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Silence didn’t last long.

“…Huh.”

A sound, either a sigh of relief or a lamentation, bubbled up from the depths of my chest.

“I understand what you want to say. No matter what happens, you mean to rush to catch the monsters first, right?”

“Well, I feel bad for coming off so presumptuous towards the Colonel.”

“If you know that, then don’t say such things. Ugh.”

I detached the magazine and counted the bullets. Lastly, I checked the condition of the firearm.

“What am I supposed to do? It’s not like we’re kids; they’re all grown-ups who can handle things themselves.”

Click.

I held the pistol, safety off, tightly in both hands, ready to fire at any moment.

Just then, it seemed Camila and Francesca had also finished preparing for battle. Francesca grasped a sword and a vial materialized in the air, while Camila tied her hair back with a string held in her mouth.

I looked at the two with a worried expression.

“Just remember this, both of you. If things get dangerous, don’t look back, just run straight to the defense line.”

“Don’t worry.”

Flames flickered from the tips of Camila’s fingers.

“We won’t get hurt.”

As if in response to that, someone’s shout echoed through the rift.

“The Corpse Spiders are coming! Everyone to the stronghold!”

That was the signal announcing the start of battle.

—

Episode 11 – Nothing Wrong on the Northern Front

The siren echoed through the noisy mountain range.

The alarm from the unit defending the rift rang out, colliding with the sheer cliffs and the gnarled trees, ringing and ringing again.

No matter how loud people shouted, their voices were drowned out; even those with dulled hearing would be left dizzy from the ear-piercing siren.

In this place, where the echoing siren spread in all directions, the clearest sound wasn’t the screams or the roars, but the shots fired.

-Bang!

A single gunshot split the air.

As the rifle fired, the spent cartridge ejected, and the acrid smell of gunpowder pierced the nose. The cold winter sky over the north rang with gunfire, chilling enough to freeze even hot blood.

However, even the commander, who had endured a thousand years of bloody battles, could not absorb the heat of the ejected casing. Unluckily, a soldier next to him flinched as he felt warmth from the casing that had just struck him.

In the past, a soldier hit by the ejected casing would have kicked the helmet of his fellow soldier using his boots. He was a veteran among veterans, and no one of a higher rank would enter the stronghold.

Yet, it didn’t happen; he did not kick the rookie’s helmet.

“Ugh, ugh…!”

“Alexei!”

One soldier grabbed the shoulder of another. The one called Alexei, instead of responding, clutched his neck and gasped for breath.

A palm-sized spike was lodged in the soldier’s neck; he hastily covered the wound with his hand, but the blood showed no signs of stopping. In fact, it spurted up like a fountain in rhythm with his heartbeat.

The blood soaked quickly into the wristwatch he wore.

Gunfire continued unabated.

-Tatatatata! Tatata! Tatatatatatata!

The machine gun positioned in the stronghold unleashed a furious barrage of bullets.

The gunner, fixed firmly in position, bit down hard on his lip as he swung the machine gun left and right. Usually, he would hear a reprimand about wasting bullets, but there was no one left to give that warning as he pulled the trigger, sweeping left and right alongside firing.

The enemy was everywhere.

And that enemy’s name was monster.

“The Corpse Spiders are climbing!”

At the familiar shout, the soldier raised his head.

He let go of the hand of the one who had just been alive and dashed towards the area with the radios, evading the bullets flying above him.

The stronghold, positioned further back. A soldier, glancing around, grabbed the radio operator who was half-leaning out while shooting.

“Hey! Where’s the magician?”

“What?”

“Where’s the magician, you idiot! The magician who came from the support squad the other day!”

For a moment, the radio operator, stunned, pointed somewhere with his finger. The magician was in a relatively forward position—the observation post.

It was supposed to be a place with fortifications, but now it had turned into a writhing mass of spiders.

Just then, a large explosion erupted from the area the radio operator had pointed to.

Though the fog was thick, obscuring visibility, chunks of icy shards soared into the air, imbued with a chilling cold. The spiderlings had triggered the mines that had been planted last time.

Understanding the situation, the soldier said to the radio operator again.

“Broadcast that the magician died and we’re low on firepower. Tell the others in the other strongholds to hurry over here!”

“They’re all under attack and can’t come!”

“Then request support from HQ! What good is the mortar if we don’t use it, huh!?”

“We just used it! Twenty minutes ago! But the communications—”

The radio operator’s reply was cut off, or rather, drowned out by gunfire.

The soldier twisted his grip on the radio operator and checked his watch. The silly watch his friends had gifted him to celebrate his discharge ticked on just fine even at this moment.

He had promised to throw the watch into the river flowing through his hometown after he was discharged, but it had shown no sign of leaving his wrist for over five years.

-Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Suddenly, the soldier realized something while looking at his watch. The machine gunfire that had been deafeningly loud until now had stopped.

When he lifted his head to look ahead, he saw the machine gun left desolate above, and a monster stirring up the interior of the stronghold with its hairy legs. There were no longer any humans left there.

Again grasping the situation, the soldier bit his lower lip and began to make a sound.

“…We retreat. Holding out here is impossible. Get ready to run to the main resistance line.”

Just then, as the veteran soldier finished his orders, the radio operator was about to nod.

“Ugh!”

A soldier who was raising himself from the stronghold, pulling his arm with all his might, toppled over with a sound like a dying gasp.

