Chapter 64

The Promise (7)

We followed the remaining footprints.

Not far from where we had found the bloodstains, we came across a pile of corpses.

The white military uniforms buried beneath the snow were familiar.

“Team Two.”

We had already suspected that Team Two had turned on itself, but actually seeing the brutally slain bodies was another matter entirely.

“What the hell… Did soldiers from the same zone really shoot one another? No, Lord Haydam, wait…!”

When I rushed forward and began turning over the bodies to identify them, Plato recoiled in horror and pushed me aside.

“I’ll do it. Even for you, Lord Haydam, this is too much.”

Well, fair enough.

There was no need to show everyone a ten-year-old child rummaging through corpses.

Only after examining each body did Plato finally stand.

Despite the freezing cold, beads of sweat had formed on his forehead.

He spoke with a breath that sounded halfway between relief and a sigh.

“The leader of Team Two and the newly commissioned officers aren’t here…”

I had assumed the Team Two leader had orchestrated this to target the new officers.

Then why were all these men dead without Lucas or Bones among them?

Had some of them opposed what the team leader was trying to do?

While Plato stood there in turmoil, I took the opportunity to inspect a few of the bodies myself.

Several appeared to have been shot in the back.

Every one of them had died with their eyes wide open, as though bitterly wronged.

Ah… So the Team Two leader intended to silence everyone involved.

The Commander looked down at the corpses with an icy gaze before turning to us.

“Let us search farther. Those who are missing may have collapsed elsewhere.”

We left the bodies where they were and continued deeper into the snowfield.

Up ahead is…

The surrounding terrain looked familiar.

This was the crevasse zone where we had abandoned our pursuit earlier.

Just as I was warning Plato to be careful, a voice came from ahead.

“Save… Please save me…!”

The desperate cry for help was muffled by the blizzard.

I stopped Plato before he could rush toward it.

Sweeping the snow ahead with the barrel of my gun, I carefully advanced while avoiding the crevasses.

The voice gradually became clearer.

“Over here! Help me!”

It was coming from a crevasse about a meter wide.

We hadn’t noticed this crack when we passed through earlier.

It had likely been hidden beneath the snow until someone stepped on it and fell through.

When I peered down, I found the Team Two leader hanging inside the crevasse.

“Your Excellency!”

The moment we leaned over the edge and looked down, the team leader began crying with joy.

“Oh… God, thank you. Thank you…!”

He was the only person hanging there.

I checked below him to see whether anyone else had fallen, but all I found were a gun and combat rations scattered across a ledge jutting from the cliff farther down.

They appeared to belong to the Team Two leader.

There was no sign that anyone else had fallen.

The newly commissioned officers escaped in another direction.

I looked down at the man still clinging to the ice.

“What happened?”

“F-First, could you please pull me up…?”

I stopped the overly innocent Plato, who was already about to help him, and asked again.

“I asked what happened. What are all those bodies back there?”

A flash of dismay crossed the team leader’s face.

He clearly hadn’t expected us to come by way of the pile of corpses.

But as expected of a seasoned officer, excuses immediately began pouring from his mouth.

“It was the newly commissioned officers! Bones and Lucas started a mutiny…!”

“You’re saying two newly commissioned officers did all that?”

“Y-Yes!”

I crouched at the edge and asked mockingly,

“Then why are you hanging down there?”

“I-I fell while escaping…!”

“Exactly. Why are you still hanging there? If they had decided to kill you, they could have simply knocked you loose and left you to fall.”

“Th-They didn’t notice that I had fallen in here!”

“Really?”

“Yes! So, Lord Haydam, please…”

I ignored his desperate pleading and continued.

“If people who wanted me dead were wandering around nearby, I’d stay quiet and cling there without making a sound. But I could hear you screaming for help from a long way off.”

“Th-That was…”

“Are you going to keep lying? Let’s be honest with each other. Tell the truth, and I may hand you over for a court-martial, but I won’t drop you here.”

He still didn’t seem to understand, even after I said it nicely, so I became more forceful.

“We already met the newly commissioned officers. Why do you think Father and I came all the way here? We already know roughly what happened, so stop scheming and spit it out.”

Plato stared at me in shock.

His expression suggested he was amazed that a person could lie so smoothly without even pausing for breath.

Still, to the Team Two leader, it must have sounded plausible that the Commander—who had ordered a withdrawal—wouldn’t have come this far without a reason.

His eyes began to waver.

“Not answering? Fine. We’re leaving.”

“Wait!”

The dangling team leader panted and hesitated for a moment.

At last, as though he had reached his limit, he confessed.

“Lieutenant General Max… ordered it. I didn’t want to do such a thing to the newly commissioned officers either, but he threatened me…”

Lieutenant General Max?

Wasn’t Max Bones’s adoptive father?

He had threatened the Team Two leader into trying to kill the new officers?

I glanced at the Commander.

But he gave a short shake of his head, indicating that this was news to him as well.

I looked down again.

“You’ll need to testify properly after we pull you up.”

“O-Of course! So please…”

“Plato.”

“I’ll help.”

The Commander apparently thought Plato would struggle to pull the man up alone on the slippery snow.

He stepped forward, grabbed one of the Team Two leader’s arms, and began hauling him up.

