Black Badger

Chapter 305: Rei (1)

Something surged up from the ground.

It pierced straight through the fighter.

Ami couldn’t tell what it was. But she knew exactly what she had to do—fly to the target point and drive the gun in. Even if the fighter in front of her went down.

The ground was burning in a strange color.

Near the target, it wasn’t just red—it was black.

She couldn’t even tell what the strike target was. Of course, every enemy in this war was something humanity was encountering for the first time. So Ami didn’t dwell on it long.

More accurately, she couldn’t afford to dwell on it.

She screamed when she saw a flying Creature coming straight at her.

“I can’t see the sky.”

She dropped altitude.

A steep descent. Straight toward the target. Ami felt the fuselage vibrating violently, dangerously so. The closer she got to the coordinates, the stronger the resistance became, and the darker everything grew around her.

But she kept pushing.

The approaching ground. Vast, heaving black flames swallowing the earth.

She fired the air-to-ground missile at the coordinates.

At that moment, the canopy went black.

“What the—!”

She had no idea what caused it.

She climbed altitude first.

She knew there were flying Creatures in the air.

But the priority was not crashing into the ground....

Kwaaang!

“Ah!”

Something slammed into the fuselage.

At the same time, the black mass covering the canopy dispersed. Her vision cleared—but the situation was bad. Warning alarms blared. The fuselage tilted, then began spinning wildly in midair.

Ami barely forced the spinning fighter back into alignment—though it was still falling—and made the decision to eject.

That was when she saw the ground.

A mass of soldiers.

“Whoa, what is this?!”

They were advancing toward the target area.

“Why are there so many people?!”

If she abandoned the aircraft and ejected, dozens would be crushed to death.

Her hesitation was brief.

“Sorry, oppa!”

She canceled the ejection and gripped the controls.

Then she began steering the fighter toward the end of the human column. She worried whether she could make it safely to an empty stretch of land.

But she couldn’t let the fighter she was in plow through dozens of soldiers.

Memories came flooding in like a tidal wave.

“So this is a life-flash.”

She muttered, thinking of her biological older brother.

Yun had opposed her receiving an enhanced body to the very end.

In the Choi family, the only one who had received enhancement and gone to the battlefield was Choi Yun. And that hadn’t been his choice. Able-bodied adult men were given no choice.

Unless they were as wealthy as Choi Hyunseok or Choi Hyunjun.

Her eldest brother and second brother had paid under the table and never gone to war. Even though the war had dragged on this long, they had never once faced a Creature in person.

Yun wanted Ami to live that kind of life too.

But when Yun went to the battlefield, Ami secretly volunteered for the air force.

‘You’re a minor.’

‘I’ll work really hard!’

‘No.’

That was what he said—but they allowed her to train through the military curriculum until she became an adult. Half of it was probably pressure from the Choi family, and half was because manpower was that scarce.

They didn’t implant an enhanced body. They didn’t send her to the battlefield.

But the moment she became a legal adult, Ami received enhancement and was deployed.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Yun somehow found out and called one day in a rage.

‘Change your adoptive parents.’

‘I’ll survive as long as I can, oppa!’

She wouldn’t cry herself to sleep anymore, worrying about Yun on the battlefield.

‘Don’t worry! I fly a fighter, so it’s less dangerous than what other soldiers do. And I’m really good at it. Everyone said I’m a genius. If you’re a genius at math and science, then I’m a genius at driving.’

‘Choi Ami. Change to Choi Jeseok.’

‘I chose this myself!’

‘And they just let you do that shit without stopping you?’

No matter how furious Yun got, Ami didn’t waver.

‘You pulled two perfectly healthy biological sons out, and you just watched her do this? And you too! You should’ve been begging on your knees not to send her to the battlefield! And instead you drop out of high school and enlist?’

‘School barely operates normally anymore.’

‘Stay locked inside the Choi household!’

She didn’t listen.

With drones in short supply due to the long war, she flew outdated fighters instead. There was no way she hadn’t noticed her own aptitude. She was an exceptional pilot, and she thought she’d survive for a long time.

But she didn’t even make it past a year.

Watching the ground rush closer, she thought—

Sorry, oppa.

She thought of Yehyeon too. Since the war broke out, she hadn’t contacted him even once. She wanted to brag to Yehyeon oppa—who always smiled gently and praised her—about flying a fighter.

I hope he’s alive.

The approaching ground.

Clutching the controls tightly, Ami made a selfish wish—that even if they heard of her death, the people she loved would be safe.

The people she loved more than anything.

“Bye! Thanks for everything!”

Kwaaang!

Her memories ended there.

***

Something like a white wave surged forward.

It came layered like flower petals, impossible to dodge.

Soldiers were swept away by the attack.

