Chapter 57 : Dispatch Reporting

(The narrator in the beginning is Yuri.)

“Saya..!”

I shook Saya, who had grabbed me and lost consciousness, to wake her up, but she, who had already become as cold as ice, had no intention of waking up.

‘Did she come all the way here with me…?’

At first glance, it looked like a place quite far from the headquarters. She probably took care of me, who had fallen, and settled in this cave, breaking through the blizzard.

‘Her body temperature has dropped to a dangerous level.’

To deal with the wind blowing in from the entrance of the cave first, I blocked the entrance of the cave by erecting an ice wall with a freezing spell. Only then could I barely escape the wind that seemed to pierce my flesh.

While moving Saya to the warmer inside of the cave, a few handfuls of leaves fell out of her pocket. I picked up one of them and checked it by smelling it.

‘…This idiot.’

It was an unknown herb, but it was definitely the one she had me chew as soon as I woke up. It was clear that she had saved the herb that temporarily makes you forget the cold so that she could share it with me when I woke up.

‘Her breathing is shallow.’

I put my finger to her lips, but only a faint breath was felt.

If I didn’t raise her body temperature quickly, I might lose Saya. I took off my coat and wrapped it around Saya’s body, crushed the leaves with my hands, and put them in her mouth.

I repeated that action until Saya’s body regained its warmth, and I was exhausted, so I sat next to her, held her close, and closed my eyes.

When the blizzard stops, I have to move from here, but in case someone might pass by, I built an artificial-looking ice structure outside the cave.

“…Let’s get out of here alive, Saya.”

It wouldn’t be heard by her, but I whispered it in a small voice and closed my eyes.

“This is…?”

Cled and his party, who had come down to the bottom of the cliff where the two had fallen and searched, were able to find the artificial ice structure she had made.

Because of the blizzard, it was impossible to check the footprints, but fortunately, the valley was formed in a straight line between the cliffs, so it was not difficult to infer where the two had gone.

The artificial ice structure was clearly made through freezing magic.

“Instructor, there’s something like a space behind.”

“Stand back for a moment.”

When Luna said, tapping the thin ice wall, Cled began to smash the ice wall with his greatsword.

“….”

What was revealed behind the wall were two people sleeping in each other’s arms inside the cave.

“Saya, Yuri…!”

Cled let out a sigh of relief when he saw the two people alive and well, and decided to use Carne’s Osteon to move them safely.

When they returned to the Krio Spirit Master Headquarters, Camilla had already been captured, so her subordinates obediently laid down their weapons and expressed their intention to surrender.

“I can imagine how you usually treated your subordinates, Camilla.”

“…..”

She and her close associates, who were the main players, were loaded onto a carriage and transported to Semal for trial, and the Krio Spirit Master Headquarters was effectively closed indefinitely.

When I woke up, it was inside a familiar carriage. Yuri and the other teammates were fast asleep, probably because they were tired, and when I made a sound, Cled’s voice was heard from the front compartment.

“Get some more sleep. It’s still a long way to Semal.”

Bewildered, I asked him several things.

“What about Camilla? What happened to the headquarters?”

“The headquarters was closed, and that woman was sent to Semal first. I should have known when she fed aphrodisiacs to her subordinates to send them into battle…. Tsk.”

In any case, she was Cled’s first and last lover, so his heart was also not very comfortable.

“Get some sleep now. When we get back, you and Yuri will be punished for acting alone, and I’ll give you hellish training.”

“..Yes.”

The short but intense dispatch to Krio ended like this. Camilla and her subordinates will receive the punishment they deserve. A punishment that would be fortunate if it ended with the death penalty.

As Cled said, Yuri and I received hellish training for a week. Cled, who was open-minded, seemed quite worried about this incident, and he had a scary expression without even joking as usual.

During a short break, Yuri and I sat down in the shade of a tree and caught our breath.

I handed the water I was drinking to Yuri and said to her.

“Still, training is better than being cold, right?”

“..Is that even a question.”

After our dispatch to Krio, we had to suffer for days because of a cold.

I woke up in the morning and was about to drink water, but blood flowed from my nose.

‘Am I tired?’

Since it was clothes that I was going to wash anyway, I roughly wiped the blood with my sleeve.

Drip.

Invidia, who was sleeping at the head of the bed, shed purple blood from the hole in his nose.

[…This is strange. Bleeding.]

When blood flowed from my nose, the same symptoms appeared in him.

‘Invidia, you too…?’

Invidia, who licked away the purple blood on the floor, said, stretching.

[It seems that we are becoming more and more biologically close. At this rate, we might even become one body.]

To become one with a Sarkas, it was terrible just to imagine.

