The Imperial Supreme Commander Has Returned - Chapter 47

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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 — Chapter 47

I’ve ruined a perfectly good child!
For a ten-year-old boy, the words were brutally cruel.

But Tas was no ordinary bearer of such weight.
The mere fact that he’d survived in these foul Underground Sewers proved it.

And he hadn’t done it alone.
He’d dragged three younger siblings along—lumps of humanity that they were.

That was why Tas could speak everything he knew.
Even as tears streamed down his face, even as his body trembled.

“It was really, really big. It had hair sticking out all over, and when it caught that man and woman, it hopped—it just kept hopping…!”
“Did you see webbing?”
“I don’t think there was any.”
“How big? Describe it by its legs. When the spider attacked those people, it must have used its legs.”
“Th-the legs… one pierced Hans’s chest, and it, it reached the ground. It was the second joint out of three…!”
“So roughly four meters tall then. Well done.”
A stifled sob escaped him.

Delram pulled the exhausted boy into his arms.
Instead of stroking his head, he patted his back firmly, hard.
It was a wordless gesture of recognition.

In that embrace, Tas wept.
Deep, wracking sobs poured out—nothing like a child’s cry.

His shirt collar grew damp.
Delram paid it no mind, turning his thoughts instead to the enemy.

‘Spider-type Demons—six species total. Only two don’t spin webs: the Trap-Type that digs, and the one that hunts directly.’

Perhaps it was because this was his first real combat in so long?
At the word ‘Demon,’ his mind sprang into perfect clarity.
Information the Imperial Information Bureau had risked their lives to uncover unfurled in his thoughts, alongside the faces of every Demon he’d personally slain.

The most likely suspect was a Trap-Type Demon.
A trap required two conditions to be effective.
The predator had to move freely, and the prey had to have nowhere to escape.

In that sense, the Underground Sewers were the perfect trap.
Dark, and with nowhere to run.

A 7th-Rank Demon—the Silent Enforcer.

It was a master of concealment.
Not a sound when it moved.
It could even render its body transparent, making it nearly impossible to spot even at arm’s length.
A permanent state of Invisibility, more or less.

There was even a famous tale about it.
Five Knights once made camp in a crumbling Abandoned House.
When they woke the next morning, only one remained.

It was horrifying.
The survivor had heard nothing all night.
While his four companions were devoured.

‘The worst of situations.’

Delram finished his deduction and let out a dry laugh.
To capture a 7th-Rank Demon, you needed at least one mid-tier warrior.
Two or three if you wanted to do it without casualties.

But what was their current force?
One low-tier Knight and four children.
Their chances of winning approached zero without limit.

‘But at the same time… it’s the perfect matchup.’

The Silent Enforcer was tricky to detect, true to its name.
Especially the fine hairs covering its entire body.
Dense as bristles on a pig-hair brush, those hairs absorbed all sound, achieving perfect silence.

And what of the Invisibility?
Unseen, unheard, and digging traps to wait in ambush—it was an utterly unfavorable fight from the start.

That’s why the Knights had fallen so helplessly.
In the dark night, from a place where nothing could be sensed, it would creep out with a whisper and strike—no Knight could withstand it.

In the waning days of the war against Demons.
If a comrade chatting beside you suddenly went silent, nine times out of ten it was this creature’s doing.

‘But can it truly hide before me?’

In the past, even Delram had struggled to track the Silent Enforcer.
But that was then.
Now it was different. The owl, a spirit of wind, was his companion, and the air that circulated endlessly through the complex sewers had become part of him.

Invisibility before him?
He could see through it all too easily.

‘The existence of the lesser Demons as well.’

Bearing young was no trivial undertaking.
A severe act of depletion for all living things.
To create extensions of oneself at the cost of lifespan, vitality, and essence—it was hardly easy, or else it would be strange.

Then the Silent Enforcer must face the same constraint.
It had surely expended considerable Demonic Energy.

‘And I’ve prepared things for this.’

Delram tapped the Subspace Bracelet lightly.
He’d become nearly destitute building a windmill in his Hometown.
But didn’t he have a new patron now?
Cardinal Nuak himself!

