episode_0154

In the middle of an old city that has become a ruin.

There, out of nowhere, a round hill rose up.

Below, there is a strange hill with red blood flowing out and occasionally groans of pain.

“Hoo… ”

At the top of the hill a woman was squatting.

She put a cigarette in her mouth, blood splattered all over her face, lit it, and stared at the ruined landscape.

An emptiness in the eyes that lies somewhere between annoyance and indifference.

“Move quickly! Check for dead and injured people…!”

“If the blade is discharged, go to the supply depot…!”

“The bodies were gathered in one place… ”

A group of people wearing armor and heavy weapons were busy clearing the surrounding battlefield. The emblem of the Republic was engraved on their shoulders. Even though they had just fought a fierce battle, their actions were restrained and unruffled.

A man who appeared to be a commander among them approached the hill and spoke to them.

“Haewolhwa.”

“Huh?”

A girl smoking a cigarette looks down at the voice calling her name.

At first glance, she appears to be in her late teens, or at most, her early twenties, with a distinctly immature appearance.

However, middle-aged men are rather overly polite.

The girl also naturally accepted such treatment from the man.

When she saw that the man had something to say, she stood up.

“Ugh… ”

“Oh no… ”

“My lady… ”

With each step the girl took, the hill groaned intermittently in pain. Each step was a scream of a different voice.

The girl didn’t pay any attention to him and went down the hill lightly as if she was trampling on grass.

“Umm… ”

The man let out a small sigh when he saw that sight.

A barber and pervert who finds pleasure in cutting off the heads of his victims while they are still alive.

A criminal with a bizarre obsession with women’s virginity, the Unicorn.

There’s Humbert the pedophile, the specimen collector who disembowels people and collects only the external tissue, and the Alligator, a mutant who devours his victims with his abnormally long face and teeth.

They are executives of the rebel group PLF and extremely dangerous criminals who are all on the highest wanted list, ‘Black’.

But now, they were piled up like a living hill, with all their limbs cut off.

By some girl who just happened to be trampling on them and seemed to be bored with everything in the world.

“Are you… going to let them live?”

“I wonder if he might spit something out. That’s why I was watching for a while. Well, it didn’t really work out that well… ”

The girl just shrugged her shoulders slightly, still with an indifferent expression.

“So?”

“The surrounding area has been cleared. The rebel core has been destroyed, and some remnants are being tracked down. ”

The man bowed his head slightly to show his respect.

“Reclaiming the Holy Land. Congratulations on your accomplishment that will be remembered throughout the history of the Republic.”

“Hmm.”

Despite the man’s rave reviews, the girl maintained an indifferent attitude.

“If there’s anything left, there’s something left.”

“Yes… ?”

She quickly changed the subject as if she wasn’t interested.

“That’s it. Go on with what you were saying.”

“Ah, yes, yes! As I said, we are tracking some of the remnants. However… a large bio-signal is being detected in the middle of the city.”

“… ”

Then, the girl with an indifferent expression throughout narrowed her eyebrows for the first time.

“Maybe the last remnants are gathered there… ”

“No, it won’t be the remnants.”

“Yes?”

The girl cut off the man and started walking away.

“Haewolhwa? Where are you going?”

“Where are you going? Since you’ve come this far, shouldn’t you finish it? Don’t follow me. I’ll go alone.”

“Yes? It’s dangerous. There are still remnants left… ”

“Tsk. Who cares about whom? If it weren’t for me, these guys wouldn’t have even come this far.”

“Ugh… ”

The man, who had been hit hard, had no choice but to keep his mouth shut.

“You guys, you …

The girl simply wiggled her fingers absentmindedly and disappeared in an instant.

A group of young soldiers approached the man who was standing there blankly and saluted him.

“Commander. Did you find it?”

“… Okay. You will now begin the classification process.”

The man gestured to the pile of living hills behind him.

“Send the dead ones to the incinerator, and take out the ones who are still alive and continue the interrogation. If necessary, use harsh methods. They are all going to be killed anyway.”

“Ugh… ”

“You little shits! Hurry up and hurry up and what are you doing!”

The soldiers, who had been wearing disgusted expressions, reluctantly began to dismantle the pile at the senior officer’s shout.

The man who was talking to the girl looks around at the desolate landscape and becomes lost in thought.

