The Spark

Yelena was always very mindful of the weapon in Chlorine Sodium's hands.

In many people's impressions, wasn't a doctor a healer? Why... were they so familiar with weaponry?

She broke open the folding barrels, pulled two 12-gauge buckshot shells from her pocket to load inside, and then snapped the breech shut with a crisp clack.

She used it with utter familiarity, coming naturally.

Scan, lock on, raise the barrel.

Without any hesitation, she pulled the trigger.

The sharp, echoing crack startled a massive flock of flying birds...

Chlorine Sodium was direct in a way that didn't feel like a doctor at all; she looked far more like a warrior.

And in the distance, a small patch of something resembling a snowy landscape collapsed in response. If not for that object suddenly vanishing from the field of vision, Yelena would never have thought it was a living thing, taking it instead for a mere drift of snow clustered with branches.

"Tonight's dinner is settled."

The young girl said just like that.

"Was the purple shooting star filmed around here?"

An Emperor's Royal Guard clad entirely in black appeared uninvited and unnoticeable within the winter woods, holding an unclear photograph in a black-gloved hand.

The photo showed the night sky, captured by a group of fanatical Stargazers.

There were many people in Terra enthusiastic about observing the night sky. Even though it was becoming increasingly difficult to do so now, under the augmentation of limited Originium Arts, there were still those who could observe the heavens and draw certain divinatory conclusions.

Of course, what the Emperor's Royal Guard wanted was not the starry sky in this photograph, but the location where this astrophotography had been taken.

Because they had discovered the intelligence they needed right in the corner of this picture.

It was an unremarkable spot in the edge of the frame, where a purple shooting-star-like object was cutting across the night sky. However, due to the camera's resolution, it merely captured the fleeting moment the meteor streaked past, making it far too blurry.

Even so, that shade of purple closely matched the color of the beam of light seen by the garrison stationed several dozen kilometers away from the mine at the time.

A purple beam of light.

And now, the Emperor's Royal Guard stood right at the shooting location provided by the photo's owner. Traces of burned brushwood still remained here, along with the anchor holes left by a tent in the snow.

It was confirmed to be the right place.

That suspicious purple meteor had passed through here and headed south.

Though he didn't quite believe such a narrative and result, this was the only clue—or rather, a clue that might potentially be a clue.

After all, no one knew what kind of existence it was that had created such a massive crater, which meant the searchable range was vastly larger.

It could not be thought of in conventional ways; who knew if that thing could fly, right?

"Where is there a place to stay in the south?"

The guard's icy interrogation was filtered by his helmet, becoming exceptionally eerie, much like a demon opening its mouth to speak.

"Uh... down south, the nearest places are just three dilapidated villages, because any further south is Kutsk City, and there are no eyewitness reports there at all... so..."

The speaker was a man wearing a black dogskin hat. The previously sealed air-filtration unit was now wide open, since wearing it tightly bound for so long was stifling.

The Infected Enforcement Squad generally only put on those air filters when approaching the Infected to keep from getting infected themselves. Originally just a mutual-aid organization formed by local ruffians and vagrants who banded together to drive out the Infected to avoid catching it themselves, they had gradually grown larger and larger, eventually transforming into the semi-official organization they were now. Compared to bureaucrats and government employees, these uncommissioned fellows saved the government and local lords money by skipping salaries while boosting internal staffing benefits.

As for how they made money, no one cared. Giving them extremely vague law enforcement rights was enough, and they could figure out the rest themselves. In short, the assigned tasks had to be completed, but not a single penny of pay was given; the price in return was the tacit approval of the local lords.

Neither acknowledging nor opposing it, they bullied the poor anyway—who cared about the lives of the paupers?

These people now relied on clothes like a horse on its saddle, turning into the vanguard for scraping up wealth and hunting down the Infected while looking somewhat respectable in unified attire.

Because they lacked internal establishment positions, these fellows usually still had to pay taxes as normal after looting. This deepened the suffering of the lower classes, but it also sustained the rule over Ursus's massive territory.

