9th Grade Civil Servant In Another World Chapter 13 - White Raven Order (2)

“Grrrrgh…!”

Blood was gushing out from the gaping wound.

I stared blankly at the pistol in my hand. Thanks to its magical operation, it only emitted a bluish light, clean and without the acrid smell of gunpowder like Earth’s guns.

The last time I’d fired a gun was during reserve military training last year. Of course, this was the first time I’d ever shot a person since I’d grown hair on my head.

“Lucas.”

Daniel looked at me with a confused expression. Ironically, this helped my wildly pounding heart slowly settle down.

‘Pull yourself together.’

What’s done is done.

If I don’t handle this properly now, we’ll all die.

“…I’ve…”

My voice cracked as it came out.

“I’ve never killed anyone before. But I don’t think that’ll remain true going forward.”

The faces of the White Raven Order members were all stiffly hardened. They all looked like they had plenty to say but couldn’t bring themselves to voice it.

I glanced down at the Ossel, who was writhing on the floor in agony, foaming at the mouth.

“I’m going to extract information from him. Who sent him, how he found out about us and followed us. Of course, if he refuses, I’ll have to kill him to keep him quiet.”

Click!

When the terrifying sound of reloading reached his ears, Ossel glared at me with bloodshot eyes.

“Anyone have objections? If so, you’d better speak up quickly. We don’t know when someone might report the gunshot. We don’t have time.”

That’s when Richard, who had been standing still as a painting, let out a sigh.

“May I treat that man first? If we leave him like this, his life will be in danger.”

“Can you do it right away?”

“I always carry a medical bag with me.”

“Good, but please hurry a bit.”

The members began moving to find their respective tasks.

Richard injected the Ossel with anesthetic and prepared for surgery to extract the bullet.

Erika assisted him from the side, Georg tied the Ossel’s wrists tightly just in case and went out to stand guard. Oscar was searching through the Ossel’s uniform pockets.

I let out a long sigh and went to sit in a chair in the corner of the room. The cold sweat that had been beading on my forehead trickled down.

“What the hell are you doing? How do you plan to resolve this?”

When the surgery was in full swing, Daniel approached and asked quietly.

“Well, it depends on what information that bastard gives us.”

“Lucas…!”

Daniel seemed to barely restrain himself from getting angry, clenching his teeth tightly.

“Calm down, friend. Things have been screwed up for a while now. From the moment you didn’t kill me, no, from the moment I didn’t report you all.”

“What do you mean?”

I looked up at him while fiddling with Ossel’s pistol.

“When I was caught spying on you all, you should have killed me. Since I might have been someone who would report to Ossel. But could you have killed me? Did you have the courage for that?

I’m the same way. I wanted to survive somehow. I only wanted to protect myself. So it would have been better to run straight to report on you the moment I saw you. At least it would have been a much safer path than now. But I couldn’t do that and came this far.

As I said earlier, I’ve never directly killed anyone either. But from now on, I’ll have to kill. I need to be prepared to kill. Since things have turned out this way, I need to have at least that kind of mindset.”

My voice was shaking severely. My throat was increasingly choking up, making it hard to continue speaking.

“Well, it’s all nonsense for now. We might all be dead in five minutes anyway.”

“…”

Daniel, who had been looking at me with strange eyes, shook his head.

“Alright, Lucas Redan. I’ll trust you. No, I have no choice but to trust you.”

I rubbed my tired eyes.

“I’ll try my best. To make sure you all don’t become more endangered. Since I bear a lot of responsibility for how things turned out. Help me.”

***

Before I knew it, the surgery was almost finished.

Richard was lifting up a small bullet with forceps to examine it.

“Fortunately, the bone and tissue weren’t severely damaged. Once the wound heals, he should be able to walk around like before.”

“It’s because it’s a cheap firearm with poor performance. But can you really call that fortunate?”

Oscar muttered as if dumbfounded, but Richard calmly began preparing for suturing.

“From a doctor’s standpoint, I can only say that.”

