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Join the wave of revolution against foreign invasion.

The soldier, who had been gazing at the slogan decorating the gray wall, turned his gaze away.

The paint-scarred wall was filled with the warlord’s propaganda, and bodies lay strewn about in disarray.

Among the variously dressed corpses, nothing extraordinary could be spotted; yet death is always relative. As the soldier wandered through the alley, he could not take his eyes off a particular corpse that appeared before him.

It was a boy, dressed in a sleeveless shirt and shorts with a neck stretched out. Could he be of my age group?

The boy stood about a hand’s breadth shorter than him. It was only after a while that the soldier, clad in military uniform, noticed this fact.

“……”

That youthful face and delicate hands. The boy’s hands, now covered with calluses, felt much softer than the rough, hardened hands of the soldier.

Yet the rifle clutched in those small hands felt so out of place that the soldier couldn’t easily look away.

As he caressed the buttons filled to the chin, the soldier lowered his gaze to his own filthy uniform. His dirt-covered military attire was starkly different from the sleeveless shirt the boy wore.

The soldier leaned his rifle against the propaganda-cluttered wall and crouched down to look at the boy’s face.

With wide-open eyes, the boy’s face was stained with red blood flowing down from his nose, and the soldier in uniform gently closed the boy’s eyes.

“……”

Just at that moment, while clasping his hands together in mourning for the boy who seemed about the same age as him.

“Nasir! Where the hell are you fooling around now?!”

“Ah….”

“There you are! Get out now, we’re moving to the next village!”

“Y-yes, coming!”

Hearing the superior’s orders, the soldier hurriedly grabbed his rifle and dashed out of the alley.

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Episode 15 – Life is Beautiful

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In a neighborhood far from the capital, there are no decent jobs.

It’s natural when born in a rural area that survives on farming.

If you look around, barren lands stretch into rocky mountains, and when you lift your head, the blazing sun beats down on you. Beside one mountain, there’s another, and behind them, yet another nameless peak peeks in.

Perhaps beyond those mountains lies the mountain range where Dark Elves and nomads crossed with their beasts of burden thousands of years ago.

The life-killing sun, the arid land, and the rocky mountains piled high were no different from a farmer’s nemesis, and surviving on agriculture in such a place wasn’t easy.

Once, goblins, raising their red flags, constructed something called a “cooperative farm” for the people living on barren land, but that was already a decade ago. The flames sparked by the civil war due to clashes between the military and local forces burned everything down. Even the nomadic tribes wandering to escape the monsters, the farms cultivated by farmers, and the people.

Thus, the past decade had been hellish times for those who survived through farming.

The circumstances of my hometown were no different.

My hometown, where my father’s father and my grandfather’s father lived, was a typical rural village that survived off agriculture. Thus, my hometown felt like a symbol of hunger.

Is it because there aren’t decent jobs, or is it because of the cursed land? Or perhaps it’s because of the detestable higher-ups who only fill their own tribe’s bellies? One can’t tell for sure, but it remained unchanged that most people were starving.

Unable to eat. Unable to wear. With little education, people had no other choices.

For those living on the barren land, there were only two choices.

The first was to rob others’ wealth to survive, and the second was to often cling to the government and live off its scraps. The former is what we call a robber, and the latter is a civil servant who gets paid.

But a country boy who had been handling farming tools since his childhood couldn’t have possibly attended school. Illiterates have been scattered around rural areas for a long time.

However, the army was the only place that accepted anyone who was fit enough to serve.

So the boy donned the military uniform.

“Are you out of your mind?”

A cold voice flew into the boy’s ears as he backed against the wall.

The boy was surrounded by young men. They wore military uniforms that seemed oversized for the boy, making him look rather comical.

The young men encircling the boy were soldiers from the same unit.

With every word, a yellowed tooth revealed itself as one of the young men scolded the boy.

“Are you sane? Did I not tell you this is a rebel-occupied area?”

“I-I did….”

“And then you freely roam around the alleys? You must want to die so badly.”

The young man berated the boy while knocking the helmet on his head.

The insignia on the military uniform was faded, but the boy’s insignia shone clearly even amidst the dirt. Just by looking at that, one could easily deduce who held the higher rank.

