Chapter 116 – O Bloody Boom Blada (3)

Ian’s plan to follow the path of flames until he met his end… failed miserably.

The war had ended. Without a winning or losing side, just gone! All of a sudden.

“How long do you plan to wait pointlessly like this?”

“…”

Despite Gustav’s grumbling, Ian merely revised the plans. According to the scout team, the 13^th brigade had also been disbanded. So he needed to organize additional troops in order to guard that side of the…

“The war’s over. You know that too. After that random nuke fell between the two sides and made a mess, we didn’t receive any orders, nor did the enemy move. It’s all over. The flames that burned the entire world finally finished burning through the entire world and died out. Oy, you listening?”

“…”

Ian once again ignored his statement. The enemy still existed. Now that the enemy’s chain of command was broken, they would be able to annihilate them without much damage. Of course, that was the case for their allies as well, but the unit he led and the self-declared bodyguards were still faithful to him, so if he managed to organize even the small group properly…

“There! Are! No! More! Enemies!”

Riiiip!

Past the torn map were the furious eyes of Gustav. Ian could see his reflection inside the man’s eyes. The man who looked unusually startled… was himself.

Ian put down the pencil that was crackling under the pressure of his hand.

“If there is no enemy… What am I supposed to live for now?”

“…What?”

“What reason is there for me to live now? As a pickpocketer, a child that did chores at an orphanage, a college student, a mercenary, and a commander. It wasn’t that long of a lifetime, but if I were to choose one of those lives, I would certainly say it was when I lived on the battlefield. But if there are no enemies, then the soldiers that fight and the commander that leads those soldiers are no longer needed. So what is supposed to satisfy my thirst now, Gustav?”

Gustav Al Harb. He was a soldier in a similar situation to Ian. As the Commander of the 8^th Allied Forces, he was well-liked and managed to survive until the end of the war. They completed several operations together, so they were able to talk on the same page. If he had to put a name on their relationship, it could be called ‘friendship’. Excluding the friendly feeling the word held.

“My goodness, am I really talking to Ashfield right now? The elderly and children that you burned would be crying tears of blood if they saw this!”

Ian couldn’t understand Gustav’s problem. What do the dead have to do with this?

Seeing Ian unable to understand what he meant, Gustav shook his head as he let out a laugh, which sounded more like a sigh.

“Well. You’ve always been this way, Ashfield. I say this is for the better.”

“What’s good about this situation?”

“I’ve thought for four whole days about how to persuade a hardhead like you, but I don’t need to anymore.”

Gustav collapsed on the chair opposite Ian’s. The words that came out of his mouth were about a topic that Ian had never thought of.

“Ashfield. Let’s form a military organization together. You want enemies? Then you have to make allies first. Aren’t allies what make a clear boundary between you and enemies?”

“By military organization… Do you mean mercenaries?”

“It’s a little different. Do you know what’s going on in the world right now? There are weird zombie-like organisms called mutants wandering around, and aside from a few select locations, the radiation has made the land inhabitable. The government, the law, and anything related to rules and restrictions are all gone. It’s a world controlled by power now! And we’re the commanders of military forces, basically at the peak of power. Commanders without an organization or higher-ups to order us around.”

There was certainty etched in Gustav’s face. As if he were reaching out to his future self, Gustav clenched the air.

“We can become the center of it all. Soldiers are those who follow commands, and if someone gives them a clear objective and order, all of the scattered soldiers will gather around us. We can become the peak of a world controlled by power and logic! You and I!”

“Then the enemy… who will be the enemy that we fight?”

Hah!

Gustav laughed while listening to Ian’s question.

“That question wasn’t even worth asking. Enemy? The entire world will become our enemy! The era of battle of all, by all, and for all is coming upon us! The war isn’t over! Rather, it just started!”

Bang!

With an enthusiastic declaration, Gustav swung his two arms down on the desk.

“Join me, Ashfield. I will give you an enemy that will satisfy your destructive desires.”

His eyes were burning with determination. Realizing his hands stopped shaking at some point, a smile spread across Ian’s face as well.

So under the dim, blinking light, the two men shook hands. Gustav Al Harb, the man who was called Raptor among the soldiers, did not lie. His charisma gathered the soldiers who no longer had an objective under their command, created the Raptor Society, and started a war against the world.

“Keheheh. Doesn’t the name tell you everything? A man called the Raptor and the Raptor Society. Gustav was a man with ambition. Of course, that didn’t matter to me, since all I wanted to do was burn and explode people. It was a win-win deal. And so the Raptor Society was created under a system based on a military organization, and I assumed the position of Swarm Alpha along with three additional division commanders.”

