War is loneliness.
And the death that one meets within it is, ironically, a blessing. Countless comrades are lost without meaning, but eventually, someone fills that void.
And it repeats. Among countless comrades, or already cold corpses, one dies, yet feels the loneliness. It is desolate. It is futile.
One, ten, a hundred… entire units may face annihilation, disappearing from tactical maps.
Endlessly, they were driven to the cliffs. Knowing that death awaited at the edge, those who finally could not endure had to accept the fear they recognized with their whole being and vanish.
Those who survived had to endure. They had to find their own way to live.
Thus, countless lives were extinguished in the pit of murder.
Cesar Li and Lucio Antorelli both survived.
They lost much. Conversely, they gained nothing.
In a world that threw away the law of equivalent exchange, if asked what they lost, Cesar could answer without a moment’s hesitation.
He lost himself.
As the war dragged on, the deaths and killings stretched like a rubber band…
Thus, looking at the grim reality, he whittles himself down. He crumbles. He shatters. In the end, he is scattered like dust in the mud that has become a wasteland.
The surviving soldiers, having cut themselves down, barely managed to preserve a meager sense of self. Those who completely exhausted themselves perished without exception.
The sacrifices of such soldiers seemed natural to the military high command. At least, that would have been the thought in the Command Headquarters of the 101st Ground Defense Brigade, to which Cesar and Priest Antorelli belonged.
– Defending against the concentrated assault of the enemy on our deeply gouged frontline, they inflict as much damage as possible on the enemy, drawing them deeper. Thus, they aim to encircle and thoroughly crush the enemy’s major offensive and completely drain their will to attack.
The unit that received the full brunt of the enemy’s major offensive suffered immense losses; it was a tactic of giving flesh to take bones. The brigade commander of the 101st Ground Defense Brigade, Colonel Maximilian von Adelheit, volunteered for the role of offering flesh.
It was a decision made under the judgment that, due to geopolitical circumstances, there was no other choice. Naturally, it would have been possible only because it was the soldiers under his command who bled.
That was how the last operation was conducted. Cesar vividly remembers the operation that crushed the united enemy’s autumn major offensive, which they attempted as a last-ditch effort.
There’s no way he could forget. Because of it, he had to suffer from nightmares every night.
The brigade commander of the 101st Ground Defense Brigade, Colonel Maximilian von Adelheit. His blood-soaked operation, carried out resolutely despite the concerns of the brigade staff.
The number of soldiers sacrificed meaninglessly was countless. They were someone’s sons, husbands, fathers, and one-and-only lovers.
Some were shot dead. Others were killed by shells scattering fragments all around.
Some were torn apart as they crawled under barbed wire, while others were shot by blind bullets while attempting to climb over.
Corpses piled up over the barbed wire, and the survivors stepped over those corpses as they advanced. Thus, it repeated.
They died that way. Crawling on the ground, desperately gasping for breath, even knowing there was no hope.
…Yes, they died like dogs.
As they spent their time in loss, the fickle seasons continued to cycle. Spring on the battlefield passed, summer approached, autumn winds were felt, and they braved the wet snow falling at the threshold of winter.
It continued, and the war could not withstand the passage of time. The long war that seemed unending slowly began to draw to a close.
Even after the end of the war, they had to rot for about a year under the guise of maintaining public order, but eventually, even that tedious time passed.
And at last, Army Sergeant Cesar Li was freed from the call of the nation.
There was a cost to their call, but no reward.
What remained for them was menial jobs with discriminatory treatment, a reward the size of a fingernail, and being treated like propaganda dolls for the upper class that controlled the empire.
Their attitude was astonishing. While they sang praises in front of him, behind his back, they cursed as if he had taken their jobs. It was remarkable how shameless and hypocritical those who they wished to protect were. If only he had known that the people for whom he fought desperately were such disgusting and shameless beings… Cesar would not have fought so fiercely.
What Cesar could not bear the most was.
Colonel Maximilian von Adelheit, who forced countless soldiers to die like dogs.
– The hero of the Great War returns to the Empire!
– The Ground Defense Command has no objections to promoting Colonel Adelheit, who made a national decision for the soldiers suffering from the war…
– Colonel Adelheit has been awarded the empire’s highest honor, the Order of Gold Venus…
To live on as a war hero, without any sense of guilt.
Cesar felt disillusionment. He felt disillusioned with the ignorant masses who did not wish to know the truth, disillusioned with the upper class and intellectuals who had enough knowledge to understand the truth yet covered the eyes of the public, and disillusioned with the society that leaned against the wall of security but did not accept them.
And he was furious. Seeing Maximilian von Adelheit, who drove countless soldiers to death by his own choice and dared to display that glory as though it were natural.
Cesar gathered former comrades who shared his sentiments together. To expose the truth of Maximilian von Adelheit, and to claim their rightful compensation.
And Cesar would never forget that day.
Amidst the raging flames, he resented being alive, as their extinguishing lives faded away.
From then on, it was a simple matter of causality. Cesar sharpened his hatred.
At last, a sharp revenge was prepared.
*
Cesar looked up at the sky.
The gathering dark clouds seemed to indicate that it would rain.
