Book 5: Volume 4 Chapter 8, Suppression

Translator: Kazumi

Editor: Silavin

 

About an hour before the attack.

 

Peach received the report with a composed nod.

 

“Good. So it worked.”

 

“Yes. The ‘Fisherman’ has already departed. He was followed the entire way.”

 

The woman who had delivered the letter to the man in the underground room was one of Peach’s people. The man had never really had a chance. The letter, the correspondence, the apparent coordination, all of it had been carefully constructed by the Smith Kingdom’s shadows. Everything had been woven so thoroughly that what the man did not have an ounce of doubt in what he believed was happening.

 

They had allowed themselves to appear outmanoeuvred. But they had never stopped gathering information. The skilled operatives who had spent months spread out across the country, patient, quiet and ready, had infiltration not just possible but seamless.

 

“How are things on the other end?”

 

Peach directed the question toward someone standing slightly apart from the rest. It was Iris, one of the kingdom’s shadow operatives, managing a parallel part of the plan from her position nearby.

 

“Proceeding without issue,” Iris said.

 

“Then we continue as planned.”

 

“Understood. Though…” Iris paused, choosing her words. “Are you sure this will be fine?”

 

Peach tilted her head slightly, the question genuinely considered rather than deflected.

 

“If your reports are accurate, and I have no reason to think they aren’t, I don’t see any problems. Is there an error somewhere?”

 

“No. Nothing like that.”

 

“Then the infiltration worked precisely because of how thorough the groundwork was. That’s not a coincidence.” A brief pause. “I intend to continue relying on those skills.”

 

Iris said nothing further, though her thoughts did not settle. She had raised the concern partly because she had been asked to, and partly because she genuinely held it. The plan required simultaneously subduing two separate gatherings of thugs across the capital, and Peach had declined to request additional support from the Smith Kingdom.

 

The implication was that Razequa Amamiya’s own people would handle both. Even the shadows’ leadership had apparently received that information with something less than full confidence.

 

That was why the secondary operation was staggered by half a day. If the capital failed, the other plan would be called off.

 

Peach, watching Iris’s expression, smiled quietly.

 

“You’re worried.”

 

It was not quite a question, and Iris did not respond immediately.

 

“It will be fine.” Peach said, before the silence could ask anything of either of them. “Well, probably.”

 

The smile remained, warm and opaque. Whatever Peach knew, or suspected, or had already accepted, she said nothing. She rarely did in the first place.

 

Iris found, as she often did in Peach’s presence, that she was left holding uncertainty without quite knowing what to do with it.

 

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They had handled the initial projectile storm reasonably well.

 

But they had not handled what came next.

 

The moment their perimeter tightened and their attention fixed outward, something was thrown.

 

A beat of confused sound, then smoke spreading faster than expected. Those closest to it inhaled before they could think not to.

 

“What in! ” A cough cut the words off.

 

“My eyes—!!!”

 

The chaos that followed was immediate. Perhaps one in ten covered their faces in time. The rest were left stumbling, eyes streaming, lungs burning. They were doing their best to just barely react.

 

Their leader was trying to give orders but by the time his voice carried forward, the next phase had already begun.

 

Five figures, all dressed in black, moved through the smokescreen. One of them broke directly toward him.

 

He clicked his tongue once, gave a short order to the men nearest him, and raised his guard.

 

It was clear the person approaching was skilled. It was immediately clear from the way she moved. And despite the black clothing that obscured most of her features, his instincts told him within a breath that she was a woman.

 

Something flickered across his expression.

 

“What a waste,” he said.

 

He was facing Peach.

 

The other four were also Succubus. They were among the best fighters in the village. They had taken the other significant threats, leaving Peach free to focus on the leader. It was an efficient arrangement.

 

What it could not account for was what Peach was noticing in herself.

 

Something felt off. She did not show it. However, she could not dismiss the feeling. If anything, engaging the leader directly was a way of testing it, of learning something about what it was before she allowed herself to acknowledge it.

 

The man she was fighting had once come within a hair’s breadth of achieving B-rank as an adventurer. He was not someone who should have gone down easily.

 

He really did not go down quite that easy. But the smoke had affected him more than he had been willing to let on, and his timing was fractionally off in a way that compounded itself with each exchange. Peach’s strikes carried something additional, too. The packed Divine Power, which made each impact register well beyond each strike appear to hold.

 

He collapsed with an expression of genuine disbelief.

 

Peach looked around. More than half were down. The remaining were being managed, slowly but surely, by the others.

 

She stepped forward to help.

 

A hand closed around her arm from behind.

 

“Wait a moment.”

 

She had not heard Mitsuki approach. She had not heard her at all. Mitsuki, dressed in her own black, had come and gone from the edges of Peach’s awareness like a shadow that had decided to become solid only when it chose to.

 

“I’ll take over from here.” Mitsuki said simply. “You take command from back here.”

 

She released Peach’s arm and walked toward the battle without waiting for a response.

 

Peach watched her go.

 

“As I expected,” she murmured, to no one in particular. Her voice carried a thread of something that might have been exasperation, or resignation, or both. “They noticed just from that much.”

 

The words dissolved into the dark before anyone could hear them.

 

Mitsuki’s entry into the fight noticeably changed its tempo. The other Succubus had already brought down the most capable fighters among the group while Peach had occupied the leader. What remained was mostly men still coughing, still disoriented, still finding their footing in a situation that had outpaced them. They were naturally swiftly subdued .

 

Some managed to slip away. The Smith Kingdom’s shadows had anticipated this, and handled them according to plan.

 

The secondary operation, smaller in scale, proceeded without complication.

 

By the time everything was accounted for, only twenty minutes had passed.

 

The plan was complete.