EP.222 The Story of the Past, the Pied Piper of Hameln - Conclusion
“He killed the Chief Instructor… an officer… a Colonel. What do we do?”
“That bastard deserved to die! Rik and Kantana are dead! If he killed them, it’s only natural he dies!”
“How are we going to explain this to Hameln, no, to the Military Nation? No, will the rescue team even come? Are we just abandoned here…?”
“If we explain it well, we can resolve it somehow, right?”
“More importantly, what’s the taboo? What exactly is the taboo that made the Chief Instructor try to kill us?”
“You idiot, did you fight without even knowing that? Huey explained it earlier. It’s a Vampiric Magic Circle!”
Seventeen died from the beast attack, and fifteen perished in the battle against Nicholas. The casualties were heavy, but frankly, it was an unbelievable feat.
Even seasoned hunters retreat against raging deer and prowling wolves.
Moreover, a Colonel is right below a general. While their strength varies greatly, they are still seasoned veterans. Unless one is a recognized cadet with talent, an ordinary military academy graduate would find it hard to match them.
However, they had lost too much to celebrate.
“…Everyone, shut up.”
Having finished staunching the bleeding, Ciatia grabbed her bandaged stump and raised her head. Everyone fell silent. The person among the living who had lost the most in this fight staggered toward me.
“Huey. I don’t… trust you. Because it was you who drove us to this state.”
I heard murmurs, but I nodded as if I understood. Ciatia continued with a pale face.
“However, your directions weren’t wrong. It’s thanks to following your orders that we made it this far. So… tell me. What should we do?”
Ciatia asked gloomily. In her empty eyes, not a single trace of hope for the future could be seen.
What she needed right now was, ultimately, an arrow to point her in a direction.
But I am someone who cannot move without wind. I asked toward her empty heart.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Anything.”
“Still, it’d be a little easier to judge if I knew what you wanted. Should we flee to survive? Or should we risk our lives to expose Nicholas’s wrongdoing? Which method do you want?”
When I asked, a moment later, Ciatia regained her focus. Her empty eyes were now filled only with seething hatred.
“If I tell you what I want, will you grant it?”
“As much as I can.”
“I want the Military Nation… to fall.”
Ciatia answered immediately.
“I’ve only done as Haran told me my whole life! Worked, learned, got scolded, studied, took exams, got evaluated. To become even a little more useful to the Military Nation, I endured even when my parents passed away, endured when I was sick, secretly cried when it was hard, all to get a better evaluation and try to achieve something! And yet!”
Her emotionally charged scream reached me unfiltered, through the over a hundred children, and through them, to me who reads the wind. Ciatia gripped her missing right arm even tighter and screamed.
“This isn’t right! Being used as material isn’t right…! No matter how useless we are, no matter how common Level 2s we are…!”
To the Military Nation, Level 2s and below were always replaceable. Existences that wouldn’t be missed much whether they were there or not.
So they were discarded.
They left the officer academy advancing students as they were, bringing only those who desperately wanted it. To use them as material.
Therefore, they were truly abandoned by their country. The Military Nation itself proved that they didn’t need the likes of them.
“…But, no matter how much we scream. This country won’t hear it. Let alone compensation, they’ll try to kill us to shut our mouths. Just as Nicholas said, because we are completely useless to the Military Nation.”
When Ciatia finished speaking, the children who had been listening also hung their heads deeply. Thanks to her resentful cry, they finally recalled the reality they had tried so hard to deny.
In the end… the Military Nation will bury the Hameln incident. So everyone dies. They won’t survive.
That simple and cruel fact.
“Do you want to be useful?”
At that moment. Someone appeared among the children. The children were startled by the sudden presence. The red-haired boy approached leisurely, as if he had been there from the beginning.
A few children recognized him.
“Lan…kart?”
Lankart neither answered nor turned his head at that question. He only walked in a straight line, his gaze fixed solely on me. In this forest, without even looking at his feet.
Just that, yet a whirlpool naturally formed half a step ahead of him, parting the bushes and blowing away the dust. It was as if the world was clearing the path for him.
The Military Nation’s first mystery. The boy possessing a strategic-class Unique Magic Path. The talent of a sorcerer.
Lankart Spendray.
Standing in the forest littered with branches, looking spotless, Lankart suddenly began to clap.