“…Lies.”
Laura von Adelheit, who was watching him, spoke with a trembling voice. Her shaking bright red eyes were fixed on Cesar, who calmly looked at the sky.
“Does it seem like a lie?”
“I… I can’t believe it. Words from someone like you…”
“Haha… Ignoring people’s words, is like a daughter or a father.”
“……”
At Cesar’s reckless remarks, Laura stopped her protest and closed her mouth. No, she had no choice but to.
“If you continue to pretend ignorance, what about my comrades who died brutally?”
Cesar Li. He glared at Laura with eyes that were bloodshot red.
His right eye, the only one remaining. It’s brown gaze, once clear before the burn, was now filled with anger as it fixated on Laura.
“Does their death become invalid? Will this transformed version of myself return to normal?”
“……”
“Not at all. Nothing changes.”
Laura felt her head growing hot. Not only was her mind crowded with all sorts of doubts, but also complicated emotions crawled up from deep within her heart.
If what this man said was true. If the cruel acts committed by her father, stripped of humanity, were reality.
And if Professor Antorelli… had truly experienced such things.
“I… do not believe it.”
In the end, Laura’s mind rejected the acceptance of Cesar’s words. It was too shocking a story. A tragedy she had no desire to know.
Seeing Laura, who still trusted her father until the end, Cesar burst into a hollow laugh.
“Puhh… Is that how you come out? In the end, do you want to walk the same path as your father?”
“…Your words do not add up. Professor Antorelli could not have gone through such things.”
“What does that mean?”
Cesar tilted his head. He could not comprehend Laura’s words.
Towards Cesar, Laura steadied her trembling voice and forcefully raised it.
“Professor Antorelli treated me as a student… He did not just look at my skills or potential; he accepted me!”
“…Ha.”
“If what you’re saying is true, then Professor Antorelli would not have treated me that way!”
“Seems you know one thing, yet are oblivious to another.”
Cesar’s laughter sounded cruel. Laura was forced to watch with anxious eyes as his mouth opened.
“Though I haven’t said it outright… do you know what Lucio went through because of your father?”
“More lies…”
“When Lucio participated in the Great War as a military chaplain, there was a priest named Helena, who was exceptionally close to Lucio.”
Laura’s expression twisted. She did not want to hear what Cesar was saying. It felt as if some catastrophic future was approaching.
She wanted to cover her ears, but her bound hands were pleading that even that was not possible. Laura shut her eyes tightly.
“I don’t know what kind of person I am either. What is clear is that Lucio loved Helena more than anything else in this world.”
Unfortunately, Cesar’s voice continued to dig into Laura’s ears.
“And Helena died. Due to your revered father, Maximilian von Adelheit’s reckless operation.”
“That’s a lie…”
“It was a tragic incident. It was yet another tragedy created by your father.”
“That’s a lie…”
“Your father killed Helena, the person Lucio loved. I heard she was killed horrifically right before his eyes.”
“……”
“Because of that battle, Lucio suffered a permanent injury to his right shoulder. He said that every time he used his holy powers, it felt like he was going to faint from the pain.”
The finger incident. The image of Professor Antorelli fainting shortly after using his holy powers to protect the church flashed in his mind.
And the way Professor Antorelli’s right arm would shake uncontrollably returned to her thoughts.
‘No… No!’
She did not want to hear it. She did not want to hear it any longer. Laura squeezed her eyes shut.
But Cesar did not stop. He drove in the final nail.
“Because of your father.”
Memories she did not want to recall surfaced forcibly in Laura’s mind.
– Laura von Adelheit. You have 10 penalty points.
The way he had appeared so strict to her on the first day of class.
– Well, it’s okay…
During the night when she was chased by a ghost in the form of Giovanni the priest, the warm cocoa he had given her with an expressionless face.
– I dare to say. Among today’s assignments, the one submitted by student Adelheit is… undoubtedly, the best.
The time after he reviewed her first assignment and acknowledged her.
– …It was truly an excellent duel.
When he praised her duel during the grade-by-grade duel, albeit with an expression that made her uneasy.
– Are you still mad about that?
…The words her father said to Professor Antorelli when he visited the practice field.
Laura’s memories, all those fragments of the past, slowly came together.
Like puzzle pieces finding their place.
“That’s… a lie.”
Laura muttered dully. Her annoyingly calm mind had already accepted Cesar’s words as truth, but the belief buried deep within her heart had yet to come to grips with it.
As Cesar looked down at Laura, he let out a sigh and stood up.
“If you still can’t believe it… how about asking the parties involved directly?”
“What do you mean by that…?”
– Clang! Boom!
A loud noise echoed from above. Cesar and Laura directed their gazes toward it.
“It seems they have arrived just in time.”
The rough opening of the rooftop door. What appeared beyond it was…
“Laura! Are you okay?!”
The Adelheit Duke, looking pale, and a group of people dressed in black suits.
And upon discovering Laura bound and kneeling, a man aiming a gun at Cesar with a furious look in his eyes.
– Click!
Laura saw someone she absolutely did not want to meet at that moment.
“Cesar…! Cesar Li—!!”
It was Professor Antorelli.
