The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 61

“A secret royal inspector? Garrison Commander. What in the world is….”

“……!”

Hearing the words “secret royal inspector,” the garrison commander’s face showed genuine bewilderment.

Understandable.

He had intended to keep me detained and talk things through slowly, and he could not have expected me to show up in a situation like this.

“I faced unexpected difficulty from the very entrance. The moment I arrived, detention, interrogation…. quite the flamboyant welcome.”

“This is a combat zone. For your safety, I would ask that you withdraw….”

“Garrison Commander, you know better than anyone that I won’t simply walk out, don’t you?”

At my decidedly sarcastic tone, the eyes of the man called Garrison Commander narrowed.

“What is your business.”

“When a secret royal inspector is dispatched to a district, the work is obvious. An inspection.”

“An inspection?”

I displayed the horse tablet in my hand and spoke.

“I have received the Administration’s order to conduct a detailed inspection of the Iron Tiger Army’s current state: troop conditions, whether there are any irregularities in violation of the Administration’s regulations…. In a situation like this one, I would simply need the garrison commander to accompany me.”

Just then, an artillery report rang out and the command post shuddered once, but no one paid it any mind.

The officers stood frozen in place, not saying a word.

It was obvious what they wanted to say.

“An inspection… do you have any idea what the situation is right now?!”

“I do. Monsters are swarming and people are dying. But… what of it?”

Well, look at this.

One of the staff officers flared up and shouted, but I spoke in a cold voice.

“The orders I issue as a secret royal inspector carry the same authority as an edict from the Administration, and the Administration’s commands must take precedence over any other procedure. Whether in the middle of combat or in the middle of a war with another nation, my instructions must always be carried out as the highest priority.”

“That makes absolutely no….”

“If you refuse, the officers present will be considered to have defied the Administration’s orders….”

“At least for this battle!”

The garrison commander cut off my words, drew a breath, and continued.

“Allow us to see this battle through. The lives of countless soldiers hang in the balance!”

“Garrison Commander.”

His voice had carried a tone of pleading, but I spoke without any change of expression.

“The lives of the soldiers deployed here are not more important than the Administration’s commands.”

“……!”

“If the garrison commander is an officer of Joseon, you would not be unaware of this fact.”

I knew better than anyone that this was an unreasonable outrage.

Staff officers gnashing their teeth and burning with hostility, and the garrison commander pressing his lips together, fists trembling.

Watching the faces around me grow darker and darker, I made a show of spreading both hands open.

“…Though if I said that and then tried to drag the garrison commander away with me, the staff officers present would hardly stand by and let that happen, would they?”

“What, did you say?”

At my voice, light as a joke, the room’s entire atmosphere changed in an instant.

‘Well. That should be about enough venting over being locked up in a cell.’

Thinking that, I looked at one of the staff officers and spoke.

“The inspection was a lie. I have no intention of interfering with the battle either. So please put away the pistol you’re hiding behind your back.”

Startled by my words, the staff officer who had been concealing a hand behind his back quickly stepped backward.

‘By the looks of it, he really was going to shoot. Even so, who in their right mind considers shooting a secret royal inspector….’

Whether to call that loyalty or foolishness.

I stepped forward and shifted my gaze to the tactical map the staff officers had been watching.

“What is the state of the battle? Even to an outsider like me, it doesn’t look good.”

“……As you say.”

One could not simply ignore a question from a senior official like a secret royal inspector.

Garrison Commander Jeong immediately operated the console and enlarged the tactical map.

Blue dots indicated friendly forces, red dots the enemy.

As Garrison Commander Jeong had described, inside the holographic wall, sparse blue dots were moving busily about.

“So the entire red area visible on the tactical map right now….”

“All monsters.”

A crimson wave that could no longer even be called dots was steadily swallowing the wall.

As though to emphasize the gravity of the situation, the garrison commander immediately elaborated.

“Cross-referencing observation reports with engagement records and estimating from there…. the enemy monster cluster is at minimum division-scale. In raw numbers, it easily exceeds thirty thousand.”

“Hah.”

I tried not to show it, but my spirit sank.

Tens of thousands of contaminated masses that turned any human they grazed into a monster.

That alone was enough to leave the mouth hanging open, yet interspersed among them were special individuals that sliced through tank armor like tofu, and large individuals protecting them.

Quite literally, the image of hell descending upon the mortal world.

Against that, the number of garrison troops defending this wall was a few thousand at most, generously counted.

“Can this actually be held?”

“We have held worse situations with fewer troops.”

“And the garrison will take severe casualties for it.”

Garrison Commander Jeong nodded heavily and said.

“More than half the garrison forces…. will not survive.”

I gathered my thoughts while watching the garrison commander’s deeply conflicted face.

An unexpected large-scale assault. Holding the line presented no problem, but heavy casualties were obviously going to accompany it.

In other words, now was precisely the optimal time to do something that would make them feel indebted to me.

“Then what I need to do is save as many soldiers as possible.”

“What?”

Leaving Garrison Commander Jeong asking what I meant behind me, I made a deliberate show of pressing the button on the back of the horse tablet.

