The Past of This Land

Once the man lost his temper, he stopped caring about anything else. He only ordered the crew to land nearby, but there was nowhere to land in a place like this. Where were they supposed to go?

"Didn't you hear me?! Land! Quickly! Hurry!!!"

However, the strange atmosphere finally jolted the man awake.

There was something abnormal in the air.

The smell of blood.

Why was there...

The pilot was twisting his body restlessly, his eyes bloodshot and stained purple...

The copilot finally lost control of the Honkai Energy remaining in the air. He howled, opened his mouth wide, and bit down on the neck of the crew member beside him!

"What's going on...? No... No, no, no!"

The man screamed and collapsed inside the cabin. Trembling, he pulled out an exquisite pistol and pointed it at the pilot, who was struggling free of his safety harness and looked completely insane.

"No. Stay right there! Don't move! Don't come any closer, don't come any closer—ahhhhhhhh!!!!"

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When chaos swept through the entire camp, fear quickly spread among the crowd.

However, barbed wire surrounded the area, blocking every route to freedom. The panicked people could only vent their madness inside the camp.

Yet that could not stop one person after another from collapsing in the crowd.

The next moment, a sudden gale swept in. The tents originally meant to offer the camp some basic protection from the wind and snow were ripped from the ground!!

"What happened outside?!"

All the soldiers around the camp were drawn to the hurricane.

Once the black tents had been blown away, everything suddenly became clear.

It was like a battle between gods from mythology...

The terrain had been completely altered, and Originium Arts flew wildly in every direction, beyond control.

When the formation of soldiers, each seemingly wrapped in a black raincoat and able to wield Originium Arts with a casual wave, appeared before Yelena, she understood why these Infected had been driven here.

Every time those people who looked like Arts Casters released Originium Arts, someone on this side fell!

What did they think the Infected were?!

Yet before little Yelena's anger could even ignite, a huge purple circle lit up behind the military formation.

In an instant, destruction arrived.

Those people who had treated the Infected as disposable batteries, squandering their Originium Arts, were simply and cleanly hit by a devastating attack.

It seemed to always happen this way. When she had hated the overseers at the mine, the entire mine had been wiped out as though it, too, had been a victim.

The curse had saved her.

When she had hated those Arts Casters, sudden destruction had eradicated them completely.

It had not even given her time to let her hatred burn.

Was this a curse, or was it luck?

However, when she looked into the sky, Yelena's eyes locked onto the glowing purple object suspended in midair.

It was something more familiar to her than anything else, yet also more unfamiliar than anything else.

That existence which seemed to live eternally within her nightmares, entangling her without rest no matter when...

Snow Demon...

Why was it here too...

P.S. In Watch Dogs, the cops at the gates were all in league with the gangsters. I went to fight the gang, someone outside reported the gunfight, and then the cops came out specifically to shoot me.

The gangsters and the cops teamed up against me, the extrajudicial enforcer???????

That's Ubisoft for you.

Section Thirty-Eight: The Past of This Land

In the sky, the burning aircraft was plummeting toward the ground. Countless people lay dead or wounded below, and even the terrain had been changed.

Operation Snow Removal could be considered a complete failure.

But that was only natural. After all, whenever the wheels of history moved forward, they would inevitably crush countless insects.

"The farce is finally over. The military really does get worse every year."

Yaga had already lost interest in the outcome of the battle. She turned and prepared to leave.

She had already gained a rough understanding of the true Snow Demon's combat strength, so everything afterward would be much simpler.

In the eyes of a god, all this fighting was merely an assessment. As she looked down upon the land, her entire body radiated a feeling of merciless rationality.

No matter what happened or what results emerged, she viewed death with utter indifference.

"Are you in such a hurry to find the Snow Demon?"

With his arms crossed, Koschei stood amid the wind and snow, watching everything that happened below the cliff.

"It's not her turn yet. In my eyes, she's only barely a little stronger than those old fossils from before."

This world needed to speak through pure strength.

The strong devoured the weak. The strong survived, while the defeated lost everything.

To humanity's tiny, ant-like beings, physically eradicating an army seemed extremely difficult, even impossible. But when viewed from a position beyond humanity, it was not even worth considering a problem.

Forget the mysterious beings in the deep sea—even the forbidden zones north of Ursus were dangerous areas humans could barely approach, and mysterious beings dwelled in all of them.

Whether they were mysterious beings standing on humanity's side or those that maintained ancient traditions and continued sleeping in uninhabited lands, they were beyond the imagination of such tiny creatures as humans.

Eradicating an army with a casual gesture was nothing remarkable in a god's eyes.

Even an old schemer like Koschei, who preferred to remain behind the scenes, could do it.

A single monarch could throw the entire land into chaos.

Not to mention a god.

However, the true identity of this Snow Demon was somewhat difficult to make out. Could some ancient existence have awakened, complete with a case of morning temper?

Yaga planned to find a suitable time to meet this Snow Demon.

Of course, Koschei merely watched Yaga leave with a subtle smile.

