Mercenary Black Mamba

Chapter 154: Chapter 18, Episode 15: The Returning Battle

Sun WooHyun found the sight of the crushed corpses and dark clouds of flies revolting. Black Mamba chased away the flies lingering around his right arm and digging in his ears and nose. The flies returned like a cloud soon after. He clicked his tongue and called Sun WooHyun over.

“Lackey, there’s another bandage in my backpack.”

“You didn’t give it to me earlier.”

“I forgot.”

A battle between life and death required high concentration. His overworked brain had pushed unimportant matters aside. Sun WooHyun loosened the litam and pulled out the compression bands to wrap the wound afresh.

Black Mamba stared at the litam for a while before throwing it aside. He was annoyed by the flies, but he didn’t want to wrap a blood-soaked cloth around his face.

His strength had drained the moment the bullet was removed. His stressed muscles convulsed in protest. His muscles screamed for nourishment. He leaned against a tree and began to heal his muscles. He took out a handful of camel date palms from his backpack and chewed on it.

Black Mamba received bullets and rubble shocks worthy of five hammers coming down on him. If he had been shot by 5.56 mm bullets, it would’ve been bearable. Of course, his bulletproof vest would have torn, as there wasn’t time to analyze which bullet to avoid or allow in the battlefield.

A sharp pain ran up his arm with the slightest of movements. He found it reassuring. Feeling pain meant that his nerves weren’t injured. It was a welcomed pain. The problem was whether he could move, not the pain. Pain was something he’d been familiar with since the age of nine.

“Wakil, don’t you need a morphine injection?” Sun WooHyun asked carefully.

“Did this human eat something strange?”

Black Mamba looked at Sun WooHyun’s changed attitude with strange eyes.

“It’s possible you’d be distracted trying to hold back the pain.”

“So, it’s between a pain that scatters my concentration and the risk of losing my senses. Which do you think is more dangerous?”

“The immediate and realistic danger has passed, and there’s no point in holding onto pain, right?”

“I see. Do it!”

“Gee, even if Wakil is a superhuman, pain is pain. Don’t worry. I’ll guard you,” Sun WooHyun muttered as he injected Black Mamba with morphine.

Black Mamba wanted to smack his talking mouth. He didn’t mind much, but those words were ironic considering how the lackey had hidden throughout the entire duration of the battle. In several ways, he was different compared to Ombuti.

When five seconds passed, he felt a light pressure on his chest. It was the starting symptoms of the morphine injection. Eight seconds later, the pain vanished. The effects of morphine were truly great.

The morphine also brought about another effect. His head cleared, and his dimensional sight poured into his surroundings. There were many who’d run and some who were hiding. He didn’t care. There were always a few lucky ones in every situation.

Those who had survived the battle were shriveled up in fear. Those who’d lost their will to shoot were no longer a threat. Instead, he became wary of those who were drugged. It was something that went against one’s determination.

Sun WooHyun looked at Black Mamba with respect in his eyes. His figure, which leaned against the palm tree, looked comfortable. It would have been the sight of a farmer taking a break after a day’s worth, had it not been for the blood. Black Mamba was a human who’d taken the same pose after beating him up, to go to sleep.

“Is he truly human?”

It was one of Sun WooHyun’s questions. The sole figure had destroyed a battalion’s worth of soldiers. Angel of Death, the nightmare of Sahel, Kanma—he lived up to those names. Sun WooHyun felt ashamed of himself for feeling so proud of his nickname, Namir.

They had been surrounded by hundreds of enemies. How many could he have killed? He considered himself the best in terms of battle abilities, but a frontal assault against hundreds of enemies was an impossible feat, even for him.

His limit was 20, an exaggeration. After that, he would have died like a beehive. He had hidden in the beat when the battle became more intense. He hadn’t come all the way to Africa to die like a dog.

Black Mamba hadn’t cared in the least. Sun WooHyun folded his pride once at Black Mamba’s strength and blood lust and twice at his fearlessness. He had witnessed a true warrior. It wasn’t simply about his undefeatable battle abilities, either.

He was a bigger man who considered other people and pitied those who had died while trying not to lose his humanity in the midst of battle. Sun WooHyun silently admitted his defeat.