Haahhh—

The liquor’s sharp alcohol scent shot up his nose with the cigar’s dense smoke. I’m drunk. For sure. Whether it’s the alcohol, nicotine, or the vibes of the chilly morning.

“It was pretty satisfying. Gustav kept his promise. There was a surplus of enemies, and looting the supplies that the survivors stocked up was far more profitable in the early stages than staying put in one place. The Raptors were powerful and rich, which attracted more people. When I learned of the existence of an enemy called the Dome, counting my 10^th birthday, and the day I saw a nuclear explosion with my own eyes, it was the third time I laughed aloud in my life. It was because I was certain after seeing those ridiculously strong guys. That these turtleshell guys were going to fight with me until the day I die!”

Monster. His enemies called him an emotionless monster. He didn’t understand why back then. All he did was choose the most reasonable option, but why did not only the enemy but also the allies fear him so much?

“A year from then, I survived as the Raptor’s Swarm Alpha and was treated as the main face of the Raptors. It was horrible, but I considered it a meaningful life back then. Because I thought that I was fulfilling the reason I was born into this world. It was a rewarding, fulfilling life filled with blood and war. Until the third explosion happened.”

“The third explosion?”

“It’s a thing.”

He didn’t need to look at his friends’ faces to see their confusion. How could he explain this emotion? You could say it was just a superstition, but Ian believed that the word ‘explosion’ was connected with his fate. There were four explosions that changed his life. The third… was a few months later, after meeting her.

Ian Desmont was a man who could talk for days straight about explosions, but he didn’t have an interest in anything else. If he had to decide, then it would be to strive to achieve peak efficiency and rationality.

That was the reason he chose to eat and sleep with the average soldiers instead of the facilities provided for the higher officials. Large, spacious hospital rooms. Fancy meals. Weren’t they all a waste? It may have been a boost to morale had it been provided to all soldiers, but it was only a privilege given to a small number of officers.

The reason Ian was able to meet Molly, who had been working in the hospital as a nurse, was because of his frugal habits and the countless wounds he gained from taking part in every single battle possible.

“I-I’m cold… I don’t want to die, m-mom. Momm…”

To Ian, who spent most of his time in the Nest inside the hospital, that was an extremely disconcerting sight to see. It wasn’t because of the soldiers. He already saw one too many soldiers meet their end.

‘A shot through the leg—his leg’s broken, but it’s fine. But the one on his abdomen… it’s a secondary injury from an explosion. Those pieces of molten rock are fragments unique to plasma explosions. That soldier can be considered a corpse already.’

The soldier clearly looked difficult to save. However, a nurse covered in the blood of struggling soldiers was tightly holding the hand of the dying soldier, making eye contact, and attempting to calm down his fear.

‘It’s foolish. She could save that many more soldiers if she used that waste of time on other patients. It’s inefficient.’

Most likely unaware of Ian’s thoughts, the nurse continued to display a similar attitude every single time Ian was in the hospital. One day, he was so frustrated by the nurse that he spoke to her.

“Hey, you.”

“I need a hemostat! A hemostat over here, please! The one who’s in charge of Clyde, give him painkillers right now!”

“…Hey!”

Glare!

The nurse looked back at him only after he called her several more times. It had been a while since he had seen a hostile expression in someone who wasn’t his enemy.

“Mister Desmont? Do you need something?”

Ian internally debated for a moment. She was inefficient but a great resource who enthusiastically devoted herself to her duty. The question of whether it was reasonable to call such a person just because ‘she was bothering to watch’ had popped into his mind.

“…The soldier on bed 13 will die soon. You don’t need to care for him anymore.”

And thanks to his internal conflict, it was advice, not a scolding, that came out of his mouth.

“I know. It’s too late to treat Sergeant Max.”

“It’s unnecessary to remember all of their names. There’s a reason why the beds are labeled with numbers.”

“But I can’t just call a dying person ‘Patient 13’!”

“As a medical worker, you should know well about the patient’s condition, so it would be much more efficient to divide patients based on their condition when they are brought in.”

“Hah, you’re so—!”

Her response to Ian’s advice only made him more dissatisfied.

“You shouldn’t treat people’s lives so carelessly! It’s natural to try my best to treat them if they have even a breath of life left!”

“But, that’s unbelievably inefficient—agh!”

Just as he was about to protest against the ridiculous claim he just heard, the nurse threw a blanket at Ian’s face.

“I think you can be discharged if you have enough strength to talk like that! I’m starting to get sick of your creepy stares, so stop getting hurt already!”

“But, I just…”

Feeling that there was some sort of misunderstanding, Ian tried to refute once again, but the nurse was already walking towards another patient when he removed the blanket.

“…Unbelievable.”

No matter how ignorant they were of the outside world, how could a member of the Raptors be so rude to a Swarm Alpha, their highest superior? Maybe she was slightly wrong somewhere in her head?

