Black Badger

A vast wasteland swallowed by darkness. A zone where the streetlights didn’t come on, leaving the aircraft visible only by moonlight. The transport plane’s fuselage was dyed blue by the pale glow.

Ami spotted something clinging flat against the fuselage—something like a giant dandelion seed. It also looked like a marimo. Round, and something that looked like it would feel fluffy if touched, the unidentified thing glowed fluorescently in the dark.

At first, she thought it was a plant.

But when she stared at it more closely, it seemed to be moving.

Little by little, like a mushroom growing up from the ground.

Ami observed it with patience. There was nothing else for her to do except wait and watch, anyway.

So she waited and observed, filmed videos, and took photos. Yun and the scientists would love it.

Fluffy, round, glowing life-form.

Kind of cute....

Lost in that thought, Ami suddenly realized something horrifying.

That fluorescent circle was eating the aircraft’s outer shell!

It was gnawing at it very thinly, and with only moonlight as illumination, she noticed far too late.

Ami yelped and climbed up onto the fuselage.

“Don’t!”

She poked the fluorescent marimo with her rifle.

“Don’t eat it!”

Poke poke poke poke poke

It didn’t move.

Ami gave up poking and switched weapons.

She came back out with a reinforced baseball bat from inside the fuselage.

“Get lost!”

Thud!

“Ack!”

She swung with all her strength, but the fluorescent marimo didn’t budge, and the shock traveled straight up her arm.

Ami crouched down, enduring the pain.

Once it subsided, she stood back up and raised her gun.

“If you don’t leave, I’ll shoot.”

Naturally, the fluorescent marimo didn’t listen.

With a sullen expression, Ami aimed at it. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

One of the biggest difficulties the Black Badgers faced was this.

Not knowing anything about the enemy. Even she—one of the most senior among the official Badgers, a First War hero—had never seen a life-form like this before.

She had no idea what would happen if she shot it.

So Ami widened the distance, carefully put on her protective goggles, and aimed the muzzle.

“I’m firing!”

BANG!

The gunshot echoed through the clear night air.

***

Kai and Yun caught the black mage.

They dragged him over, blood pouring from his arm. I was frantically checking Shu’s legs.

Ash-gray legs.

Now I knew the cause of this symptom. Jin Silver’s arm had turned ash-gray like this too. This was what appeared on the body when a Child of the World Tree transferred power to someone far inferior in strength.

But this mage wasn’t a Child of the World Tree.

And could this even be treated?

「Traitor.」

Fear dropped my heart straight down.

But I had to move first. I handed the unconscious Shu over to Carl Dow.

「You cowardly bastard.」

Crunch

「Aaaagh!」

“Yun.”

Yun, who had been stomping on the mage, looked up.

“Want me to blow his head off?”

“No.”

There were things we needed to hear.

“We need to make him talk. I’ll carry him.”

First priority was to get out of S Zone and escort Shu to the hospital.

I wanted to investigate the flower, but there was no time. We didn’t know how bad Shu’s condition was. We needed to get her to the hospital first, then deal with everything one by one.

I knelt on one knee in front of the mage. Drawing my sword, I severed the tendons in his ankles and wrists with the blade that still held traces of holy power.

The mage screamed, overflowing with pain.

Ignoring the sound, I stopped the bleeding.

It would be a problem if he died midway.

After finishing the first aid, I covered the mage’s eyes with cloth. Then, with him on my shoulder, barely conscious, I approached the fourth-floor window. Kairos was waiting for us atop the head of a massive snake.

“That thing’s huge.”

I heard Kai mutter.

A wide-open window.

With Kairos’s help, we mounted the snake’s head and descended to the first floor.

The field was soaked in blood, no less than the inside of the school.

The stench of iron stabbed at the nose.

Between the dry grains of sand, winding rivers of blood had formed. Creatures trudged through the blood like a zombie horde, swarming closer. Even so, the seniors were holding their ground behind the barrier. It looked like they’d formed a second barrier using corpses behind a dump truck.

Sophia, however, seemed to have run out of ammunition.

Thank goodness the rescue hadn’t dragged on too long.

The ground drew closer.

The snake casting its shadow over the non-infiltration unit fired venomous stingers at the approaching creatures.

Pop! Papapapop!

Kieeeeeek....

“That’s insane.”

Yun muttered as he watched the creatures’ flesh melt away as if splashed with hydrochloric acid.

“What’s the composition?”

“What?”

Meanwhile, Sophia tilted her head up and sprang.

“Reptile?”

“You can ride it.”

Kairos held out his hand.

“Please, get on.”

Sophia blinked a couple of times.

But her hesitation didn’t last long. She quickly grasped the situation and took Kairos’s hand.

Walker climbed onto the massive snake’s body on his own.

Ricardo retreated last. Retracting the shape-shifting weapon that had formed into silver thorns, the senior kept narrowing the distance while guarding the front.

Then he tilted his head and met the gaze of the snake looking at him.

The green-eyed senior curved his eyes into a smile and created a long snake with his silver shape-shifting weapon.

“Hello~.”

The blue snake touched noses with the silver artificial snake.

Ricardo laughed long and climbed onto the snake’s back.

“I’ll borrow you for a bit, °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° blue friend....”

