Promise (5)
Was Platon seriously asking me right now whether his own father had kidnapped my friend?
“Haydam, sir?”
While I stood there blankly, Platon called my name with a worried look.
“I asked because I assumed you already knew about it… Don’t tell me you didn’t?”
After a brief delay, I pulled myself together and answered.
“No… of course I knew. I just never expected you to be the one asking.”
I frowned and pressed him.
“But how do you know? Anton wouldn’t have told you himself…”
“My father mentioned that he had heard about the graduation speech from you, sir. It struck me as strange that a man who didn’t even attend my own graduation would go out of his way to meet with you, so I looked into it on my own.”
He actually went and investigated his own father?
“I really did pick a good adjutant.”
Platon gave a slightly bashful smile and continued.
“So… if my father truly committed a discourtesy, I wish to offer a formal apology.”
So that was why he had been so long-winded—it all came down to wanting to apologize?
Anton kidnapping Homebody Honey wasn’t Platon’s fault in the first place. And here he was, a second lieutenant, ready to apologize to a private. Meanwhile Homebody Honey, the moment he heard I planned to make Platon my adjutant, had been more interested in giving me an earful. The contrast was almost funny.
“That’s admirable of you, but the discourtesy was his, not yours. You don’t need to apologize.”
“Is… that so?”
“By the way, he didn’t kick you out after that?”
“I’m currently living in the officers’ dormitory.”
So he had been kicked out.
“When it was just announced that the recommendation system would be replaced by an entrance exam, he said nothing. The moment they revealed that you would be setting the exam questions, he threw me out.”
“Oof.”
Just then I noticed the team members ahead of us had come to a halt and were murmuring among themselves.
“It looks like they’ve found something up ahead.”
I hurried forward and found the Commander and Meursault already there, speaking with grave expressions.
“What’s going on?”
As I approached and asked, Meursault answered.
“It’s the crevasse.”
A crevasse, simply put, is a crack that forms in the ground. After the ice age arrived in this world, most of the surface became glacier, and those glaciers split open, leaving bottomless holes—that was the in-game explanation.
“According to the map this area ahead is a crevasse zone… but the snow still hasn’t melted this far out, so the crevasses are covered and invisible.”
Crevasse sizes varied wildly. Most were large enough to spot with the naked eye, but when snow piled up layer by layer, some became so ambiguous you could no longer tell them apart from solid ground. Even those deceptively modest openings were usually wide enough to swallow a grown adult whole.
If it hadn’t been snowing, we might have been able to spot the bluish tint of a hole beneath the snow and collapse it safely before crossing. But with the snow still falling, it was nearly impossible to judge the color of the ground by eye.
That was why the subjugation campaigns only ever launched in spring, once the snow had melted. We had simply chased the monsters so far that we had wandered into a region where the snow still lingered.
“Continuing the search will be difficult.”
Team 1 had been following the tracks the monsters left while fleeing. But even those panicked creatures had begun erasing their footprints with their tails halfway through, and the snow that had started falling a short while ago had finished covering what little remained. We could no longer follow their trail.
We had been searching in the direction of the last footprints we found when we ran straight into the crevasse zone.
The snow-covered cracks ahead were wide enough to take a grown man, yet a large-class monster could cross them without trouble. If the creatures had fled beyond this point, pursuit would be nearly impossible. We could detour around the terrain and reach the other side, but if they doubled back through here in the meantime, our search net would have a hole in it.
In any case, our team’s objective was less about hunting down and killing the four escapees and more about keeping watch so they couldn’t ambush the wounded while they withdrew. The Commander seemed inclined to call off the search here.
Truth be told, if I hadn’t felt that strange sense of unease from the monsters, I would already have chosen to head back myself. Visibility was still fine for now, but once the snow grew heavier it wouldn’t just be signal flares that became a problem—we would struggle even to find our way back to the Zone. We had already come far too far out.
“We’re turning back.”
In the end the Commander decided on withdrawal and fired the signal flare announcing the retreat.
So we returned to the designated intermediate rally point.
And there an unexpected problem awaited us.
“Team 2 still hasn’t returned?”
Of the five teams that had scattered, Teams 1, 3, 4, and 5 had all made it back to the midpoint. Team 2 had not.
The Team 2 leader was a colonel from the pro-Hayden faction—the same man who had personally selected Lucas and Bones from my Team 10 and taken them with him.
Meursault, face frozen stiff, continued his report.
“Team 3 says they saw Team 2 heading in the opposite direction.”
“They saw Team 2? Weren’t Team 3’s search sectors nowhere near each other?”
“At the time they thought Team 2 had simply taken a wrong turn and their areas had overlapped… but given that they still haven’t come back…”
I didn’t need to hear any more. It was obvious what had happened.
Blinded by promotion, huh.
The reason the Team 2 colonel had taken such a reckless gamble was that a promotion hung on this subjugation campaign. Ever since Anton of the pro-Daphne faction had announced his retirement, rumors had been circulating that Yosef of the pro-Hayden faction would soon retire as well. With two general slots opening up, everyone below them naturally started dreaming of advancement. The Team 2 colonel clearly intended to distinguish himself in this campaign and make general no matter what.
