"This... Fine, have it your way!"
Merlin didn't want to argue with her anymore about whether he was kind. Whatever happened, he only needed to be able to face himself without guilt.
Whether he killed people...
Or saved them...
Whether his actions were good or evil,
It was up to him to decide.
If he held firm to that belief, no one would ever be able to interfere with him.
Listening to the gunfire around them, it wasn't long before Merlin led the girls to another group of soldiers hunting down survivors.
This time, however, all the survivors were already dead. Only four soldiers remained, two of them wounded. Three were huddled in the corner of a broken wall, watching as the group approached.
Merlin glanced at Yol.
"When they get close, I'll go first. You stay behind me and take them by surprise."
Yol nodded, but looked puzzled.
"Shouldn't we use grenades?"
"There aren't many of them. We need to save them."
Merlin turned away and spoke softly.
Before long, as they drew closer, the soldiers' shrill curses reached them.
Ten meters... five meters.
Seizing his chance, Merlin gripped his dagger in his right hand, black flames rising from his left. He suddenly leaped over the wall and charged straight at them.
Merlin's sudden appearance startled them. All four reflexively raised their rifles. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Muzzle flashes burst violently.
But the Lynx equipment had greatly enhanced Merlin's overall dynamic vision, night vision, motion tracking, pupil adjustment, and field of view.
The instant their rifles came up, Merlin's pupils contracted. He clearly caught the movement of their muzzles.
His physical abilities weren't enough to dodge bullets, but his dynamic vision let him track the direction of their barrels.
In that instant, as their fingers curled around the triggers, Merlin nimbly lunged forward and rolled.
In the blink of an eye, he was upon them.
His black-flame-wreathed left hand struck the legs of three of them with incredible speed.
Then he sprang up in front of the fourth. His dagger shot forward like a lynx lunging to seize its prey. With a wet shunk, it plunged beneath the man's chin and pierced straight through the back of his head.
At that moment,
a piercing scream rang out nearby.
Of the three who remained, one clutched his abdomen and collapsed to the ground, blood seeping through his protective suit.
Disaster: Scarlet of Wounds.
A gutting disaster inherited from Yol.
The other two were lying on the ground, eyes bloodshot, groaning in agony.
Disaster: Scarlet Lead.
There was no need to look to know that most of their bodies beneath their protective suits had turned scarlet.
They were in the late stages of Lead Platinum Disease, severely ill, on the verge of death.
With a wet squelch, Merlin pulled out his dagger and walked toward the other three fallen soldiers. His left hand reabsorbed and stored the disasters within the two men afflicted by Lead Platinum Disease, while his dagger sliced across their throats.
Then Merlin drove three more wounds into the chest and neck of the last man.
After absorbing and storing the increased disasters, he used his dagger to finish the man off.
Yol came over, calmly glanced at the four dead men, and began gathering their weapons and equipment.
Merlin turned to her. "I'll check where they were fighting and see if there are any other useful weapons or equipment."
Yol nodded.
As Merlin headed that way,
she lowered her head and looked at the four dead soldiers, her lips pursed in prayer.
"May you be punished in hell, then become people of sound judgment in your next lives!"
Seeing that the area was safe, Lami came over. She glared at the bodies and spat as she cursed them.
"These executioners can only be pigs, dogs, chickens, or ducks in their next lives. They'll never be human!"
Yol fell silent. She looked down at her hands. Though she was a nun, they were stained with blood. When she died someday, she would go to hell too, wouldn't she?
Merlin soon returned to Yol with a bundle of rifles and ammunition. Seeing her dejected expression, he looked confused.
"Are you unhappy?"
Yol looked at Merlin. After hesitating for two seconds, she said gloomily, "I'm a nun who believes in God, but my hands are stained with blood. I'll go to hell when I die, won't I?"
Merlin glanced at her and said flatly,
"A nun who believes in God isn't saved by the very God she believes in.
"That just goes to show that He's deaf and blind. So why keep believing in Him?
"Rather than believe in Him, you'd be better off believing in yourself!
"Let your own heart be your measure.
"Even if our hands are drenched in blood, as long as we can face ourselves without guilt, that's enough.
"Whether we kill people or save them, it doesn't matter!
