stopped eating proper meals altogether.
They marched while crunching through Rations.

The operation, for all its apparent complexity, boiled down to three elements.
Time, place, and circumstance.

[Place] was fixed at the Altar—that couldn’t be changed.
[Circumstance] was the same.
No one knew what conditions awaited them at the Altar.

But [time] was different.
It could be adjusted however they wished.

‘They’ll have some sense of when we’re coming.’

They’d likely expect a Feint Attack.
Strike the moment the flanking maneuver begins on the front line.

And he meant to shatter that expectation.
Hit them earlier—or later—than anticipated.

But lingering around the barbarians’ main camp would accomplish nothing.
There was only one way to shake the board the enemy had set.
Launch the attack far ahead of schedule.

“This way!”

Under the scout’s guidance, the entire force ran through the forest.
The knights moved without question, and the Special Forces soldiers—veterans among veterans—coursed through the woodland like deer.

How many times did they repeat the cycle of running, walking, resting?
Before even half the expected travel time had elapsed.
The party reached their destination.

Whooooooosh—

There was no need to confirm they’d come to the right place.
Far overhead, crimson waves shimmered against the sky, rising like Vengeful Spirits ascending toward the heavens.
The sight alone sent chills down the spine.
It was unmistakably the Altar.

“Contact!”

The Special Forces Commander cried out and drew his blade.
The undergrowth, swallowed in darkness until that instant, thrashed with sudden frenzy.
Dozens of Torches ignited simultaneously across the forest floor.

Beneath them appeared the distinctive brown skin of the barbarians.
It was clear—enemies had dug in and waited in ambush.

“End march! Form Defensive Formation! We’ll take their first assault here, then countercharge! Everyone defend and conserve your strength!”

The Special Forces Commander spotted the enemy and cried out at once.
The night was pitch-dark on all sides, so he couldn’t determine exact numbers.
Still, judging by the torches, there were at least five hundred.

Fewer than expected, yet daunting nonetheless.
On open ground, fighting one-to-one, they could slaughter the enemy with ease—but here in this dark forest, on ground the enemy knew intimately, the battle would be fierce.
A brutal engagement was coming.

One mercy: the enemy’s reaction.
Look at them floundering, panicked and disorganized.
It was proof that Delram’s prediction had been right.
If they’d stuck to the original plan and crept forward using Covert Movement, there would be a thousand enemies before them now, not five hundred.

“Defensive positions! Defensive positions!”
“Archers inside! Archers inside!”

At the Special Forces Commander’s order, his troops responded instantly.
Elite among the elite.
Warriors hardened by countless real battles, veterans of impossible victories.
They formed a circular perimeter even as the archers moved inward, then the spearmen assembled their divided shafts into full pikes.
Last, the soldiers in the archers’ direct fire zone stepped aside, replaced by shield-bearers who sealed the gap.

The whole maneuver took barely twenty seconds.
The formation was complete before the tribesmen could even react.

But there was a problem beneath this competence.
You could see it in the faces of the knights who’d joined the Special Forces Unit.

“We’re supposed to destroy the Altar, and you form a Defensive Formation?”
“Special Forces Commander, is this right?”
“We should switch to Wedge Formation now!”

The knights protested, but it made no difference.
The Special Forces Commander’s face was set, and he shook his head with resolute finality.

The knights had no choice then.
Though their skill and rank were superior, the Special Forces Commander held direct command authority, delegated by the lord marshal himself.
A knight lives by orders and dies by orders.
So they had no choice but to obey.

Not that the Special Forces Commander was a fool.
Without the knights dispersing the enemy’s attack pressure, even the Special Forces Unit would suffer catastrophic losses in their current formation.

So the Special Forces Commander asked a question.
Of Gillian, the oldest of the younger-rank knights.

“Sir Gillian, a rather abrupt question, but—are you still wearing that Sword Ornament you were so fond of?”
“Of course I am… wait, what?”
“Sir Michel, your Helmet Plume is gone. Sir Talpim, the Short Sword you kept for emergencies—I don’t see it.”
“What are you talking about— huh.”

The knights’ faces twisted at this seemingly random observation.
But then they searched for the items he’d mentioned and went pale.