Yaga would never have imagined that all of this was actually Koschei's doing.

Even the Snow Demon was his subtle ally.

Of course, at least for the time being, they were still allies.

What could be confirmed was that the Army Group's actions could no longer be undone. The Empire would certainly hold someone accountable for this.

That gave them a reason to weaken military power, while the generals and old nobles gained another reason to seize power.

Excellent. This was excellent. It perfectly matched his expectations.

And next...

"The Empire is about to change."

Koschei gazed at the fiery-red horizon and spoke.

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The Empire was indeed about to change, but that was not what Kal'tsit cared about.

When she arrived at this plain, everything had changed.

Most of the original ice field had evaporated. White mist filled the sky, while nothing remained below but blackened earth.

Molten crystals and huge Originium Crystals lay exposed to the air, grotesque and sinister.

This land looked like hell.

No, this was hell.

Charred corpses on the ground. Corpses torn into pieces. Corpses still giving off a scorched odor.

Everything resembled a scene from hell.

But Kal'tsit did not pay much attention to any of it.

Or rather, she no longer had the energy to care about—or even pity—the unfortunate lives upon this land.

If one's compassion overflowed too freely, it would amount to nothing more than pity spoken aloud.

After climbing the slope, Kal'tsit quickly saw the remains of the enormous machine resting in the crater.

The residual heat had yet to dissipate from the scorched earth. Kal'tsit climbed up without hesitation, paying no heed to whether her shoes could withstand the heat in the soil or to the metal fragments scattered everywhere.

Because in her eyes, something even more important than herself was here, and she needed to find it.

Fortunately, the entire machine had been sliced apart by the Snow Demon's attack. Its arms and legs had all been cleanly severed, leaving only the massive torso wreckage fallen here, which allowed Kal'tsit to climb onto it.

Perhaps driven by fate, or perhaps because Kal'tsit knew the secret of this place, she had never participated in this operation, yet she knew where the central control area of this enormous humanoid weapon was.

The deputy director's life or death was unknown, but Kal'tsit's attention was not on that.

As she had said, the suffering of this land had already exceeded what one person's heart could contain through compassion.

The so-called trolley problem ultimately amounted to choosing the optimal option.

When the woman's hand touched the back of the machine's neck, it was still emitting great amounts of steam despite having cooled for some time in Ursus's cold. Yet she did not give up.

The entire armor had nearly melted apart. Beneath layer upon layer of armor, the epidermis resembling biological tissue had long since rotted away. The ejection port, heavily protected beneath it all, had melted and deformed, and the mechanical structure no longer resembled its original form.

The metal surface was like a branding iron. Yet even while enduring excruciating pain in all ten fingers, trying to pry the metal armor open by hand was far too optimistic.

"Mon3tr! Tear it open."

The woman growled out a name. Instantly, a mass of black matter appeared behind her.

The monster shrieked. Its sharp forelimbs pierced directly into the metal surface, tearing and biting at the already-melted metal structure like a true beast and brutally ripping a large opening in the surface.

With the obstruction gone, the central device finally activated the emergency ejection procedure remaining in its programming.

The procedure had originally been built in. However, when the machine later passed through the deputy director's hands, he had not considered it at all. The original biological weapon could be used repeatedly, but after the experiment failed, it was handed over to the deputy director.

The deputy director had treated it as a disposable product, so he naturally no longer needed the ejection mechanism. However, since the structure already existed, he had merely hastily added several layers of armor to increase its defensive power.

The central component embedded deep in the spinal cord was ejected in an emergency. It looked like an insertion bolt, and a large amount of scalding steam erupted alongside it!

When the boiling heat met the low temperature outside, it instantly became white mist. The woman paid no attention to the heat that could easily burn her skin. She gripped the bolt's latch with both hands and forcefully pressed it down.

As the latch came loose, the metal sealing door opened downward, and heat poured through the gap.

Now that the door was open, the rest was simple. Mon3tr shrieked and tore open the door, which could not fully open because of its deformation, allowing the woman to bend down and squeeze into the cramped space.

Most of the original buffer fluid had evaporated. The rest had leaked into the machine as the chamber was crushed and deformed. By the time it was ejected, no buffer fluid remained inside.

It was pitch-black inside, with not a trace of light, but she could still make out the thin figure bound motionlessly in the cockpit.

"I hope you haven't wasted my investment too easily..."

Kal'tsit placed a hand against the figure's neck and only relaxed after confirming that it still had a pulse.

"You're lucky... and, of course, unlucky too."

As she spoke, the monster behind her used its forelimbs to cut through the restraints.

Kal'tsit herself was not a physically strong researcher, yet when she dragged the figure out, she felt as if what she was pulling weighed even less than she did.

It was emaciated, as though she were dragging out a black cat.

When sunlight rose above the horizon again...

Kal'tsit finally saw what she had dragged out.

Under the light of the rising sun, the pale face revealed the beauty of an inorganic object. It looked like the face of a doll.