The Imperial Supreme Commander Has Returned - Chapter 69

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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 Empire’s Supreme Commander Returns Chapter 69

Twang!

An arrow shot forth like lightning.
The arrow, forged not from wood but steel, struck with terrible force.
It passed cleanly through the lead Harpy’s skull and vanished beyond.
The Harpy that had been diving plummeted lifeless to the ground.

-Shriek!?

The Harpies, belatedly spotting Delram, cried out in alarm.
But there were others even more startled.
The three handsome men bound and serving as bait for the village.

“Why aren’t you using magic? Fire arrows instead!?”
“Use that storm spell—the one that burst the apple!”

Delram dismissed them lightly and nocked another arrow.
The bowstring, drawn to its limit, snapped free with tremendous force.

The Harpy directly in line reflexively beat its wings and dodged.
But the draw weight of Delram’s custom-forged Longbow was extraordinary.
Before the creature could complete even a single wingbeat, it tumbled toward the ground.
A handful of feathers drifted down with ironic slowness.

-Shriek?
-Shriek!

The bewildered Harpies began to grasp the situation.
Their kindred, lost to the sudden ambush.
Yet for all they could see, the attacker was just a single young human.
Meanwhile, their own numbers remained substantially greater.

Should they flee, then?
Without this human, those three delicious males would be theirs for the taking.
And this young human—tender and succulent.

-Shriek-shriek-shriek!
“Not running? Charging instead? Good. That’s exactly what I wanted.”

Delram grinned wickedly.
The original plan had been to annihilate them in one strike.
Summon Imir, pour in spirit energy to the maximum, and unleash it all at once—

But the calculation had gone slightly awry.
Against the villagers’ estimate of six, there were actually twelve.
At this angle, taking them all down in one blow was impossible.
At best, he could eliminate roughly half.

Then the remaining half would scatter in panic and flee.
Delram would have to wait again, indefinitely.
If they left like this, the villagers would continue to suffer.

So he had deliberately captured them one at a time, luring them out.
Drawing the Harpies into underestimating him.

“Time to finish this.”

Delram cried out as the Harpies plummeted toward him.
The Harpies responded as if acknowledging his shout, suddenly folding their wings.
With air resistance reduced, the Harpy’s speed surged dramatically faster.

The distance had closed far too much to loose another arrow.
Even for someone of Delram’s skill, their speed made a clean hit nearly impossible.

So the textbook response was Evasion.
An attack from above meant a straight trajectory.
Step aside, slash with the blade—that was all that was needed.

Delram employed much the same tactic.
Only his method of evasion differed slightly.
Just before the Harpy’s talons raked forward—
He drew breath and launched himself into an Aerial Flip, rotating in place.

Whoosh!

Delram’s body spun naturally through the air.
Legs pointing upward, head now where his feet had been.

And what was directly before him now?
The Harpy’s face, struck with horror.

“Three.”
Click.

Delram swept his Short Sword in his right hand with fluid grace.
A clean, fruit-plucking sound—the neck severed with surgical precision.
The headless body slid onward, tumbling through the air for several seconds more.

The second Harpy’s end was far more gruesome.
It had raised its talons against Delram—so far, so good.
But the thirty-six-faceted golden Protective Barrier was a problem.

Clink-clink-clink.

The barrier materialized in an instant.
The talons slid across it without so much as striking a spark.

“Now it’s my turn, isn’t it?”
-Shriek!?

Delram extended both arms, seizing the Harpy by both ankles.
He planted himself and spun, then hurled the creature away with force.
Straight toward the third Harpy that was still diving at him.

Crunch!
Thud-thud-thud…….

What happens when two birds collide mid-air?
The spinning swing, imbued with centrifugal force, burst an enormous cloud of feathers in an instant.
The remains of both Harpies scattered slowly through the air.

What was remarkable was the fourth Harpy.
Intelligent enough to recognize the danger, it fled in that brief window.
Had circumstances been different, the escape would likely have succeeded.
Say, if Delram simply pointed at it with his hand… something like that.

“Vanish.”
Whoosh!

Delram’s words as he reached out his hand.
It wasn’t much, but remarkably, the Harpy froze mid-air.
No—more precisely, it was beginning to plummet.

