By Zephyria 
“It will happen. Just wait. I’ll rise higher than you, and then I’ll cut your arm off.”
Tae-muk spoke with a hardened expression, his voice sounding like a growl. He remembered vividly how the Lieutenant Colonel had sliced his arm with a sword during his childhood. He knew that because of that incident, he had become a goddamn soldier, and that he had been rolling around in this dog-eat-dog battlefield for nearly ten years.
“Really? I’m not a God of War, so if my arm gets cut off, it won’t grow back like yours. I’d just have to live as a cripple.”
The Lieutenant Colonel murmured, inhaling his cigarette. There wasn’t a hint of fear on his face at the prospect of losing an arm.
“…….”
Tae-muk looked down at him silently. He felt as though the Lieutenant Colonel had been much taller than him in the past, but now, Tae-muk was the taller one. Thus, even if he didn’t intend to look down on him, he had to.
“That’s perfect.”
Tae-muk’s lips curled up in a smirk of satisfaction. Despite his youthful face, his murderous intent was quite piercing, yet the Lieutenant Colonel chuckled as if there was something amusing about it. Then, his chest heaved with a series of coughs—cough, cough!—and he spat out blood.
The blood that sprayed from between his teeth soaked not only his lower lip but also his chin, yet he nonchalantly wiped it away with the back of his hand. Then, bringing the cigarette back to his lips, he spoke.
“If you want to cut my arm off, you’ll have to get promoted faster. What’s the point of doing it after I’ve kicked the bucket?”
“…….”
Tae-muk clamped his mouth shut so tightly that wrinkles formed on his chin. The Lieutenant Colonel was growing weaker by the day. He must have contracted a serious illness, but in a battlefield littered with wounded soldiers whose limbs were torn off and bellies burst open, a bit of coughing wasn’t treated as an illness; consequently, he had never once seen a medic.
Tae-muk scanned the Lieutenant Colonel’s face slowly. The Lieutenant Colonel, now well over fifty, said he had volunteered for the army as a teenager. It was because of the rumor that soldiers were given three meals a day.
Coming to a battlefield where one might be eaten just to eat.
It was madness, but it was said that back then, not long after the Devouring Ghouls first appeared, life had become so extremely difficult that many people committed such madness.
Of course, all the people who had committed that madness with him were dead. Only the Lieutenant Colonel remained. He often spoke with admiration about how strangely long his life had been.
“Want me to tell you how to get promoted quickly?”
The Lieutenant Colonel, inhaling his cigarette so hard his cheeks hollowed, spoke as he exhaled smoke.
“…….”
Tae-muk asked with a glance, What is it? In response, the Lieutenant Colonel gestured with his chin toward the nobles being slaughtered in the inner quarters.
“Save the nobles.”
“…….”
“As many as possible, as loudly as possible.”
“…….”
“Then you can reach a higher rank than you are now. One day, you might even surpass me, or even a Colonel.”
“…….”
At that, one of Tae-muk’s eyebrows twitched upward. Save the nobles? He felt no interest whatsoever. He’d rather not get promoted at all. How could he possibly save disgusting bastards like nobles?
Furthermore, Tae-muk did not have a great desire for promotion. His current life was sufficient.
A life where he didn’t have to eat fodder. A life where he wasn’t bullied for no reason. A life where he didn’t have to bow his head. A life where he didn’t have to worry that his parents would be beaten because of him. This was more than enough.
Moreover, there were those who treated him as a superior and those who followed his orders. Compared to his past, when he was born a Lowborn and treated as a beast inferior to a horse, this was almost overwhelming.
Tae-muk did not hope for a better life, nor did he think he could have one. His fate couldn’t possibly be that high. That’s just how it is for the Lowborn.
“I don’t want to.”
Thus, Tae-muk firmly rejected the proposal. But at that moment, cruelly, the screams of the nobles that had been echoing from inside the house abruptly cut off. A Devouring Ghoul was chewing through them with gusto, its back heaving as it devoured the lumps of meat.
The Lieutenant Colonel gazed at the inner quarters, where blood was pouring out, with dry eyes. He did not pity the dead nobles, nor did he feel gratified. He was, how should one put it, like a man who had aged after seeing and hearing things beyond human endurance. Looking only at his eyes, he was no different from a hundred-year-old man.
Then suddenly, a light flickered in his vacant eyes. Removing the cigarette from his mouth, he spoke in a voice slightly louder than before.
“There is another way.”
“What.”
“Save the country.”
Tae-muk frowned slightly. It was as abrupt as the suggestion to save the nobles. No, it felt even more foreign.
“The country?”
“Yes. The country. This country, the Korean Empire.”
“…….”
Tae-muk blinked slowly. Though there was nothing in his mouth, he chewed as if he were gnawing on something. After thinking for a moment, he absentmindedly stroked his shoulder, where the Taegeuk symbol was engraved, and asked back.
“What about the country?”
“We only exist because the country exists.”
“…….”