As he added on to the prediction about the strangely eye-catching nurse’s mental illnesses, it made a fairly reasonable explanation.

“Her actions and attitude too. She must actually be a little mentally ill.”

Watching the woman smile warmly at another patient in the distance, Ian could feel an even bigger discomfort take place in his heart. Just one word. Just one wave of his hand, and he could make her kneel in front of him.

“…That’s all unnecessary.”

But instead of doing so, Ian closed his eyes and quietly immersed himself in his thoughts. He pondered exactly what about the woman got on his nerves so much.

Ian went to the general ward several more times after that and met the consistently inefficient woman each time. Due to the ever-growing discomfort he was feeling, Ian made it a habit to give her sincere advice every time she passed his bed, along with a work efficiency improvement plan that he spent his own time on making. And every time she listened to Ian’s advice, the two bickered about subjects such as the weight of a human’s life, which Ian couldn’t understand.

The more time passed, Ian couldn’t deny that he was enjoying this exchange. But he still didn’t know why. He just assumed that it was from the sense of accomplishment from changing the inefficient to the efficient.

“Jaw, isn’t that that, though?”

Vex’s short interruption made Ian nod his head.

“It’s hard to say I fell in love at first sight, but yeah. I did have feelings for her. But I didn’t know that back then. I did have my fair share of women, but none were initiated by me. They were just women attracted to my face, and I merely did what everyone else considered good. In the first place, I hadn’t felt any romantic feelings up to that point.”

“Deceiving bastard.”

“Hope she rejected your ass.”

“Heheheh, how’d you know? I didn’t know it was affection, but I did approach her when I realized I was interested. Whether she wanted to be my secretary. A Swarm Alpha could have a secretary or two. I thought she would obviously accept the offer. Since being a nurse is a much tougher job than you expect. Especially in a critical patient ward like that one. But do you know what she said to me?”

Gyosu emptied the rest of his glass with an incredibly uncomfortable expression, then asked.

“What did she say?”

“She shut me down like a wall. Said that ‘I don’t want to kill people!’ I found myself trying to persuade her. That a secretary wasn’t that kind of job, that she wouldn’t need to come out to the battlefield or ever hold a gun. All she needed to do was organize my schedule and a bit of paperwork… But even with all of my explanations, she didn’t budge an inch. So all I could do was say alright and leave the ward. Was I sad? Not really. But the ‘discomfort’ I had been feeling snowballed into several times the size it had been before I knew it.”

There was a tone of happiness laced into Ian’s voice as he reminisced about his past. The other men were close to barfing from his sweet tone, but Ian didn’t stop talking.

“So I just continued to struggle with that mysterious discomfort. Going to her again… didn’t feel right. But the annoyance was too strong to just stay still. So I spent that entire night at the testing field shooting and blowing up everything. So when I was about halfway through tearing up the entire field, I thought of a superbly stupid idea.”

‘Let’s kill her.’

His head and ears rang from shooting up the field until sunrise, but thanks to that, the knot in his heart loosened up, and he thought of an incredible solution. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it sooner.

‘It was interesting, but it’s all just a hobby in the end. If it’s affecting my mind so much that it affects my daily life, then isn’t that hobby as harmful as a drug?’

It was once again the right choice to depend on gunpowder. It gave him such a clear answer in just a day!

“Let me borrow this.”

“Y-you can just take it, sir!”

“I see.”

Ian picked out a silver revolver from the wall displayed with all sorts of firearms and headed out. Once he felt the cold and heavy touch of the object, he could feel his resolve harden. One shot. Just one shot, and the ‘discomfort’ that had been brewing in his heart will be gone. How clean and efficient that was, wasn’t it?

When he was close enough to see the green cross in the distance, he was even humming. He was going to meet her soon. What should he say? Should he just shoot her? Or should he point out every single reason why she needed to die? Like how they bickered about the value of life back in the ward.

‘There isn’t any need to lecture her, but a word or two should be fine. Thinking about it, isn’t she the only one who was able to bring me joy aside from explosives? Hm… this was all avoidable, it should be enough. If she hadn’t made me realize she was such a nuisance, then she wouldn’t have died in the first place.’

Reaching a clear conclusion with his usual cold logic, Ian opened the doors to the ward with an unusually pleasant feeling.

Slaapp!

Between the smell of a mixture of alcohol and blood, a sharp noise rang through the ward.

“Aww, our little missy nurse. That must have hurt. Right?”

“Aghh!”

“So why didn’t you just listen the first time? We’re patients too.”

The tense atmosphere made Ian’s pleasant feelings fade away. No, it wasn’t just erased, but replaced with a tight, knotted feeling that he had never felt before.

