86 - Volume 10 - Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

THE BANKS OF THE LETHE

The coursing waters of the river were blue and spanned as far as the eye could see.

Specifically speaking, the opposite shore from the bank Raiden was standing on was several hundred meters away. Far enough to squander any curious desire he might have had to swim across. To begin with, it was already autumn, and the temperatures were dropping accordingly, so he certainly wasn’t feeling inclined to go in for a dip.

That said, Raiden thought with a snort that if any of the other members of the Spearhead squadron—like Haruto, Daiya, or Kujo—were still around, they’d probably dive in headfirst.

It had been half a month since they’d departed on the Special Reconnaissance mission—a death march reserved for Eighty-Six who had been too stubborn to die.

By this point, he didn’t know how far they’d traveled from the first ward’s last base, mostly since they’d cut off their inertial navigation system’s positional data. They finally got their journey to freedom. Letting everything end while knowing they’d only come so far from where they started would have been unpleasant.

“…The Juggernaut…can’t cross this, right?” Raiden asked.

“Of course not,” Shin, who stood next to him, replied curly.

Juggernauts couldn’t traverse bodies of water. They were the product of hasty development and were only meant to hang on for a few years until the war ended on its own. It was a disposable suicide weapon. Its design and production were terribly careless, and even with the canopy closed, there were multiple gaps in the machine.

Cockpits were usually airtight, so as to protect the pilot from nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare, but the Juggernaut’s cockpit still had gaps. Needless to say, all its other parts weren’t any more waterproof than the cockpit was.

So if they wanted to go over this river, they’d need to find or make a bridge. But since the dawn of history, bridges were deemed key military positions. Meaning the Legion likely regarded any bridges in the area as important routes.

When they’d reached the banks of this river three days ago, they sighted a Legion force crossing a nearby bridge and heading east. Of course, traversing the river was dangerous, since it divided the forces between the two banks of the river. Naturally, this meant they had reconnaissance units on high alert all around the area. The Spearhead squadron couldn’t come anywhere near the bridge and had to lay low.

Making things worse, the day they arrived at the river, a storm settled over the area, and it rained for three days straight. Thankfully, they found shelter from the rain, which allowed them to start a fire in order to stave off the cold. That was a stroke of luck. They were already exhausted from the Special Reconnaissance mission, and if they didn’t have that fire, some of them would have surely fallen ill.

They hid in an abandoned old pillbox on high ground to avoid the rising water and observed the Legion forces crossing the bridge from there. The days were dark with heavy black clouds blotting out the sun, and the pelting rain further obscured their field of vision. They watched the metallic horde march across the bridge, lining the entire bank as they went over the river and headed east.

It was a surreal sight. Like a bad dream, a nightmare one couldn’t wake up from. It was a bigger army of Legion than they’d ever seen before, likely several divisions in size. The Legion could, without any particular effort, churn out these numbers and send them out to the battlefield.

Everyone—even Shin, who was rarely fazed by anything—could only watch the Legion march in silence. It felt like their future was thrust out before their eyes.

Humanity would lose this war.

The storm passed late the previous night, and that was about the same time that the last of the Legion passed the bridge. It only made sense it would take them that long. The lightest of the Legion, the Ameise, weighed over ten tonnes, while the Dinosauria weighed over one hundred tonnes. Tens of thousands of them had crossed the bridge.

When dawn rose on that day, the rain cleared as if it had never been there, and the Legion were all gone. They lingered on this bank, though, since Shin said they’d be better off waiting a while longer. They decided they would stay there an extra day and scout out the state of things.

…Raiden himself didn’t like this. He felt that spending the first bright day they’d had in a while cooped up inside the Juggernaut’s cockpit was a waste. Especially after they’d sat on their hands for three whole days because of the rain. But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t like it, but it wasn’t like they were in a hurry to go anywhere.

Anju had been excitedly saying all morning that this was a fine day to do the laundry, and so she made an impromptu clothes-drying line between one of Fido’s crane arms and her Juggernaut’s barrel. There, she hung their worn-out, camouflage field uniforms and thin blankets to dry. It was an almost absurdly serene sight. It was hard to believe they were in Legion territory—just about the worst place a human could end up.

Raiden looked over the spanning scenery again. The cloudless azure sky was still barely dark and clear enough to let one observe the sea of stars in the heavens. The deep blue stretched as far as the eye could see. It was such an unrealistic scene. There weren’t any enemies in sight, no people to be seen. It was simply peaceful and serene. It put Raiden in a strange mood. Like he was watching the world on its final, dying day.

“You know, looking at this view kind of feels like…we’re the only ones left in the world,” Raiden said.

Shin glanced in his direction. Raiden continued speaking without meeting his gaze. Mythologies across the continent regarded light blue as a color associated with heaven, and all cultures seemed to link rivers with passage into the afterlife. He couldn’t remember if it was the old woman or Shin who’d taught him that.

“Or maybe we’re already all dead, and this is the entrance to heaven…”

Shin still stared at him with that sidelong look, seemingly amused.

“…What?” Raiden asked suspiciously.

