The Deserters' Ambush
Madam has always deployed this doll’s abilities with perfect precision, which is why the family’s systems are so well established. Left to myself, I would never have even attempted to build such structures. In that sense, aside from my master Elisa and her proxy Elsa, no one understands or utilizes me better than Madam. The satisfaction I feel when used as a doll is correspondingly high, which is why I like her.
Madam silently retrieved the gown she had discarded earlier, slipped it back on, and approached me with her hand extended.
“I’ve said this many times already, but I hope you’ll continue to lend us your strength.”
“Heh. Don’t ask—command me. I prefer it that way.”
“Really… Elisha, you are a peculiar one. Hohoho~ Very well. Continue devoting yourself to the family.”
“Yes, Madam.”
I took her hand, rose to my feet with an expression full of gratitude and satisfaction, and left the room under her escort. After conceiving the heir, Madam received everyone’s blessings and was largely exempted from all duties. She now spent most of her time in the camper on the mart rooftop, waiting for signals from Earth.
The torrential rain that had continued for days finally stopped after turning the city into a sea of water. The floodwaters had risen so high that the embankments around the farm had matched their height, but once the rain ceased, they stopped rising as well. The sky was now clear, as if it had never rained, and the sun blazed high overhead.
I watched the men, now fully accustomed to farming, working alongside the women with bright faces, then turned to Ruya beside me.
“I heard someone from the port survivors’ group came?”
“Yeah. Horana and Oppa are meeting them at the perimeter right now.”
“What could have prompted them to initiate contact first?”
“Who knows? If those arrogant people came looking for us, something big must have happened.”
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
For some reason, a faint sense of foreboding stirred within me. Lately my intuition had been proving surprisingly accurate, which only made me more uneasy.
“I can’t just sit here. I’m going myself.”
“Only one person came. If we all rush over, won’t they think we’re threatening them?”
“Are we certain only one came?”
“That’s what the sentry reported.”
“Still, I should go see for myself. Ruya, stay here and keep watch.”
“Mm.”
Leaving Ruya nodding in a daze, I spread my wings and flew toward the location where Oppa was. Soaring at high speed, I soon spotted two figures facing each other from a distance. Oppa stood heavily armed in hunter gear, while Horana wore the black habit she had fashioned to resemble a nun’s robe. In front of them stood a muscular man in a tank top, military-style pants, and combat boots—unarmed at first glance.
Instead of approaching directly, I landed on the rooftop of a nearby tall building and scanned the surroundings. Using my automatically analyzing vision that highlighted and labeled threats, I swept the area and spotted a figure on a distant building opposite them.
“That’s… a gun?”
The figure was hidden inside a dark room, aiming a rifle through the window at Oppa and Horana as they conversed. I quickly reached for the rifle in my spatial pouch when another armed figure appeared on a diagonally positioned building.
“This… there’s more than one or two.”
I raised the rifle and assumed a firing stance. A quick count revealed four enemies in total. Some were positioned extremely close to Oppa and Horana, suggesting they had been lying in ambush beforehand. While running a simulation through the combat-assist program that displayed the optimal firing path to eliminate all targets in the shortest time, I assessed the situation.
“…I understand what you’re saying, but trading food for women is out of the question.”
I heightened the directional sensitivity of my auditory sensors and caught the faint conversation. The first words I heard already sounded ominous.
“…If you comply with the trade before we resort to force, there won’t be any bloodshed.”
“Who would agree to such an open threat? This conversation never happened. Leave.”
When Horana relayed Oppa’s firm refusal, the man’s previously expressionless face twisted into a menacing scowl. He spoke again, and Horana translated.
“…He says this is your last chance. He claims his subordinates have already infiltrated and are preparing for war……”
“What? Infiltrated? Don’t tell me……”
Oppa’s expression grew grave at the alarming words, and so did mine. Infiltrated—did that mean enemies were already inside the central district? I couldn’t tell if it was a mere bluff or the truth. Either way, the immediate priority was dealing with the situation here. I tightened my finger on the trigger.
