Chapter 117 - Encounter (1)

Good lord.

My mouth fell open at Lucia’s innocent question. The others, Dawson included, turned to stare at her in horror. Yun raised his head, utterly expressionless, but she continued.

“The emergency mobilization came at dinnertime, so I haven’t eaten.”

“Here!”

Isaac cut her off, frantically rummaging through his pockets until he found a chocolate bar. He stretched out his arm to press it into Lucia’s hand, smiling awkwardly.

“Want this? A chocolate bar!”

“A chocolate bar isn’t enough for dinner...”

“Lucia Kwon.”

Everyone except Lucia flinched at my training officer’s toneless voice. The senior with the rounded haircut responded blankly.

“Yes?”

“Shall I boil you one of those larvae outside?”

By now, even Lucia seemed to realize something was wrong. She stared at the squad leader’s eerily expressionless face, then answered in a tiny voice.

“No, thank you...”

“Everyone senior to her, report to me when the mission’s over.”

Of course he wasn’t going to let it slide.

“Can’t you keep your juniors in line?”

Isaac Lane smiled bitterly, and Jerry Jones groaned and rolled his eyes upward. The pair of sociopaths, one man and one woman, blinked.

My training officer moved off after that, so no one voiced any objections. Not that anyone would have had the guts.

As Lucia fumbled with the chocolate bar’s wrapper, everyone headed to their positions. I went up to the roof with Yun.

* * *

“So, did you remember?”

“Pardon?”

The question came as I was lighting the cigarette between Yun’s lips. I blinked and snapped the Zippo lighter shut.

“Remember what?”

“How Titans control creatures.”

Yun blew out a stream of smoke and leaned against the rooftop railing.

“Or how the level ten kept coming back to life.”

I shoved the Zippo lighter into my pocket.

My own kind had already sensed me. Perhaps because Area 5 was quite far away, I couldn’t pin down their exact locations or numbers, but I could distinctly sense that they had changed targets.

That wasn’t what my training officer was asking, though.

“Those are two different techniques. I’ll explain the latter first.”

“Go ahead.”

“You could call it a straightforward way of obtaining nourishment.”

My spirits sank at the thought of Ray.

“He came back to life by absorbing the energy in living things. But hardly anyone could actually use it. Just me, Kyle, and Ray, more or less... And it isn’t a technique you can use lightly.”

“Because you burn to death?”

“Yes. There’s a limit to how much energy the body can take.”

Yun had said he’d faced Ray too. Though I’d heard he hadn’t witnessed Ray’s end.

I looked out beyond the rooftop railing, craving a cigarette even if I wouldn’t be able to taste it. The ruined city lay buried in darkness.

Perhaps I’d once strolled along these streets with Ray, eating ice cream.

The question that followed was dry.

“Why could only you three use it? If you’d taught it to the rest of your kind, you would have won the war.”

I gave a short laugh. I’d had that thought so many times.

But it wasn’t something you could learn, nor was it reserved for the gifted.

“This may be hard to understand in Earth terms, but it isn’t a technique we learned. It’s more like a scar that only survivors are left with.”

Yun silently prompted me to continue.

I searched through the memories of my youth, which sometimes felt like a fantasy novel to me now.

“There’s a curse you suffer if you incur a tree’s wrath. You could say it’s like a scar left on those who survive that curse. Think of it as your constitution changing after an illness.”

“I want to argue that not a word of that makes sense, but I suppose that’s how things worked in your world.”

I laughed again. What a typically Yun response.

My explanation had been nothing but the truth, though. Resting a hand on my sword hilt, I continued, my gaze on the distance.

Even there, most trees were just trees. But some were different. Perhaps they had benefited from magic, grown in blessed soil, or simply been gifted from the time they were seeds.

Those trees grew into sacred trees.

Anyone who cut down a sacred tree would be cursed and slowly die.

“Why did you cut one down?”

“There were things we could only fight with swords made from sacred trees.”

It had happened before I turned twenty.

“Normally, you’d buy or obtain a sword made from a sacred tree that had already died. But I didn’t have that option. War had broken out, so buying one was impossible to begin with.”

The temple had burned.

The priests who had raised me with love had been torn apart by the enemy. Violence was an everyday occurrence in that era. So much so that, orphan though I was, I could call myself lucky to have grown up sheltered within the temple. But eventually, the temple too was engulfed in the flames of war. The enemy rendered fat from the priests’ corpses and used it to feed the fire consuming the temple.

I cut down a sacred tree and made a sword so I could take their heads.

Once my revenge was complete, I buried the bodies, which had barely retained their shapes.

After burying as many as three hundred priests, I prayed for the dead to rest in peace and set out on a journey to break the curse.

“Did you meet Kyle and Ray on that journey?”

“No. I met them after I broke the curse.”

Wasn’t this sort of story boring, though?

“It seemed we’d each broken the curse at different times. I was alone throughout my entire journey to break it.”

“How did you break it?”