“What was it you said before? Perhaps dying wouldn’t be so bad if this meteor shower is the last thing I get to see?” Shin replied, a hint of an impish smile on his lips.

Raiden groaned. This was an old story from two years ago. Both of them survived a battle and ended up spending the night watching a once-in-a-century meteor shower when Raiden let that comment slip.

“That was surprisingly poetic of you,” Shin added teasingly.

“…Shut up,” Raiden growled through gritted teeth.

Shin laughed aloud. Raiden stared at him incredulously as he chortled without a care in the world. It had been half a month since he’d managed to slay his brother’s ghost on their last battlefield on the Eighty-Sixth Sector. And ever since, Shin had started smiling and laughing more.

His expression seemed to soften a little. He cracked more jokes. Joined them more often in idle chatter. It was like something that had weighed on his heart had been lifted. Like he’d been released from a punishment imposed on him.

Maybe he’d felt liberated after putting the brother he’d sought on the battlefield over five long years to rest. Or maybe he was elated at their first true taste of freedom. And more than anything, that small bit of salvation he’d found was a major influence on him.

Their reaper, who would take all their dead comrades and even they themselves, who would die at the end of this journey. He would carry them, remembering every single one, until his final destination.

But when he would eventually meet his end, there wasn’t anyone he could give his own heart to. Or so it should have been, but at the very, very end, he’d found someone he could entrust his feelings with. Someone he could ask to not forget him, to entrust with that wish, to survive and come to the place where his end would meet him.

We’re off, Major.

To Shin, being able to leave those words behind truly was a greater salvation than anything else.

After laughing for a short moment, Shin shrugged.

“I doubt we’re already dead. If we were, we’d have just disappeared. We’d fade into the depths of darkness… We wouldn’t be conscious or want for anything anymore.”

Shin could hear the voices of lingering ghosts, and he could make out the moment they completely disappeared, too. It was a perception that was separate from his five senses, a perception that Raiden lacked. So whenever Shin described that ability, Raiden could never quite understand what he meant.

…The depths of darkness?

But anyway…

“Like the ones who died before we did…right?”

“Yeah.”

The dead comrades Shin carried with him, who, along with his brother, now numbered at 576. They, who’d only known the battlefield of the Eighty-Sixth Sector, had likely never seen anything like this scenery.

Incidentally, since their laundry was currently being dried, and they naturally didn’t have any spare sets, they were currently wearing some bedcovers they’d found in abandoned civilian homes. Needless to say, they looked quite shabby. And since they didn’t want to move around too much in these makeshift clothes, they were sitting by the riverside, fishing with impromptu fishing rods they made out of string, branches, and chunks of metal.

The others were in a similar state of dress. Anju was humming some odd song to herself as she pretended to paint her nails with colored flower petals. Theo’s creative urges were tickled by this sight, but since he had nothing to sketch on or with, he simply twirled his fingers fretfully. Kurena was running and rolling around in a nearby field of flowers, which released cotton puffs into the air.

As Shin watched the fluffy balls of cotton soar up to the blue sky like snowfall on rewind, he said:

“Apparently, there’s a legend in the east about a white hare that rolls around in a field just like that.”

“…Ooh.” Raiden cared very little about that legend, but… “What did you just see that made you associate a white hare with it?”

“…”

On the other side of the field, Kurena was running around, a vivid quilt covering her pale, nude form. And as she ran, Raiden could make out the blanket flapping about quite conspicuously.

Despite it being autumn, the sunlight was hot, and the wind that came in the wake of last night’s storm was strong. The laundry they’d put up early would likely be dry by noon. They sat around a campfire, sipping on tea made of pine leaves as the fragrant scent of the slightly overcooked fish they’d had for lunch that day hung in the air. When they’d been in hiding, they had to put up with nasty synthesized rations, and so the fish was an appetizing change of pace.

A fox appeared—one that had doubtless never seen humans before—and peered at them curiously. They threw it a fish that was too small for them to eat, which it proceeded to sniff for a while before picking it up with its mouth and scampering away. Seeing it off with a smile, Anju said, “We did the laundry. Now if we just had a drum or something we could fill with water…”

Kurena gazed at her in blank puzzlement, while the three men, Raiden included, fell silent. They understood what she wanted to do, and they certainly understood why she wanted to do it, but…

“…So you basically want to heat up some water,” Raiden eventually said.

“Right! We’re so close to a river, but I’m tired of just dipping in the water. I wish we could take a bath!” Anju exclaimed, clapping her hands together.

“A bath?!” Kurena parroted her, her eyes positively sparkling.

“We’ve been wiping our body off, but that’s just not enough,” Anju continued. “And it was cold until yesterday, what with the rain, so I’d like to heat up a little.”

“A bath!” Kurena said again. “And a hot shower, and a towel, and soap!”

“All those are gonna be hard to find here, but I do miss them. I’d at least like to refresh myself a little.”

Faced with two girls chattering excitedly, the three boys exchanged glances.

That’s… Hmm, we get it, but… It’s not gonna happen…

“No, any drum we’d find will definitely be rusty… I mean, if it’s been sitting here for years…”

“And I’m pretty sure the Legion would have taken anything that still had fuel in it.”

