Chapter 158: Southward (Part 1)

Chapter 158: Side Story: Southward (Part 1)

In the bitter winter of the year 1092 of the Terran calendar, the war initiated by the Sarkaz had swept across the entire continent, pushing the world to its absolute breaking point. Surrounded by the combined military might of almost all of Terra, you made a decision that caught everyone completely off guard.

“What we lack most right now is time.” You tapped a pale finger against the tactical map. Dense red markings bled across the holographic projection, each one representing a battlefield choked with corpses.

Inside the dilapidated operations command room, the rusted blades of the ventilation ducts hummed and rattled, threatening to drown out your voice. Ninety percent of Kazdel’s highest-ranking generals stood in a tight circle around you, holding their breath as they awaited your next command.

“The spread of fear takes time,” you continued, your tone terrifyingly flat. “Leithanien, Kazimierz, Victoria, Columbia… the sheer volume of their sacrifices has long since crossed the threshold of the unacceptable. Right now, the burning anger of the victims’ families vastly outweighs their fear of death.”

You rested your forehead against the knuckles of one hand, letting out a low, dry chuckle that sent a chill through the room. “After all, not every race is as accustomed to the meat grinder as the Sarkaz.”

When the Elders, who had grown soft and complacent in their comfortable lives, took up arms against the Sarkaz—a race hardened by thousands of years of brutal exile—the greatest disparity wasn’t found in the trenches. It was what came after the war.

The hot-blooded rush of hatred is fleeting. Once that blood cools and the surviving soldiers return home to their cozy houses and weeping parents, the lingering trauma of war will utterly break them. The anti-war factions will inevitably become the loudest, most desperate voices in their society.

“After all, internal contradictions only take the stage when external threats disappear.” You casually tossed your data terminal onto the scarred metal table, clapped your hands once, and looked up at the bewildered Sarkaz generals exchanging uneasy glances. “Inidraixi, it’s about time you briefed them on the progress of the Rose Riverside project.”

A Vampire dressed in a sharp, immaculate black suit nodded. She stepped into the center of the command room, drawing a wave of surprised looks. She had kept such a low profile until now that many of the Sarkaz commanders didn’t even know she existed.

Inidraixi connected her terminal to the primary tactical display, projecting a cascading list of names. The data spanned the news industry, commerce, and the nobility, covering various sectors, ages, and genders across the allied nations.

“Rose Riverside’s infiltration initiative has been highly successful,” the Vampire reported, her voice smooth and measured. “While you were slaughtering their forces on the front lines, the acceptance rate among the survivors we intentionally spared exceeded ninety percent. Once they return to their respective countries, they will act as pro-Sarkaz voices embedded within the anti-war movements. They will follow our hidden directives to push for armistice treaties and guarantee the rise of the Appeasement Party.”

It was almost a pity that the dirty tricks your homeland had taught you were being weaponized here. How to ensure that soldiers who survived the hell of the battlefield returned home only to bleed society dry from the inside—this was a psychological warfare tactic well-documented as far back as the Cold War.

Clearly, these straightforward Sarkaz had never witnessed such underhanded, political warfare. Most hesitated, shifting uncomfortably in silence. But there were always a few brave souls who dared to question the mastermind.

A Banshee, her silhouette marred by a violently severed horn, stepped forward. She glared directly into your eyes, her expression burning with defiance. “Doctor, although they are our enemies on the battlefield, they are warriors just like us. If you treat them as mere political tools today, will you treat us the same way tomorrow?”

You were being questioned again. It was a common occurrence. The Sarkaz’s feelings toward you had always been a volatile cocktail of deep admiration and primal dread. A Pathfinder… always had to bear the weight of their fear.

You sifted through your memory, barely recalling that this doubter was a close-combat Banshee who always charged at the absolute vanguard of the bloodiest skirmishes. She was usually quite obedient. As for her name… from the day you realized the Sarkaz were essentially consumable units on a grand chessboard, you had stopped bothering to remember their names.

“If we don’t use this method, do you want to keep fighting a war of attrition?” Your voice dropped to a freezing whisper. “Who do you want to see die next? A rival worthy of your ‘respect,’ or the comrade sitting right next to you?”

The Banshee’s jaw tightened. She fell silent for a long moment before retreating back into the crowd. Theresis simply shook his head and gestured for the meeting to proceed.

