🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter 27
Rita was a Processing-type Oathbearer.
She possessed a talent specialized in processing Od and transforming it into different properties. Even if her Od aptitude was poor and the amount of Od she possessed was small, when it came to processing Od, she surpassed anyone else.
She calmly approached the squad leader and pretended to nullify her existing oath, while changing the Od she held into a property that generated smoke and exploded.
An enormous plume of smoke surged upward, and the site exploded. Both Gid and Sera were startled, but their reactions were swift. The healer’s protective magic enveloped Oli and the children, and Gid, who burst out through the smoke, struck the squad leader’s neck.
What followed was a chaotic melee.
The squad members who had been loafing around while dumping the fighting onto the Pascals were pushed back miserably despite their numbers. When more than half were killed and defeat became apparent, they all fled.
In the blood-soaked campsite of “Fair,” only Pascal’s children survived and became the new owners.
As Sera treated Rita, who had done something tantamount to a self-destruction, she spewed curses.
“What did you think my signal meant, you reckless fox?”
“Didn’t it mean that no matter what I did, you’d cover for me, sis?”
“Do you think that meant you should blow yourself up? I call you Cherry Candy, and now your head’s actually turned into candy or something? If your Od control had slipped even a little, your head would’ve become sugar crumbs!”
Gid stared blankly at her with a deathly pale face, then opened his mouth.
“Rita, your judgment was correct. You’re the one who could create that situation, and I’m the one who could attack the enemy in that situation. It was a rational and cool-headed decision, the optimal operation. We won thanks to you.”
After speaking calmly, the boy covered his face with his hands. From between his fingers came a trembling voice.
“But Rita, never do that again.”
“…Okay.”
“Really, never do something like that again, Rita Pascal.”
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
She apologized immediately, because she understood the feelings of her one and only comrade.
“I know I worried you.”
“No, you don’t.”
The boy wore a strange, bitter smile.
Of the ten Pascal children who had been in the Fair autonomous squad, eight remained. One had died during the melee, and another was a traitor who had fled.
Among them, Is Pascal—who looked the most adult on the surface and had the calmest disposition—went undercover into the city as their representative and bought the identity of an adult citizen who would guarantee them from a black-market broker.
Sixteen years old.
They erected a beacon in the ruins of Fair, registering officially as an autonomous squad with the Rear Defense Line Command.
After discussion, Gid became the squad leader, and Rita the vice leader. Together they fought magical beasts, built camps together, and shared everything they obtained.
Not everything went smoothly from the start.
The children learned that the adults who had run the squads before them had done far more work than they had imagined.
Dealing with a sloppy yet finicky command headquarters, gauging the difficulty of assigned missions, preparing so as not to have their rewards skimmed off, negotiating when receiving supplies, and fulfilling their duty to defend the Rear Defense Line while avoiding being shoved into death traps or used as meat shields.
Even in a world where magical beasts ran rampant, people were always more dangerous. The children learned that with their whole bodies.
As they learned step by step, many things happened. They made mistakes and failed. They fell into danger due to poor judgment and suffered major losses after being deceived.
They lost comrades in battles defending the Rear Defense Line, and there were also comrades who left on their own, saying they had found their families again.
They even witnessed those comrades being exploited by the so-called families and dying.
On the other hand, they also found new comrades.
“Gid, that Pascal in that squad—something’s off.”
Rita spotted him while they were assembled at the Rear Defense Line fighting a defensive battle.
A boy with dark blond hair—Ethan Pascal.
“He’s skilled, but way too reckless. He fights like he wants to die right here. He doesn’t seem sane. He also looks short on stamina… like someone who’s been starving for days.”
“He does seem strange.”
“And that squad—aside from that kid, there’s no one who can fight properly.”
It was difficult to interfere in another squad’s affairs.
But Gid didn’t brush off Rita’s words. Somehow, he managed it—obtaining inspection authority from headquarters.
While they visited that squad under the pretext of an inspection, Is scouted the interior using a summoned creature.
Then he reported something shocking.
“Junior, this squad… their performance is so bad they barely get any food rations. But they didn’t seem that starved, so I checked the food storage… There were human skulls. And butchered meat too… Probably unregistered orphans or vagrants.”
Rita had heard that among the poor inside the Rear Defense Line, food shortages sometimes led to people eating each other—but this was the first time she had seen it firsthand, having lived mostly outside the Rear Defense Line until now.
The command usually tried to supply food to those fighting magical beasts, and if that failed, there was even a way to cook and eat the carcasses of magical beasts—though it tasted atrocious, and anyone who wasn’t an Oathbearer would die from contamination rather than digest it.