True, the Radiant Church was a poor organization.
They gave away everything they received.

Yet no matter how impoverished, it remained the kingdom’s sole faith.
If Delram personally embezzled a few donations, it wouldn’t be noticed.
Nuak had foamed at the mouth, but here he was, something like a hero saving humanity—couldn’t he spare such a thing?
In the end, Nuak had to hold his tongue.

With that money, he’d bought weapons.
Delram had handled countless weapons before his return.
They weren’t artifacts, but they came from craftsmen of genuine skill.

“Tas, get ahold of yourself.”
“Brother…….”

Delram pulled Tas away from his chest.
The boy’s face was streaked with tears and mucus.
A moment ago he’d seemed composed, but now he looked like the child he truly was.

Yet this was no time to indulge such weakness.
One final task remained.

“I’m going after that spider now.”
“I want to help too!”
“You need to look after your siblings. If I haven’t returned within an hour, take them straight out of the sewers.”
“But…….”
“Don’t be afraid. Even if I fail, I won’t go quietly. I’ll at least sever a few of its legs.”
“I understand.”
“If you escape safely, find Nuak, a cardinal of the Radiant Church. When you tell him I sent you, he’ll provide for your survival. And inform him that there’s a 7th-Rank Demon and its offspring in the Underground Sewers.”
“You must win!”
“Ha. I’ve never lost before.”

Delram rose with a bitter laugh.
But soon he murmured softly to himself.

“Except for that one last time.”

A true hero acknowledges his defeats.
And the true victor is the one who laughs at the end.

That was why he had come back.
To overturn his only defeat!

* * *

…….

Delram sat alone in the sewers.
He’d lit no torch; even his own hands were invisible.
In the suffocating darkness, only the sound of wastewater flowing.

The one mercy was the wind.
Foul breezes struck from all four directions at once.
Delram sat at their convergence, alone in meditation.
In a crossroads perfectly suited for ambush.

And his worry was not unfounded.
When had it begun?

Whisper…….
Scritch-scratch…….

Faint sounds emerged from all sides.
Sounds even the sharpest ear would struggle to catch.
Yet they came without pause, continuous and unwavering.
Their source soon became clear.

Glimmer—

In the darkness, small lights flickered in unison.
They were not fireflies.
Eight of them clustered together and blinked simultaneously.
That meant their owner was an arthropod—a spider, in other words.

Moreover, the lights numbered not one or two, but thousands.
Which meant hundreds of creatures by head count.
Young demons, lurking silent in the darkness.

Click.

As the malevolence intensified, Delram opened the socket.
In the darkness, Mother’s Portrait was invisible.

But the cool, leafy scent came through.
Not even the stench of the Underground Sewers could overwhelm it.
Delram drew in a long breath and murmured.

“You’ve come.”
Shriek!

That was the signal.
Young spiders hiding nearby wailed in response.
All at once, they launched themselves toward Delram.

Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh!

Hundreds of spiders poured down from all sides.
It was like watching black hail fall.
What made it worse was the direction they came from.
Hail falls only from above, but these young demons came from the ceiling, both walls, and the floor—even bouncing up from beneath.

Yet Delram did not panic.
Instead, he jerked his hands upward from where they’d hung limp at his sides.

“Been waiting for you, you little bastards.”
Snap!

His moving hands were not empty.
Was he like a puppeteer of a theater troupe?
A thread ran from the tip of each of his ten fingers.
The threads twisted, tangled, wove into a complex pattern, and soon stretched taut like a web filling the space around him.

Screech!
Shred-shred-shred!

The young demons that brushed those threads were cleaved in two entirely.
Hundreds descended; as many were sliced to pieces.
These were no ordinary threads.
They were a weapon—steel alloy drawn with precision, then coated with glass and the magical substance of Delram’s own art, completed with a mirror polish.

More than anything: Aura.
Dozens of steel wires glowing a deep blue even in darkness, their presence unmistakable—each one sang with embedded Aura.

This was one of Delram’s weapons: the Gangsa.
A tool to command wires of steel with absolute freedom.

