Black Badger

“A, I didn’t kill him. Just in case you’re misunderstanding.”

“Then did Senior Sylvia kill him?”

When I asked bluntly, Leonard’s smile widened.

“Neither. To be precise, his status is unknown.”

“I heard you had eyes on him.”

“I did. But as of yesterday, he stopped moving from one location. It’s somewhere we can’t access, so I couldn’t go check.”

What the hell is all this?

As I stood there looking dumbfounded, Leonard turned his body slightly and added an explanation.

“You’ve heard the story about Doug colluding with the Anti-Badger group, right?”

“Yes.”

Yehyeon had told the deserter apprehension team that much—that Doug Clark had joined hands with the Anti-Badgers and was siphoning Green Dream off somewhere.

Strictly speaking, that wasn’t wrong.

“Doug visited the Green Dream production plant yesterday. But then he didn’t move at all while inside the facility grounds. I was curious enough to want to check it out, but as you know, Green Dream plants have extremely tight security.”

Damn it.

How did Doug Clark even get in there? Don’t tell me the factory owner is a human traitor?

We didn’t have enough information.

“Let’s talk details after we get to the quarters.”

I nodded and followed behind the solidly built senior.

When we walked over to a café inside the airport, Sylvia lazily rose from her chair.

A pale-skinned, silver-haired senior who looked almost washed of pigment.

She saw me and smiled softly.

“Long time no see.”

That was a chilling smile.

“That pitch-black pillar of a man over there—he’s your kind, right?”

Sharp ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ as a ghost.

I smiled bitterly as I followed Sylvia’s gaze behind me. Igor and I had taken the same flight, but we’d come separately. Our seats were far apart, and we hadn’t spoken after landing either.

But people like Yun seemed to sense something strange from us.

Since we had Yehyeon’s permission—and the mission itself was already a bit outside the norm—Igor’s accompanying me shouldn’t be a major problem.

With an awkward smile, I said,

“He won’t get in the way.”

“I don’t mind.”

Sylvia replied without wiping the smile from her face.

Leonard answered right away.

“I don’t mind either. More hands are always welcome.”

“Igor.”

I called to my subordinate, who was staring intently at the cakes lined up in the café display case.

“Let’s go.”

Igor straightened up and looked at us.

The man, who reminded me in many ways of a pitch-black guard dog, adjusted the backpack slung over his right shoulder and strode over.

This guy had never gained much fame relative to his ability, even back in the Empire. The reason was simple.

He never tried to hide what he was thinking.

“What’s with them.”

That was the first thing he said the moment he saw Sylvia and Leonard.

Before Igor could elaborate further, I drove my elbow into his side.

“Ugh.”

“Stop talking and move, you unemployed bum.”

Memories of all the trouble this idiot had caused me in the Empire came bubbling back up.

“They’re both my seniors.”

Fortunately, Igor shut his mouth.

He stopped right behind me and even tipped his head slightly toward Sylvia and Leonard. If the other party had been Jason Trevain or Richard Green, he would’ve gotten chewed out for calling that a greeting, but the deserter apprehension team didn’t care.

Leonard just smiled broadly and waved his hand, while Sylvia quietly examined Igor before turning away.

We got into Leonard’s car and headed for the residential quarters.

***

Seunghyun was skeptical about the rescue team.

Before coming to Core 3, I’d had a lesson with Seunghyun. It had been a while since I’d taught anyone, so I’d been a bit worried, but it turned out to be a surprisingly substantial session. Lee Seunghyun was as exemplary a student as ever. Whatever I taught him, he absorbed immediately.

He’d reached the point where, when he tried to release a sword strike, he could do so stably.

The shape and density still had a long way to go, but still.

His rate of acquisition was impressive enough to make one click their tongue. If he’d been in the Empire, everyone would have coveted him. Kyle, of course, and even Kysis or the imperial family would’ve set their sights on him.

His personality was a bit... well. He wouldn’t have gotten along with Kysis.

In any case, if he’d been in the Empire, he was the sort of man who would unquestionably have walked the path of the sword.

After staring fixedly at me as I handed him a towel and told him he’d done well, the man with such outstanding talent spoke.

‘In the end, you’ll have to go out.’

When I blinked, my student added an explanation.

‘The rescue team will fail. It’d be best to prepare to go out.’

‘You already know.’

Seunghyun took the towel from me as I smiled wryly.

After wiping the sweat from his face with the white towel, he looked at me again.