They really had vanished.
Objects they carried with them always.

“I have them all.”

The Special Forces Commander said this, then rummaged through his pocket.
What emerged were a Sword Ornament, a Helmet Plume, and a single Short Sword.
All of them belonged to the knights, who had lost them just moments before.

“Forgive me. I wished to test the Stealth Ability of our vice-commander, Delram, so I was compelled to lay hands upon your possessions.”
“……!”
“It was a necessary maneuver. I would be grateful if you could find it in yourselves to trust us.”

The knights wore expressions suggesting they wanted to press further.
It was only natural.
Objects they carried on their persons had vanished without their knowledge?
To put it another way—

‘If instead of taking my things, he had driven a blade through my throat… would I have been able to dodge it?’
‘Cold sweat. I’m drenched in it.’

Death itself had walked among them and vanished.
The knights trembled, their spines prickling with dread.

And so the Special Forces Commander could now be certain, beyond all doubt.
Delram’s Stealth Ability was real.

‘I trust only you, Delram.’

* * *

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

A strange sound echoed through the Oak Forest.
The sound of something being struck repeatedly.

But no one heard it.
A thousand soldiers stood locked in a standoff.
The tension was so thick that even the slightest movement seemed ready to shatter it—no one had the mind to notice such a small noise.

‘Proceeding smoothly.’

Thanks to this, Delram could reach the crown of the Oak tree.
Then he carefully stored away the tools that had made those small sounds—the Short Swords he’d used, striking the wood alternately as he climbed.
His next action was a running start.

Crack!

He sprinted across the short distance and launched himself into the air.
Delram, his branches firmly grasped, landed safely on the next tree.
He had leaped from tree to tree.

In truth, it was an impossible feat for anyone but Delram.
Even if the oak wood was dense and solid, the gaps between trees were wide, and the branches themselves were thin.
But Delram was only fourteen.
The lightness born of his small frame—small compared to an adult—combined with Mana to compensate for his lack of strength, and his Balance Sense honed to perfection, made it possible.

“Hmm?”

A barbarian with keen senses lifted his head and glanced upward.
Of course, he saw nothing.
Delram left only the faintest noise in his wake, and now was the darkest hour of the day—just before dawn broke.
There was no chance of spotting a flying squirrel.

Moreover, Delram was also an accomplished assassin.
It was not his primary skill, but he had experience in it more than once.

‘And there’s Wind, too—perfect for Aura Suppression.’

Wind was something he’d already tested thoroughly during Special Forces Unit training.
Rubian, an Intermediate-rank Knight, couldn’t spot him even when Delram stood directly in front of him—the concealment was beyond question.

Because of that, in this moment.
Delram had become, without exaggeration, one of the finest assassins in all the Fiyor Kingdom.

Crack, crack, crack.

And so Delram raced across the treetops.
He moved with precision over speed, but running through an unobstructed sky meant his pace was remarkably swift.
As he went, Delram turned the problem over in his mind.

‘No matter how I think about it, this is the only way.’

Originally, his thinking had matched the knights’ exactly.
Arrive near the Altar, form a Wedge Formation, crush the enemy, and drive straight through to the Altar itself.
With the knights clearing the path ahead and the Special Forces Unit pushing forward with death in their eyes, it would be straightforward.

Especially given the chronic weakness of the Sambala Tribal Alliance.
Since soldiers came from different tribes, they couldn’t be expected to coordinate organically—it would likely be even easier than anticipated.

‘But what happens after?’

Congratulations.
You’ve broken through the enemy and reached the Altar.

‘Now you die.’

The greatest weakness of the Wedge Formation revealed itself at that moment.
The Offensive Endpoint.
The Special Forces Unit, halted to destroy the Altar, would become nothing more than a feast for the barbarians.

It didn’t matter how elite they were.
In confined space with enemies rushing from all sides, dismantling his comrades one by one—who could hold out against that?

Of course, the Altar would be destroyed in the process.
But the survivor count would be zero.

‘I have to stop that. That’s the only way I survive.’

There was no point in surviving alone.
He wouldn’t make it back to the Garrison.
So he had to keep as many Special Forces Unit members alive as possible—only then would his own odds of survival increase.
And complete the mission while he was at it.

