Chapter 2

On the barren and parched land, an ominous dark cloud looms.

The dark cloud, neither moving nor raining, merely observes the dying in silence.

The stench of blood permeates the city. The source, rotten flesh and chunks of meat of unknown origin, are found scattered throughout.

“It’s the end! The end has come! God has forsaken us! The demon’s minions hunger for our flesh and rush towards us, so abandon your meaningless resistance and thrust that spear into your own throats!”

From atop a pile of corpses in the ruined plaza, the voices of the mad echo.

“…….”

Hans, the captain of the few remaining city guards, merely stares at them with pity.

His forehead is starkly exposed thanks to his closely cropped hair. And on that exposed forehead, numerous scars are visible. Mostly ragged tears, but some look as if they were made by a blade.

Hans’ armor, like a mass of scrap metal, speaks volumes of the intense battles of the past few weeks.

The plate on his left shoulder is completely gone, exposing the leather beneath, and the plate covering his right arm is barely clinging to the leather beneath.

And to top it off, Hans’ armor is covered in a vibrant green liquid. It looked like blood, but judging by the color and viscosity… it certainly wasn’t human.

Hans throws down the rag he was using and picks up a ripped piece of old clothing nearby, resuming the task of scrubbing the green blood from his armor. Disgustingly sticky, and difficult to remove, but a necessity for survival.

“……When did they say the reinforcements would arrive?”

“In about three days… You asked the same question ten minutes ago.”

“……Fucking hell.”

Upon hearing his adjutant’s words, Guard Captain Hans throws the rag he was using to wipe the blood from his armor onto the ground and collapses in a heap.

Every joint in his body screams in protest. It’s been three days since he last slept.

“……What’s the state of the men?”

“Not good, sir. Our numbers are halved, and eight out of ten of those remaining are wounded.”

“Tell the men to thoroughly cleanse themselves of the Variant’s blood. An epidemic on top of all this? We’ll be wiped out for sure.”

With those words, Commander Hans leaned against the ruined city wall, snatching a moment to close his eyes. If he didn’t steal these snatches of sleep, he feared he’d lose his mind like those screaming in the shattered plaza.

“…Excuse me.”

Just as he was drifting off, Hans heard a boy’s voice.

Forcing open his heavy eyelids, Hans shifted his creaking armor and turned his head toward the sound.

The boy was striking, with silver hair and intensely blue eyes. His clothes were torn in so many places they were little more than rags, and his bare feet were covered in cuts and grime.

…Though his deep eyes possessed an almost unnerving quality, his appearance marked him as one of the many urchins that infested this city.

“…There are Variant corpses everywhere. You could catch something. Run to the inner city, now.”

Hans sighed and gestured for the boy to leave.

“…”

The boy reached out a slender hand to touch the utterly ruined city wall, then turned his head toward the festering pile of corpses.

He observed the mountain of bodies and the madmen raving atop it without a flicker of emotion.

Slowly, the boy approached Hans.

“It seems there are no resident mages in this city. Burning the corpses would be much safer.”

“You think they’d waste valuable mages on guarding a place like this?”

“…”

The boy looked back at the path he had taken.

Rats devoured one another in the gutters, a prostitute lay bleeding from a stab wound in the street, a church was burned and collapsed, and madmen babbled in the ruins.

“Stradus is finished.”

“…Then why are you defending it? What’s left to gain from guarding a city that’s already gone?”

Hans chuckled, a hollow sound, at the stark innocence of the boy’s question. A question so absurd it was almost insulting.

“Does a city guard need a reason to defend its walls?”

Hans responded without much thought.

“…I may not know much about war, but even to my inexperienced eyes, things look grim. It doesn’t seem like you can hold out for more than a few days… Aren’t you afraid of death?”

“I am.”

Hans answered the boy’s second question just as quickly, without hesitation.

“Then why don’t you flee?”

“Because I am the city’s Captain of the Guard.”

He offered the third answer with the same immediate certainty.

“…”

The boy seemed lost in thought, taken aback by the man’s unwavering responses.

Hans, on the other hand, seemed unconcerned with the sudden appearance of this stray. Vagrants like him were a common sight in the city.

“Don’t just stand there like a fool, run to the inner city. There’s too much filthy blood here.”

Hans was the Captain of the Guard. He needed no greater reason to sacrifice his life.

Though their conversation had been brief, the boy quickly understood the kind of man standing before him.

After a moment’s consideration, the boy sat down right next to Hans. This seemed to be the safest place in the city, after all.

“…What are you doing? I told you to go inside.”