[I’m not very happy either, Saya. The hope of regaining my body is gradually disappearing.]

‘…You’re calling me Saya now?’

[..Is something wrong?]

Invidia, who had always called me human, not by my name, had called me by my name for the first time.

‘No. It’s nothing.’

Maybe I and Invidia are gradually getting used to each other.

As a result of steadily collecting the genes of Sarkas with Invidia, I was already able to reproduce three types of power.

I had been using the leg ability of the rabbit Sarkas well so far, and the newly acquired abilities were the sense of smell of the wolf Sarkas and the claw ability of the bear Sarkas.

Invidia could easily find hidden Sarkas with his developed sense of smell, and the lethality of the bear Sarkas’s claws was truly outstanding. It was a little funny that only the front paws were excessively large.

[Saya, this time I will target the boar Sarkas.]

‘Boar Sarkas? Is there any ability worth acquiring?’

It was certainly a scary opponent to meet in the wild, but the characteristics of the boar Sarkas were things that could be sufficiently replaced by the abilities of the Sarkas that I had obtained so far.

[We have a useful ability. Look at that, Saya.]

‘We?’

At the place he pointed, a boar Sarkas was standing there, just in time. He was starving, and he was forgetting to be wary of his surroundings and was busy eating unknown mushrooms.

‘It’s just eating normally.’

[Yes. But the mushroom it’s eating is not normal. It is a mushroom with enough poison to kill other species within 5 minutes.]

‘You mean it’s a poisonous mushroom…?’

The boar Sarkas was eating such a deadly poisonous mushroom without any hesitation.

[Their stomachs are different from ours. They have a special form to decompose and consume all kinds of poison. If we can get that digestive ability, we can overcome things like being poisoned last time.]

Now that our bodies are becoming more and more closely connected, if he gains detoxification abilities, there is a high probability that it will be passed on to me as well.

‘It’s quite useful, Invidia.’

[70% of your current power is operated through me, so the expression that I am useful is wrong. Rather, it would be correct to say that you are useless.]

‘…’

It was a bit of an annoying way of speaking, but I couldn’t think of anything to refute, so I just kept quiet.

This guy is getting smarter and smarter these days.

To speed up the hunt, I actively utilized Invidia’s black arrows. Unlike before, when only Invidia’s will could control the trajectory, now I could control it to some extent with my will.

Invidia said it was ‘evidence that I was becoming a Sarkas’, but I’m still human. I believe that becoming a Sarkas will never happen.

[You’re worried again, Saya.]

‘…I wasn’t.’

Actually, I couldn’t say I wasn’t worried. The more I borrowed power from him, the more I felt a sharper sense of sensation that I had never had before.

If I’m really becoming Sarkas-ified, and if it happens someday….

‘..Julius.’

I remembered the appearance of Julius, who had changed into a terrible form before. The image of him, like a distorted lump of flesh, with no trace of being human left, was vividly drawn in front of my eyes.

I remember that Chris Barnaba once told me that the darker the hair color, the higher the assimilation rate with Sarkas, saying that the same blood as me was flowing.

Perhaps the reason I didn’t turn out like Julius was because my assimilation rate was high.

[Useless worries will only shorten your lifespan. At this point, it’s all speculation, isn’t it? There will be no one else in the world besides us who has combined a Sarkas and a human.]

As he said, unnecessary worries only shortened my lifespan. I reloaded the black arrow and immersed myself in the battle.

Cled, holding a pile of documents, knocked on the door of the commander’s office.

“Commander Violet, the report of the Krio dispatch…”

“Ugh….!!!”

Instead of an answer, the sound of a desk being struck and a tearing scream came from inside the room, and Cled almost dropped the pile of documents he was holding.

“What’s wrong…! I can help…”

“Don’t open it!”

Violet, who insists on using honorifics to his subordinates if possible, shouted in an angry voice.

“..There. Leave it there and go. I’m in a.. bit of a bad state.”

Embarrassed, Cled quietly put the documents down in front of the door and answered him.

“..I understand, Commander.”

As the commander said, he quietly turned around and walked down the hallway without facing him.

‘..Violet-nim, he’s been like that ever since the Invidia battle.’

After waking up from being hospitalized for injuries sustained in the battle with Invidia of Envy, Violet had been locked in his room and refusing to show his face.

Even when I was ordered to dispatch to Krio, I was only able to receive the order through the door.

‘Could there be a problem with his body….’

Cled thought about that for a moment, then shook his head and shook off the thought.

No matter what anyone says, he is Cled’s own idol and the hero of the Armonia Empire, Violet.

There was no way he was a person who would lose his combat power due to such an injury.

‘…’

But, the angry voice of the commander, which he heard from beyond the door, was giving him a strange sense of incongruity.