The soldier who had taken a spike to the chest fell back into the stronghold. The color drained from his utterly distorted face, his eyes lost their vitality, and as the strength slipped from his hands, something fell with a thud.

The soldier’s eyes widened as he recognized what it was.

“A grenade in his hand!”

“Get down!”

One of the soldiers in the stronghold threw himself over the grenade. With hurried moves, he tried to escape the stronghold…

An explosion erupted behind the soldiers who were preparing for battle.

In an instant, a soldier was flung to the ground.

“……”

There was no need to comprehend the situation.

A grenade went off, and he got caught up in it. His stomach felt hot, indicating he had taken a proper hit.

It was hot.

It hurt.

“……”

Turning his head, he saw people rolling in the snow.

Some remained completely motionless, while others gripped fallen weapons with trembling hands, and some dragged the injured towards the defense line, stumbling with bodies that hardly moved.

No more gunfire could be heard. No, there was no sound at all.

The soldier, clutching his belly, lay on the ground, gazing up at the sky. The grim northern sky peeked through the thick fog.

Just like the sky of his longed-for hometown.

“……”

Drowsiness washed over him. Once, friends back in the north had worried that he might die, but now their concerns felt trivial.

He hadn’t been particularly studious, but now he understood. At least in the final moments of life, death was not the glorious end spoken of by the recruiter who visited the Academy.

He knew it was nonsense, but he never expected it to be like this.

Muttering to himself, whether in solitude or contemplation, his two eyes closed.

As his eyelids gently shut, never to open again beyond the skin, the final scene reflected on his retina was.

Flames painting the sky red.

And the dark-haired foreigner looking down at him from somewhere.

*

Just now, a soldier had died.

With the explosion, the soldier was thrown to the ground, spilling his intestines and breathed his last. A slightly comical-designed watch dangled from his wrist, but with its glass shattered and soaked in blood, the watch was more chilling than amusing. The second hand had stopped, making it all the more unsettling.

I reached for the soldier’s body. And pulled the rifle that had been slung over his shoulder until the end.

Upon checking the magazine, there were hardly any bullets left. It seemed the battle had been fierce.

I stripped the chest rig holding the bullets from the body and roughly donned it over my suit. Blood soaked my white shirt, but I didn’t care much.

After gathering the meager ammunition, I aimed my rifle and fired bullets into the head of the corpse spider approaching us.

– Bang!

The corpse spider, whose head was now a gaping hole, forgotten its furious charge and fell to the ground. Filthy bodily fluids oozed from the opening, and a few crushed eyeballs spilled out like porridge.

– Bang! Bang! Bang!

As I dispatched a few monsters, I shouted towards Camila and Francesca.

“The defense line has collapsed! If we let this continue, monsters will breach our defenses!”

“I know that too!”

With a swift movement, Camila extended her hand, causing the air to ripple around us. It was as if telekinesis was in play, and sparks ignited in the air.

The small sparks transformed into flames. The flames spawned from the air engulfed the dry wood, the corpses of the monsters, and even someone’s body, spreading in all directions.

The flames became a small barrier encircling us. The corpse spiders, approaching us with sharpened senses, hurriedly retreated.

– Kyaeeeeeeek!

– Sishishisit!

The horrid shrieks echoed through the northern mountains. The corpse spiders glared at us with the hungry gaze of predators while retreating and advancing repeatedly.

As Francesca kept her eyes on the movement of the corpse spiders, they narrowed slightly.

“…Hmm. This is certainly strange. A corpse spider facing fire and not backing down.”

“In the past, there were monsters the size of a mid-sized vehicle charging at Camila, you know?”

“That’s for the larger varieties. If they invade their territory, they’ll charge at anything, human or animal. But with smaller species like corpse spiders, it’s a different story.”

Francesca adjusted her grip on her sword, watching the swarm of monsters. The crowd of beasts wasn’t just numerous; it could be referred to as a horde of corpse spiders without sounding absurd.

“It’s peculiar. Could the magic of the rift be affecting the monsters’ instincts…?”

“What kind of nonsense is that?”

“Recently, there have been similar research findings from the Mauritania Continent. I was even planning to invite you to the Magic Tower soon, since I’m keenly interested in the field….”

Francesca’s field of interest being the ecosystem of monsters was rather surprising. This was a story that reminded me of Veronica—always something new surfacing like peeling an onion. My knowledge had increased once again today.

As she absentmindedly touched her chin and hummed, Francesca licked her lips and spoke up.

“Well, what’s important right now is that. It seems we might get surrounded if we stay like this. What will we do?”

Not answering Francesca’s question, I turned my head. My gaze met a group of soldiers from the headquarters rushing a wounded soldier back to the defense line.

After glancing at Camila, who was controlling the flames to prevent monsters from approaching, I turned to Francesca, swinging her sword through the air.

“Administrator.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“Ten minutes. Just ten minutes, can you hold on?”

Francesca, who had been swinging her sword, grinned.

Her violet eyes, resembling violets, flickered, turning a shade of carmine.

“I could hold for thirty minutes. Care for a bet?”

“Don’t be so full of yourself.”

I lifted my rifle and began gunning down the approaching corpse spiders.

The gunfire reverberated across the northern snow mountains.

*

-‘…The rift is under attack. I repeat, the rift is under attack. All troops receiving this transmission, support the unit defending the rift. This is a command from the Commander of the Military Government. Over and out.’

 

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