Chapter 735: 第733章 永别了，国王和战争

Chapter 733 732. farewell forever, the king and the war

Major Ron was very firm in his request to return at once to the Pathfinder Fortress.

Fraser advised him not to do anything foolish, but in all the years he had known Ron, he had never seen this guy so serious and stubborn about anything, this guy was a very “know-it-all” character, knew how to read people’s minds and never caused trouble for others for his own reasons.

Although he is usually a bit of a jerk, he can still be relied on at critical moments.

However, perhaps it was Major Dunn’s death that stimulated him, after the seven-day coma, Ron was like a different person, irritable and violent, Fraser couldn’t stop him at all, so he promised to bring him back to clarify this matter as soon as Ron’s surgery was done.

But I didn’t expect that just as he left, Ron had his own Captain Iron Hands call out to Brother Loyalty for him.

Because he had bought the highest level of war insurance, this time the mechanical prosthesis surgery was personally debugged by Brother Loyalty for him, and he had brought a whole box of leg prosthesis modules and accessories alone.

“So, which one do you want?”

Brother Loyalty with his engineering glasses was grasping a cable for debugging prosthetics in his left hand, and in his right hand he was carrying a very dangerous looking triple-jawed stabilizer, and beside him was a shelf full of all sorts of leg prosthetics.

Not only did he make them himself, but his young mentor, Sheridan, had traded them in for “high quality” ones from Chardonnay.

Some of them were even delivered to Transylvania only yesterday, which were originally provided to players for trading, but Major Ron was obviously a big customer, so Loyal Brother also paid a lot of blood to ensure the quality of service.

“Either one will do, you just have to get me on my feet by early morning tomorrow, I have an errand to run.”

Leaning back on the hospital bed Ron bit into an apple, he stared ahead as if at an invisible object and spoke in a hoarse tone:

“Can’t delay Fraser will definitely notify them in advance, even my father will block me, so I have to be quick, your Transylvanian airships will stop at the Maginot defense line, right?
Can you use your connections to arrange a ticket for me?
To the Ancestral Woodlands!
It will only take one night to travel to the Pathfinder Fortress from there.”

“You do realize that you’re actually doing something stupid, right?”

Loyalist asked rhetorically with a wink:
“You’re a tiny Major who dares to run and question your Marshal, that act alone can be seen as a challenge to military law in itself, not to mention the fact that Marshal Loren rules the military so tightly that he should shoot you if you dare to break into his office.

Your general father won’t be able to protect you.

Take my advice, brother, this is not the way to investigate the truth!

You’re putting yourself at gunpoint. Not only will you not get what you want, but you’ll easily scare the snakes.

If you’re sure this is being hidden by the military brass, then what you should do is do what Colonel Frazier did, stabilize yourself before anything else, you’ve got a general for a father, that’s already winning at the starting line.

Uncle sees you as a good kid, so I’ll remind you not to mess around.

So if it’s going to be quick, I’ll give you the standard prosthetic first, this thing has been used in Chardonnay Harbor for two hundred years without any major problems, it’s all processed stuff and it’s exceptionally quick to adapt.

I’ll give you the best kind, five plug-in slots, and pick the combat and support plug-ins you need to use when you get back from your errand, I won’t have to come over for the later installations.

This thing has a ten-year warranty, so save your money.”

After saying that, Brother Loyalty turned around and went to help Major Ron modulate the mechanical legs.

As a spy, he keenly smelled the opportunity to intervene from Major Ron here, but suffered from the fact that there was still no suitable local agent under his command, and it was too late to make a report to the Phantom Intelligence Bureau, and Mrs. Adele’s main focus was on the Black Plague, so she could only sit back and watch this opportunity slip by in vain.

But in the end is the old spies, a few words seem to comfort actually arch fire, almost to Ron angry explosion.

Captain Ironhand beside him was very worried, and whispered to his own officer while Loyalist was debugging his mechanical leg:
“As direct as this foreigner’s words are, he’s not wrong, Major.

If you really want to get to the bottom of this, the best thing to do is to hold on to your current position and work your way up, and when you have access to more information, the truth of this matter may come out.

