Chapter 174
Chapter 174
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 174
Chapter Title: Chapter 10: Lead and Silver Coins (28)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
****
The anomaly struck suddenly, as always.
On his way to the supply depot to pick up new clothes to replace his torn ones.
A commotion broke out among the soldiers lined up for breakfast.
“Mike. When are you gonna pay back that money you borrowed back then?”
“What’re you talking about? I never borrowed any money from you.”
“What the hell. Mike, you borrowed from me too? You still haven’t paid me back.”
Eavesdropping as he passed by, it seemed like some trivial personal matter. He figured they’d sort it out themselves and kept walking.
But then.
“Are you all crazy as a group! I’ve got no place to spend money on station duty, so why the hell would I borrow any!”
“....No, you did borrow money. Mike.”
“Yeah, that’s right. You borrowed it, and you looked down on me plenty just ‘cause I’m short.”
“Your girlfriend’s name was Kate, right? Our late mother was named Kate too. You killed our mother!”
“Mike! Why’d you ignore us! You went around beating us and killing our mothers, didn’t you? A bastard like you, trash like you deserves to die!”
“Kill him!”
“Kill the sinner Mike!”
“If we just get rid of this guy, peace will return!”
“Kill him!”
“Why, why are you doing this.... This is going too far as a joke, right? Let go. Let— ugh! Aaaagh!”
They ganged up on him with absurd accusations, then in an instant, the soldiers began lynching an innocent one.
It wasn’t just them. All around, groups of soldiers were lynching individuals for no reason at all.
“Kill him!”
“The world turning like this, our mother dying, me rolling around on this battlefield—it’s all because of you!”
“They said everything would be fine if you were gone!”
“N-no, stay back. Stay back!!!”
Bang! Baaang!
“Write the eulogy in their blood!”
“Chop off their limbs and hang ‘em up!”
“Burn them!”
“The witch! Kill the witch and we’ll regain our happiness!”
The terrified victim fired at them, but there were far too many already lost to the frenzy.
A greatsword slammed into the limbs of the soldier who’d fired.
A soldier fleeing with all his might was grabbed and thrown into boiling water.
Oil was poured over someone struggling to survive.
“Uwaaaaaah! Gas! Gaaaaaaaah!!!”
With that desperate death cry as his last, the soldier was engulfed in flames in an instant.
Before I could even believe my eyes and rush out, the frenzy hit suddenly and all at once.
Woooeeeng—! Woooeeeng—!
“Enemy attack!”
“All hands to battle stations! Biochemical terror alert!”
“Personal doping authorized! All uncontaminated personnel, inject Lionheart!”
“Contamination source confirmed north-northwest! Enemy attack! It’s an enemy assault!”
As the command post responded swiftly and sirens blared, I knocked out a soldier lost to the frenzy and pulled the red and brown vials out of the five neatly tucked in his inner pocket, jabbing them quickly into my thigh.
Pshk!
“Ugh!”
A dense liquid flowed through my veins, my vision shook, and an unpleasant sensation scrambled my head.
Mixed neural agent Lionheart. An antidote and stimulant with almost no side effects, aside from slight nausea and vision sharpening uncomfortably like a blade’s edge.
Through my wavering vision, I spotted white smoke drifting lazily across the ground.
‘Damn it. It mixed with the morning mist—I didn’t notice in time! It’s a hallucinogenic gas!’
The white gas hung low. It wasn’t the type heavier than air that spread easily. Dispersing it this widely wasn’t simple either.
‘Not unless they rode the constant winter winds!’
I grabbed a telescope from a fallen soldier’s gear and turned it toward the smoke’s source.
Next to the Happy Blind outpost, a tall rocky ravine. There, belching thick smoke and obvious as the cause to anyone, was an object burning. About three meters tall. In the dim winter dawn just breaking, an orange flame caught the eye.
‘A burning.... cross?’
No, looking closer, it wasn’t just any cross. Scorched and melted beyond easy recognition, but traces of human flesh and skin clung to the burning cross. Below it, a charred brownish body supported by countless human legs moved the cross along.
Incredibly, the self-immolating cross was alive—a creature.
‘Unidentified Type 3. The Artist Union’s on the move!’
The Professor tossed the telescope and bolted for the command tent. Soldiers in gas masks clubbing frenzy-maddened ones with rifle butts filled his view, some faces familiar.
“Ian! Azel! Bex! You guys together?”
“You bastard! We were waiting so long we thought our necks would snap.... Hey! What’s wrong with your arm!”
“No time to explain! Doping!”
Thwack!
“Some passerby tossed ‘em to us—we’re all dosed!”
“Then stick behind me! They’ll come swarming soon—we need gear first!”
“They?”
“Yeah! We sowed chaos in their camp, so of course they’ll push!”
Kwaaang!
Crackle—
[Enemy attack! Command tent, command tent has a monster— grraaaah!]
In an instant, as if proving the Professor right, a heavy crash echoed, followed by a death scream over the outpost broadcast.
Smoke and screams blanketed the outpost. Countless Type 2 and 2.5 variants charged toward Dome’s position as if they’d been waiting.
The full-scale war began with a surprise attack from the enemy, who’d been at a disadvantage.
****
Thudududududu!
Kwaang!
Whirr— zzzzap!!!
“Grrraaaaaah!!!”
“Woooargh! Ooooooo!!”
Machine guns and grenade launchers spewed fire endlessly.
Plasma projectors that turned a 10-meter radius to ash in one shot, plus electromagnetic nets.
