A Regressor's Bucket List

Chapter 246 : Berserk (5)

While it was hard to say they were exactly the same, the thoughts running through everyone's minds in the quiet silence were all similar.

The news U-jin had brought.

‘The Orc Mountains have been fortified, and an improved black ollive that doubles combat power is being constantly applied.’

The degree of helplessness felt by this outrageous news might have differed for each person.

But the gravity on their faces as they mulled it over was exactly the same.

‘…Besieged on all sides.’

As befitting her duty, Kanna was considering the state of the subjugation coalition forces.

Currently, the condition of the subjugation coalition was certainly good.

It wasn't just that the casualties during the subjugation were lower than expected; their forces were so powerful that Kanna wondered if she had ever commanded such a strong army on the Anti-Demon Front.

This was possible because the number of troops assigned to the coalition was large to begin with, and the casualties among the Hero-class forces were extremely low.

However.

‘…Is it possible?’

Despite all this, a bad feeling kept nagging at Kanna’s mind.

A bad premonition that it might be difficult not just to conquer the Orc Mountains, but even to breach a corner of it and secure a supply route.

The Order’s preparations had been thorough, but one disaster had been piled on top of another.

The Curtain of the Black Sea, which appeared once every 100 years, had to rise just in time for the subjugation.

The Orc Mountains had undergone ‘fortification,’ something not seen for decades.

Whether it was a temporary phenomenon that just seemed constant, or if they had truly gained a permanent stat boost, required further confirmation. But it was a certain fact that the Orcs had ingested the ‘improved black ollives’ created by Isaac Einstein and acquired a method to augment their power.

Moreover, although U-jin’s actions had stopped it, a variant of the ‘Black Blood Disease,’ which had once devastated the north, had nearly broken out.

Honestly, speaking objectively, she felt their forces were still strong enough to give it a try.

But, how to put it… there’s an intuition one feels from the flow of events.

A thought that this might not be the end of it kept lingering in Kanna’s mind.

…That was the thought of Kanna Cartier, the commander-in-chief of the subjugation coalition, who had to see the Northern Subjugation War through to the end.

‘…….’

In the case of Leonardo Louis Button and Ludwig Allegro, they were thinking something slightly different.

It was something they couldn't quite say out loud, but the two of them weren't solely responsible for this subjugation coalition.

Even if the entire coalition were to be annihilated, they were confident they could preserve their own lives.

Their thoughts were fundamentally in the same vein as Kanna’s, but they were forced to consider a broader scope.

How to put it… the ripples that the ‘improved black ollives’ could create on the battlefield.

The Orc Mountains right before them were a problem, but if the ‘improved black ollives’ could truly provide a constant and permanent twofold increase in combat power…

…then the Orc Mountains were the least of their worries.

It meant that all the battles currently being fought on the Anti-Demon Front were nothing more than the Demon King's Army playing house, a line that could be broken at any time by their will.

If that were true, the very idea that The Order's coalition could win the War against Demons was nothing but a hollow mirage.

It was a simple calculation, but if those ‘improved black ollives’ were applied to the entire Demon King's Army, it would mean the Demon King's coalition would have twice the strength of The Order’s coalition.

Until now, the Demon King's and The Order's coalitions had been fighting a war on equal footing, which was why it had dragged on for so long.

And a twofold difference was not a gap that could be overcome with clever tricks or strategy.

To put it simply, there was no way for a child who was one meter tall and weighed 50kg to beat an adult who was two meters tall and weighed 100kg.

And that was even if their weapons, armor, and experience were similar.

No matter how brilliant the child or how foolish the adult, there was virtually no way to overcome that gap and win.

An uneven playing field.

The current silence was a result of having to accept this utterly unacceptable fact.

‘…….’

Of course.

Contrary to their worries, the ‘improved black ollives’ were not something that could be universally applied to the entire Demon King's Army.

If such a thing could be invented, the Demon King's Army wouldn't still be struggling against The Order’s forces.

If it were just a matter of the strategist Isaac Einstein on a personal level, it wouldn't be entirely impossible for him to play some bizarre game of delaying victory even when he could have won long ago. But the War against Demons was a war waged by the massive organization known as the ‘Demon King's coalition.’

If they could have ended the War against Demons by boosting their power with the improved black ollives, the Demon King would have likely done so long ago.

After all, even at this very moment, quite a few Magical Beast races were dying in the border regions of the war.

Besides.

In the first timeline, The Order’s headquarters fell to the Demon King's Army and was completely dismantled a full ten years from now.

If the Demon King's Army had the ability to distribute and apply the black ollives to their entire force, there would have been no reason to wait for a ten-year gap.

