The Apostle Who Always Saves
The Apostle Who Always Saves
The world slowly regained its color. Ash-gray sky. Crumbling concrete. Something acrid stung my nose.
The smell of gunpowder. It was the real smell of gunpowder, something you'd never encounter in reality unless you were in the military.
"...What is this?"
What touched my palms was a cold, hard stone floor. There was no blue light from a monitor, no tactile feel of a keyboard. A sound of something collapsing behind my back. Screams in the distance. And a heavy vibration that shook even the soles of my feet.
It was the sound of a mass of steel treading upon the earth. I knew this sound. It was the sound made when an Advent, the robots of this game, walked.
I tried to stand, but my knees buckled. There was no strength in my legs. Even so, I barely managed to grab onto the railing of a half-destroyed building and peered toward the source of the sound.
"No way..."
What unfolded before my eyes was...
A ruined city district and black smoke rising from everywhere... and there, standing tall between the broken buildings, was a familiar silhouette.
A 10-meter class bipedal weapon. An Advent. That shape, which I had seen until I was sick of it on screen. Seeing it like this, it was so massive that I had to crane my neck to look up at it.
The name of that machine was 'Hayabusa'.
It was a machine of the Kyungdanryeon.
"Hey, you there..."
In the place I turned to, a person was sitting slumped against a collapsed wall. The man, wearing the knight's uniform of the Southern Cross, was pressing his hand against his side. But, rendering that effort futile, dark red blood was seeping out between his fingers.
At a glance, it looked like he wouldn't last long.
"What... on earth is going on?"
"The Kyungdanryeon... they attacked. You must run. This place will soon..."
He gasped while trying to continue. It seemed the pain had surged. Even so, he turned his gaze to look in one direction.
I followed his gaze without realizing it. And my breath stopped. Under the collapsed wall, there was a person lying down, half-buried in the rubble. Disheveled milky-blonde hair was covered in dust, and beneath it, something red was slowly spreading.
I recognized her at once.
"Earl Grey Twining."
The name leaked out on its own.
The knight's eyes wavered hazily. As if wondering how a civilian he'd never seen before knew the Saint-nim's name. But he didn't even have the strength left to ask that. As his breath was fading, he spat out one last word.
"Please... take care of the Saint-nim..."
The rest of his words never came. The knight's body slowly slid down the wall. Having poured his last strength into those words, he moved no more.
I ran toward Earl Grey, cleared the rubble, and pulled her into my arms.
Seen up close, she was much smaller than she looked on screen. Even with her face a mess of dirt and blood, she was more beautiful than she had been on screen.
What should I do? Stop the bleeding? Where was I supposed to press? My mind went blank, and my hands trembled in the air, lost. The game had never once taught me this. How to save a dying person. How would I, a mere game addict, know?
Then.
The closed eyelids trembled slightly and slowly opened. Hazy amber eyes fumbled in the air without being able to focus, then finally reached my face.
"...Who are you?"
It was a voice that seemed to be leaking out, as if it were about to extinguish.
My heart felt like it stopped.
The voice I had only heard from beyond the screen was reaching me now. A voice I had heard tens of thousands of times, but had never actually met in reality. I didn't know how to answer. I couldn't give my name, nor could I explain the situation.
Instead of answering, I fumbled over her wound with trembling hands. The only thought filling my head was that I had to stop the bleeding.
"Don't talk. Don't waste your energy for nothing."
I barely managed to spit out those words.
She looked up at me quietly. With hazy eyes that I wasn't even sure were focused, she still didn't take her gaze off my face until the end. And then, she smiled, very faintly.
Even though she was bleeding to death...
"To shed tears for someone like me..."
"You are... a very strange... person..."
Her words trailed off. Her focus dissolved, and the rising and falling of her chest slowed noticeably. Just as I was about to try and support her somehow.
In an instant, my spine froze.
Far away. The culprit who caused all this destruction. Hayabusa was looking at us. Its blue optical sensor shone, illuminating us.
And
Then, it disappeared.
A flash of light. A mass of steel over 10 meters tall accelerated, mocking the common sense of all objects with mass.
"...Afterglow Dash/Overdboost."
It was a maneuver that concentrated all propulsion into a single point and accelerated to Mach 5.
I tried to run away as fast as I could while supporting her. I had to escape somehow before that thing reached us...
However,
Kuaaaaaaang!!!
The world flipped upside down. Blood flowed from my ears due to the shockwave. It was because I couldn't cover my ears while holding Earl Grey.
Fragments of dirt and concrete poured down. When I barely managed to lift my head, it was already standing in front of us.
There was no way I could run away from an Advent moving at supersonic speeds. The very idea of running away from that thing was laughable from the start. A giant of steel blocked the sky.
{Found you. Earl Grey Twining.}
A distorted young man's voice flowed out from the speaker. It had been looking for Earl Grey from the start.
{And what's that next to you... Huh? You're a face I haven't seen before. You don't look like a Southern Cross escort knight... What are you? A lost little mouse, I suppose?}
Mockery.
That thing inside the cockpit was enjoying my fear.