‘I even know the members of the rescue team.’

‘And you don’t like that lineup? But there isn’t a single Badger who meets your standards anyway.’

‘Yes. Which is why the rescue operation cannot succeed.’

As ever, he was brutally realistic and pessimistic.

‘No matter who you add to the mix, the probability of success doesn’t increase meaningfully. Unless you yourself go in. If you only pick the most tolerable fighters and send them, it might succeed, but the success rate wouldn’t justify the people committed. They’ve never encountered magic and don’t know how to respond to it.’

‘But as Yehyeon says, if I go out right now, it’ll only raise suspicion. While buying time to dispel that suspicion, we should try to block the Green Dream leak.’

‘If he gave up on the rescue, it would be resolved, but he won’t make that choice.’

‘He’s your son. At least call him by his name.’

I scolded him, dumbfounded by the way Seunghyun referred to Yehyeon as “he.”

Seunghyun pretended not to hear my last bit of nagging.

While I was mentally adding to Lee Seunghyun’s list of sins, he grumbled,

‘You won’t abandon the kidnapped either.’

‘And while we’re at it, we should recon the enemy camp too.’

After a small smile, I tossed the sweat-soaked towel into the basket.

‘If the rescue team succeeds, that’d be ideal, but....’

‘What are you going to do with that rabble.’

‘Lee Seunghyun. Don’t you ever think your standards are too high?’

Seunghyun answered with his eyes that he did not.

I couldn’t hold it in and let out a sigh.

How hard must it have been for Yehyeon to grow up under someone like this. Once this urgent situation passed, I decided I’d bring ice cream over on one of Yehyeon’s days off. No doubt this twisted man had never once bought his son ice cream.

‘There’s pressure from above to abandon the hostages.’

Seunghyun said in a low voice.

I wasn’t surprised.

‘We can’t abandon everyone who gets captured. If we can save them this time, we should. And the Green Dream leak needs to be stopped as soon as possible. So tell me—do you know anything?’

This is what I heard from Seunghyun afterward.

Green Dream.

It was also the name of an injection used to euthanize whales. When whales washed ashore and were dying, they were euthanized by injecting barbiturates, and that injection fluid was said to glow fluorescent green.

A whale’s central nervous system was too large and complex to euthanize it the same way as other animals. Even electrical shocks to the brain took too long to reach the heart. Cutting arteries also led to a long, drawn-out death. Massive animals did not die instantly.

The final mercy granted to whales as they died slowly.

The Green Dream that weakened Black Badgers was named after that injection.

Its origin.

‘It was created by one of the scientists working in a lab that was sealed off at the time.’

Seunghyun didn’t give me the name, and I didn’t ask.

‘Without it, the Black Badger organization would never have been founded.’

That made sense. Without a means to subdue those with enhanced bodies, people would never have accepted them. Even now, they were a perennial hot potato—things that could seize control of the world if they felt like it.

In any case, the drug created that way to suppress Badgers was managed under strict control. It flowed only to Black Badger Headquarters and the police.

In principle, that was how it was supposed to be.

But reality never followed principles.

As we’d seen in the Colosseum, there were things being siphoned off behind the scenes. When diverted to criminal organizations, it was usually diluted again and again, its efficacy reduced.

But the kin outside the Cores used pure Green Dream.

“Core 3 is where the factories that produce Green Dream are,”

Leonard said with a grin, spreading documents across an empty room in the Black Badger residential quarters.

“It’s a wealthy Core. That’s why the sky route connecting it to Center Core is maintained.”

“Where did you get these?”

“Doug Clark’s house.”

As I looked down at the items laid out on the bed, Sylvia answered flatly.

“We were originally just going to go watch, but he looked dead, so I took everything last night.”

He didn’t have much luggage.

As a fugitive, he wouldn’t have been able to carry much. A cigarette pack with only a few sticks left. A lighter with the brand scraped off. Two pistols slick with oil. The leather of his wallet was worn and frayed, and inside were cash and condoms.

In the card slot, a single black business card was tucked in.

“What’s this?”

“Proof of collusion.”

Leonard smiled as he sat down on a wheeled chair.

“Among the Anti-Badger members we’ve run into, every human with a halfway decent job had one of those. No idea why they wrote that word on it, though.”

「Titanomachia」

One word was written in gold italics at the center of the black card.

A sneer slipped out of me without my realizing it.

