Chapter 159: Southward (Part 2)

Chapter 159: Side Story: Southward (Part 2)

The command room was a freezing metal tomb. Finally, perhaps because the suffocating silence had weighed on her heart for too long, the Great Banshee was possessed by some strange impulse and broke the quiet.

“That boyfriend of mine is down in the South,” she murmured, her voice uncharacteristically soft. “He’s thin and frail, just like you. His home is in a city of steel and concrete, where the winter snow doesn’t freeze the children’s hands, and colorful flowers bloom by the river in spring…”

Sitting slumped in the tactical chair, you felt the biting chill seep into your bones. You instinctively huddled closer to her, your voice weak as you ruthlessly debunked her fantasy. “With all due respect, that’s not the South. The South is supposed to be a place where it never snows, regardless of the season… Has this Kazdel hellhole given you frostbite of the brain?”

The Great Banshee looked like she wanted to punch something. “—I say it’s the South, so it’s the South! Everything south of Kazdel is the South. You’ve already dragged us all the way to the Ursus tundra, so where do you get off having such picky geographical requirements?”

“I haven’t even complained about the fact that your logistics department doesn’t issue electric blankets… Fine. The South it is. Continue.”

“He grew up in the South,” she continued, falling into a deep, wistful reminiscence. “He’s been well-loved since he was a child. He’s smart, but not that terrifying, bottomless kind of smart that you have. He’s gentle and incredibly attentive. His family keeps two feathered pets that hold absolute supreme status in the household. If he pokes them too hard, his temperamental little sister will give him the cold shoulder for half the day. The whole family lives together, bustling and lively like a den of Cautus, completely untouched by war, displacement, or death…”

“That’s called a romance scam,” you mumbled, your speech becoming increasingly slurred. “A classic catfishing setup targeting gullible Banshees.”

The command room’s central heater had been dismantled during the Great Evacuation; you had allocated it to the Sarkaz Academy that Theresa had built with her own hands. Now, the only warmth in this steel box came from the exhaust fans of the server towers. As the steady stream of allied units vanished into the howling wind and snow outside, the tactical screens extinguished one by one, plunging the room into a deeper, encroaching cold. The Great Banshee sat on the armrest of your chair, her body radiating a steady 40°C heat like a Molting Beast. In the freezing dark, her presence became overwhelmingly noticeable.

She suddenly turned her head. One hand gripped yours, while the other pressed flat against your forehead. One side was icy and clammy, the other burning with a terrifying heat. The starkly contrasting sensations made her frown deeply. “Why is your forehead so hot? Do you have a fever?”

The Banshee had absolutely no experience dealing with common illnesses. In her world, this kind of physiological chaos was merely a precursor to the total collapse of a dying kin’s physical defenses.

“Relax, it’s normal…” you breathed out, your eyelids heavy. “My CPU is just thermal throttling. Keep going with your catfishing story.”

This land had long belonged to the previous civilization, its surface almost completely saturated by Originium dust. If one had to identify what pathogens still remained that were actually effective against baseline humans, only ancient prions would make the list. You had once collected air samples in the deepest sewers of Kazdel; even those slums, which were teeming with lethal infections to the people of Terra, were—aside from the stench—as clean as a sterile operating room to your immune system.

Right now, your condition was purely a hardware compatibility issue: a Nokia-tier body trying to run a Black Myth-tier processing engine. The heat dissipation simply couldn’t keep up. You looked incredibly fragile, but in reality, you were like a broke college student on deadline—tenacious, stubborn, and damn hard to kill.

But the Great Banshee didn’t understand that. She cursed under her breath, yet her subsequent actions were those of a total softie, entirely ill-suited for her ruthless Sarkaz identity. Without a second of hesitation, she unfastened her heavy cloak and draped it over your shivering shoulders. The thick fabric carried the faint scent of wild berries and a few stray black downy feathers, reminding you of a falcon that had accidentally crashed into a concrete city.

Actually, given her INT stat, it should have been a wild crow. But her sheer lack of processing power really brought shame to the crow community.