Even if the Demon King's Army had a reason to hide the improved black ollives, their existence was already as good as revealed through the appearance of the enhanced Orcs in the Northern Subjugation War.

As could be inferred from this series of facts, the specially improved black ollives created by Isaac Einstein were only applicable to the ‘Orc race’ located here.

It went without saying, but even U-jin didn’t know the exact mechanism.

Pharmacology was a field far beyond his reach; even after regressing, all he really knew how to do was throw a punch.

However, thanks to his past memories, he knew for certain that it couldn't be universally applied to the entire Demon King's Army.

Until the very end of the first timeline, the Orcs of the Orc Mountains were the only Magical Beast race whose ordinary members had displayed double the combat power with their bodies dyed black.

Even if he didn't know the logic or principle, he figured they hadn't done it because it was impossible.

Moreover, he had heard that the Suicide Squad had once tested the improved black ollives meant for Orcs on other species, just in case.

The Magical Beast species they experimented on at that time had all died instantly, regardless of their individual strength or weakness.

Therefore, rather than calling it ‘improved black ollives,’ it was more appropriate for understanding the current situation to limit its scope to Orcs and call them ‘enhanced Orcs,’ just as U-jin had before.

However, U-jin didn't bother to reveal the fact that the ‘improved black ollives’ were only applicable to the Orc race.

The climax of the War against Demons was still to come, and with the battle for the Orc Mountains ahead, a sense of alarm wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

In the first place, even if he did tell them, the fact that he knew it would be impossible to explain.

For Ludwig and Louis, he had already pushed the nonsense about the Saintess's prophecy, so it might not be entirely impossible to make them understand somehow.

But Kanna Cartier and Heart de Garson were a different story.

‘…There will be plenty more occasions to push this nonsense anyway.’

Since the Saintess's prophecy itself was fundamentally based on a lie, he had to avoid spreading it around.

He didn't know about other things, but if the fact that the Saintess's Resurrection itself was a lie got out, he wasn't confident he could handle the fallout from ‘Leonardo Louis Button.’

Well.

There would be plenty of other times he'd have to use the Saintess's name to make his case, even if it wasn't right now.

For now, it was enough to let them know that the Orc Mountains' forces were far stronger than they thought.

As U-jin nodded with his eyes closed, he suddenly felt a chilling sensation amidst the silence.

How to describe it? A prickling sensation on the back of his neck, perhaps.

It felt like an indescribable, formless energy was shooting at him from all directions.

And as he slowly opened his eyes and looked up at this strange feeling…

“…Huh.”

Just as he’d suspected.

Everyone inside the barracks was now staring at him in the silence.

As if they had entrusted him with something.

“…Why?”

U-jin, wondering what to say, simply spat out the word that came to mind.

And the moment he opened his mouth, a barrage of incomprehensible demands rained down.

“What do you mean, why? If you bring a problem, you have to take responsibility for it, you rascal.”

“…Did I bring it?”

Shrug—

“Well, who else is there?”

The look on Ludwig Allegro’s face as he shrugged truly said, ‘Well, who else is there besides you?’

At that unbelievable audacity, he turned his head to look at Louis Button.

His expression changed a little less, but Leonardo Louis Button’s attitude wasn't much different.

“Now, please tell us, Mr. Seo U-jin. Since you’ve accurately identified the problem, you must also know a way to overcome it.”

“……”

“…Just as you always have.”

It was a strange and incomprehensible turn of events.

‘…Heh.’

From Louis’s brief addendum, he could somewhat understand why they were acting this way.

Come to think of it, he was always the one to bring a solution in situations like this.

It was an unprecedented crisis that even the fully prepared subjugation coalition of The Order had no answer for, but they believed that, as always, U-jin would have the solution.

They were just expressing it in their own ways.

What they called U-jin’s ‘peculiar exceptionalism’ had sublimated into a ‘peculiar expectation.’

In U-jin’s memory, Ludwig Allegro and Leonardo Louis Button were the two most meticulous people in The Order, so it was unusual for them to show such baseless trust.

But the fact that the object of that trust was U-jin made it somewhat understandable.

“…Uh.”

Having roughly grasped the flow of things, U-jin scratched his head.

He had no idea how to respond to those bright, expectant eyes.

‘…Of course I have a way, that’s why I came this far, but…’

As he was contemplating where to begin,

Flap—

The entrance flap of the barracks was suddenly thrown open.

“Commander! An unidentified flying object has been spotted in the sky above the camp!”

And with the urgent voice of the adjutant who entered with him, the situation began to unfold a little more quickly.