RATH 12

TL: Eevee

2. What is this. Scary. (5)

#7 Their story: the story of the spies in the evil organization. (2)

Gulp.

The saliva that’s gathered in my throat goes down automatically.

At present I actually am a spy. I can’t get caught here, but the opponent is the woman who hit me with that weird object last time.

“It’s been a while, mister No.1.”

She’s smiling brightly, but my heart’s shrinking back on itself. She made that exact same smile when she hit me last time..

“Th, th Senior, you don’t have to be polite with me..”

“Ah, that’s alright. Because this is official work. Master said that if I speak with you too easily like a casual setting then it isn’t work.”

Ahh, does that mean she’s going to beat me up in an official setting!

If she’d hit me with that stick, let alone my own identity I’m almost certain I’d spill the beans on all the ducal family’s secrets as well.

Feeling pleasure even though it hurts! It was the devil’s weapon that made me ashamed of myself.

“Now then, it’s shorter for men so I’ll end it quickly.”

“Ye, yes!”

When I thought about it at a later date I wondered why it was shorter for men but at the time I didn’t have the leisure to care about that.

“Are you a spy?”

“No, ma’am!”

“Alright. We’re done.”

.. Wut?

This organization, how is it still running?

#7 Their story: the story of the actual future member of the evil organization.

“No.1000?”

“Yes.”

“I shall begin the questioning now. Is your preference for older, or younger men?”

Preference? What’s that?

“What you like.”

Mmm.. What I like. Then of course.

“Meat?”

“Preferences in people.”

“Someone who cooks good food?”

“Hmm.. This is a first..”

The pretty big sis is frowning.

Did I do something wrong?

“Someone who cooks good food.. Then what about the instructor?”

The instructor?

The instructor makes delicious food.

The desert fox steak he made for us before in training was really tasty.

The instructor is amazing. There’s nothing he can’t cook.

Animals, fish, bugs, tree bark.

The moment he said there’s nothing in this world you can’t eat I realised I still lacked comprehension of the world.

“The instructor is really good at cooking!”

“..This is quite the conundrum..”

After we talked a bit the pretty big sis scowled harshly and walked out.

Mm.. did I do something wrong?

#8 Their story: A certain organization’s evaluation

No.1: Ordinary overall.

No.17: Great belief in the organization. A trustworthy asset

No.1000: Cannot tell her thoughts at all. Caution advised.

The trainee evaluation ended.

It was unexpected that No.1000 had a cautionary label, but since words don’t really get through to her something like that could happen or so I thought.

Anyways, that’s a relief.

That girl Sia, considering her own history I half wondered whether she would fail them or not.

Luckily they all passed. If there were any spies among my disciples then there would be a massive red line across my CV, that has to be avoided at all costs.

Therefore.

Let’s teach them some ideals.

Well, I’m not making them a socialist or any other weird doctrines.

If your colours are too bright then you stand out. That’s the law of nature. It’s a law of nature that weak animals have camouflage.

If my disciples had a queer ideology, and they said I was their teacher?

I would also be seen as someone with dangerous ideals.

Therefore, my disciples need to be a lovely shade of grey.

So that they don’t stand out to those without talent, and so those with talent will fight over them.

Normally the more they’re wanted from both sides, their price goes up, and as their teacher a little something finds its way into my back pocket to put in a good word.

But unlike the training done so far which is half-automatic by this point, it is very hard to plant ideas into people.

Ideals are a total of everything that they have been exposed to in the world.

Therefore changing that is as much of a shock as saying their entire life is a lie.

In that case, how would I give these kids that shock?

“This time is real combat.”

Naturally, by beating them.

I can’t remember who said it, but someone did. That there’s nothing easier than persuading someone that’s mentally defenseless.

There’s a reason why they do their best in torturing and mind breaking captives, after all.

And someone else said this.

A healthy mind in a healthy body! Therefore, if the body is invincible, so is the mind!

First up is our No.1.

Hm. He’ll make a good example.

His pretentions of kindness are oddly annoying. Of course there was that time where he tied up No.17, but compared to the others he’s oddly morally uptight.

