Thirty Thousand Lab Rats in a Cage
"Are you... are you serious about that?"
"Of course. If it means winning this war, what wouldn't I do? I'll hand you the authority — work them into the ground until they drop."
Not a shred of hesitation in her voice. At the same time, a trust so solid you could almost feel it on your skin.
From that alone, I got a pretty clear read on the kind of person Song Dana was.
Once she decides to trust someone, she backs them all the way, huh? Big-hearted, decisive, no bottlenecks when it comes to getting things done... From that angle, she'd make one hell of a superior.
Even accounting for seniority and rank, there was a reason the other adjutants treated her with such deference.
Honestly... if that dog of a woman Lee Sena had even a quarter of Adjutant Song Dana's character, things never would have gone this far.
I finished silently cursing the dead weight that had once been my superior, then looked at Song Dana — who was watching me with an expectant expression — and answered with resolve in my voice.
"Thank you. Truly. I'll give it everything I have."
"Good. I'm counting on you. If you need anything else, just say the word."
"Yes, Adjutant."
—Whoooooosh!!
A fighter squadron cut across the open sky. Traveling at Mach speed, they reached their destination in under a minute.
And right after that... the images started coming in — Abysses, captured through the cameras mounted on the fighters and through satellite feeds.
An endless black tide, so vast it seemed to have no end. The hunters watching it swallowed dryly, almost on instinct.
Then, a moment later, a voice reached their ears — the voice of Adjutant Lee Jinhyun, who had recently been given temporary command over them.
— "Proceed as requested."
"Yes, Adjutant."
"Understood."
Honestly, they weren't thrilled about taking orders from the adjutant of an outside mercenary company like Dreamouth — not even from another guild's adjutant. But the person who had authorized it was none other than Adjutant Song Dana, so they had no choice but to comply.
Besides, this was the man who had figured out how to neutralize the Abysses' relentless anti-air barrage. The hunters might grumble, but they had already decided to follow his lead without complaint.
On Jinhyun's orders, the hunters immediately took the fighters up and began moving in the patterns he had requested.
"Fire!"
At the S-class hunter's command, bombs rained down on the ground below. The familiar anti-air fire came up the instant they were spotted — but with the weak points already identified, it no longer posed any real threat to the aircraft.
— KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-BOOM!!!
Shrugging off the anti-air fire like it was nothing, the fighters reduced roughly two hundred Abysses on the outer perimeter to ash in a matter of seconds.
And then, without a second glance, they pulled the aircraft out of the combat zone.
The results of the bombing run were a little underwhelming on their own — but their mission had never been to wipe out the Abysses. It was intelligence gathering. With the next pattern already waiting to be executed, there was no point fretting over a haul that amounted to scooping a single bucket of water out of the ocean.
They slipped out of enemy territory without a single casualty and began a wide banking turn once more.
Watching their movements, Jinhyun kept a serious expression as he carefully logged every detail — his gaze fixed not on an advancing army of thirty thousand, but on lab rats trapped behind iron bars.
Just as I thought... even a provocation of this scale doesn't rattle them at all. No pursuit force sent out, either, and their movement speed hasn't changed in the slightest. Which means... my predictions are lining up more and more.
After testing the Abysses with every kind of provocation I could think of and studying their reactions at the start of each engagement, I had managed to pin down several critical facts.
Some of them weren't immediately useful — the kind of things I'd file away for a situation that was similar but not quite the same, somewhere down the line.
But even setting those aside, the nonstop fighter sorties day after day and the steadily accumulating intelligence had let me start building the framework of an operation that could break this deadlock.
And yet... even as the plan took shape and the odds of victory climbed higher, a problem I still couldn't solve had sunk deep roots in the back of my mind.
That said... the more I think about it, the more the risk feels excessive. Especially that final piece...
I could see the path to victory taking form. But minimizing friendly casualties would require something decisive — and that particular problem was still making my head throb.
I have to make sure as few people die as possible. And for that, I need something — anything — that can stop that thing's movements...
Day after day, sortie after sortie — the Air Force hunters were growing more exhausted by the hour.
Watching them grind through an ordeal they had never asked for, a male adjutant from the Air Force turned to Adjutant Dana with concern in his voice.
"I honestly don't know if this is all right. Handing Adjutant Lee Jinhyun command of the Air Force on top of everything else..."
"What's the big deal? Frankly, in a situation like this, I'd hand over full military control if I could."
"Even so, I'm still worried. I acknowledge Adjutant Lee Jinhyun's abilities — but entrusting him with essentially everything..."
Giving a Black Hunter adjutant the practical authority to command the soldiers here was the kind of thing that would draw all sorts of complaints from higher up once word got out.
And yet Adjutant Dana had agreed to it without hesitation, and she continued to accommodate him on every minor detail as well.
Even so, the male adjutant couldn't shake the feeling that this was going a little too far.
Meeting his gaze, Adjutant Song Dana spoke in a calm, even voice.
"I'm sorry to say this, but our situation right now doesn't leave us the luxury of fretting over things like that."
"What?"
The unexpected answer left him looking bewildered. Watching her junior, she continued.
"This is only a guess on my part... but I think the higher-ups intend to stop that humanoid Abyss here no matter what it takes."
"What do you mean by that...?"
There was something pointed in her words. The male adjutant asked again, unease and doubt in his voice. Adjutant Dana watched the fighters launching yet another sortie and answered quietly.
"I don't have solid proof... but my instincts and the overall picture both point the same way. If we lose here, it won't just be a matter of taking some losses and falling back. This place will become our grave — for certain."
"What...?"
The chilling implication in Dana's words made the male adjutant's face go rigid. Looking at him, Adjutant Song Dana let a cold smile touch her lips.
"What? You've seen it on the news often enough. The national forces, facing defeat, holding the enemy back to the very end and meeting a glorious last stand... You didn't actually think that just happens on its own, did you?"
"..."
As the war against the Abysses dragged on, the military's power had swollen far beyond what it should have been, and media control had grown correspondingly thorough.
You only had to look at how Lee Sena's recent atrocities — which had lit a political firestorm internally — had been completely buried from public view to understand that much.
In a climate like that, dropping bombs on the heads of a defeated allied force and then spinning a news story about how they had willingly fought to the last for their country would hardly be difficult.
"A retreat order will never come. If we lose here, the people on the next news cycle will almost certainly be us. So do everything you can to help Adjutant Lee Jinhyun. Unlike the rest of us, that man knows exactly what the formula for victory looks like."
He had already steeled himself for death — and still, hearing his senior deliver something that weighty in such a casual tone made the male adjutant swallow dryly without meaning to.
Well... this goddamn situation should change soon enough. Those people have finally started making their move...