Chapter 75
Divorce (1)
“Have you heard about Lieutenant General Max?”
“What about him?”
Inside the barracks of the sentries stationed at the most remote edge of the district, a soldier who had just returned from leave began telling the others what he had heard in Central.
“Lieutenant General Max admitted that he really did order Second Lieutenant Bones’s murder. Central is in complete chaos right now.”
“So it really was Lieutenant General Max who ordered it?”
“I don’t believe it. Lieutenant General Max isn’t that kind of man.”
“Yeah, I don’t really believe it either, but since he confessed personally, I guess they can’t ignore it.”
“True. If the man himself says he did it, there’s not much anyone else can say...”
“To be honest, I suspected Second Lieutenant Bones.”
“Me too.”
The incident in which Colonel Samson’s Team Two had been killed during the subjugation campaign was widely known even among the ordinary soldiers.
Naturally, Colonel Samson’s testimony that Lieutenant General Max had commissioned Second Lieutenant Bones’s murder had also spread throughout the district.
However, so many soldiers admired Lieutenant General Max’s character that almost no one believed the testimony.
Some argued that it was suspicious for Second Lieutenant Bones to survive when a colonel had seriously tried to kill him.
Others countered that even if Second Lieutenant Bones had started a rebellion, there was no way a newly commissioned officer could have killed a colonel and all the veteran officers under him.
No one had expected the matter to end with Lieutenant General Max’s sudden confession.
“But according to the rumors, there was another true culprit.”
“Another culprit?”
“Well... Captain Josef died recently, remember?”
“We all stood in formation at his funeral. To think he would die so tragically during training...”
“That wasn’t just an accident.”
“If it wasn’t an accident, then what was it?”
“Divine punishment.”
“Divine punishment?!”
When the man’s voice grew louder, the returning soldier jumped and placed one finger to his lips, gesturing for him to lower his voice.
“Keep it down! You know the colonel will lose his shit if he finds out we’re gathered here talking about this!”
“R-Right... But what do you mean by divine punishment? Did he get struck by lightning or something?”
“Exactly.”
“What?”
“I mean it literally. Divine punishment. He was struck by lightning during training and died on the spot.”
The soldier drew the edge of his hand across his throat.
The others stared at him with expressions that said they could not believe such a thing was possible.
“But why call that divine punishment? Wasn’t he just unlucky?”
“And what does that have to do with there being another culprit?”
“People are saying Captain Josef was actually the one who ordered Colonel Samson to do it, and that he was punished by Heaven for it.”
“What? Isn’t that stretching things a little too far?”
“The source of the rumor is the officers. More than a few soldiers overheard officers discussing it among themselves.”
“Huh...”
If the officers themselves were saying it, then it was difficult to dismiss the rumor as complete nonsense.
Emotionally, Captain Josef also seemed more likely to be the culprit than Lieutenant General Max.
They had already been denying inwardly that Lieutenant General Max could have done such a thing.
It would be far easier to accept if Captain Josef had been the culprit and had received divine punishment as a result.
When the soldiers fell silent, lost in thought, the recently returned soldier apparently still had plenty more to tell.
He opened his mouth again and asked mysteriously,
“But do you know about that?”
“What else is there?”
“Stop asking whether we know and just spit it out, asshole.”
“Do you know the real reason Lord Haydam is called the Miracle of the Crevasse?”
“Of course. He fell into a crevasse and survived, didn’t he?”
“I find it even harder to believe that he killed four large-class monsters by himself with four shots.”
In reality, Haydam had only killed two.
However, an officer who had participated in the subjugation campaign had supposedly said:
Of the five large-class monsters killed during the campaign, one was taken down by a boy soldier, two were killed by Lord Haydam, and the remaining two fell over after being crushed by the monster Lord Haydam killed, which allowed us to finish them off easily. We’re alive thanks to Lord Haydam.
Among the soldiers, that account had somehow become distorted into the claim that Lord Haydam had personally killed four of them.
“You could say surviving the crevasse was luck, but killing monsters takes actual skill.”
“Wait, I also heard that Lord Haydam killed four large-class monsters, but this is the first time I’ve heard he did it with four bullets.”
“Exactly. That would mean he killed every one of them with a single shot. Isn’t that obviously exaggerated?”
“It’s probably true.”
“You think it’s true?”
“I asked if you knew why Lord Haydam is called the Miracle of the Crevasse. He isn’t called a ‘miracle’ simply because he returned alive.”
“Then why...?”
As the curious soldiers leaned closer, the returning soldier deliberately lowered his voice into an eerie whisper.
“The reason Lord Haydam is called the Miracle of the Crevasse is because an unimaginably huge monster was found dead beside him when he was rescued. A colossal monster that had never before been discovered in the district.”
“Oh, that...”
At the mention of a huge monster, one of the sentries listening to the story pretended to recognize it.
“You mean that hairy giant they brought into the district last time?”
“Exactly.”
“Wow. The subjugation campaign was already over, so I wondered where they had found something like that.”
“I heard that monster threatened His Excellency, so Lord Haydam jumped down into the crevasse to lure it away.”
The soldiers listening all reacted with shock.
“What? He didn’t fall in by accident? He deliberately jumped in to save His Excellency?”
“Wait, but you said the monster was found dead. Are you saying Lord Haydam killed it while trapped inside the crevasse?”
“That’s right.”
“No way.”
