By Zephyria The scattered, acrid smoke swirled around again, stinging his eyes. Nevertheless, Leonardo stared at Hugo without blinking.
This person was… well, strange.
‘Does he even know what it means to wait?’
He had a knack for leaving people speechless.
His waiting and his were bound to have different urgency and weight, just like his belief and his.
He felt like it was a deception, but at the same time, he foolishly wanted to believe him, either because this person’s eyes and voice gave him so much trust that he couldn’t help but believe his words, or because he was really a fool.
Or maybe both.
He thought it was amazing that he could say such things to him, but at the same time, he had a defensive thought that he would not fully understand his position as much as he had hoped.
Leonardo closed his stinging eyes tightly and then opened them. His head was throbbing. Originally, when complex thoughts and emotions rushed in at once and reached their limit, his mind would become hazy, and that was exactly how he felt now. Besides, he hadn’t been able to sleep properly lately, so it seemed to be even worse.
As a result, the inside of his mouth was sore, and his throat was swollen, making it uncomfortable to swallow. Leonardo swallowed his saliva and slightly parted his lips to bring that discomfort out of his mouth.
“You are―.”
Thump―!
At that moment, a huge sound that shook the area around where the two were standing echoed.
* * *
About 15 minutes before the explosion, somewhere on the border between the eastern and southern areas of the Eldermilli Peninsula.
A part of the 9th Battalion belonging to the Southern Branch of the Council continued to wander over the huge ruins. For several days, heavy rain had fallen continuously, washing away the accumulated volcanic ash, and thanks to this, the appearance of the hidden ruins had been revealed a lot.
The muddy, wet ground was a swamp where soil, volcanic ash, and grass roots were intertwined, causing feet to sink deep. The members of the 9th Battalion of the Southern Branch patrolled the inside of the ruins, marking them while walking through such land, looking for hidden demon beasts or people.
Usually, the buildings in the ruins had many straight paths and structures, but these hidden ruins had many curved shapes.
They were all simple shapes made of roughly stacked flat stones, but they were quite elaborate for curved buildings built by people in the past, at least hundreds of years ago.
Of course, the height was not very high, and most of them were not intact because they were heavily covered with huge tree roots and grass as if swallowing the surface.
Nevertheless, buildings were generally built in places where the stairs were built high so that they would not fall into the swamp, and judging from the entrances that served as windows and doors, it was clear that civilization had developed.
The house site, which bore the traces of a long time and was devoid of people, created a quiet eeriness, like abandoned land.
While walking along that strange and desolate path, the squad leader, who suddenly discovered a weathered statue, stopped and stared at it as if possessed. It seemed like he had seen several statues of similar shape in the places he had passed by earlier.
The statue, which was in the form of a woman, looked somehow lonely, and when he faced the carved empty eyes, he felt as if he was being sucked in.
A damp and humid wind blew, and only the sound of leaves rustling lingered in his ears. At that time, he heard someone calling him from afar.
“Squad leader, take a look at this!”
The squad leader, who had been staring at the statue, immediately turned his eyes and approached the place where the squad member was calling.
There, pillars seemed to have been erected between buildings like huge piles of stones to create an entrance, and there were four more members, including the squad member who had called him. And they were looking at something, illuminating the inside with light balls. The squad leader approached and asked.
“What’s going on?”
“Isn’t this… a demon beast’s nest?”
The squad leader, who immediately looked inside, saw a large, blue-tinged white egg surrounded by sticky mucus. Some of the eggs had broken shells, and the contents inside seemed to have already disappeared. He, who had approached as if it was a hassle, changed his expression seriously when he saw the situation and said.
“This is… tsk―, it seems too open to be called a demon beast’s nest. Besides, isn’t the egg just sitting there too plainly?”
“It’s a bit strange to us too.”
From the broken egg they were looking at, fine steam was flowing out as if something had just broken out.
“It seems like it hasn’t been long since it hatched, right?”
“That seems to be the case.”
“If this place is a nest, the adults would have been guarding it right before it hatched, and it would have been in a very difficult-to-find place…. It seems like it was moved before the egg hatched, rather than a nest.”
“Do they move eggs outside the nest? Isn’t the nest the safest place?”
“I don’t know the reason well…. Anyway, it’s not an environment where a nest would be.”
While they were carefully examining the scene they were seeing for the first time, another member compared the shape of the egg in front of him with the characteristics of the eggs noted in his notebook.
“Among the currently known demon beasts, there is no creature that lays eggs of this shape.”
Then, the member who was talking to the squad leader added.
“Ah, I heard that avian and reptile species were additionally discovered among the deformed species that were broadcast a few days ago. Although no eggs or chicks were found at the time, seeing that deformed species are being continuously discovered, the adult of this egg may also be an unknown species.”
“Then there’s a high possibility that it’s an egg of a deformed species. But what are we going to do by guessing? Let’s contact the exploration team first. Who has the radio?”
“It’s the squad leader.”
“…Tsk―, I’ll do it.”
“Yes, I understand.”
The squad leader, who had been looking inside, scratched the back of his head, annoyed, but came out to contact the exploration team. And he called the exploration team that would be nearby using the radio, but the exploration team did not respond, perhaps because the distance was a bit far and the communication was not working.
“Annoying…. It’s not working again.”
