The best way to solve most problems in society is, naturally, to eliminate their cause.

Not every social problem can be eliminated, however. In such cases, a society's leadership generally tries to divert public attention by singling out a particular group within it. (Authorities in this field included Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong.)

This means shifting the costs of social problems and the public's anger onto a tangible target. Nearly every defeated nation has had to resort to this quite frequently. Blaming the poor costs less than blaming the leadership.

The most common version is, "There was a traitor among us."

A slightly more elaborate twist would be, "It wasn't that the enemy was superior or that we were inferior. It was all down to one particular individual's overwhelming abilities." (Japan actually went so far as to establish a shrine to Yi Sun-sin after the Imjin War.)

Idolizing an enemy is surprisingly helpful for consolidating internal unity. Along the lines of, "Our preparations and plans really were perfect. We just happened to be up against XX!"

This was a mindset shared by nearly every demon group the Hero's Party had crushed. What were we supposed to do when our enemy was someone who had even killed the Demon King? That sort of thing.

The problem was that the Dwarves had never directly clashed with the Hero's Party. (Their roles had been logistical support in the rear or infiltration behind enemy lines.)

So the Dwarven leadership created another "overwhelming adversary." As luck would have it, there was someone they had frequently clashed with, who had even killed one of the Seven Dragon Generals, and who had genuinely inflicted concrete, quantifiable losses on the Dwarves.

The Venomous Spider. Major Ivan Petrovich. Krasilof's Dagger, the Great King's Executioner, the Woodsman, and the despair of the Dwarven intelligence corps.

There is usually one thing to watch out for when creating this sort of "adversary." If that adversary is still alive and active, the entire nation risks sinking beneath a sense of inferiority.

On that score, the Dwarven leadership could relax. Major Ivan Petrovich had died alongside Aviditas of the Seven Dragon Generals. That loathsome, gloomy bastard had apparently taken the bastard who deserved to be torn limb from limb down with him.

Now they could safely embark on "idolizing evil."

What? A food shortage? Ivan strikes again!

What? Goblins running riot? Ivan strikes again!

What's that? All our export routes are blocked? Ivan strikes again!!

Job insecurity, population decline, a catastrophic fall in gross national product, countless munitions factories going bankrupt, a surge in poverty, and an ever-widening wealth gap.

Faced with any social problem befitting a defeated nation, they need only cry, "Ivan strikes again!" Everyone would accept the explanation and go back to being docile workers. For these paragons of egalitarianism, Ivan was something of an all-purpose trump card.

And now, the people here were paying the price. Not some abstract price like social problems, but a coldly honed, tangible, physical, visible one. (It was unfair. The leaders who had exploited Ivan's name back then had not joined the rebels.)

"Ivan Petrovich... strikes... again!"

The command headquarters of the Third Munitions District stared in terror at the corpse of a Dwarf hanging from a pole planted at an angle in the middle of the street.

In an age when bringing back the dead was nothing remarkable, they had signed an MOU with a faction hailed as the pinnacle of necromancy—the art of commanding the dead—only to find the most horrifying resurrection of all awaiting them.

* * *

Ivan did not consider himself the person with the most important role in this mission. (It certainly wasn't the Dwarves. All they had to do was advance. He had never expected moles to do a person's job in the first place.)

He had slapped the name Feint East, Strike West on it, but that was not the essence of this operation. If he insisted on invoking that old stratagem, he ought to have called it Feint East + Feint East + Feint East, and at the same time, Strike West + Strike West + Strike West.

Three separate operations on three different fronts had to complement one another perfectly, while each simultaneously functioned as the main thrust.

Ivan was bait for the operations on the other fronts, while also serving as the field agent responsible for eliminating Aviditas's underlings.

The Dwarves were bait to support Ivan and Enrique, while also serving as the main thrust responsible for pinning down the rebels' main force.

Enrique was bait to draw some of the attention away from Ivan and the Dwarves, while also serving as the rescue team, sowing confusion in enemy command's intelligence to extract the Secretary's son.

No piece on this board was simply meant to serve as bait and leave the game. Everyone had to do their part, and everyone had to succeed simultaneously.

That made Enrique's role the most important.

She could not reveal her location, since the Secretary's son might be moved the moment she was exposed. Yet she also had to alert enemy command to the possibility that she was after him. And she had to carry out the hostage rescue in perfect synchronization with the completion of the other operations.

That was why Lucia was here. There was no need to communicate with the Dwarves, but he had to remain in constant contact with Enrique.

Ivan snapped his pocket watch shut and looked at Lucia.

"Again?"

"Yes, again."

Lucia waited for the signal with her eyes closed, then nodded. Ivan let out a quiet sigh. Apparently, every suspected target location Enrique had searched had been wrong. This was already the third.

Day Five of Feint East, Strike West. By now, she needed to be finding the facility where the Secretary's son was held.

