Invasion [To the Outpost] Section 12
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The screen was covered again and again by thick, clotted blood.
The boundary between heaven and earth, between the world and the screen, had vanished.
In everyone’s eyes, nothing remained but the captain locked in desperate combat.
With nothing but flesh and bone, he drew every monster away by himself.
Alone, he fought within a swarm of monsters that blotted out the sky and earth.
When his bullets were spent, he drew his saber. When the saber broke, all that remained was his battered body.
He was a captain in every sense of the word.
Don’t die.
Hold on, Captain!
Break through, Captain!
Those were the cries of the viewers before the screen.
At that moment, no one called him a murderer anymore. No one wanted to see him fall. Even though everyone knew he would ultimately make it out alive.
A gigantic whale appeared beside him.
At first, it was the size of a calf; then it grew as large as a house, and soon it towered like a mountain, shaking heaven and earth.
The great black-and-white fish floated through the air, its eyes burning with violet phosphorescence. Its powerful tail fin swept whole swarms of monsters away.
The whale song rang out, as beautiful as singing. Amid that savage battle, it seemed like a summons from a distant homeland, cleaving through the thick veil of despair.
Man and whale, their bodies covered in wounds, tore open a gap in the monsters’ encirclement.
They broke through.
The image darkened, then lit up once more.
The horrifying battle was over.
Ni Ji walked along a street beneath a sky filled with drifting spores. Several times, he raised a hand to wipe away the blood obscuring his vision.
He walked quickly. The sound of his breathing was clear, carrying a trace of unease.
At that moment, when he saw what lay ahead—
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The sound of breathing in the screen suddenly ceased.
An awful silence descended over heaven and earth.
Everything there was gray. Nothing there belonged to the living anymore.
An older sister held her younger sister tightly in her arms.
A huge, withered finger had pierced both young bodies at once.
Someone had severed the monster’s enormous finger, leaving the two lives frozen in that final embrace.
Countless cottony spores drifted slowly down from the sky, soft as flower petals as they settled upon the dead.
The long-haired girl’s braid had come undone. Her hair spilled down, gently covering the one she had sheltered in her arms.
They looked as though the sisters had simply fallen asleep while embracing one another.
Ni Ji’s gaze fixed upon the two entwined corpses, but his footsteps did not falter.
He passed them and withdrew his eyes.
Then he broke into a run.
The air around him churned. Spores were whipped into the sky by the turbulent currents, swirling everywhere like the chaotic ashes of a funeral.
The shadows of ruins and plants raced backward through his field of vision.
Ni Ji ran wildly through the night.
More and more bodies of soldiers appeared along the way.
They lay tangled among the remains of monsters.
How could this have happened?
Everyone beyond the screen asked the same question in the depths of their hearts. Their captain had clearly risked his life to draw the monsters away.
They had clearly been almost at the safe exit.
Why had so many monsters still come after them?
Why had so many people died? Why had so much blood been spilled?
Some lay on their backs amid the drifting gray fluff, their hollow eyes open, staring ceaselessly at the sky.
Some were mangled beyond recognition, their condition too terrible even for seasoned warriors to look upon.
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Yet on the screen outside, in the video of those memories displayed before everyone—
Every dead face had been seen clearly by Ni Ji as he ran past.
All color had vanished from his world.
The earth stretched before him in a vast expanse of gray and black.
Only the bodies of those who had died so horribly remained vivid and intense, stark against his vision.
They were carved into his memory.
He stopped before a sentry who was still alive.
Though there was no hope of saving the soldier.
He was the youngest sentry in the unit, hardly more than a boy. Shy by nature, he had wanted to marry a girl from the pleasure quarter.
“Cap… Captain.” The young sentry saw him.
Ni Ji had run all that way, yet he stopped for him.
“Is there anything you want me to see to?” he asked, standing there and speaking in an exceptionally calm voice.
It was as if he were still the same captain he had always been: composed, steady, powerful, capable of resolving any crisis.
“I… I have a letter beneath my pillow in the barracks. Take it, take it…”
“Deliver it to that girl for you?” Ni Ji asked.
“No, not that.” The boy tried to raise his arm, but he no longer had a hand. “Burn the letter. Don’t let her see it. Don’t let her grieve for me.”
Ni Ji looked at him. After a moment, he clenched his teeth and said one word.
“All right.”
The boy began to cry. “The money… all the money I’ve saved, give it to her. Tell her to live well. To live a different kind of life.”
“All right.”
“Captain, Captain. I still want to be your soldier. I still want to be your soldier…”
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