The City of Light. A sacred place of the old civilization and the center of the southwest, now a mere ruin.

But even its crumbling skyscrapers tower higher into the sky than anything in the current capital.

A landscape of the Holy Land that clearly symbolizes the fall of civilization. The recapture of this city was one of the Republic’s long-cherished desires, but sadly, it had recently become even more notorious as a den of rebels.

As the warlocks and mutants who were being chased by the security service and the military took refuge in him, his power grew day by day, and he even claimed to be the spiritual successor of the old civilization.

Even the central government could not bring itself to suppress such a powerful force, but the situation reached a turning point when the elite 1st Regiment of the rebels that had attacked Jinling was annihilated.

There was a special named demon who had been interfering with the subjugation. Until the death of the owner of the Southwest Plains.

The Supreme Council, faced with such a golden opportunity, declared the recapture of the City of Light, but no one could have imagined that the Haewolhwa of ‘Natae’ would accompany them there.

But until now, no one has been able to guess the reason.

“Ah… Ahh… ”

The man turned around at the echoing groan of pain.

A group of rebels who had been forming a hill were muttering something, foaming at the mouth.

“Goddess… Please protect us… Make a new heaven… Become one… ”

***

Haewolhwa stepped into the middle of the collapsed city.

Buildings that have collapsed one after another, revealing their steel bars, asphalt roads with sinkholes all over them, rusted and dented traffic signs, and the old city landscape with weeds and trees growing here and there.

There was only one reason she went on the expedition: to confirm a certain suspicion that was growing stronger with each passing day.

That was also the reason why he withdrew his troops and entered the city alone.

If your guess is really true, then having them along won’t be of much help.

She was walking lost in thought when she suddenly stopped walking.

Something was staring at her from across the square she had finally reached.

Neatly styled hair, a clean suit jacket, white shirt, and even a tie.

A woman dressed like an office worker, completely out of place among the empty ruins.

And perhaps… the identity of the massive biological response that was detected.

“Are you here?”

She spoke to Haewolhwa in a friendly manner, with a faint smile on her lips.

“I’ve been watching you the whole time. You. You’re really talented.”

Even though Haewolhwa didn’t say anything in response, the woman continued talking on her own.

“I said I was surprised. No matter what, I didn’t know I would see that level of sensitivity in a native life form.”

“… ”

“You. Aren’t you one of our kind? Huh? Actually, you lost your memories. ”

“Parasite is talking nonsense that isn’t even funny. There is a limit to slander.”

Haewolhwa finally opened her mouth and cut her off in a tone that seemed slightly offended.

The woman looked at him with a smile, even though she had heard words that were almost insulting.

That sight of her not blinking an eye gave me a very strange feeling.

“From the way you speak, it seems like you are that ‘priestess’.”

“That’s right. It’s a pretty good title, isn’t it?”

“I’ve never heard of a priestess in a suit in my entire life. Well, where would a priestess just leave her followers to die? ”

Haewolhwa was still looking at the woman with a cynical gaze, seemingly indifferent.

“If you were watching, why didn’t you help me? Even though they were dying, they were looking for you. Are you scared and running away? Huh?”

“It’s scary… What is it that’s scary…?”

The woman tilted her head with a look of genuine bewilderment.

“Ah… I found it…! This is it!”

Then he clapped his hands and smiled broadly, like a little child who had found hidden candy.

Soon her expression began to distort in a bizarre way.

“Ugh… I’m scared… Ugh… Please save me… ”

“… ”

“Ugh… Please… ”

The woman suddenly burst into tears and let out a terrified voice, like a girl facing a wild beast.

Haewolhwa stared at the sight with an expression of astonishment. It was only at this point that she could feel for sure that the woman in front of her was a being that could not be thought of with human logic.

Also, that it is a being that has appeared on this land before.

‘Professor… You have to believe me… ! They will definitely come back… !’

The painful pleas of her former disciple echoed in her head.

‘What good would it do now…?’

Haewolhwa swallowed her sigh and closed her eyes tightly. Then, she asked the woman in front of her with her still dry voice.

“What is your name?”

Then, the woman suddenly stops crying and opens her mouth. She is so calm and smiles brightly, as if she is telling her name to a friend she is meeting for the first time.

“Sadal Melik.”