Black Badger

“Send air support.”

Ska spoke as he ran up the stairs.

“Deploy every drone we can launch! And contact the portal company—tell them to redirect every portal they can activate to this location. Prepare the helicopters!”

“Is there no spare portal device?!”

Yoow screamed hysterically as he followed Ska.

“Fuck, I’ve never once seen those bastards at the portal company do their job properly!”

The underground was blocked.

The barrier the mage had erected had not lifted. Even when the Titans including Yoow rushed there, nothing changed. Igor’s sword strike failed to break the barrier, and because there were scientists inside it, they couldn’t blow up the underground either.

The one who realized the enemy’s intentions first was Yoow.

He was the one who arrived at the portal zone a moment later than the leadership.

He had brought not only Igor, Rose, and Deltei, but also a crowd of unfamiliar faces. Those who followed Yoow were all armed in one way or another.

Normally, they would never have been allowed inside the Black Badger headquarters.

But at that moment, no one paid attention to the strangers.

In fact, when Ska spotted Yoow, he shouted urgently.

“Can you guess what they’re trying to do?”

The strategist stood frozen, staring blankly at the barrier.

For a brief moment, every person in the portal zone looked at him.

Then the man grabbed his hair with both hands and tore at it.

“Cowardly bastards!”

Yoow roared.

Bobby Winter actually flinched and stepped back in surprise.

“You fucking bastards! Fucking bastards!! I’m ashamed to share a species with you! Your pride won’t let you bow your heads and come in, is that it?! You want us to clean up your mess?!”

“What?”

Hesh muttered in confusion.

“What’s wrong with him all of a sudden?”

“Just die!”

Yoow screamed.

“Just die, you idiots! You stupid fools! Weaklings! Get lost! Get lost! If you all disappeared together, the average IQ of this world would rise by thirty points!”

“Strategist!”

Igor grabbed Yoow’s shoulder roughly.

“Calm down! What the hell is wrong with you?!”

That was the turning point.

Like a robot whose power had suddenly been switched off, Yoow abruptly stopped shouting. Then he cast a chilling gaze at the Black Badgers staring at him in shock.

The man who had been standing there gloomily looked at Ska Owen, who was calmly waiting for an answer, and spoke.

“There is only one answer.”

His voice dripped with disgust.

“I hope I’m wrong... but that doesn’t seem very likely.”

Ska Owen did not question Yoow’s explanation.

He accepted the strategist’s guess exactly as it was. Listening expressionlessly, he turned his head the moment he understood the situation and issued orders to the Badgers.

“Go up.”

The first to react were Ricardo, Jonathan, Yehyeon, and Jason Trevain.

“Break through the top-floor portal!”

Ska Owen ran as well.

And so things reached this point.

Those who had abandoned the underground and burst back up to the surface. Running to retake the portal zone on the top floor, Ska began making calls.

He was trying to support the Black Badgers on the front line.

He knew they were severely lacking in manpower there.

If things were delayed any longer, the entire front-line unit might really be wiped out.

When reinforcements finally arrived, it would not be surprising if the report stated that every Black Badger except Hildebert had already died.

Exactly what Kyle wanted.

But as Yoow had said, securing a spare portal immediately was not easy.

There simply were not many portals humans could use inside Center Core. And they couldn’t just cram people into cargo transport portals.

Only places like the elders’ mansions had one or two portals suitable for human travel.

But what were the elders doing now?

Weren’t they all dead?

Maybe only Erich Erhart had survived.

His mansion probably wasn’t intact either. It was impossible to know whether Spitfire himself had survived in one piece.

Ska did not have the leisure to ask after the well-being of miserable men who thought themselves unfortunate merely because they had not obtained the power they desired.

Still, should he have taken the time earlier to contact them and check their status?

As if reading his thoughts, Yehyeon approached while stabbing a Creature to death.

“I’ll contact Spitfire.”

His morphing weapon clung to his arm like jagged coral, writhing strangely.

“And Wei...”

“I’ll handle that.”

The fourth elder, Wei, was notorious for never answering calls from the Black Badgers.

But Ska knew that her subordinate, Liu O’Neill, would answer.

“Break through the top floor.”

“Yes.”

“All elevators are down!”

Asil reported.

He had just forced open every elevator door together with Leeho.

“All the cables are cut!”

“Stairs.”

Gilbert said sharply beside them.

“Split into three stairwells and go up!”

The Badgers split into four groups in the lobby.

The place was in chaos from civilian employees evacuating in a hurry. Creatures swarmed everywhere. Car keys, ID cards, wallets, and torn flower bouquets littered the floor.

The elevator entrances, pried open to check whether they still worked, gaped like black mouths but did not move.

The Black Badgers stabbed down Creatures that seemed strangely unmotivated to attack and ran toward the stairwell entrances.

The Titans, including Yoow, also sprinted for the stairs.

“How did those things know they had to cut the elevator cables?!”

Only the first-generation Badgers did not head for the stairs.

Instead, they ran outside the building.

As if climbing the headquarters exterior would be much faster than navigating stairs full of obstacles.

“You two.”