“Those crazy bastards—why not just eat magical beasts instead? How could they even think of something like that!”
“Well, there are probably quite a few like this in secret. Especially places with poor performance.”
“Have you seen this before, senior?”
“I’ve been around longer than you, junior. I also go in and out of the city a lot. It’s more common in the slums.”
“……”
“From a purely natural standpoint, it makes sense. Humans are easier than magical beasts. Easier to catch, easier to eat.”
“…I understand what you mean. At a glance, it might seem efficient. But in the end, it isn’t.”
“In the end?”
“Humanity’s strengths are sociality and altruism. Humans haven’t lost to magical beasts yet because they form societies and can risk their lives for others. Humans must not abandon that strength. So it isn’t natural for people to do this. And it must never be considered natural.”
“…I see.”
“Besides, the poor at least have the excuse of having no other choice. These guys don’t even have that. They chose the easy path while knowing it was wrong. We can’t leave this alone. We have to stop it immediately.”
“Yeah… That’s why I follow you, junior.”
“What do you mean, ‘that kind of person’?”
At her question, Is Pascal only smiled.
They soon devised a plan.
While Gid dealt with the squad leader, Is rescued the still-living “food.”
And Rita infiltrated secretly to meet Ethan Pascal. He was bound in chains.
“What? Escape? Hey, fuck—do you know what oath the Pascals made me swear?”
“‘O Od, I swear: I shall always obey my master’s commands, in the name of Ethan Pascal.’”
“Get it? Escape is impossible. My master right now is that bastard squad leader. Want to know how he used me? Want me to show you what kind of shit I’ve been doing to survive?”
Ethan Pascal went berserk and tried to kill her. However, he had starved after refusing the horrific meals, and after repeatedly breaking his oath and suffering Od’s punishment, he had no strength left.
Rita subdued him easily, then aimed a gun at his forehead and issued a “command.”
“I won, Ethan Pascal.”
“If I just twitch my finger like this, you die. Right?”
“If you want to live, from now on, serve me as your new master.”
The boy’s eyes snapped open. Beneath the gun barrel, Rita saw his pupils trembling finely.
At that moment, he recognized Rita Pascal as his new master, and was freed from his previous restraints.
After removing his shackles, she gave her first command.
“Do whatever you want.”
Ethan Pascal killed his former master, the squad leader. He also killed every squad member who had forced him into inhuman meals and made him do all kinds of filthy things.
“That’s how it happened, Gid.”
After listening to Rita’s explanation, Gid let out a single sigh, then manipulated the scene using the carcasses of magical beasts.
The command didn’t even care about something like an autonomous squad with almost no achievements being wiped out after failing a magical beast subjugation.
That was how Ethan Pascal became a member of Beacon.
Many things happened after that as well.
Rita finally defeated, together with her comrades at age seventeen, the mimic she had failed to kill at fourteen. They also dealt with several other infamous named magical beasts.
The reputation of the autonomous squad Beacon grew steadily. Pascal’s children who had been scattered gathered at Beacon. Rita and Gid accepted anyone who bore the name Pascal.
Beacon grew in size. Too many Pascal children gathered.
Enough to irritate the Rear Defense Line Command.
Nineteen years old.
The command ordered them to subjugate a kraken, a troublesome named magical beast that had taken over the sea.
There was a trap on the ship provided by the command. Among the Pascal children who had joined later was a spy from the command.
The ship sank. Beacon fought a desperate battle atop the sinking vessel against the kraken, a giant octopus-shaped magical beast.
Many children died at sea. After the kraken subjugation, only six squad members survived.
Rita, Gid, Oli, Sera, Is, and Ethan.
When she had lost a friend at fourteen, Rita had been traumatized. When she lost her first squad member after founding Beacon, she had sobbed uncontrollably. This time, she did not cry.
She simply conducted the funerals carefully with reddened eyes, personally erecting each gravestone for the children who had no families to come for them.
After the funerals ended and they had fully recovered from their injuries, Gid spoke.
“Our squad can’t get any bigger.”
“Because the command doesn’t like it?”
“Yeah.”
“I see.”
Rita understood what he meant.
The command did not want Pascal’s children to gather and become some new power. They wanted Pascals to be split into small numbers across different squads and function solely as “weapons.”
She ground her teeth at the thought. But she said nothing more.
The ruins filled with the graves of the squad members she had created—most containing only personal effects, since the bodies could not be found.
It was winter. Snow began to fall from the sky.
Amid the ash-gray gravestones rising like ghosts and the white snowflakes settling slowly, Gid gazed at her with his one remaining eye and asked,
“Rita.”
“Hm?”
“Would you like it if we established a new command?”
