"Yes."
"Uh, wait, Captain... Wouldn't it be a bit much to have Team Member Lin clear half the area by himself..." A noticeably more timid voice made Lin pause just as he was about to move. She seemed so nervous that she was stumbling over her words. "He and I are both newcomers. Wouldn't it be better if we acted together..."
Upon hearing that, the mature female voice replied teasingly, "Oh my, Little Soul, you're worried about Lin? Don't worry. Lin had already taken part in numerous Honkai Beast exterminations before you joined the squad."
The softer female voice hurriedly tried to explain, "Huh? No, that's not what I meant, I was saying..."
"Team Member Soul."
Lin had no interest in listening to them argue over such trivial matters. He stopped Seele from continuing. After a simple breath cycle, he exhaled and said, "I have experience completing missions alone several times. You, on the other hand, have no mission experience whatsoever. Staying by the captain's side and learning is best."
"..." There was no sound from the other end. Faintly, he could hear the captain stifling her laughter.
Lin shook his head. Ever since meeting her, he had felt that this colleague who had joined later than him was not only timid by nature, but also exceptionally chatty and overly concerned with trivial matters outside missions.
Especially that habit of caring far too much about unimportant things. She was exactly like that pink-haired woman who kept "running into" him for no reason, making Lin so impatient that he had started going out of his way to avoid her.
He cast aside those useless thoughts and focused on the mission. After drawing the firearm from his back and chambering a round, he pressed the button beside his helmet's ear section. An enormous amount of information flooded the visor.
Jump Gear activated
Lin leaped down from the high platform. His visor had already locked onto the nearest three zombies, and before he even landed, he pulled the trigger, blasting their heads apart like watermelons amid the gun's recoil.
"Mission start."
"Bang!"
The moment Lin landed, he pulled the Sonar Detector from his waist and slammed it into the wall behind him. Several more streams of data appeared in his vision, revealing the movements of every Honkai Beast and zombie nearby.
"Rat-tat-tat..."
He raised the muzzle spitting flames. The modified firearm tore through the bodies of ordinary zombies without restraint. He methodically chose the order of his kills, trying to eliminate several zombies at once whenever possible, conserving ammunition while dealing with targets as efficiently as he could.
In the blink of an eye, the surrounding zombies fell in swaths like wheat before a scythe. The commotion he caused quickly drew a response from this nest of monsters.
During the brief moment he reloaded, a piece of data flashed across the screen. Lin glanced at it, then reflexively jumped. The Grappling Hook Device on his right hand shot out, and with the Jetpack on his back, he instantly swung away as if flying.
The very next second after he flew off, the wall behind him exploded with a thunderous crash, shattered by the Honkai Beast inside. Its foul-smelling maw let out an ear-splitting, twisted roar.
At the same time, a tide of small winged Honkai Beasts poured from the breach, charging at Lin in midair at incredible speed.
Lin swung to another wall. Using the Jetpack, he began to "run" across it with extreme agility, racing toward the Chariot-class Honkai Beast that was clearly their leader. In his clenched left hand, the pin had already been pulled from a grenade.
At times like this, Lin always involuntarily remembered the pointless discussions within MOTH.
Most zombies and lower-class Honkai Beasts had been transformed from humans. So when they killed these "monsters," were they setting them free, or simply taking their lives under the guise of righteousness?
Lin labeled such discussions boring.
No matter what moral, philosophical, or biological argument people made, the moment these things prepared to take human lives, every debate over whether they deserved to live became especially pointless.
And Lin never hesitated when pulling the trigger on them.
This was what he lived for.
"Bang!"
The slaughter continued until nearly dusk. Only after detecting that there were no more zombies or Honkai Beasts anywhere within the sealed-off area did Lin drag his empty gun and tactical knife, both coated in blood and grease, back to the handover point.
"Grade-A area cleared. Logistics team, take over. Squad Five, return."
After boarding the transport aircraft, Lin closed his eyes, slightly fatigued, and dozed off for a while.
Whenever the logistics personnel passed the transport vehicle, they would sneak a glance at the faceless man with eyes filled with both awe and fear.
A superhuman in a helmet who hunted Honkai Beasts and zombies day and night without sleep, who had even single-handedly exterminated Upper-class Honkai Beasts during the Second Honkai War—within only a few months of Lin joining MOTH, such rumors had already spread.