The moment the man raised his hand into the air in response to Oppa’s refusal, time seemed to slow. My magnified aiming view expanded. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! In the slowed vision, bullets fired in rapid succession pierced cleanly through the targets’ heads. At the instant the first shot rang out, Oppa charged at the man reaching for the pistol at his waist with incredible speed.
Thud! Crunch! Even as the pistol was aimed at him, Oppa calmly twisted aside to dodge the bullet, swung his sword, and severed the hand holding the gun.
“Kuh!”
The man let out a short groan and immediately shifted, drawing a dagger from his thigh with his remaining hand. The blade, swung in a clean arc toward Oppa’s face by someone clearly trained, was blocked by the hunter-grade leather armor on Oppa’s raised arm. The man’s eyes widened in shock—he had clearly mistaken it for ordinary leather. Before he could react further, Oppa’s sword flashed again, and his head flew from his shoulders.
The brief battle ended in mere seconds. I landed beside Oppa as he flicked the blood from his blade.
“Oppa, are you hurt?”
“Elisha. I’m fine. Horana?”
“I’m all right too.”
“There were four snipers lying in ambush. They were planning to attack from the start.”
“Then we can’t ignore what he said about infiltration. Let’s head back immediately.”
“Yes. I’ll scan from the air again.”
“Be careful.”
Oppa and Horana began making their way back to the central district while I took to the skies once more. The central area was densely packed with ruined buildings, making it difficult to detect hidden enemies. However, the only moving things were objects swaying weakly in the wind and small plant monsters that rarely moved, so any large human-sized movement would be immediately detected by my sensors.
As I flew toward the center, I spotted human movement and dropped down, silently neutralizing each one with my bare hands. Crack!
“Kuh!”
“Hoo… That’s the fifth already. More than I expected.”
They were moving separately, which made them easy to pick off, but having already eliminated five on the way to the central district alone, I couldn’t even guess how many more remained. Moreover, while the surprise attacks made them simple to handle, their equipment and tactics clearly marked them as trained soldiers. If they hid among the buildings and waged guerrilla warfare, our casualties would mount rapidly.
What we needed most was to eliminate them quickly, before they realized their operation had failed. Instead of returning straight to the center, I circled the outskirts, killing every enemy I found moving through narrow alleys. Since noise was undesirable, I mostly landed behind them, grabbed their heads, and snapped their necks.
Crack! I had just finished off another when I suddenly sensed movement behind me.
Tatatatang! The moment I felt the presence, time slowed. I spun the corpse I was holding to shield myself from the bullets, then charged forward using the body as cover. The enemy, who had been aiming for my torso, hesitated in surprise before regaining composure and lowering his aim toward my legs.
Tatatang! Watching the predicted impact trajectories calculated in real time, I weaved left and right to dodge, then hurled the corpse forward as a distraction and launched myself upward. The enemy raised his muzzle to track my sudden ascent, only to be staggered when the corpse slammed into him. I descended and drove my foot into his face.
Thud!
“Kuhak!”
Staring at me with eyes wide as if seeing a ghost, he was knocked unconscious by the kick.
“Damn… The gunfire will have put the others on high alert……”
It was my mistake—I hadn’t expected another enemy to be this close. The loud shots would have driven them all into hiding. As expected, the frequency of detected enemies dropped sharply. Occasionally someone would fire at me from a building while I flew, but after being tracked and eliminated, even those attacks ceased.
Eventually, with no more movement or attacks to be found no matter how much I searched, I had no choice but to return to the mart. The people who had been farming had all been evacuated. Oppa, Ruya, and Charlotte were gathered in the empty park beside the mart. Oppa turned to me as I landed and folded my wings.
“Elisha, how’s the situation?”
“I took care of twenty-one. Some hid after I made noise with the gunfire, so I don’t know how many more are left. How about here?”
