Bastard, Are You Kidding Me?

Bastard, Are You Kidding Me?

Wendy felt that she must have gone mad. Otherwise, why had she listened to that bastard John and led a group of squad members flying around the combat zone through the pouring rain on a night so cold it could nearly freeze someone to death?

What fucking patrol? What opportunity to help the Empire win?

On a night so dark she could not see her own fingers, beneath that dense curtain of rain, she would be a ghost if she could find some secret Allied Forces squad from the sky.

"Bullshit mission, bullshit John Maslow!"

High in the air, Wendy wore a black raincoat and carried a mobile magic pack on her back. Like the other complaining squad members flying beside her, she held a standard-issue Empire magic rifle. After carrying out this rain-soaked patrol for half an hour, she could not help cursing under her breath.

Feeling the raindrops striking her face like knives, regret filled her heart.

Looking at the boundless curtain of night ahead, Wendy seemed to see her future stretching before her like an abyss.

Sure enough, if she kept following these officers from military academies—people who had nothing but theory and their so-called credentials, without a shred of actual combat experience—her chances of promotion and prosperity were absolutely zero!

She should ask Battalion Commander Olaf to transfer her to another squad when she got back.

Wendy could not help sighing inwardly. After all, she had resolutely left her hometown and chosen to become a magic soldier not so she could muddle through life and wait for death under some idiotic superior.

A life whose end could be seen at a glance was simply unbearable to her.

She had probably truly developed an aversion to stupidity.

Just as Wendy was considering leading her people through this irritating rain curtain for a little longer, wandering aimlessly through the sky before quickly returning to the temporary base and ending this utterly useless patrol—

The next second, a squad member's startled cry came through her communicator:

"Vice Captain Wendy! At coordinates 45'37, horizontal distance 351 meters, a suspicious target has been spotted!"

No way. They had actually found something?!

Wendy was startled and hurriedly activated her magic eye to look toward the target.

With magic power reinforcing her vision, the pitch-black night gradually brightened before her eyes, and the scene below instantly became clear.

It was a fully armed Allied Forces squad, roughly fifty men strong, slowly advancing through the rain.

In the center of the formation was a gray truck. Its lights were off, and the sound of its engine was perfectly concealed by the unbroken rain. Like a ghost, it silently crossed the Empire's defensive line and gradually penetrated deeper inside.

With just one look, Wendy, a five-year veteran, determined that this was an Allied Forces squad carrying out a secret operation.

And there was definitely something extraordinary inside that truck. Otherwise, the Allied Forces would never have taken such a risk and sent a squad this deep behind the Empire's lines.

At that moment, Wendy had no time to marvel at how her commander, who had only just entered the battlefield, could possess such a sharp eye that he had predicted the Allied Forces' movements in advance.

Her combat experience was already telling her—

This enemy force was a huge fish, and her moment to distinguish herself had arrived!

"Everyone, load armor-piercing rounds! Open fire in twenty seconds! Make sure we take down this Allied Forces squad!"

From the air, Wendy looked down upon the enemy soldiers groping forward through the darkness below. Like ignorant flies, they were voluntarily flying into an invisible spiderweb.

As she counted down in her heart, an excited gleam began to rise in Wendy's eyes.

The instant the enemy officially entered effective range, she gave the attack order through the communicator without hesitation.

"Fire!"

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Blooming magical light tore through the black night. The gunfire, masked by the torrential rain, was like Death swinging his scythe, brutally taking the lives of the Allied Forces soldiers trudging forward with their heads down before they had time to react to the strikes from above.

It was not until thirty members of the squad had their heads blown apart almost simultaneously and fell to the ground in uniform motions—

That the officer commanding this Allied Forces squad, burdened with a secret battle plan, realized that their tracks had been completely exposed.

And beneath the enemy's undisguised magical light, he instantly understood that the force ambushing them was no third-rate outfit.

It was the Empire's magic soldiers, known as the Demon Legion, enough to make any Allied Forces unit tremble in fear!

Against monsters capable of flying and wielding large-scale explosive magic, their little army squad had never stood a chance.

Much less when the enemy had already prepared an ambush?

Damn it. Their covert infiltration plan had been flawless, so why had they been ambushed by the Empire?

Could there have been a traitor?

The Allied Forces captain could not make head or tail of it, but feeling the magical aura above him descend like the Grim Reaper, he realized that the plan had completely collapsed and no longer stubbornly resisted.

Without another word, he gritted his teeth, threw down his gun, raised both hands over his head, and shouted toward the sky:

"Don't shoot! We surrender!"

Elm Village, temporary base.

John sat in a chair, leisurely sipping coffee from his cup while admiring the rain outside the window.

He knew that under his orders, Wendy was surely suffering through the pouring rain with her squad members, carrying out a search mission that could never possibly find its target.

Perhaps she was cursing him in every possible way in her heart right now, but John did not care.

