By the way, I wanted to tell Senior Jonathan Kudo that I had troubled him.

As I expected, he did not come. He had never seemed interested in others, so it was not surprising. Everything must have gone smoothly for him, so he probably came out without trouble.

I focused on recovering while enduring Samuel’s barrage of scolding.

Days of holed-up recovery, eating and resting. Tom and Hesh came to visit. They enjoyed seeing the article I was in.

When I told them I was being sent far outside the Core, they even envied me.

Only Hesh.

“You’ll improve a lot!”

Hesh was as passionate as ever.

“We’re going someplace deeper, aren’t we. Really jealous. When will I get to go further in?”

“...You jealous?”

“You’ll have it rough.”

Tom showed a slightly more sensible reaction.

“The deeper you go, the worse the surroundings. I’ll pray you come back with all your limbs. You’re not exactly sturdy in regeneration.”

“Yeah. Well, I just shouldn’t be a burden.”

“Who are you going with?”

Hesh peered in with eyes full of excitement.

“You’re going with big seniors, right? Who are they?”

***

Who, you ask.

“Richard Green, Jason Trevain, Choi Ami, William Walker, Aki.”

Yun rattled off the names and clicked his tongue.

He evaluated casually in that indifferent voice.

“If Ami’s not there you’ll suffocate and die.”

“...Is it that bad?”

“Didn’t Richard Green come to see you?”

Yun slid his phone into his inner pocket.

I shook my head.

“No, he didn’t.”

“He did for me.”

“Why?”

“He lectured me on whether we taught rookies shooting or driving. Isn’t teaching the basics fundamental? With how long people serve, how are the basics not covered yet? I went off on Personnel Director about assigning Yun as a mentor and all that, and then left after making a fuss.”

I was useless.

Richard Green-senior was right: the basics were not covered.

A tidal wave of self-loathing crashed over me and I clawed at my head. No one was wrong. And on top of being so lacking in basics, I had attracted a creature and had some unidentified stalker attached to me.

My regeneration, too....

Ugh.

I buried my face in my knees and Ami gave my shoulder a light pat.

“It’s fine! I’ll cover you as much as I can!”

Ami was a beam of life and salt.

“Hilde, just don’t die!”

“I apologize in advance and thank you....”

“Well. If you come back alive, your skills will improve.”

Yun evaluated flippantly as if discussing someone else.

“You don’t seem like the type to suffer severe psychological shock from a traumatic event.”

“...Thank you for the compliment.”

“Right. You might be better off than expected.”

Ami patted my back without much feeling as I answered.

Then she peered at me with her round eyes and bright voice.

“And Richard said the article made you look gutsy! He hardly ever praises anyone—if he thought you had grit, that alone is huge. You won’t be universally hated.”

“Gasp. Really?”

“It’s like patting your cheek before you slap it.”

Yun crushed that hope with his calm tone.

Ami scolded Yun at my side. “Bro! Don’t stomp on Hilde’s morale already!” Yun nonchalantly snatched the soy milk Ami held.

“Facing reality is important.”

He said it dryly, then stuck a straw into the soy milk even though he didn’t seem all that thirsty.

A spectacular tug-of-war for the soy milk ensued. A high-quality sibling skirmish; it was hard to follow their arms with my eyes.

Samuel’s grumbling—“What a lot of fuss”—floated over from a distance.

Anyway, I was glad Ami was there. Having even one person to rely on put me at ease.

Watching the soy milk tug-of-war in a daze, I steeled myself. Don’t die, act sharp, and memorize everything the seniors tell me before we go.

I mustn’t stain Yun’s face anymore.

“What should I do before heading out?”

I muttered to myself, and the flashy hand gestures stopped as the siblings turned to answer in turn.

“I’ll tell you the details about the people you’re going out with! Remember them.”

“Pack your gear.”

I did both.

***

“Sword?”

Richard Green was the seasoned man who first asked me a question in the auditorium.

“You taught him the sword? Your real brother is even less fundamental than I thought.”

“Hey. He said he was going to teach shooting next in sequence.”

Ami brushed it off amiably.

“He hasn’t been here long anyway. He’s the kind of rookie who normally never leaves E District.”

“All the more reason to teach the basics. He doesn’t even have an autonomous driving license. Are they even hiring rookies without licenses these days? I’ll have to mention it to the Personnel Director.”

“He’ll learn fast. We’ll teach him later. Hilde is smart; he’ll pick it up quickly.”

“Later? When is later? After this rookie returns as a corpse and then you’ll teach him?”

“Arriving in fifteen minutes.”

Aki, sitting in the driver’s seat, said in a blunt tone as if the harsh conversation did not reach him.

“All clear at the front.”

