Chapter 37: The Unforeseen Interruption

“What in the world have you all been doing to let Ethan Prescott come to the battlefield? The operation starts tonight!”

Bang!

A desk splintered apart within the building serving as headquarters. Captain Chase, Bliss’s adjutant in the Antares Unit, felt as though he’d witnessed an unprecedented number of strange occurrences in less than half a day. With a flick of his wrist, he telekinetically moved the broken desk away.

Possessing an A-grade memory ability and B-grade psychokinesis, he stored all administrative matters within the unit, along with anything too sensitive to be documented during combat, in his mind. As part of his security oath, he was required to have a chip implanted in his brain that could incinerate it if he were captured by an enemy nation. Fortunately, it had never been activated.

Yet, remembering Bliss in such an emotional state made Chase wonder if this information should be classified at the highest security level. He even worried that Bliss might activate the chip if he ever blurted it out.

The calm demeanor Bliss had shown just moments ago, when he instructed Ethan Prescott to be escorted to the Guides’ quarters, had vanished entirely. His current outburst, directed at the Moore family aides who had brought additional supplies, made Chase genuinely question if Bliss had been subjected to voice mimicry.

Though deceiving a biometric scanner was impossible, Chase couldn’t shake the absurd notion that another Esper might be issuing commands in Bliss’s stead.

“But Lord Bliss, haven’t your pouches run out by now?” Philip asked, his face pale.

Standing nearby, Captain Chase flinched. As Bliss’s close aide, he knew his superior had been receiving a small amount of guiding from the pouches for several days, which had made combat much more manageable. It was a hundred times better than any dulling painkillers.

“I’ve always managed fine without pouches,” Bliss retorted.

“That’s not true,” Doctor Sera interjected, her tone incredulous.

“While you’ve certainly managed without pouches before, Lord Bliss, that was when your body wasn’t in its current state. Now, I doubt even painkillers would properly work.”

“We’re developing anesthetics, aren’t we?”

“Lord Bliss!” Sera cried out, her voice a near-scream. Her eyes were distorted as if she were about to weep.

Philip, too, shouted in an agitated voice, “That is not a weapon for yourself, Lord Bliss!”

Bliss pulled a large pouch from the sack Ethan had brought and opened it.

‘Damn it,’ he cursed internally. His body, however, yearned desperately for the guiding from Ethan’s pouch, not for painkillers or anesthetics.

Seeing this, Doctor Sera and Philip, and even Ethan’s guards who had been somewhat skeptical, all breathed a sigh of relief. They realized that listening to Ethan had not been the wrong decision after all.

A little calmer, Bliss slumped into the lone chair remaining where the desk had once stood.

“Alright,” he said, crossing his long legs in his combat suit, his gaze dispassionate and overbearing. “Let’s hear what Ethan said to convince all of you.”

Liam and Kyle exchanged glances, and then Kyle cleared his throat.

“Ahem,” Kyle began. “Ethan came to my quarters and asked me to call Liam. Then, out of the blue, he brought up our Esper grades, asking if we were, in fact, Lord Bliss’s guards. He must have noticed something during the skirmish with the assassin, and frankly, we were quite flustered.”

Liam nodded in agreement.

“Honestly, in that terrifying, chaotic mess, how could anyone have possibly realized we were A-grade Espers and that I possessed two abilities?” Liam continued. “Ethan suddenly blindsided us, and while we were still dazed, he asked if Lord Bliss could truly avoid direct participation in this battle.”

“And?” Bliss prompted.

“We reassured him that you truly hadn’t been participating much lately, and if you did, it would only be once,” Kyle explained.

“Oh, he said that…?” Doctor Sera interjected, sounding a little surprised.

“Well, yes,” Sera continued. “The next day, during my class, Ethan asked me about the size and number of pouches he’d given Lord Bliss. He wanted to know how many days Lord Bliss could last with them.”

“…And?” Bliss pressed.

“I told him it was hard to say for certain, but if you didn’t directly participate in combat, you could probably last about two weeks,” Sera replied. “Oh, and before he sought out Liam and Kyle the day before, he’d also asked me my departure date.”

Philip then looked at Doctor Sera with a slightly dazed expression and mumbled his own part.

“He asked me if there was an executive order requiring Espers and Guides to fight together in combat,” Philip explained. “I told him such a law existed, of course, but that Lord Bliss could be an exception. I tried to reassure him a bit.”

Listening alongside them, Captain Chase’s lips curled into a slight smirk. Ethan had been systematically collecting information from multiple individuals, all leading to one central objective. The involved parties seemed to sense this, their faces showing a hint of exasperation.

“Two days after Lord Bliss departed, Ethan gathered Mr. Hans, who had almost fully recovered, and the rest of us for a major announcement,” Philip recounted. “By then, he had already collected all the information about graduate school enrollment and additional courses through Dale.”