“I’ll be a real lackey.”

Sun WooHyun lowered his stiff back.

“Lackey, move your ugly face out of my sight.”

Black Mamba cracked an eye open and shoved Sun WooHyun’s forehead back with a finger.

“I lost to you. You’re the hero of all.”

“Ha, stop barking madness. Give that hero s*** to the dogs.”

Black Mamba smiled bitterly.

Noja once said that the best plan was no war. The person who fought from daybreak to nightfall as a mercenary was himself. In what way was he a hero?

Would his master understand? Did he predict his future, running around like a devil? Black Mamba’s face darkened like the cold fields in Autumn. Sun WooHyun suddenly felt bad.

“Wakil, sorry about something. I hid in the beat in fear of my own life.”

Sun WooHyun rubbed his face in guilt.

“Good job. You’re a lackey, not Black Mamba. You would have helped in the battle but would be bound to death. I don’t want to go through the pain of losing someone close to me again. I’ve had enough of dogged deaths like sergeant Mike.”

“Damn, the plates are different.”

Sun WooHyun nodded. The sizes of their plates were different. Black Mamba’s back suddenly looked wider.

“Right. A FAP sub-officer is nothing to a Deuxieme Rep private.”

“That depends on the private.”

Black Mamba resigned to the complaint. Sun WooHyun took out four sets of C-rations from his backpack.

“I brought Wakil’s food with me. You worked hard for your food. You should eat.”

Hunger had caught up with him. Black Mamba brightened up.

“You act like Ombuti day by day. Finally, you’re acting like a servant.”

“I’ve been learning a lot from the senior servant.”

Sun WooHyun smiled.

Black Mamba estimated his battle capacity after recharging his energy. It was hard to exert 60 percent of his battle capacity due to the low energy and injuries. His condition wasn’t good, but he didn’t have an iota of thought to retreat in front of the enemy’s base.

Reactivating the network was easy, with the command post left intact. They’ve taken it on the chin. They had to break and move past the enemies as fast as they could before the Bata province’s soldiers became their gravel.

Black Mamba raised his body with a groan.

“Let’s go rob an empty house. We need to break them so that they’ll never catch up.”

“You can do that with that body?” Sun WooHyun pointed to his injured shoulder and side.

“That’s why I need a lackey. This time, I need support.”

“Okay. I’ll pour in everything.”

He checked his watch. Three and a half hours had passed since the beginning of the battle. It was already 2:30 PM. Black Mamba had gotten rid of over 400 people within half a day and was seeking to erase some more. Sun WooHyun could see the flames of Asura coming off Black Mamba’s back as he followed.

Black Mamba and Sun WooHyun headed towards the north-eastern command post, leaving behind the forest full of dead ki. They were headed towards another deathmatch.

The north-eastern FROLINAT command post was composed of 20 tents, a cafeteria, weaponry, and headquarters. The buildings were made out of palm trees, its roofs and walls made with reeds. Most of the buildings had burned down during the first wave of attack as it was weak to fire.

Black Mamba looked at the smoking command post with cold eyes. There were some tents on fire, but there were more burnt down.

Sun WooHyun looked at the busy FAP soldiers attempting to reorganize their camp with pitiful eyes. He had always seen blood in the past, and even now, after meeting a stubborn b*stard. However, Black Mamba wasn’t a normal, stubborn b*stard. He was a monstrous human who chased his targets until the end of the earth.

“Wakil, I took with me a few rifle grenades.”

Sun WooHyun took the rifle grenades out of his backpack. He had said a few, but there were a lot.

“You shouldn’t be experienced with it.”

“I can use any weapon that enters my hand, whatever it is.”

Sun WooHyun connected the adapter with familiar steps and placed the grenade.

Bang—

“Urgh.”

Sun WooHyun flinched at the sound of its large explosion.

“This is worse than a Kostoy[1]. The recoil is going to finish off a person.”

Sun WooHyun showed amazing accuracy despite his complaints. The grenade, which flew in the air, in an arc, landed right on the headquarter tent. Following that, another round of grenade landed on the same building.