“That’s insane...”
“But do you know how the monster died?”
What they had already heard was astonishing enough, yet the story clearly was not finished.
The soldiers asked with tense expressions,
“H-How did it die?”
“Its head had been pierced by a gigantic icicle.”
“Wow, so the icicle fell and saved him?”
“I heard Lord Haydam didn’t suffer a single injury even after falling into the crevasse. He really is unbelievably lucky.”
All the soldiers seemed to assume there was no possibility that Haydam had killed the giant monster himself.
The storyteller shook his head.
“This is the part that’ll really give you chills. That icicle didn’t fall naturally.”
“Then what happened?”
“Apparently, it was shot down with a gun.”
“A gun?”
“You’re not about to say Lord Haydam fired the shot, are you?”
“What else would Lord Haydam shoot it for?”
“To drop the icicle on the monster’s head, obviously.”
“Wait. So Lord Haydam shot the icicle to kill the monster, it fell exactly where he intended, and it pierced the monster’s head?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
The barracks instantly fell silent.
It was simply too absurd.
They could believe that he had fallen into the crevasse and returned alive, since that had actually happened.
But it was difficult to believe that a ten-year-old child had maintained such cold judgment against a monster hundreds of times larger than himself, put that plan into action, and successfully killed it.
“Come on, does that really make sense? Isn’t the Commander’s residence just trying to glorify Lord Haydam?”
“I heard His Excellency actually didn’t want Lord Haydam to participate in the subjugation campaign.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was dangerous.”
“What? We go out there every year! Is only his own child worth protecting?”
“Well, that is how normal people think. Usually, dangerous tasks like that are left to orphans like us.”
The mood in the barracks became solemn, entirely unlike before.
“So... Lord Haydam still participated in the campaign?”
“From what I heard, he desperately wanted to go. You know Lord Haydam was the one who changed this campaign into a small elite operation, right?”
“Yeah, of course. Our colonel complained endlessly because he couldn’t participate.”
“The colonel was upset because he couldn’t earn any achievements, but honestly, we were relieved. Ordinary soldiers like us are usually placed in the front line during a campaign and end up dead or crippled.”
Not a single soldier present disagreed.
This was the outermost part of the district.
It was a dangerous place that could be attacked by monsters at any moment.
Orphans who had enlisted merely to survive, and who lacked the backing of any officer, were pushed aside by sponsored soldiers until they ultimately ended up stationed here.
They were also the soldiers most frequently selected for subjugation campaigns and the ones who suffered the most deaths.
“But I heard fewer than thirty people were injured in this campaign. Most of those injured weren’t ordinary soldiers like us but officers, and excluding the soldiers Colonel Samson killed, only six people died. Have you ever seen so many soldiers return alive?”
“Never...”
“Then why did Lord Haydam suddenly switch the campaign to a small elite force?”
“That’s another remarkable thing about Lord Haydam.”
The returning soldier had apparently gathered a great deal of information while visiting Central.
He spoke with obvious pride.
“I heard that after Lord Haydam disappeared as a child, he spent all those years living in the slums.”
“Disappeared?!”
“He wasn’t raised in the Commander’s residence?”
“Is that why he suddenly appeared? We never heard that His Excellency had a child.”
“I thought he had been raised in secret all this time.”
“Maybe that’s why he values our lives more than the people in Central do.”
“Come to think of it, hasn’t Lord Haydam also been holding a charity party every month?”
“Right, he has.”
“Wait. Then did Lord Haydam return during the officers’ meeting where Lieutenant General Bartom died? That was when people first started talking about him.”
“I heard about that while I was in Central too. Lieutenant General Bartom really did deserve to die.”
“Didn’t they say Major General Meursault shot him because of his attitude?”
“Apparently, he insulted Lord Haydam’s biological mother right in front of him.”
“What?!”
“That’s insane...”
The soldiers instinctively cursed at the mention of someone insulting another person’s mother.
Then they noticed something strange and asked,
“Wait... Biological mother?”
“Are you saying Lord Haydam isn’t Lady Daphne’s child?”
“Apparently not. It seems His Excellency already had a fiancée before he married Lady Daphne.”
“Then why did he marry Lady Daphne...?”
“I heard his fiancée suddenly disappeared from the district, so he had no choice but to marry Lady Daphne. Now that Lord Haydam has returned, people say they might divorce soon.”
“Holy shit. His Excellency divorcing Lady Daphne...”
While listening intently to the fascinating story, one soldier suddenly noticed something odd.
“Who did you hear all of this from?”
“Second Lieutenant Lucas.”
“Who’s that? A newly commissioned officer?”
“He was on Lord Haydam’s team during the recent subjugation campaign. Second Lieutenant Lucas seems to admire Lord Haydam tremendously. When he talked about him, I almost thought he was in love.”
“Lord Haydam is only around ten years old, and Lucas already admires him that much?”
“You’ve heard this entire story, and you’re still focusing on his age?”
“He is a child.”
“That only makes him more impressive. Besides, Second Lieutenant Lucas personally witnessed Lord Haydam’s achievements during the campaign.”
“Hearing all this makes me want to see him in person. I wonder whether there really is something different about him compared to ordinary people.”
Inside a barracks at the edge of the district, the soldiers’ fantasies about Haydam continued to grow.
Meanwhile, Haydam—who truly was somewhat different from ordinary people—was forcing his father to get divorced.