There were five candidate locations in all, carefully selected from camps capable of holding an abducted dignitary, thwarting rescue attempts by covert-operations troops, and readily communicating with the outside in an emergency.

She had searched three of them now. This wasn't a matter of searching a single building. She had to comb through an entire enemy unit's camp, with no intelligence whatsoever, without being exposed. It was hard to call her mission any easier than Ivan's.

Still, three out of five meant she should be getting a hit soon. Unless, by sheer chance, he was being held at the very last candidate location.

"Oh, Senior! There's another group coming out! Wow, they're really sticking close together this time!"

"Move to C-11 and conceal yourself. I'll strike in fifteen seconds."

"Oh, ah, w-wait a minute!!"

Lucia hurried through the shadows to the other side of the building. Ivan shouldered his rifle and turned his gaze.

Beyond the broken window, a lone Dwarf was trembling in the square. Wounded, the Dwarf sobbed and screamed. Ivan studied his contorted face through the scope, then dispassionately shifted the muzzle.

"Just hold on! We'll be right there!!"

A terrified group of Dwarves approached, wearing armor plates thicker than standard issue.

Five of them.

Ivan carefully examined their equipment through his scope. His current ammunition could not penetrate their frontal armor.

Narrowing his dry, gritty eyes, he slowly steadied his breathing. A few test shots had already acquainted him with the gun's specifications. Like all Dwarven firearms, it was an excruciatingly precise piece of machinery.

He let out half a breath, held it, and slipped his index finger inside the trigger guard. The spring's resistance pressed pleasantly against his fingertip.

His target was 1.5 centimeters below the pauldron: the mail exposed when the wearer raised his arm. Even that could not be penetrated with a single bullet, but it was the weakest point available from the front.

BANG!!

The instant he fired, the Dwarf at the front jerked his head up.

'He has Line of Fire Detection.'

He hadn't spotted Ivan, but he seemed to have identified the position Ivan was using for cover. The Dwarf quickly gestured and bellowed something.

Ivan's enhanced hearing caught a whistling sound. Incoming artillery. They had located his hiding place and were shelling it.

There were roughly three seconds between firing and impact. To superhumans, three seconds represented far more than the number suggested. Ivan's eyes were already narrowed, his hands in motion.

CLACK.

Before the sparks from the first bullet's impact had faded, his hands had finished reloading. Still shouldering the rifle, controlling its recoil completely with both arms, he fired again.

BANG.

CLANG!!

The bullet struck the mail precisely, with less than 0.1 millimeters of deviation. The impact exceeded its tensile strength, loosening the links.

The moment he saw sparks fly, he swiftly reloaded with a clack. He tightened his muscles, aligning his sights, then released one final breath to steady his breathing.

BANG!!

CRACK!!

The mail snapped, loosening the pauldron. Ivan tossed aside his rifle and picked up a javelin. Repeating the same attack was pointless against Line of Fire Detection. Now that his armor was broken, the Dwarf would be certain to dodge.

Go ahead. Dodge.

Ivan drew his right arm back to its limit with a crack of straining joints. Immediately twisting his waist, he hurled the spear with the force of the recoil.

With a booming rush, the spear tore through the air, streaking toward its target. The instant it left his hand, Ivan ducked low and ran.

TAP-TAP.

He planted a foot on the windowsill and kicked off, twisting in the dizzying sensation of free flight. The moment he exposed himself, Line of Fire Detection picked up more than seven shots.

He batted aside what he could, dodged what he could, and deflected whatever required it with his armored left hand as much as possible. His body blurred for an instant.

CLANG, CLATTER!!

He planted a foot against the wall rushing toward him and kicked off. Next. He kicked off another wall. Even as he bounded through the air, his eyes remained fixed on the square.

Whenever Line of Fire Detection sounded a warning, he twisted, corrected his altered course, sprinted again, and kicked off another wall. Finally.

CRUNCH!!

As the Dwarf who had barely dodged his javelin hurried to recover his stance—

"You bastaaard!!"

Ivan landed right before his eyes and was already pulling the javelin from the ground.

Embedded deep in the ground, the javelin was still quivering with residual force. Ivan raised it and drove it straight into the startled Dwarf's shoulder.

The spearhead smashed through his shoulder blade and crushed his kneecap as it drove onward, then tore through his neck and burst out the other side.

Feeling the grinding crunch through his hands, Ivan released the shaft and immediately ducked.

BANG!! RAT-TAT-TAT!!

Countless bullets struck the body of the Dwarf, who had died without even time to scream. It was fine. Dwarven armor plates could not be penetrated head-on, even by Dwarven bullets.

That required heavy weapons. And the heavy weapons' fire was only now striking his original hiding place.

BOOOOM!!

Feeling a surge of heat against his back, Ivan reached behind him. His hands closed around an axe and a dagger.

