Chapter 96

January 8th.
The helicopter carrying Kushan arrived in Bastetira. He was invited to the royal castle as the head of Cellbrossix Labs. He was honored as a state guest and held talks for several days.
And on January 13th.
“Yes, that’s good.”
The talks, which began the day I arrived, took a long time to come to an end.
“There are details that remain to be worked out, but I don’t want to overdo it on the first step, which will only make us squeaky clean. We need to clean up the mess at home first, and we can work out the rest later.”
When the story came to a close, there were sighs from all around. The nobles, who had been dragged around for six days, had exhaustion written all over their faces.
Adrian was no exception.
‘……What a man.’
A courteous, needle-in-a-haystack demeanor. A practitioner’s eye for detail. Meticulousness that leaves no stone unturned.
“I’m a researcher.
It was like dealing with a decades-old politician or merchant. Even the nobles who initially dismissed Minos as unknowingly Minoan folded on the third day and completely surrendered control.
The results themselves weren’t bad.
Adrian was assured of what he needed most: an outside intermediary. The price was not unreasonable. It was just on the edge of unreasonable.
‘What’s he thinking, anyway.’
He glanced at Ainoa, who yawned nonchalantly. My brother remained mostly silent during the meeting. He never voiced his opinion, only intervening when things got heated.
I don’t know. Adrian shook his head.
“Hmmm, hmmm.”
A loud, audible cough. All eyes focused on Ainoa.
“Well, while the contract was in place, several of the Lab’s agents were to be stationed at Bastitera, correct?”
“Yes, but are you uncomfortable? It’s more of a liaison than a history.”
“No, I don’t see a problem with that, I just have a small request.”
“What do you call a request?”
Ainoa kept her face as expressionless as possible as Kushan asked.
“If you’re a liaison, you’ll be seeing each other often….”
“I suppose so.”
“So I guess it’s important for us to have a say in how many people are assigned.”
The no-big deal attitude. It was like he was pointing out the obvious. But Adrian’s brow furrowed as he listened. He’d seen Ainoa all these years, and he saw right through her.
The same was true for Kushan.
“I see what you mean, and for confidentiality reasons, I can’t give you a list of agents, but I’m sure you already have some idea.”
“Yeah, well. So I guess you need my opinion.”
The selflessness was palpable. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was feeling. It was a simple thought: if I had to stay with her, I’d rather have her than someone else.
But things don’t always work out the way we want them to.
“If you have a specific agent in mind, I’ll pass along the idea, but we respect their freedom of choice, so I can’t promise anything.”
Ainoa thought about it. When she asked Kim to stay in Bastitera. Would he say yes?
It couldn’t be.
* * *
Kim looked down on the intersection from a hill. The Granada Line. No bodies were anywhere to be seen, as if the battle that had just taken place had been a lie.
All that’s left is a trail of disaster.
No, even that was being erased.
“Hmm.”
I squatted down and dug my hands under my feet. As he cleared away the snow, he found a sparse blue powder. The substance brought by the catastrophe was being buried by the snow, day by day.
“That’s weird, too.”
I glanced to the side at the voice.
A man covers his skin with a dust suit. A researcher from the lab, looking around the snowy field. In his hand, he holds a zipper bag of powder.
He wasn’t alone. Lloyd, the lead researcher, was accompanied by three people below him. They were quite impressive, scanning their surroundings with instruments.
“Weird?”
“Disasters don’t subside that easily, you know, they come in all sizes and shapes, and in one extreme example, yes, we had a case where we had 3600 boulders the size of a man fall in a radius of about 5 kilometers in just 37 minutes.”
Lloyd’s story was eerie.
“I think I’ve seen that mentioned somewhere.
I skimmed the script because it was a simple explanation of the world, but it had a different weight when I realized it happened in real life.
“The falling boulders shattered on impact, scattering toxic substances everywhere; another boulder came down on the head of a man who was paralyzed and in agony; someone else was crushed by the rubble of the building and inhaled gas; it was literally a disaster.”
“Speaking from experience?”
“Not really, I just saw the video from a long way away.”
“Good.”
“Yes. Good.”
Lloyd smiled bitterly. Instead of mourning a tragedy somewhere, he says, “I’m glad I wasn’t there.
It’s unfortunate that this has become the norm.
“But hey, what’s a little disaster worth?”
“Of course it does. It’s just not the norm.”
That’s not all, he added.
