I'm Fighting Kal'tsit? Seriously?

The soldier took the documents, glanced back and forth between the two of them, then turned and walked over to the commander to hand them over.

Yet the commander didn't even look at them, only saying coldly, "Please cooperate with the routine physical examination. This is a necessary procedure. Do not make any improper moves."

"No problem, but please hand the soil over to the Catastrophe messenger still inside the station." Provence spoke much faster at once, rushing through her words without pause. "We need to ensure the sample reaches someone capable of analyzing the current situation. If this is a sudden Catastrophe, we can't guarantee when it will strike. It might even happen two hours from now."

"Once we verify your identities, the sample will naturally be handed over to the Catastrophe messenger."

"...What?"

"Samples can be forged, ma'am."

The commander's attention had already shifted to the electronic terminal in his hand, clearly having lost interest. "Over the past year, there have been twenty-five cases of false or mistaken Catastrophe reports in Columbia. You don't appear to be Columbia's Catastrophe messengers, nor are you carrying company-issued equipment. Therefore, I hope you will at least cooperate with the inspection and obey Columbia's rules."

"Then we should at least know how long the verification will take, shouldn't we?!"

Angelina had never encountered anything like this. Even though she knew Columbia was full of restrictive rules and taxes designed to squeeze people dry, she'd never imagined such rules could exist even at a Messenger Station. "Or we could handle both at the same time—"

"Take them away." The commander waved a hand, signaling his men to move.

At once, two soldiers stepped forward, one standing on either side of Angelina and Provence. The crossbows in their hands lifted slightly, creating a silent sense of pressure.

"Come with us." One of the soldiers spoke coldly. Though he didn't fully raise his weapon at them, his unyielding attitude made everything clear.

Angelina frowned deeply, her fingers lightly brushing her staff.

But... she wasn't alone now.

She couldn't guarantee that Provence wouldn't be injured in crossfire.

So Angelina took a deep breath, forced herself to calm down, and nodded firmly. "Fine, we'll cooperate. But I hope this can be resolved as quickly as possible. That's my only request. Is that alright?"

The soldier didn't answer, merely signaling for them to walk forward.

Their footsteps mixed with the faint clatter of weapons, sounding especially harsh.

Before long, the two of them were brought to an isolation area on the outskirts of the station.

A small space had been enclosed with barbed wire. Several simple metal beds and a dust-covered table stood in one corner.

They still had all their belongings. Apparently, the others intended to make sure they were completely isolated and no longer posed a threat before taking their possessions here.

"Get in. Wait for instructions." One soldier spoke coldly, then stepped aside and took position outside the isolation area, gripping his weapon with both hands before his chest.

Standing before the barbed wire, Angelina swept her gaze over the crude surroundings, anger in her voice. "This is your so-called 'procedure'? Locking us up here in isolation?"

The soldier didn't answer. He only stared at her expressionlessly, raising his weapon to signal for them to place their personal belongings on the ground for inspection.

Provence sighed and gently tugged on her arm. "Don't argue with them. We need to find a way to make them believe us. Angelina, stay calm—"

Clang.

Before either of them could react, the other soldier swung his weapon's stock and struck the speaking soldier squarely in the head.

The blow knocked him unconscious at once. His limbs went limp in an instant, and he collapsed to the ground.

When they looked up together, a low voice came from within that soldier's helmet. Through the holes left in it, they seemed to glimpse violet eyes hidden behind the visor.

"You respect Catastrophes, messengers. That's good."

[Soldier] spoke slowly.

"Respect?" Provence froze for a moment before hurriedly continuing, "No, it's our duty. Also, may I ask if you can take us to the Catastrophe messenger here now? We need to pass this information on to someone who understands the situation!"

"You shouldn't be locked here, dying alongside ignorant fools." [Soldier] shook his head. "You should continue singing of Catastrophes, delivering the great unknown to everyone."

"Messengers of God, please leave."

Angelina's hand around her staff trembled slightly, her voice filled with disbelief. "Who are you? What do you mean, dying together? What's going to happen here?"

"...God will descend upon this place with sweet rain."

"And lost souls will find release, vanishing alongside sinful civilization and returning to the wilderness."

Naturally, [Soldier] didn't answer any of their remaining questions.

After saying only two baffling sentences, he walked out of the isolation area and soon vanished from their sight.