“Those great and high-and-mighty nobles are ultimately nothing without a country. So, if you think about it, the country is above the nobles.”
“…….”
“Just how important the country is…”
The Lieutenant Colonel paused to choose his words. However, he couldn’t easily continue. Thinking back, he probably didn’t know very well himself. Though he was an adult, he too was ultimately of low birth and had likely never sat leisurely at a desk to learn anything. Thus, it must not have been easy to define the existence of a ‘country’ in words, something he had only felt through his body and skin.
The Lieutenant Colonel scratched the crown of his head in thought, then suddenly frowned as if remembering something.
“You wouldn’t know, but when I was young, the Japanese… our country…”
“…Japanese?”
Tae-muk tilted his head. That expression looked exactly like a seventeen-year-old. Innocent, dull, and ignorant of the ways of the world. The Lieutenant Colonel wondered how to explain this, then simply waved his hand.
“Forget it. Japan has long since collapsed and vanished anyway…”
Then, as if the mere mention of that country’s name made him nauseous, he spat on the ground—ptui. After skipping over many things, he jumped straight to the conclusion.
“Anyway, save the country. Then you can put those noble bastards under your feet.”
Tae-muk’s eyebrow rose subtly. Putting those noble bastards under his feet… That was quite appealing. Tae-muk turned his body to stand looking in the same direction as the Lieutenant Colonel and asked.
“How do you save this ‘country’?”
“You have to kill the Devouring Ghouls. All of them.”
“…All of them?”
“Yes. Every single one.”
Tae-muk pondered his words, and in an instant, his brow furrowed deeply. Kill all the Devouring Ghouls. Kill every single one of those things, so numerous they were called the Myriad Calamities.
“Just, fuck, tell them to live their whole lives struggling like this. Talking nonsense, how annoying…”
Tae-muk glared fiercely at the Lieutenant Colonel and attempted to walk out. However, the Lieutenant Colonel grabbed Tae-muk’s elbow. Then, with a face more serious than ever before, he spoke.
“No, you can do it.”
“…….”
“Because you’re the strongest person I’ve ever seen. You can do it. So think about it carefully.”
Having said that, the Lieutenant Colonel coughed again—cough, cough—let go of Tae-muk, and put the cigarette back in his mouth.
“…….”
Tae-muk stared intently at the Lieutenant Colonel. For a moment, strangely, his father’s face overlapped with the man’s. They didn’t look alike, their ages weren’t similar, and not a single thing—from the manner of speaking to the voice—was similar, yet he didn’t know why he suddenly saw his father.
The Lieutenant Colonel continued to puff on his cigarette as if he had nothing more to say. In the bitter, acrid, and spicy smoke, Tae-muk stood side-by-side with the Lieutenant Colonel again. Then, he nudged the man’s forearm with his elbow.
“That. Give me one.”
“What?”
“That thing. The one in your mouth right now.”
“A cigarette?”
The Lieutenant Colonel stared at Tae-muk with a look that said look at this kid, then, with a face that held a strange hint of a smile, he took out a cigarette from the inner pocket of his military uniform and handed it over.
“Here.”
Tae-muk rolled the long, white cigarette in his hand before awkwardly putting it in his mouth. The Lieutenant Colonel took out a matchbox and lit it for him.
Tae-muk brought the tip of the cigarette to the flame in an awkward posture. And when the fire caught, he took a sharp breath in—sip. Immediately, a thick cloud of smoke pushed past his throat and surged down to his lower abdomen.
“Ugh…”
Feeling as if ash were filling his lungs, Tae-muk quickly jerked his head back. Then he coughed heavily—cough, cough. It tasted not just unpleasant, but uncomfortable. It tasted as if he had taken a huge bite out of charcoal. Tae-muk coughed for a long time, spat, and then glared at the Lieutenant Colonel with eyes full of irritation.
“Fuck, what is this? You gave me a spoiled one, didn’t you? Huh?”
“Spoiled, my foot, you brat. It tastes great…”
The Lieutenant Colonel chuckled.
* * *
One day, during a long summer monsoon, the Pig, who was a Colonel, died. He didn’t die by being eaten by a Devouring Ghoul; he simply wasted away and died. No one grieved, and no one felt a sense of loss.
However, a problem arose due to his death. The person leading the unit had vanished.
The Lieutenant Colonel tried to take over the unit, but he couldn’t because he wasn’t a “Lieutenant Colonel.” It was a bizarre statement. He was a Lieutenant Colonel, yet he wasn’t a Lieutenant Colonel.
As it turned out, the Pig had given the Lieutenant Colonel the rank of Lieutenant Colonel but had failed to report it to the state. To be precise, he had arbitrarily granted a promotion that the state had not authorized.
It wasn’t just the Lieutenant Colonel; Tae-muk was the same. Tae-muk, who had been dragged into the battlefield by chance at the age of eight, wasn’t even officially registered as a soldier. Naturally, he had never received the rank of Second Lieutenant. He was in a state where he couldn’t receive it in the first place.