Shortly after, the Ossel’s leg was cleanly sutured and the blood completely wiped away. To achieve that level of work under such dim light—truly admirable skill.

“Now leave him to me.”

The moment I stepped forward, an awkward atmosphere settled over us.

We had just been getting acquainted and were in the exploratory phase when this incident happened, so it was natural that the awkwardness from unfamiliarity hadn’t yet been resolved.

A bitter regret washed over me, but it couldn’t be helped. Every minute and second was urgent.

I waited for the Ossel, who was half-conscious from the anesthesia, to come to his senses.

The fortunate thing was that apparently no one had heard the gunshot and come to investigate, probably because the abandoned house was so remote.

Moreover, this Ossel bastard didn’t seem to have requested support from headquarters either. If he had, we would have been tied up like dried fish and dragged away in a chain long ago.

We really had to call it lucky.

But how long could that last?

‘What should I do? How should I handle this?’

Anxiety washed over me and I couldn’t stay still. I fell into thought while rolling the pistol in my hand and spinning it between my fingers.

‘Please, there should only be a few people who know about us. Only then can I try something. Whether killing him to keep him quiet, or negotiating…’

As I chewed my lips, I tasted something metallic. I wiped away the trickling blood with my sleeve.

Tap, tap tap.

“Grrrrgh…”

When I was impatiently tapping the pistol, having reached the limit of my patience.

The Ossel finally opened his eyes.

After rolling his eyes around in a daze, he saw me and was startled, hurriedly trying to search his inner pocket.

“I have your gun.”

When I poked him with a sneer, his handsome face contorted uglily.

“Why did you spare my life?”

“Well, why indeed? To test the techniques I learned from you Ossels, I need my subject to be alive first, don’t I?”

I hid my anxiety and put on a sly voice. The Ossel began struggling, telling me to just kill him.

“Don’t disgrace a servant of the Great Supreme Leader!”

“Is your name ‘Servant of the Great Supreme Leader’? Don’t you have anything else to introduce yourself with?”

I looked at his leg where the pants had been cut away, then deliberately pressed down on his bandaged thigh.

“Grrrrgh!”

“That will worsen the wound!”

Richard, who had been dozing in a corner of the room out of fatigue, was startled and approached. Pretending to give in, I lifted my foot and crouched down next to the Ossel.

“Well then, shall we begin? First, let’s hear your name and rank.”

***

“…”

Major Johann Werner lost his composure at the scene before his eyes and stared off into the distant mountains.

In the dawn when the sky was turning bluish bright, the doorbell suddenly rang and when he opened the front door, his aide Lieutenant Philip Decker was standing there, pale as a sheet.

One pant leg was torn, his thigh wrapped in bandages, and he was trembling with a complexion so pale he looked ready to collapse at any moment.

And behind Philip, a short man with a gun barrel pressed against the back of his head.

The moment he recognized that it was Lucas Redan, Johann immediately understood what kind of situation was unfolding.

‘Stupid fool. It looks like he got carried away with enthusiasm and charged in alone, only to be captured.’

He had assigned Philip to tail Lucas today, but who would have thought he’d cause such an incident.

Johann immediately stepped back and opened the front door wide.

“Come in. Keep quiet.”

Lucas prodded Philip’s head with the Ossel supply pistol. Philip, with both hands raised, limped into the house and then had his legs swept by Johann, collapsing with a thud.

“Ack!”

Johann looked down at Philip pathetically, then closed the front door and met Lucas Redan’s eyes.

“What do you want?”

“Your understanding is quick, as expected.”

He was now aiming at Johann. Seeing his composed expression gave him a headache.

“If you risked being seen by others and dragged that guy all the way here, you must want something specific.”

“First…”

Sweat was beading on Lucas’s disheveled hair.

“I’d like to have a conversation.”

Johann was pushed back to the living room as Lucas directed, complying obediently.

Without giving any attention to the expensive furniture and decorations, Lucas sat him down on the sofa and sat across from him.

Of course, the gun barrel was still aimed at him.

