Chapter 46: No Forest Stands After a Single Swing (2)
Chapter 46: No Forest Stands After a Single Swing (2)
“Uncle. Wake up.”
A voice echoed, muffled as if filtered through something. That peculiar tone alone was enough to tell me exactly who was calling.
“How many hours left?”
“About twenty-five hours.”
“Slow as hell.”
I knew they moved slowly, but these Otherworld monsters were dragging their feet even more than I’d imagined. Perhaps the Otherworld Erosion, which distributes damage, was designed to compensate for their lack of speed.
As I opened my eyes, I saw the other meeting participants leaving the room, each clutching their documents and weapons.
With twenty-five hours to spare, maybe I should go check on those disciples of mine.
Just as I started to push myself up from the chair with that thought—
Clatter.
The sound of something hitting the floor reached my ears, and I turned my head toward the source.
A mountain of syringes and strange ointments lay there. It was the sound of the needles that had been stuck in my body falling onto the pile.
“....”
“How are you feeling?”
“I was feeling fine until a second ago.”
The realization that all of that had been inside my body made my mood sour instantly. No matter how I looked at it, the volume of fluid seemed to exceed the actual capacity of my physical form...
It was clearly Oxymoron’s doing, but the Librarian and the Heavenly Sword, who had sat beside me and let it happen, were accomplices.
“Are you on standby in the rear again this time?”
“No. I’m heading out this time.”
“Try to take care of at least three of them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Personally, I would have preferred for Oxymoron’s Operating Room to be activated, but there was no way the conditions would be met on this battlefield.
I decided to ask anyway.
“How much of the activation requirement have you filled?”
“Sixty-three percent.”
That’s going to be tough.
It wasn’t likely that enough people would die here to fill the remaining forty percent. Oxymoron might possess the most meaningless S-Rank Technique in a peaceful world. Though, because she possessed healing arts that were the polar opposite of her Operating Room, she was actually the most active among us.
I pulled out the remaining syringes still stuck in my skin and spoke to her.
“Want to go see the disciples?”
“Yes!”
I hadn't received any reports of their deaths, so they had to be alive.
* * *
“Are you lot alive?”
“Yes! Master!”
“I’m dead.”
“Poyoooooook.”
One disciple lunged at me like a puppy that hadn't seen its owner in days.
One disciple looked half-dead, practically fused with her bed.
And beside them, a white rag was twisting and dying.
The contrast was as extreme as ever.
“Ha-ram-nim, you’re back... Gaaah?!”
I tossed the rag collapsed by the bed to Oxymoron.
“Pump it full of glucose or whatever you’ve got for now.”
“Will do.”
An ominous silver liquid sloshed inside a giant syringe. Was that mercury? Why did her medicine always have such sinister colors? It was probably just plain water, though.
“I hate needles! Poyoooooo.”
It’s a mascot; it won’t die anyway.
I opened the refrigerator in the disciples' quarters, but all I found were fruit juices and sparkling water. I mixed the liquids haphazardly, sat down, and spoke.
“What’s wrong with A-bin?”
“She says she’s exhausted.”
“I’m exhausted. Please save me.”
“And you?”
“I had energy to spare, so I just got back from swinging my hammer in the training room!”
I didn't ask about that.
By the time the Champagne-Orange-Grape-Sparkling-Water-Bon-Bon in my cup began to take on a bizarre hue, I took a sip and looked at my disciples' faces.
A beaming Baek Si-hyun.
A deathly pale Han A-bin.
It was their first deployment, but it didn't seem to have traumatized them. Even though they must have seen people die and faced powerful enemies.
I decided to test the waters.
“It was your first time on a real battlefield. How did it feel?”
“It was hard, but rewarding. Knowing that I could save people.”
“What about you, A-bin?”
“I was so focused on saving people that I didn't really feel anything...”
“What do you mean, saving people?”
“I kept asking Si-hyun to go to certain places. It was just a hunch, but I’m glad it worked out.”
“You got every single one right! Don't be so modest!”
Slap.
Baek Si-hyun smacked A-bin on the back, and a grotesque sound escaped Han A-bin’s mouth as if she were in agony. It wasn't just fatigue; she was suffering from muscle aches too.
More importantly, A-bin had been giving Si-hyun directions. So, Baek Si-hyun appearing at the artillery battery had been Han A-bin’s call.
“Han A-bin, how did you know the enemies would appear at the battery?”
