Chapter 235. The Immortal (3)
Enoch sat in a chair inside a two-story infirmary built from container housing, looking at the scene outside the window where dawn was just breaking.
Through the wide-open window, a breeze blew in, stirring the curtain and his hair.
Behind the battle's defensive line where Enoch sat, container-frame buildings hastily expanded for the emergency lined up in rows.
Filled with wall-to-wall glass along one side, and with stark white numbers etched on jet-black metal surfaces, the modern-designed container buildings evoked a strange impression in the viewer.
This much might give the feeling less of rear-support buildings for a warzone, and more of a well-kept city.
"……"
Gazing out at the scene, Enoch realized something.
The defensive line built by the freelancer army had been drawn far further back than at the time of the original full-scale battle.
The line had been pushed close to the towering steel wall of the Outsourcing District, which looked like an enormous fortress.
The situation was still not good.
Recounting this to himself, Enoch slowly rose from his chair and began walking toward the infirmary's door.
"Th, um! Direct Lineage, wait a moment!"
Suddenly, Enoch stopped as he felt the hem of his uniform top being tugged, and glanced back.
"Sister Lily?"
There stood the Order's nun, Lily, with her lustrous tangerine-colored hair trailing beneath her veil, looking up at him urgently.
"Th, that! You still need to rest!"
Hesitant, still awkward about touching a man, Lily nevertheless called out desperately as if trying to stop him.
"Direct Lineage! You should sleep at least a full day! You haven't slept, and from my magical diagnosis, your body is tremendously fatigued!"
"I'm fine. I'm sturdier than I look."
"N, no you're not!"
Lily ran in front of him and, with her small frame, threw her arms out wide. She blocked Enoch's path like that.
Then she glared up at him with eyes brimming with tears.
"I understand that your physical abilities are preposterously high, Direct Lineage, but at this rate you won't last! Especially with you personally joining the fight……!"
"I appreciate your concern. However, unfortunately, I have things to do right now."
"Noooo! Not in that body!"
Lily's concern was appreciated, but she seemed to have no intention of yielding. Enoch looked at her and tilted his head.
"Sister Lily. Is this also the opinion of my Follower Family, Saintess Amelia? If so, I'll consider it."
"Th……!!"
Lily flinched, but she did not yield. She placed a hand on the chest covered by her habit.
With the other hand, she clenched her staff tightly and stared straight at Enoch.
"Though I'm unskilled, this is my medical opinion as an official nun of the Order and a Healer. I may not have anywhere near the skill of Saintess Amelia, but even I can see this isn't sustainable!"
"……"
As Enoch kept looking at her without replying, she planted both hands on her hips and puffed out her cheeks, crying out loudly with a sulky face.
"If you keep being stubborn, even I, gentle as I am, am going to get angry! Please get some rest, Direct Lineage!"
Enoch quietly looked down at her standing before him like a small animal with both arms spread wide.
So his injuries were that serious.
Certainly he was a little tired, but it didn't seem like he couldn't endure.
Come to think of it, Persona had once remarked that his mental fortitude was strong.
Perhaps without being aware of it, he was also using his mental power to greatly reduce the fatigue of his body. Perhaps that, too, was a byproduct of honing his sword and approaching the Sword Saint's summit.
But regardless, it was still too early to rest.
Above all, now that he had become leader of all the Interim, there were things stacking up that he had to do.
"Sister Lily."
Enoch stepped closer to Lily and slowly looked down at her.
Perhaps nervous, Lily gulped and looked up at him with her wide eyes.
"Y, yes. Please, speak, Direct Lineage."
"I appreciate the thought, but let's promise I'll make up the rest later. It's not over yet."
"Ughh, again with the stubbornness…! I won't move!"
Lily, truly seemingly resolved, looked at him squarely with her arms still outstretched.
Enoch let out a small sigh and walked toward her with a composed expression.
"I suppose there's no help for it, then."
"Huh, huh? Why are you getting closer……!"
Without a word, Enoch firmly grasped the armpits of the nun blocking him with her arms thrown out, and hoisted her straight up.
"Eeek!! Di, Direct Lineeeage?!"
Lily panicked in surprise and, with her slender arms and legs, thrashed to free herself.
But since Enoch's arm didn't budge in the slightest, her expression turned even more flustered, not knowing what to do.
Calmly setting the red-faced, whimpering Lily down off to the side, Enoch walked out through the doorway.
Behind him, Lily cried out that at least she should come with him, but he had no wish to take her along to where he was headed next.
Offering Lily a one-sided farewell, Enoch left the infirmary and walked alone down a path where the dim dawn was beginning to break.