I wanted to go home.

It had been less than a day since I left the Core. I yearned dramatically for my old quarters: the game console, the comfortable bed, the window that let in gentle sunlight. I even missed Yun’s sword-swinging lessons.

I wanted to return to the Commander’s guest room in Yun’s house.

But I could not. I had to live outside indefinitely until the Commander lifted the expulsion order.

Day one of the expulsion.

I kept my eyes lowered to avoid showing my discomfort and watched the floor of the military vehicle.

The vehicle rattled loudly. We were heading to the safe point roughly at the center of D District. We took the train as far as E District, but from D District there were no tracks laid.

That was why Richard Green had exploded at me for not having an autonomous driving license.

I’d heard he had convictions as hard as mithril and got angry easily.

“They put a rookie like this among us and sent him to D District. Yehyeon gives such irrational orders.”

“That’s right.”

Trevain, who had been sitting next to Richard Green watching me getting scolded, joined the conversation.

He was consistently the same: all black combat uniform but with a polished face and a rough, sloppy air about him. He persistently disliked Yehyeon.

“Their judgment’s declining. Ami, can’t you see that with your own eyes?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Why would he give this order? This hasn’t happened before.”

“When have we ever questioned the Commander’s orders? If an order’s given, we follow it.”

Ami brushed off Trevain’s words nonchalantly and clipped back at Richard Green’s mutterings.

“There’s no harm. Richard was curious about Hilde anyway.”

I reflexively raised my head.

My gaze met the seasoned soldier’s. He stared at me, arms folded, eyes burning with anger and conviction.

He called my name, breaking the silence.

“Taleb.”

“Yes.”

“Keep your head in the game.”

He spoke with a voice full of anger at a world that did not match his ideals.

“From D District onward, if you lose your head for a moment, you lose your life.”

A war hero who survived the First and Second Wars. A soldier who charges to the front more readily than anyone else. One of the unquestionable top ten among countless Black Badgers.

I did not avoid his gaze.

“Yes. I will remember.”

Richard looked at me for a long time, then turned his head.

Silence returned. The engine noise thundered in the windowless vehicle. I sighed softly, relieved that the carpet-bombing directed at me had ended.

I swallowed the sigh and met Ami’s eyes. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

Ami’s round eyes shone as she smiled brightly.

Wow. She was so dazzling I could not see her face.

The radiant senior drifted over and looked down at me.

“Did you pack well?”

I glanced at the gear strapped to my legs and nodded.

“Yes. I checked it three or four times.”

“What’s in it?”

She asked in that friendly way she might have otherwise barked, “Recite it, rookie.”

Quietly grateful, I recited the contents.

“Ammo, water, emergency rations, fishing line, solar-reflective signal mirror, small saw, fire-starting magnifier, body armor, magnetic compass, spectrometer compass, spare battery for the comms, basic first-aid kit.”

“What first-aid items did you pack?”

Richard, who had not taken his eyes off me, asked.

I answered without hesitation.

“I packed blood transfusion kit, suturing instruments, analgesics, carbohydrates, antibiotics, scalpels, IV fluid, IV line.”

“Do you know how to use them?”

“Yes.”

“Morphine?”

I showed the morphine I had stashed by my neck.

Richard fell silent again. Apparently I had passed his little test.

I breathed a reflexive sigh of relief, and Ami smiled wryly.

“You learned how to use the comms and tactical beacon, right, Hilde?”

“Yes.”

In truth, Yun had tried to teach me not only how to use them but how to repair the comms.

‘You don’t seem stupid,’ he’d said.

But I had been stupid.

Yun had quickly given up on teaching me comm repair—not only did we lack ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) time, but I did not reach the technical level Yun expected.

Yun set a very high standard for others’ intellect. He insisted that the content he did not even expect me to understand was basic, demanding I quickly learn the fundamentals and apply them.

He compromised only after recognizing my intellectual limits.

In short, I had just memorized how to use and superficially repair the comms.

I still had no confidence that I could fix them if they broke. I had blindly memorized basic countermeasures and still could not recall every scenario. Yun did not expect me to repair them properly—how could I repair something whose workings I did not even grasp?

If we split up and my comms went dead, I wouldn’t even be able to try the memorized fixes.

Better not to split up at all.

Gloomily scanning my gear, Ami spoke cheerfully.

“When we arrive we’ll unpack at the safe point.”

“Ah, yes.”

“Then we’ll do reconnaissance...”

KA-BOOM!

The vehicle flipped.

My vision spun. The seniors shouted. A heavy impact sounded.

William Walker’s and Ami’s firm arms grabbed me.

As they steadied me and I recovered my sense of balance, Richard Green roared.

“Time to hunt!”