Once the grind in the ss hall was about to wrap up.
“Your discharge is only a few days away. You’ve worked hard.”
“Tell about it.”
My imdiate junior in the cookhouse.
Junhyuk ca up to and struck up a conversation.
“What are you planning to do after you’re discharged?”
“Not sure.”
It was the kind of question any soldier nearing discharge thinks about at least once.
What do I do when I get back to society.
“First I have to go find my family.”
Of course I had thought about it.
“We’ve learned there are people alive in other regions, but I still have no idea where my mom and dad are. I’ll take care of that first, and after that I’ll go step by step into why the world ended up like this.”
“Hm. I see.”
“Do you have sothing you want to say?”
My junior.
Junhyuk had started learning Japanese cuisine before he got drafted.
“I don’t know if I should say this.”
Maybe because he started adult life early.
He handled kitchen work well and had a pleasant personality.
He also had a knack for making coolly realistic points.
“There’s no way your family is still alive.”
“...What did you say?”
At my junior’s ridiculous remark,
I turned my head.
“I died like this too.”
Junhyuk’s corpse
was looking at .
“...”
One eye dangled half out of its socket.
The flesh all over his body had been torn open by the teeth of so beast.
From his neck.
Sothing that should never co off had co off and was dangling.
How could I forget.
The last thing I saw.
Junhyuk as he was then.
“...Right.”
I glanced back over my shoulder.
The youngest in the cookhouse.
Yongjun was splattering entrails as he prepared dinner.
Watching that,
I muttered to myself inside.
“It’s this dream again.”
Ever since the day of ruin,
it was the dream I had seen until I was sick of it.
A truly garbage dream.
“The youngest and I died so pointlessly. Do you really believe a sergeant’s family with nothing special about them would still be alive.”
If anything,
the two juniors walking around talking to in those disgusting states were the mild part.
The truly rotten thing about this dream
was that even when I realized it was a dream,
I could not wake up easily.
All I could do was...
I don’t know.
“If you have sothing to say, say as much as you want.”
Until the dream broke,
I just listened to what he had to say.
“Do you rember? Back then, if you had done the errand you ordered to do, the one who died would have been you, not .”
“Well, sure. That’s true.”
“A chef? You got yourself a good job. But if you think about it... that job. Don’t you think it should have gone to , the one who had actually studied cooking.”
“That’s not exactly wrong either.”
He spoke words steeped in malice.
But his tone and face were calm as could be.
“You survived because you were lucky.”
When he was alive he had never once yelled at or gotten angry.
So for it was hard to even picture him getting angry at .
“How long do you think that luck will last.”
“I don’t know.”
“It probably won’t last long. The Beastkin world and Dasmur both fell. Your family. You. All of you will soday follow a similar path.”
“Is that how it will go.”
“No. It could be worse. Those two at least managed to flee here sohow. Dinsional travel... there were great beings on that side, so it was possible.”
“Right. I won’t be able to run away like that.”
“In the end, everyone will die. You. Your family. The other unit mbers. Everyone.”
Yeah.
It was a dream anyway.
That guy was nothing but a shadow I had made up.
“Hey.”
There was nothing in particular I could do,
so I had been listening in silence.
“Even so. Don’t you think you’re talking a little rough to your senior?”
For an imdiate junior,
what kind of way of talking was that.
“...Sir?”
Junhyuk’s corpse faltered, flustered.
Right.
Embarrassing as it is to admit,
because I saw the ugly way he died,
I am still.
Terrified of death.
“I still feel sorry for you and the youngest.”
But
that is separate from this.
“So. I do not want anyone else to end up like you two.”
I might make mistakes,
but I have no intention of making the sa mistake twice.
Once more,
I studied the corpses of my junior and the youngest carefully.
The first ti in my life I had ever seen it.
More hideous than I had imagined.
Even now it was enough to make gag.
“Because I have struggled all this ti not to see this again.”
Human death.
“...Huff.”
When I woke,
cold sweat ran all over my body and the bed was soaked through.
“...”
I rose from the damp bed.
I splashed water on my face and thought.
“I never want to see a human turned into that again.”
Right.
If that is what it takes,
“I will work very hard.”
Whatever the ans.
However brutal the thod.
I will use every move I can use.
In any filthy form,
I will survive no matter what.
****
The monsters released from the military bases.
After the cleanup for those monsters was mostly finished.
“Sending people to the bases and rebuilding the communications network is good, but we are going to be short on personnel.”
“For now let’s dispatch Legionnaires to each base and settle survivors in the surrounding area. A lot of survivors have gathered since we put out the radio. The bases have enough facilities to house large numbers.”
After I returned to Vimana,
I was in a eting with the officers.
“Well. For imdiate handling this should be enough.”
“In the end we ca out way ahead. Just the byproducts from those monsters have the production crews over the moon.”
It had been the kind of battle where it would not have been strange if the humans in the entire area, including us, had been wiped out.
Thankfully it had been handled well thanks to Taejun.
“It was definitely a big deal.”
It was unquestionably huge.
And we had actually gotten enormous results.
But.
