By Zephyria The smell of blood swirled through the hot, humid air, forcing him to face the horrific scene before him.
Hugo, after confirming the face of the deceased one last time, covered it with a white cloth and rose from his spot. As he stood, the two members holding the handles of the stretcher in front and behind also took heavy steps.
Hugo watched the member returning to his homeland until the end, paying his respects to the last path he was taking.
As the Supreme Commander raised his arm, all the members around saluted the fallen soldier. They, too, followed the white cloth covering the body with their eyes, burying in their hearts the comrade who had bravely fought for the empire and met his end.
“I’m sorry. If only I had come a little sooner…”
The commander of the 9th Battalion of the Southern Branch bit his lip and bowed his head. His combat uniform was soaked with the blood of numerous demon beasts and torn in places, indirectly showing how fierce and terrible the battle at the forefront had been. Hugo, seeing the traces of such a grueling battle, spoke to the 9th Battalion Commander.
“It’s not your fault.”
At the Supreme Commander’s voice, as heavy and subdued as his own, the 9th Battalion Commander briefly raised his head. However, the eyes looking at Hugo were stained with endless guilt, unable to accept comfort.
The situation was roughly under control, but the atmosphere among the members who had lost their comrades was bleak. The pursuit team that had gone after the squad leader was still missing, and the members of the Southern Branch were mentally and physically exhausted due to the sudden bad news and the long hours of duty.
Hugo, while observing the members one by one, listened without missing a single report recited by the company commander of the 9th Battalion, who was substituting for his tired superior. In the midst of this, he turned his head and asked the company commander again when he heard a particularly troubling story.
“They were running away with an egg?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
The company commander reported to Hugo about the situation where they had been chasing a group of fleeing Dermokas. Hearing the company commander’s words, he shifted his gaze to the broken eggshells that the investigators were examining.
The eggshells, when first discovered, were said to have been lying alone inside the ruins, along with an unhatched egg. At first, they speculated that the Dermokas had brought the eggs of another creature to eat.
Since Dermokas were mammals that didn’t lay eggs, it couldn’t be their egg, and traces of them constantly storing food had been found throughout the peninsula, so they thought it was likely that the egg had been placed inside the ruins to be eaten.
“What do you think is the reason they took the egg while running away?”
Hugo asked the company commander next to him, without taking his eyes off the eggshells. After a moment of contemplation, the company commander carefully opened his mouth.
“Wouldn’t it be natural to think that it’s… because it’s their egg?”
It certainly made sense.
If they were planning to eat it, there would be no need to take it while running away in a disadvantageous situation. And that thought soon led to the conclusion that the egg they had taken was quite important, enough to take even in the face of death.
The Dermokas had no specified areas of appearance or habitat, so no nest had yet been found.
Furthermore, the fact that they were mammals was just a classification based on analyzing the characteristics of the demon beasts and comparing them to animals. There was no clear evidence that Dermokas were mammals that gave birth to offspring. So, if we assume that the unhatched egg was their egg and they were trying to protect it, it made some sense.
Hearing the answer, Hugo paused for a moment, then nodded lightly and asked.
“I see. Then what happened to the egg they took?”
“Battalion Commander Hastings is leading a part of the pursuit team to retrieve it and is coming this way. Ah, it seems they have arrived.”
As the company commander shifted his gaze behind Hugo and spoke, the thunderous sound of ‘Loyalty’ from the Southern Branch members soon followed.
Hugo, also turning around, saw some of the 9th Battalion members returning to the scene and the battalion commander leading them. They also noticed Hugo and quickly walked towards him.
Soon, the highest-ranking battalion commander stood before Hugo and saluted him.
“Loyalty, Charlotte Hastings, Battalion Commander of the 9th Battalion of the Council Southern Branch. Reporting to the Supreme Commander.”
“Loyalty, you’ve worked hard.”
Hugo responded with a light salute as well. Afterwards, his gaze immediately turned to the blueish-white egg held in the battalion commander’s arms.
“Is that it? The egg they took.”
“Yes, it is.”
As soon as the battalion commander answered, Hugo reached out his hand to her without further ado. She quickly handed the egg she was holding to Hugo.
The egg was large enough to fill Hugo’s large hand.