Any other Knight seeing this would have been appalled.
Igniting Aura on a single blade was not difficult.
One could become proficient quickly enough by imagining the hilt as an extension of one’s own body and forcing mana into it.

But this wire was different.
It was wispy, impossibly long, and worst of all—there were dozens of strands.
He had to perceive each one individually while channeling Aura with just enough force to keep the wires from snapping, maintaining an unbroken flow without a moment’s lapse.
This was the very pinnacle of Aura Control.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
—Screee! SCREEEEEE!

But the spawn were no easy prey.
They were demons—born without fear.
And so they hurled themselves forward even as their still-soft, newly-hardened carapaces splintered and fell away, scrabbling endlessly for any opening.
Searching for any weakness to exploit.

The result: corpses piling thick across the sewer floor.
The spawn’s struggle was a mixed affair.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.

Slice, slice-slice.

Their search for an opening had failed.
Remarkably, Delram’s Gangsa did not remain idle.
With Aura flowing through them, his fingers pulled and released, pulled and released.
Each time the wires moved with organic fluidity, transforming what had been weak points into traps, herding the creatures toward oblivion.
Yet not every effort was wasted.

Thud.
—Kreee?

One spawn tumbled to the floor.
It had struck the wire but emerged uncut—alive.
Even the creature seemed amazed by its own survival, bouncing frantically in place.
Of course, Delram’s heel came down on it an instant later, and it burst.

The reason lay in cutting power.
No matter how much Aura flowed through them, at their core they remained metal wires.
Alloy dust mixed with spider blood and corpse fragments had caked and crusted over the strands, and with each accumulation, their cutting edge dulled steadily.

‘It’s fine.’

Delram glanced at the state of the Gangsa and murmured to himself.
He’d never intended to use them indefinitely anyway.
What good would it do to capture these spawn?

These were merely appetizers.
The real hunt—the real prize—was the Demon, the Silent Enforcer.

“……!”

Delram’s eyes blazed with sudden recognition.
A sharp, acrid stench peculiar to Demonic Energy scratched at his nostrils.
And ripples disturbing the surface of the sewage water.
The conclusion?

‘It’s here.’

Delram released both Gangsa simultaneously.
In the same motion, his right hand—passing across the Subspace Bracelet—carved a horizontal slash through the air ahead of him.

Clang!

Sparks erupted in the darkness of the Underground Sewers.
Two things collided.
Delram’s Greatsword drawn from the subspace, and a jet-black leg.

The massive limb of a spider stretching three meters!
But Delram not only deflected it effortlessly—he spun forward in a complete rotation, unleashing a follow-up strike.

Screech!
‘Shallow after all.’

It was a mass attack from the Aura-infused Greatsword.
Yet the blade had only sunk halfway before grinding to a halt.
The creature’s carapace armor and its densely bristling surface hairs.
Together they had drastically dampened the Greatsword’s cutting power.

—Shriek!?

Only then could Delram get a clear view of the creature’s true form.
A spider standing 3.9 meters tall, filling the entire passage of the Underground Sewers.
Though it resembled a spider in appearance, like all demons it was a grotesquely twisted mockery of life’s original pattern.
In short… it looked utterly repulsive.

What was surprising, however, was the demon’s behavior.
It froze, as if it had never imagined its attack could be blocked.
Unlike an ordinary demon equipped with cruelty and violence, its movements were strangely passive and unnatural.

‘Maybe it hasn’t fully grown yet.’

As Delram thought this and raised his Greatsword upright.
The demon glanced at him once, then simply vanished.

Vanished—not as a figure of speech.
Even as he watched it directly, its body blurred at the edges and melted into the darkness like some otherworldly apparition—it sent chills down his spine.
Unmistakably something that didn’t belong to this world.

“So you want to play a game of holding your breath with me, is that it?”

Of course, Delram laughed—a low, mirthless chuckle.
This wasn’t his first time seeing such tricks, and it wasn’t going to shock him now.
Besides, he’d deliberately provoked this response, so naturally he was amused.

“Hide well. If I catch you, I’ll rip your heart out.”

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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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