“You just have to reach the World Tree standing in a ruined city.”

The problem was that people usually died before reaching the World Tree.

Their bodies were already weakened by the curse, and all sorts of creatures attacked them. I only learned after breaking the curse that the cursed formed parties to reach the World Tree.

I’d been lucky.

Even in a party, the chances of making it out of that city alive were less than five percent.

“But are you really interested in a boring story like this?”

“Quite.”

“What good will hearing it do you? The world’s gone, anyway. You couldn’t go there even if you wanted to.”

“The level ten...”

Yun blew out a stream of white smoke. The cold air scattered it until it vanished.

“Killed thousands of humans single-handedly.”

Back to Ray again?

I nodded, trying not to let the melancholy consume me. My heightened senses picked up the approaching creatures.

But they were still some distance away, so I decided to continue the conversation.

“It coordinated the creatures until the whites of its eyes burned.”

“Yes. Controlling creatures and absorbing them are entirely different techniques. You can learn the former, but the latter, as I said... Inverted eyes are one of its distinguishing features. The whites of your eyes start burning away the moment you begin using it.”

“There’s a reason Yehyeon became the Hero of a Troubled Age.”

The matter-of-fact words wounded my heart.

I gripped my standard-issue dagger tightly.

“The survivors of the First War hate it.”

Yun flicked his cigarette butt over the edge of the building.

“Those who remember the First War fear it. Later generations seem to think of it as little more than the final boss of that time, though.”

“... Well. He’s gone now.”

“Don’t let anyone find out you’re grieving over killing him. Not even by accident.”

I must have frozen there like an idiot.

Yun watched me through narrowed eyes, then added,

“Ami was caught in your kind’s rampage and spent two years in a coma. If she hadn’t woken up, I might have tried to kill you just for being the same kind as that thing and having known it.”

“... And now it doesn’t bother you at all?”

“Ami’s and Yehyeon’s lives are all that matter to me.”

Yun shrugged and drew his gun.

They really were getting dangerously close. This man couldn’t have the same senses I did, so how did he know with such uncanny accuracy?

I could also hear Leonard and Sylvia loading their guns on the floor below.

Most of the Badgers here were unreliable, but at least there were three whose skills I could count on.

At this speed, the creatures would reach Area B-7 within ten minutes.

“Don’t try to look after the dead weight. Help them and they’ll run off to save their own skins.”

“Run off?”

I’d known they’d deliberately lumped all the screwups together here, but I hadn’t realized they were bad enough to flee the battlefield.

How were they still Badgers?

Humanity was at war, after all.

“Is running away allowed?”

“No. Desertion is punishable by death.”

Right. That was the usual rule on a battlefield.

But then his story didn’t add up. I arched my eyebrows at him, and he smiled, one corner of his mouth lifting.

“They’ve been lucky enough not to get caught on camera doing it.”

“Ah. So there wasn’t enough evidence to punish them.”

“So far. Who knows how things will turn out today?”

He was enjoying this a little too much.

I began to hear them. The footsteps of the approaching creatures tickled my ears. About seven minutes now, provided the creatures living here didn’t impede their progress.

I saw Yun switch on his radio to relay the situation to the squad.

But before he could say anything, a voice burst from it.

[“Area 7!”]

It was Richard Green.

[“It’s a level nine!”]

Ah.

And I sense a familiar presence. One of my own kind.

One I know.

Someone I once fought alongside.

She was a renowned general, beloved by the empire.

[“It’s headed your way!”]

Hecate.

So I get to see your face again.

You’d wanted to fight me in earnest. I smiled bitterly as I felt her presence draw closer. Now that your wish has come true, what expression will you be wearing?

She was at the head of the horde.

“Sylvia will be pleased,” Yun muttered.

Why did he call Sylvia Keef “Sylvia,” rather than “Keef”?

With that trivial question in mind, I drew my standard-issue sword.

“You seem destined to be loved by strange people.”

“My senior Sylvia’s love is a little frightening.”

The people on the third and first floors seemed to be having a minor panic, but I paid them no mind.

I put one foot on the railing, ready to jump to the ground if necessary.

The wind stirred my white hair.

“Do you have a particular plan?”

“No.”

Now they were coming into view.

Creatures crawling heavily out of the darkness.

“None of them have either the ability or the will to follow a plan.”

My green-haired former comrade.

“Do as you like, but get some shooting practice in too.”

Yun jerked his chin at the gun I hadn’t even thought of drawing.

He put on his helmet just as gunfire began to erupt.

“Don’t trust anyone to watch your back, and don’t get yourself killed by making some stupid mistake.”

“Understood.”

“And you’ve been on a battlefield before, so you know this well.”

Even with his face hidden by his helmet, I could see my training officer’s smile.

A smile brimming with nasty anticipation.

“Insubordination and desertion are punishable by death.”

He clicked his visor down and began pulling the trigger.

“Deal with the enemy.”

The thick, bloody reek reached me along with the sound of flesh bursting.

The battle had begun.