The Banshee continued to ramble, her voice a low hum against the server noise. “He told me so many things about the South. From the sunset clouds to the little stationery shops lining the streets. You don’t have to report anyone’s KIA status there. Do you like the phrase ‘death is like a lamp going out’? I especially like it. No need to become a Nachzehrer, no need to become a hateful, rotting old relic thousands of years later. When this war is over, I’m going to the South. I want to die in the warm, moist soil, with even my bones buried deep inside. I’ll eat lots and lots of seeds before I die, and in the following spring, I’ll bloom into a riot of colorful…”

You didn’t remember the rest. The final tactical screen flickered out, signaling that the most dangerous phase of the border crossing was officially over. With the immediate threat gone, your exhausted brain finally felt safe enough to initiate an emergency shutdown, plunging you into a deep, supplementary nap—

“That’s a fcking coma!” a Sarkaz expletive shattered the memory.

“Whoa, you should’ve checked my HP bar earlier!”

Despite the constant bickering, the relationship between the two of you had softened somewhat during the retreat. She ignored your cold-blooded pragmatism, and you tolerated her brash insolence. Knowing that once you successfully breached Ursus territory you wouldn’t have to see each other every single day, the two of you actually managed to get along quite pleasantly.

As the final link of the rearguard, the mobile headquarters faced a tactical nightmare no different from a forced breakthrough, given that most of the Ursus mobile cities had already mobilized their garrisons. The new central base hadn’t been established yet, and the temporary communication relays were agonizingly unstable. Most of the time, you had to stand directly on the blood-soaked battlefield yourself to issue commands, surviving in the razor-thin margins between rampaging Originium monstrosities and hostile casters.

“Can you please check your fire discipline and not spam your Banshee’s Wail while your own Commander is standing in the splash zone?!” You covered your ears, feeling the warm trickle of blood sliding down your neck. The absolute first thing you did every day after stepping off the frontline was scold her. How did you not know before that there were Royal Court Banshees who fought like they had completely unplugged their keyboards?

From a distance, her AOE effects were visually gorgeous and the theoretical DPS seemed ideal. Up close? There was zero Arts penetration, no true damage multipliers, friendly fire was permanently enabled, and it was only effective for farming low-level mobs. At your young age, you had intuitively learned the true meaning of ‘stat-padding’.

“If I had known you were this squishy, I would have brought Teacher Theresis along…” you grumbled, wiping the blood from your earlobe.

You and Theresis maintained a mutually beneficial relationship where you addressed each other as ‘teacher’. You taught him modern military strategy and technological integration, while he taught you Sarkaz history, Terran common sense, and moonlighted as your personal counselor. His sword strikes had absurd range and dealt massive true damage; he instantly cleared whatever lane he pointed his blade at. The man had serious meta value.

And to emphasize, he was a proper counselor. Not one of those HR psychology reps who immediately crosses her legs and shows off her thighs the moment you say you’re ‘not feeling the vibe today’!

“I can’t do that, unless you want to see my legs,” the Great Banshee shot back. Having just stepped off the active battlefield, she showed absolutely zero remorse, her mouth spouting typical Sarkaz barbarian rhetoric.

“Don’t you have a boyfriend?”

“He ran off with his sister-in-law and the money.” Without a shred of reverence for her commanding officer, the Great Banshee shoved her hand into your tactical coat pocket, rummaged around aggressively, and failed to find a cigarette. She withdrew her hand with a loud, disappointed click of her tongue. “Why don’t you carry smokes? Don’t you have any basic social needs?”

“I don’t smoke. And besides, who on this godforsaken battlefield would I need to offer a cigarette to?”

You finally found a brief moment of respite on the edge of the scorched earth, feeling slightly more energized now that the adrenaline was settling. “First, tell me the logistics of how your boyfriend ran off with both the money and his sister-in-law. To outrun a Banshee, what race was he?”

The Great Banshee sneered, expertly dodging the question. “You fcker! Is this twisted, cynical sense of humor the only difference between you and those Columbian automated tin-cans?”

You searched the charred ground nearby, plucking half a wild fern that had miraculously survived the crossfire. You leaned in, lit the tip of the plant against the Great Banshee’s still-smoldering, Arts-infused fingertip, and tactfully shoved the makeshift cigarette directly into her mouth. “Not necessarily. I have significantly higher processing power than they do.”