His destination was another container housing structure set up just a short distance from the aid station.
Announcing his visit to the staff at the entrance and, with their guidance, entering within, a large hall-like space in the middle of the hallway appeared.
The interior was wide and stark white, and from time to time people wearing metallic masks could be seen coming and going.
Looking around, black body bags — so called — were laid out in rows along walls tilted at an angle.
So this is what it looks like to die, he thought, watching the scene with a strangely cold, sunken feeling.
The building now served as a storage facility where the bodies of fallen freelancers and support staff were being gathered.
Moving further in, in order to prevent decomposition, volunteers stood beside the bodies holding mechanical-looking staffs in solemn guard.
It seemed they were, at minimum as a mark of respect, performing magical treatments on the bodies at regular intervals.
Walking along, the staff member who had guided him spoke beside him in a voice small as if in lament.
"By all rights, the bodies of the freelancers who participated in this operation should have been swiftly transported back to their families or their hometowns."
He shook his head there.
"But with the tide of the first all-out battle turning against us, the retrieval personnel all pulled out or went missing too, so now we can't even do that."
"Transport wouldn't be possible either way."
"Well, yes. The railway that the magical beasts destroyed is still being repaired, after all. It'll take some time to restore operation of the trains."
So there were people hiding, waiting for the railway to be repaired in order to escape the Outsourcing District. Though with the enemy sure to attack again before then.
Enoch silently shook his head and looked forward.
The sound of his shoes rang sharply on the black floor tiles, and the air faintly trembled with the sound of a generator from the adjoining room.
After a while, guided by the staff member, Enoch stopped in front of one body.
The staff member checked the tag with a terminal, bowed, and stepped aside. Watching him, Enoch knelt on one knee and quietly pulled down the zipper of the bag.
The light-lost eyes and half-parted mouth revealed there — Enoch regarded them without expression.
The freelancer, codename Damastes.
His eyes, now devoid of light, met his.
"……"
By anyone's measure, Damastes' final stand had been magnificent.
He had lost one arm and both legs, and on his black mechanical twin-bladed axe — which he had never released even in death — bright red blood, unmistakably his own, was splattered.
But strangely, there was almost no bleeding from his body.
How he had fought to the very end — Enoch could easily guess.
Most likely, when the experimental magical beasts' erosive fluid had been injected into his limbs, with quick judgment he had cut off his own arm or legs himself. By sealing the cross-sections with freezing magic, he had prevented the erosive fluid from penetrating into his bloodstream.
And having fought to the very last — with the magical beasts forgoing even infection and simply rushing in to overwhelm him, that was how he had met his end.
"I'm sorry."
From the testimonies of other freelancers who had fought alongside him, Enoch had learned the circumstances in which Damastes had met his end.
Leading his own Interim through the freelancers and pushing the enemies back with momentum, Damastes had, in an instant, become isolated in the very middle of the enemy. — And even as the other Interim members were all being cut down in that brutal environment, he had continued to rush against the overwhelming enemy tide, charging toward the enemy commander Anarchilon. Such testimony, too, had come from other freelancers.
When the communication function came back, the last message he transmitted to the other freelancers, as his dying words, had been one line: [Don't help].
The words Damastes had thrown at April when he had clashed with her before floated up in Enoch's mind.
[Are you giving me a sermon about how selfishness is wrong?]
[Fine. We'll see. When the time comes to stop the magical beasts' attack.]
[Let's see if that grand hypocrisy of yours — even with the Direct Lineage at your side — can outmatch and outlive selfish bastards like us on the battlefield.]
Enoch silently looked around at the black body bags lined up nearby.
It was just as he had said.
At the very least, he — and the other Interim leaders whose freelancer bodies rested here — had held to their convictions to the end.
In the previous incident, with unknown creatures appearing in the Outsourcing District, they had refused to help the children without pay.
And similarly, when he was isolated in enemy ranks, he had not asked for help through the comms, and alone, he had kept making the best possible choices in his own way, fighting and dying.
Looking at them, who had fallen in battle, Enoch slowly raised his head.
Surrounded by the chill of the dead, he understood it clearly. Their way might have been their best — but in the end, it was not the right answer.
"……"
The black bags, now unable even to speak, seemed to line up around him and ask Enoch,
See. Our result has been this, Direct Lineage.
Then what of you?
You, who, at this moment, must become the leader of all the other freelancers. What method, then, will you choose?
***
The heavy responsibility of becoming leader had fallen upon him out of nowhere, but surprisingly, he didn't feel any particularly strong emotion about it.