It flapped its wings harder a moment too late. Already done for.
The wind around it had vanished in an instant.

A bird abandoned by the wind always met the same end.
There was only one way down: straight into a nosedive.

And waiting below was none other than Delram.
As the Harpy made its final desperate lunge, claws extended, Delram slipped past them and drove his Short Sword deep into its throat—one of the creature’s few weak points.

Gack, gack, gack…

That was the Harpy’s end.
It died without even breathing its last.

And mid-motion, Delram hurled his blade, striking down another one.
Only five remained now.

“Huuuuh…”

Delram closed his eyes, facing the remaining Harpies.
In that moment, his consciousness collapsed inward like a candle flame to a single point.
Ultimate Focus.

At once, he felt everything.
The wild currents born from the Harpies’ wingbeats.
Wind speeds that varied by altitude and the atmospheric boundary layer itself.
All of it lay within Owl’s dominion.

Then the path forward was clear.
He had only to strip the wind from the Harpies.
What he’d done to that one creature moments ago—but on a vast scale.
They would not fly again without his permission.

Delram’s eyes opened.
He was about to extinguish the wind across the entire area.

Screeeeeech!
“Ugh…?”

A piercing sound suddenly tore through his ears.
It was not some mere discord—the shriek of metal scraping metal.
It was loud enough that Delram dropped his weapon and clapped his hands over his ears.

His skull shook; vertigo crashed over him.
Yet even through it, Delram refused to let his gaze slip from the Harpies.

But what struck him as strange was the Harpies’ reaction.
He’d expected them to suffer from the horrible sound as he did.

Flap, flap!

Instead, they were fleeing in unison toward the distant sky.
As if the moment they’d been waiting for had finally come.

‘What is this?’

Next, Delram’s gaze swept across the young men of the village.
The Harpies were one thing, but what of ordinary folk?
Their eardrums might be ruptured, blood pouring freely.

“Mage, what’s wrong?”
“Those creatures are fleeing!”

But this time, too, his assumption fell wide of the mark.
They all stared at Delram in confusion as he suddenly writhed in pain.
If they’d heard that terrible sound just moments before, their expressions should have been anything but calm……?

[Sound: Delram — struck]
[Sound: Harpies — fled]
[Sound: Youth — unharmed]

“……!”

In that instant, Delram arrived at the truth.
It wasn’t reason or knowledge—it was instinct, pure and primal.
The scattered pieces of evidence he’d glimpsed wove themselves together, and the answer crystallized in a heartbeat.

The sound had exceeded the audible range of ordinary humans—and
was a signal that commanded the Harpies to act.
He’d been struck because his hearing was sharp enough to perceive it.

“Owl, track those creatures!”
-Hoot!

Though he’d spoken in haste, Owl grasped his meaning instantly—that was her gift.
The emerald Owl surged forward, swiftly closing the distance to the fleeing Harpies.

* * *

‘What in the world is happening here?’

Delram furrowed his brow, turning it over in his mind.
A sound beyond mortal hearing. Harpies suddenly taking flight.
The conclusion was straightforward enough.

[Someone is commanding the Harpies.]

Yet still, he couldn’t be certain.
Was such a thing even possible?

In truth, there wasn’t a kingdom that hadn’t attempted to tame Magical Beasts.
If they could be controlled, a formidable army would arise—it was obvious.
But no kingdom had ever succeeded.

Magical Beasts were not livestock.
Even raised from birth, the Demonic Energy within them never faded.
It was not a trait that could be overcome through training.
[Hostility toward humans] was an instinct written into Magical Beasts from birth itself.

‘Could the one giving commands… not be human?’

The first thought that came to mind was demons.
Demons had wielded Magical Beasts as instruments of war before, hadn’t they?

But that couldn’t be right.
Demonic Energy was something that always registered unmistakably whenever a demon stirred.
Yet he sensed no Demonic Energy from the Harpy at all.

On this point alone, he could speak with absolute certainty.
Delram had spent the latter half of his life waging war against Demonic Energy.

‘In any case, I’ll know once I see it. I should hurry too.’

