All Right

Kang De was a modern man.

He lived in a great power that had risen peacefully.

Even when artillery thundered in regions half a world away, war remained very, very distant from him.

He had never set foot on a battlefield. His most real and direct understanding of the so-called cruelty of war and the terror of modern weapons came from nothing more than words and videos online.

He knew that a solid head could be blown apart by a bullet, that a bustling town could be shaken to its foundations by a howitzer shell, and that living people could be burned to charcoal by white phosphorus incendiary bombs.

But he had never seen it with his own eyes.

At most, he had seen a flattened face spread across a driver's seat on his computer screen, gray smoke and dust billowing upward with a roar and a white shock wave spreading violently in an instant in a video, and twisted black corpses amid devastation and wreckage in pictures.

Words stirred the imagination, while videos and pictures assaulted the eyes.

But all that information had been dulled.

Sitting at a computer, reflecting and sighing, could only bring pity.

Seeing it firsthand, however, could leave a person suffocating.

War was hell; only those who had experienced it firsthand were qualified to comment on it.

And now he had seen it.

It had been only a small battle, a single successful ambush against just seven enemies, but he had indeed seen war. The Goth People had told him of the brutal battles that had left the elves and the Goth People with a blood feud. That principled, ever-courteous knight had slain every enemy without mercy, then prowled the battlefield, killing the survivors one by one.

No pity, no pleasure, only the unhesitating extermination of every last one.

The princess beside him was delicate, beautiful, and gracious. She looked like a dreamlike girl who knew nothing of the world and lived in a magnificent palace, yet she watched the bloody slaughter as though it were only natural.

Kang De watched it all.

And he felt the greatest difference between himself and them.

These Goth People from another world knew war, accepted war, and were prepared for it.

Only now did he understand what war truly was.

War was when everyone had grown accustomed to it, from civilians to soldiers, from beggars to nobles, when even the noblest and most cultured people took brutal slaughter for granted.

It was something modern people accustomed to peace and plenty could not imagine.

At that moment, a sense of alienation rose in Kang De's heart.

This was not the battle he had imagined.

In the battle he had imagined, Miss Fulan would fight in a beautiful pose while suppressing his embarrassment. Perhaps his clothes would be torn off, or perhaps someone would suddenly pull off his wig and get a fright instead... all sorts of little mishaps and rather comical fight scenes, just like a comedy action movie.

The enemies would still be knocked down one by one, only to discover in shock that this peerless beauty was actually a man, whereupon they would all let out anguished howls and declare that they couldn't accept it.

Not like this, with blood flying and death everywhere.

He stood in a daze for a moment, then asked quietly, "Aren't we taking anyone alive?"

The princess shook her head. "The elves' arrogance is beyond imagination. They despise humans, and being captured by us is an immense humiliation. They would rather die on the spot, so how could they possibly give us information to save their lives?"

"Kang De, they're different from humans... Because they live so long, they don't attach much importance to life or death. Ordinary threats can't make them submit, and because of the gulf between our cultures, we don't know what they fear, so we have no way to intimidate them. As for torture, we have neither the time nor the tools right now."

She was a noble, beautiful woman, yet she spoke of such things as if nothing were amiss.

So that was how it was.

Kang De slowly walked forward, avoiding the blood on the ground, and looked at the elven corpses lying there.

One elf had died cleanly and swiftly, his heart pierced by a sword. Another had been struck in the head with a shield and incapacitated before his throat was cut. A third had been stabbed through the neck.

There were also two elves who had been burned by incendiary bombs and slashed more than a dozen times. Their sturdy bodies were covered in burn marks, the flames had not yet been completely extinguished, and their wounds had curled under the heat.

And farther back were the two elves killed by the flying sword and shield.

Hideous, gaping wounds, agonized expressions, flowing blood-apart from their pointed ears, they really looked no different from humans. Even their blood was red.

Kang De stared blankly at these dead beings.

His face turned pale.

In novels and television dramas, people who killed for the first time, or who saw a horribly mangled corpse for the first time, would vomit. For the former, it was a reaction to excessive adrenaline; for the latter, a physiological stress response... In any case, they would vomit.

And Kang De's face turned pale.

Because he... didn't feel like vomiting at all.

Instead, he was very calm. His body was very calm.

The slight sense of distance he felt from the Goth People and his true understanding of the war between the Goth People and the elves—those thoughts all came from the part of Kang De that was a modern man from Earth.

And another part of him seemed to think the matter was hardly worth mentioning.

Looking at the corpses on the ground, at the two elves who had been burned, he even thought of the conflict that had erupted with the Goth People the day before yesterday. He had summoned the bar-headed geese to pour gasoline and thrown his lighter without hesitation. If Cleveland had not thrown an extraordinarily precise flying knife, the Goth People would have been the ones lying dead all over the ground.

At the time, he had done it without hesitation.