“…That damned brat,” Bliss muttered under his breath.

From that point, the sequence of events was obvious. Ethan, with his unique rhetorical style—seemingly logical yet subtly insistent—must have swayed everyone.

“Mr. Hans was the last to object,” Philip continued, “but when Marquis Douglas Moore visited that week, he no longer opposed it.”

Bliss’s eyebrow arched. “My grandfather?”

“Well…” Philip hesitated, glancing around unnecessarily. There was no one nearby to spread rumors, yet his voice instinctively lowered, as if discussing a deeper family matter.

“He reportedly learned about Ethan during his business trip, through Lord Bliss’s report. But after his return, there was a loud argument with Marchioness Annabelle Moore at the main residence. In fact…he still hasn’t returned home and is staying at Lord Bliss’s mansion. While there, he’s also interrogating the captured assassin. It seems more like he’s venting his frustration, as the assassin’s mind isn’t likely to return to normal anyway…”

“…Predictable,” Bliss cut in. Without needing to hear more, he could envision the entire scenario. He raised a hand to halt Philip’s report, then turned his gaze to Ethan’s guards.

“I wonder if you brought a sense of responsibility with you when you brought Ethan here.”

Liam and Kyle tensed, about to answer with a firm “Of course,” when Ethan’s voice cut in.

“I merely insisted on coming here, so why are you blaming Liam and Kyle?”

“……Ethan.”

“The Guide barracks are quite impressive, by the way. Very well camouflaged.”

“…Did you introduce yourself to the Guide personnel?”

“They were very kind.”

Bliss gently pulled Ethan closer to his side. Seeing Bliss perform such a complete 180-degree shift in attitude after just moments of shouting at them, Chase’s eyes widened.

“You can stay in my tent,” Bliss offered. “But it’s dangerous, so don’t you dare leave it.”

“It’s fine if I stay with the Guides.”

“I won’t be participating directly in combat either, so I’ll mostly be in the command center. Therefore, use my tent.”

“Oh… is that really alright?” Ethan asked, surprised.

“It would put my mind at ease.”

‘Hmph, Colonel Bliss Moore, speaking in such a gentle voice? It’s chilling,’ Chase thought.

He instinctively looked at Doctor Sera and her group with a bewildered expression, but they seemed quite accustomed to such scenes, showing no particular reaction. Even the guards deliberately turned their heads away, pretending not to notice.

‘Didn’t they say he was a civilian?’ Chase wondered.

He began to doubt if his superior had truly lost his mind. In truth, it was a miracle Bliss Moore had endured this long, so many would probably just sadly nod if he started showing strange symptoms.

It was only natural that Chase saw a reflection of his younger self in Bliss—the same awkward man who had stammered and pursued his own matched Guide, who was then resting in the barracks.

“Colonel!”

A unit member in charge of communications rushed into the command center, then paused to salute sharply. Noticing the urgency in his actions, Bliss waved Ethan and Sera’s group away. Chase, seeing Bliss’s eyes follow Ethan’s retreating figure until the door closed behind him, nodded, wondering if his theory was truly correct.

‘Colonel Bliss Moore, desperate for a Guide, has suffered a brain anomaly and become fixated on a perfectly compatible civilian.’

****

“Veliki’s forces have refused the pincer movement,” Bliss announced.

Veliki was one of the disputed autonomous regions. Though the conflict bore the characteristics of a territorial war, Veliki had formed a marriage alliance with the invaded Riga Autonomous Region. The plan was for Bliss’s Antares Unit to execute a pincer movement to extract Riga’s lord and their defending forces, who were isolated in a winter villa at the edge of the territory.

“That’s strange,” Bliss mused. “They can’t be unaware that if the Riga Autonomous Region falls, it might be fine for a moment, but Veliki would be next.”

Bliss’s brow furrowed.

“The weather is terrible,” a subordinate reported. “It’s already been fifteen days since Zaisler’s forces blew up the railway and power plant leading into Riga, isolating them. If this cold continues, the lord’s safety is one concern, but all the villagers could die.”

“What are Veliki’s forces doing now?” Bliss asked.

“They are reportedly retreating again,” came the reply. “Veliki’s lord has apparently issued a retreat order.”

Opinions poured in from various directions.

“Without Veliki’s forces, it will be impossible for us alone to protect everyone.”

“Perhaps we should change our strategy?”

“We haven’t properly grasped the abilities of the Espers Zaisler has mixed into his armored and infantry units,” one officer stated. “It was probably impossible for them to staff all units with Espers, but our previous engagements were short, attritional skirmishes that didn’t allow us to fully assess their capabilities.”

“…Ultimately, the mixed Espers are the biggest problem, then,” Bliss murmured.

Chase shot him an anxious look. ‘Surely not,’ he thought.

“……I’ll go myself.”

“Colonel!”