episode_0402

To avoid this situation, Laquilo had to be turned into a bad guy.

In reality, Laquilo was a bad guy.

But… I don’t know how to make my fortune.

In the end, it was the same thing that should not be done.

“Attention trainee engineers.”

In the silence that fell, my classmates’ eyes turned to me.

A gaze heavy enough to contain the words I was trying to spit out.

“Lakilo betrayed us.”

Strange emotions and disappointment.

“···Are you saying you’re going to move on like that?”

Coober’s voice was filled with indescribable disappointment.

I don’t know why I have to spread this stuff.

“No, I really betrayed you.”

“···What?” “What do you mean…?”

All twenty-five pairs of eyes are focused on me.

“Immortal can only imitate a person’s appearance, but cannot take that person’s memories. Don’t you think Immortal did a good job of pretending to be Laquilo?”

Coober’s eyes widened.

“No way…!”

“He confessed it to himself. Laquilo recognized Immortal’s identity at first sight. Then he asked us to kill him. And I am deserting.”

The apprentice knights were embarrassed.

But even for a moment.

“Like a social misfit, I tried to leave society.”

“That crazy bastard…!”

Susan was shocked and started swearing, and Amilla looked up at me with a fed-up expression.

“But since you were so cooperative, you once again aroused Immortal’s suspicions. So he was murdered. And this is for us too.”

Amilla gritted her teeth.

“To become a knight, I couldn’t see injustice─”

“The reason the other party was able to prepare for negotiations just three hours after the incident was because Immortals were already positioned around the knight training center. Can you guys distinguish between immortals?”

No one could open their mouths.

Kailish, who was always quiet, gave me an intense look.

“So. What is that important immortal?”

“Exchange with Drekkar’s prisoners.”

At my words, everyone froze.

“To be exact, we are exchanging the lives of 50 people.”

“···Lakilo They say that bastard was an asshole, but he was still a soldier. What would happen if we were Laquilo?”

“That’s right. The commander seemed to be stung by that too. ‘At the commander’s discretion, I will make all of your classmates into knights!’ I heard that? Instead, if a rumor spreads, it is invalid.”

“···What?”

one word.

At that one word, there was a mixture of anger and joy inside the dorm.

‘How ironic.’

An old thought comes to mind when I was in training camp.

The guy who deserted.

What happened after he deserted?

After that, I skipped all the hard training, did mental training every day, and ate a lot of food.

‘As if admonishing me.’

The absurd thing is that it worked.

Because the kids in the military are young.

Moreover, they are children in their early to mid teens or early twenties.

‘It’s the same as then.’

When an asshole is crushed in a grinder while acting an asshole, the remaining people drink the nectar made from the corpse.

“Let’s accept it for the sake of the rest. And, never be loyal to this country.”

Anger and joy are all taken away from the answer that only pursues utility.

“It’s all going to be an article anyway. So let’s just do half of it and no more. I will teach you how to identify immortals. What are their weaknesses and how do they perceive the world?”

My head hurts.

“Tomorrow, I will go to secretly bury Laquilo’s body according to the instructions of the training director. All of you. So go to bed early.”

I have to go bury Lamia’s cut body.

“···Dwin.”

Lila.

There was hidden anxiety and curiosity in the eyes that looked up at me.

“Huh?”

“···Can we really all become knights?”

“Unless the commander is a liar.”

But Lila’s concerns seemed unresolved.

“What if it’s a lie?”

It’s a natural concern.

But there are also traditional gifts for such superiors.

A very old tradition called fragging.

“If you come out like that, I will kill the commander.”

“What…!”

“So don’t worry.”

Because a guy like that shouldn’t stand over people.

After putting on the boots, I wrapped the strings around my arms and the bowstring around my waist.

“···Where are you going?”

“I’m going to take care of the things in front of the kitchen.”

Flies must have already started to swarm around the corpse.

“I’ll follow you.”

“What do you do here? Oh, please forget about this with your classmates.”

I took out hundreds of cherries I picked while hunting deer.

I don’t know what breed it is, but the kernels are about the size of a human eye.

I grabbed something that looked healthy and shoved it into my mouth.

