A Truly Wasted Talent
A truly wasted talent.
After thrashing about above the Abyss formation for well over an hour, Glass's fighter was returning to base.
It wasn't damage that brought it back — simply that the fuel had nearly run dry. Watching that aircraft come home, the Air Force adjutants stood slack-jawed, unable to close their mouths.
"Th-that… is that how easily an Abyss anti-air net can be rendered useless?"
"We already knew you could dodge to some degree by suddenly changing direction or spiking your speed, but I never once imagined they had a weakness like that…"
Extreme, if you wanted to call it extreme — and simultaneously a thoroughly dangerous maneuver to attempt in the middle of a battlefield: a hard brake using reverse thrust.
But its effectiveness more than overflowed any measure of risk. It could neutralize that cursed anti-air net.
Of course, slamming the brakes on an aircraft screaming through the sky at supersonic speed was bound to put serious strain on the airframe. And right after that, you had to switch back to forward thrust as fast as possible and climb back into Mach territory — which made the whole stunt an excellent way to burn through a plane's service life.
But under the present circumstances, that level of risk was more than worth taking.
When half the sorties that went out typically came back as wreckage anyway, what did a little shaved-off airframe and engine life matter?
If this raised the return rate of the aircraft that launched, it would be nothing short of a revolutionary discovery — an enormous gain.
"So this is… this is what they mean by the legendary adjutant?"
"As expected of the God-tier legend himself… I figured he'd show us something, but I never dreamed he'd thought this far ahead… Later I absolutely have to get his autograph and offer a proper memorial service…"
While the other adjutants freely poured out their awe at everything their eyes had just witnessed, the face of Adjutant Song Dana — the very person who had set this whole affair in motion — began to fill with a far more complicated mix of feelings.
I figured he'd produce some kind of special result… but the moment we lent him a few fighters, he turns around and shows us something on a level I never even imagined…
From the standpoint of someone who had placed her expectations on him, the fact that he had exceeded every projection was more than enough reason to be glad.
And yet, in that moment, what settled deepest in Song Dana's heart was not joy — it was astonishment, thicker and heavier still.
I've fought countless air battles since becoming an adjutant, and I never discovered that the Abysses had a characteristic like this. Even someone with the sharpest eye in the world wouldn't have picked it up overnight… And yet he demonstrated it in live combat as if he'd been waiting for the chance — which means he must have been preparing for this all along. Completing the theory, getting ready to test it…
This was not simply a matter of possessing a genius intellect. Song Dana could see that clearly.
He didn't merely outclass them in raw brainpower. Without having watched and studied countless battlefields with his own eyes, he never would have noticed this fact at all.
She could vaguely estimate how much time he must have poured into gathering information, establishing the theory, and reviewing endless footage again and again in search of counterexamples — all for the sake of producing this single result.
A monster who combines effort and talent in equal measure… is that what this is? I already knew he wasn't ordinary from the moment I saw that data archive on the community boards. But this is incredible… truly. He's so extraordinary it makes me covet him.
The fact that someone this remarkable had been buried in that garbage guild all this time…
And the fact that, having finally crawled out of the trash, he had already crossed the river of discharge and become a Black Hunter — a mercenary — filled her with nothing but bitter regret.
If a person of that caliber had been a colleague or a superior… no, even if he had merely been under her command, the tide of this war would have turned long ago.
Joy, admiration, reverence, and a deep, aching sense of waste — Song Dana felt them all at once.
Then, before her eyes, the final image of the fighter appeared: safely returned, its camera feed cutting out.
And right after that…
A smile bloomed across Song Dana's lips — a smile filled with a thrill of an entirely different flavor from the one before.
"Well then… just as I said, it came back in one piece. Shall we settle up?"
"Ah…"
"Th-that reminds me…"
The moment Song Dana's words landed, the junior adjutants snapped awake as if jolted from a dream. For a brief stretch they had been so absorbed in the wondrous spectacle that could completely rewrite the doctrine of anti-Abyss air operations that they had cleanly forgotten — and now, as the memory returned, dismay began to settle over their faces.
