Chapter 144: Mobilization Order Records - Someone's Diary (1)
Chapter 144: Mobilization Order Records - Someone's Diary (1)
At the mobilization zones guarding the front lines, problems are bound to arise.
Since these places are overflowing with Otherworldly Power, distortions of physical laws are common, even if they don't escalate to full-blown Otherworld Erosion.
Last week, the gas wouldn't ignite, so we had to tear into raw, uncooked meat.
Those from countries accustomed to steak tartare managed to stomach it somehow, but it caused quite a stir among those who weren't.
The head chef ended up doing something bizarre like making beef jerky out of it, though I’m not sure if we’ll ever actually use it. I mean, if the gas won't even light, what guarantee is there that the jerky won't just rot?
Anyway, while the front lines are always rife with such incidents, the event that occurred that day was of a slightly different nature.
* * *
The smoking room was thick with hazy clouds. Cigarette butts were piling up in the central ashtray, yet no one spoke a word.
Perhaps everyone just wanted to savor their brief break, or maybe they were simply too focused on getting their nicotine fix.
Or perhaps it was because we had simply run out of things to talk about.
The faces in the smoking room were always the same. There comes a point where you get tired of trying to liven the mood with the same old stories.
Once the current lot is rotated to the rear and new conscripts are sent to the front, voices might echo in this smoking room once again.
For the regular soldiers, at least. For an Awakened like me, going to the rear only happens for cleanup duty or a specific dispatch.
In that silence, the fog grew even thicker.
Creak.
The door to the smoking room swung open, and a draft pulled the smoke out with it.
Then, a voice broke the silence.
"The smoke is thick. Get some ventilation in here."
It was a man I hadn't seen in the smoking room before.
With short blonde hair and a US military uniform, he stood there with an Anti-Material Sniper Rifle slung over his shoulder.
"Well, look at that. Meteor. Have you finally decided to become a smoker?"
Meteor. An A-Rank Awakened from the United States.
He was a man who loathed cigarettes and had constantly urged me to quit.
What was it he said? That for a sniper, things like cigarettes are nothing but a distraction.
"I am only here to find you."
He stepped through the smoke toward me and spoke.
"What is it? I thought you couldn't stand the smell."
"I'll keep it brief. There is a rat."
"Then you should've brought a cat."
To think a hater of smoking would come all the way here because of a rat. Did some kind of monster rat show up? It must have raided the flour and rice in the food stores.
"Perhaps I kept it too brief. How should I put this..."
He fell into thought for a moment, then opened his mouth.
"Cough."
Instead of words, a cough came out.
"...Let's talk outside."
"Can't be helped, I guess."
For a non-smoker like Meteor, even this must have been a long time to endure. I should be the one to yield.
I tossed my cigarette into the drum-can ashtray and left the smoking room.
"Haaaah."
I immediately heard Meteor taking a deep breath of fresh air.
"To be more precise: there was a rat in my room. Help me."
He was clearly in a hurry; he didn't even wait to find a proper spot, blurting out his request the moment the smoking room door closed.
The request was so trivial that...
"..."
I remained silent, my face twisting into a grimace.
Why on earth was he consulting me about that? He should talk to the housing manager or buy some rat poison at the PX.
Or was Meteor actually deathly afraid of rats? Were we even close enough to share that kind of personal struggle?
He seemed to realize what I was thinking.
"My explanation was lacking again. To be precise, it was a giant rat. A rat the size of a human was looking down at me."
Well, that changes things.
"...When?"
"Yesterday. No, it was tonight. I felt a presence while I was asleep, and when I opened my eyes, a giant rat was staring down at me from my bedside."
Meteor gestured with his hands as he described the situation, and his words rang with sincerity.
He wasn't mocking me or joking; he sounded desperate, as if an Otherworldly enemy had truly infiltrated the garrison.
"What did Commander Macbeth say?"
If he came to me, he must have already reported it to the commander.
"I was about to tell you that... Macbeth said nothing was detected."
"Through magic?"
"Yes."
"What about the Lord of Infinite Castles?"
"He also said he felt no intruders within the building."
Hmm. Nothing found through magical detection or superpowers...
Then there was only one answer.
"...It's a hallucination. Go see Oxymoron. She'll prescribe you some sedatives."
Either that or a nightmare.
Regardless, it seemed even the great Meteor had finally reached his breaking point.
Then again, the conditions at the garrison were abysmal.
Chewing on that raw meat must have finally snapped his sanity.
"...Commander Macbeth and the Quartermaster, the Lord of Infinite Castles, all said the same. However, I am certain the rat exists, which is why I sought you out."
"What are you talking about?"
"Your superhuman savagery... No, I misspoke. I want you to find something using your sensing abilities that defy common sense."
...I couldn't tell if he was asking for a favor or insulting me.
"If those two couldn't find it, there's probably nothing I can do. Why are you so sure anyway? To be blunt, if there really were an Otherworldly enemy, you'd be dead by now."
An Otherworldly enemy reaches the bedside of a sleeping Awakened and just leaves without doing anything?
And this enemy can't be detected by magic or superpowers?
It was only natural to assume it was a hallucination because such a thing shouldn't exist.
However, his next words were enough to shake my conviction.
"It is my intuition. That thing is dangerous if left alone."
His words were firm and resolute.
Intuition.
Intuition, huh...
"Don't you think you sound a bit ridiculous?"
