Chapter 29: How Dare You Bully My Daughter Because of a Prophecy!

Wis’adel let out a sharp, irritated hum.

Bracing her grenade launcher with one hand, the ancestral weapon strapped to her back whirred to life.

With a deafening, singular blast, she blew the rugged, impassable crevice wide open, reducing the stone to a perfectly circular, slag-dripping hole.

“What are you idiots just standing there for?

Move!” she barked, turning her head to scowl at the stunned Rhodes Island combat squad behind her.

“Do you want me to carry you too?”

The temporary squad leader hesitated.

He glanced at the Doctor, who was currently—and obediently—clinging to the back of this notoriously dangerous Sarkaz mercenary.

Swallowing hard, the leader signaled for the operators to follow her lead.

It hadn’t even been half a day since Mon3tr departed.

While the vanguard group was trudging through the bitter snow, struggling to track the elusive Yeti Squadron, the Doctor had accidentally scraped his hand against a jagged rock.

It was a minor scratch, barely enough to draw blood, but this strange Sarkaz had suddenly burst from the shadows, rushing to his side as if she physically couldn’t hold herself back a second longer.

The operators had all read the Rhodes Island files.

They knew of this notorious bomb maniac.

They expected chaos, betrayal, or at least a hostage situation.

What they didn’t expect was a bizarrely harmonious dynamic—provided one completely ignored the venom in her actual words.

“How are you not frozen to death yet?” she had sneered while bandaging him.

“You can’t even climb a simple rock face?

You’re just as useless as ever.” And then, “Only now do you know pain?

Why didn’t you just die from it?”

Cursing him the entire time, she had effortlessly bent down, hoisted the fragile Doctor onto her back, and marched to the front of the formation.

Now, she was directing the Rhodes Island squad with an authority that felt even more natural than Kal’tsit’s!

Doctor, resist a little!

the operators screamed in their minds.

How could you just let her carry you away so naturally?!

Doctor, don’t eat her potatoes!

Don’t we have our own standard-issue rations?

Doctor, stop praising her potato-cooking skills!

Now she’s ordering us around with even more smug confidence!

Wis’adel shot a sidelong glance at the trailing operators, reading their panicked expressions like an open book.

She didn’t care in the slightest.

Instead, she casually hitched the man on her back higher with one arm, ensuring he didn’t have to strain his own muscles to hold onto her neck.

“They’re all questioning me,” she remarked, her tone dripping with amusement.

“Tell me, is it better to operate with me, or with that old lynx?

Has she ever carried you like this before?”

The man riding on her back didn’t miss a beat.

He casually fished another small, roasted potato from her coat pocket, using his teeth to peel the skin back piece by piece.

“Did you pick up some Higashi culture while I was asleep?” he mumbled around a mouthful of starch.

He paused, realizing he was slipping into gamer terminology.

“Never mind.

That was a bizarre thing to say.

Continue.”

Wis’adel sneered, her boots crunching heavily along the freshly blasted path.

“You’re absolutely inexplicable.

Can’t even a potato keep your mouth shut?” She shifted her shoulders, her voice dropping into a sweet, venomous threat.

“And if you dare spit those potato peels on my head, I will slaughter your entire squad right alongside you.”

The Doctor sighed heavily, a cloud of white mist escaping his lips.

“Can’t you show me a little respect?

Do we really have to discuss such realistic, gritty problems in the middle of a dramatic plot like this?”

Wis’adel scoffed, tossing her head so sharply that a stray piece of potato peel flew right off her red horn.

“You once used Her Highness’s horns to roast potatoes!

How can I possibly trust you with anything?”

At the mention of Theresa, the Doctor snapped his mouth shut.

He knew nothing of his past, but his gamer instincts and subconscious were screaming at him not to dig any deeper.

Just thinking about the fragmented lore of the Babel era gave him a headache; he knew it was a massive, lethal can of worms.

He wasn’t even sure if the Sarkaz King was truly dead, who the ‘past him’ had manipulated, or what grand, terrifying chessboard he had set up.