The Great Banshee, operating purely on muscle memory, instinctively tried to take a deep drag. She was instantly caught off guard by the overwhelmingly bitter, foul taste of the unknown, burning plant juice. She dropped to the dirt, gagging and retching violently, before scrambling up to furiously kick you in the shins. “Are you sick in the head?! When I get to the South, I’m going to buy a dartboard, stick your stupid face on it, and practice my throwing accuracy every single day!”

You laughed loudly, the sound carrying over the desolate wind. You pulled back your heavy hood, letting your stark white hair shine brilliantly in the reflection of the breaking sunlight. “Remember to capture my good side.”

The Great Banshee was stunned for a fraction of a second, staring at the sudden brightness, before indignantly delivering two more kicks to your boots.

In the end, you never did get to hear the rest of her gossip, which you found genuinely regrettable.

When you finally reunited with the main vanguard force ahead, the atmosphere shifted. The time for parting had come. She waved her hand nonchalantly, her tone masking whatever she was actually feeling. “Get lost, you warmonger! The Banshees have an old saying: ‘The fire-bringer will eventually burn themselves.’ If you die out there, I’ll personally sing a dirge over your ashes!”

“Isn’t that phrase supposed to be used when a traditional Banshee confesses her eternal love? Don’t you guys consider it a highly sacred vow?” For a moment, you genuinely suspected Theresis had been feeding you fake lore just to mess with you. “I’m not accepting confessions, especially not from a bird-brain!”

The Great Banshee flushed with fury, looking even more like an agitated, brainless bird. “Where the hell did you read such unofficial garbage lore? Fall for you? Does my skull look like it has a hole in it?”

She crossed her arms, looking away toward the horizon. “When this war is over, I’m going to the South to experience a kind, gentle young boy,” she declared earnestly. “Sexual repression is a terminal disease. Although it’s highly unlikely anyone in all of Kazdel would ever willingly fall for you… at least you can use your Commander authority to coerce someone into it, right?”

You let out a quiet breath, finally relieved that she was safe. “That’s good. Don’t worry about my HP bar, I won’t die.”

“I’m going to fight my way back to the capital and make those traitors pay in blood. Maybe one day, when the dust settles, we’ll meet again in the South?”

The Great Banshee shook her head rapidly like a rattle drum. “Forget it, absolutely not. Let’s not. What kind of cursed, godforsaken place would be unlucky enough to run into a warmonger like you? Tell me your coordinates in advance so I can actively avoid the entire region.”

You exchanged a few more dry, sarcastic remarks, the familiar banter serving as your final farewell. You turned and walked into the cold, sharp shadows cast by the mobile command room, while she stepped forward into the brightest, warmest sunlight of the new plantation zone. You both tacitly ignored the mutual disdain from moments ago, offering a final blessing like two strangers passing in the night.

“See you in the South, Doctor.”

“See you in the South, Great Banshee.”

So, what about the second half of the story?

You sat up with a violent start, gasping for air as you snapped out of your deathbed-like trance in the quiet, sterile Rhodes Island lounge.

Holy crap. The realization hit you like a physical blow. The gentle boy in the South… the protagonist of this entire galgame was me all along!

You took a frantic moment to compose your breathing, your heart hammering against your ribs. You immediately rushed down the pristine corridors toward the central archives, your fingers flying across the PRTS terminal interface, desperate to unmask the Great Banshee who had suddenly forced her way into your locked memories.

The screen flickered, pulling up the restricted files.

[Deceased Operators List – Entry 236]

[Andoshanli and her squad (1093.2): Unexpectedly ambushed while out on a routine patrol. Cause of death was having her heart pierced from behind by the Silverlance Pegasi Expeditionary Force. Resisted to the death until the very last moment, ensuring the survival of her subordinates.]

[In October of the same year, the first Kazimierz Annihilation Campaign ended. Full compensation has been issued. According to her final will, she was buried at the temporary Kazdel site in the Ursus tundra.]

Your story ended just like that.

There was no grand finale. No dramatic reunion in a city of steel and concrete. Just a beginning that never got the chance to find its end.

“I see…” you whispered to the empty, glowing screen.

Suddenly, standing in the perfectly climate-controlled archives of Rhodes Island, you felt an overwhelming, hollow sense of loss.

[Rhodes’s Note:

Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?

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