“The most terrible thing about disasters is not the event itself, but the aftermath. It pollutes and devastates the land, making it uninhabitable.”
Of course, there are cases where it’s a one-off. But it’s not common.
“You mean this isn’t typical either.”
“I’ve seen the report, but wasn’t it a coincidence that it was a disaster?”
The intent was obvious.
“What does this have to do with Legion?”
“It’s just baseless paranoia, but I can’t help but be suspicious; they have unusual skills.”
“Sure.”
Kim crossed his arms, thinking hard. It was something that bothered him. Lloyd’s timing was too exquisite to be a coincidence.
“Was there a disaster in Bastitera around this time in the first place?
I don’t remember. The Granada Line connects to the capital. It should have been described in the story, unless it was as backward as Snowfield’s hometown.
“It’s not like I forgot about it.
Assuming this never happened in the game, the next question arises.
“How on earth?
All the changes so far have been due to the behavior of ‘Kim’.
But this time, it was hard to convince me.
“As far as I know, Legion doesn’t have that technology.
First, Lloyd’s guess was wrong. If he could intentionally bring disaster, he could simply bring down Magnu. It’s no exaggeration to say that it was an act of God.
If the Legion had that kind of power, I wouldn’t even be an agent. I would have joined them from the start, or been thrown into the mountains.
I knew it was a recipe for disaster. What’s even more puzzling is that we don’t know what happened or how it happened.
“I don’t know. If you know something, let me know.”
“Okay, you guys have done the hard work, now it’s time for us to pull out all the stops.”
The lab’s researchers don’t just talk about being tireless. In fact, they work like machines, day and night, whenever something breaks. With a sense of mission, spontaneously.
I patted him on the shoulder to cheer him up.
Lloyd said, as if he’d forgotten.
“Hey. It’s almost time for you to arrive….”
Too scared to speak, a car came from the other side. It cut through the snow and was soon in front of Kim.
The door opened and a familiar figure stepped out of the car.
“Warden, you’re here.”
“Okay. How’s the investigation coming along?”
“As expected, there are a lot of questions, and I can’t say anything for sure yet.”
“It’ll take a while, but make sure you get everything you need before more snow falls.”
Kushan was also dressed in a jumper over his dust jacket. It was a far cry from his usual neat appearance. He might be used to it, but for Kim Yi Hyun, it was awkward.
It wasn’t a major issue.
“What about the talks?”
“We’re done discussing this right now.”
“Oh, yeah. What, six days? That’s longer than I thought.”
Kim did not attend a single day of the talks. Kushan and Adrian were invited, but she flatly refused.
“I don’t want to be too intrusive.
I know I’ve already chimed in, but it’s best to leave things alone if they’re going to work themselves out. It’s also annoying.
I wasn’t worried at all.
“I’m sure you’ve done well.
At a time when professors are still growing, there is no one like Kushan. Especially in the political arena. I can only imagine how the conversation would have gone.
“There were a lot of people with their heads in the sand, and the deep-seated discrimination was troubling. Thank goodness the prince was cooperative, or we would have wasted another two days.”
“Well, from the sounds of it, it worked out.”
“They asked for it, so it was a no-brainer.”
There was no exhaustion in Kushan’s voice.
“No one knows much about the situation on the continent, and the few who do seem to have heard of it are out of date. How can we take the lead on something we know nothing about?”
It’s not a guns-and-knives negotiation. Bastila’s leadership is not used to seeking cooperation from outside forces. They don’t know how much they should be paid.
It was an easy condition to ignore.
“It was a good deal. That sums it up.”
“There was someone worse than me.”
“That’s a little unpleasant to hear.”
Kushan glared at Kim, his eyes narrowing.
“What are you going to do next?”
“Forward?”
“Princess Ainoa seemed to want you to stay in Bastitera.”
Has an ambiguous relationship with his family, Adrian. Her only friend, Cessa, killed herself. He is feared by the nobility due to a previous purge.
Ainoa relies on Kim because she’s the closest thing she has to Carmen. She’s the one she’s been closest to, the one she’s protected, and the one who’s pushed her buttons.
“Well, that’s a shame.”
Kim wasn’t exactly thrilled about it, but she wasn’t about to stay in Bastitera for long, either.
There’s still a lot of work to be done.
“I knew it. Leave the investigation to me, go back to your quarters and get your things organized.”
Kushan said as he handed over the keys to the car he’d arrived in.
