The Imperial Supreme Commander Has Returned - Chapter 37

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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 Has Returned — Episode 37

Thud, thud, thud.

Delram was digging with determined intensity.
The plain was still frozen solid, but that hardly mattered.
Aura could shatter a knight in full armor—digging through earth was trivial.
With Aura sheathed around the shovel, a pit took mere moments to complete.

“There we go.”
Thunk.

Three unfortunate men tumbled into the hole.
Now he just needed to cover it well.

He hadn’t buried them too deep on purpose.
Spring was the season of hunger.
The starving beasts and demons that had endured the winter would be more than happy to unearth their meal with snout and claw.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the end of it.
There was one more at the Rocky Terrain where he’d first met these men.
And another at the Campsite, the one who’d died from an arrow—that needed handling too.
While he was at it, he’d have to erase any lingering signs of the fight in the area.

“Ugh, what a bother.”
Whoosh.

Delram muttered under his breath as he moved the shovel.
Dirt fell across Matthew’s face.
Looking at that pale visage, the conversation from moments before surfaced in his mind.

—Please, spare me! If you kill me—
—The Antonio Family won’t forgive you?
—Y-yes! And besides, my father is—
—So fond of you that he’ll pursue me to the ends of the earth?
—Exactly! And if you let me go—
—You won’t hold me responsible, and you’ll even compensate me?
—…….

Matthew’s desperate thrashing had curdled into despair.
Even a three-year-old would have understood at that point.
There was no walking away from this alive.
Especially not when Delram was casually trimming his fingernails with Tarbing—that demon blade that had just cleaved two men apart—answering with utter calm.

Would this madman spare him?
By any measure, no.

Then if death was certain anyway!
Matthew’s eyes flared with defiance as he cried out.

—Kill me! A man of the Antonio Family does not beg for his life—he dies with dignity!
—Didn’t you just spend the last few minutes doing exactly that?
—I-that was—
—In any case, I can’t let you live. But if you tell me one thing, I’ll give you a clean death. Your family’s Secret Mana Formula—you have it, yes?
—What? You madman! You think I’d tell you?
—Then I’ll ask your body directly. Tarbing, carve.
—Kreeeeeeaaaaahhhhh!

Despite his pathetic conduct, Matthew possessed a surprisingly strong will.
He’d held out against Delram’s interrogation for a full five minutes, after all.

Delram had never walked the elite path.
He’d climbed to Supreme Commander by serving in every conceivable post, clawing for merit at each step, grinding his way upward one rung at a time.
So did he not know how to interrogate? How to torture?

The result now sat cradled in Delram’s arms—a small booklet.
Within its pages: the Mana Formula of the Antonio Family.
Painstakingly transcribed from Matthew’s oral recitation.

Of course, Matthew hadn’t yielded willingly.
He’d twisted his words, played tricks along the way.
But his opponent was Delram.
The man who’d completely remade the Mana Formula of the great House of Vistache in mere months—what good were shallow tricks against such knowledge?
Only more pain.

‘Still, I’ve gotten something genuinely useful here.’

Delram knew many Mana Formulas.
But the problem was that all of them were advanced—sophisticated beyond practical use.

Were rare and powerful Mana Formulas enough?
Sadly, they were not.
Yes, they were formidable and accumulated Mana quickly, but the real difficulty lay in the learning curve.

‘Excellence means complexity.’

Moreover, a Secret Mana Formula was, in essence, the history of a bloodline.
This was no mere metaphor.
Passed down through generations, refined and altered over centuries, parts deleted or added, until the very spirit of that house became woven into the technique itself.
For those outside the family, mastering such a formula became exponentially harder.

But the Antonio Mana Formula was different.
Its history was shorter, so it lacked that accumulated spiritual weight.
Consequently, it was moderately powerful yet relatively simple to learn.
Like an octagon half-filled with water, one might say.
Even if poorly executed, it would merely lose efficiency—not suddenly cause one to cough blood and collapse dead.

‘I’ll need to refine it and teach it to the promising ones.’

Delram hummed to himself as he continued covering the grave.
Half-buried armor and a sword caught the light.
Intermediate Knight’s Equipment, no less.
Not an Artifact, but unmistakably a masterwork—crafted by a master smith who’d poured his heart into it using purification techniques.
It would fetch several hundred gold coins.

‘Ah, well. Potions will have to do.’

But Delram took only the potions and coin.
Armor and swords were often custom-fitted or bore marks that close associates might recognize.
The last thing he needed was to be tracked down.

Still, there was no reason to regret it.
The three of them had carried quite a hefty purse of Silver Coins.

In any case, that settled it.
Delram tamped down the earth and took to the road.
Getting a Conscripted Soldier home turned out to be this difficult…….

* * *

“Waaaaahhhhh!”
“Our son—our son is dead?”
“Don’t lie to us, damn you!”

The Village filled with wailing—shepherds and potato farmers alike, their cries rising together.
Delram’s arrival was more terrifying than any plague.

He moved from house to house, delivering letters.
Some families breathed sighs of relief; others drowned in tears that showed no sign of ending.

Delram watched it all with a bitter taste in his mouth.
Not that their deaths were his fault, of course.
Still, having fought in the same war, he could not feel at ease.