If the killing had begun then, not only the dozen or so Goth People present, but probably all the remaining Goth People would have been killed as well. It was almost certain to have happened.

But Kang De was thinking.

If he had chosen to kill then, if the people lying on the ground had been humans like him, hacked down, beaten to death, burned alive, when he came to his senses after losing control, when he finished killing, when he faced the corpses covering the ground and the people he had brutally killed... would he have vomited?

Kang De's face was deathly pale, and he even felt a chill run through him.

He had almost arrived at the answer.

"...Mr. Kang De?"

The knight's question brought him out of his horrifying train of thought.

He raised his head.

Cleveland saw the look in his eyes and instinctively stepped back, assuming a defensive stance.

The two of them quickly came to their senses. Kang De was eager to hide it, while the knight's heart was filled with apprehension. By unspoken agreement, they passed over what had just happened, and the knight presented the spoils in his hands.

"A perfect ambush."

He said, "Even my mentor couldn't have done better than I did with his extraordinary powers suppressed... That's not boasting. Rather, I must thank you for the weapons you provided, especially this spray. It actually put two elven marine soldiers out of action at once. It's truly astonishing."

It was police-issue pepper spray, also borrowed from the police station.

That stuff was beyond what any living being could endure. Even a well-trained elven archer corps sergeant, sprayed in the eyes without warning, could not withstand the searing pain that penetrated to the bone, even if he instinctively shut his eyes and turned his head. He could not even hold on to his weapon.

Add to that the sword and shield, two enchanted weapons that would have been considered fine pieces even among the elves, and an attack in anger from the most celebrated model knight of Goth's younger generation, and it was only natural that the fight had ended quickly.

After all, Miss Fulan had intended to silence them from the start.

How could he allow elves who had seen him dressed as a woman to live?

He had finished clearing the battlefield and now offered the pepper spray and some of the spoils with both hands. "They were all ordinary elven soldiers and had nothing particularly valuable on them, but these are worth something. I found several pieces of jewelry and amulets on those five."

"The two archer corps sergeants had somewhat better things. After all, they inherited the Dragonfang soldiers' legacy. Their swords and bows are fine pieces that would fetch a high price on the continent. Their rings are enchanted for precise shooting, though they're much inferior to the one I lent you earlier. The arrows they carried are also worth collecting..."

He gave a concise explanation, then said, "If you have no objection, please allow me to keep these two broad-bladed greatswords, one great warbow, and half the arrows. The remaining longbow and arrows, as well as all the enchanted jewelry, are yours."

Calling that division of the spoils generous would have been an understatement.

Especially when Kang De had contributed nothing at all.

Kang De paused and looked at the knight's sincere eyes. Much of the distance and alienation he had just felt faded away, and the other man's kind gesture made him feel good.

At least it dispelled that feeling of resistance.

He tried to put the turmoil in his heart aside and was about to offer a few polite objections, but the knight said, "Please don't refuse. We owe this entire victory to your planning and strategy, and even..."

Even this women's outfit was provided by you—the knight was too embarrassed to say it aloud.

Kang De steadied himself, took the bow and a large bundle of arrows, then put all the jewelry into the satchel at his waist, but left the pepper spray in the knight's hand.

Meeting the other man's surprised gaze, Kang De smiled. "No rush to return it. We'll still need it."

If you were nervous, you could always say something cheeky to relax.

A special trick and lesson he had picked up over the past year.

"..."

Only then did the knight come to his senses, his face flushing bright red.

To tell the truth, he had to admit the outfit was comfortable, especially the fabric of the stockings, which was practically comparable to eastern silk—but it was fucking women's clothing!

His face fell, and he pleaded, "I think we could do this another way..."

"I think this works just fine. It's the least troublesome method," Kang De reassured him. "Besides, we'll keep a close watch on the elves' movements. If they find the bodies here and warn their allies, we'll stop the cross-dressing plan immediately. But before that, we need to make the elves feel more pressure and perceive a greater threat."

The knight felt terribly aggrieved and helpless. He even wanted to stamp his foot.

Then he realized what an alarming gesture that was. It was exactly what his younger sister did when she acted spoiled and threw a tantrum-Good heavens, what am I thinking?

Just then, Kang De bent down, grabbed an elf by the foot, and dragged him toward the bushes. "All right, let's bury the bodies."

When he returned from Earth, he had also brought a shovel for A Xing to dig graves, making it easier to dispose of the elven corpses. Although he had realized there would certainly be casualties, he had not expected things to end like this, with such brutal, efficient deaths.

The knight paused, then went to help. "Please let me take care of this sort of thing."

Kang De said mildly, "It's fine."

Cleveland hesitated. He had not forgotten the look in Kang De's eyes just now.

So he asked quietly, "Mr. Kang De... are you all right?"

Kang De calmly continued what he was doing and answered softly, "I'm all right."

PS1: First update... fuck, I'm late again. Damn it, I didn't even play any games today.