Killing Machine (1)
The long march had dragged on for hours. The Humian soldiers were beginning to feel the ache in their legs. The journey from headquarters to the outskirts of Caboni Forest had been tolerable aboard transport vehicles, but after that they had been forced to proceed on foot. Even so, fatigue was nowhere to be seen on their faces. Each man was swollen with anticipation, openly displaying a sticky, greedy hunger.
“Unidentified individual spotted! Female!”
“Halt! Halt immediately!”
The report from the vanguard crackled through the commander’s communication artifact. The Humian soldiers aboard the mobile Scavenger vehicles had discovered a woman and relayed the information to the main force. Upon hearing it, the commander ordered a full stop.
The Humian troops halted at once, forming neat ranks as they waited for the vanguard to identify the unknown woman. The commander, however, felt a flicker of confusion. Had the target been a demi-human, the report would have used phrases like “target confirmed” or “pursuit initiated.” Given the current high morale, the scouts might even have captured her first and reported afterward. In Humian eyes, demi-humans were not even counted as people—they were little more than livestock. The very choice of the word “individual” was therefore strangely unsettling.
“Sh-she’s Humian!”
“A Humian… in a place like this?”
The commander was genuinely startled by the urgent follow-up. If it had merely been an unidentified Humian, he might have assumed it was a straggler or deserter from another unit. But the first report had specified a woman. He could not imagine why a Humian woman would appear alone in this death-ridden land.
“Sh-she’s wearing a maid uniform!”
“Are you sure you’re not mistaken!? Answer me, vanguard!”
“N-no, sir! She has fair skin, average height… and round ears!”
The commander’s bewilderment only deepened. It made no sense for an ordinary Humian woman to be wandering such a dangerous place alone. Reaching this location by herself was nearly impossible. Most Humian women lived safely within Esteronan, and the few who lived outside did so in fortified outposts built for defense. Humians fundamentally protected their own women. There was simply no reason for a woman under national protection to leave the safety of the walls and walk the perilous lands beyond.
“Find out exactly where she came from!”
“Understood!”
“We move out! We will protect the unidentified woman ahead!”
The commander’s unease stemmed from the mystery of her origins. Even a well-trained man could not traverse the barren, polluted regions of the Astaris continent alone. It was not merely the toxins or contamination—mutated beasts and monsters lurked everywhere, along with the restless dead that followed the living. The very ground they now marched upon had, until recently, been overrun by hordes of the undead, a danger zone even the military had avoided. For a Humian woman to be wandering here alone, only one explanation fit within the commander’s common sense: she had been traveling with an external organization from Esteronan and had become separated for some reason.
Outside Esteronan, Humians fell into three categories. The first was the military, which guarded the front lines, monitored the continent, and occasionally discovered slaves or resources to send back. The second was treasure hunters who scoured buried ruins and unknown lands. But the military did not accept women, and treasure hunters operated only near Esteronan—they would never reach this northern region. That left only one possibility.
Slave traders.
Most slave traders possessed enormous wealth and their own powerful private armies. Given their habit of traveling wherever slaves could be found, their appearance in the northern continent was not unusual. With such forces at their command, they could easily push through the continent’s threats to reach this place. The most plausible explanation was that a woman traveling with slave traders had become separated from the group.
And that very possibility was what troubled the commander most. If demi-humans existed in Caboni Forest, capturing them as slaves should be the exclusive right of the Humian army. Only then could the commander and his superiors catch the eye of Esteronan’s high-ranking officials and climb the ladder of status. If slave traders stole the prize first, the soldiers who had built walls and guarded this land would be left with nothing but scraps from the table. The commander had no intention of allowing some unknown slave trader to snatch away the fruits of their labor. Everything within that lush green forest ahead belonged to them.
As the march resumed, the commander resolved to interrogate the woman the moment they reached the vanguard. If she refused to speak of her journey, he was prepared to subject her to harsh questioning. His excitement was so great that his teeth ground together, and his face flushed a deep red.
“Um… miss? Where did you come from, if I may ask?”
“This place is dangerous. Please join us. If you tell us where you belong, we’ll escort you back to your master.”
The vanguard soldiers dismounted from their Scavenger and approached the woman, several of them attempting cautious conversation. She gave no reply, nor did she make any meaningful gesture. She simply stood in silence, gazing at the Humian soldiers.
“Maybe she can’t hear us?”
“How could someone with a disability survive out here?”
“No, listen. She’s not even wearing a Prima Ventus. I heard once that if you’re exposed to pollution without one, you can go blind or deaf.”
“Ah, so the reason she’s not reacting to us might be because she’s deaf—and maybe blind too?”
“Could be… or maybe she’s been through something so terrifying that she’s lost her mind…?”
The Humian soldiers began offering every possible speculation about the woman standing before them. Even as they whispered among themselves, she remained perfectly still, which only lent weight to their theories. Convinced that the motionless figure truly could neither see nor hear, the soldiers gradually raised their voices. After all, if she could not hear them, there was no harm in speaking freely.
“By the way, this is the first time I’ve seen a Humian maid.”
“Right? Usually servants like that are left to slaves, aren’t they?”
“Maybe her master was high-ranking enough to keep a fellow Humian as a maid?”
“Ah, damn it! I wish I had a maid of my own! I’d take her everywhere and have my way with her whenever I felt like it!”
“Kk-kk-kk! You crazy bastard! Seriously, how vulgar can you get? Kk-kk-kk-kk!”
The conversation had descended into crude, lewd remarks. The soldiers’ eyes were now tracing the woman’s appearance in detail. Her long emerald hair gleamed so brilliantly it seemed as though jewels themselves had been spun into thread. Her blue eyes evoked the clear, distant seas of legend; merely gazing into them brought a sense of rapture. The long lashes framing those eyes stirred thoughts of a night sky embroidered with stars, fluttering gently in a cool breeze—elegant and alluring.
Her blouse was made of luxurious black fabric, its collar stark white, with a pair of daisies embroidered in gold thread on either side that lent the garment an air of refinement. The sleeves, slit from shoulder to wrist, revealed glimpses of pale skin through the gaps. A slender red ribbon sat at the center of the collar, its brooch adorned with an oval emerald the same shade as her hair, accentuating her graceful charm.
The small white apron that covered only from beneath her chest to her lower abdomen was secured by frilled white straps that ran up to her shoulders—an impractical design clearly meant for beauty rather than function. The way the apron lifted and supported her breasts from below made their fullness all the more pronounced, radiating an irresistible sensuality.
Her skirt was no ordinary garment either. Instead of the common flared style, it was a daring wrap-around design, split down the front to boldly reveal long, shapely legs. Through that opening, white 30-denier stockings held by garter belts were visible, their outer seams embroidered with climbing rose vines in white thread from ankle to thigh.
She was a peerless beauty, every part of her form captivating. The Humian soldiers, confronted by a loveliness they had never witnessed in their lives, began to lose their composure. Their lust boiled over so fiercely that their throats went dry. With desire burning in their eyes, they devoured every curve of her body—the soft, moist lips that seemed warm to the touch, the full breasts clearly outlined beneath the fabric, the slender waist the tiny apron could never hide, the firm, shapely hips, the long legs whose smooth skin gleamed with an almost luminous quality. Everything about her fanned the flames of their desire.
Their arousal was so obvious that it strained visibly against the thick fabric of their trousers. A few even stood slack-jawed, drooling. At last, the beautiful woman reacted to their dazed, lecherous stares.
“Remove those filthy gazes at once. Human.”