His entire body was covered in specially designed equipment that might make ordinary people fall apart if they used it. Especially that helmet. Ordinary equipment simplified complex information to make combat easier for soldiers, but his helmet crammed all the detailed, overwhelming data into his head for him to analyze and process personally.
It greatly increased his combat efficiency, but for anyone else, let alone processing the information, simply moving normally would be a problem.
Furthermore, he was cold and detached. Other than missions, he never interacted with anyone, as if he were merely a robot programmed to fight Honkai.
"Beep—"
A communication signal linked to his phone sounded within his helmet. Lin opened his eyes, looked at the name on the visor, and silently accepted the call.
"..."
"..."
A silence so long it was suffocating.
Lin had never imagined there would come a day when he and his friend would not know where to begin over the phone.
Kevin hesitantly spoke first. "Lin, are you okay?"
"..."
Was he okay?
Lin glanced at the blood and body tissue stuck to the inside of his arm. He did not know whether it belonged to a Honkai Beast or a zombie. Even after cleaning himself once upon returning, it still would not come off. His entire body was nothing but exhaustion, while his overworked brain buzzed inside his skull.
His vision blurred for a moment before he refocused on the name on the screen and said flatly, "I'm fine."
He was only walking the line between life and death every day, that was all.
Hearing Lin respond, Kevin let out a breath of relief. "Is that so? That's good, then."
Lin asked, "...What did you call me for?"
Kevin froze for a moment, then stammered, "N-No, it's nothing..."
He had only wanted to ask about his friend, whom he had not contacted in a long time. He wanted to know how Lin had been, where he had gone after dropping out, and what he was doing now.
But when the words reached his lips, he swallowed them all back. Lin's gaze when he left remained vivid in his mind, making Kevin understand that even if he asked, he would not get an answer.
Lin fell silent for several seconds, guessing Kevin's thoughts. He adjusted his voice to resemble how he used to sound and asked as gently as he could, "How are things between you and Mei?"
The moment Lin asked about that, Kevin became incredibly excited and poured everything out in one breath. "Hehe, we've been going out together all the time now. Whenever she has lectures or academic seminars, she asks me to go with her. Though I can't understand any of it..."
"Is that so? That's great. Keep it up, Kevin." Lin's expression softened slightly as he offered his heartfelt blessing.
Then his tone turned icy and indifferent again. "I still have work here. I'll hang up now."
"Huh? Wait, Lin—" Before Kevin could react to the sudden change, all he heard was the long disconnect tone.
"..."
Lin silently raised his head and looked back at the red-haired woman watching him with great interest, as well as the girl beside her with inner highlights, who looked at a loss under Lin's gaze.
Those two must have been watching for quite a while.
The tall red-haired woman was Himiko, captain of Squad Five and Lin's superior. Within MOTH, squad captains were the strongest among soldiers, and she was naturally no exception.
In truth, based on Lin's record of exterminating Emperor-class Honkai Beasts in the Second Honkai War and his outstanding mission performance, he should not have needed long to be promoted directly to squad captain. But he was still a rookie, after all. Taking various considerations into account, they had him remain in Himiko's squad for the time being.
The girl with black outer hair and blue-purple inner highlights was Seele. She had joined the squad slightly later than Lin. She was quite shy and introverted, but also exceptionally talented.
"Mm... 'That's great. Keep it up, Kevin~.'" Himiko pinched her throat and mimicked Lin's earlier encouragement in a thin voice. Seele looked back and forth between her goofy captain and silent senior, completely at a loss.
Lin: "..."
"Ahahaha, Lin, you can actually say something like that? I thought outside missions, all you ever said when talking to people were filler words like 'oh,' 'ah,' and 'mm.'" Himiko pointed at Lin and laughed so hard she bent over, just short of rolling around on the floor. Inside his helmet, Lin's face was as dark as coal.
Seeing that the captain's unrestrained mockery seemed to have made Lin unhappy, Seele weakly tried to explain, "Um, Team Member Lin, we only accidentally..."
"Who was that Kevin? A good friend of yours? Our headless knight actually has friends?" Himiko laughed as heartily as she lived, hooking an arm around Lin's neck and interrogating him with a mischievous grin.
Lin twisted away, slipping free from his captain's broad embrace. He coldly turned his helmet without answering her question and changed the subject. "Captain, outside missions, aside from filler words, I can also say one other word."
"Oh? What word?"
"I use it often when dealing with a woman. I think it suits the current situation too."
Lin stared at the smiling Himiko and said in a low voice filled with coldness—
"Get lost."