"H-hey… Haeun, if you've got any money left…"
"I'm barely scraping by myself. I've got nothing to lend you, so figure it out."
"Well, if you're truly broke, paying later is fine. Special rate — eight percent interest per day…"
"Come on… payday is only a week away. Could you maybe ease up on the interest a little…"
"Ease up? Between us? You chose this future. Accept it quietly."
Learning a good strategy was unquestionably a positive development. Separately from that, when it came to collecting on bets, Adjutant Song Dana showed not a shred of mercy.
A horde of Abysses was moving slowly southward.
And at its center stood a woman in white…
In that moment she was advancing at a leisurely pace, as if out for a stroll — very slowly. Very, very slowly.
She moved as though the tens of thousands of Abysses surrounding her did not exist at all.
And then…
Another group of Abysses appeared ahead of her horde.
Compared to the force she led, their numbers were vanishingly small. Roughly a hundred of them — yet among them were some twenty creatures that, by human classification, ranked as Upper-class Abysses.
By ordinary standards, Upper-class Abysses made up less than one percent of any given horde. This was a thoroughly abnormal concentration of power.
But in that moment, the strangeness of these creatures was not limited to their force composition alone.
"Grrrrrr…"
"Karrrk…"
They radiated fierce hostility toward the Abyss horde before their eyes. Despite being Abysses themselves, they bared fangs and claws as if confronting humans, preparing to attack.
And yet, even witnessing this, the horde centered on the white woman showed not the slightest hostility in return. They simply continued their silent, glacial advance.
And the moment their movement crossed a certain boundary line—
"KYAAAAAAK!!"
"KWOOOOORK!!"
With piercing shrieks, the creatures charged. They surged forward with a ferocity that looked ready to tear their own kind to shreds on the spot.
Despite being outnumbered, they plunged ahead in a frenzy, heedless of everything.
In response, the Abysses belonging to the white woman's horde at first appeared to do nothing at all.
But then—
—KRRRRRUMBLE!
In the next instant, the Abysses shifted formation in perfect unison, as if a drilled army answering a command. Placing their most heavily armored members at the front, they moved with swift, flawless coordination — splitting open the center of their formation like a fruit being cleaved in two.
And at the same time, from the very heart of that formation, she revealed herself…
A woman in white, two black dragons coiling from her waist, their crimson eyes flashing.
The moment they saw her, the Abysses that had been charging forward in a blind frenzy all swung their course toward her at once.
And in answer, the white woman fixed her unfocused white eyes on the creatures rushing her — on the hundred-odd Abysses — and quietly… very slowly… began to raise her hand.
And the instant those Abysses reached the space directly before her—
—CRACK!—
In the next moment, a single streak of blood spattered across her pure white body.
At the same time, blood and scraps of flesh began to drip from the jaws of her black dragons, as if they had greedily chewed and swallowed something whole.
And before her…
In that single fleeting instant, the pulverized corpses of dozens of Abysses lay scattered across the ground.
In one breath, the bulk of the force that had launched the ambush simply evaporated — and then—
"KYAAAAAAK!!!"
As if they had been waiting for exactly that, the Abyss horde closed ranks from both flanks and charged.
In less than ten seconds, the screams of Abysses echoing inside the formation gave way to a heavy silence…
And from within that silence, thick with death, a very small voice began to emerge.
A tiny voice, drifting out on a sinister cadence…
And then—
"No… no… This… this can't be… Why?… Why do we… why do we have to die?… I don't want to… I don't… I don't want to die… Please… ple—ase!!!!!!!!!"
Like a radio drowning in runaway static, the voice suddenly swelled.
And at the same time, for the first time, that white woman — on a face shaped like a human's — began to show a single, distinct emotion.
Despair.
An emotion so clear that anyone could have recognized it.
And with it, she covered her face with both hands, curled in on herself on the ground, and began to tremble.
From those pure white eyes…
She shed tears of deep, blood-red crimson,
muttering in a tiny voice thick with noise — sounds no one could fully parse—
"Please… please…"
"Save me…"