After all, the land was simply too vast, the population too sparse. The military had to remain stationed at the borders, police and covert operatives had to secure the safety of the major cities, and the quality and quantity of the private armies under the lords varied wildly. Wanting to manage sprawling territories and these out-of-reach villages naturally required a batch of free cannon fodder.

Thus, the Enforcement Squad was born.

The lackey-like captain of the Enforcement Squad hastily unfolded a map, pointing out the locations of the aforementioned three dilapidated villages.

Towns and settlements couldn't move alongside mobile cities; these villages possessed a high degree of mobility, but a specific positional range still existed—they couldn't wander too far off anyway.

Because they were too small and had too few people, they were basically never marked on maps. Only the Infected Enforcement Squad, who were familiar with this region, knew the number and locations of the surrounding villages.

After all, who could ever forget a place to make money?

"However, one of the southernmost villages has already been abandoned, and the last two still have some old folks living there."

Wearing a face full of ingratiating smiles, the small captain subserviently explained the situation of one of the villages.

"When my brothers went to inspect it last month, they found that no one was there anymore. It might be because of reduced yields from the snow and wind; the whole family must have packed up and migrated."

"An unmanned village?"

"Precisely."

No one?

This clue was indeed very important.

The Emperor's Royal Guard didn't care about the bootlicking of the lackey beside him. After all, who at his level would care about these pariahs and beasts below?

Yet this piece of intelligence was crucial. After all, a place devoid of people was suitable for concealment. If that meteor were to descend upon an inhabited village—assuming it could—naturally it would have been seen by people. With the eyewitness records in hand being so sparse right now, it must have gone somewhere unnoticed.

Of course, this was based strictly on the premise that it was a living creature and needed to rest. If this meteor wasn't a living entity at all, or some other kind of existence entirely, and didn't need to stop and rest midway, or didn't need to specifically find a place to rest, then that would be another matter entirely and require deliberation from a fresh perspective.

"Go there first."

"Yes."

ps: I actually got scammed out of ten yuan when I went out today. An old lady asked me for incense money. MD, do proselytizers now start asking for money too??? When I was in school, Christian missionaries always gave me things; now Buddhists don't give me things and instead ask me for money. The internal competition is truly terrifying. Shrugs.

Section 9: Chapter 9: A Spark

Living in the mountains was pretty nice.

It was a pity that there was nothing here, let alone any seasonings.

Although Chlorine Sodium, as a wicked arrangement-making senior traveler who had crossed multiple timelines and long since seen great winds and waves, still had a bit of research when it came to cooking, given that she inherently loved life and enjoyed peaceful daily routines.

She knew a thing or two.

Yet a clever housewife could struggle even with no rice to cook; no matter how proficient one was at cooking, there was no way to create something out of thin air, and a lack of seasonings truly left one helpless.

Fortunately, she still had a dagger in her hand.

In an unseen corner, gathered firewood was piled together, then ignited by the flames on the blade of the crimson greatsword protruding from the void.

An overpowered attack was really convenient.

Cooking indoors was out of the question. The only way was the same as last time: piercing the simply processed meat with a knife and roasting it over the fire.

There were no condiments, let alone any sauces; one could only eat the most primal flavor.

Chlorine Sodium definitely wasn't used to eating like this, skewering small pieces of meat to send into her mouth and chewing each bite for a long time.

And Yelena also ate very slowly, much like a stray animal picked up on its first day: eating a bite, glancing at her master's expression, and then continuing to the next bite.

She looked pitifully forlorn.

The two of them were still unfamiliar with each other—or rather, a barrier still existed between them. This was completely normal, and Chlorine Sodium had plenty of patience, so she wasn't in a rush.

"We might have to leave this place tomorrow. If we don't have enough to eat by then, we'll go hungry."

The two of them, one large and one small, sat beside the bonfire outside the door. The dilapidated village houses could block the wind, while the fire provided warmth.