All the standing buildings were hit by a rifle grenade. The tents were dry due to the long drought. They were swept into a fire instantly. The command post, which was attacked again by a stubborn b*stard, turned chaotic once more.

“It’s the Kanma!”

“The Kanma’s come again!”

The members, who had been suppressing the fire and tidying the mess, scattered like spiderlings in search of cover.

Tens of armed guerrillas poured out of the main buildings and tents, which were on fire. Shouts and curses were exchanged. The guerrillas didn’t take aim as they shot randomly into the other side of the wadi. They were self-marking targets who didn’t know the basics of battle.

“Were all the idiots left behind? Why’re they untrained?”

Black Mamba tilted his head and grabbed his Dragunov.

“They’re better off dead.” Sun WooHyun raged at the pathetic sight.

His pride had taken a blow as someone who had been a training officer.

Clang Clang Clang—

The triple tap of his Dragunov began. Several guerrillas out in the open fell to the ground instantly. The guerrillas finally regained their senses and scattered, in search of a hiding place.

Tututu—

Tututu—

His skills of using a Minimi was, as he’d said, better than Emil. He didn’t lose a target as he shot three rounds per aim, decreasing the wastage of bullets. The guerrillas who were jumping out of the burning buildings fell under the Minimi’s sniping. Sun WooHyun was a battle machine, brought up to the highest ability a human could reach. It was just that his presence was marred beside Black Mamba’s feats.

The camp was steadily destroyed in the joint attack between Black Mamba and a North Korean training officer. The wind blew, turning the entire camp into a sea of fire. The guerrillas who jumped out of the buildings to avoid the fire were sniped at without fail.

They were the only guarding unit left behind in camp. The commanders and warriors had all been killed in the forest. They didn’t have enough commanders, possessed low fighting abilities, and lacked supporting heavy weapons. A miserable sight of a one-hit-one-kill occurred.

Nothing moved on his radar. He had sniped over 50 people. Adding to the numbers wrapped in the explosions and killed by Sun WooHyun’s hand, the FROLINAT’s north-eastern command post had been annihilated in biological terms.

The stuffy smell of burning corpses tickled his nose. Black Mamba placed his Dragunov and Pamus down to look at the burning camp afar.

Even though they were b*stards who committed crimes worse than animals, his chest twinged. He had killed over 485 people from the FROLINAT in a day. They, too, were someone’s son and father.

“Wakil, are you going to clean up?”

Sun WooHyun glanced at Black Mamba. He had agonized over a name to call Black Mamba for several days, but now he was determined to call him Wakil. He had thought about it a lot.

Sun WooHyun had heard that South Koreans didn’t like the word “dong-mu.” He’d turn into paste if he called him a son of a b****. It was difficult to call someone so much younger than him, his boss. He didn’t want to call him Black Mamba, either. That was because he recalled his self-portrait of demolition.

In the end, he decided to call Black Mamba, Wakil, like Ombuti. He volunteered to be his servant, so Wakil was right.

“You want to go in there? I refuse. If you want to burn to death, you can go by yourself.”

The camp had turned into a ball of fire. He was bound to be barbecued if he jumped in.

“F***, I really don’t like the way he talks.”

“Namu Amita Bul, greet your other life, cross the threshold of hell as quick as you can. May you be blessed and reformed in your latter life. May your soul rest in peace!”

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Black Mamba prayed for a better afterlife for the dead, in a respectful manner. His calm chants floated around the heated earth.

The battle was over. Black Mamba’s face, as he picked up his weapons, was peaceful. It wasn’t the face of someone who’d ended several hundred lives in half a day.

Sun WooHyun’s face darkened. His heart shivered. This was a hard human to understand. No, he was Janus. He was someone who created a holocaust like mad, then prayed for their afterlives with a sorrowful face. His expression had turned peaceful the moment the prayer ended. Even he couldn’t act as if nothing had happened with a chicken’s death. An ominous concern rose to his mind. Had he jumped into the arms of a devil?

[1] It is a North Korean grenade launcher, a copy production of the Soviet’s GP-25 Kostyor. Its recoil is harsh and its launch sequence is limited.