Silence lingered in the area for a while, but the two quickly started moving again.

Provence slowly rose to her feet, picked up the backpack that had fallen to the ground, checked it for damage, then swiftly slung it over her shoulder. She glanced at Angelina beside her, her expression growing more grave. "...I've got a bad feeling. We need to find the Catastrophe messengers in the station quickly. They should have signal flares to launch into the sky. The people of Columbia will understand what that means."

"Mm!" Angelina nodded heavily. Without another word, she lowered herself and moved with Provence in a crouch, trying to slip closer to the center of the station.

The surroundings were unnaturally quiet. Only a faint breeze passed through the station's corners, stirring a few fallen leaves.

Footsteps, hushed conversations, and the occasional clink of weapons drifted over from afar in scattered fragments, as though swallowed by the grim atmosphere.

Angelina and Provence concealed their presence as best they could, weaving past obstacles formed by freight trucks and crates as they slowly closed in on their target.

The entire Messenger Station was unfamiliar terrain to them. They hadn't entered from this direction, so they could only identify their exact location by the shapes of the buildings.

Just as they thought everything was going smoothly—

"A tail?"

A puzzled voice suddenly came from around the corner, drawing closer to where they were hiding.

The two of them held their breath almost instantly. Angelina froze in place, unconsciously tightening her grip on her staff as her eyes darted toward the source of the voice.

A fully armed soldier slowly emerged from the other side, the powered crossbow in his hand pointed at the ground. As though he'd discovered something unusual, he crossed several steps and arrived at where they were hiding.

Then, just like that, the two sides came face-to-face.

The messengers and soldier stared at one another, and the air instantly seemed to freeze.

Yet this soldier's attention didn't fall on Angelina's face, nor did it focus on Provence's position.

His gaze passed directly over both of them and landed on Provence's enormous, conspicuous fluffy tail.

"Haha." The purple-haired Lupo lowered her head to look at her tail and gave an awkward laugh. "Oh dear, sorry, Angelina. It seems I... wasn't very suited for stealth operations."

Then a shrill alarm tore through the air, echoing across the entire station.

Time returned to the present.

The manhunt spread from the station almost instantly, swiftly taking over the entire entrance area. Even the several freight trucks lined up at the front weren't spared, undergoing thorough inspections.

The scene immediately caused quite a commotion. Many people returning from frontier work couldn't help voicing dissatisfied curses.

"Damn it! We were already exhausted from frontier work, and now they're pulling this!" One weary-looking pioneer complained as he jumped down from his truck and viciously kicked a pebble on the ground.

That pebble flew in a perfect arc and struck the stealthily advancing Angelina on the head, nearly making her cry out in pain.

I want to cry.

Thinking about their current situation made her want to cry even more.

But she couldn't cry yet. At the very least, she had to wait until everything was over.

Suppressing her emotions, Angelina slipped past one pioneer after another and slowly made her way toward the end of the line of vehicles.

They still had to find a way to reenter the Messenger Station, at least to let the Catastrophe messengers there know how serious the situation was. But faced with inspections of this level, they could only patiently wait for this period to end before acting again.

Almost there, almost there—

Tap.

Angelina's heart suddenly skipped a beat, and her steps stopped at once. Just as they had relaxed for a moment and were preparing to find somewhere to hide, a figure jumped down from behind a freight truck ahead. The person wore a helmet, and their armored body looked exceptionally heavy. Under the sunlight, they seemed like an insurmountable wall.

Had they been discovered? Would they be arrested? Or would this person expose them immediately?

No, she couldn't gamble.

Almost instinctively, Angelina tightened her grip on her staff, ready to activate her Originium Arts the next second and fly away from this place with Provence.

Yet just as she raised her hand, a layer of cold, hard Enamel swiftly covered her arm, precisely stopping her movement.

"Don't be hasty." The person's voice was calm but stern. She slowly removed her helmet, revealing a face Angelina recognized.

Angelina's eyes widened, and her breath caught. The tension on her face gradually turned into delight. "You're—!"

"I've seen you at Rhodes Island." The Vouivre's voice was low and composed as her gaze rested on them. "You delivered a letter for me, Operator Angelina, and Operator Provence, who handles Catastrophe observation."