Chen Koenig had been toward the rear, so he didn’t die with his limbs torn apart.

“Fuck.”

That didn’t mean he was fine.

“What the hell is even in the middle of that....”

Kwaaang!

A grenade flew in and exploded.

A stabbing pain, and his strength drained away. He never got his answer. He knew he wouldn’t be able to advance further. He never found out what they had come here to kill.

Is this the end?

Who knows. If he was lucky, maybe he’d open his eyes again.

He had always been relatively lucky. This time too, he hoped luck would be with him and his unit.

Chen muttered curses and lost consciousness.

He sank into a cool, comfortable darkness.

***

“Get up.”

Someone shook Ju’s body.

“Get up. We have to get out.”

He was crying.

Ju opened his eyes, feeling heat. He saw a soldier shaking him, crying. It was Nouvel. Seeing his comrade with part of his head blown away, Ju managed a faint smile—to show he was conscious.

And to comfort his frightened comrade.

It didn’t help.

“My body won’t move.”

Ju replied calmly.

“Go first, Nouvel.”

“No.”

Nouvel dragged Ju out from among the corpses.

He pushed aside arms and legs whose owners he couldn’t identify, hoisted Ju onto his back, and crawled forward like a beetle with a shell.

Away from the noise and the dark flames.

Bodies torn to shreds. Prayers scratched into dry earth with fingernails.

So I lost people I grew attached to again.

“Don’t breathe the smoke.”

Nouvel muttered.

“Cover your nose. If you breathe the smoke....”

Crawling over ground carpeted with corpses, Nouvel suddenly collapsed and stopped moving.

Ju barely moved his arm and closed Nouvel’s eyes.

If I can move again, I’ll cover my nose and crawl.

He thought as he slipped toward unconsciousness.

Because it’s a life Nouvel tried to save. I have to try my best to survive.

For my siblings back home.

For my parents....

***

“Division Commander!”

Someone shouted from behind.

“Division Commander!”

Richard Green didn’t turn around.

Instead, he stood atop a mountain of corpses and looked down.

At last, he faced it.

The cause of the bizarre order that had come down the day before.

Something burning amid the heaps of bodies. Something wrapped in black, flame-like fire.

The Creature that had created this catastrophe.

Richard couldn’t clearly see what lay within the roiling black flames.

But he knew it was the Creature that had killed them all.

Across the vast plain, bodies were piled high.

Those who died approaching it. Soldiers who lost their lives attacking it.

Only around the black flames were there no bodies. Perhaps they had been caught up and burned to ash. At the feet of the not-so-large Creature, a desolate circle had formed.

The surrounding ground writhed strangely.

He couldn’t understand how that Creature was still alive.

He had heard that every available force was being poured in. So he had assumed, on his own, that by the time the troops under his command arrived, it would already be over.

Either way, it had to be annihilated.

Standing atop a mountain of corpses, Richard looked down at the unidentified thing and raised an infantry missile.

At that moment, something stretched out from it.

A shockwave like flower petals.

Kwaaang!

The shockwave burst corpses apart as it spread outward in concentric circles.

Crushing everything in its path, it surged toward him.

Richard didn’t flinch and fired the missile.

Kwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwaang!

Then he was struck by the white, petal-like shockwave.

Pain and impact slammed into his body.

It has to be eliminated.

He climbed the mountain of corpses with countless thoughts in his mind, but at the instant his memory cut out, there was only one thought left.

We have to kill that thing as fast as possible.

Richard Green lost consciousness.

***

‘Is he going?’

Shashinsky was thinking of Eric.

‘There’s no need for that.’

That’s right. Either he or Eric could have chosen not to go to the battlefield, if they wanted.

But Shashinsky had chosen to receive an enhanced body.

Half because it could restore his damaged body, and half out of a sense of justice.

He had hesitated briefly because of Eric’s existence.

A man who could die within half a day if he went to the battlefield—truthfully, even outside the battlefield, he wasn’t particularly healthy or good at fighting.

He had wondered if he should stay behind and guard him instead of going out there.

‘You’ll come back.’

That was what he had said to Eric before they parted.

‘You’ll come back alive, with all your limbs.’

‘I’ll be waiting.’

Looks like I won’t be able to keep that promise.

Watching the burning enemy, Shashinsky thought—

Against that thing, there’s just no way....

***

Unless luck is absolutely terrible, I’m going to die.

Yun thought that as he lay sprawled on the ground.

What the hell is it this time.

A chill wrapped around his body. Faint groans of soldiers and murmured calls for family seeped into his ears.

Death cries and sounds of destruction flowed from the place they had been trying to reach.

With his eyes half-open, Yun felt vibrations transmitted through the ground and the bodies.

He hadn’t reached the target point. Advancing over a mountain of corpses, he had been caught in an attack at some point. The unexpected massive strike swept through Yun’s unit.