“Please use your brain before raising such pointless questions next time; my brain cells are precious, and I’d rather not waste them,” you said, clapping your hands to breeze past the heavy atmosphere. “Our next topic is a bit drastic. Are you all familiar with the Base Trade tactic?”

You paused, letting the silence stretch. “We are going to swap bases with Ursus.”

The Sarkaz were a wandering race, and Kazdel itself was a modular, dismantlable mobile city. Previously, being trapped in this barren backwater was purely because every other habitable zone was occupied by the descendants of the Elders. In the past, if someone announced that Kazdel was to be dismantled and relocated yet again, most Sarkaz wouldn’t have batted an eye. But over the last few years, they had bled and sweat to build this city up from a pile of ash and ruins.

“Are we really leaving…? Mama said that in another month, this batch of berries would be ready for harvest. We planted these with our own hands!”

A little Banshee stood in the dirt, reluctantly clutching a watering can with both hands as she stared at the lush, green field of berry bushes.

Beside her, the elder Banshee had stripped off her heavy, bloodstained wartime armor. A light breastplate clung to her torso, outlining her lean waist and emphasizing her incredibly long, snow-white legs.

These legs—rare and striking even among the Banshee race, where nearly everyone possessed the physique of a supermodel—were currently pulled up against her chest as she sat aggrievedly on the dirt ridge. The elder Banshee watched the child in the farmland tearfully saying goodbye to every single berry plant. She instinctively reached for a cigarette to take the edge off her mounting fatigue, but after pulling out a crushed, empty pack, it took her a few seconds to remember she had quit smoking months ago.

Settling for the next best thing, she plucked a broad leaf from a nearby bush, rolled it tightly between her fingers, and stuck it between her lips. She extended a forefinger as pale as jade, and a ghostly blue spark of Banshee Fire flared to life at the tip. She ignited the stem of the leaf and took a deep, slow drag, managing to trick her nicotine addiction for just a moment.

In the past, this little girl—who valued her tiny plot of land more than her own life—would have already been screaming at her to pay for the damaged leaf.

After only a few puffs, the persistent little girl came running back, her boots going patter-patter against the soil. “Auntie… can’t we just leave a week later? In a week, Spot, Shorty, and Buggy will be ripe, and we can brew a whole jar! That Gargoyle big brother who visits all the time has been looking forward to our wine for ages. Doesn’t that big brother have feelings for you?”

Heh, this brat even gave every damn bush a name…

The elder Banshee casually stubbed out the smoldering leaf against the dirt ridge and curled her lip. “First of all, I’ve had a boyfriend for a long time. If you spout such baseless nonsense again, I’ll spank your bottom red. Secondly, this is non-negotiable. This is an absolute order from that cold-blooded war maniac up top. Military orders are as immovable as mountains, understand?”

The little Banshee planted her hands firmly on her hips, pouting.

The elder Banshee grew even more annoyed. She raised her hands, curling her fingers to mimic a monster with sharp claws, and flashed a sinister grin. “It’s not for a brat whose horn-feathers haven’t even grown in to worry about my love life. Be careful. If you keep dragging your feet, that war maniac will just leave you behind. Let’s see how long an underage little Banshee lasts before she gets thrown into a stew pot and eaten by those creepy old Leithanien perverts!”

The threat worked instantly. A thin mist of tears welled up in the little girl’s eyes, and the tip of her nose flushed bright red, but she stubbornly refused to let the tears fall. “Then… then I’ll just leave the berries here. Will we come back next year?”

A normal person would have softened and offered a comforting lie. But the elder Banshee didn’t. This unmarried, wicked frontline general loved nothing more than popping a child’s naive fantasies. She smiled and delivered the cruel truth. “No. That war maniac’s exact words were, ‘Leave not a single blade of grass or a tree for the coalition.’ We’re going to burn all of this to the ground in a few minutes.”

“Waaaaahhhhhh—!”

The little Banshee finally broke, bursting into loud, ugly sobs. Crying hysterically, she vengefully kicked at the little saplings she had spent a year carefully tending to, snapping them one by one. She stripped handfuls of hard, unripe green berries from the branches and shoved them into her mouth. The unripe fruit was tiny and intensely bitter, the seeds scraping against the roof of her mouth, the harsh taste burning all the way down her throat.