"...!" Angelina almost burst into tears, an excited disbelief leaking into her voice before she forcibly swallowed it back down. "Ms. Saria, we... this place may be hit by a Catastrophe at any moment. Could you, could you help us get into the station?!"

"It seems urgent." The Vouivre nodded and looked toward the distant station. "Can you tell me what happened, as briefly as possible?"

Just as Angelina hurriedly began to explain, an unfamiliar voice sounded from behind the truck.

"There really is a Catastrophe."

All three of them turned toward the source at once. A helmeted figure slowly stepped out from behind the freight truck, a strand of silver hair spilling from beneath the helmet and gleaming coldly in the sunlight.

He rubbed his head tiredly. At the instant he woke from the dream, a flood of information and noise had rushed into his mind.

It was like time had been stopped, only for several throwing knives to be driven into his brain in succession. Although Gerald felt that his senses and Originium Arts had become sharper, it was still difficult to recover so quickly.

As his senses gradually returned and he focused his gaze on the people before him—

His hand instinctively went to the sword at his waist.

"What are you?"

Though she didn't know why Gerald had suddenly looked as though he were facing a great enemy, Saria followed his gaze toward its target and ultimately looked at Angelina, who had broken out in goosebumps from fright.

Angelina trembled as she glanced around, then, after confirming there was nothing else unusual, pointed at herself in confusion.

"Me?"

A Direct Solution Has Always Existed for Every Problem

The blur faded, and everything returned to normal.

The Vulpo girl before him was no longer giving off that strange aura, and the fluttering feeling in his heart vanished in an instant.

Though it had lasted only a moment, he seemed to have seen the girl standing beneath some kind of megastructure.

But considering Dreammist Essence had not completely worn off yet, such a hallucination was understandable.

"Sorry, it's nothing. I might still be groggy from sleep."

Gerald opened a gap in his helmet, took a deep breath, then sealed it again. He turned toward Saria. The Vouivre met his gaze and nodded.

It meant they could be trusted.

Provence glanced at the somewhat subtle sense of distance between Saria and the helmeted stranger, immediately lowered her guard somewhat, and explained the current situation in the briefest terms she could.

"Angelina and I previously departed from another Messenger Station in the south. After completing our commission, we were preparing to head to this station..."

She quickly explained everything that had happened during that period, including their conversation with [Soldier].

Before the information had even fully sunk in, the little fox girl hurried over, looking as though she wanted to get to the bottom of it.

"Excuse me." Angelina blinked, recovering from her earlier fright. Her entire focus was on Pegasus's last statement. "What did you mean when you said, 'There really is a Catastrophe'?"

"The lady beside you is a Catastrophe messenger. She should know that Originium-driven geological activity is also part of Catastrophes."

Gerald looked toward Provence, his gaze lingering on that large tail for a moment before being forcibly locked there for a full three seconds. Only after realizing his behavior was impolite did he force himself to look away. "For example, the volcanoes near Columbia. Before a Catastrophe occurs, some plants change color as a warning. The situation here is similar."

He summoned the wind, drawing a handful of dust into his palm. It slowly floated in the air, circling around a central point.

"The temperature is too high. The soil is unnaturally loose and doesn't resemble the way this terrain should naturally form. On top of that, I haven't sensed aerial vortices, clouds, or the formation of rain."

Pegasus tried closing his eyes. As the sensitivity of his senses decreased, his connection to the Resonance Core seemed to grow more distant. "Catastrophes can take the form of storms, Originium Downpours, and even hail in the Ursus wilderness. But this feels more like... an earthquake?"

The energy was coming from underground.

The wind wasn't enough to bring him information from outside the field. This could only be the lingering effect of Dreammist Essence.

His connection to Originium now felt like an incredibly fragile thread. With the slightest tug, it would snap—perhaps applying more Dreammist Essence could solve the problem, but that clearly wasn't a good solution.

At the same time, for the two messengers, that conclusion struck their hearts like a hammer.

"You're also a Catastrophe messenger?"

Provence asked instinctively. Even after hearing his explanation, she already believed most of the answer.

One reason the Messenger Station had been established here was that Catastrophes in the form of natural disasters rarely appeared along this route.

A region of extremely low danger, combined with the fact that almost no one used large amounts of Originium in the wilderness, made the possibility of a Catastrophe reaching this place exceedingly slim.