The Imperial Supreme Commander Has Returned - Chapter 45

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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 45

On the far side of the Underground Waterway.
At Delam’s urgent cry, the man turned his head.

……

The only problem was his reaction.
The moment the man saw Delam, he spun on his heel and bolted.
Within moments, he vanished beyond a fork in the passage.

“Hey, I just want to talk. You’re killing me here.”

Delam complained under his breath and gave chase.
His quarry showed not the slightest inclination to chat.
But what did that matter?

Anyone who lived in the Underground Waterway led a predictable life.
The most honest profession among them was a fugitive criminal.
So what the man wanted was irrelevant.
If he wouldn’t cooperate willingly, Delam would simply make him.

Splash—

Delam skimmed across the water’s surface, closing the distance in seconds.
It didn’t take long at all.
He reached the fork where the man had vanished.

Huh?

He could still see the man’s back in the distance.
Delam frowned, puzzled.
The man was running impossibly fast.
But that wasn’t what troubled him—there was something else wrong with his target’s condition.

‘I can’t sense any Life Force.’

Life Force is the vitality of the living.
More precisely, it’s the vital sign that Mana leaves behind.
Which meant that if he couldn’t sense it, there was no Mana left in the man’s body—not a drop.
In other words, he was dead.

Hum—hum—

His detection device trembled in response, growing more agitated.
Or rather, growing weaker.
Delam stood still while the man fled, after all.

This left two possibilities.
Either there was a Demon ahead of him, in the direction the man was running.
Or the man himself was a Demon.

“Well, easy enough to find out.”
Crack!

Delam drove a Torch into the muddy ground beside him.
Then he closed his eyes and concentrated.
Spiritual Energy flowed into focus, and the Wooden Gauntlet on his left hand transformed into a slender twig that he grasped in his palm.

Along with it came a green bowstring and arrow.
Delam drew it back without hesitation.

Twang!

He hadn’t bothered to aim.
The Weapon Master’s title wasn’t won by gambling.
The moment the arrow loosed, air tore open, and the green shaft slipped through the gap—a dull, certain feedback traveled through his fingertips.
He didn’t need to see it to know.

‘Dead hit.’
Splat!

The man’s head burst like a watermelon.
What if his instinct had been wrong?
He’d have murdered an innocent person.
Yet there was no hesitation in Delam’s bowmanship—
Because he held an absolute certainty.

The black sorcery that demons wielded.
The Undead technique matched this perfectly—he was certain of it.

“…….”
“Hell. He really was a demon bastard.”

Delam exhaled deeply.
Even if it made him a murderer, he’d hoped his judgment was wrong.
But unfortunately, it never was.

“Grrrgh…….”

The man’s head was gone, yet he remained intact.
His limbs even twisted as he staggered toward Delam.
All while making inhuman sounds from his half-shattered vocal cords.

No ordinary human could move like that.
And that was far from all.

Bulge. Bulge.

The man’s entire body swelled in grotesque lumps.
Dozens of fist-sized somethings.
They seemed to race through his flesh at sickening speed.

It was a sight anyone would call revolting.
But worse still—they surged toward the severed neck in unison.

“Kyaaaaaaah!”

And from the throat came a geyser.
They were spiders.
Dozens of palm-sized spiders poured out in all directions.

Their translucent carapaces still glistened with moisture.
They had just been born.
From inside the host’s body.

Buzz! Buzz!

At the same moment, the detector began vibrating frantically.
You didn’t have to be a fool not to recognize a Demon when you saw one.

“Ah, filthy bastards.”

Delam scowled as he watched the spiders.
It wasn’t enough that they’d made their host suffer a agonizing death—the creatures were now ravenously devouring the man’s corpse.

But the truly repugnant part was something else entirely.
It was the strange sound that had been emanating from somewhere nearby.

Skitter-skitter-skitter……

Could this be what a cockroach sounded like crawling across a floor?
Except there wasn’t just one.
Hundreds, thousands of them swarmed together, and as their noise compounded and amplified, it echoed through the passage in a deafening chorus.
Or perhaps like a wave of sand.

“I’d rather it were a Sand Wave.”

Of course, that was impossible.
A Sand Wave—one of the desert’s plagues—could never manifest in this damp Underground Waterway.
So what was it?

Delam seized a Torch and hurled it with all his strength.
Propelled by his formidable muscles and the wind, the Torch sailed dozens of meters before landing.
And then he could see clearly.
The floor and ceiling of the Underground Waterway were blanketed in black—an infernal legion pouring toward him: spiderlings.

“I should have known.”

The moment Delam confirmed what he was facing, he responded immediately.
He spun around and began to flee.

Dash!

Delam—the man who shuddered at the sight of a Demon.
That reputation had earned him not only the title Weapon Master but the epithet Demon Slayer as well, and yet even he made an exception now.

‘How am I supposed to kill all of them?’

At a glance, there were thousands.
Weapon Master or not, there was no solution.
He’d cleave one, and another would latch onto him; he’d brush that one off, and two more would swarm him; as he tore those free……

If that continued and he got bitten again and again?
Fifteen seconds. That’s all it would take before only well-stripped bones remained.