“Amazing. Truly, a genuinely unexpected situation. I had a hunch, but to think you’d kill Nicholas and devour him.”
While everyone was speechless at his sudden appearance, Lankart stopped his vigorous clapping and feigned a frown.
“But, however, you know too, Huey? Nicholas is a very different existence from you. He was old, worn out, and his ki attribute and ki capacity differ from yours. It’s extremely, terribly inefficient. Even if you devour him with Gluttony, there won’t be a dramatic change in your capabilities.”
“Lankart. How long are you going to talk about what we already know?”
As I spat out with an annoyed attitude, Lankart flinched mid-sentence. I crossed my arms and pressed him.
“You should have the efficient conversation you like, Lankart. Don’t tell me you doubted my intellectual level and are teaching me from the beginning.”
“Ah, y-yes, um.”
“Just state your business. I’m tired.”
“Ah, got it, sorry.”
The cowed Lankart quickly brought up his business. Without a moment’s hesitation.
“Eat the remaining guys.”
A conclusion reached after a few leaps in logic. However, I, possessing mind-reading, understood Lankart’s words instantly.
They were going to die anyway. Even if I didn’t kill them, the Military Nation would. So rather than letting them die meaninglessly, it’s more efficient to kill them on the Forbidden Array and turn them into my power.
Besides, they are the best materials biologically tailored to me in every way. Unlike Nicholas, ‘Gluttony’ would be a little smoother. If not now, eating them would be meaningless, so eat them now… Well, that was the gist.
Naturally, Ciatia, who had just escaped death, reacted violently.
“Lankart! I just thought you were a detestable bastard. Are you Nicholas’s minion too…!”
“Shut up, you ignorant idiot. Do I look like a minion of that loser?”
The annoyed Lankart whipped his head around. Instantly, an immense pressure crushed Ciatia. Ciatia’s face contorted in pain. It was because Lankart’s Unique Magic Path had reached where she stood.
It distorts.
Close to Lankart, it’s fast; far from him, it’s slow. Everything in the world, including the air, swirls to the right at different speeds. In the flow that varies by distance, Ciatia felt a severe pain as if someone was grabbing and tearing her body.
“Urgh, uaaargh!”
Ciatia screamed. But even the sound eerily felt distant. Because within the Unique Magic Path where space distorts, even sound loses its way and wanders.
Having subdued Ciatia without even using his hands, Lankart turned his gaze back to me.
“If you don’t want to dirty your hands, I, yes I, will do it for you.”
“It’ll be annoying, though.”
“Whatever. It’s for a friend. I can endure this much, this tiny bit of annoyance.”
Of course, the existence of ‘friend’ Lankart spoke of referred only to me.
The children screamed and tried to save Ciatia, but far from approaching, they felt a pain as if their outstretched arms would be torn off.
One cannot cross the storm in a teacup in a straight line. One must advance at an angle. But who, and how, could instantly see through and overcome the maze of swirling space?
Impossible. No one can approach or retreat without his permission. Even me.
The world of the right-handed.
To him, the world is like water swirling to the right. The logic of the world. Its flow. If one doesn’t follow it, they collide and get swept up. They sink, creating bubbles.
Lankart, the master of that world, applied force as if he would twist and crush Ciatia at any moment, and spoke.
“Ah. By the way. Just as you said, even if you interfere with me, I can shake off your interference and kill them all. I’m different from the likes of Nicholas. Huey, you might have a hidden trump card up your sleeve… but it still won’t reach me.”
Lankart warned that he couldn’t be persuaded like Nicholas. His eyes were shining with interest and curiosity. Like someone curious about how I would respond.
However.
“Lankart. Don’t act so boringly.”
I spat out in annoyance. Lankart looked puzzled.
Even if I’m good at listening to others’ wishes, I don’t grant every single whining demand of a child asking to be entertained. It’s annoying.
“Didn’t I just take a test with you and Nicholas and give you an answer? Are you going to make me give the same answer again? Where did the Lankart Spendray who grumbled about giving the same problem with only the variables changed go?”
“No, no. I.”
“Deliberately adjusting your strength to apply magic that hurts but won’t kill… That’s a threat. Why waste mana when you know it won’t work? Stop being annoying and withdraw your magic.”
