9th Grade Civil Servant In Another World Chapter 52 - The Scent of Blood (6)

Bang!

The head of that disgusting bastard flew off.

Bang!

Once more, another one too.

Johann twisted his lips in a strange satisfaction.

‘Delightful.’

When was the last time he had felt this entertained? Even if Lucas’s plan failed miserably and he fell to ruin, he would have no regrets about this moment.

“Ma, Major Werner!”

Even amidst the chaos of gunfire echoing everywhere, his sudden outburst was far too conspicuous.

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

Tat-tat-ta-bang!

The Ossels who had been horrified at witnessing friendly fire spewed blood from their chests. With the sound of scraping gun barrels, the walls and floors became drenched in blood.

“Graaaaaah!”

One Ossel with rolled-back eyes leaped up from behind the round table and charged toward the barrier. He held a regulation small bomb in his hand.

“No, it’ll break!”

The elf who had cast the barrier called out faintly. Johann squinted slightly and aimed his gun.

“Hey! Get down!”

Lucas shouted from beside him.

Bang!

BOOOOOOM!

Crack!

Johann’s bullet precisely hit the Ossel’s hand.

In the middle of the grand conference room, an explosion erupted in midair and the shockwave swept over everyone.

“Gah, shit!”

Lucas, who had pulled him down and barely hidden behind the round table, spat out curses.

The round table cracked and split, and the flying debris tore their clothes. Since they were bundled up from head to toe, there wouldn’t be any serious injuries.

When the explosion and screams subsided, Johann poked his head over the round table.

He saw figures who had been injured here and there as the barrier shattered.

“Mongrels are nothing special after all.”

In the space splattered with blood like red paint, all the Ossels except him and the Colonel were rolling around with their bodies torn apart or limbs severed, staring with bulging eyes.

He felt like bursting into laughter. If he had known how to laugh out loud, he surely would have.

“Urgh!”

Lucas got up beside him and started retching.

“Hah, you’re a crazy bastard!”

“Wasn’t it you who called yourself a hunting dog?”

At his indifferent response, Lucas ground his teeth, then dipped his hands in the pool of blood and roughly smeared it all over Johann’s face and clothes. The fishy smell and sticky blood stained everywhere.

“That’s enough. We don’t have time, so let’s move on quickly.”

Johann returned to his emotionless expression, hoisted up the unconscious Colonel, and rushed toward the 1st conference room after kicking down the door.

“Take cover! It’s an attack!”

***

“How utterly gloomy.”

Someone muttered eerily.

Erika was descending the damp stairs, relying on the dim lanterns attached to the walls.

She and the other members of Team 2—twelve people in total—had infiltrated through a hidden back door and were heading toward the underground prison.

Down the long, long staircase. The musty smell tickled her nose.

When the stairs ended, a dark corridor appeared along with the concrete walls Lucas had mentioned.

Solid iron doors attached to each wall and tightly sealed peepholes.

At the end of the corridor would be the break room for the Ossels on patrol, but it was still quiet, as if they hadn’t noticed yet.

“Well then, shall we begin?”

Oscar asked in a low voice.

Erika, Oscar, and the elves efficiently pulled out small adhesive bombs from their backpacks.

Smuggled in by Fa-Elhar, they were crude but devastatingly powerful homemade explosives. Fael himself apparently wasn’t born with particularly strong magical power, so he didn’t have the skill to make bombs.

After installing twelve bombs in locations where the prisoners would be least likely to get hurt and inserting the prepared magic stones—

“Stand back!”

Everyone ran up the stairs they had just descended.

The runes carved into the bombs activated the spell and glowed brightly.

Rumble rumble…

CRASH BANG BOOM!

Twelve bombs exploded in succession, and the massive underground space shook like an earthquake as walls collapsed and steel beams were exposed. Erika clung tightly to the stair railing to withstand the tremendous aftershock.

“Gaaaaaah!”

“Wh, what’s happening!”

Beep! Beep!

Beyond the blown-open prison doors, before she could even make out the shapes of people, a loud alarm sounded. The far end of the corridor became noisy as countless footsteps rushed toward them.

“Intruders!”

What emerged from around the corner were, as expected, low-ranking Ossels.

