Regressor Instruction Manual

Chapter 1465. Continental War (45)

"Revenge..."

"I'm here for revenge."

Arrows resembling streaks of light poured down on the Brigade members, and I caught sight of Lady Hamgardia and Lady Rainelpia becoming transparent once again.

"Hah, don’t make me laugh! You really think that trick will work against me?!"

"Tricks or not, you can find out for yourself."

"Is there any need to check? Just four years ago, you were idiots dancing at a ball. Now you’re bluffing with some childish spell? Don’t stop me, Sun Hee-Young. I’ll kill every one of these idiots right here."

"Hoo... I wanted to avoid fighting as much as possible, but our goal isn’t combat."

"Ha, a mass invisibility spell? So you did have some talent. Listen, young noble ladies. I gave everything I had to magic. I threw away my guild, Cha Hee-Ra, all of it, to be here. Do you really think magic learned as mere etiquette in some warm, comfortable place would work on me? It would only take a few seconds to dispel something like this..."

"..."

"..."

"Quadruple stacking? Circuit reconfiguration? Hah, so you did have a trick up your sleeve," I could hear the masked woman muttering to herself. She’d just delivered a line worthy of a villain’s dramatic exit, but...

‘She’s strong...’

I knew because I’d already seen her once when Jung Jin-Ho died. She originally belonged to the Red Mercenary Guild, but after deceiving Cha Hee-Ra and conducting human experiments on guild members, she was exposed and became a fugitive mage.

I remembered her spouting that it was a necessary sacrifice for the advancement of magic. She was certainly rotten, but there was no denying her ability. A mage with talent who had climbed a tower built on blood was naturally more capable than Lady Rusvilla.

‘Their power... is seriously lacking.’

She wasn't the only strong one in the Brigade, either.

"You went to the trouble of hiding yourselves with invisibility, yet you give away your position with your voice. So... what was your name again?" asked a man with an astonishingly ordinary face.

"..." An unnaturally tall, skinny bastard appeared.

"Can I eat them?" asked a pig.

"It’s fine if we kill them, right?"

"We won’t get scolded, right?"

The twins...

"Hmm... it does sound like it could be fun..." said the one with only one leg.

"We don’t have time. It would be best to finish this as quickly as possible," said Sun Hee-Young.

Compared to the named ones, there were also plenty of small fry, but they were lacking. Even so, those small fry were stronger than the young ladies. The man with an ordinary-looking face looked around and said, You can’t hide sound completely, can you? I can hear everything."

In an instant, one of them rushed off somewhere.

The masked woman shouted, "Don’t move, you idiot!"

‘A trap.’

He swung his sword, but unexpectedly, it cut through nothing but air.

"Huh... what?"

‘Huh, my ass.’

It wasn’t exactly better, but an arrow came flying in from somewhere and buried itself in his shoulder.

"Huh?"

He was more confused than in pain. He had clearly followed the sound, so he couldn't understand why his sword didn’t hit anything.

"It’s a trap, you idiot! They spread sound around the area with a spell. Don’t just charge in because you hear a voice! They’re not that stupid. And also... the smoke... Watch out for the smoke!"

Kabooooooooooom!

"This is more troublesome than I expected."

"Yeah. It’s tricky."

"Sun Hee-Young, did you get their positions?"

"The smoke... seems to be causing interference. Unfortunately... I can’t lock onto them."

"Damn it! You useless bastards! Is there not a single one of you who can do anything properly?"

‘I can see why she's frustrated.’

The only one with experience in a proper guild was the masked woman from the Red Mercenary Guild. The rest were clearly former wanderers or had been worked solo until now, so there was an unavoidable gap in their understanding of party play.

Sure enough, the masked woman looked like she was about to explode in fury. Of course, it wasn’t that the other Brigade members had no concept of party play at all, but their carelessness was a really massive flaw.

Anyone could tell their opponents didn’t look particularly strong, and with the added fact that they had been noble ladies just four years ago, there was no way those arrogant bastards would believe that the ladies could work together so effectively.

"Protect me, damn it! Give me thirty minutes, and I can remove that kind of spell, so protect me! Guard me! Clear the smoke, you bastards! Listen to me! Protecting the mage is common sense!"

‘Didn’t she say something similar last time?’

"You stupid, ignorant pieces of shits. Protect me!"

"If we can’t see anything, shouldn’t we just wipe everything out?"

"Yeah, that’s right!"

"You crazy twins! Don’t break formation! I told you not to fire spells at random!"

"..."

"Damn it! This is why we need a captain or a proper leader! What the hell is he doing right now?!"

‘Looks like they can’t even be controlled unless it’s Jung Jin-Ho or the Masked Hero duo...’

Compared to them, the young ladies’ party play was so overwhelming that even calling it impressive didn’t do it justice. I never imagined I would see movements this tactical on such a barbaric continent.

It was as if eighteen people had become one. They moved without the slightest error, as though the entire strategy was hammered straight into their brains. The Brigade members couldn’t see it, but with Mind’s Eye, I could clearly make out the young ladies.

They moved in perfect unison in response to Lady Paint's hand gestures.

"Do something about this, Sun Hee-Young!"

"Swamp of Death.

In an instant, a marsh flooded the map.

"R-right! There’ll be footprints, at least. Good job, Sun Hee-Young! Well done!"

Despite that, they couldn’t locate the young ladies.

‘They’re moving through the smoke.’