Lankart followed my words for now. The force that had been tearing at her body from the outside and inside dissipated, and Ciatia’s body slumped down. A pained sob leaked from between her face meeting the ground.
“Then what are you going to do? Rescue ships, instructors will come. Even if they only question a few people here, they’ll quickly figure out the whole truth of this incident. Once a report goes up to the command headquarters, the Military Nation’s ‘rational’ judgment will definitely…”
“I told you we shouldn’t talk about things we both know.”
“Ah, right.”
Even though he himself doesn’t trust rationality and tries to test this and that. When will he realize that such a test itself is irrational?
Having silenced Lankart, I summed up the story simply.
“In a word, this is what you mean. There can be no other response to break through this predicament. Or maybe there is, but you, Lankart, couldn’t think of it exactly. So you’re curious about my response to see how I’ll break through. Right?”
“Not exactly that… Wait. You can break through this predicament, this situation?”
“Predicament, situation. If you don’t know, shut up and watch. Why do you keep interrupting and muddying the waters?”
Having crushed his spirit with one more scolding, I briskly waved my hand.
“Go clear the stuff blocking the river. I have something to do downstream.”
“Even so. The end of the river is the sea. As long as the primordial terror, the Sea Terror, lives in the sea, escape is impossible anyway…”
“Again, again with what we already know.”
As I made an annoyed face, Lankart clamped his mouth shut and hurried to the riverbank.
My request was nothing short of coercion. Whether to comply or not depended entirely on Lankart’s will, and there would be no problem if he didn’t.
But having agreed to watch without interfering, he had to grant my request.
Because he became curious about how I would cope, he fell into the trap of having to help me prepare for it.
Not long after Lankart headed to the riverbank, a loud cracking sound was heard. The driftwood blocking the river like a dam was shattered in an instant. What would have been difficult even with a hundred people clinging to it ended so effortlessly before Lankart’s Unique Magic Path.
Magic. The mystery that overlays the rules of the world. To someone who wields it at will, driftwood supported merely by structure and weight is bound to collapse easily.
“Ciatia!”
“…Ugh, yeah. One person is… better than a hundred, right.”
Supported by her friends, Ciatia barely stood up. With a pale face, she smiled as if she had given up on everything.
“…Still. A path… appeared.”
“Lankart…! Even if you don’t see him as a friend, at least I thought he was a fellow cadet!”
Carapalad, who was once a follower of Lankart but had developed deeper affection for the others, reacted furiously to Ciatia’s injury. Carapalad shouted, completely forgetting the fact that he used to admire and fear Lankart’s magic.
“Everyone help me! I can’t stand it if we don’t land a hit on that son of a bitch!”
“Stay still. Heh. Compared to losing an arm, this is nothing.”
Ciatia, holding back Carapalad and panting, repeated in a breaking voice.
“What I just went through is the fate we’ll all face from now on. It’s better, ugh, that everyone gets used to it. Neither the Military Nation, nor anyone else. Will not even care about us… let alone help us.”
The children bowed their heads desolately.
Unable to handle even a single Lankart, there was no possibility of them overcoming the hardships to come.
Even the Colonel they barely defeated earlier was only repelled after a trap prepared in advance and the brave sacrifice of fifteen people… If the Military Nation exerted its full force, a hundred and thirty students who were nothing more than blank lottery tickets would be uprooted like weeds and thrown away like trash.
Someone shouted.
“Fuck…! What did I do wrong!”
The exhilaration fades, leaving only resentment. The pain and sorrow forgotten in the excitement of battle return, and the briefly flickering spark goes out as darkness closes in.
They had nowhere to go. Even wasting time couldn’t be their refuge. Because another enemy army named the rescue ship was approaching by the minute.
Everyone lost their way, lost their destination, and lost even hope and will. They merely swallow their resentment. And yet, they only wish for someone to show them the way.
If the might of the Heavenly God Cult had spread here, they would have prayed to God. To save them from this trial and lead them to heaven.
But there is neither heaven nor hell in this world. Death is the simplest ending one can imagine.
Heaven, hell. Belief processed to be easily consumed is artificial. If it’s artificial, it’s nothing but an imitated fake. It’s nothing more than something that kept the good inside the body and excreted only the bad.
“Go to hell…”
Still, I must respond to that wish.
