Promise (3)
While the soldiers cleared away the corpses of the large-class monsters, the Commander and I sat facing each other in a hastily erected tent.
“What happened?”
“What happened?”
We asked each other the same thing and, for a moment, both of us faintly furrowed our brows at once.
I wanted the explanation in chronological order, but as the subordinate I had to answer first.
“I thought the signal flare had been fired by mistake. Figuring there would be six or fewer, I only brought Meursault and the two new officers. My judgment was off. If I’d known there were nine, I wouldn’t have come with just us.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
The Commander looked more confused than I had ever seen him.
“How did you drive those things off?”
Ah. So that was the question.
But I didn’t know why they had suddenly fled either. Honestly, it left me a little uneasy. Their retreat was fortunate, yet as long as the reason remained unknown they might come back for another attack. Simply saying I didn’t know, though, wouldn’t be the answer he wanted.
No choice. I would have to offer Meursault’s hypothesis at least.
“Actually… in the sector we searched, we didn’t see a single small- or medium-class monster, let alone a large-class one.”
“Not a single one?”
“According to the team reports, only footprints remained—as if something had terrified them all into fleeing at once.”
“Same as the ones that just ran.”
The Commander’s eyes took on a strange cast.
“I can barely believe what I saw myself, but… those things looked like they were running from you. If the monsters had already cleared out of the area you searched, then the cause of their sudden flight has to be you.”
“But I don’t understand why they would run from me. Until I arrived and killed two of them, they didn’t seem particularly afraid.”
“That bothers me too. It’s not as if you suddenly changed mid-fight.”
Something had changed in the middle, of course, but I couldn’t tell the Commander it might have been the title. I needed a plausible reply.
“Is it possible they simply got scared after watching me take two of them down so easily?”
“Well, that does sound the most probable—but right up until the moment they fled they looked furious at you for killing their comrades.”
“Then I truly have no idea.”
That much sincerity should have satisfied his questions. Now it was my turn.
“So what happened on your end? How did you end up fighting nine large-class monsters?”
The Commander exhaled a heavy sigh and answered in a worried voice.
“Same here. I don’t know the reason.”
“What?”
“As you know, large-class monsters don’t travel in packs.”
I knew the trait well. Large-class monsters ate anything that moved—including their own kind. Same rank was no exception; large-class devouring large-class was common. So instead of packing together they were the sort that desperately avoided one another on sight.
“Yet after we began the central search and went hours without seeing so much as a hair of them, they ambushed us from the rear. In a pack.”
“Large-class monsters ambushed you in a pack?”
As I’d said before, among monsters the smaller ones often possessed higher intelligence while the larger ones tended to be simple-minded brutes. Yet individuals capable of advanced tactics like an ambush—not one or two, but nine at once?
Come to think of it, among the ones I fought earlier there was one that used its head a little…
In the heat of the moment I hadn’t considered it deeply. Raising its head so we couldn’t shoot its gem wasn’t a common large-class behavior either. Had that individual led the pack ambush?
“Then the reason you only fired six flares…”
“Yeah. In the first ambush four men were swept away. Looked like instant deaths. We hurriedly fired every signal flare we had, and luckily Team 2 was searching nearby, so we survived. After that the other teams who saw the signal joined one after another—that’s why we’re still breathing. Plenty didn’t make it, but the casualties were fewer than expected…”
He trailed off, then spoke to me in a firm tone.
“This is all thanks to you.”
Suddenly?
“I think I arrived the latest.”
“No. I’m not talking about direct help alone.”
The Commander propped his chin on his hand and regarded me steadily.
“Plenty of soldiers lived because of your performance, but more than that—the fact that our numbers were small from the start is why we survived this. If we’d formed the subjugation force the usual way the damage would have been far worse. If that many people had tried to flee the ambush we never would have established a perimeter as quickly as we did. The monsters, trying to attack a force smaller than themselves, ended up blocking one another’s paths and couldn’t build speed. That’s how we managed to reach Team 2…”
He paused, then asked with eyes that mixed suspicion and expectation.
“Did you… know?”
Hmm.
Right—I had told the Commander I was a regressor. It was reasonable for him to think I had known the future of a large-class ambush and reorganized the force into teams because of it. Suspicion that I had known yet said nothing. On the other hand, hope that if I had foreseen this I could also resolve whatever came next.
But the team structure had been purely for efficiency, and I wasn’t truly a regressor. Even in the game I had played there was no story of large-class monsters attacking in packs.
Just from my expression the Commander seemed to realize I knew nothing about the incident; the look of suspicion and expectation faded.
“Looks like you didn’t know after all.”
“It never happened in the future I know.”
“Then… could that guy have intervened?”
“That guy…?”
“The one from the Unicorn Area—the player or regressor or whatever he is.”
When the Unicorn Area player had ambushed me before, I had told the Commander the man might be a regressor like me or a player like Mother, and he had remembered. His guess that the man was connected to this wasn’t entirely far-fetched. If something that never occurred in the game was happening here, player intervention was the first thing to suspect. The other areas were only sending surveillance at best, but given the Unicorn Area’s technology they could certainly control large-class monsters.