“I’ll be back tomorrow.”
* * *
Tuck.
The sound of your footsteps on the stone floor is eerily clear. Stone walls surround you on all sides. The only source of light is a haphazardly placed scarlet light.
This is the facility where the Godmother usually stays. It was the epitome of her sinister personality. Every time he came here, he felt his heart clench in his chest.
Off, black! Aaaaahhh…!
The moans of pain were incessant. The man walked toward the source. The facility itself wasn’t large, so it didn’t take him long to get there.
A door with a small pane at the top. The man peered through the crack. He couldn’t see anything straight. There was no light, only darkness.
Drupal.
It was the moment I opened the door.
אני סובל!
The black figures grabbed the doorframe and stuck their heads in. The man took a few steps back. They screamed, but they didn’t come out of the door.
A moment later, the monsters’ flesh collapsed like foam. They became part of the darkness that pervaded the room. In the center of it all, the cowering woman slowly raised her head.
“Whoa, haaa……!”
Her eyes flashed through her long hair. The godmother was as thin as ever. Even as a man who had seen her for years, she looked unfamiliar.
“You must be seriously injured.”
“Shut up, it’s none of your business, turn it off….”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying this out of concern.”
He snorted.
“You take a bullet through the heart and you’re still alive, you should be thankful for a miracle.”
Of course, the miracle was not a phenomenon that could be explained by the shallow word miracle. The Godmother’s spell had worked in some way, though the mechanism was unknown. In the man’s eyes, she was a monster.
Even monsters are sometimes weak.
“I’m just here to give you some advice, you’ve gone too far this time.”
The godmother didn’t react. Instead, the air grew even more sticky. The man felt a chill of fear run down his spine, but he didn’t retract his remark.
“A soldier is not an organ that you can use and throw away as you please. How agitated your comrades would be if the whole story became known. They would feel betrayed that you used them as human sacrifices.”
The mood in the Legion was already very bad. A series of failures. Officers deserted. Even the plans for Bastitera, which had been heavily invested in manpower and funds, had been derailed.
At least this time, the godmother was responsible for the loss.
“This is the result of your arbitrariness, Godmother, and I’m sure she’s sorry for it, because she trusted you enough to give you that right.”
He shook his head.
“We’re going to be holding our breath for a while. I won’t go so far as to say it’s all on you, but you have to accept some of it.”
“Ha.”
The godmother snorted, as if she were plastic.
“You say that you are going to charge me with sin.”
“That means….”
“Yeah, you can’t. If you can’t do it, someone else can. If you have a complaint, I’ll listen. Just come in front of me and say it with dignity.”
The man felt a throbbing headache, nothing new. He’d known from the beginning how egocentric his godmother was. Not the kind of person to lead an organization.
“So, you’re saying that the problem is that the single-mindedness-”
Purr.
A monster appears upside down from the ceiling, blocking the man’s view. It’s outside the room. The man’s eyes widened as he realized what it was.
אוהב אותך.
Tap!
The monster’s entire face opened wide and swallowed the man’s head. The rest of his body convulsed madly. But the tremors lasted only a moment, and then he collapsed like a doll with a broken thread.
Godmother giggled as she broke out in a cold sweat.
“I’ll give you credit for guts.”
The man was the chief’s messenger, and it was annoying to hear him pontificate as if that alone guaranteed his life.
I did it in a way that made me feel good about myself, but it was pretty cathartic.
My head was dazed from the intense pain, and the hatred in my stomach was overflowing. She hadn’t tasted it in a long time. The godmother was even feeling nostalgic.
“……Oh, right.”
In a way, this was his origin.
“Hafael, you were right. You are always wise. The Legion is nothing more than a bunch of dirt. No different than the maggots that flock to filth…….”
Orphans with nowhere else to go, kids we liked the way they looked, kids we took in when they were trampled by the snow, and trained them to be martyrs or family members, depending on their level of perfection.
They were obedient children, none of whom rebelled except Hafael, and in drawing them into the Legion, they may have developed a sort of obsession with the organization itself.
“Futility.
Why did you abandon your countrymen, leap from your tower, and join the Legion? Was it to lead the buggers, or to play a silly family game?
It wasn’t about spewing hate.
“…….”
The Godmother’s eyes were deeply sunken. She sweetened the pain. She kept silent, holding back the urge to scream.
The only sound was Metunaf chewing on a chunk of meat.