I’m a stupid person, but I think it’s a bit too extreme for you to question the entire Pathfinder Legion based on just this one incident of the Jackal Plague.”

Ron simply closed his eyes and didn’t talk.

This gesture of refusing to communicate made the Captain rather helpless as well, but he didn’t think of ventilating Colonel Fraser, after all, he had also experienced the attack and defense of the Black Flame Pass.

That wave of jackal plague outbreak was right in front of his eyes, if it wasn’t for Lord Heather’s self-sacrifice, the plague offensive would definitely have to cause even more horrific casualties, but just that small period of time of the plague outbreak had left the originally solidly fortified Position 8 dead and wounded, and not even one-third of the Goldfinch artillerymen guarding there had escaped back.

It was impossible to say that the captain did not have some anger in his heart.

“Here, inhale a bit of anesthetic gas to make it easier for me to implant a control arithmetic pearl in your wound.”

Brother Loyal’s side made preparations and took out an asthma respirator style thing and placed it by Major Ron’s mouth as he said smugly:

“This is a sharp product smuggled from Chardonnay Harbor, if you are not a big customer, I would not bother to get on this thing, just take a deep breath, the halfling did the inhalation control, it can accurately control the time of unconsciousness in ten minutes.

Hey, big guy over there, you’ve got a new combat component for your cyborg too, want one for you too? The new arrival of the strong-strike type frame that comes out is really awesome, we call it the gorilla arm.

Commissioned His Excellency Flywheel to reset the internals, and now you can additionally add small Mantis blades as well.”

“Yeah, give me one!”

During the conversation between Brother Loyalty and Captain Ironhand, Major Ron drifted off to sleep, and when he awoke again, the cybernetic implantation had been completed, and there was still no sense of flesh and blood in his left leg, but he could clearly feel a “new organ” waiting for orders there.

This is a very novel experience.

He had heard Captain Robinson describe the feeling when he first got the prosthetic body, the mechanical hand that always needed to give orders to act was very clumsy to use, however, after getting used to it, he would feel that this thing was much better than the original hand and also much more deadly.

“Although it’s a basic prosthetic, I’ve also loaded it with a bounce enhancement module and an unloading impact module, so now you can jump high into the air and then kill the battlefield with a cool ‘rocket slam’.”

Brother Loyalty smiled and patted Ron’s mechanical leg as he said:
“Let the Captain teach you exactly how to use it, by the way, considering that you might have to become a pauper in the future, the Captain paid for this extra modification for you, we’ll see you after that, lad.

I’ve just got someone to buy you a station ticket for the dirigible at the Maginot Line, it arrives in thirty minutes, but take a word from your old uncle, don’t be impulsive in any case!

It’s the future that counts.

You know, what you eat is aggression, but what you feed is the pattern.”

Finishing another archfire he dragged his mechanical case out of the ward while Captain Ironhand, who had his arm frame replaced, stood off to the side getting used to his new mechanical hand.

This thing is bigger than the previous one by two whole circles, and with the exaggerated upper body muscles of Captain Iron Hands looks a kind of incongruous sense, but that steel giant fist in the tight grip when the sense of power erupted is really intimidating pull full.

Such a heavy fist smashed down, hit the jackal head is estimated to be able to crack the skull, in the fight with the human enemy, this thing is a proper lethal weapon.

Ron attempted to jump from the sickbay, stumbling a bit as he stood but quickly stabilizing himself as he sent accompanying commands to his mechanical legs, a miniature steam furnace humming in them at the first lift of his leg, causing many of the modules in them to operate in turn adapting the force of the ground to Ron’s gait.

As subtle as it sounded, the rugged ways of steam engineering kept it in an “awkward” stance that was “barely functional”, and after a few adjustments Ron was able to walk around in a rather strange stance, but it was not easy to use his machine with the same agility as Captain Ironhands. Captain Iron Hands, but it would take some time before he could use his robotic hand as dexterously as Captain Iron Hands.

“You stay here and keep watch, I’m going to the Maginot line.”

