Chapter 8 — Being Seen Doing This Is Super Gross!
In an inner garden of Himeln’s royal castle, the queen, Elisabelle, was receiving a soldier’s report on Gerhardt’s death.
“You say he has died, but are you sure?” After a short period of stunned silence, she collected herself.
“No,” the soldier replied. “The only confirmation we have is that Sir Gerhardt’s signal has disappeared.”
“In that case, there is no evidence he is dead, is there?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. That is very true, but in general, we assume losing someone’s signal to be a sign of their death...”
“But this is Gerhardt we’re talking about.” Gerhardt was one of Himeln’s L units and a man adored by the gods. There was no way he could lose to anyone, and even if he did, he would easily come back to life if he died. Elisabelle couldn’t believe he was actually dead.
“Precisely. That is why I have come here to ask how we should proceed.”
“What precisely do you mean by his ‘signal’?”
“That is referring to the location information provided by the Protocol of all our active units. Gerhardt’s information has suddenly disappeared. In all cases prior, this has been due to the death of the unit.” The Protocol was the system that governed warfare on the continent of Belm. Everything that occurred there was done through the Protocol. Using it, one could determine the location of any unit within an area under one’s control.
“But losing someone’s signal does not guarantee they are dead, does it?” If a unit left one’s area of control, their signal would be lost. Generally, one had to abide by the rules of the Protocol to move between areas, but someone like Gerhardt might have been able to ignore those rules. After all, those mysterious gods had appeared at his side from all over. It would be stranger if he wasn’t able to circumvent the system somehow. “But discussing this with you will provide us with nothing. I will head to the command room. Sorry, Luu, but it looks like we’ll have to part ways here.”
“Oh, okay.” Luu’s blank expression made it clear she had no idea what was going on.
Elisabelle floated up into the air. Her class was Queen, which gave her the ability to give birth to allies with random abilities, but the ability to fly in addition to that was a matter of course. Soaring up into the sky, she headed to the control room on the highest floor of the castle.
“Your Majesty!” The soldiers in the room immediately knelt as she stepped in through the window.
“What is the situation in the area in question?”
“Please look at this.” A hexagon was drawn on the wall. It must have been a map of the area Gerhardt had gone to. Blue and red dots were scattered about the map, blue representing allies, and red, enemies. Both colors were concentrated in the northeastern portion of the map, which was strange. As a territory under Himeln’s control, the entire area should have been filled with blue dots. “Originally, we had 500 cost worth of units in the area, Princess Nina and her subordinates. After her defeat and Marino’s return, our cost dropped by 205. Gerhardt and Marino then returned, increasing the cost by 600, followed by a loss of 813.”
There was a limit to how many people could enter each area. Each faction had a cost limit of one thousand per area. Costs were determined by the size of the unit. L Units were five hundred, M units were one hundred, and S units were one. The original force was two M units and three hundred S units. Now, only eighty-two S units remained.
“Who exactly killed Nina anyway?”
When Elisabelle had first heard about Nina’s death, she had written it off as unfortunate but unsurprising. Now that Gerhardt had also been caught up in it, she was very curious about what had started it all.
“Actually...there has been no movement from the enemy factions. The enemy soldiers present are all S units, so it is impossible to think they could defeat Lady Nina, let alone Sir Gerhardt.”
“In other words, there is someone outside the control of the Protocol?”
“Yes. There is no way to hide the presence of someone under the Protocol’s influence.”
Considering the gods that occasionally visited Gerhardt, the possibility of a powerful being from outside the continent coming here could not be ruled out. There was no way they could use the Protocol’s interface to determine the location of such a being.
“Where did Gerhardt’s signal disappear?”
“There is a settlement of infected in the southwest of the area. He was last seen at the boundary to the south of that.”
“Send all S units to investigate. Connect to their vision so I can see.” It was impossible to learn the details from here, so there was no choice but to send other units to investigate in person. They could link the visual and auditory senses of their units to the control room as well, allowing Elisabelle to see what was happening. Doing so cost points, so it wasn’t something they could do as often as they wished, but now wasn’t the time to be stingy.
“You wish to send all forces defending the area?”
“Yes. Dealing with this mysterious new foe is our priority now, don’t you think?” Elisabelle still didn’t believe Gerhardt had actually died, but the situation was still a problem. They needed to know what had happened and if it was still happening now.
A new image appeared on the wall beside the map. It was broadcasting the vision of the squad leader closest to the area of concern. It was obvious at a glance that something was wrong. Infected plant life was packed densely in the area, having grown extremely long. The moment a plant or animal was infected by the Seyla, it stopped all growth. Its form at the time of infection should have been preserved. Looking closer, they could see that the plants hadn’t actually grown, but instead other plants were growing on top of the others.