The elder Banshee simply plucked another leaf from a trampled bush, lit it with her fingertip, and held it between her lips like a cigarette. She sat in silence, watching the little girl vent her grief until she had absolutely no strength left to cry.

Only then did the elder Banshee slowly stand up from the ridge. She patted the dust off her shorts and walked over to the exhausted little girl, whose dirt-smudged face was now marked by two clean, funny-looking streaks from her tears. Bending down, she firmly grabbed the child—who was still trying to act spoiled and anchor herself to the dirt—and hauled her up.

“Did you memorize this feeling?” the elder Banshee asked softly. “When you grow up, whether you choose to run away or hide, don’t ever follow that war maniac to kill people again. This right here… this is the price.”

The little girl sobbed, dragging her feet the entire way as the elder Banshee practically carried her toward the evacuation zone.

At this exact moment, the entirety of Kazdel was in a similar state of chaotic mourning. Because of one simple sentence from you, the Sarkaz—both the legendary heroes and the nameless grunts—were swarming like busy ants, dismantling the great city of Kazdel into hollow steel carcasses. They formed massive, winding convoys, crossing the Ursus border in coordinated batches under the heavy cover of night.

Back in the command room, deep, bruised shadows had formed under your eyes. The room was nearly empty now; only a dozen or so monitors that couldn’t be immediately unbolted from the walls were still glowing, tracking the Sarkaz evacuation across multiple hidden routes. On the center screen, a wildly fluctuating frequency line spiked violently. The other end of that signal was connected to an Ursus man floating in a tank, covered in tubes.

Ever since you realized that you could manipulate Originium—a substance that was practically a slow, agonizing death sentence for anyone on Terra upon contact—you had been quietly testing its limits. Just like right now.

The encrypted communication channel crackled to life, the voice on the other end trembling with a mix of sheer terror and religious fervor. “How did you do it?! The Saint of Fools has truly gone mad! Its presence is manifesting in almost all of Ursus’s mobile cities simultaneously, rampaging everywhere!”

That was close. You let out a long, shaky breath.

The catastrophic failure you feared hadn’t happened. Your insane theory was correct: Originium acted as a universal connector, essentially functioning as the underlying code of this world. By using heavily infected fanatics as signal relays, you had forcibly linked your consciousness to the Saint of Fools. It seemed the entity was forced to connect with your overwhelming stress and suppressed emotions, and the effect was spectacular—it had completely lost its mind.

On the surveillance monitors, the Ursus border patrols reacted exactly as you had calculated. Receiving emergency reports of the rampaging entity, they abandoned their posts and rushed back to their cities mere moments before the Sarkaz convoys crossed the threshold, perfectly missing the vanguard without a single drop of blood spilled.

It’s over…

Your tightly wound nerves finally snapped. The sheer physical exhaustion of staying awake for two straight nights to calculate the logistics of a dozen evacuation routes, combined with the agonizing mental backlash of forcing a sensory link with the literal embodiment of Ursus’s suffering, hit you like a freight train. Your vision swam with black spots, and your knees buckled as you collapsed toward the cold metal floor.

Fortunately, a hand shot out and caught you just in time, a surprisingly warm palm cradling the side of your face.

The Banshee leaned down, her face inches from yours, examining your deathly pale complexion with wide-eyed astonishment. “Tsk, tsk, tsk… How long has it been since you actually slept? Tell me, I know you don’t give a damn about our lives, but do you seriously not care about your own either?”

The warmth radiating from her hand helped anchor your fading consciousness. You struggled to lift your heavy head, your vision blurring from severe hypoglycemia after skipping meals for days. “Who are you? How did you get past the guards into my office?”

The Banshee, still effortlessly supporting your dead weight with one hand, tilted her head to look at your glowing monitors. The dense, chaotic streams of tactical data and constantly shifting surveillance feeds made her—a self-proclaimed illiterate when it came to tech—feel a brief wave of awe.

“You’re literally about to pass out and die, and this is the first thing you care about?” She rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine, just stay still. I’m terrified you’re going to drop dead while I’m holding you and I’ll get blamed for it. I’m the Banshee from the valley who yelled at you earlier. Your original assistant ran into a Silverlance Pegasi guerrilla unit on the way back and got held up, so Theresis sent me to cover the shift. How are you feeling?”