He drew them and hurled himself at his next target. The Dwarf, only just recovering from his shock, hurriedly raised his war hammer and charged.

CRUNCH!

Ivan twisted past the hammer and drove his dagger between the links of the mail glove around the Dwarf's wrist. As the strength drained from his grip, Ivan swung his right arm and slammed the axe into him.

CLANG!

Sparks flew from the back of the Dwarf's neck. His armor had stopped the axe's blade, but apparently could do nothing about the impact. His stance buckled.

Ivan drove his dagger into the mail the axe had loosened. Three pounding blows in a single breath. The armor securing the Dwarf's helmet and pauldrons tore away.

Ivan called this "procedure" the "Can Opener." Even in the Extermination Unit, only about five agents could pull it off.

CLANG!!

The instant the helmet flew off, he finished the Dwarf with a swing of his axe. Feeling the vertebrae at the back of his neck shatter completely, he confirmed the kill and launched himself away.

"You... monster...!!"

The remaining Dwarves fled, screaming. He could not linger any longer. The gunfire registering through Line of Fire Detection was beginning to exceed his capacity to react.

A whistle announced the next artillery shot. Ivan immediately raised his left arm, shielding his neck with its armor plate. A bullet struck the back of his hand with a metallic whine and skidded away.

"Venomous... Spider...!!"

The Dwarf hanging from the pole glared at Ivan with hate-filled eyes, panting. Ivan glanced at him indifferently, then sprinted back into the city.

Artillery and gunfire continued long after he vanished from the square. Only after bullets struck it several more times did silence return.

The Dwarf slowly let his head droop and sobbed. Prey, suspended in a spider's web.

Less than ten seconds after the rescue team appeared in the square, two of his kin who had rushed to save him had crumpled into corpses.

This was how the Venomous Spider fought.

* * *

The Extermination Unit's standard field manual contained a tactic called "Antlion Pit."

It involved leaving a wounded soldier in a highly visible position, then picking off the troops sent to rescue that soldier one by one.

The mere presence of a fellow soldier screaming day and night in plain sight undermined the morale of an entire army. The enemy was forced into a choice: shoot their wounded comrade themselves to end it, or accept losses in a rescue attempt.

The usual solution was to send a superhuman soldier to the rescue. Naturally. The tactic described in the manual focused on neutralizing enemy reinforcements through sniper fire.

Superhumans could not be killed by sniping, because they had Line of Fire Detection. The original "Antlion Pit" was therefore useless against them.

That was where Ivan's reputation began to spread among his enemies.

Whenever they dispatched elite troops such as superhuman soldiers, he appeared from nowhere to ambush them, then dangled the bait once more and waited for the next superhuman.

Laying out his web and sharpening his venomous fangs in the dark.

That, they said, was how he earned the name Venomous Spider. The Dwarves had to learn that derogatory name before his real one. And by the time Ivan's real name became known, he was a legend in Dwarven intelligence.

The legend that had died at Aviditas's hands was casting its shadow over Dwarven society once more.

* * *

Command's decision to anticipate Ivan's entry and prepare a trap had been exceptionally swift and sound. Their rapid initial response had minimized pointless losses.

Enough firepower to take on even the Hero himself head-on lined the center of the munitions factory district. This would suffice. So they had thought.

If he wanted to kill Dwarves and shut down the factories, he would have to charge straight at them. They had blocked every other route.

But after the first night passed and a Dwarf became caught in the web, they remembered the Venomous Spider.

Even if they bombarded the area where they thought he was stationed into oblivion, the next day another Dwarf would be hanging from a pole.

If they sent a search party, the entire party vanished, and a lone survivor ended up on another pole.

When they mobilized every goblin for a wide-area search, all remained deathly quiet—until another pole appeared somewhere else. With a Dwarf hanging from it, of course.

It went on for days.

Whenever one screaming Dwarf fell silent, he tied up another. Again and again, openly flaunting his ability to infiltrate at any time, abduct someone without a trace, and put them on display in the square.

When two more days had passed—when they realized they had not laid a trap but fallen into one, and chose to hole up to prevent further losses—when the remaining Dwarves finally lost the will to fight and were convulsing in panic...

RUMBLE!!

The entire munitions factory began to reverberate.

The beating of wings echoed throughout the cavern, louder than the artillery. A Dwarf raised his eyes and whispered, a tiny ember of hope stirring within him.

"Have they... come?!"

Swarms of bats took flight, filling the cavern ceiling. Snakes, lizards, centipedes, rats—underground vermin poured in like a wave from the tunnel beyond the cavern.

Hissing filled the air, and when they had finally spread throughout the factory district—

"Ivan Petrovich!!!"

A voice like metal scraping against sheet iron thundered across the entire factory district.

Ivan snapped his pocket watch shut and rose.

Andgrund. Day Seven of "Feint East, Strike West."

0530 hours.

At last, the target had arrived in the trap.