"We only live once. There's no need to entrust our souls to those vague, nonexistent beings.
"As for hell?
"If it really exists, that's a problem for the future. By then, I'll be much stronger...
"So what if there's a hell?
"If it picks a fight with me..."
Yol hurriedly reached out and covered Merlin's mouth, chiding him with her eyes. "You're blaspheming!"
Merlin pulled her hand away and rolled his eyes at her. "So what if it's God? It's just a title.
"How many people in this world call themselves gods?
"They're just a bunch of lunatics."
Yol looked at him helplessly. "Enough. Let's not talk about God. We should get going!"
Nearby, Lami covered her mouth and giggled.
"Brother Merlin is so amazing. He made Sister Yol speechless in no time."
Merlin ruffled her hair and chuckled. "That just proves my arguments make more sense.
"Yol can't win against me."
Lami nodded emphatically.
Yol looked helpless, though the halo she had once placed around God had begun to fade.
After all, at that moment, it hadn't been the God she prayed to day and night who saved her. It had been the boy standing in front of her.
She watched Merlin out of the corner of her eye, wondering, How come I never realized he was so good with words?
The three of them continued wandering through Flevance, hunting down the enemy in turn.
They hunted soldiers from neighboring countries, rescued survivors along the way, pointed them toward Eric, and handed out weapons.
Time passed.
Three days went by.
That morning.
At the harbor.
Aboard a neighboring country's warship.
In the conference room.
Bang!
The man at the head of the table slammed his palm down hard. The middle-aged officer in a navy-blue uniform glared furiously.
"Damn it! Why have my soldiers' casualties gotten so high these past few days?"
The officers below exchanged glances. Then the commander of the Volgala Kingdom's army, Laked, glared at one of them.
"Dalami, you'd better give me an explanation. Otherwise, I'll report everything to the king when we get back. Do you want to lose your family's non-hereditary baron title?"
Dalami, a blond young man with an aquiline nose, lowered his head. A deep, sinister gleam flashed in his eyes. Report everything? He'd embellish the story and make Dalami take the blame, wouldn't he?
This trip to Flevance was a golden opportunity to make a fortune.
Every noble family present was making a killing.
But his troops were doing the dirtiest work while getting the smallest cut, simply because his title ranked lowest. If anything went wrong, he'd obviously be the one to take the fall.
And now, the purge in Flevance had run into trouble. The consequences were catching up with him. Dalami raised his head, his face appropriately wreathed in bitterness.
"Commander, the survivors still in Flevance are all tough customers. We're outsiders, after all. The city is riddled with underground sewers. They hide and fight us in the streets, and there's nothing we can do about it!
"And it's not just our country. The other three countries have also suffered plenty of casualties these past few days. What's more, we found more than a dozen soldiers who'd been left alive with varying degrees of Lead Platinum Disease."
At this, hesitation flickered in Dalami's eyes. "Is Lead Platinum Disease really not contagious?"
Laked's eyelid twitched violently. Remembering the soldiers who had suddenly contracted Lead Platinum Disease and whom he'd had executed, he couldn't help but feel wary.
The others in the conference room looked equally uneasy.
After exchanging glances,
his expression softened a little as he looked at Dalami.
"According to information our king received from the royal family evacuated from Flevance, the World Government has certified Lead Platinum Disease as an inheritable biological toxin.
"It's hereditary, but not contagious.
"As long as you take the proper precautions and don't come into contact with raw Scarlet Lead, you'll be fine.
"Enough. Let's not talk about that."
Then he turned to Dalami.
"I'll give you another two hundred men. Take them yourself and wipe out those infected."
Dalami's pupils contracted. He was about to object, but when he saw the cold glint in Laked's dark-gold eyes, he shut his mouth.
His eyelid twitching, he stood up and said solemnly, "Understood!"
"All right, that's the end of the meeting!"
Laked rubbed his brow and waved them away.
As his fellow officers looked on with sympathy, Dalami left with an impassive face.
The same discussion was taking place aboard the other three foreign warships at the harbor, though the outcomes differed slightly.
Before long, Dalami put on a protective suit, strapped an antique slender sword to his waist, and led a force of three hundred men into Flevance.
At the same time, troops of varying sizes, some more elite than others, entered Flevance from the other three directions.
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