Since No.17 already made a contract with an archdevil she’s going to go down in history as an archvillain, and No.1000 is easier to persuade by giving her tasty food.

This is all for No.1’s sake.

No villain dies quicker than one that holds onto their morals.

“Yes, sir.”

He takes up a stance with his sword, eyes peeled open.

Now, time for a choice.

1. Tackle

2. Sand-Attack

3. Hit

4. Run

Very well, this time’s choice is!

“Huwaah?”

The choice is number 2 sand attack! It was super effective! No.1’s accuracy harshly fell!

“What the hell is, huuuak?!”

And immediately following up with a number 3, hit combo. Since this was using the bat, as a passive he also has the pain increase and damage reduction attached!

The magic weapon where no matter how much you’re hit your HP will never drop!

“This cheap way of uugh..”

He tried to dodge even as groans came out of his mouth instead of words, but even if I look like this I’ve spent most of my life making a living with my sword.

As someone who taught someone to hack away with a sword even in my past life, you have mister at-least-50-years-of-experience Naruan.

“Cheap, you say. I said this was real combat, you know?”

My mouth moves but my hand never stops.

Normally when the villain explains their story or their technique it’s a matter of human nature that the hero uses that time to restore their stamina, prepare magic and the moment the villain finishes “thanks for the story! This is my gratitude!” and firing off their finisher.

“Have you never heard this? According to the mercenaries’ manual, if your forces are ten times the enemy, surround them and make them surrender. If five times, attack, two times, split the enemy with strategy, if even fight head on, and if your forces are less then avoid fighting and bait them. And if the situation is not ideal to fight your enemy, pull out and retreat immediately. If a weak force does not avoid the enemy and resist they become the enemy’s captives, and become deadweight to their allies.”

“Th, I’ve heard that.. are you still going to hit me while you’re talking! Kuhuk!”

Yep. I’m not the one getting beat up.

“So can you not understand? You just need the advantage of numbers. And if your numbers are less, then run away. Is that fairness?”

“Th, kurk.. is that battle!”

“Yes. That is battle. And there is nothing fair about fighting. In an arena where you either kill or are killed, there’s nothing more useless than fairness.

How much you deceive the enemy, make them fall in despair, winning even with cowardly methods. The person who said the words I said earlier, won in war using very bullshit and cheap methods.”

“He, he was an honourable general of the Empire! No one denies that.”

Oh, he’s dodged and offered a rebuttal.

But honourable my ass.

All he did was go around smacking the enemy upside their heads, but there are so many morons in the Empire that can’t even do that so he’s called a great general.

“The one who brought an early end to the previous great war! He was fairer than anyone else. There was no way he would have meant what he said! Kuhk!”

Mm. This kid is oddly weak to stabs. I’ll keep on stabbing him. Since his defense of his sides is weak I’ll just keep aiming there.

But this brat, he’s been completely brainwashed by that imperial princess’s campaign.

Who the hell is fair?

It was all the princess’s show of grabbing achievements from somewhere and deliberately reporting them under my name.

I need achievements so that less people object when she marries me?

And so I diligently gave out achievements to all my subordinates and somewhere down the line she started trumpeting the line I was some harbinger of fairness or something.

Heck, I just randomly bullshat something from Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Wu Qi’s Wuzi and she went and put them in the Empire’s officer training manual.

Thank goodness I ran away early.

I bailed out two months ahead of schedule, if I’d followed the original plan I would’ve certainly been caught.

Thankfully the organization understood me somewhat.

To be honest, more than understanding, the great war just turned everything into a giant clusterfuck.

“Kuhuk!”

Thump, thump, thump!

“Kahuk!”

He’s doing his best to block but since I keep aiming for his sides he keeps focusing on them.

In that case a shot on the shoulders, once on the thigh, oh my his legs are shaking? Another hit to encourage him to do his best.

“Fair? Even the heroes who always scream about a minority being persecuted by an evil noble, when a demon king comes out they take ten, hundreds, thousands of heroes to subjugate a single demon king. And yet they still harp on about fairness. But that is called justification. They are absolute good, the enemy is absolute evil. Therefore even if they care absolutely not about their means and methods, they are still fair.”