Hans frowned slightly, as if the boy was a nuisance.

He seemed worried that the unwashed blood of the mutated creatures still clinging to his armor might infect the boy with some disease.

“Either way, if you lose, citizens like us will die whether we’re in the inner or outer city.”

Hans couldn’t fathom what possessed the boy to sit beside him.

His expression was too serene for despair, too clear-eyed for shock.

“Well, can’t argue with that, I suppose.”

In the end, Hans gave up on shooing him away.

As the boy said, this place, the city within, it was all the same hell.

“A godforsaken age…”

Hans muttered, gazing at the towering mass of dark storm clouds.

When he was a boy, barely thirty years past, the world wasn’t like this. Sure, the orcs to the west and the elves to the east constantly stirred up trouble, but there was at least a semblance of sense and reason.

That all vanished with the sudden arrival of a sorcerer.

Toker the Black Mage.

He summoned an ancient demon, offering it the world in exchange for transcendence, and so the demon descended in its full glory.

Since that day…

The stench of corpses festered everywhere. The screams never ceased. Every moment was a struggle for survival. Hope and the future, those words had become extinct long ago.

“Though, even in this godforsaken age, this city takes the crown for most godforsaken…”

“Even so, it’s a city worth protecting.”

“Ha! Right you are.”

Hans laughed, clapping the boy on the back, but stopped abruptly.

The boy was alarmingly thin.

Even among the vagrants, whose bodies were worn and ravaged, this boy was withered, diminished.

One wrong thump with his gauntlet-clad hand and he might just snap the boy’s spine.

“Over there, behind the burned-out bank, there’s an outpost. They’ve got a little bread left…take some, if you need it.”

“Isn’t that for the soldiers?”

“Just tell them you’re there to collect Hans’ share. They won’t say anything.”

“It’s a waste of rations. I’m nothing but a vagrant, not a soldier. Even if I replenish my strength by eating, I won’t be of any help in defending the city.”

Hans sighed at the boy’s cold calculation.

“…True.”

He couldn’t bring himself to say otherwise. Rations were already critically low; even the few remaining soldiers couldn’t get a proper meal. To give that away to a vagrant who did nothing would lead to a loss of combat strength.

“Still, take it.”

Despite everything, that was what Hans said.

The boy stubbornly refused, until Hans, unable to watch any longer, dragged his heavy plate armor to the outpost behind the bank and returned with a thick, stale hunk of bread.

A thin slice of bread, barely a snack, let alone a meal, landed in the boy’s hand.

Dust and something like mold clung to it, but it was the only food left in the city.

“He is watching, it’s never a meaningless act.”

Hans said, glancing between the collapsed church’s cross and the boy’s eyes.

“What good is the city guard if all the people they’re meant to protect starve to death?”

“……”

Finally, the boy wordlessly put the bread to his mouth.

It was the first food he’d tasted since being reborn.

Filthy, rock-hard, and smelling of mildew – clearly poorly stored and riddled with mold – but in this city, there were plenty of people starving to death because they couldn’t even find rotten bread like this.

*Dong, dong, dong, dong!*

As the boy cautiously chewed his bread, a colossal alarm, installed just beyond the city’s walls, shrieked a deafening cry.

“Mutants sighted in large numbers, four hundred meters to the fore! Numbers unprecedented!”

“Scout reports indicate the presence of demons among them! All mobile units, return to the front line and prepare for battle! All personnel, rally to the city center!”

A young soldier, perched atop a rickety wooden watchtower, spat out words in desperate urgency. Soldiers, barely asleep, groaned with despair at the sudden air raid siren. Hans, expressionless, simply cursed, gazing up at the sky.

“…Damn it.”

Despair clouded his face, yet his eyes still gleamed with a stubborn refusal to surrender.

“Flee.”

“Didn’t I tell you it’s the same inside the city as it is out here?”

“Flee nonetheless. There’s a small breach in the city’s north wall. Escape through it, turn your back to the sun, and run. If fortune favors you, you might break through the demons’ encirclement and encounter our reinforcements.”

“Can’t the guard win?”

“Didn’t you hear? They said demons are present.”

“I heard.”

“Do you know when a demon reveals itself on the battlefield?”

“When their victory is one hundred percent assured.”

Demons are cunning. They typically lurk deep underground or within dense forests, sending forth armies composed solely of mutants—creatures born from beasts and inhabitants captured from the surrounding lands—to slowly sap the strength of their prey.

Only when the prey is weakened beyond repair, when their victory is certain, do they reveal themselves upon the field of battle. To deliver the final blow and secure their triumph.