The wall of grass was taller than the squad leader, so his squad was forced to cut their way through. The soldiers wore armor that covered them from head to toe, so there was little threat of them getting infected themselves, but they were still fearful of the grass and moved quite slowly.
After passing through the thick flora, they came upon an empty field. Aside from a gentle roll in the landscape, there was nothing there, not even the Seyla-infected plant life. It looked like all the infected grass had been forced out of this area to the edges.
The squad made its way through the reddish-brown earth. It did not take long for them to reach the location where Gerhardt’s signal had disappeared. Gerhardt’s body lay there. They could now confirm his signal had not disappeared due to him having moved beyond their range. Beside his body were a boy and a girl. They were crouched at his side, searching his body. Noticing the presence of the soldiers, the girl turned to look at them. There was fear in her eyes.
“Being seen doing this is super gross!” she cried out, her hand still stuck in one of Gerhardt’s pockets. Elisabelle was perplexed. Though she still couldn’t be sure Gerhardt was dead, it was clear that something was wrong.
“Your Majesty, there is no signal from the enemy unit. In addition, there is no indication they are infected by the Seyla.” For some reason, animals infected by the Seyla had purple eyes, so they could be recognized at a glance. Then again, hiding one’s eye color wasn’t especially difficult, so it wasn’t a foolproof method of identifying them.
“Perhaps some food that made its way to the continent somehow managed to slip out and survive on its own?” By sheer coincidence, ordinary people occasionally made it to Belm from the outside world. Movement off the continent was severely restricted, but there weren’t any real limits on people coming in. Of course, no ordinary human could survive in Belm, so their presence was hardly an issue, but in this situation it was far too suspicious. It was hard to believe they were unrelated to Gerhardt’s case.
“Looters, I suppose? No matter. Kill them.”
At Elisabelle’s command, the squad of ten soldiers drew their weapons and charged. Once they had killed them, they could retrieve the bodies and search them for information, and even bring them back to life if necessary. Of course, it was possible they were the ones responsible for Gerhardt’s defeat and would just kill the soldiers, but the loss of ten or so S units was hardly a loss. If the sacrifice could help them learn anything about their opponent’s abilities, it was worth it.
But in the end, they didn’t learn anything. The charging soldiers collapsed without warning, and the image on the wall snapped off. As far as they could tell, it didn’t seem like anything had happened. The boy and girl had still been searching Gerhardt’s body.
“Did you see what happened?”
“Their signals are gone, so they have died. But it looks to me like they just collapsed for no reason...” one of the soldiers responded, echoing Elisabelle’s own thoughts.
“What about the other squads?”
“They are approaching the location now. I’ll switch to their vision.”
The image on the wall appeared again. Once again, they could see the two teenagers and Gerhardt’s body, but this time the remains of the previous squad were lying there too. With ten S units dead, the remaining seventy-two surrounded the strangers.
“Order the soldier we are viewing through to do nothing, then send the others to attack.”
“All seventy-one? I cannot imagine that will go well.”
“Sending them one at a time will take too long. If they all attack at once, ignoring the possibility of friendly fire, they’ll be more likely to succeed.” Elisabelle was the absolute authority in Himeln. If she gave an instruction, her followers had no choice but to obey.
The S units attacked again. This time Elisabelle and the others in the control room looked closely to see what was going to happen. The attacking soldiers ran forward, and then just as before, all fell to the ground. Every attacking unit stopped moving, their signals disappearing from the area map. The only one left was the single soldier giving them a view of the situation.
“What is happening there? I still didn’t see anything.”
“Umm...I am starting to think we should avoid getting involved with them...” one of the soldiers in the control room said hesitantly.
“But we can hardly leave such a bizarre situation unchecked, can we?” Perhaps they didn’t need to resolve it immediately, but they couldn’t ignore it either. This was an unknown that could someday impact all of Himeln. “Okay, then. Luckily, we have dropped our cost in the area close to zero, so this time let’s send nine M units.”
The cost limit for an area was one thousand, so the most M units they could send at once was nine. If they killed the last remaining S unit, they could send ten, but then they would lose their ability to observe.
“Would it not make more sense to send an L unit right away?”
“That would require us to recall an L unit from the front lines.” Only ten L units could be deployed at once, so they couldn’t afford to thoughtlessly move them around.
“Understood. Sending nine M units from the capital to the designated area.”
Sending forces in piece by piece like this wasn’t the greatest strategy, but it was impossible to avoid with the cost limits on the individual areas. As they appeared in the center of the area, the nine M units moved, reaching the location almost immediately. For an M unit, near instantaneous movement was a given.
“Now, how will it go this time?”
As M units, it was possible they would die just as quickly, but the loss of nine M units was still within the realm of acceptable loss.
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