Titanomachia. The war between the Titans and Zeus. In that war, Zeus was victorious, drove out Cronos, and seized power.

I knew why the Elders called us Titans. Even without their bothering to explain, I could guess.

It meant overthrowing those who had bestowed immortality and placing themselves on Olympus.

In the end, we would be forced to give up our seats, while they drank nectar and ambrosia and looked down on the rest of humanity.

Arrogant bastards.

“Who are the Anti-Badger members Doug Clark was in contact with?”

“Unfortunately, they’re all just humans. I printed their profiles out over there.”

Sylvia spoke while disassembling her favorite rifle.

I checked the spot she indicated with the barrel.

A thick stack of A4 papers in a clear file. I pulled the profiles out and skimmed through them lightly.

Names of those we hadn’t yet made contact with were marked in yellow highlighter. There weren’t many. It seemed they’d met most of them one way or another.

Quite a flashy list of backers.

“We haven’t made contact with the most important party yet, though.”

Leonard said, trying—and failing—to hide his boredom.

“He’s a major player in the distribution industry that transports Green Dream. It seems the drug is leaking out somewhere through him. But he’s such a big shot that people like us can’t get a meeting.”

“How far does our authority extend? After we verify a certain amount, I think we’ll need to hand it over to the courts.”

“For now, there are two objectives. First, meet the chairman of P&T Pharmaceuticals, the owner of the Green Dream factory, and obtain factory access rights. Second, retrieve Doug Clark’s body. Once we confirm Doug Clark’s corpse, we’ll hand it over to Legal. We were dispatched here because of Doug Clark, after all.”

So the deserter Badger dying had tangled everything up.

The original plan had been to capture the deserter alive, interrogate him, and grab the tail.

As Leonard said, the moment we recovered Doug Clark’s body, what we could do would be greatly reduced. A Badger’s authority was limited to matters involving Creatures and Badgers.

“Are we even sure that deserter Badger is dead?”

Igor, who had been leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, finally broke his silence.

“He could’ve just ditched the tracker halfway. How can you trust these guys’ judgment?”

“That’s entirely possible. Personally, I hope that’s the case.”

Leonard replied without looking offended in the slightest.

Rather, the blond man rested both arms on the armrests and smiled broadly.

“That way, there’s something to look forward to.”

“I want you to hurry up and set a meeting with the P&T chairman, Hildebert.”

At Sylvia’s abrupt remark, I lifted my head from the documents.

I widened my eyes and looked at her pale face.

“Me?”

Why me?

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“You’re handsome.”

?

The more we talked, the deeper into a maze it felt like we were falling.

As I stared at her with a dumb expression, Leonard smiled and said,

“The P&T chairman is young. He’s been married for, what, three years? Two? And he’s remarkably good-looking. He hasn’t been chairman for long, but people say he’s been running the company quite competently.”

“...I see?”

“He’s also famous for having entered into a loveless strategic marriage with his current wife. The chairman likes men.”

I stared at the two sociopathic seniors.

After looking at them for a long moment, I spoke.

“Are you seriously telling me to use a honey trap?”

“I hear the chairman’s wife also likes handsome men. If you’re not the chairman’s type, maybe you’re the wife’s. They’re both young and bold, apparently. Especially the woman. There’s even a rumor the chairman has someone he’s had his eye on lately. Though that’s not particularly important information.”

“No, but there’s no way this will work.”

I was at a loss.

“They’re the chairman and his wife of a major corporation. How could things possibly go that easily?”

“I think it will. You’ve got a pretext, too. You know how famous you got over the amusement park incident. I bet they’d be willing to give a factory tour to a famous Badger visiting Core 3.”

“Senior.”

Wondering where, exactly, things had gone wrong, I spread both palms toward the ceiling.

“I’m really not... I’m not that much.”

***

The appointment was set.

Just one day after I sent the email.

“Ha, hahaha!”

Igor laughed his head off as he watched me frozen in front of the screen.

“Oh, figures.”

Meanwhile, the two sociopaths weren’t surprised at all.

Sylvia checked the time and date, then disappeared, saying she’d be acting independently until then. Leonard smiled, grabbed my shoulder, and said,

“Human charm solves quite a lot of problems.”

“...Are these people even sane?”

“Have a good trip. I’ll be waiting here like a good boy.”

Leonard winked at me.

“Go win us an access pass with your charm.”

And so, I ended up heading off with Igor to meet the pharmaceutical company chairman and his wife....