A demon’s presence on the battlefield was a death sentence for everyone there.

The wise among them would plunge a blade into their own throats, while the foolish would be captured by the demons, forced to watch helplessly as their bodies were twisted into horrifying mutants.

“If you know this, then flee. Survive, and tell others that we fought bravely.”

And Hans, captain of the guard and sharer of bread with a boy, was one of the foolish.

He turned his gaze from the boy and addressed the soldiers.

“Today! Death has come for us! They will violate us, using our brothers and sisters to forge monsters, and they will tear even our surviving neighbors to shreds!”

Hans rattled his heavy plate armor as he shouted.

“The situation is dire! Rust clings to our equipment, and poison festers on their teeth and claws!”

One by one, the guards, shrouded in terror and despair, began to focus their gaze on Hans.

“Courage has fled, and only fear remains to engulf us! They have driven us to the brink and seized every arrow, every weapon!”

“……”

“……”

“But! There is one thing they have failed to steal, and that is our rage!”

“……”

“……”

“Do not forget the sight of our children ravaged by their claws! The image of our comrades and friends twisted into grotesque abominations by demonic hands!”

Slowly, a fire rekindled in the eyes of the guards, once filled with only despair and dread.

“Those who wish to flee, run north now! But those who would remain human until the end! Those who would defend their pride, and display their will to fight, glare upon these vile minions of evil with eyes burning with hatred…!”

Within their hearts, the pride of being human began to blaze. That heat made their hearts pound, and soon a frenzy of screams erupted from every corner of the formation.

“Follow me and stand upon this terrible battlefield, to meet your end as honorable warriors! For Estella!”

“For Estella!”

“For Estella!”

Despair vanished in an instant, replaced by a surge of elation among the few remaining guards. They cast aside the splints that braced their limbs, re-donning their armor and gripping the hilts of their broken swords.

The boy, shoving the last of his bread into his mouth, thought to himself.

‘By rights, I should be fleeing while they die.’

The demon about to appear before them was level 15.

An enemy designed so that a normal level 1 character couldn’t hope to defeat it, no matter what they tried.

And so, the newly created Human Vagrant began the game by running from the demons and mutants that appeared in the city.

A good tutorial, showing a fragmented glimpse of a world on the verge of collapse, and a textbook example of how to immerse the player in the game’s world… or so it was meant to be.

But the boy had, from a long time ago, held a deep dissatisfaction with these kinds of tutorials.

‘I always wanted to take a shot at that b*stard someday.’

In the tutorial, the player’s character *had* to run. The option to fight was systematically, utterly blocked.

No matter how uniquely you built your character, that wouldn’t change.

The core premise—that ‘the Human Vagrant abandons the crumbling city of Strader and embarks on a long journey to the central city, marking the true start of the game’—was something a player couldn’t subvert, no matter what.

But in reality… such systemic restrictions didn’t exist.

Carefully, the boy steadied himself against the collapsed ramparts and rose to his feet.

This boy, with his shimmering white hair, could flee whenever he wished.

Every detail of the terrain beyond Strader, down to the smallest pebble, was etched into his memory.

Avoiding monster-infested areas or finding a safe place to spend the night was something he could probably do with his eyes closed.

Even so, the boy’s steps led him not north, but toward the battlefield.

It wasn’t for some grand reason.

The bread Hans had given him was disgustingly hard and coarse, but strangely, it was as warm as freshly baked bread.

It was a strange thing. If it was bread that had been stuck away in the food storage, it should have been rotting rations of unknown origin.

A disgustingly tasteless, yet strangely warm piece of bread.

That alone was enough to wager one’s life… but this boy had another reason to step onto the battlefield, risking it all.

‘Whoa, this is kinda thrilling.’

…If someone heard the boy’s inner thoughts, they would have surely branded him a madman.

The boy wasn’t excited by the heat of battle or the soldiers’ solemn resolve.

The boy was experiencing a high from something a little different than others, no, rather…a *lot* different.

Namely, the opportunity to capture a ‘monster that could never be caught.’

‘This is an opportunity. A rare and unparalleled chance that only I can experience…!’

In truth, just entering this game world was already a special experience that no one else in the real world could have, but this crazy boy apparently wasn’t satisfied with just that.

How this human, this boy, became like this, I couldn’t know.

Like all those who call themselves hipsters, the boy was the kind of human being who found excitement in things that were especially bizarre and twisted.

…Well, whatever.

For a disgustingly hard and tasteless piece of bread and a desire that was warped somewhere deep within.

“Bloom.”

The boy summoned a massive lightning strike onto the battlefield.