Which meant running was the wisest choice.
He’d need to come back with the Gwangmyeong Church next time.
If they swarmed with numbers, he’d have to answer with numbers of his own.

Skitter-skitter-skitter……

But then he noticed the opposite passage and had to scratch his head.
An unidentified—no, an all-too-identified sound—was coming from that direction as well.
Hearing it, he couldn’t help but laugh.

“Well, I’ll be. It was a trap.”

No wonder the man had been left alone like that.
Delam called out, but the child ignored him and headed toward the fork in the passage.
So all of this had been maneuvering to cut off both routes of escape.

“Crude tactics.”

Delam shrugged and extended his left hand.
At the same moment, Spiritual Energy surged forth within him.
The wooden branch infused with Spiritual Energy stretched long and taut, while the pale green bowstring gripped in his right hand drew back to its limit, generating tremendous tension.

Creak-creak-creak!

Up to this point, it was no different from before.
The soft green arrow nocking against the bowstring was the same.

But what came next was not.
Delam began channeling Spiritual Energy into the arrow.
Not merely a question of more or less—but everything.
Every last drop of Spiritual Energy remaining in his body.

Whoooooosh—

Wind began to stir through the Underground Waterway, which had reeked of nothing but stench.
The violent gale was swiftly drawn inward.
Toward a single point—Delam’s arrow.

And the pale green arrow itself transformed.
From a color like fresh leaves, it deepened to rich verdant, then to emerald brilliance, and at last flushed red with the strain of containing such power.
It was, in truth, the essence of tempest itself.

Click.

But that was when it happened.
Just as he was about to release the arrow, the ceiling above suddenly burst open.
What tumbled out was, to his astonishment, a child.

“What the—!”

Even Delam, renowned across the land, could not help but start.
His shock was compounded by the fact that he’d sensed nothing—no presence, no sound.
He’d poured everything into this single arrow.

“Hey! Get up here, quick!”
“Who are you?”
“You idiot—is now the time for questions? If you don’t get up here, the monsters will catch you and eat you alive!”

It was a child, no more than ten years old, who shouted these words.
Unwashed for who knew how long, caked in grime, dressed in rags.
Yet his eyes burned with remarkable clarity.
It bore no resemblance to a demon’s tricks at all.

“Wait. Just this one shot.”
“We don’t have time, you blockhead!”
“I know, I know—just cover your ears. Now!”
“Huh? I—”

Startled by Delam’s commanding tone, the child clapped his hands over his ears.
The gesture was reflexive, so his hands didn’t fully seal out the sound, but Delam couldn’t wait any longer.
The arrow’s power had compressed to the breaking point.
Delam released the bowstring toward the corridor ahead.

“Eat this!”
Whoooooosh!

* * *

Earlier, someone had called it the essence of a tempest?
It seemed like hyperbole, but seeing it firsthand proved otherwise.

A gale!
Nature’s punishment, cradling the calamity of annihilation.
The Arrow carrying it tore through the passage in a blink.

Whoooooosh—!

Behind the Arrow’s long tail came a sonic boom.
It was the roar of air itself, an indiscriminate shrieking of shards.
Thousands of blades unleashed from the compressed wind carved and ravaged the otherwise solid corridor with a sound like shattering glass.

But that wasn’t all.
In that brief instant, the shockwave ricocheted hundreds of times within the passage, tearing everything from the floor into the air and obliterating it.
The sewage pooled waist-high on the ground rose to the ceiling, then shattered into fine mist and fell again like rain.

Truly, a force beyond measure.
As for the spiders—the passage had been devastated, and they were no different.

They had received demonic essence, but they were weak creatures by nature.
They had no chance to struggle for survival.
Before awareness could even dawn, the calamity swept upon them—sliced, burst, colliding with one another, then burst-burst-burst-bang! They became nothing but filthy bloodstains.

—Kee, kee-eek…….
Pitter-patter.

Something fell upon the pitiful cries of the spiders.
The remains of the siblings who had stood before the calamity.
Thus, the thousands of Demons that had boasted such numbers, now with only a handful surviving, lay trembling on the ground.

“…Wow.”
“Unnngh…….”

Delam and the Child.
Strange sounds came from their lips only moments later.
The sight was that surreal.

But they couldn’t afford to stand in shock forever.
One side had been swept clear, but the rear passage still remained.

Fortunately, the Demons were so startled they’d gone still.
Ideally, he’d finish them all with the next Arrow, but that was impossible.

There was no trace of Spiritual Energy left in Delam’s body.
He’d squeezed out every last drop.

“Hey, are you a… a mage?”
“Something like that…….”
“Um, should I help you up?”
“It’s not that bad…….”

The Child asked with concern.
And with good reason—Delam’s complexion was deathly pale.
All the Torches had gone out.
Even in that darkness, she was pale enough to stand out. There was no hiding it.

Delam, it seemed, had no strength left to speak—he merely nodded his head.
His glance tilted forward and upward.
At the passage where the spider had vanished cleanly, and at the ceiling where the Child now stood.
He was asking which way they should run.

“This way!”

The Child chose the passage.
Delam grasped the hand she offered without hesitation.

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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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