Sweet and refreshing.

“Sleep well, Isabelle must not sleep. Because I have to train.”

“Oh, no! Why only me…!”

“Can’t you?”

Isabel hesitated and shook her head.

“···No.”

“I miss most training during the rainy season anyway. Don’t you just have to work hard until then?”

After gently admonishing Isabel, I opened the door to the dormitory, and there were two assistant technicians and a training director waiting for me, leaning against the wall.

At an angle that cannot be seen from inside the accommodation.

I closed the door and walked in silence, following them in front.

Director Yang Yang is a person with an unbreakable poker face, but the two knights are not.

Naturally, their expressions were not that bright.

Is it because I rejected the mindset I should have as a soldier?

Or is it because they don’t understand the current situation?

“Thank you for taking good care of me.”

“No.”

I took four shovels and threw them on the cart.

* * * * * *

After finishing the store, I started night training with Isabel.

Most of the apprentice knights who had not yet fallen asleep despite digging for an hour followed Isabelle out.

I guess he was curious about what I was doing.

“Hosot, Terup, and Lamia have good eyesight.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know how good that is, do you?”

This is very important.

“The day looks like when the sun is up. The moon looks like the sun, and they look for stars in the sky to determine whether it is day or night.”

“What does that mean?”

“Humans do not have good ears, and their sense of smell is at a embryonic level. More than half of our senses are received through sight. Still, I don’t have good eyesight.”

I gave this theory class a few times, but Isabelle couldn’t understand most of it. Perhaps because he thought this was a story like that, he narrowed his eyes even as he answered.

“···So?”

“You can’t hide in the dark. Also, to them, the other person’s eyes seem to shine like stars in the night sky. You should look down at an angle where the iris is not visible.”

The military will probably teach it up to this point as well.

Even the two assistant technicians were outside, wondering what they were doing in the brightly lit dormitory.

“It doesn’t matter whether you cover the smell with poop or mud, but if the opponent is a basilisk, it’s a different story.”

“Basilisk? Are you talking about the four-armed Lamia?”

I remember it well.

The subjects of Ceres, the creator of life, perceive their surroundings with their five extremely sharp senses.

“Yes. The chosen race of Ceres have an extremely sensitive sense of smell, and there is no frequency they cannot hear, assuming they want it to.”

Perhaps because it was her first time hearing this, Isabel’s eyebrows furrowed.

“What is the frequency?”

“Frequency is the vibration of sound… Just think of it as being able to hear sounds that we cannot hear. Besides that, we can also see things that we cannot see.”

No one, including my classmates, seems to understand what I’m saying.

It will be difficult for even me to understand.

“What on earth are they all? I don’t understand. Please explain it easily.”

Isabel spoke as if protesting on behalf of the representative, and the other classmates also nodded.

“For example, they can see the temperature.”

“···Yes?”

Was it too much of a leap?

“No matter how well you camouflage yourself, you will get caught if the temperature is higher than other places. You can even smell the breath exhaled by living things.”

This time, Amilla tilts her head.

“···Everyone can smell bad breath, right?”

“Not like the smell of food coming from your mouth. This means that you can smell the waste products in the breath that come out as the organism exhales and spits out.”

“What? Where is that?”

“There is. That’s a complaint to Ceres. What kind of monsters have you created? The basilisk isn’t the apex predator of the South for nothing. If you spot it or see traces, run away.”

After teaching a simple theory, I walked out to the parade ground with the apprentice knights who began following my instructions.

“First, I will learn how to walk on clouds.”

Thanks to this, individual classes became group classes.

We explained traction to the trainees and later explained the trees that should not be ridden.

“Even if you break your back while climbing a tree and become paralyzed, I will help you recover, so do your best.”

Was it a mess in my head?

The bigger kids practiced falling techniques and steps, and copied the same mistakes I made.

Since it was a mistake I made, it was easy to give advice on how to overcome it.

In Terup’s case, the learning speed was really fast.

He also explained to me one by one how to climb walls well.

“CEO!” “I rolled and my back hurts!” “How thick can a branch burn?” “Like you said, I made the sole of my shoe like this. I dug it. Is this right?”