Still…
I can’t help thinking… why bother?
That guy had shot at me from point-blank range. There was no reason for him to go to the trouble of puppeting large monsters into an ambush. And if it had been his doing, the monsters’ empty retreat made even less sense.
“I don’t think a guy who already put a bullet in me would bother using monsters.”
“I heard the one he originally tried to kill was that kid—Darling Outsider. What if he was targeting your friend again?”
“Too inefficient if he was after Darling. He should have sent the monsters at the team that guy was on, not Father’s Team 1. It’s too ambiguous to claim he was after Father either. When the monsters fled they didn’t even glance toward Father’s side.”
At my rebuttal the Commander pressed a hand to his forehead as if it throbbed, then leaned heavily back into the simple chair.
“…Should we return to the Area?”
Having taken five, we had achieved a fair portion of the subjugation’s purpose. The large-class monsters in the vicinity were probably those nine and no more. Staying longer in a place where the inexplicable was unfolding might only invite more risk; returning could be wiser. Leaving four behind was unsettling, yet if they simply ran at the sight of me next time, finishing them would be difficult anyway.
“Sir.”
At that moment Meursault pushed open the tent flap and stepped inside.
“Reporting. Total monsters subjugated: five. Killed in action: six, of which two bodies have yet to be recovered.”
“Wounded?”
“Three serious, twenty-one minor—total twenty-four. All personnel waiting in the other sectors are confirmed safe; Second Lieutenant Platon is leading them here. The monster corpses are ready for transport, but… what are your orders?”
Meursault had clearly come to ask about returning as well. The Commander looked at me with an expression that asked what we should do.
…Was he seriously leaving the decision to me?
“How many of the twenty-one lightly wounded can drive a bike?”
The answer came at once, as if Meursault had expected the question.
“All twenty-one can handle a bike at least.”
“Then send the corpses and the wounded back to the Area first.”
The Commander regarded me steadily.
“You intend to continue the search?”
“I think we should until the wounded get back. There’s no guarantee the ones who ambushed once won’t do it again.”
Commander and Meursault glanced at each other, then nodded together.
“We can’t send only the wounded, so we’ll select a few soldiers to return with them.”
“We’ll need to reorganize.”
In moments they had decided who would return, reduced the ten teams to five, and assigned eleven men to each. Team leaders were chosen from the survivors of the Commander’s Team 1. Because Team 1 had been deliberately packed with battle-hardened veterans to support the Commander, the loss of four members now struck especially hard. Including the Commander there were six survivors, so one was not given a team and was put in charge of escorting the wounded instead.
My Team 10—neither dead nor wounded, composed entirely of new officers—was evenly distributed among the five teams. Meursault and I were of course placed in Team 1 under the Commander, but what surprised me was that he put Yeobom into Team 1 first.
“You’re taking him along?”
“The one who was running toward you before the monsters fled—wasn’t that your friend?”
Even in that chaos he had noticed Yeobom charging toward me. I still wasn’t sure the guy would have been any real help, but watching him come to my aid in that situation had impressed me with his growth as well.
Then Meursault looked at me as if he had just remembered something.
“Come to think of it, Private Outsider was standing in front of the tent looking pale as a sheet…”
“He’s out front?”
“His Excellency and I will handle the rest. Wouldn’t it be better for you to go to your friend?”
When Meursault said that, the Commander also told me it was fine to step out. Since the reorganization no longer required my attention, I gave a light bow and walked out of the tent.
The instant I emerged, a hand clamped onto my arm.
“Dopa… Haydam!”
Pale as a sheet, Meursault had said—and it was no exaggeration. Yeobom was white as a ghost, as if he had seen something truly terrifying. Even when he had nearly died at the hands of the Unicorn player he had never looked this frightened. I found myself asking without thinking,
“You… okay?”
“Those things earlier… those things!”
Yeobom kept shaking his head as if he hadn’t heard me.
“Something’s weird… something’s wrong…!”
Looking closer, the hand gripping my arm was trembling as well. The reaction was a little excessive if it was only from facing several large-class monsters moments ago.
“Calm down. I also thought it strange that large-class monsters ambushed in a pack, so I was about to start looking into—”
“It’s not the packing that’s the problem!”
Yeobom yelled, so I clapped a hand over his mouth at once. Right behind us, separated by only a single sheet of canvas, were the Commander and Meursault. Yeobom glared at me resentfully, but considering he had almost called me Dopamine Addict a second earlier, the measure was justified.
I hauled him away from the tent, confirmed no one was nearby, and only then released his mouth.
“First, calm down.”
“…”
“Now tell me what’s wrong.”
“Those things…”
Yeobom swallowed hard, then continued.
“I saw them… eating people…”
I nodded as if I understood.
“Must have been horrible.”
I had tried to empathize in my own way, but Yeobom shook his head violently.
“No! It wasn’t horrible. The problem was that it wasn’t horrible!!”
“What are you talking about?”
Tired of waiting, I finally frowned. Yeobom answered in a muttering voice.
“I definitely saw it. The body of the person they ate…”
He looked at me with trembling eyes and slowly forced the words out.
“The moment their teeth touched it, it vanished into blue particles.”