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Chapter – 44
The faces of the fallen were, for the most part, strangely peaceful.
Their eyes were shut as if in a deep sleep; it felt like if someone called them they might open their eyes.
But they would never rise again, and they must not.
Slowly, soldiers collecting the bodies covered the dead with cloth.
The rain picked up as if the sky itself were wailing—sheet after sheet of water pattering down.
“Damn it.”
“Who orders a mission on a day like this… no wonder they come back like that.”
“Might as well have shoved them off the cliff and been done with it.”
A few soldiers voiced their complaints openly.
“Jes—Jesse!”
Gwen ran to one fallen soldier.
“What happened? Jesse, Jesse! Get up! What are you doing like this?”
The men who were handling the bodies paused, taking the cloths off, so Gwen could say goodbye to her comrade.
The dead weren’t only from non-combat branches like the engineers.
“You bastard! Why did you have to die? You barely had any leave left! Why the hell did you die?”
Scout leader Begman was shaking a slain scout roughly and shouting.
The dead man’s name was Mikhail.
He’d been senior to Russell—Russell who smelled of something off—but that detail didn’t matter now.
“Huh. The continentals are strange. Why mourn? If someone dies honorably in battle, shouldn’t you be glad?”
A captured barbarian blurted that out without reading the room.
“You mouth-breather!”
“Son of a—!”
Angry engineers began beating the barbarian with their tools.
“Guh—guh! You vile continentals! Ugh! You have no decency toward prisoners… Aaaaaah!”
No one stopped the engineers.
In a yard already turned into a scene of slaughter by the barbarians’ ambush, what was one more prisoner beaten to death?
Click, hiss—the sound of a flint.
Kudo, who had made a spark with a magic stone, was lighting a cigarette.
“Hoo.”
Smoke curled thickly.
“Bad premonitions are never wrong. Damn it all.”
Kudo took a few drags, then put the three-quarters-smoked cigarette between the lips of the corpse, Mikhail’s body.
Cigarettes were expensive in this world; low-ranking soldiers like Mikhail could hardly ever dream of them.
How Kudo got such a pricey luxury was anyone’s guess…
“Who would have thought this place would be soaked in blood.”
Carlyle stared at the corpses and felt anew that this was a battlefield.
They had returned having fulfilled their quota despite the enemy’s ambush, yet still there was a mourning scene.
He could no longer comfortably celebrate that they had all come back alive; one or two dead ruined that.
But the sorrow didn’t last long.
“What can you do. Rest easy. It was an honor to have fought with you.”
Scout leader Begman said that and covered Mikhail’s body with the cloth.
“For Mikhail.”
“For Mikhail.”
The scouts gathered around the body and, to Mikhail’s memory, downed shots of vodka together.
Carlyle drank without complaint—bitter, poisonous liquor.
He thought his sinuses might be burned; it felt as if his throat was being scorched.
A warmth rolled up from deep in his gut as if someone had set a fire there.
What proof was there of its strength? It called itself vodka, but Carlyle suspected it might as well have been pure alcohol.
“All right, everyone, back to the barracks. Kudo, you go report to Lady Helen and hand over the captured barbarian.”
Begman shouted at the engineers still beating the prisoner, “Hey—are you trying to kill the bastard? Don’t you kill him until after interrogation!”
He looked back at Kudo. “And don’t forget your report. You’re fine in everything else, but you always forget the paperwork.”
“When have I ever forgotten a report?”
“When, huh? How many times have you actually brought one in? Maybe once out of ten missions.”
“Prove it.”
“Look at this guy—evidence?”
Begman and Kudo argued as if they’d never been sad at all.
“Ugh! I’m soaked through and it’s getting chilly. We need to get a fire in the bunks.”
“What’s for dinner?”
The other scouts, after offering a shot to Mikhail’s memory, went their separate ways toward their duties.
The engineers likewise said a quick prayer for the dead and left for their barracks.
“Oppa! Thanks again today! Let’s go on a mission together again!”
Gwen waved to Carlyle, then hobbled off after her squadmates.
Her face wore its usual innocent, wide smile.
“…what the hell.”
Carlyle felt hollow.
Where had the heavy, dreadful atmosphere gone?
Only minutes ago people clutched the corpse and wailed; now no trace of that remained.
Their normal behavior made him uneasy.
Could it be…?