What if I was the one who actually killed Theresa?

he thought, a cold sweat prickling his spine despite the freezing weather.

Fortunately, the volatile Sarkaz carrying him was already accustomed to being ignored when the ‘Ghost of Babel’ descended into these silent, calculating trances.

She maliciously jostled him once, hard enough to rattle his teeth, and left it at that.

“There.

We’re about to catch them.” Wis’adel suddenly stopped, kicking a charred, splintered tree trunk jutting out of the snow.

It bore fresh, unmistakable scorch marks—a clear sign that someone had built a campfire here within the last few days.

Deep within the howling snowfield, the towering figure of Patriot suddenly ground to a halt.

His heavy armor groaned against the wind.

“He is advancing,” the Wendigo spoke, his voice a slow, rumbling bass that vibrated through the ice.

“We have been discovered.”

The veteran Shieldguard standing beside him realized almost instantly who ‘he’ referred to.

The elite warrior’s expression twisted into a grimace beneath his heavy visor.

“Him?

Why won’t he let us go?

Shouldn’t a monster like that head straight for Victoria the moment he wakes up?”

This Shieldguard was one of the very first to follow Patriot.

He vividly remembered crossing paths with that terrifying mastermind during the blood-soaked Babel era.

It had happened in the treacherous, unpredictable frozen wastes of Sami.

The Doctor had brought along a white-haired, red-horned Sarkaz girl, and casually saved the Shieldguards when they were on the absolute brink of being corrupted by the demonic entities of the north.

“What sort of serendipity is this?” the Doctor had muttered back then.

He had been wearing a pristine trench coat and the black crown of the Lord of Fiends.

In his hands, he held a small, ornate golden cup, which he was actively trying to shove into the ancient coffin of the former Sanguinarch.

“Whatever, if I see it, it’s mine!”

Accompanying the Doctor on that bizarre expedition was a tall, gaunt Cyclops.

Standing in the snow, the giant had suddenly fallen into a trance, sharing a dire prophecy with them:

“I see cities, riddled with scars.”

“I see Originium, covering the land.”

“I see you, wearing the black crown, turning ten million lives into memories.”

“I see the Lord of Fiends, enslaving every race.”

Just as the Shieldguards and the Cyclops were nodding in solemn, apocalyptic dread, the Doctor had burst into laughter.

He laughed until he was physically doubled over, clutching his stomach.

Wiping a tear from his eye, he reached out and waved a hand in front of the giant’s face.

“Is your Cyclops eye a bit nearsighted, buddy?”

The very next moment, the Cyclops’s eyes rolled back, and he started spitting out alternate prophecies like a rapid-fire auctioneer.

Originium assimilating the land.

The Heavenly forces purifying Terra.

The Seaborn decomposing all organic matter.

The northern demons distorting the fabric of reality…

He rattled off dozens of doomsday timelines in a row.

Suddenly, the original prophecy where the Doctor merely enslaved everyone seemed as gentle and comforting as a children’s nursery rhyme.

The apocalyptic visions poured out of the Cyclops like they were on a discount sale, and every single one ended in absolute, inescapable annihilation.

Even the prophet himself was left utterly dumbfounded.

In the end, that terrifying, fruitless discussion concluded with the Cyclops rubbing his chin and delivering his own medical verdict: he hadn’t eaten enough carrots lately.

It probably wasn’t a prophecy at all, but severe night blindness, which was why he saw Terra’s future as pitch black.

For some inexplicable reason, that absurd memory had lingered in the Shieldguard’s mind for years, refusing to fade.

It couldn’t be because it was all true, could it?

The Shieldguard almost laughed out loud at his own morbid thought.

“Prepare for battle,” Patriot ordered, his imposing figure slowly rising to its full, terrifying height.

He hefted his massive halberd, his red eyes burning through the blizzard.

“Even if I cannot stop him, I still need his proof.” The Wendigo’s breath plumed like exhaust from a furnace.

“Proof that he can bring about a better tomorrow.”

[Rhodes’s Note:

Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?

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

to use the links!)