"It's that intuition that has kept me alive this long, so I don't find it particularly funny."
Fair enough. When it comes to intuition, I'm hardly one to talk.
"Fine. Let's go."
"Where to?"
Where else?
"Your room. You asked me to find the rat, didn't you?"
Though I wasn't sure if I'd be of any help.
* * *
"It's here."
I followed Meteor to the US military quarters.
Perhaps it was because they were dispatched to the Siberia-East Asia Line, or maybe the US military just had money to burn even in this ruined world.
"Your quarters are better than ours."
While we both had private rooms, this place had thick beds with mattresses, proper wardrobes instead of those crappy lockers, private televisions, and even refrigerators.
Our "private rooms" were just thin partitions where you could hear everything happening next door, with a 3cm mattress thrown on top of a creaking plastic frame.
I heard the Soviets had the Awakened and regular soldiers sharing the same rooms...
Anyway, I'd only heard rumors about the US military's extravagance, but seeing it in person made the gap feel painfully real.
"Is that so? I thought everyone lived in quarters like these."
Well, I didn't know the difference was this vast until I saw it myself, so I wasn't going to hold that comment against him.
That aside, the room felt completely devoid of any personal touch.
The bedsheets were perfectly tucked, and the room was spotless, without a speck of dust.
Aside from a bookshelf filled with books, there were no personal belongings to be seen.
Was it even possible to relax in such a bleak place?
The thought that he might have just lost his mind and seen a hallucination resurfaced, but I shook my head to clear it.
Since I'd decided to believe him, my task was clear.
"You said it was at your bedside. You mean here?"
The left and top sides of the bed were blocked by walls, so the only place left was the right side, which faced the door.
"Yes. It stood right there, staring intently at me."
Hmm. So it wasn't some surreal situation like it clinging to The Wall.
"Did you already clean the room?"
"While I was scouring the place for evidence. But I couldn't find so much as a single hair."
Is it really a hallucination after all?
Keeping those idle thoughts at bay, I closed my eyes and channeled mana into my sensory organs.
My senses were freakishly developed, capable of detecting places distorted by magic or even hallucinations.
Of course, it consumed a massive amount of mana, and the Heavenly Demon Sword God had warned me not to use it often because my brain couldn't keep up with the information processing speed.
But I had no choice right now.
Then, I slowly opened my eyes.
My brain began to overload.
A world made of rotting corpses.
A simple world filled with gray.
A clockwork world where everything was made of gears.
A paradise made entirely of fire.
I pushed those useless visions out of my mind, narrowed my focus to the immediate surroundings, and extracted what I wanted.
An anomaly, a discrepancy with reality.
I strained my eyes, searching for such a thing, but...
"...There's nothing here."
Nothing caught my eye.
No distortion of the world, no twisted reality, no magical evidence, no psychic phenomena.
All that was here was our reality, contaminated by Otherworldly Power.
"...I see. Hearing that from you as well, it truly must have been my imagination."
So it was a hallucination.
"It can't be helped. Even Commander Macbeth experiences hallucinations. For your trouble, let me buy you din—"
Just as I said that and closed my strained eyes to deactivate my senses.
Something flickered past.
A faint sense of incongruity.
Something that would have vanished if I hadn't been paying attention.
...I'm seeing something even though my eyes are closed?
Beyond my eyelids, a tiny speck existed within the darkness.
"Wait. Don't move."
I reached out a hand to stop Meteor, who was about to approach, so I could focus all my senses on it.
"...Is there something?"
"...Maybe."
With my eyes still closed, I poured in even more mana.
To find that tiny, minuscule sign.
And as I did, its presence became increasingly bizarre.
How was I able to find it?
I felt absolutely nothing from the thing right in front of me, beyond the darkness.
And yet, it was clearly there.
As if it existed and didn't exist at the same time.
I lowered my posture, dropping to the floor and moving on all fours.
To get a closer look at that faint speck.
Inside my eyelids, a faint gray line cut through the black darkness.
I was afraid it would blow away in the wind.
Afraid it would vanish if I got too close.
I felt like if I lost sight of it once, I would never be able to catch it again.
I moved my body with a caution that was unlike me.
Perhaps my tension was contagious.
Even the sound of Meteor’s breathing vanished.
Concentrating with my entire being, I reached out toward the gray line.
My hand touched the line.
A thin, delicate sensation, like touching a strand of hair.
I felt like I had grabbed something... but even I couldn't be sure.
Maintaining my posture, I threw a question to my comrade.
"Meteor."
"What is it?"
"Is there something in my hand?"
"...There is nothing."
"Even if you look closely?"
"Nothing at all."
I see. Even Meteor couldn't see this.
Thinking that, I rubbed my fingers together to confirm if the object between them was real.
Ping.
With a short sound, even that shred of presence vanished.
As if it had never existed from the start.
"..."
Is there nothing else left?
I braved the headache in my brain and turned my head to look for more clues, but I couldn't find anything else.
Still. I knew one thing.
"You said it was a rat, right?"
I withdrew my mana, calming my senses, and spoke.
"Yes."
"...It was probably really there. Tell Commander Macbeth immediately. Something has infiltrated the base."
Yes.
Something is here.
Something that bypasses my senses.
Macbeth’s magic.
The Lord of Infinite Castles' superpowers.
And even the Future Foresight of Clairvoyance.
An Otherworldly enemy is inside the base.