They even made use of Sun Hee-Young's swamp, magically creating squelching noises and footprints, which made the battlefield even more confusing. In the end, an arrow pierced someone who took the bait.

"Damn it! Where are the arrows coming from?! An invisibility spell is supposed to break when you attack!"

‘The sniper never even entered the battlefield.’

The eighteenth young lady stayed outside the fight entirely. It was the combat style of Dawan’s famed Mist Summoner Cheon Kwan-Wi and long-range sniper Yu Ran. All of it was by design.

‘This is insane.’

Of course, there was no way this was put together overnight.

‘They were trained for this.’

Given the circumstances, they probably couldn’t train together, but...

‘There must’ve been a communication channel.’

It was known that a communication channel existed between them, but there was one more fact that the other young ladies didn’t know about. One can tell even without seeing it. Unless everyone shared Lady Paint’s tactics each quarter and trained on their own, there was no way they could fight at this level of quality.

It was also easy to understand why they went through all this seemingly pointless effort. The goal was exactly what Lady Paint said earlier—revenge. Revenge for that day four years ago.

‘They knew everything.’

Whether the Union of Kingdoms and the Empire had concealed the information or released it was unclear, but Lady Paint arrived at the conclusion that the culprit behind the debutante incident four years ago was the Murder Brigade.

She had confirmed that one of them was connected to the cleanup incident, something that would have been easy enough to deduce if one had the relevant information, but the fact that she even obtained such information at all was astonishing.

Even if the Union of Kingdoms and the Empire deliberately leaked some details, they would never go so far as to reveal a connection to the cleanup incident.

There was no choice but to think that the young ladies had made up their minds to hunt down the culprit themselves.

Exactly when they reached the truth was impossible to say, but one way or another, they had gotten there far faster than expected, and they had clearly been sharpening their blades in silence since then.

Brush was a single step away, Paint was within the Empire and the Union of Kingdoms, Palette was in the Republic, and the other young ladies were scattered far and wide, each carrying out her own role.

They had been doing all that without telling the other young ladies who hadn’t been present at the debutante. Perhaps they believed that since it was something that had happened to them, they ought to resolve it among themselves.

‘They’re even scarier than I thought...’

It also felt like they hadn’t told Lady Pastel either. Ever since losing Aina Peneloti, Pastel hadn’t been in a normal state, so they probably kept it from her for her own sake.

No matter how many times I thought about it, the situation was unbelievable. Watching what they were showing now only made my jaw drop further. The Brigade members were being pushed back without any way to respond.

"There! Kill them!

Boom!

"Damn it! Get lost! Damn this smoke!"

"What the hell are you doing?! They disappeared again! Damn it! You can’t even catch one?!"

"What do you expect us to do? The smoke is blocking everything. Forget the others. Whoever is casting this smoke is no ordinary mage. At that level, they’d be welcomed anywhere. Damn it... I’ve never seen anything like this. Shouldn’t you be supporting me instead? If we could just deal with this smoke..."

"I’m dispelling the goddamn invisibility spell right now!"

"Didn’t you say it would only take a few seconds?!"

"I told you it’s layered and the circuits are twisted! Of course it’s going to take longer! And you idiots keep interrupting me! Damn it! What’s the point of explaining anything to a bunch of morons? Damn it! I should’ve kept my mouth shut! If there were just one more person with half a brain here!"

"..."

With no leader and no one with a brain, things descended into chaos. Sun Hee-Young didn’t seem particularly interested in controlling it either. It was hard to tell what she was thinking, but I could clearly see her looking around instead of intervening. And then...

"Aaaaargh! Fuck!!! Let go of me! Let go!"

Crack! Craaack!

At last, Lady Palette’s smoke twisted someone apart. He looked like a low-ranking member, but even so, she had succeeded in killing someone. Of course, the others weren’t shaken. If anything...

"That dumb bastard. How do you get hit by an attack you can see coming?"

"I knew he’d be the first to die. What was his name again? Whatever. I never liked him anyway, so good riddance."

"Hey... can I eat him?"

"You pig. If you’re gonna eat something, don’t eat our own. Eat these gnats first!"

"..."

"...

‘This is chaos.’

At this point, it felt like a miracle that they were even holding on. However, it only showed how wide the gap really was between the two grroups. The young ladies kept burning through turns, draining their mana and stamina. As time went on, even their perfect coordination was starting to crack.

More than anything else, the core members of the Brigade were alive in the future. That meant at least half of the ones shouting over there would make it out alive. The odds of the young ladies losing this fight were higher than their chances of winning.

‘This is bad.’

Just keeping them in check would be enough, but the young ladies had rushed in too far, and on top of that...

“We can’t end it like this! You bastards! My little brother is dead!”

“DIE!!!”

“Block them! Those bastards! You filthy Republic scums!”

“I’ll never forgive you! You rats! Die!”

Fights were starting to break out across the battlefield, which had fallen into a lull. Under the urging of their commanders, personal vendettas, and countless other reasons, people picked up their weapons and charged forward.

I never really believed that Sung Ji-Hoon’s shouts would end everything, but even so, I couldn’t help but frown. Of course, the situation wasn’t entirely bad. More and more people were withdrawing from the battlefield, after all. But still...

‘This is bad. If this continues... it’ll get really bad.’

As I was sitting alone tapping my thigh over and over, it happened.

— Sir.

A transmission came in from somewhere.

‘Chang-Ryeol... is that you?’

The voice on the other end delivered unexpected news.

— Can you hear me?

"Mr. Chang-Ryeol?"

— I found the guild master.