9th Grade Civil Servant In Another World Chapter 63 - Catastrophe (6)

“Mmph! Mph!”

Bang! Bang!

Harsh creaking sounds echoed loudly through the bleak concrete room.

Tied to a chair with rope and gagged with cloth, I thrashed my body wildly.

“Hmmph!”

Tears streamed down from my stinging eyes. My entire body ached and throbbed—there wasn’t a single part that didn’t hurt. Yet I kept twisting and struggling without rest.

Crack!

Finally, the old chair toppled over sideways, and my body crashed hard against the floor. The impact loosened the ropes binding me somewhat.

Taking advantage of this opening, I wriggled like a worm on the floor and barely managed to escape from the ropes.

“Haa, haa…”

I pulled the cloth from my mouth and desperately gulped in the musty air of the basement.

I had been ready to die.

I had steeled myself for it.

Yet here I was, pathetically gasping for oxygen just because my breathing was slightly restricted.

“Haa… I was wrong to think that way.”

A faint voice leaked from my cracked throat.

Damn it, yes. The idea that my guilt would become dulled was too arrogant.

I had pretended to be a cold-blooded person, acting like I’d use any means necessary. But I couldn’t even bear to watch someone right beside me suffer harm.

Someone like me, whose mental state completely collapsed just from the death of a person I’d only spent a year with—I could never have become such a cold-blooded person in the first place.

What wealth and glory had I gained by playing the prophet? I should have just lived as a coward, staying true to my nature.

If I had known it would turn out like this anyway.

If I had known I would writhe in pain and rage like this.

Even though I had blood on my hands, the burning feeling in my heart hadn’t disappeared. My hands, and my heart, craved even more blood.

I wanted to kill everyone involved and bring down this damned country.

Even though I knew I couldn’t!

I ground my teeth and stared at the shackles around my ankles.

I had to somehow unlock these and escape through that iron door. While I was racking my brain with such schemes.

My mind was such a mess that I couldn’t even think about meeting Johann and trying to persuade him properly.

Clang!

How many hours had I been wracking my brain trying to think of an escape method?

The solid iron door opened, and a shadow fell across the room.

“What’s all this? Do you think you can get out by doing this?”

A mockingly familiar voice reached me. I, who had been writhing on the floor, rolled my body upright and charged toward the door, but was immediately caught by the back of my neck by Johann.

“Guh!”

“Stop doing useless things and sit down.”

“You damn… bastard…”

Ignoring my curse, he closed the door and crouched down to look down at me.

“For a human to become this stupid in such a short time—truly amazing.”

He pressed his fingertips against my forehead to keep me from getting up and muttered.

“Did I misjudge you?”

“…Are you going to kill me?”

“Depends on what you do. Do you want to die?”

I looked up at Johann’s emotionless, calm eyes.

Just a few hours ago, yes.

I had wanted to die. No, I thought I could accept death if it would just extinguish the flames in my heart.

But now it was different.

I felt my will to live was stronger than ever before.

Because I still had things left to do.

“No, I want to live! I want to live so desperately I could die!”

“Then live. I’ll tell you the way you can survive.”

With an expression containing neither contempt nor pity, he gave his calm command, and I nodded.

***

“Long live His Excellency the Great Supreme Leader!”

“Long live His Excellency the Supreme Leader! Come in, Major Werner.”

Lieutenant General Kaiser greeted Johann with his usual light, friendly manner.

In the general’s office, a symphony flowed from the spinning gramophone as always.

“This is the final masterpiece of a composer sponsored by His Excellency the Supreme Leader. Despite being an enormous work requiring an orchestra of 150 members, every element is mathematically calculated to fit together perfectly. Such a well-structured piece will never appear again. Don’t you think so, Major Lorenz?”

At his leisurely question, the aide who had been standing still as a statue gave a slight nod. The lieutenant general smiled with satisfaction, turned off the gramophone, and looked at Johann.

“Is it finished?”

“Yes. Everything is complete.”

The lieutenant general smiled broadly.

“You’ve done something quite bold. I didn’t know you had such audacity. Truly impressive!”

“Thank you.”

Johann bowed his head politely.

“Does this sound like praise to you, Major Werner?”

“Yes, it does.”

Even to his playful yet chilling tone, Johann responded in a monotone.

“Hahaha! See, I told you he was bold. The major must be made entirely of guts.”

The lieutenant general even clapped his hands while laughing, but when his laughter stopped, a quiet silence settled over the room.

Leon Kaiser leaned back in his armchair with a smiling expression, lost in thought.

‘The one who wanted to die came back alive, while the one I was curious to see survive died most miserably.’

Colonel Eric Klein.

Major Johann Werner.

Both had aspects he liked and disliked. Well, no one in the world is perfect.

Still, he had thought a fool would be easier to handle than a clever one, but in the end, the fool remained a fool to the very end.

The colonel had made a mistake. No matter how far District 13 was from central Lüdelheim, he had still set fire to the capital.

‘If the Supreme Leader finds out, it’ll be cause for fainting. That guy botched it from the very first button.’

From what he heard, the colonel had scattered all sorts of flammable materials and set them ablaze. If it hadn’t rained, there was no telling how far the flames would have spread.

He didn’t care about the lower-class people’s houses burning, but if such a major incident caught the Supreme Leader’s attention, how could he handle it?

On the other hand, the major had committed the extraordinary act of cutting off the colonel’s head and hanging it on a gallows, but that was something Lieutenant General Kaiser could cover up within his own authority.

‘He probably didn’t do it directly, right?’

Well, whether he did it directly or not didn’t really matter.

Since the major was in cahoots with those White Raven Order fellows, he might have had them kill the colonel.