“Even if you kill me, you won’t be able to escape.”

Johann tried to make a veiled threat, but he just smiled.

“No, I have no intention of running away.”

“Then you’re buying time. Planning to let those so-called comrades of yours escape?”

“Well, that might be the case. But more than that, I came because there’s something I want to ask.”

Lucas’s smile faded as he looked at him.

“I heard you started surveillance the day after you interrogated and released me about the play issue. Why did you do that? If I was that suspicious, you could have just arrested and imprisoned me.”

Johann chuckled and slowly reached out his hand. He could see Lucas tense up and put strength into the finger gripping the trigger, but pretending to be unconcerned, he grabbed the cigarette pack on the table.

“…Whew.”

After lighting a cigarette and taking a puff.

He threw the still-lit lighter toward Lucas’s face.

Thack!

“Ah, hot!”

It was a simple attack, but a winning strategy that had never failed.

Lucas showed unexpectedly quick reflexes and dodged the lighter.

“Are you crazy! What are you doing!”

Johann lunged at him.

Crash! Bang!

Rat-a-tat-tat!

From the strong impact of body against body, the sofa toppled backward. Lucas’s frail body went flying through the air.

He fired the gun at Johann while flying, but the bullet barely grazed past Johann’s face.

Johann mounted his body as it rolled to the floor and twisted his wrist to make him drop the pistol.

“Gack!”

Lucas screamed from the joint lock.

“Lieutenant Decker!”

“Yes!”

Philip, who had somehow limped over, undid his belt to bind him.

“Clumsy fool.”

Johann irritably pressed his cigarette to Lucas’s forearm.

“Hssss!”

Lucas’s face flushed bright red with pain.

“You asked why I released you? I’ll answer. You’re worthless and pathetic, but your bloodline isn’t. You’re descended from royalty, so I was just investigating to find ways to use you. Did you think you were released because you were impressive? What grand delusions.”

“Cough, cough! I’m, I’m a descendant of royalty?”

Lucas, coughing violently while writhing, asked back.

“It’s a family that was wiped out except for you anyway, so there’s nowhere to use it. Still, it might not be completely useless. What was it called—White Raven Order? They’re nothing but ridiculous small fry, but they might be worth about a month’s performance quota.”

“Haha! Serves you right, you reactionary bastard! Ugh!”

Philip laughed loudly and kicked Lucas with his injured leg, then screamed and collapsed.

Johann rubbed his temples at the throbbing headache.

“Lieutenant Decker, get up immediately.”

“Yes!”

“Gah, gasp! Heh haha!”

But then, Lucas, who had been curled up and drooling on the floor, began cackling with laughter.

“Keh heh heh gasp, a month’s performance quota? You’re satisfied with just that much? Hahahaha!”

He shook his body for quite a while, finding something incredibly amusing, then turned his head with difficulty to look up at Johann.

“Haa… I have a better idea. Want to hear it?”

“Where do you get off with such ridiculous tricks…!”

“Wait.”

Johann restrained Philip and looked down at him. His eyes appeared indifferent and coldly settled, but were actually stirring with interest.

“What are you talking about?”

Lucas Redan was cunning enough to turn around and eliminate a superior who had attacked him. If it was a desperate plan squeezed out by such a guy in a life-or-death crisis, it was worth hearing.

“Cough cough! How much merit would you get from catching such a small gathering? If I fatten them up nicely and season them, you can devour them then, right?”

Lucas spat out dry coughs and spoke while cackling like a madman. He crawled along the floor, forcing his strengthless body upright.

“Keh gasp, wait a little before enjoying the feast. I’ll make White Raven Order into the greatest—no, the worst secret society. It’ll be very delicious.”

“Major! Surely you’re not believing that story…!”

But Philip was horrified when he looked at Johann. A satisfied and wicked smile had risen on his face.

“Lieutenant Decker.”

“Yes!”

“I always told you to keep in mind.”

“Yes, yes! Always think far ahead…”

“Hahahahaha!”

Lucas burst into maniacal laughter again.