The thought that flashed through his head drained the color from his face.
“Maybe this really is a game.”
Carlyle thought it might not just be a world like the game Overlord but the actual inside of a game.
If it were a game, then people would be algorithm-made data, and the unsettling sight he’d witnessed earlier might have been some glitch—an uncanny valley error.
Perhaps that thought showed on his face.
“You know what it is.”
Marder, smiling oddly, came up and said.
“What do you mean I know?”
“Just now—your expression.”
“What about my expression?”
“You thought it strange—they were acting like nothing happened, right?”
“……!”
“See? I knew it.”
Marder wore a “told you so” look.
“You thought it weird that they behaved as if they hadn’t been sad at all, didn’t you?”
“Well…”
“Don’t forget. This is the Bloodsoaked Land.”
“……!”
“Not that there’s something inherently wrong with us. It’s this place—the Bloodsoaked Land—that made us like this.”
“Oh.”
Only then did Carlyle understand what Marder meant.
‘Like the thief blaming his own foot.’ Carlyle let out an inward wry smile.
He felt like crawling into a hole when he remembered having been unsettled and doubting reality at the odd behavior he’d seen.
“As you’re starting to see, people die here every other day. A comrade you rolled and fought with can be gone overnight. Like when Derek died.”
“I understand.”
“No.”
Marder shook his head.
“You still don’t get it. You’ve never experienced it.”
“……”
“If you do—well, you will soon enough—just ignore it and keep fighting. I do.”
“Ignore it and fight…”
“If you really can’t bear it, then be angry instead of sad. Around here, anger is more useful than grief.”
Marder’s blue eyes seemed compressed with endless rage and hatred toward the enemy.
“Hmm. The Butcher clan, huh. Never seen them before. Strange tribes showing up is never a good sign…”
Marder mumbled that and left.
Alone, Carlyle mulled over what he’d seen and what Marder had said.
“Be angry rather than sad… will I become like them?”
That was something he couldn’t tell yet.
Marder had said it himself: he hadn’t experienced it yet.
One thing was certain, though—he’d learned how the northerners here coped with losing comrades in the Bloodsoaked Land.
That night.
The rain still hammered down as Helen called a mission briefing.
“The situation is bad.”
Helen looked colder and harsher than usual.
“We got detailed information about the Butcher clan from the prisoner we captured. The Butcher clan’s numbers are—”
“About five hundred right now.”
Carlyle muttered without thinking.
He had a good grasp of the Butcher clan’s information already.
Interrogation was probably unnecessary; barbarians seldom held back about their tribes and usually boasted everything.
“Private Carlyle?”
“Yes?”
“What did you just say? You know something?”
“No, that’s not it. I was just distracted.”
“Pay attention. This is your warning, but if I catch you daydreaming during a meeting again, I’ll have to deal with you under military law.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Helen glared at him before resuming the meeting.
“The Butcher clan has unified several small tribes we’d faced before; their number of warriors reportedly reaches nearly five hundred.”
“…!”
Faces in the meeting froze.
Barbarians didn’t really have a concept of state; they were a tribal society of many small groups sharing culture and customs.
If a single tribe had five hundred warriors, it meant they’d ceased to be a minor group.
Bowden Fortress’s garrison numbered less than a hundred.
Even though barbarians had a high warrior-to-population ratio, simple comparisons with continental forces were meaningless.
“The Butcher chieftain, Zarkan—”
‘He’s Bjornsen’s older brother.’
Carlyle listened to Helen while his thoughts drifted to what he already knew of the Butcher clan.
Zarkan was a skilled warrior and a competent commander.
He’d earned the title “the Clever Butcher,” an odd epithet for a barbarian.
‘He might become a major figure… He was supposed to die years later at Bjornsen’s hand.’
In the original scenario, Zarkan would be killed by his younger brother Bjornsen and lose his tribe.
But Carlyle had already removed Bjornsen, so Zarkan’s fate had shifted.
‘Maybe I’ve made a worse enemy than Bjornsen.’
In the present, Zarkan might be a more dangerous foe than Bjornsen had been.
That Zarkan hadn’t come raging in after his brother’s death showed something: unlike most barbarians, reason came before rage in him.
“So what do we do? If the Butcher clan has five hundred warriors, we can’t face them with our current strength. If small skirmishes like today repeat—”
“There will be no retreat.”
Helen drew a firm line.