But in any case, the major must have given the order at minimum.

The callousness of cutting off his direct superior’s head was unpleasant, yet that wicked, unrestrained aspect was quite appealing.

‘Dangerous, but I’ll have to use him.’

He wasn’t particularly bothered by the major arbitrarily becoming partners in destiny with the traitors called the White Raven Order.

No, it was actually a good thing.

What was Ossel’s role?

They were a paramilitary and intelligence organization disguised under the name of special police.

They were also one wing that kept the Supreme Leader’s bodyguard unit Ferint in check.

If the Supreme Leader’s authority remained absolutely solid and the country ran ideally and perfectly, why would they need to exist?

In that sense, Major Johann Werner raising a rebel organization might be exactly what was needed.

Right now, Schufaben was too peaceful. More slaughter and chaos needed to unfold.

Ossel could only survive amid the hatred of swarming criminals and traitors.

Having finished his thoughts, Lieutenant General Kaiser smiled once more.

“Good. Well done, Major Werner. You may go now. Wait until I call for you. There will be a suitable reward.”

“It’s an honor, Lieutenant General.”

Johann bowed deeply and turned to leave.

He realized that Lieutenant General Kaiser was under a major misunderstanding, but felt no need to correct it.

He had intended to create that misunderstanding anyway.

The colonel’s gruesome death had to become something Johann himself had planned and executed, not an accident Lucas Redan had caused on his own.

‘Fortunately, it went smoothly.’

In the carriage returning to District 13, quiet joy stirred in his heart.

***

Past yesterday’s carriage station, I found a modest inn nearby.

“I’m back.”

A brief silence flowed.

Smack!

Oscar approached and struck my cheek hard.

“Never do that again!”

His eyes were red as a rabbit’s.

“We all could have gone together! What were you trying to accomplish by going alone?!”

“I didn’t want to watch you all die too!”

I grabbed my stinging cheek and shouted roughly.

My mind and body weren’t functioning properly under the crushing pressure and fatigue that felt like death.

“So we’re supposed to watch you die? How selfish. You’re the person in the White Raven Order who wants to live the most, Lucas. You’ve been doing all this to survive. Did you think we wouldn’t notice?”

Daniel gazed at me with sunken eyes.

For a moment, I was so shocked I forgot even the pain in my cheek. How did he know that?

When had he caught on?

That I had only joined hands with him, killed others, used people, and ran around frantically—all for the purely selfish instinct of survival.

That it all stemmed from selfish survival instinct.

“Ha, I…”

I had nothing to say and could only blink. Erika, who had been glaring at me from across the room, sighed deeply and approached.

“Let him rest. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

At those words, Oscar backed away with a displeased expression, but Georg insisted on adding one more thing.

“Brother, you can’t live in this world alone. Let’s do dangerous things together. We’re the White Raven Order.”

And Richard, with his usual calm expression, gestured to me.

“You should get some treatment before sleeping. Your body is covered in wounds.”

At those words, all my strength drained away.

***

I had a long dream.

In the dream, all sorts of images from my past and present lives appeared and disappeared in a chaotic mix.

My one-room apartment in Seoul, my company office, the burning Ossel headquarters, that asshole Manager Kim, the university campus, the bustling scenes of Redan Tavern, my parents’ car accident, the District 13 office, Emil Hoffman, the White Raven Order, and my senior who had been my training supervisor.

I couldn’t tell what belonged to my former self and what belonged to my current self, so I just stared blankly.

I was a human with no special qualities whatsoever.

I didn’t possess a genius brain, looks that would make anyone like me, a golden spoon I was born with, or a blessed body worthy of standing in an Olympic arena.

If I had to pick something, it would be that I was good at talking and pleasing others—that was the only thing.

Effort, effort, effort.

My life had been built entirely on effort.

Yet people liked me for it. Because I was an ordinary, sincere hard worker, they treated me more comfortably and warmly.

Had any of them ever noticed?

That I had never desperately wanted anyone.

Even if all those friends and acquaintances vanished into dust in an instant, I would have been briefly shocked and quickly forgotten them.

But through some ghostly turn of events, I fell into this strange world and met strange people.

And those people became far more deeply intertwined with me than everyone in Korea had been.

They trusted me, liked me far more than all those others ever had.

That terrified me.

I was so scared I felt like I might suffocate from fear.

How many more precious people would I lose in the future? How many more times would I have to endure the agony of my heart being torn to pieces?

What if Daniel died?

What if Erika died?

I would go even crazier than I had now.

Why hadn’t I felt this way when I lived in Korea?

Why did I have to develop this pathetic sense of justice and camaraderie in this damned world of all places?

Because I was afraid of them dying.

I had gone to kill the colonel alone.

I had threatened Philip, who was raging about “the major’s orders,” holding a gun to my own head and saying I’d die right here and now if he didn’t let me go.

I had pleaded with my friends, who tried to calm me down and got angry, asking to come with me if I was going—I begged them to let me go even if they resented me for life.

I had caused such trouble and killed the colonel that way.

And afterward, I had planned to leave the White Raven Order and go anywhere.

But now, why did I want to cling to them so pathetically?

Where had my former self disappeared to?

***

I opened my eyes on a white, fluffy bed.

It was afternoon, with bright sunlight and fresh air coming through the window.

When I turned my head, I met Erika’s eyes as she watched me. And Daniel, Oscar, Georg, and Richard too.

I moved my dry lips.

“I want to kill Kruger.”

“Yeah, so do we.”

Daniel answered in a gentle tone. I smiled.

“I want to kill him even if it costs me everything.”

“Do that. No, let’s do it together.”

I took Erika’s outstretched hand and sat up.

I have to kill Kruger.