Gilbert stopped Ricardo and Jonathan as they tried to follow them outside.

“You stay beside Aide Ska.”

The two immediately understood.

They nodded and moved beside Ska with their rifles ready.

Ska noticed them but had no time to speak.

Instead, he pressed his phone to his ear and headed outside.

Their comrades cleared the path for them. In this situation, they didn’t even glance at Ska, who was casually making a phone call.

Instead, they quickly switched their weapons from firearms to cold steel.

Jonathan drew his sword.

Ricardo transformed his morphing weapon into a spear.

Without a word, they cut down the Creatures blocking their path.

Stabbing and kicking them aside, they opened a path.

The moment they stepped outside—

The fourth elder’s subordinate answered the call.

[Ska?]

They had been comrades during the Second War.

Five of them had been particularly close.

Then two of them died.

One of those two, Liu O’Neill, had suddenly reappeared one day before Ska—now as the subordinate of the fourth elder.

Ska had kept the fact that Liu O’Neill was alive and living happily hidden from his two friends until now.

[What’s wrong? Do you need support?]

“Of course I do!”

He had intended to keep it secret forever.

But he forgot he shouldn’t say the name.

There had been no time to think of such things.

Ska’s mind was already overflowing with other thoughts.

A way to close the distance.

Subordinates who had not received support in time.

Creatures flooding in like a tidal wave.

Titans charging toward death in pursuit of revenge.

Ska Owen wanted to tear apart the corpse of the Supreme Commander who had burned to death. That man should have died in far greater misery.

If only the Supreme Commander had listened to the proposal he and Yehyeon made just a few hours earlier...

[What kind of support?]

“Portal!”

Ska shouted while staring up at the top floor of headquarters.

“Bring a portal device!”

[A portal device?]

Liu O’Neill’s voice sounded startled.

[A human-use one? We do have one, but it’s difficult to move it immediately. As you know, portal devices are delicate, and we only have one...]

“Liu O’Neill.”

Ska growled.

“Do you even have the nerve to lift your head in front of me?”

Ricardo whipped his head around.

The man who had been stabbing Creatures suddenly lost focus.

A Creature lunged toward him.

Jonathan sliced it clean in half.

The swordsman frowned.

“Rick. Focus.”

But Ricardo did not answer.

His green eyes widened as he stared at Ska.

Unlike Jonathan, he had clearly heard the name Liu O’Neill.

Of course, Ska didn’t notice Ricardo’s reaction.

“Fine!”

Ska snapped.

“If you can’t send the portal device immediately, then send something!”

The normally relaxed man shouted with veins bulging in his neck.

“Do something! Do something, damn it! If you’re a war hero too!”

SMASH!

The phone shattered as a Creature struck it directly.

Ska Owen lowered his empty hand, breathing heavily, and drew his gun.

Then he tore off his tie and pulled the trigger repeatedly.

RATATATAT!

A path opened again.

Following the brief corridor created by the pile of Creature corpses, they could see the headquarters wall they would have to climb.

“Let’s go.”

Ska spoke to his blinking friend.

“No other way. Retaking the occupied top floor seems fastest.”

“...Who were you talking to?”

Ricardo asked.

His voice carried a coldness he had tried to hide but failed.

“There aren’t two lunatics hiring actors to pretend to be dead people like Jonathan...”

“I’m sorry.”

Ska replied in a low voice.

“I planned to hide it ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ for life.”

“Ha.”

“When this is over, I’ll explain everything. You might not want to hear it, but first let’s put out the fire in front of us.”

“I’m not curious.”

Ricardo said coolly.

His green eyes held the cruelty he had been born with but always tried to suppress.

“He’s already dead to me. But it pisses me off that I visited his memorial every year—and one year I even punched a junior after coming back from it.”

“I’m really sorry. But even if you hadn’t gone to the memorial that year, you probably would’ve punched Hilde anyway.”

“Focus.”

SHING!

Jonathan swung his sword and glared at them irritably.

“What are you doing? The path’s gone.”

Ska and Ricardo fell silent and looked at Jonathan Kudo.

When Liu O’Neill hadn’t returned, he had been the one who wandered the most among the three of them.

But now he had probably forgotten O’Neill’s name entirely.

Jonathan had erased the dead comrade from his world.

Since that man could not exist in the past Jonathan reconstructed, he endured the loss by forgetting him entirely.

Ricardo and Jonathan had once fought fiercely about that.

Ricardo had said he couldn’t understand how Jonathan could say such things.

“So if I die, you’ll forget me too?” had been the bitter exchange.

But those days were long gone.

And now was not the time for that.

“Sorry~.”

Ricardo’s morphing weapon melted into the floor.

“Let’s go...”

BOOOOM!

Spikes burst upward.

The approaching Creatures were impaled and died instantly.

When the green-eyed man retrieved his weapon, a path of corpses remained.

The three men ran across the bodies toward the wall.

Without another word, they fired their wires and began climbing the headquarters.

Their seniors were already far above.

“Let’s climb fast so no one says we fell behind.”

The three began ascending the headquarters.

***

Shu Diamond saw a spatial gate open inside her house.