“Hmm. As expected, things don’t proceed as smoothly as some ordinary affair. I’d hoped for a bit more chaos.”
“....Grrraaa.... uuuuu....”
“Hm? Ah, no need for that, Glinda. Don’t blame yourself while they’re already pushing so hard. Even if all of them die, it’s no issue from the start. You’re doing splendidly. Impressive, really.”
Crackle, crackle.
At his words, one of the faces impaled on the cross—a horribly festering woman’s—twisted into a smile.
Atop a rocky hill about a kilometer north-northwest of Dome’s outpost.
W sat beside his newly acquired sister, observing the battlefield.
As expected of the wasteland’s top combat force. There’d been brief initial chaos, but once they steadied, overwhelming firepower crushed the variant horde in moments. The variants’ momentum broke the instant they entered the kill zone, their ranks pulverized. At this rate, Dome’s forces could repel the raid and push into Happy Blind territory, but W didn’t care.
His goal from the start wasn’t protecting those monster-worshipping humans—it was simply guiding the Box to find its own path.
Crackle— crackle—
“Aaaah.... aa, ah....”
W, quietly watching the slaughter, turned his head. Family conversations were always his top priority.
“Ah, yes. It might look that way in Glinda’s eyes. Anywhere you can go, just head there directly, right? But Glinda. As you know, we brothers are all bound by rules tied to the original’s memories, aren’t we? Even I’m not free of that curse.”
“Eeey.... aaa?”
“Ahh, of course not. Caring for family is a good thing. Not difficult at all. I.... can’t stay in one place by my own will. It’s an innate wanderlust from the original. When there’s work like this, I can linger a bit, but without it, I drift endlessly like a ghost, passing by someone’s side until they call me. Personally, it’s quite unpleasant. Just a few seconds. No time to even admire the view, adrift in an alien world without substance.”
“Eeeuuu— grooo, aaaa...”
At his sister’s warm concern and her own proposed solution to his rule, W burst out laughing loudly.
“Hahaha! It’s not that simple. Like all our originals, mine was a severely twisted person. A family’s request doesn’t count as ‘work.’ What they want is what I want—how could that be a task? Similarly, staying put for my own goals isn’t permitted either. Only when carrying out others’ tasks can I linger like this, converse, take in the world.”
He thought it like a curse. Unable to stay anywhere unless needed, and even then, not with those who truly needed him.
That’s why, before their deal, he couldn’t return to the Collector’s side except for brief visits to receive the seals.
Short business trips. That was the most time he could spend at home.
After those fleeting reunions, he’d find himself at some stranger’s side, swallow aching longing, and wander once more in search of ‘work.’
“Thanks to that, getting anything I want requires such aaah—complicated processes. Reaching out to someone with desires. Achieving a bit of my goal as they pursue theirs. Little by little here, a bit there. Gathering intersections of their goals and mine until I finally achieve ‘what I want.’ Hmm.... Think of it as solving a 100-piece puzzle by borrowing 100 different hands.”
What a long detour. One year as an adapter, haunting the world like a ghost due to that damned curse. The first to summon him was the Collector, who’d spotted one of W’s traces. The first adapter. Prototype, the created one. The moment she called him family, that became his home and goal.
“What I want is truly nothing much. Just to stay long by my brothers’ sides, in the same space as them.”
His wanderlust, inability to stay home, was inherent to W’s origin—unchangeable.
So narrow the world we live in. Like old humanity launching nukes and shrinking human domain by over ninety percent. With weapons, dire threats, environmental factors. Shrink the world itself.
Can’t stay by family if they all die off. But a world where the ruined lab with the Collector is visible everywhere. Yes, a small village size would be perfect. Small enough that shouting lets voices carry. That world, that many humans—enough.
And at last, he’d found those to grant his wish.
Happy Blind. Zealots who believed all old-world inheritances— even humans carrying those era’s memories—must be eradicated.
In their ideal, only the newly born could exist: ‘sheep’ born in their community, knowing only this changed world’s knowledge. Blind innocents who’d accept barren wastelands, daily deaths, this hell as true happiness. Once remnants of civilization and humans were purged, and sheep could sustain themselves, the shepherd and eye elite would self-immolate to complete it. In such a tiny world, even without special events, familiar sights would greet him everywhere.
Suddenly, amid the distant raging battle, a familiar face caught his eye. Another piece carrying him toward his wish. The Professor. What an entertaining man. Seeing his direction, unease tinged W’s voice.
“Hmm.... It’d be trouble if that friend dies by Claw Brother’s hand. I warned them ahead, but Claw and the other brothers aren’t big thinkers.”
Please endure. Not too injured, not unscathed. Survive broken and keep moving for him to the end.
W silently cheered the struggling Professor from afar.
One puzzle piece moving stealthily in a battlefield corner.
Another scattering dust and black smoke about now.
And.... the final piece, lying low, awaiting its chance.
Who would raise the victor’s cup? And what reward would come?
W was delighted. Doing new work free of the original’s yoke reminded him he was no mere trauma cluster, but an independent being.
The toil of the process, joy of success. Despair of failure. He’d swallow it all gladly.
“Now, the finale approaches. Will the Professor survive the merciless brothers’ hands and charge the bait? Will he pierce all truths, leaving me despair and new work? Or.... die in crushing loss, reborn as a new brother?”
Even he no longer knew where this twisted drama would flow. All the puzzle pieces were finally converging.
****