“We’ve moved everyone inside the mart for now. None have shown up, probably because you handled them.”
“Are you hurt anywhere, nyang?”
“I took some gunfire in the middle, but I’m fine.”
I entrusted my body to Charlotte’s hands as she checked me for injuries and continued speaking with Oppa.
“By the way, they really do seem like soldiers, don’t they?”
“They do. But they can’t be regular army—there’s no reason for them to be at the port. I heard everyone gathered in the capital to form a final defensive line.”
“I think there’s a high chance they’re deserters.”
“Just like Ruya said—deserters. Trading food for women is no different from human trafficking.”
“Nyang, there’s a wound here, nyang.”
“Huh? When did that happen?”
Charlotte’s finger pointed to the inside of my thigh. Thanks to the combat mode still active since the start of the fight, my pain receptors were suppressed, so non-lethal injuries were hard to notice unless visible. I instinctively tried to check the wound, then realized it was hidden beneath my large breasts and spoke.
“It’s hard to see the injury. Is it big?”
“It’s already healing, nyang. But the inside is light gray, nyang. How strange, nyang.”
“The artificial skin has a metal inner layer beneath it.”
The self-healing artificial skin, combined with my vital energy, seemed to be closing the wound already. Lick, lick.
“What are you doing?”
“Licking wounds helps them heal faster, nyang.”
“I see.”
Though I didn’t fully understand, I accepted it as something a cat beastkin would say and let it pass. Watching us, Oppa scratched his head and spoke.
“Anyway, the current problem is that we don’t know when the hidden enemies might attack, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then the most urgent matter is preparing countermeasures against an ambush.”
“If only we had the spirits, we could find them easily. What a shame.”
“Ah, the spirits.”
Indeed, spirits—embodiments of nature itself—were barely affected by terrain and were ideal for searching or scouting.
“And we can’t stay on guard against gun-wielding enemies all day long.”
“True.”
Oppa nodded at Ruya’s words, his expression troubled. They all seemed to have forgotten, but an unexpected solution already existed.
“There’s a way. Let’s go find the automated defense robots we couldn’t retrieve because of the rain.”
“Ah! Those were still there?”
This was exactly the situation where the defense robots were needed—when we couldn’t predict when or where the enemy might strike.
“Then let’s have everyone stay inside the mart for now and take only a small group including Deckard to the research facility.”
“Let’s do that. So, who’s going?”
“Elisha and I will go. Ruya and Charlotte, protect this place.”
“No, nyang. Husband stays here, nyang.”
“She’s right. Moving through enemies with guns is too dangerous. I’ll go with Elisha.”
“I agree. Oppa, stay here and keep Madam calm.”
“Ah, Ekaterina will be anxious. All right. I’ll leave it to you.”
No matter how well the Yin Brand and latex-converted womb protected the fetus, an anxious pregnant woman’s state of mind was still harmful to the child. Thus, it was decided that Oppa and Charlotte would remain to prepare for any possible attack, while Ruya, Deckard, and I would head to the research facility.
We dressed Deckard in spare hunter armor for protection, and Ruya and I armed ourselves thoroughly as well.
“Hohoho, we have to cross a city crawling with enemies to reach our destination… It feels just like a game.”
“You mean the kind where you escort a VIP out of a city occupied by enemies?”
“I’ve seen my son play something like that. Though I don’t know if he’s alive or dead now……”
A shadow crossed his face at the thought of his son, whose fate was unknown. He quickly composed himself.
“When do we depart? I’m ready.”
“Right now. Ruya, let’s go.”
“Yeah. Deckard, stay close to us.”
“Got it. I’ll trust you ladies.”
“Come back safely.”
“Return unharmed, nyang.”
“O Erutina, Goddess, bestow your blessing upon them……”
“Yes, we’ll be back.”
With Oppa, Charlotte, and Madam seeing us off, we set out eastward toward the research facility, leading Deckard—who now wore a thick helmet taken from the enemies.