“What do you mean lacking manpower…!”

Oscar grumbled as he raised his gun.

“Let’s split up now!”

The elf at the front of the formation gestured. As planned beforehand, the twelve of them divided into groups of six.

One group would use the fallen concrete to create a barricade and defend the corridor, while the other would handle prisoner rescue.

Tat-tat-ta-bang!

Erika ran down the devastated corridor. Behind her came the ear-splitting gunfire.

To avoid being drowned out by the noise, she shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Everyone come out! We’re here to rescue you! Please come out!”

There were hardly any responses. Unlike the noisy corridor, inside the cells it was quiet and cold.

She had prepared herself that it wouldn’t be easy.

However, seeing people who had collapsed from malnutrition and could only move their eyes was a far more devastating sight than she had expected.

“Hurry! Come out!”

Erika grabbed the arm of a middle-aged man who was just skin and bones, wearing rags and sitting in a daze, and dragged him out.

“Here, please help.”

Clang!

After cutting the shackles around his ankles and forcibly dragging him along, the man with vacant eyes began to slowly move his mouth.

“Freedom? Is this freedom?”

“Yes, so hurry and escape! There are people waiting outside to help you!”

Suddenly life returned to the man’s eyes. He tried to stand on his emaciated legs and somehow began running slowly but powerfully.

After confirming he was climbing the stairs, Erika ran to another cell.

Some people slowly came to their senses, some heard the noise and jumped out, and some had fainted and couldn’t get up.

The elves used their tools to cut shackles and evacuated people.

Erika struggled to carry an unconscious woman on her back. Her belly was swollen as if she was near full term.

Tat-tat-tat-ta-bang!

“Die! You bastard!”

A fierce battle was raging at the far end of the corridor.

“Please, please…”

Erika muttered as she carefully moved the woman.

She realized that twelve people were nowhere near enough to rescue all these people.

But even if they couldn’t save everyone, she wanted to bring as many as possible out into the sunlight.

Tat-ta-bang!

“Gaaaaah!”

“Erika! Danger!”

Thud!

When she heard Oscar’s voice and tried to turn around, she felt a strong impact at the back of her head.

“You bitch!”

A blood-covered Ossel had knocked her down. His pistol had apparently run out of bullets as he had already thrown it away.

“Hngh…!”

The Ossel raised an ornately decorated dagger. Erika’s hands trembled as she fumbled at her side. Relying on the sensation through her gloves, she put strength into her fingers.

Tat-ta-bang!

The bullets from the rifle struck the Ossel’s chest directly, and his body spurting blood collapsed on top of Erika.

“Hah, hah, are you okay?!”

As her strength drained and she lay there, Oscar’s voice reached her. He dragged away the corpse and helped Erika to her feet.

“You’re bleeding from your head…”

“I’m, I’m fine.”

Her voice came out severely shaken. When she touched the back of her head with her hand, she felt a sticky, warm liquid. However, perhaps due to the shock, she felt no pain.

After wiping her face and looking around, it seemed like the dozen or so Ossels had been mostly dealt with. However, there were also several elves who had fallen behind the barricade and prisoners who had been caught in the gunfire…

Her heart grew cold.

“We need to get you out quickly to receive treatment from Richard. Let’s move the wounded and prisoners first. I’ll help.”

Oscar’s voice sounded distant. She nodded mechanically and together they carried the pregnant woman who had been lying on the floor up the stairs.

***

Boom!

How many explosions had there been already?

Daniel quietly clenched his fist at the faint explosion sounds coming from afar.

There was no way to know whether things were going well or not.

Beep beep sounds of warning alarms echoed here and there. The footsteps of Ossels rushing to the top floor and basement also vibrated.

“…Did they pass?”

Daniel and four elves were hiding in what appeared to be a cafeteria, observing the enemy’s movements.

At one elf’s small question, Daniel, who had his ear pressed to the door, quietly nodded.

There was a prejudice that elves had large ears and could hear well, but that didn’t seem to be the case. According to Fael, it had degenerated from living in the city for a long time…

Daniel shook off his idle thoughts and carefully left the cafeteria. Then he groped around again to find his way.

The document storage that Team 4 was assigned to was hidden far more secretly than the conference room or underground prison.