Ron threw an overcoat over his body and was ready to go, but the Captain shook his head and fetched him a warm classic green military overcoat, saying:

“It’s the dead of winter already, Major, and you’re still sick.”

“What do you mean you’re carrying a bag?”

Ron glanced at his adjutant and said:

“I didn’t ask you to tag along, you don’t have a general father, and don’t you dare storm the marshal’s office with me watch out for your dog’s head!”

“General Soros gave me orders to protect you, sir.”

Captain Ironhand said with a shrug:

“I have to fulfill my duty, besides, I suddenly realized that with my background, I’m lucky to be able to make it as far as retiring as a school officer, I still have a big family to support, there’s no way to make a good life for my family with just a military paycheck. You are not the Transylvanian King of Gamblers, you have a lot of ways to make money and you are righteous, so I’m sure I can make a lot of money by following you.”

“Bullshit, stay here!”

Ron grabbed the adjutant’s traveling bag and chided:
“You have fought so many times for your future, after becoming a war hero this time, you are destined to have good luck, there is no need to put your future on the line like this loser like me, I don’t need that in the first place, but you are different.”

“Only one third of the brothers from position eight have returned, and now there’s still a big half of them lying here, who doesn’t have fire in their hearts? You’re not the only one who found the problem. If I dared to let you go alone to seek justice for the dead and injured brothers, the others could eat me alive.”

Captain Ironhand sighed:
“Prospects do matter, but there’s always something in our lives as big men that’s more important than all that glitz and glamor, and I’m a roughneck, and I can’t figure out the complicated things that only Colonel Frazier can.

If you think that the ones hidden here have something to do with the Pathfinder Corps hierarchy, then I’m willing to break into command after you.

May General Soros, for the sake of my diligence in carrying out my orders, put in a word for me when the angry marshal shoots me.”

“You won’t die, we’re already war heroes, and Marshal Loren, as angry as he is, will have to consider the domestic repercussions; he can’t do the sort of thing that would liquidate the heroes after the war, when King Louis’s negative arrangements in the direction of Transylvania have left us men to be used to publicize the victory at home after the fall of the Black Flame Pass.

We would have had the amulet in our possession, and death was absolutely impossible.

You really think I’m stupid.

But I only bought one airship ticket, so you can figure out your own way with that one.”

“Hey, that’s a good one, I just won a ton of money using the card hiding trick you taught me.”
—
“Get out of my office! You two little scumbags! Guards! Drag them out!”

The next morning, Marshal Loren’s loud voice rang out from his office in the Pathfinder Fortress, but this time, unlike usual, the roar was filled with suppressed anger.

It seemed that someone had really pissed the marshal off.

The guard at the door immediately pushed his way in but was easily silenced by Captain Ironhand, and Ron was slamming the table and snarling at the short-man marshal:

“Get this straight! Are you colluding with the bullshit psionicist from the Tower of the Ring? You haven’t answered me what I just asked you! Why did we use the same plague that the Jackals used before?
Soldiers under your command died! They were killed by the same plague we used! Everyone who survived on position eight saw the Jackals drop the plague barrels with their own eyes, even the runes on them were identical!

Bullshit love of soldiers, you cold-blooded bastard dwarf.”

Loren, who was stuck in his office questioning these damned things, almost went mad.

The young man in front of him had no idea how many heads had already fallen to the ground because of the Tower of the Ring, he was just venting his anger, Loren had lost comrades as well, he could understand where Ron’s anger was coming from at this point, but this young man with a bright future was using the worst kind of venting.

He had trampled the face of the Marshal of the Pathfinder Legion underfoot, he had violated the most untouchable taboo in the system that was the military.

“I’ll give you one last warning, Major Ron!”

Loren stared at him like an angry lion as he practically squeezed the words out of his teeth:

“Get out of my office immediately! Obey the guidance of the military police to go and stay in a cage while you await the court-martial’s decision on the foolishness you and your adjutant have done on this day. And if that’s too boring for you, then I can shoot you myself right here!”

“We went with 5,500 men and only came back with 2,000, the damn jackals and their vicious plague killed our soldiers, Marshal.