Should you feel sad, or perhaps regretful? You felt a dull ache in your chest, but in your current state, you couldn’t even recall the poor assistant’s name. The psychic reverberations of the Saint of Fools were still echoing in your skull, refusing to fade. All you felt right now was…

“So hungry.”

The Banshee blinked, clearly not expecting such a pathetic response, and burst into exasperated laughter. “Hahahaha… Unbelievable. Fine, I overestimated you. I thought the great mastermind might actually have a shred of poetic humanity left. What do you want to eat, oh great and terrible Evil Spirit?”

“…Anything.”

Due to extreme mental fatigue, your brain was practically flatlining. You could only vaguely sense that she seemed to intensely dislike you, but it didn’t matter. In Kazdel, anyone who didn’t dislike you was the statistical outlier.

The Banshee sneered. She pulled her hand back, letting your head flop unceremoniously against the backrest of your chair. Reluctantly, she stood up, rummaged through a pile of dismantled clutter in the corner until she found a battered military kettle, and boiled some water using a portable heater. She sprinkled in a handful of toasted rice rations she kept in her pockets, shook it roughly, and shoved the hot kettle into your hands. “This is it. Take it or starve.”

You gripped the kettle blankly with both hands. You stared at the rising steam for a long time, completely zoned out, before finally giving a slow, robotic “Mm” and tilting the boiling metal spout directly toward your mouth.

“Hey, hey, hey! It’s boiling hot! Are you stupid?!”

The Banshee, who had literally just been cursing you in her head and wishing you would drop dead, reflexively lunged forward. She snatched the kettle away, grabbed your jaw with one hand, and forced your mouth open to inspect the damage.

“The burns aren’t even that bad… Is your Originium Arts specifically designed to make your mouth fireproof or something?”

This Banshee possessed enough raw physical strength to stop a charging Silverlance Pegasus in its tracks with a single roundhouse kick. You weakly tried to swat her hands away, but it was like a mayfly trying to wrestle a mountain. You could only sit there helplessly as she marveled at the durability of your mouth, which was apparently tough enough to brew instant noodles internally.

The strong-but-dim-witted Banshee paused to think. To prevent you from bringing eternal shame to the Sarkaz race by dying in the most embarrassing way possible—scalding your own throat or starving to death in a chair—she grabbed your kettle, stepped back into the center of the room, and lifted one leg.

Balancing perfectly on her other foot, she kicked off and began spinning her entire body like a high-speed top.

Is this brute-force solution seriously her alternative to not having ice-based Originium Arts? Even through the heavy fog of your exhaustion, you were deeply shocked by this extravagant, ridiculous waste of kinetic energy.

Having maxed-out physical stats really is a cheat code…

The Banshee spun so fast she became a blur, acting as a living centrifuge. In just thirty seconds, the water in the kettle had cooled down significantly from the rapid airflow.

“Here.” The Banshee patted her slightly dizzy head and triumphantly shoved the kettle back into your chest.

You took a sip. It was perfectly lukewarm.

Having maxed-out physical stats is truly terrifying.

This absurd little episode finally broke the suffocating tension between you. You were exhausted to your very bones, but your paranoia dictated that you couldn’t sleep until the final evacuation convoy had crossed the border. Perhaps the warmth from the toasted rice water had thawed your cold, mechanical rationality, or perhaps the psychic residue of the Saint of Fools was still scrambling your social filters.

You sat there holding the kettle, while she casually hopped up and sat on the armrest of your command chair, crossing her long legs. The room was peaceful, filled only with the rhythmic humming of the server racks. You actually found the atmosphere quite comfortable.

To keep yourself awake, you did something entirely out of character—you attempted to make small talk with one of these Sarkaz who lived every day like it was their last.

“Is it good?” you asked.

“You’re the one drinking it, why the hell are you asking me?” she shot back.

Right… It seemed your charisma stat was currently in the negatives, but you honestly didn’t have the processing power to handle a normal conversation.

“Tell me about your past,” you murmured, staring at the monitors. “Anything at all.”

“What? Trying to dig up use on me?” The Banshee crossed her arms defensively, genuinely wanting to provoke this heartless, cold-blooded Commander who usually gave her goosebumps just by looking at him. At worst, he demotes me, she thought. The headstrong Banshee didn’t care.