Leaving.

As if reacting to a trigger, Yelena's hand jerked, and the knife in her grip plunged into the snow.

Hearing the sound, Chlorine Sodium raised her head, only to see Yelena staring with wide-open eyes, her gaze filled with disbelief.

Why?

Her lips trembled gently as she recited the question in her heart.

Yet Yelena could not imagine what kind of response the young girl would have.

She couldn't imagine it because she seemed to not understand the woman before her at all.

She only knew that she wasn't good at expressing her own intentions.

Was it a misunderstanding?

Yet just as her re-freezing heart sealed all hope away in ice, the warmth of a palm on her head dragged the girl back from her own world to reality once more.

"It means taking you with me. If I were going to throw you away, I wouldn't have picked you up in the very beginning."

"Huh?"

The warmth of the palm also checked the nearly-uncontrollable cold current—that was the girl's curse.

At least in Chlorine Sodium's view, this was a vicious curse.

But in Yelena's eyes, that was a miracle of redemption.

The cold was both a redemption and a curse. The girl who manifested the harsh winter possessed the ability to protect herself, yet this acted like a hedgehog raising its spines, indiscriminately stabbing every living thing that approached her.

Whether those people carried malice, or the small animals living in the woods she had seen these past few days, all fled in terror; if anyone approached rashly, that torrent of cold would extinguish all life.

A girl who could naturally never be embraced again consequently lost the qualification to receive love once more.

Perhaps, facing this damned world, it wasn't a entirely bad thing.

When all was said and done, even though hardship could spur a person to grow, Yelena was only a child. No matter how much one pulled on the sprouts to help them grow, it was still an unhealthy way of maturing.

The freezing curtain of snow became the wall around Yelena's lonely heart, isolating everyone from the girl. What she touched was forever cold; even hot drinks would cause her to scald herself because she couldn't perceive normal temperatures.

Ever since she possessed Originium Arts, the word warmth had nearly vanished. Even before a campfire, the girl struggled to feel any heat, because the flames would be easily snuffed out by the cold current.

Right at the moment when the girl was lost in a daze of dejection, the words having just fallen, Chlorine Sodium suddenly reached out and pulled the unhealthily slender girl into her embrace, placing one hand on her head while resting her chin against the girl's forehead.

"If you want to cry, just cry it out."

The textiles rubbed by the chilling airflow melted under the carried warmth, and the girl's vision was shrouded in a hazy mist of water vapor.

However, all violent psychological activity was a factor that would cause the Originium Arts to spiral out of control.

If she remained forever lonely, wandering the snowfields might keep her Originium Arts suppressed within a controlled range for a long time, because her heart had long since lost any ripples.

Yet the moment an unstable external factor interfered, everything ceased to be as it always was.

In a mere instant, the curse swelled instantly due to the outbreak of emotion!

That was an extreme frost akin to the one that could only be unleashed at the very moment of awakening!!!

"No! Don't, you'll...!!!"

The young girl hugged the girl's icy body—a physique that knew no warmth—paying no mind at all to the domain of extreme freeze triggered by the surrounding cold current, one powerful enough to snuff out all life.

No! Don't!!!

Yet it was all too late. An uncontrollable cold current would kill everything; this was the face of the curse.

Even though Yelena didn't want to, and absolutely did not want to hurt the person before her, this ability was not controlled by her.

Everything seemed too late.

Why... do such a foolish thing?

Within a domain where even tears would be instantly frozen, Yelena wept.

Yet, with a snap of fingers, a surge of warmth abruptly illuminated this realm of bitter winter.

The girl froze in surprise.

Was that a dancing... spark?

Just as the girl stood stunned in place, she saw the spark reflecting against the fingertips of Chlorine Sodium below. The young girl's hand had somehow moved away from her head, and a spark that could never be blown out no matter what was ignited at her fingertips.

Though tiny, it was overwhelmingly scorching.