After all, once he returned to the Legion base following this failed command, Battalion Commander Olaf would certainly reprimand him. That would disappoint the Empire's higher-ups in him. And that was exactly what he wanted. As long as he proved that he was incompetent, he could be dismissed by the higher-ups as a mediocrity according to his perfect plan, thus fulfilling his long-cherished dream of retirement.

Hmm, it seemed that wartime pensions in the Empire were not much. And his game character setting was that he had come from an orphanage.

So he really had to carefully plan out his life after retirement.

For now, he should lie low whenever possible. If worse came to worst, he could use his pension to rent a little shop and muddle through his days.

After the Empire fell ten years later and the Emperor died, he could become a bard in a tavern.

By then, he could make up stories about the Norman Empire Emperor's early rise to power. Like how, in order to successfully inherit the throne, His Majesty wove straw sandals in the morning and sold his ass at a brothel in the afternoon.

Then, when he went home that night, he found that the death-sworn agents he had painstakingly trained had been lured away by someone with a single meal. Stories like that would surely earn him plenty of tips and support from customers.

As for authenticity, unofficial history was still history!

And whether the Empire's remnants would seek revenge? Heh. When the Empire fell, the imperial loyalists would all be watched by secret units as they put bullets through their own heads. It was not as if a bunch of ghosts could crawl out of their graves to take revenge on him!

Anyway, no matter what, as long as he could retire, his future would be filled with light and freedom.

Once the Allied Forces completely occupied the Empire, he would use his startup capital to speculate on real estate, leap straight into the ranks of business tycoons, then keep several beautiful and adorable beast-eared girls and live a life of extravagance every day.

How wonderful would that be?!

"To beautiful freedom and the future!"

John raised his coffee cup with a yearning expression. But before he could continue immersing himself in his fantasies of the future, hurried footsteps sounded, and the battered door was violently pushed open.

The person who entered was Wendy, whom he had fooled into carrying out the patrol through the rain. She seemed to have come in great haste and had not even had time to change out of her black raincoat. Water continuously dripped from it onto the old wooden floorboards, making a pitter-patter sound.

She was still breathing uncontrollably hard. John frowned at the sight and was about to put on the airs of a dogshit superior and scold her, when his eyes met her fanatical gaze in midair.

Then Wendy's excited voice entered his ears:

"Captain John, you're incredible! Under your brilliant leadership, we successfully wiped out an Allied Forces special unit that was secretly infiltrating our lines. Not only did we capture their commander alive, we also seized a large quantity of explosive charges they were transporting for a secret mission."

"I've already had the communications soldier relay this good news to headquarters. Headquarters replied that they would immediately send soldiers to meet us, and they strongly praised your exquisite battle plan during the call!"

"Warrant Officer John, barring any surprises, with such a great merit to your name, you'll definitely be promoted to at least second lieutenant this time. First lieutenant isn't impossible either!"

"This is heavenly good news, Captain!"

Wendy chattered excitedly without stopping, but as John listened to her report, his hands and feet began to turn cold uncontrollably, and his head swam.

Good news?

Are you kidding me?

This fucking counted as a good thing?

What the hell had this stupid pig done, bastard?!

John roared inwardly. But facing Wendy's excited gaze, although he wanted nothing more than to eat her alive—

He still had no choice but to put on a surprised expression, as though marching toward destruction alongside the Empire was exactly what he had hoped for. With his face twitching, he replied:

"Heh, hehe, is that so? Then that really is... very pleasing."

Pleasing my ass. This was a fucking disaster!

"Yes, Warrant Officer John!"

Yet Wendy was somewhat puzzled as she looked at her captain's "calm expression." They had clearly earned merit this time, so why did this commander show no happiness at all? Instead, he even seemed somewhat unhappy, as though his defenses had been completely shattered.

But when she connected this with his earlier "every calculation accounted for" performance, Wendy instantly understood everything.

He simply did not regard this victory as worth mentioning!

Yes, that was right. It had to be!

Although they had stopped the Allied Forces secret unit's attack and given the Empire an opportunity to alter the Battle of Walden—

At its core, this had merely eased the situation and could not completely reverse the tide of battle.

And what Warrant Officer John wanted to see was not such a tiny victory. He wanted to dominate the entire battlefield!

That was why, after hearing her report, he had displayed such a disdainful expression!

How calm. How proud!

He was not moved by a fleeting victory, but kept his eyes on the bigger picture, maintaining astonishing composure and wisdom at every moment.

So this was the world as seen through the eyes of a true genius commander?

It was simply breathtaking!

Wendy was filled with endless emotion, and her admiration for John reached its peak at that moment.

Yet at the same time, unaware of Wendy's thoughts, the "genius commander" John, with his back turned to his subordinate, slowly raised his head and tried his best not to let his bitter tears spill from his eyes.

A promotion and a raise? Becoming a first lieutenant?

Are you kidding me?!

He had only wanted to slack off and retire. Things should not have turned out like this!

Just which fucking link had gone wrong?!

(End of Chapter)