In a village that the rebels had taken stronghold of, regular troops began to harass regular troops. This came from the fact that the boy had acted independently without permission.

“You’ll get shot, idiot. If you die, that’s the end of the line. No more rations for your siblings back home.”

“……”

Under his superior’s scolding, the boy’s head instinctively lowered. It wasn’t just from the hand hitting the helmet.

The boy chose to enlist to avoid starvation, but not everyone makes such a choice solely to fend off hunger. The army is a place nobody wants to go, especially in a village where civil war is raging.

At first, he didn’t want to join the army either. However, the recruiter’s words—that enlisting would ensure monthly rations sent back to his family—were too tempting for the boy who felt responsible for his siblings.

So the boy donned the military uniform. He chose to wager his present for the sake of his future.

Of course, his superiors weren’t broad-minded enough to admire the boy’s resolute decision, for they too had mouths to feed back home.

“What kind of idiot rolls in here, I wonder?”

“Hey, cut it out. You’ll end up killing him.”

“Yeah, Shawal’s right. Let’s stop here.”

Other superiors intervened, halting the scolding directed at the junior.

Yet their intervention was not born out of sympathy or brotherly affection for the boy who was being bullied.

“We’ll be moving the unit soon, so we can’t waste time here.”

With the squad leader’s words, the teasing stopped.

The superior who had been grabbing the boy released his grip and spat between his crooked teeth in a low voice, growling, “We’ll settle this later.”

“……”

Left behind as the squad leaders departed, the boy leaned against the crumbling rubble. His gaze, lost in thought, glanced at the sky until it met the shouting of a sergeant yelling, “What are you doing?!”

“Y-yes, sir!”

“It’s not ‘yes’! Move quickly, Nasir! We’re relocating now!”

The boy hugged his rifle tightly and hurried to join the unit.

After finishing the rebel extermination, the twenty-some soldiers set out to leave the village for the next destination. Observing the departing backs of his superiors, the boy moved along with the unit, occasionally glancing back at the receding village.

In the squad, there were no luxurious vehicles—only a flimsy rifle and a single machine gun.

Although the generals occasionally arrived in the village with the vehicles left by foreign troops, for some reason, not even a single wheeled vehicle was in the boy’s unit.

What if he had the same car that the general rode in?

Though he was a country bumpkin who had rarely even seen a vehicle, let alone a car, he momentarily indulged in such thoughts.

The soldiers walked along the path covered in sand and gravel.

They walked, walked, and walked again.

It was a distance so far that only the vague shape of the village could be seen beyond one hill, but there was no luxury of complaining. The boy, burdened with a gun almost as big as himself, began to walk after the young man.

Over the mountains, across the rivers. They strolled past a village turned to ashes.

The soles of his combat boots were raw and scraping, while the salt-stiffened military uniform clawed at his armpits and groin.

It was about the time the boy’s feet began to swell, sending sharp pains through him.

“Stop.”

At the signal of the officer, the unit halted its movement. The soldiers huddled in the path cautiously eyed their surroundings, seeking out places that seemed safe to hide.

The boy tucked himself behind a rock along with the young man who had been pressing him.

Doubt crept in—had they finally arrived at their destination? No matter how hard he strained, he couldn’t hear even a whisper from the officer across the distance.

“…Is that it?”

“Yeah.”

The squad leader replied.

“That’s the village we’re attacking today.”

“What’s so special about that village that we’ve come all this way?”

“I heard there was an executive from the United People’s Party there, but beyond that, I don’t know. Even if I saw the face of that orc bastard on the wanted poster, it would look just like any other orc selling trinkets in a shop. How am I supposed to know? He travels with a goblin shaman, after all….”

“A, a shaman?”

A shaman? The boy had never actually seen one, but he had heard enough rumors about how dangerous they were.

A shaman who could kill with curses and control puppets with sorcery. There were even tales that they could walk on air and fly through the sky. The thought of killing such a dangerous shaman with just a gun was beyond imagination.

But the young man’s next words were enough to wipe away the fear lodged in his heart.

“The bounty on the rebels’ shaman is enormous. If we kill just one, it could change our fortunes!”

The talk of money had him thinking. The bounty that had once frozen the boy’s face broke into a grin.