{Try running away once. Huh? It'll be fun. Not that you can escape, anyway.}
A giant steel finger slowly descended.
Like a cruel child about to crush a toy. It didn't rush. Slowly, as if to savor the moment of crushing. I crawled backward while holding Earl Grey. My back was blocked by rubble. There was nowhere left to retreat. Hayabusa's shadow loomed over us.
Is this how it ends?
At the very moment I finally saw the face of Earl Grey, whom I had wanted to see so much...
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Just then, flames erupted from the side. The ground shook from the impact.
It was a tank. A tank unit with the Southern Cross marking was opening fire in unison, having formed a formation amidst the ruined city. It seemed to be a remnant unit that Hayabusa hadn't managed to deal with yet.
{Fire! Protect the Saint-nim!}
Someone inside a tank screamed.
The cannons immediately spewed fire. Tank shells exploded in succession, and the shells were sucked into Hayabusa's flank. The maximum firepower they could mobilize was concentrated on that steel monster.
However. The shells could not reach the ash-gray Hayabusa.
A light flared an inch in front of the machine's surface. As a red, translucent membrane enveloped the machine, armor-piercing shells were crushed. High-explosive shells scattered before they could even properly ignite. The pouring shells all exploded and scattered above it. Not a single one could even scratch the armor.
Sanctuary Field.
An Advent's defensive barrier using the Afterglow Phenomenon could not be pierced by conventional weapons. Whether it was tank shells or missiles, it was the same. No matter how much you struck the Advent, with that level of firepower, you could only manage to scratch the surface of the Sanctuary Field.
To land an effective hit on that thing, you had to mobilize more brutal firepower like the mobile fortress Golgotha, or an equivalent Advent had to step up.
{Don't get in my way, you bugs.}
Hayabusa turned its head. What followed was a one-sided massacre. As Hayabusa's rifle spewed fire, the tanks were torn apart like paper.
Kuaaaaaaang!!!
{Tank unit, do not retreat! The fire net...}
The warriors who risked their lives with a sense of duty to save one Saint couldn't even scream properly, and in just a few seconds, they became burning scrap metal and scattered.
Turrets flew into the sky, hulls were crumpled, and flames swallowed the tanks.
{Keep firing!}
{We must buy time for the Saint-nim to escape! Hold out for even a few more seconds!}
Before those words could even finish, the tank the owner of the voice was in exploded. Flames soared. A single short scream was cut off.
Still, the remaining tanks did not stop.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The shells still did not reach Hayabusa. They only scattered into red particles in front of the Sanctuary Field. Exploding, melting, being stepped on... even while being trampled literally like bugs, they did not give up the fight.
They must have known. That their shells wouldn't reach. Still, they fired. To draw its attention for even a few seconds... I gritted my teeth.
"...Damn it."
Their resolve, which hadn't been conveyed in the game, was being transmitted.
I couldn't waste the few seconds they had bought me.
I gritted my teeth and hoisted Earl Grey onto my back. My legs hurt. But I ran. Aiming for the short gap while Hayabusa was trampling the tanks, the moment flames and smoke blocked its view, I hid inside the collapsed space of a building.
Kuaaaaang!
The aftermath of an explosion from somewhere reached here.
Shrapnel grazed my back.
Earl Grey, who had lost consciousness from the shock, groaned softly.
"Hold on a little longer..."
I didn't know who I was saying that to.
It might have been to Earl Grey, or perhaps to those who were dying right now.
I hoisted her more firmly and ran as if crawling through the half-collapsed hallway.
And I saw it. A transport trailer was slammed into the wall in front of me. It seemed it had crashed through the building and pushed its way here due to the impact of the airstrike. And the seal of its cargo hold had been torn off by the impact.
Through the gap, I saw something. Something black and evil. As if possessed, I approached and looked inside.
It was an Advent.
But its appearance was different from any Advent I had ever seen while repeating the playthrough tens of thousands of times.
Sharply angled black armor wrapped around its entire body, and beast-like thorns sprouted from its back and shoulders. Its posture, lying quietly, was unmistakably that of a dragon. Or, a sleeping monster.
There, only one thing. A red sensor was glowing hazily in the darkness. As if it were looking down at me.
A roar rang out from behind me. It was the sound of a tank exploding again. There was no time. A name was engraved in fine relief on the cockpit. I read it.
"...Logos?"
I only knew this machine through text.
The Logos described in the text was a sealed piece of scrap metal. A failure that had been asleep for 500 years. Destined to be broken in the Kyungdanryeon's attack and never wake up again. Just a meaningless MacGuffin.
But. Now, this thing in front of me. It was intact.
"...Why are you here?"
There was no answer. It was obvious.
Behind me, the giant footsteps were approaching again.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The sound of the predator that had finished its massacre coming to finish off the prey it had put aside. There was no time to think.
I climbed onto Logos while carrying Earl Grey on my back. To the heart of the machine. Then, the cockpit opened as if to accept us. I went inside.
The moment I sat in the seat. Logos's red sensor flashed and brightened.
As if it had been waiting for me.