The Commander kept his expression carefully composed, but veins stood out blue and rigid along his neck from sheer fury.
“…So now we need a search party for the search party.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing you need to apologize for.”
Meursault hung his head, looking thoroughly ashamed.
In my opinion, even if the Team 2 colonel made it back safely, he wasn’t going to keep all his limbs. And I had no intention of letting the bastard who had dragged my two precious newly commissioned officers off on a solo expedition walk away unscathed either.
All the while the snow was falling harder and harder.
The Commander stared for a long time in silence toward the direction Team 2 had likely taken, then spoke heavily.
“I won’t put everyone else at risk for one idiot. We’re going back.”
It was the most rational decision a commander could make.
But if we left now, those fools would all die. If Team 2 had been chasing the monsters, they would have headed straight for the crevasse zone we had just abandoned. We had only discovered the crevasses because the snow hadn’t yet grown fierce. A unit made up of a mere colonel and green officers was never going to notice crevasses in a full blizzard.
“We can’t do that.”
I hadn’t even opened my mouth when some lunatic had the gall to openly contradict the Commander’s order. I looked over, and of course it was Platon.
The Commander and Meursault were so flabbergasted by the cheeky new officer’s defiance that they fell silent for a moment and simply stared. Platon apparently took that as permission to continue, because he pressed on with a deadly serious face.
“Team 2 includes newly commissioned officers. Those new officers would have had no choice but to follow their superior when he ordered them to leave the assigned route in search of monsters. Exactly as you said, sir—one idiot could get freshly commissioned officers killed for nothing. Someone has to go after them and warn them about the crevasses. If you’ll allow it, I’ll go.”
Consistent as ever, this guy.
Under normal circumstances I would have cut Platon loose on the spot. But I had more than a few reasons of my own to feel uneasy about simply turning back.
If we leave now, we may never find out what those monsters were running from.
Subjugation campaigns only happened once a year, in spring. The large-class monsters that had fled today wouldn’t come near the Zone again until next spring at the earliest—and they might well die out here on the tundra before then.
And it’d be a shame to waste the early training I put into them…
Even if I had put them through the wringer in the training simulations, spotting a child in actual combat and responding properly wasn’t something just anyone could do. Lucas and Bones were far too valuable to burn up like this.
All right. We’re going after them.
Having made my decision, I stretched out an arm to push Platon back a step and stepped forward myself.
Or rather, I tried to.
“Don’t you dare, Haydam.”
The instant I moved to support Platon, the Commander stopped me cold, as if he had known exactly what I was about to do.
“I’ve overlooked your recklessness more times than I can count, but this is not the time for you to step in. Your bravado doesn’t always produce good results.”
It was something a father and superior had every right to say to me. But I couldn’t back down here either.
Hearing the word “bravado” brought back the faces of those new officers who had looked up at me and applauded during the graduation speech.
“Father.”
I met the Commander’s gaze squarely.
“You’re not going to call the courage those newly commissioned officers showed at the graduation speech mere bravado, are you?”
“……”
Platon might treat his superiors lightly, but Lucas and Bones would have had no choice but to obey whatever their superior ordered. They had only just broken out of their shells. If we let them die so meaninglessly now, who would ever take seriously my claim that we should admit every child in the Zone into the military academy in order to cultivate talent?
“And I wasn’t about to suggest we go looking for Team 2.”
“Then what?”
“That crevasse we just saw. I’ll go only that far, mark it as a danger zone, and come straight back.”
The Commander stared at me for a moment, at a loss for words, then said,
“So you intend to go yourself.”
“I doubt the others are eager to risk their lives because of one idiot either.”
“Does marking a danger zone really require a child like you?”
“I’m not an adult when I’m beating down monsters and a child when the work is dangerous, am I?”
The Commander fixed me with an unreadable look.
“How can you be so reckless and arrogant… Sometimes I truly wonder whether you’re my son at all.”
Sharp as ever.
“Meursault.”
The Commander spoke without taking his eyes off me.
“Take the rest and head back first.”
“Sir?”
This time Meursault nearly jumped out of his skin.
“What do you mean? Don’t tell me Your Excellency means to stay behind as well?”
“You don’t actually believe these two will just mark the danger and come back quietly either, do you?”
I hastily tried to hide the guilty look that flickered across my face and accidentally locked eyes with Platon. Judging by his expression, he hadn’t planned on returning quietly either.
I felt a gaze on me and looked up to find Homebody Honey watching me with open anxiety. He looked ready to raise his hand and volunteer to come along at any second, so I shook my head firmly. If Homebody Honey peeled off from the returning group as well, the withdrawal party might end up in more danger than we would. With both the Commander and me peeling off, we needed to leave one of the people capable of handling large-class monsters—Homebody Honey—with the return team.
The Commander followed my gaze, glanced briefly at Homebody Honey, then looked away again and said,
“If you’ve decided, then move out. If we delay any longer, both we and you will get lost in this blizzard.”
And then—
Before we even reached the crevasse, we found bloodstains staining the pure white snowfield red.
Platon immediately began scanning the surroundings, assuming it was the monsters’ doing.
But I knew the moment I saw it.
This.
Wasn’t the work of monsters.