I know that in the eyes of a great man like you, the grudge behind these things can be slowly settled after the Black Plague is over.

l also know it was the right thing to do.
But I’m sorry, I’m just a pipsqueak who survived the front lines, I’m just a soldier, I don’t see as far as you do, and I can’t understand any necessary sacrifices.

I want revenge, revenge for my brothers for my subordinates, revenge for Dunn!

That’s all!”

Major Ron took a step back.

He gripped his major’s insignia and pulled the thing off with a single effort, and as Marshal Loren rose up in wide-eyed fury, he gave his major’s insignia one last stroke then dropped it on the marshal’s desk.

This action was just in time to be seen in the doorway by General Thoros, who had arrived as fast as he could, and the panting General’s hand, which he had just raised, fell helplessly at the moment.

He knew that he had come too late, and that his stupid son had done all that could not be done.

Ron didn’t care about that at this point, cloaked in his military coat he said dumbly:

“I know that this will get the word out about this as fast as possible, I know that this will put you under the most political and public opinion pressure you can handle, and I know that this will force you to have to get to the bottom of this as fast as you can.

The entire Pathfinder Corps up and down the country will be watching your actions afterward because of this incident.

Those who died and those who lived are watching you!
Perhaps no one will dare say it to your face, but be careful, Marshal, as you walk on thin ice you need only make one wrong choice and the Pathfinder Corps you have worked so hard to build will fall apart from within.

I didn’t come here on a whim. I learned from you how to put pressure on a target.

I’m sorry, Marshal, but I am pressuring you, and this is the fastest and most direct way I can get justice and revenge for my brothers.

I know that I will be expelled from the Pathfinder Corps today .”

“You wish! You’re an asshole who deserves nothing more than a bullet.”

Loren clapped his hands together and roared:
“Guards! Take these two below-the-belt traitors down to their cells, and if they dare to resist, shoot them on sight!”

More guards rushed in, Major Ron and Captain Ironhand no longer resisted, allowing them to escort themselves out, one of his eyes staring dead at Marshal Loren as Ron was dragged out.

Those bloodshot and tired eyes were exactly what a soldier’s eyes should be.

It even had supplication written all over it.

Several minutes later, General Soros, who seemed to have aged a dozen years in an instant, walked into the office, and before he could even open his mouth, he heard Loren’s voice ringing out from the smoke:

“Your son must be very desperate otherwise that smart boy wouldn’t use this way to make a last stand, he probably guessed the compromise between us and the Tower of the Ring.

Blanch!
I really didn’t think that something that was over two years ago would still be making waves today
No, it never ended at all!
The moment I ordered the use of the plague sent by the Tower of the Ring, this matter would haunt me like a grudge for the rest of my life.

Forgive me for having come to my senses, but now I realize that I dug a hole for myself with my own hands that will never be filled.

The Transylvanians are seeking revenge on me, the grudge spirits of the city of Sicor will not relent, the dogs hiding in the Tower of the Ring are smug because of this, and now even my own soldiers are going to mutiny because of this.

But don’t worry, Thoros.

They are war heroes, King Louis has begun to publicize their victory at home, Ron is at the center of that propaganda, and the court-martial won’t execute them at this point, but your promotion in two months may have to be as a result…”

“No, I don’t care about that anymore, Marshal.”

General Soros stepped forward and reached for the military insignia that had been discarded by his own son, he clasped the object in the palm of his hand and pressed his five fingers hard enough to make it sink deeper into his flesh as well as make himself feel the pain.

He said wearily:
“We’ve got to fix this! If Fraser’s report and Ron’s questioning are true, it means that a force is hiding in our country that could stab us in the back, and I don’t know if His Majesty is prepared for that, but there may not be much time left for him.

The Tower of the Ring.
You really should have led your troops to bulldoze it last time!”

“Yeah.”

Marshal Loren, who was sitting in a special chair, tilted his head and exhaled a smoke ring as he whispered:

“We missed that opportunity, but this time . This time it’s never going to be solved by cleaning up a single faction, 3500 people who went to the dead . I want them to pay a hundred times more for their blood!”

(End of chapter)