Having lost even hope, unable to think of any path, with only a desperate wish residing in the center of their hearts.
I put the cold whistle to my lips.
The rescue ship ended up wasting time where the driftwood had piled up.
There were clearly traces of them staying here, but the children were nowhere to be seen. However, judging from the traces, it seemed they had been attacked by beasts and engaged in a fierce battle. Bloodstains were scattered everywhere, and there were marks of something heavy being dragged to the riverside.
Amidst this, someone who recognized the sword marks carved into the trees cautiously pointed it out. Saying there were traces of Chief Instructor Nicholas wielding his sword. The opponents were an organized group of ordinary soldiers, probably students.
The instructors were thrown into confusion, but soon became enraged and hurried the search even more.
Nicholas had no reason to attack the children in such a remote place, but the children had plenty of reasons to attack Nicholas.
The trainees who participated in the graduation practice were dropouts from the competition, confirmed Level 2 failures. They must have held a grudge against the top student Huey or Chief Instructor Nicholas and threatened or attacked them… the instructors judged.
In any case, the need to hurry the search increased. The rescue team was divided into a camp search team and a downstream search team. Since a corner of the piled driftwood had collapsed, they also considered the possibility that they had gone down the river.
It was when the rescue ship was going down the river like that. Upon arriving at the downstream camp, they obtained sighting information. It was said that children divided onto several rafts passed the camp and went down to the downstream city.
They wanted to complain and ask why they weren’t caught… but they couldn’t. They weren’t Nicholas, and the middle school instructors had a lower rank than the camp commander. Also, it was an internal matter of Hameln unrelated to the camp.
It was when the instructors who saluted were about to go further downstream.
“But, did they give some strange order again? They were rowing and singing a song…”
A huge commotion broke out downstream of the Hameln River.
The Hameln River wasn’t that big, but because of that, it was a good area for people to live. In particular, narrower rivers were safer because the terrifying Sea Terrors rarely swam up against the current.
A group of people floated down such a river. It was the children divided onto several large rafts.
-The academy of the low hills. Oh, the embrace of Hameln.
A song sung by the hoarse children tearing their throats out in time with the whistle. It was a scream more horrifying than any gruesome cry. Citizens frowned and turned their heads toward the river.
-Burning all blood and sweat, defeating the enemies...
Spectators crowded to the riverside with displeasure and curiosity. They thought that an instructor with bad taste might have given a strange order.
Phweeeeet.
When the boy standing on the frontmost raft blew the whistle, something strange happened.
The children who were rowing clumsily stood up. They faced each other once, then tightly held each other’s hands and headed to the edge of the raft. While still singing with their mouths.
-For the glorious nation, we march, offering our lives...
Even if it was large, a raft was a raft. It looked difficult to even keep balance, let alone walk on it. Yet the children supported each other and calmly took off their stiff military boots on the swaying raft. Their bare feet landed on the rough logs.
Someone let out a groan. It wasn’t the children. Because they were still singing.
Among the spectators who used their bad imagination, someone let out a laugh with a ‘no way’ feeling. No matter what, that imagination was too unrealistic.
How could so many people...
The river, with water mist rising, gave off a mysterious atmosphere. In the hazy vision, the refreshing sound of water flowed out. The wind hitting their faces was cool.
-Forward... Forward...
Singing the chorus, the children held hands and stepped forward. To the edge of the raft. To the very spot where one more step would step on the soft water surface instead of the hard logs.
Only then did the audience, realizing something ominous, urgently shouted something. But it didn’t reach the children who were singing.
At dawn, the sunlight filtered through the fog shone dimly on the river. Because the current was rough, because there was no light shining on them, the children’s faces were not reflected on the water’s surface.
But it didn’t matter. Right beside them, if they turned their heads, there were faces that looked alike.
Like that, the children sang the last verse to each other.
-To the future of the Military Nation...
They sank beneath the cold and deep river.
Only then, the song stopped.
-The Command Headquarters relays to the Hameln Middle Military Academy. Ascertain the truth as quickly as possible and report. Search for survivors and interrogate them to reveal their intent.
Urgent. Urgent. Grasp the full picture as quickly as possible. The headquarters will also conduct an independent investigation...
....
....
....
-Correction.
From this point on, Level 5 information control is activated.
Control Hameln.
I repeat. Control Hameln.