The silver snake soon crawled up Ricardo’s arm, melted down, and became a ring coiled around his finger.

With that, boarding was complete. Everyone settled into place atop the scales.

While people were settling in, I had my instincts raised, ready to cut down anything that appeared.

Once I confirmed boarding was complete, I sent a transmission to Ami.

Thankfully, there was almost no movement on the GPS.

She’d landed the transport in the wasteland—had nothing happened?

“Shall we go?”

Kairos approached and asked.

I nodded, waiting for Ami to answer the call.

The seniors gathered in a circle around Shu, checking her condition.

Kairos gave them no particular warning.

The snake set off.

“Ugh.”

“Ah!”

“What the—?”

As the massive blue snake suddenly burst forward, all sorts of sounds erupted among the seniors.

It was understandable. The snake was running at an incredible speed. If they hadn’t been this skilled, someone would’ve surely fallen to the ground.

How fortunate that only experts were riding.

Letting the passing scenery blur by, I kept trying to contact Ami.

Why isn’t she answering....

[Hilde!]

A voice full of panic stabbed into my ear.

“Ami!”

[The fluorescent marimo is eating the transport’s shell!]

Huh?

[Bullets don’t work! It eats the bullets too!]

“Are you hurt!?”

[No! Not me—the transport!]

Confusion dripped from the senior’s voice.

[The transport is being eaten!]

What the hell does that even mean?

[It’s getting bigger!]

I couldn’t fully understand Ami’s words.

***

I only understood once we arrived at the transport.

The transport really was being eaten.

“I’m sorry.”

Ami approached us with a face utterly dejected.

“I tried really hard, but it just wouldn’t come off.... I couldn’t use explosives. I was afraid the transport would be damaged too.”

“It gnawed on the aircraft fuselage?”

Yun asked back as he strode toward the transport, its surface looking like a layer of skin had been peeled away.

“And it eats ammunition too?”

The shooter hopped up onto the fuselage.

He’d inspect the life-form first. I stared blankly at the fluorescent clump of fur stuck to the transport. I’d never imagined a situation like this.

So that thing had fallen onto the fuselage during flight.

It didn’t register to my instincts, so I knew it wasn’t a monster.

And I doubted something like that could have existed on Earth.

“It’s not a monster.”

Kairos muttered as well, still carrying the mage.

“Looks like a life-form that fell from another dimension.”

The key issue was that the transport could no longer fly.

Its outer skin had been stripped away. Well—no, it hadn’t completely lost flight capability. If forced, it could probably fly to some extent. But if it hit strong winds or regional turbulence, the fuselage would likely spin violently in an instant, and we’d smash into the ground before we could even escape.

Even enhanced bodies couldn’t overcome gravity.

At high speed, crashing into the ground would crush us all together.

“I’ll try tearing it off.”

Walker strode toward the transport.

“Though I doubt it’ll change anything at this point.”

That was true.

Honestly, there was no need to desperately rip it off right now. The aircraft was already unusable.

We were stuck in S Zone.

Ami looked devastated.

“I’m really sorry.”

While Walker and Yun examined the fluorescent marimo, the others took Shu and the mage inside the transport.

Shu was still asleep. According to Carl’s examination, there were no immediate abnormalities—aside from her two legs, turned ash-gray and hardened.

The mage, on the other hand, was unconscious, but his condition could worsen at any moment without treatment.

We needed to interrogate the mage while figuring out a way to return with Shu.

As I was about to call Kairos to think through our options, Ami apologized again, barely holding back tears.

“Everyone did great, but I couldn’t keep watch over the transport....”

The first to respond was Walker, who had just come inside.

“Even I couldn’t pull it off, senior. It wouldn’t tear. There’s no way.”

“Even if it wasn’t you, we couldn’t have dealt with it.”

Yun followed, pointing it out objectively.

“I don’t even know what it is. Once you enter S Zone, you really do run into all kinds of absurd things.”

“Ami. Don’t blame yourself. I knew something was off and still didn’t respond properly—that’s on me.”

Besides, even if I’d stayed behind, could I really have handled it properly?

“Judging by it, it only eats alloys. Let’s leave it for now and organize what we need to do next.”

It wasn’t as though there were no options for returning.

We had the Empire’s greatest beast tamer.

“Jack.”

I shoved aside the fear I’d felt when the mage teleported the Slip-Ghoul and called out to the tamer.

The man, who’d seemed to be feeling out a monster’s presence with his arms crossed, turned his head.

“Is there any flying, bird-like monster nearby?”

The tamer smiled faintly.

But just as he was about to speak, a scraping voice cut in.

「You traitor bastard.」

He’s awake.

「Our king told us everything about how pathetic you are.」

The black mage laughed, still sprawled face-down on the floor.

The seniors stared at him but didn’t touch him. Whether it was because he looked like he’d die at the slightest touch, or because they couldn’t understand the mage’s Imperial language, was unclear.

Only Kairos reacted.

I lightly furrowed my brow and stopped my kin as he took a step forward.

“Kai.”

Kairos stopped short.

“I—”

At that moment, the mage expelled something onto his palm.

A hazy image, like an Earth hologram, appeared in the air.

An image.

No—fragments of memory.

A fragment I had once revealed only to Kyle.

That memory shard played vividly inside the fuselage.