“The radio kept repeating distress calls from the battery's location, but the Heroes being called were different every time.”
“That’s not enough. Explain in more detail.”
“Mmmmmm.”
Han A-bin buried her face in her blanket, but she let out a strained voice through the fabric as she tried to recall the memory.
“Even after the order to retreat was given, I could still hear the sound of shells being fired from that position. Also, I don't know how to put it, but I had a feeling that the Gray Crustaceans' gaze was generally focused on the top of The Wall...”
She continued in a strange voice, still face-down on the bed, as if deep in thought.
“Uuuugh... When I thought of the Gray Crustaceans as one giant crab, it felt like that was where the next pincer was going to strike.”
Intuition?
When I first met her, I thought it was just simple combat instinct—reading my movements and predicting my next direction, because otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to keep up with my speed.
When she was taking down monsters with Baek Si-hyun, I thought she was just capable of processing a vast amount of visual information.
I had been mistaken because I viewed combat sense and information processing as two separate things.
From the beginning, this girl had an extraordinary talent for mapping out the future.
Her value lay in her ability to act as a commander who reads the future by piecing together certain information she gained with fragmentary information from the outside.
I thought she was specialized for squad or platoon-level combat, but I was wrong.
In Han A-bin’s eyes, whether it was tens of thousands of enemies, dozens of small-scale skirmishes, or a single powerful foe, they all looked the same.
Maybe I should ask the Lord of Infinite Castles after this is over.
I had considered shoving her into the Management Bureau’s Squad Leader curriculum, but this talent was far more impressive than I’d imagined.
She certainly wasn't a theorist.
Seeing as she couldn't explain it clearly, teaching her the standard textbook methods would likely be meaningless.
She was the type who moved by instinct—much like the Lord of Infinite Castles, who used to charge off toward whatever he felt was right, completely ignoring Commander Macbeth’s orders.
I’ll let her keep at it for now, and if the results turn out strange, then I’ll hand her over to the formal curriculum.
“Si-hyun. Do you understand what she’s saying?”
“I listened to her during our break, but I don't really get it.”
“That is the correct way to use Future Foresight.”
The act of sketching out the future with tiny bits of information. Such predictions are always missing the final period, so you can never be certain.
Missed information, incorrect information, unobtainable information. Those are the variables. However, by adding Future Foresight to the mix, the calculation becomes complete.
A prediction can be wildly distorted by even a small variable, but with Future Foresight, the vision itself is added as a new piece of information.
The future you’ve mapped out versus the future shown by your foresight. The closer those two are, the more it serves as an indicator that you’ve grasped all the information.
Whether you move according to the foresight or try to change the future, the mere fact that you realize you missed a piece of information is valuable enough.
“Try to map out the future as much as possible, like A-bin. That’s how the power of your Future Foresight will expand.”
“Yes!”
She didn't understand a word.
She answered energetically, but her expression was blank, her lips twitching and her pupils shaking as if she were lost.
I’ll have to be satisfied with just making her aware of it for now. Things had veered off in an odd direction, but what I really wanted to ask was the next part.
“Did you see people die?”
“....”
At those words, both disciples' faces stiffened.
As I thought, their excessive cheerfulness was a mask to hide something.
An awkward silence filled the room.
A 1.1% loss rate.
Most of the losses were among the soldiers and the Management Bureau, but for a forty-eight-hour period, it was a devastating figure.
Considering the retreat began around the thirty-hour mark, it was a battle where one out of every hundred people died in a single day.
Perhaps they hadn't seen it.
One in a hundred is like that. It’s a large number on paper, but those within it might not perceive it.
So, what exactly had these two witnessed?
“It was my mistake.”
“No, it’s because I arrived too late...”
“No, I did it on purpose. To save more people.”
For the first time, Han A-bin sat up on the bed and looked at me.
“Senior. Do you know what triage is?”
“No.”
“It’s a medical term...”
Han A-bin’s voice trailed off, her face bitter.
I tilted my head back and spoke to Oxymoron.
“Do you know?”
“No idea.”
“Poyo. Save m...”
As expected, she was a quack medical practitioner.
It was my fault for expecting anything from the deranged Oxymoron.
Ignoring Un-ho, who was swelling up like a balloon, I turned my gaze back to Han A-bin.
“It’s a method of prioritizing who to save. It takes into account the severity of the injury, the possibility of treatment, the current backlog of patients, and the number of medical staff.”
A brief silence.
“And in that classification, there is the color black.”