The hard surface, the considerable weight, and the unpleasant warmth made him realize that something was alive inside.
* * *
The newbie involuntarily closed his eyes the moment Leonardo threw the egg to the ground.
Soon, he heard a dull thud and felt something heavy touch his foot. He opened his eyes again and looked down. To his surprise, the egg, which he thought would be shattered, had rolled to his feet without a scratch.
Seeing this, Leonardo frowned, approached the member, and gently pushed his shoulder, saying.
“Get out of the way.”
The member flinched and stepped back. Leonardo kicked the egg into a groove in the floor and fixed its position with his foot. Then, he held a flaming sword in his hand, raised it high, and struck it down directly at the center of the egg.
Sizzle―!
As the tip of the sword touched the surface of the egg, the shell melted, and an unpleasant smell, like burning protein, rose from the point of contact.
Smoke billowed from the friction surface, filling the surroundings, but Leonardo didn’t care and pressed the sword down further.
Then, the sword, which had only slightly pierced the edge, gradually dug deeper into the shell, and a strange sound, as if a demon beast was screaming from inside the egg, was heard. The newbie and the man, who were watching him, grimaced and covered their ears at the sharp, nerve-wracking sound.
Leonardo only frowned slightly but didn’t stop his actions. The hard surface of the egg melted and sizzled, and cracks gradually appeared around the part where the sword was stuck.
With a fierce look in his eyes, he lifted the egg with the sword stuck in it and slammed it down on the floor at once. Then, the tip of the sword completely pierced the egg, and the bizarre sound from inside stopped abruptly.
Soon, an eerie silence fell. Leonardo stared at the egg for a while, as if waiting for something to react inside, but when there was no reaction, he extinguished the flaming sword stuck in the egg. Then, he stirred up the wind to dispel the thick smoke around him.
He kicked the eggshell with his foot, and it crumbled easily, as if the shell had softened due to the high temperature. Between the broken shells was something white and unidentifiable, surrounded by a sticky, viscous substance.
It seemed to have been alive until just now.
Leonardo knelt down and picked up the corpse without hesitation with his gloved hand. He looked at it intently, then turned his head and asked the newbie.
“Hey, did you say the Dermokas kept chasing you?”
The newbie, who was looking at the pale corpse with a disgusted expression, answered with a queasy look.
“Yes? Yes, they only chased me, so the seniors told me to stay away. I ended up here while being chased.”
“And that guy was with you then?”
Leonardo pointed at the man, and the newbie glanced at him before answering.
“Yes, I was the first to find him and was trying to arrest him. So he’s been with me all along.”
Dermokas were not creatures that dragged out fights or chases for long. They were clever creatures that would give up without hesitation if they had no chance of winning or if time was delayed while hunting prey.
But the newbie said that the Dermokas had been ‘persistently’ chasing him. And at that moment, the outsider had been with him all along, and the man’s bag contained an unknown egg.
If these two humans didn’t have a strange constitution that attracted demon beasts, then the most reasonable guess at this point was that the Dermokas were chasing them because of this egg.
Logically, if a creature persistently chases an egg, it’s because it’s the egg that creature laid. But looking at the small corpse in front of him now, Leonardo had to feel confused once again.
This small corpse seemed to be a demon beast, but its appearance and color were quite different from a Dermokas’s offspring. It was also difficult to identify it as any particular creature.
It looked like a reptile, and it looked like a four-legged mammal. Because its skin was smooth, it was impossible to know whether it would grow fur or scales on its surface.
He wondered if it was a malformed creature he had never seen before, but if so, he had to go back to the original question.
‘If this isn’t a Dermokas’s offspring, why were they looking for it?’
Would they bother looking for something that wasn’t their offspring?
Leonardo sighed softly and ruffled his hair with his left hand. It seemed that nothing in this peninsula made sense. It was full of questions, making his previous visit a few years ago seem meaningless.
While their attention was focused on the corpse from the egg, the man, who had been crouching, carefully lowered one of his arms.
He secretly picked up the blue mineral lying under the fallen Dermokas adult. It was the one the newbie had thrown at the Dermokas, but it had fallen to the ground and failed to detonate.
Having successfully picked up the mineral, the man slipped it into his inner pocket without the others noticing. Then, as if nothing had happened, he raised both hands again.