If only there had been spare blood injections left, his chances of survival would’ve been much higher.

His body wouldn’t move.

At this point, there was nothing he could do.

Where were Yehyeon and Ami?

He thought through pain and cold. He didn’t even know whether they were alive or dead.

The last time he’d heard from her, his younger sister said she kept being deployed. Right before coming out to the battlefield, he had bowed deeply and politely to the Choi family, asking them for favors. And despite trampling over that effort, Ami had walked straight into danger of her own accord.

Stupid idiot.

So damn stubborn.

Still, she’d always been relatively lucky. Maybe she’d stay lucky until the war ended.

Yehyeon, on the other hand, was unlucky.

‘If you die, I’ll die too.’

That was the kind of nonsense Yehyeon had said when they met a year ago.

‘I’m satisfied just having survived this long. But if possible, I hope I die before I ever hear news of your death.’

‘Don’t say stupid shit.’

Unlike himself, who was merely physically exhausted, Yehyeon grew more and more worn down as the war dragged on.

‘Stop talking crap and eat.’

Then he disappeared.

From the battlefield. Using the Choi family’s influence, Yun had tried to track him down, and it seemed someone had pulled him out of his original unit. One day, he’d been suddenly summoned from the barracks and never returned.

The moment Yun heard that, he thought of Yehyeon’s biological father.

Lee Seunghyun.

The one who did not age.

One day, that man had suddenly gone mad and driven Yehyeon relentlessly. Back then, Yun had thought, maybe that bastard is finally starting to age. But now he knew—that wasn’t it. The man had known the war was coming.

He had thought Seunghyun kept Yehyeon around reluctantly because his child wouldn’t die. But seeing how much effort he’d put into training him, it seemed Seunghyun wasn’t completely unattached to Yehyeon either.

Yun hoped it had been Lee Seunghyun who pulled Yehyeon out of the battlefield.

That he’d realized his own child was being worn down and quietly moved him to the rearguard.

“At least that much,”

he muttered.

That would be the bare minimum to atone for the sin he’d committed against Yehyeon.

He didn’t know whether Lee Seunghyun was alive or dead.

But if he was alive, Yun nagged him silently to move Yehyeon to the rear—and slowly lost consciousness.

With a lingering curiosity about who the owner of that attack had been.

With lingering doubt about what kind of thing could warrant pouring in power so brutally.

***

Lee Seunghyun faced Rei.

He closed the distance while firing shot after shot, finally succeeding in severing Rei’s arm.

It regenerated.

Then this time, I’ll destroy the sword.

If he couldn’t cut off the arm, he would cut the sword Rei was holding.

As he raised his gun with that thought, the barrel was cut clean through.

Golden eyes met his.

Blackened sclera burning white.

“Not bad.”

Rei’s mutter startled him.

“You’re the best human I’ve faced so far. What a waste.”

Kwaaang!

His body was sent flying, smashing into a damaged cannon.

“Guh—!”

Lee Seunghyun spat blood.

And he knew he had lost. Agonizing pain surged through him, and the hand clutching his abdomen was soaked with blood in an instant. There were no spare blood injections. He was recovering, but the body had taken a massive shock and was bleeding out fast enough to be fatal.

There was about a ninety percent chance he would die.

I have to send Yehyeon out at the very end.

Shivering with cold, Lee Seunghyun thought that. He had to send that one out at the moment the Titan’s body and mind were worn down. If he sent him out too early, Rei wouldn’t be fooled or hesitate.

I wonder if Hilde’s sword made it safely.

Lee Seunghyun thought of the sword of the man he had never been able to catch up to, no matter how hard he tried.

It was an elegant greatsword. The crossguard between blade and grip was a straight, honest line, «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» so the sword as a whole resembled a long cross. The crossguard and the pommel at the end of the grip shared the same golden hue. From the rain guard to the ricasso, golden patterns were engraved, and in contrast to that gold, the blade itself was silver, giving it an oddly sacred air.

He remembered quietly accepting it when Hilde said it was a sword that had been kept in a temple.

Hilde had never allowed anyone else to hold that sword to the very end.

If things had gone right, it would be in Yehyeon’s hands by now.

Its speed still didn’t quite satisfy him, but....

‘You’re the best at it, so you should carry it on and teach.’

He hadn’t been able to fulfill Hilde’s request perfectly.

Still, no one had done as well as Yehyeon. Even if he dragged in some other human to teach, that fact wouldn’t change.

Lee Seunghyun didn’t doubt it for a moment.

That he had chosen the right person to inherit Hilde’s sword.

And that Yehyeon would never hesitate or make a mistake in real combat.

***

Jason and Yehyeon were there.

Two humans who had resolved themselves to mutual destruction.