Enoch's worries were already full just thinking about the most important issue — the erosion of his Inner World.
Still, it wasn't as if he could simply ignore this situation.
Setting his worries aside, he returned to his lodgings at the hotel first, and found on the living-room dining table a plate with his name tag placed on it, as well as a freshly pressed new shirt folded neatly on the side table. It seemed Lien had prepared them.
Enoch sat down at a desk beside the sofa in the corner of the living room, folded his arms, and covered his mouth with one hand.
His head was quite muddled, but he ought to think about what came next right now…
"Ah! What, when did you get back?"
Just then, a familiar, light and bright girl's voice came from beside him.
Turning his head, April was staring intently at him. The hotel's bright lighting cast a clear illumination on April's slightly surprised expression.
Not expecting anyone to be there, Enoch stared at her in spite of himself. His eyes were drawn to April's very different appearance from usual.
Without her ball cap, her bright pink short hair swayed freely, and on top of that, she was in an alluring thin camisole-like outfit — with even one of its shoulder straps slid down to the side.
Beautiful, he thought, honestly.
"Haaah. I didn't know you were coming straight here, Direct Lineage. If you were coming, you could have said so~."
Having briefly been caught off guard, he came back to himself at the voice right before him. At some point, April had strolled over with lazy eyes, a small tear welling at the corners as she yawned.
Within arm's reach, with her pale skin fully exposed and the soft swell of her chest below the camisole advancing on him defenselessly, Enoch had to briefly consider where to look.
The contrast between this and her earlier, serious request in the middle of the freelancers, asking him to become their leader, struck him with a strange feeling.
"Really, you've worked hard, Direct Lineage. But, aren't you tired? Ah! If you can't sleep, how about I stay by your side and watch over you until you do?"
At April eyeing him with mischief clearly kicking in, Enoch shook his head.
"I'm fine."
April said, "Hmm, is that so~? It would've been a golden chance to hear a lullaby from a beautiful girl like me." Then she pulled a cold bottle of water from the fridge, drank some, and exhaled with a deep "Phew."
"Ah! By the way, the Dragoon was saying earlier that you really worked hard on the mission, Direct Lineage? Oh right, speaking of Lady Alicia — she said she was going to take a quick look around alone."
"Going off on her own? Hope she doesn't get lost again like last time."
"Ahaha, tell me about it."
She closed the refrigerator door and walked over to the sofa by the desk where Enoch was sitting, glancing toward him.
"By the way, you didn't particularly have to go to a place like that. Wouldn't it be better to rest a little more with that time?"
"Do you know where I went?"
"Ah. This hotel's view is better than I thought? So I got a good look at where you went, Direct Lineage."
She stood right beside him, hands clasped behind her back, and gazed at him, then tilted her head with some puzzlement.
"But, right now, Direct Lineage, when you should be getting plenty of rest — why'd you go to the morgue? The atmosphere there is grim, isn't it? Didn't you not want to go?"
"I just wanted to confirm something. If leader-class freelancers on the level of Damastes had all been taken out at once, I thought I might find the reason in the bodies."
"Did you get what you were after?"
"No. Not really."
Just then, Enoch recalled something and glanced at April, who had come right up beside the desk.
"Come to think of it, I thought I saw your name on the visitor list at the building's lobby. You — why did you go there, then?"
"Hmph. What's it to you."
With her arms crossed, April turned her face to the side. Her fallen bangs partially obscured her cat-like eyes.
"…Honestly, just. I wanted to at least say goodbye to everyone who fought here and got no attention at all."
Come to think of it, inside the morgue, despite those being war casualties, no sounds of weeping or sobbing for them had been heard.
So in the end, were the freelancers of the Outsourcing District people whom no one grieved for, even when they died?
So perhaps April going to see those she hadn't been on particularly good terms with was also…
Just then, in front of Enoch — lost in thought — April, embarrassed, lowered her lashes and shrugged.
"Aah~. Honestly, times like this put me in a down mood, I hate it. I want some sweets. Guess I'll go see if I can grab some chocolate off the other freelancers~?"
She padded over softly and simply dropped down beside him. Then, stretching languidly, she lay out long on her side. Her pale thighs, as a result, showed clearly.
Enoch briefly looked over at April, lying comfortably on the sofa in her light attire.
Then, her gazing at him from the sofa where she lay on her side, April propped up her chin with one arm resting on the other and, with one fingertip, poked Enoch's cheek.
"Hey. Direct Lineage."
As Enoch watched her in silence, April spoke with a somewhat vacant expression.
"How about we just run away?"