They are calling from all directions.

I took care of each and every one of them, and for the children who had learned a certain level, I asked them to serve as teaching assistants.

Soon, dawn broke.

“Everyone is gathered together.”

The training director was standing there holding an oil can and Laquilo’s luggage.

The apprentice knights seemed to know where to go from now on and began to gather in this direction.

“Representative of apprentice engineer. Lead the apprentice engineer.”

“Yes.”

Twenty-six apprentice knights, including myself, gathered and lined up without any explanation.

We headed to the training principal together, and when we reached the principal, we walked towards where the gourd was. Since it happened the day before yesterday, the traces have not disappeared yet.

Traces of walking with Immortal.

It seems that Director Yang Yang also noticed this.

“Guys. Look at this.”

Although many of the traces were gone, enough to teach remained.

Traces of climbing a tree, traces of being followed…

Taught them all.

The director of the training camp also did not tackle him.

He was standing there, looking at me with a slightly surprised expression.

“Now, and… that.”

We arrived at the place where the gourd was buried.

When we arrived there, we taught them how to bury them and gave them a few secrets, such as having to use stones when secretly digging and differentiating between layers of soil.

The gourd, which could no longer be used as evidence, was blocked so that no one could touch it. Given Lamia’s personality, she will definitely come to retrieve it.

Maybe even Laquilo’s corpse can teach us something.

“And, here. Look at the terrain carefully. Isn’t the slope too gentle compared to other terrain?”

“No. I don’t know.”

Coober shakes his head.

“Look. It looks decent on the outside, but it changes when you rake up the leaves.”

As I shook off the fallen leaves, Coober said, ‘Ah.’ He nodded with admiration.

“This type of terrain cannot exist naturally. Fallen leaves are washed away by rainwater. And···.”

When I dug up the soil, a jar lid appeared.

“Never breathe when digging something like this. Lamia is a master of poison and can create poison that spreads through the air.”

I wonder if he just spewed out stories that were too cruel.

“And, I like handsome men. Since I am a hermaphrodite, I am bisexual and prefer men. I love getting fucked and fucked. If you get hit once, your asshole will be torn apart.”

It was a joke, but several knights laughed out loud.

I dug out the jar and opened the lid.

There was a peculiar odor of chemicals…

“Wow!!!!”

Ruggle, who was usually shy and quiet, started throwing up.

“Hee Iik…” “Such crazy…!”

Even the benign chief has a slight wrinkle between his eyebrows.

“I’m sorry about Laquilo, but let’s find out what we need to know. It will definitely be helpful someday.”

Laquilo’s body was taken out of the embalming jar and a cross-section of forensic science was shown in front of people.

The immediate cause of death was strangulation.

“Now, your lungs are filled with blood, right? My eyes were bloodshot…”

“All living things are sensitive to the smell of blood. One way to dispose of blood is to cut it from the neck and drink it in one gulp.”

Just like a vampire.

They dissected the heart and other organs and showed them.

The eyes looking at me are complicated.

That’s what forensic science is like.

You can only learn it by going over hundreds of corpses.

The apprentice knights only vaguely realized that fact, but it was good.

Everything I learned will have a huge impact on the survival of these children.

‘I’d rather just throw it away on the mountain.’

Of course, you can tell when a maggot died based on its age or pupa.

It would be better to put that kind of knowledge to use.

Finally, a firebreak was created to prevent the fire from spreading, and all 29 people gathered branches and leaves to cover Laquilo’s stomach.

The director of the training camp sprinkled the oil he brought with him, and soon Laquilo’s belongings and body began to burn.

Grumbling—!

The smell of burning meat is truly disgusting.

When all that was left was ashes, Laquilo’s bones were cut down with a shovel and roughly broken apart.

─Only 23 years old.

Laquilo, who had lived for 8,395 days… 201,480 hours, burned, turned into powder, and was buried in the ground in just three hours, less than 60,000th of his life.

When I saw that fleeting end, I felt so sad that I couldn’t say anything.

“Next time, don’t be born as an idiot, but be born as an ordinary person who can get along well with people.”

You idiot.