Delram glanced up at the northern sky where Owl had flown.
Owl’s detection range extended roughly five kilometers in all directions from Delram.
Beyond that distance, it would automatically be summoned back.
So he needed to finish up quickly and follow suit.

Moving with purpose, Delram gathered the Harpy corpses into a single pile.
Lower bodies of Magical Beasts, upper bodies of human women.
The sight was repellent to touch, but Delram paid it no mind.
After all, wasn’t he himself a butcher of humans?

‘It’s been a while since I’ve done this.’

Once he’d stripped all the feathers from the Harpy, Delram opened a Subspace.
What emerged was a dagger of distinctive design.
The curved blade was shaped to slip smoothly beneath skin, while the sharp, angular tip was meant to sever tendons with ease.
He’d brought a Butchering Dagger along deliberately.

Delram lay the blade flat, wreathed in Aura, and inserted it into the Harpy’s body.
As the blade cut through skin and reached the muscle beneath, a firm sensation transmitted through his hands.
Applying gentle leverage like a pry bar, something went—ping.
And something popped free.

Thwip!

Delram caught it with his other hand.
Opening his palm, an eerie blue-red glow shone back at him.
A mixture of Mana, Harpy blood, and fatty tissue.

Once he wiped it clean, a transparent crystal emerged.
This thing, swimming with blue Mana, was the bread and butter of Mages.
A Mana Stone.

“Yet… hm.”

Straightening his back, Delram gazed at the Harpy he’d just butchered and sighed.
It wasn’t because the Mana Stone was damaged or anything of the sort.
Rather, it was that the Harpy, stripped of its feathers, looked far too unmarred.

What was the paramount virtue in the wild?
Needless to say—survival.
Which meant there were no absolute masters in nature.
Even serpents, when young, get swallowed whole by frogs.

Magical Beasts were no different.
As juveniles, prey to beasts; as adults, prey to other Magical Beasts.
They lived day to day, locked in the struggle for survival.

So how should their bodies look?
Naturally, they should be covered head to toe in scars—

‘Yet this one was far too clean.’

But these creatures bore no sign of it whatsoever.
Like pigs raised in comfortable captivity on some well-tended farm.
What irritated him most was how likely it seemed to be true.

Harpies, judged by appearance alone, were a form of Half-Human Half-Beast.
Two-thirds Magical Beast, yet still one-third human.
But how had someone managed to domesticate them so thoroughly by exploiting that nature?

‘This is worse than I thought.’

Delram let out a thin laugh.
Domestication meant breeding was possible. That was what it truly signified.
No wonder there had been reports of increasing numbers of Harpies attacking settlements.

‘So humans are directing them after all. But who? Who in their right mind would—’

To breed Magical Beasts and set them upon people.
There weren’t many minds deranged enough to conceive of such madness.
The Mage Tower perhaps? Or some other faction vying for power within the Crown?

‘That’s a question for another time.’

Delram decided to focus on what he could do now.
He checked the remaining Harpies’ condition and collected their Mana Stones.

Only two dropped.
Out of twelve, he’d call that fortunate.
Then he heard his name being called.

“Um… excuse me…”
“What?”
“Could you possibly let us down?”
“Funny how you weren’t asking so politely a moment ago when you were cursing up a storm.”
“Oh! W-well, that was—”

Delram snorted and flicked his fingers.
A blade of Wind cut the ropes, freeing the self-proclaimed gentlemen below.

For all their escape had been from a modest height, these young men had nearly faced death.
And then, to add insult, they’d watched a Magical Beast being dismantled right before their eyes.
Fear and shock left their legs unsteady, and all three tumbled to the ground.

“You saw them fly off, yes? The Harpies?”
“Y-yes! We saw them!”
“I’m going to track them down now.”
“But they flew away… how will you possibly—”
“There are ways. So go find the village headman and tell him this: I don’t need the quest reward. Use it to buy yourselves a good meal instead. But in exchange, take the horse I rode here to the nearest Relay Station and return it for me. Think you can manage that?”
“Yes, we can do it!”

From here on out, Covert Movement was key.
He couldn’t pursue on horseback.

—Caw!
‘Got it. I’m on my way.’

The cry told him he had less than five kilometers to cover.
Delram vanished into the dense Cork Oak Forest.

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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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