That was when it happened.

Boom!

The ground suddenly shook.

Plato and the Commander lost their balance and released the Team Two leader.

“Aaagh!”

That alone wouldn’t have been a major problem.

The real problem was that the tremor didn’t stop.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

This wasn’t an ordinary earthquake.

It was the sound of something enormous moving and shaking the earth with every step.

A large-class monster!

I gripped my weapon and tried to rise, but a sinking sensation ran up my spine.

The vibrations caused by the monster’s movement were making the edge of the crevasse collapse.

I instinctively curled up to prepare for the fall.

Then something slammed into me from the side.

Thud!

The powerful impact sent me sprawling onto a snowbank outside the collapsing section of the crevasse.

“Damn it.”

The Commander, who had pushed me to safety, muttered a curse as the ground beneath him gave way.

“Father!”

I screamed without thinking and reached for him.

But the Commander twisted away from my hand.

He must have known that if I caught him, I would be dragged down as well.

“Shit!”

I hurriedly looked over the edge.

By extraordinary good fortune, the three men—including the Team Two leader—had not fallen into the bottomless depths.

They had landed on a glacier shelf jutting from the cliff midway down.

After shifting for a moment, all three managed to stand.

They didn’t appear to have suffered serious injuries.

“Are you all right?”

The Commander regained his balance and gave me an okay sign with his fingers.

I examined the glacier ledge they were standing on.

It was narrow, but it stretched around the cliff.

It seemed that the earlier tremor had carved away part of the glacier and created a step-like formation.

It didn’t look likely to collapse easily, allowing me to breathe a little easier.

The problem was that the crevasse, originally only about a meter wide, had been stripped away on both sides and transformed into an enormous chasm.

When it had been narrow, even if something went wrong while pulling someone up, they could at least brace themselves between the walls with their arms.

Now, one mistake would send them plunging into an abyss.

Can I pull them up by myself…?

I had rope.

My inventory was already packed with rope, guns, and all sorts of other equipment.

Until now, because people were watching, I had only used the firearms officially issued to me.

In truth, I possessed guns with far greater firepower than the one I was currently carrying.

They were weapons I had taken with me during the hunt for the fur crocodile.

After returning, I reported them lost because of the Unicorn Zone player and kept them for myself.

Now that I had confirmed my body was sturdier than I had thought, I could probably use the other guns stored in my inventory as well.

In any case, I had rope, and my body was strong.

But no matter how sturdy I was, pulling up a fully grown man alone would be impossible.

And even if I offered, the Commander and Plato would obviously refuse.

It would have been helpful if there were somewhere to anchor the rope, but this was a snowfield.

The Commander and Plato knew better than anyone that there was nothing suitable nearby.

I’ll have to find the newly commissioned officers.

If I returned with them and said we would work together to pull the others up, neither the Commander nor Plato would object.

Meanwhile, Plato and the Commander appeared to be subduing and binding the Team Two leader.

They could still make that judgment in a situation like this.

No wonder he was the Commander.

I called down to them.

“I’ll find Lucas and Bones. If all of us pull together, we should be able to get you out somehow.”

“Will you be all right alone?”

The Commander had apparently realized that the tremors had been caused by a large-class monster.

“If I move alone, there’s little chance I’ll be noticed.”

A small child like me, dressed in a white military uniform and moving through a blizzard, would be difficult to spot with the naked eye.

Besides, the stench of blood around the pile of corpses we found earlier would likely draw the monster’s attention away from me.

The fact that the footsteps we had heard were now moving farther away suggested that it had caught the scent of blood and headed toward the bodies.

“Don’t try climbing up on your own. Stay there quietly.”

I said it half-jokingly.

The Commander gave a faint laugh and gestured for me to go.

Leaving the three of them on the glacier shelf, I set out to find the newly commissioned officers.

The first place I headed was the pile of corpses we had discovered earlier.

If the large-class monster had really gone there, I reasoned that its next destination would be the wounded officers.

When I reached the spot where the bodies had been, I realized we were in serious trouble.

The corpses are gone…

The bloodstains remained, but the bodies alone had disappeared.

That confirmed that the monster responsible for the tremors had passed through here.

But the footprints it left behind were anything but ordinary.

“What the hell is this…?”

Compared to these tracks, the large-class monsters we fought that morning looked like children’s toys.

The footprints were larger than anything I had ever seen.

Even the blizzard blanketing the sky was unable to cover tracks of that size completely.

A clear trail stretched into the distance.

Since they all led in one direction, the creature was moving with a definite purpose.

Either Bones or Lucas is injured.

It must have been following the scent of blood.

I ran along the trail for some time.

Then, far ahead, I spotted an enormous shape standing within the blizzard.

It was too large to be called a monster, yet too small to be a snow-covered mountain.

At a glance, it looked like a gigantic hill moving across the snow.

Its speed was slow, but it was so enormous that every long stride carried it farther away.

I pulled a motorcycle from my inventory.

I had secretly taken one not long ago.

I hadn’t expected to use it so soon.

As I rode closer, the enormous silhouette gradually came into focus.

The moment I recognized what it was, I couldn’t hide my surprise.

Why is that thing here?