That kind of reward would be enough to live on. It may not work in the capital, but in a quiet countryside, that money would last for years without a worry.

What if he got the bounty and returned home? He couldn’t quite picture it, but he could see a future where he lived well after his discharge with his siblings.

“…….”

The boy gripped the dust-covered gun tightly as though it were a lifeline dropped from the sky.

In the meantime, the young man knelt on the gravel and lowered his body. With his back to the sky, he pressed his lips to the ground and whispered a prayer. As a believer of Al-Yabd, he directed his prayer toward the sacred ground where the prophet lay asleep.

Even devout believers aren’t bound to pray outside of set times, yet the young man had a habit of praying before every battle. The reason being that he always felt unlucky on days he skipped prayer.

As the believer pressed his lips to the earth and prayed for mercy once more, the boy’s eyes, fixed on the village, caught sight of a human figure.

A tall person surrounded by others. It looked like the tall one was a man.

Around the man dressed in traditional tribal garb were many people. Those wrapped tightly were the tribal women, while those wearing kufis were the tribal men.

And there, surrounded by them, was a figure small of stature. The distance was too great to discern gender, but the pointed green ears protruding through the fabric hinted that they were not human.

“…It’s a goblin.”

The grip around the gun tightened.

He couldn’t be sure it was the shaman, but it was clear enough that it was a goblin. Ever since the coup and the military’s purge, goblins forced into resettlement without government approval had bounties on them if they operated in other regions.

Though it was a trivial sum compared to the bounty on the shaman, the mere fact that there was a bounty at all was important.

Just then, as the boy looked up at the sky, an unfamiliar sight unfolded before him.

A bird was flying across a completely clear, blue sky without a single cloud. Even from a distance, its wings spread wide made it clear—it was indeed a bird.

But there was something strange about it.

Simply put, it was flying too high to be just any bird. With the experience of having chased birds away while helping on the farm, he could tell that such heights were uncommon for birds.

And the wings.

How was it that the wings looked so vividly detailed at such a height?

No matter how large a bird, it was evidently unusual. The boy stared at this giant bird soaring at a high altitude.

“Hey, what are you looking at?”

“…There.”

The boy pointed a finger up at the bird. The young man followed his gesture and looked up.

What the two saw was a gigantic bird soaring through the sky.

And then, the bird that had been flying over the vast expanse suddenly plummeted to the ground.

“Uh…!”

A gasp escaped from the boy’s mouth, a sound he made without thinking.

His loud voice drew the gazes of all the soldiers lying in ambush nearby. The officer, who had been marking something on the map with a radio, was in a similar spot.

“Who made the noise—”

Just as the officer began to raise his voice at the soldiers, the giant bird crashed right into the center of the village.

The moment the soldiers felt something strange and turned their sights toward the village, a brilliant light erupted from the village’s heart.

It flashed.

*

With the crash came an illumination that engulfed the area in light.

The world became a pure white. The piercing sound resonated painfully in their ears, as if their eardrums were about to burst, and their heads throbbed as though struck by a hammer.

Someone wearing a headset muttered a few curses and stood up. The headset connected to the terminal had been carelessly tossed onto the desk.

The once bright screen gradually returned to its original colors. In reality, it was just a display of black and white, but the fact that the screen was back was what mattered.

“Damn it… the sound is deafening.”

“Are you okay, Manager?”

“No. I think I burst my eardrum.”

The suit man joked, and his fellow suited companion let out a small chuckle. The man with tied black hair peered into the screen and spoke.

“Saleh Al-Afri. Confirmed deceased 17 km southeast of Dames.”

“I saw it. Once the BDA is finished, call in the pigeon and have something to eat.”

The suit man patted the subordinate employee’s shoulder and turned around.

The man with copper skin and striking blonde hair, stirring his coffee, asked the superior who was leaving the situation room.

“Where are you going, Manager?”

“I’m off to report to Leoni.”

“Go ahead.”

“Yeah. Pippin, Jake. You two make sure to get in before it’s too late.”

In the situation room situated underground at the Military Intelligence Agency.

I waved goodbye to the two of them as I left the room.

“I’m going first.”

“Jealous!”

Before I knew it, I was starting my eighth year with the information agency.

Once again, it was just another ordinary day.

 

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