This operation was what he’d arrived at after turning it all over in his mind.
Namely: go alone, in secret, and kill them all.

The Altar crumbles automatically once the sorcerer dies.
So the plan was simple: assassinate and escape.

‘And it’s only possible because of Wind.’

So far, everything was going smoothly.
He’d advanced roughly five hundred meters beyond the starting point.
But not a single barbarian had spotted Delram yet.

And so Delram reached the Altar.
A barren clearing, every tree nearby felled.
At its center stood a statue carved from an ancient, lightning-struck oak.

The carving resembled both human and monster at once.
Likely one of the Sambala ancestors—
A chieftain of extraordinary power.

‘A mess,’ he thought.

Delram surveyed the Altar’s perimeter and clicked his tongue.
Countless animal carcasses lay heaped around it.
The stench was so thick his nose had gone numb.
All the corpses bloated and decomposed.

This alone told him everything.
What they were preparing had nothing to do with weather.
It was undoubtedly Diarroia—Grand Sorcery to spread plague.

‘Let’s see.’

Delram focused his mind and surveyed the surroundings.
Ten sorcerers encircled the Altar.
Each waved oddly shaped Staffs, Bronze Mirrors, Bells, and recited what appeared to be Rune Characters in an endless drone.

And surrounding them, numerous tribesmen.
At least fifty, it seemed.

‘Kill five sorcerers and it should work.’

As he’d said, sorcery had a 1+1+1 effect.
The more gathered, the more the power multiplied.
That’s how they could pull off such absurd spells.

Of course, weaknesses and side effects existed.
If they didn’t, who’d be mad enough to become a sorcerer?
Everyone would just learn sorcery instead.

Regardless, the most fatal weakness—
The sorcerers themselves.
The moment sorcery activated, participating sorcerers lost a significant portion of their Mana and needed at least years of recovery.

And unlike magic, the cast time was long.
But if something went wrong with a participating sorcerer in that interval?
The sorcery simply canceled.

This time was no different.
With ten of them, roughly cutting down half would do the trick.
The Special Forces Unit could laugh all the way home.

‘Damn, they’re too far.’

But Delram smacked his lips.
The Altar’s perimeter had been completely cleared of trees—no wood left to cross toward the sorcerers.

Just five meters.
If he could go just five meters further…

‘No, scratch that.’

Delram sighed at the sight of the barbarian warrior before him.
A giant of a man, seated alone in front of the sorcerers.

Ordinarily, when knights were evenly matched in strength, you could gauge it at a glance.
The moment you saw them, you knew.
‘This one’s roughly my equal!’ or ‘This one looks weaker than me!’
But what if you felt neither?

‘Then it means he’s far stronger than me…….’

Probably intermediate-rank, perhaps high-rank.
Only three high-rank knights existed in the Sambala Tribal Alliance, and with the flanking maneuver imminent, he wouldn’t be here now.
So by logic, intermediate-rank.

But what did intermediate-rank mean to these people?
Among the Sambala, he’d be a warrior chief—directly beneath the tribal leader.
By kingdom standards, he was the commander of a small noble’s knight order.

‘If I charged straight at him alone?’

Unthinkable.
The odds of winning were dismally low.

So he had to wait.
The fierce sounds of battle, still faintly audible at the edges of his hearing.
The Special Forces Unit that Delram knew wouldn’t lose to barbarians.
When his own forces began to give ground, reinforcements would be sent from the troops near the Altar to support them, and that would be his moment.

‘If only that warrior chief would go himself.’

For now, patience was the only virtue.
Delram drew a vial from his chest and uncapped it.

Click.

A crisp, unchanged fragrance burrowed into his nostrils.
He felt his mind settle like a lake without a ripple.

“……!”

Then an alarm blazed through Delram’s mind.
An enemy he would have missed, had his mind not been so perfectly still.
Delram turned his head downward instantly.

And met them.
The warrior chief’s pale, sallow eyes, fixed on him.
Those owl-like eyes—and his smile.

Caw!

The moment the warrior chief’s feet scraped forward—

Thwip!

Delram loosed his arrow nearly in the same breath.

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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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