He continued to wait for a response from the radio, put his hands in his pockets, and slowly looked around. Then, he suddenly realized that one of the other members was missing, except for the three members who were inside with him. He tilted his head, holding the radio without much thought, and asked the members behind him.
“Hey, where did Dylan go?”
“Yes?”
The members inside also checked the personnel inside the pillar and realized that one of their colleagues was missing. They hurriedly came out and looked around. Then, they said with puzzled expressions.
“He was… here with us until just now.”
“I’m saying, where did he go now.”
The squad leader sensed that something was wrong, put down the radio, and asked coldly. The two members quickly jumped onto the structure and searched for the missing colleague, but his figure was nowhere to be seen, as if he had evaporated.
The squad leader felt a humid wind blowing once more in the strange atmosphere. When he felt a slight smell of blood mixed in the wind, he slightly grabbed the sword in the scabbard and said.
“Everyone, gather around me.”
At that, the members, feeling that the squad leader’s aura was unusual, all approached him, put their backs together, and grabbed their respective scabbards. The squad leader frowned and lamented, watching the quiet surroundings.
“Ha, I should have known from when I thought it hadn’t been long since it hatched.”
One of the members asked in a trembling voice.
“Is there… something nearby?”
It was then. Just as the member asked, a growling sound began to be heard from somewhere. As the members tensed up and drew their swords, the sound that had been heard from only one place gradually spread to several places and surrounded them in an instant, slowly tightening the noose.
The wide-eyed members held their breath and pressed their backs even closer together.
While they were focusing on their sight and hearing and being vigilant, something suddenly rushed at them at a rapid speed from above the pile of stones where the unidentified egg was.
Kyaaaaaak―!
“Above!”
When the member who saw him tried to jump forward and confront him, the squad leader grabbed his arm, pulled him hard, and rolled to the side together to create distance.
And he immediately swung his sword to send out sword energy, and its body was split in half, and green mucus burst out, soaking the stone floor. The floor where the mucus was scattered emitted a faint smoke and slowly melted away.
“Dermokas!”
At the same time as the squad leader’s shout, Dermokas, who didn’t know where they had come from, popped out one by one from the bushes and wandered around. As if they had been hiding and waiting, there were quite a few of them.
The squad leader, seeing the overwhelming number, sent out sword energy once more towards the front, but the Dermokas avoided it at a rapid speed, and only the nearby structures were destroyed. The statue they had been looking at earlier also had its head blown off.
However, the power of the sword energy that had half-destroyed the stone structure was quite threatening, so the Dermokas surrounded them but did not rush in rashly, keeping a certain distance.
However, since there were more of them, the members, including the squad leader, could only stand still and confront them.
In the meantime, the Dermokas suddenly roared threateningly at the squad members and began to twitch and tremble, with wrinkles on the lumps on their backs.
The members, who were watching the sudden behavior of the Dermokas with tension, suddenly felt a huge sound and a strong vibration that shook the surroundings.
“What, what is it?”
A heavy impact that shook the ground was transmitted through their legs. Their vigilance, which had been momentarily flustered, was slightly disturbed. In the meantime, the lump on the back of the twitching Dermokas repeated contraction and relaxation, pumping as if a heart was beating. One member moved his lips as if he suspected something.
“Squad leader, is that perhaps… that?”
At that, the squad leader, who swallowed his saliva, replied.
“…It’s calling its kin.”
In the meantime, the squad leader’s mind was very confused with tangled thoughts.
‘Is that a Dermokas egg? Wait a minute, aren’t they mammals that give birth to their young?’
‘No, no. No one has ever seen their proper nest. It hasn’t been discovered yet. Giving birth to their young was just a guess, it wasn’t certain.’
Their hides looked quite wrinkled and rough, and their eyes seemed to have degenerated because they relied on ultrasound, and instead, their temporomandibular joints were abnormally developed.
The closest one made a threatening sound and opened its mouth, and saliva mixed with blood dripped from its bright red mouth. The stimulating and bizarre shape was enough to evoke disgust and fear just by looking at it.
“Lucas.”
“Yes.”
“Did they say those guys are highly intelligent?”
“Yes, that’s right. I heard that they can read fear… so you shouldn’t show it.”
Kyaaaaaak―!
The squad leader smiled bitterly at the mind-numbing sounds of the Dermokas threatening them from all directions.
“If you’re not afraid of something that looks like that, are you even human? Ha… damn it, this is a big problem. And the radio’s not working.”
“What do we do now? There are too many… do we retreat?”
The squad leader, who was holding the sword handle and pondering at the member’s words, opened his mouth as if he had made a decision.
“If you go out a little further from here, our squad members will be there. Go and call for support. The rest of us will recapture Dylan.”
“Yes? Aren’t you coming with us?”
Their colleague, Dylan, was already being dragged around with his head bitten by the Dermokas’ sharp teeth. The possibility of him being alive was 0, not to mention that his body was limp and had holes as if he had been hacked to pieces. However, the squad leader nodded even after seeing that and said.
“We have to take even his corpse.”
The member named Lucas stared at the squad leader’s determined profile and nodded accordingly. Then, he immediately prepared to jump upwards.
The members gathered around Lucas as if to protect him and backed away, and the Dermokas crowded in more and more as if to tighten their breath. Finally, the squad leader’s low voice brushed past.
“Be sure to call for support. Go quickly.”