I hit the kid who’s about to fall unconscious and wake him up again. Since he’s waking up it means he’s still lively.

“Also, taking hostages is cowardly? When someone breaks the Empire’s military laws, the first thing they do round up the criminal’s close friends of family. While there is the intention of preventing them from helping out the criminal, in reality they’re hostages. When the criminal gets away, the very first thing they do is give them sound amplification magic tools and have them persuade the crim.”

Oh, for the record this was used in the great war as well. Usually by me.

When I captured an enemy village as prisoners and broadcast their fear live, the enemy troops’ morale took a nosedive.

Mm. Well, thanks to that we caught a lot of live prisoners, and my, it only seems like yesterday I was giggling with the imperial princess as we listened to them yell do you bleed and cry you so-called great general of the Empire, are you lot even human, not even devils would do this! And so on and so forth.

That was quite fun.

“Why, why are you explaining all the way there! I was just blaming you for throwing sand in my face!”

“Same with sand. I said this was real combat, not a training spar. If you wanted a fair fight like you’re thinking of then you should have gone to a knight order, not the organization. But do you really think the knights are any different?”

Honourable knights, fair knights!

Very well. When hero stories started to die down, those kinds of knight tales started to rise in popularity as well.

But, reality is different.

“Even knight orders are already decided by connections. If your father is a knight captain, even if your skills are lacking then you’ll end up in the knight order eventually. On the contrary, even if you have skill, if you’re a commoner it’s hard to even become a squire.”

Well sure, that’s what I say. But those famed knight houses as a given, almost all houses famous for martial arts would rather teach their kids how to swing a sword instead of common sense. They don’t call them muscle brains for nothing.

The difference between commoners who find it hard to put food on the table and the ones whose sword is their life is overwhelming.

But that in itself isn’t fair either.

To begin with the starting points are unequal, the fact that other things beyond that are even more unfair is life’s logic.

And to realize that logic,

“S, stop!”

You need to beat them. It’s alright, it’s alright. If you get hit by this your body gets better. Although your legs are shaking and it hurts like you’re going to die, but when you wake up you can do it feeling nice and refreshed.

Moreover, if it’s to the point where it’s not okay, then you’d probably faint first. And so, I’m hitting him.

And the biggest reason is.

“To begin with, I can’t use magic. For the majority of my life I’ve swung a sword, but for this simple reason I am pushed back by simple sword ki users.”

Whether it’s natural strength, superior technique, if your magic power is stronger than you win. Simple as that.

Between swordsmasters, it’s more a matter of who has the bigger and sharper sword aura, or even output what they call an aurora better.

Of course, experience and skill is important. But if you have a fuckoff big aura blade you can chew up anyone experience and skill and all. In a straight fight, that is.

“And so, if I’m going to beat you kids who can use sword ki, then it’s natural I prevent you from using it.”

“Th, that is!”

Oh, his mouth can still move. I shall name you Sandbag the Second.

For the record, the First was one of your seniors from a previous cohort. Since he was a demihuman famous for their sturdiness he got beat up a lot.

“Even in the martial houses that spout on about training with the sword prioritize sword ki. They need to be able to use sword ki, and further on be able to use sword auras to be treated better, and because of that swordsmanship alone doesn’t cut it.”

Of course, this is bullshit as well.

They’re not a famous family for nothing. Famous sword styles have that much value. But since I can’t tell them all that let’s just lump them all as fraudsters.

“To begin with, what is fairness. Is it good? Is it justice? In that case why the hell are you in this organization that the Empire calls evil?”

To be honest it’s not just called evil, it actually is evil. But this organization has quite the historical background. It was founded by the royal families that lost their kingdoms to the Empire, and are actually half independence fighters!

Because of that, my utopia plan which is similar to the two-faced peace strategy was usable in the organization as well.

Hello, this kid is sleeping when people are discussing important things. It seems a touch dangerous since I can see nothing but the whites of his eyes, but a little drubbing and he gets right back up.

Since he looks like he’s going to hit his limits, let’s get onto the main point.

“There is no such thing as evil in this world. Only people living with their own ideals.”