“According to the map, this should be the right place.”

After a while, Daniel stopped in front of a luxurious wall.

Gorgeous armor worn by knights was displayed on either side of a massive religious painting.

“They really hid it well.”

According to Lucas, the document storage was definitely here, but Johann didn’t know how to enter, so he couldn’t tell them.

Only high-ranking Ossels like colonels or above shared the secret.

Daniel carefully felt around the painting. When he stroked the face of a baby angel that somehow resembled Kruger, he felt the bumpy texture characteristic of oil paintings.

“Ah.”

Daniel, who had been alternately looking at the painting and armor, exclaimed.

Among the people in the painting, there were five knights wearing the exact same outfit as the armor in front of the wall.

When he pressed that part, as expected, the wall receded and revealed a keyhole.

“Quite ingenious.”

One male elf walked over admiringly and touched the wall.

“But there’s no particular magic cast on it.”

“Good. Let’s blow it up.”

Daniel spoke decisively.

“If we don’t know how to open it, let’s just throw a bomb at it first.”

Just as Lucas had said when they were making plans.

A moment later.

Boom boom BANG!

The wall burst apart, and when the thick dust cleared, what was revealed was an enormously vast space that felt like a library.

“It’s more extensive than I thought.”

“Can’t be helped.”

They moved quickly, scanning the countless rows of bookshelves.

“Stealing classified documents sounds nice. If we can’t take everything, let’s just burn it all down!”

Lucas had decisively suggested, but burning everything without knowing what was there would make any writer’s soul weep.

Daniel began pulling out documents at random, reading their titles, and stuffing anything that looked worthwhile into his backpack.

The elves did the same, looking only at titles and throwing anything within reach into their backpacks.

“Good heavens.”

Then he discovered documents neatly placed on a golden reading stand.

Prisoner Status – Must be updated when changes occur.

The very registry that absolutely had to be destroyed was sitting right there.

With his heart pounding, he continued the work first. Then, when everyone’s backpacks had grown heavy, he pulled out a bundle of matches.

Soon, starting with the prisoner registry, the choice information that Ossel had gathered over more than ten years began to burn.

The flames spread quickly in the dry air. Daniel and the elves hurried to run.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

After the nearby windows shattered in succession, they threw themselves out the windows.

The document storage was on the second floor. An easy height for escape. Since Ossel had disguised their headquarters as an abandoned factory, there were piles of garbage outside.

Thud!

Daniel, who fell on top of it, got up without receiving much shock and ran.

The front of the building was chaos with elves trying to evacuate as many prisoners as possible.

Team 1, led by Georg, who had been waiting at the entrance surrounded by walls, were helping them.

Daniel breathed a sigh of relief after confirming Erika and Oscar’s faces.

***

“Open the door!”

When Johann appeared like a blood-soaked demon and shouted, the Ossels standing guard in front of the 1st conference room fell into confusion.

“Only Supreme Leader—”

“Didn’t you hear me! Open the door!”

“Y-yes sir!”

The door opened wide, and gentle, beautiful music flowing from a phonograph could be heard. The atmosphere in the conference room was completely different from the chaos outside.

The gazes of Ossel’s high-ranking officials—that is, people of lieutenant general and major general rank—turned toward them.

“It’s an attack! Reactionary elements armed with firearms have invaded! Our colleagues in the 2nd and 3rd conference rooms have already been annihilated!”

The blood that Lucas had smeared all over him had hardened like scabs, making his face look extremely tragic even without any acting.

“Wh, what do you mean!”

“What the hell were the guards doing!”

The grand conference room became noisy like a stirred beehive at Johann’s bombshell announcement.

The only man who didn’t waver, Lieutenant General Kaiser with his mustache and snake-like eyes, looked at Johann and the Colonel he had carried in.

“It’s urgent! Lieutenant General, give the evacuation order! No, have them sound the alarm! We need support from the police department and military units!”

Lieutenant General Kaiser’s eyes narrowed. Then, a loud explosion echoed from beyond the corridor.

“Damn! They’re already here! I’ll somehow hold them off…!”

Johann hurriedly drew his pistol.

And so it began. Johann’s fake heroic tale.