Han A-bin’s voice grew even fainter.
“Deceased, or no point in treating.”
It was the same as a unit abandoned on a battlefield. There are always units that simply cannot be rescued. And the answer for them was almost always the same: rather than putting the majority at risk, abandon the rescue of that unit.
A statistical answer derived from countless choices and experiences.
“I thought of those people as black. That they couldn't be saved no matter what. Like that person I saw in the accident whose face was... ground away.”
No one spoke.
This was the heavy burden Han A-bin carried from this war.
“But I was wrong. Those people... those soldiers were still alive until the moment Si-hyun returned from saving the others.”
Perhaps it was a final burst of strength in a crisis, an unexpected variable, or any number of reasons.
But in the end, they weren't 'black.'
“What if I had sent Si-hyun to them? The place I sent her wasn't even that dangerous. If I had saved the 'black' first, and then the others.”
Han A-bin swallowed her words.
As if the rest was too painful to say.
“If I had just gone a little faster, I could have saved them.”
“No. My choice was wrong.”
Baek Si-hyun stepped in to defend her, but the dark emotions that had begun to plummet continued their descent.
Stupid kids.
“Oxymoron.”
“Yes.”
“Contact headquarters and have them pull the data. How many people did Baek Si-hyun save?”
As Oxymoron pressed her hand to her ear and activated her communicator, I looked at my two disciples and spoke.
“How many died?”
“Three out of five. It was a small squad of soldiers.”
“Han A-bin, this isn't your first time, is it? You’ve definitely seen people die before. Right?”
“Yes...”
“Then why are you so gloomy this time?”
“Because they died because of my judgment.”
Judgment. What a joke.
“How could you know when you can't see the future? If you had saved those five 'black' ones and three died on the other side, would your judgment still be wrong? You’d probably react the exact same way, wouldn't you?”
“That’s...”
I cut them off before Baek Si-hyun or Han A-bin could say anything.
I’d heard enough about how you can't put a value on human life or how you shouldn't treat people as numbers. If I heard it one more time, my head was going to explode.
“That’s just how it is. You can't turn back the past. Don't obsess over the people who died outside of your reach. It’s impossible for anyone to save everyone on a battlefield.”
I took a breath and continued.
“But don't forget them either. Han A-bin. Those three died because you couldn't read the battlefield perfectly. Baek Si-hyun. Those three died because you weren't fast enough.”
In truth, if we were going to look at it that way, wasn't it my fault? If I were stronger and could have annihilated all the enemies at once. I hid those feelings and kept talking.
“If that feels unfair to you, then get stronger. Strong enough so that people don't have to die.”
If only I could have taken out their leader at the very beginning.
While I was passionately delivering this speech, hiding my own emotions, Oxymoron’s hand interrupted me.
“The data is in.”
“How many?”
“Sixty-four confirmed. Sixteen more that haven't been cross-referenced yet. This is definitely medal-worthy.”
“So they saved at least seventy people.”
The two disciples' eyes widened; they clearly hadn't realized the exact number themselves. I spoke to them.
“This is the result of your hard work.”
I paused for a moment.
“You saved seventy people. And you’re still going to say you failed to do your duty as Heroes?”
I kicked my chair back and stood up, leading the balloon-like Un-ho and Oxymoron out of the room.
“Instead of moping around, think about how many more people you can save next time. If you intend to keep living as Heroes, that is.”
After that sharp rebuke, the door clicked shut.
From the other side of the quiet door, I let out a loud shout.
“Well done!”
I turned and walked down the hallway.
Oxymoron walked beside me, letting out a creepy, snickering laugh.
“Uncle, you really don't know how to give a compliment, do you? So shy.”
“Shut it.”
“You should be a bit kinder to your disciples... Ugh...”
Un-ho started dry-heaving as if something were coming up, but that wasn't my problem.
“They’re bright kids. To think they can worry about things like that.”
“I suppose.”
We had become too accustomed to seeing the dead as mere numbers. Could I really agonize like that over three people dying before my eyes?
In war, people die as a matter of course, and I knew all too well that there is no savior who can rescue everyone.
We simply strive to reduce the numbers.
“Maybe being a Hero is something kids like that should do, not rotten puddles like us.”
“Then it’s a good sign. It means the next sprouts are growing well.”
“Is that so?”
Oxymoron’s words strangely lifted my mood, and I walked slowly down the hallway.
“Ugh. Someone... water...”