And that was far from all.
Before the Regression, he had sown such sorrow wherever he went.
The darker truth was that in this life, too, the odds of repeating the same horrors were staggeringly high.

‘If the Roof of the Continent falls to Demons, there will be no one left to weep for anyone.’

He was certain of it.
He had seen it himself.
So here he was, crawling back out of a coffin he should never have left, grinding through the same nightmare all over again from the beginning.

In his heart, he wanted to die again.
If only someone else would stand against the Demons in his place.

Delram distributed money to the families of the fallen.
By common standards, a substantial sum.
Yet it fell short of easing their grief.
Still, it was the best he could offer.

“D-Delram? Is our Mark…?”
“He’s safe.”
“Oh, thank the gods of light!”
“He took a hard lesson, so he’ll mind himself now. If you send him far off to tend sheep, he’ll only get into more foolishness—best keep him close and have him work the potato fields if you can manage it.”
“Thank you! I’m grateful you’re alive and well.”

There was another who had regained his senses besides Mark.
The Neighbor whose leg Delram had broken was the one.
Watching him walk smoothly, the bone had clearly knitted back together straight and true.

But his expression was troubled.
He seemed to believe he’d only survived through cowardice.
Delram pressed something into the hands of this guilt-stricken man.

“What’s this?”
“A medallion of the Special Forces Unit—the elite of the Royal Army. Only the finest soldiers receive one. I brought one to give you.”
“Oh…”

The Neighbor examined the insignia with genuine pleasure.
But not with the wild enthusiasm of before.
Clearly, his mind had matured.
If he’d started bragging again about great deeds and accolades, Delram would have broken the other leg—but he was grateful it hadn’t come to that.
For both their sakes, it was a relief.

“Where’s the Village Chief? He wasn’t at home.”
“He said he was going to Hans’s place.”

Delram sought out the Village Chief one last time.
The Roof of the Continent lived up to its name — the terrain rose high.
Wind swept through relentlessly, making life there a bitter struggle.
A windmill would turn beautifully in such gusts, but money was the obstacle.
Building a mill to grind flour required not just materials but considerable skill, and hiring a craftsman came at a steep price.

Delram scraped together what remained and pressed it into the Village Chief’s hands.
It was his entire fortune, save for the barest travel expenses.

“Delram, are you truly certain we should use this?”
“Please use it.”
“But you earned this with your life on the line…….”
“If I earned it with my life on the line, then saving lives with it seems only fitting.”
“Hmm?”
“Build the windmill, and whatever remains, keep it as a common fund for the village. And if anyone falls ill like my mother did, use that money to heal them. That way, it truly becomes a matter of saving lives, doesn’t it?”
“Delram……!”

It was a form of gratitude he could not have offered before the Regression.
His mother’s fragile body had endured only because of the villagers’ quiet, unassuming kindness.
In the previous life, his existence had tossed like a shipwreck upon stormy seas — he’d had no time to acknowledge such debts, let alone repay them.
That failure had lingered as regret ever since.

‘This is one good thing about the Regression,’ he thought.

Now, his business in his hometown was complete.
Delram adjusted his bundle and turned toward home.

* * *

A Cottage set some distance from the village.
That was where Delram’s childhood home stood.

Click.

Standing before the house, Delram opened the Socket.
Beyond his mother’s portrait, her grave came into view.
It lay just behind the house.
She had asked the villagers to bury her there, so she could always watch over him — or so the story went.

……

Delram stood before the grave in silence.
A younger Delram would have wept — wept for having returned alive from war.
Wept for his success.

But Delram’s memory had faded.
It had been more than forty years since he’d last seen her.
They say a decade is enough to change mountains and rivers; forty years is time enough for streams to become great waters, and great waters to become deserts anew.

And his own life had been anything but gentle.
A relentless struggle, accepting the erosion of one’s humanity as the price.
An endless succession of extremities.
Through it all, even the gentlest mother’s face could not escape the weathering — it faded from memory despite all resistance.

‘An unfilial son weeps……,’ he thought.

In the end, Delram silently laid down flowers.
A Flower Bouquet made from spring blossoms native to the Roof of the Continent.

He couldn’t remember if she had favored them in life.
But what woman in the world truly dislikes flowers?
Even Delram, hopeless as he was with romance, knew that much.

‘Ah, that’s right—Mother’s diary.’

The thought surfaced unbidden.
His mother’s diary, to be precise.

He’d deliberately never opened it before.
There was wisdom in remaining ignorant—beauty lay in what one didn’t know.
If he’d read it and found something like “The child was born. But he’s so terribly ugly……” wouldn’t his heart simply break?
So he’d respected his mother’s privacy all this time, but the moment to commit filial transgression had finally arrived.

Curiosity had taken hold.
Sockets and fruits, spirits… and his own bloodline, besides.

“Forgive me, Mother.”

Delram apologized, then opened the worn wooden chest.
Inside lay a bundle of parchment, its edges discolored with age.

The Roof of the Continent was shepherd’s land.
Parchment being what it was—sheep’s hide stretched taut and treated—it wasn’t difficult to come by here.

Crack.
He opened the first page.

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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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