But you didn’t take the bait. Your tone remained surprisingly soft. “…I suppose so. Talking about something trivial is fine too. Just keep talking.”

Faced with such unexpected politeness, the Banshee felt a sudden wave of awkwardness. Her horn-feathers twitched nervously. “You asked for it. I only know how to talk about stupid, trivial things anyway.”

And she delivered on that promise. You slumped deep into your chair, your eyes half-closed, as the empty command center was filled with the echoing cadence of her voice.

She talked about coming in dead last at the Banshee Academy when she was a kid. She talked about her little niece’s beloved berry bushes, and how the kid still didn’t know her mother had died on the front lines. She recounted crude, dirty jokes she had overheard from mercenaries during brief respites in the trenches, occasionally throwing in a mischievous jab to see if you were still awake.

You could tell this Banshee was genuinely simple-minded in her approach. She honestly believed that by avoiding military secrets and battlefield logistics, she was keeping you from truly understanding her.

Naturally, the topic she spent the most time on was her boyfriend who had deserted the army.

Though, she absolutely refused to let you call it desertion.

“I made him run before the war even started, so what?” The Banshee huffed, her eyes flashing with a mix of smugness and deep-seated defiance. “I told you earlier, this whole mess with the Sarkaz can’t be solved with violence. It’s only going to bury an entire generation in an early grave.”

“Then why did you stay?” you asked quietly.

“Me? I’m here because of those bastards! Because little Banshees who are barely a few years old are losing their parents because of people like you!” She gritted her teeth. “The hatred of the Sarkaz is a bottomless pit. One less of me wouldn’t change the outcome, but one more of me doesn’t matter either.”

She let out a bitter laugh. “Heh, but unlike you, I’ve managed to drive everyone I actually care about away! The people important to me are all staying safely in the south!”

Even with your brain operating on one percent battery, your logical processing was leagues ahead of this loud-mouthed, emotional Banshee. “You’ve been talking for an hour, but besides that ‘boyfriend,’ you don’t have anyone else important around you. Except for that child, who shouldn’t have been anywhere near a military camp in the first place.”

You took another sip of the lukewarm water. “And how many boyfriends do you actually have? The ideal heights in your descriptions of your ‘intimate interactions’ ranged anywhere from 2.3 meters to 1.6 meters… Are you dating a Shapeshifter Cluster?”

Your words were a surgical strike to her ego, but the Banshee’s long legs were not to be trifled with. In a sudden fit of embarrassed, flustered rage, she kicked off the console with one foot, sending your entire swivel chair spinning wildly for a dozen rapid revolutions.

Satisfied to see her already lethargic, gloomy superior completely slumped and dizzy in the chair, she finally spoke up, her cheeks burning red.

“Fine…! The ‘boyfriend’ is just a fake excuse I use to deal with the elders pressuring me into marriage! I’m a rare heterosexual among Banshees, okay?! But it was real before!”

Just as she took a deep breath, preparing to launch into a defensive tirade, another deadpan, biting remark floated up from the spinning chair like a lingering ghost.

“What? Did you accidentally scare him away with your brute strength when you broke up?”

The Banshee inhaled sharply, her fists trembling as she repeatedly told herself that she couldn’t murder the Commander, or all of Kazdel would be doomed. “Weren’t you dizzy from the spinning?!”

“My brain is dizzy,” you replied dryly, “but my mouth works just fine.”

“If you say one more word, I’m not telling you anything else!”

Silence descended on the room. For a long while, there was only the hum of the servers. Just as the Banshee finally managed to swallow her anger and adjust her mood to continue her story…

“Oh, then I’ll shut up,” you muttered. “You go ahead, little illiterate.”

“—I’m not continuing a damn thing!”

Before taking this guard shift today, the Banshee had always thought of herself as a very cool, experienced, and unflappable Sarkaz warrior. But right now, she seriously suspected she was just a neurotic, hair-trigger, menopausal old Banshee.

Wait a minute, she thought, her eye twitching. Should a Banshee in her forties even be considered menopausal?

[Rhodes’s Note: “Base Trade” is a common strategy game/esports term where two opposing players abandon defense to attack and capture each other’s main bases simultaneously. The Doctor, being a gamer, applies this logic to real-world geopolitics.]

[Rhodes’s Note:

Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?

(This daily grind literally pays the landship’s rent!