Not everyone was just marveling at it.
“Sergeant Shin.”
“Yeah.”
“We still have not heard an explanation for how this raid happened.”
Corporal Seo Suhyeok.
He folded his arms and looked at .
“It is good that it ended well, but should you not brief us properly on this part.”
“Hey, hey. Show so respect to the sergeant.”
“Respect is respect and work is work. Gwangil, be quiet.”
He spoke with a face full of dissatisfaction.
Watching him,
“Sa as ever.”
“Sir?”
I murmured that.
Corporal Seo Suhyeok looked puzzled, not getting what I ant.
“What do you an, sa as ever? If my tone sounded that way I apologize, but I do not plan to stage insubordination like last ti.”
“No, not in that sense.”
“?”
“I just ant you are impressive.”
After I returned from the 423rd Battalion,
the way the unit mbers looked at was.
Awe.
Like they were looking at sothing imnsely great.
“...”
This guy
had not changed how he looked at .
No, it was not only him.
Gwangil, Suhyeok, Minjae,
the officers of the unit were impressed by my ability, but only that.
They pointed things out when they needed to.
They did not seem to be in awe.
Maybe because they had struggled with since the very early days of the unit.
Rather than looking up at ,
they just treated as a person with a bit more ability.
To be honest,
for an attitude toward a corps commander, so might call it impertinent.
Sotis they even told a senior to run errands or spouted nonsense.
But.
From where I sit, that kind of attitude is actually more to my liking.
If the gazes of people who think of like a god feel like pressure,
then the gaze that sees as a human being.
That, if anything, puts at ease.
“Stay just like that.”
“...?”
Anyway, that is personal.
Right now,
it was ti to talk about unit business.
“Ahem. To answer the question, there is not much I can tell you.”
“What does that an, that it is classified even from us?”
“No. I would prefer that.”
From the start,
there is not much I actually know.
“I only heard there would be a raid after I t Taejun.”
Besides that.
I do not know.
“Oh. Now that I think about it, I did see a few of the people who caused this raid.”
“...!?”
At that,
Team Leader Lee Sanga cried out in shock.
“Did you say people.”
“...Ah.”
Co to think of it,
I had personally seen the people who ca to the 423rd Battalion.
I had seen them trying to free the monsters that should have been stationed at the battalion.
So naturally I knew the culprits were people.
Considering it was monsters from military bases being freed,
most would assu the culprit was sothing more powerful than humans.
It would feel more natural to think at least so other powerful monster did it.
“Did you learn anything from those people.”
“Right. If it was you, Youngjun, you would have gotten sothing.”
“Well. I ant to.”
If we had captured them alive
and managed to feed them a round of Chef’s Special Sauce,
things would have gotten a little easier.
Unfortunately,
“They died before we could take them.”
They sacrificed their own lives
to summon a monster to attack us.
When that monster failed to kill us,
the humans scread into empty air and crumbled to dust.
Humans ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) being toyed with by another being
and dying miserably.
Honestly,
it was extrely unpleasant to watch.
“Well, anyway.”
We managed to win sohow, so that is fortunate.
The monster they summoned,
and the other monsters released from the bases in other places.
If not for Taejun, it would have been an attack we could not have stopped.
“I had a lot of questions, but there was no way to find answers, so it was frustrating.”
The ones who hit our unit with an attack of this scale.
Having no information on them is a fatal fact.
They are not normal.
The mont they were subdued by and the unit,
they sacrificed their own lives and summoned a being that could threaten us.
Sacrificing your life is not easy.
Among the drives humans are born with,
the strongest is the drive to survive.
They did sothing that denied that survival drive.
Either they had been brainwashed so that drive was gone,
or they had so grand goal worth giving even their lives.
I had no idea which.
“What I do know is that their job was Demon Contractor.”
“Demons.”
“And one more thing.”
If there is any hope,
it is what Taejun said before I left the mountains.
“Soone with information would co find us on their own.”
Right then.
“L, leaders.”
The eting room.
A soldier ca to report.
“What is it.”
“Well, a visitor has co.”
“A visitor.”
“We are in a eting. Tell them to wait a bit.”
“I tried, but the visitor said it was extrely urgent.”
...?
Among the visitors who ca to our unit,
none were not urgent.
If it could be handled at the enlisted level, they would have handled it.
The reason he had co all the way here to report had to be sothing else.
I was a little puzzled,
but the answer was simpler than I thought.
“It is because it is him.”
As the soldier finished,
a man appeared behind him.
“Been a while.”
“...Ah.”
He wore light armor made from monster hide.
A long spear was slung across his back.
He radiated the feel of a seasoned hunter,
and the power emanating from his body proved he was a formidable fighter.
A face we knew well.
There was a simple reason the soldier had not turned the visitor away.
The visitor
was an extrely important figure to our Legion.
He was the leader of the group we t inside Dasmur,
and the man who had since grown that group to guild size.
“Taejun did say soone would bring information.”
One of our unit’s strongest allied forces.
Leader of the Avengers.
“I have an urgent matter to discuss with you.”
It was Changsu.
User Comments
0 comments from readers