A two-way communication device connected to the Administration’s main system.

The moment the device lit up, an operator waiting at a relay station picked up the signal immediately.

“Secret Royal Inspector Kim Changwoon. Issuing Emergency Situation RE-8876 at current location.”

-Situation code confirmed. Verifying the order.

A brief pause as the operator buried in the data center responded in a flat voice.

After confirming my location and situation code, the operator hesitated for a moment, then asked me again.

-Inspector?

After confirming my location and situation code, the operator hesitated for a moment, then asked me again.

-Your coordinates are in the northern region…. confirmed as Iron Tiger Fortress. Issuing RE-8876 at said coordinates. Are you certain?

“Yes. Exactly as you heard.”

-I beg your pardon, Inspector. That region is…….

“Hey.”

I cut off the operator who was about to say something more in a low voice.

“I, a secret royal inspector, have assessed this and made the decision myself. So why is this taking so long?”

-A, ah, I merely….

“You merely what? Do I need to explain the situation here to you at length? Should I file a report? Well?”

-I apologize. I overstepped.

“If you understand, then send it. We’re short on time.”

‘As soon as I’m back, this operator is filing an incident report.’

Not long after I ended the transmission, a response came back from the officer in charge.

-Order approved. Three Iron Horse-3 tactical modules have just taken off from the runway. Due to communications interference in that area, remote control from this relay station is not possible, so you will need to operate them directly, but….

“Right. Confirmed.”

Just three units after all that trouble. Tight-fisted bastards.

I would probably need more than ten to save everyone here.

-Young Master.

While I was thinking that, a transmission came in from Mooyoung, who had gone outside the wall.

-I’ve arrived at the site. Standing by for orders.

“Hold for a moment. Get ready to go in as soon as clearance comes through….”

“W, wait a moment!”

In the instant I was confirming Mooyoung’s response and checking the position signal of the Iron Horse units being transported, a staff officer who had apparently been eavesdropping on my transmission cut in urgently.

“What have you been saying this whole time? What’s this situation, and what clearance…….”

“What else? Exactly what I said. Saving the soldiers here.”

Saying that, I looked around at the garrison commander and the other staff officers.

“In five minutes, three tactical modules dispatched by the Administration will arrive as reinforcements.”

“……What? Reinforcements?”

“Yes. And for the tactical modules to conduct combat operations in this area, they require the authorization of the garrison commander as the commanding officer….”

Reinforcements dispatched by the Administration.

As though those words were completely unfamiliar, the faces of the garrison commander and the staff officers under him went rigid.

Understandable.

They were almost certainly thinking that the Administration was pulling some kind of scheme.

If the Administration’s tactical modules were admitted into Iron Tiger Fortress, who knew what might happen.

Thinking about what I was here to do, that was half correct, but…….

“Garrison Commander.”

Let me see how he responds.

I erased the smile I had been wearing throughout, and with a hardened expression I opened my mouth toward the garrison commander.

“The soldiers fighting at the wall right now. Do you not want to save even one more of them?”

“……!”

The moment I put into words the soldiers fighting monsters at this very instant, his deliberation went no further.

“Clearance granted.”

A voice suggesting he could not afford to waste even the time to deliberate.

A few staff officers tried their best to dissuade him, but he appeared to have already made up his mind.

“I take full responsibility.”

Cutting off the voices of the staff officers trying to stop him, the garrison commander declared.

“Cooperating with the secret royal inspector, and admitting the Administration’s combat machines into Iron Tiger Fortress, all of it is something I judged and decided entirely on my own authority. So stop worrying and focus on command. Do you not know that soldiers are dying even as we speak?!”

“……!”

At the garrison commander’s reprimand, the staff officers began returning to their stations one by one.

The resolute expression of the garrison commander as he faced me.

Seeing that, I felt a measure of the unease I had been carrying inside ease somewhat.

‘Impressive. Far more so than I expected.’

Antipathy toward the Administration, wariness and hostility toward me. Suppressing all of that, and bowing his head to me with nothing but the intent to save lives.

This Iron Tiger Army was not the one that remained in my memory.

Before they became the army of death that would set Hanseong ablaze. The period when reason still remained in them.

A period when something more than mere vengeance, a cause and a hope to build a better life, still lived in them.

They had not yet become spirits of revenge.

“I am grateful for the garrison commander’s resolve.”

This was more than I could have asked for.

The moment I spoke in a voice more earnest than I had ever used, three blue dots appeared in the sky of the tactical map.

“Heat source detected approaching the combat zone. IFF confirmed.”

“I authorize approach under Garrison Commander authority. Open the air defense network.”

“……Understood.”

And when the air defense batteries that had received the field commander’s order released the locks they had trained on the sky.

Thud!

Three massive tactical modules came crashing down before the eyes of the monsters in the midst of battle.

White-bodied in contrast to the monsters, with the plum blossom emblem embedded in their chests.

[Tactical Module Iron Horse-03. Deployed to combat zone]

[Transferring aircraft control authority to Secret Royal Inspector Kim Changwoon…. Connection complete]

[All units, commence combat]

It was a gift extended to future comrades.