Five soldiers. Without a single wound on their bodies, they were surrounding someone on the floor.

“I came here because my dick was killing me all night, but what? Don’t cause a scene in the hospital and leave? Is that how you treat a patient?”

“You should be prepared for this much as a woman in the Raptors! Pretending you’re so clean and pure! Did I ask you to marry me? Let’s just enjoy the moment together, alright?”

“Oy, Dickson! Quit trying to sweet talk the girl and just bring her in!”

“Aaghh!”

And when the swollen cheeks of the all-too-familiar woman’s face came into view as one of the men dragged her up by the hair…

Snap—

With the feeling of a string snapping inside of his head, Ian felt a dark, sticky feeling envelop his entire body, from inside of his mind to the very tips of his fingers.

He couldn’t see anything. The patients that stared as he charged in with the guttering roar of a beast, the startled soldiers, or the epaulet on their shoulders only given to the personal bodyguard of a Swarm Alpha. He just hoped that his habit of shooting for the head would make their deaths less painful.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! … Bang!

When he regained his senses, there was a hole through all five of the soldiers’ heads and another shot through the one that had grabbed her hair. He killed them all, but the thought that he needed to do something continued to circle through his mind.

Past the corpses that were shaking and spewing out their dirty blood, Ian approached her. He didn’t even know why. His stimulated brain merely delivered him fragments of information, unable to produce complete thoughts.

‘Why did I do that? They’re allies. But it was the right thing to do. But why? What meaning did that action have? I don’t know. This revolver does its job well. Right! Revolver. I had a goal. It was related to the woman in front of me. Before I finished the goal with the revolver, I was going to say something…’

The woman was curled up in a corner of the ward floor, which was now pooling with blood, shivering. Seeing that, a small part deep within Ian’s heart started to feel uncontrollably anxious. He needed to do something. If he didn’t do something…!

[I don’t want to kill people!]

‘Ah…’

In that moment, Ian’s mind gave up on making proper thought processes and just started to spit out anything that came into his mind.

“T-this is…!”

Click!

Clang, c-clang—

“It couldn’t be helped!”

Ian threw the revolver out of his hand and continued to spew out whatever he could manage. The shell casings that fell out of the revolver let out a sharp cry, but that wasn’t his business anymore.

“A-as one of the leaders of the Raptors, I have a duty to protect its members!”

That was a lie. There were over a truckload of soldiers that he threw away like old shoes based on his needs.

“Those soldiers were threatening you, who is working as the Raptor’s medical worker, and that is an act equivalent to sacrificing the countless lives that your hands could save in the future, so I had no choice but to ‘remove’ them from the Raptors! It’s not just meaningless murder!”

Feeling his heart racing even faster and faster, Ian realized what one of the discomforting feelings inside of him was. It was fear. The anxiety that came from killing five people in front of a woman who hated killing and considered life precious.

Ian couldn’t believe himself right now. Killing an ally? First time. Lying? First time. Shaking in fear to the point he couldn’t breathe properly? First time. Feeling fury to the point that everything in front of his eyes darkened? First time. And…

“So… I wish… you could reconsider.”

For Ian, it was definitely the first time his heart beat this hard.

“I know as well. That I’m just an empty shell of a person hidden behind the title as Swarm Alpha. I spent my entire life using what little I had in order to fill this empty void! Yes! I thought that this was enough… enough to be a satisfying life! Until now!”

Ian reached out his hand. The moment he saw those small shoulders trembling in fear, his body moved before he could even think.

After taking off his coat and placing it around her shoulders, Ian carefully wrapped his arms around her body. The little granules of ‘discomfort’ that had been slowly building up in him spilled out like a waterfall as Ian pulled out the deepest feeling he had been hiding.

“But… when I’m next to you. I feel the desire to change, that maybe even though I was a cold-blooded monster my entire life, I can become a human as well.”

She was a woman who gave her best even to those who had no hope. Seeing her sacrifice herself to even those that could not be saved, Ian had imagined it. Maybe, if it were that woman, she just might be able to give her heart to an empty-hearted corpse like him.

To Ian’s sincere confession, the woman slowly raised her head. Kneeling in front of her, Ian held her in his arms as if he were confessing his sins to an angel, as if he were clinging to the last hope in his life.

“So, please… just give me one chance. The chance to have you live alongside me…”

Squeeze.

Feeling the guilt and humiliation slowly suffocate him after barely managing to breathe out his confession, Ian was no longer able to continue talking. Within his arms, he felt her presence embrace him back. That… was a promise more beautiful than a hundred words could make.

Like how a newborn lets the world know of its presence through its cry, Ian poured out his tears within her warm embrace. In the 22 years that have passed since his sister died, not a single person has hugged him like this.