“And besides, anything that has fuel in it is stuff that’s probably not safe for us to touch anymore. There won’t be any new, clean barrels lying around here.”

At this awkward but firm reminder of the reality they were in, Anju dropped her shoulders.

“…Yeah…I guess we won’t find a hot-water boiler around here…”

The frontline bases had shower rooms so the livestock—the Eighty-Six—could maintain basic hygiene. It took a long time for the water to heat up, and the facilities and fixtures were quite horrible, indeed only worthy of livestock.

But even those basic facilities weren’t something any one person could arrange on their own. They were based on multiple types of infrastructure provided by the state. And now that the group was cut off from that, they couldn’t even enjoy the privilege of a shower, even if it was a bad one.

It was a pretty grim reminder of how small and powerless humans could be…

Seeing Anju and Kurena hang their heads in disappointment, Fido, which had finally been freed from its duty of supporting the clothesline, blinked its optical sensor.

“Pi.”

“If you’re talking about the ammo container we emptied out ten days ago…,” Shin said. “It’s a bit badly welded, but we could cover that up with some cloth. More importantly, how are we going to heat up that much water? We don’t have the fuel to stoke that kind of fire.”

“Pi…,” Fido beeped dejectedly.

“…I gotta ask you again, how the hell can you tell what it’s saying, down to those kinds of details?” Theo asked, shuddering.

Raiden had to agree with Theo there.

“…Pi!”

“There’s a city nearby?” Shin asked pensively. “Well…I won’t stop you if you want to look for it.”

“Come on… How can you tell what it’s saying…?”

“Are you sure, Shin?” Anju asked, inclining her head to one side.

As much as she longed for a bath, she did realize it was realistically difficult to arrange. It would require a great deal of effort, and she assumed Shin, being the captain, wouldn’t approve of it. But Shin simply gave an indifferent shrug.

“I can understand wanting to take a hot shower, and it’s not like we’re in a hurry to get anywhere. Besides”—he smiled softly, flashing the serene expression he’d shown now and then during this journey—“we should be entering the old Empire’s territories soon. We might as well see what the Empire’s cities were like.”

They approached the city Fido had seen from the plateau, finding an Imperial flag with the symbol of the double-headed eagle flapping in the wind on the road leading into the city ruins. Next to it was a sign, too faded to read, with the name of the city.

The buildings were made of black and gray stone and blackened cast iron. Oppressive colors. Uniform, inorganic buildings lined the city, and by contrast, the roads were full of coordinated twists and turns, making the city feel labyrinthine.

It was quite unlike Republic cities, where the streets were a radial shape that passed all the way from the city center to its outer brink, with a straight main street at the city’s heart. There, where refined buildings were set up to reflect the architect’s aesthetics. Imperial cities were planned, from the very beginning, to serve as military strongholds, and their design was meant to stall enemy armies marching through them and befuddle their sense of direction.

It drove the point home that they really had crossed the border between the Republic and the Empire, reaching what was once an enemy country.

They hid their Juggernauts in a warehouse on the city outskirts just in case. Raiden and the rest watched Fido go off in what was (probably) a jolly mood to search for a drum they could use, before exploring the Imperial city themselves, hoping to take in the sights of a foreign city.

Despite their expectations, once they stepped into the main street, they found stores standing side by side, their once-brilliant show windows lining the street. Just like a Republic city. In between stores they’d never seen before, they noticed fast-food chains whose names felt distantly familiar. They’d seen places like these in the ruins of the Eighty-Sixth Sector, but they’d never actually caught them in business.

As they watched Kurena walk between the two sides of the streets, peering into the clouded-over, broken show windows, Raiden was suddenly overcome by a strange feeling.

Figures dressed in desert camouflage, without regard for the season or terrain, wandering through abandoned city ruins. This was a sight he’d seen countless times in the Eighty-Sixth Sector when they foraged for supplies. But for a moment, the sight of Kurena walking along the flagstones of an unfamiliar country’s city…almost gave him the feeling that he was looking at an ordinary girl walking through a peaceful city.

Had it not been for the Legion War, had the Republic not persecuted the Eighty-Six, she…all of them would have been just ordinary children, living uneventful lives. Had things not turned out this way, they might have never met at all.

Kurena was born in one of the northern secondary capital’s, Charité’s, satellite cities. Theo was born on the other side of the Republic, near the old southern border. Anju was born in a small eastern city. Raiden was from what was currently the thirty-second administrative Sector.

None of them would have had a chance to meet. The rest of Spearhead’s members had also come from all over the Republic.

Shin was apparently born in the Republic’s capital of Liberté et Égalité. The capital, along with what currently served as the first to fifth administrative Sectors, had been a high-end, affluent residential area since before the war. Children born there hardly ever left those areas, save for vacations or school trips, and people rarely moved in, either.

Were it not for the war… Were it not for the white pigs casting them out onto the battlefield together…they likely would have spent their entire lives without ever crossing paths. And that thought made walking through the same places and looking at the same things feel very strange.

He then noticed Shin stop in his tracks. He was in a square that was oddly decorated compared with the rest of this oppressive, impersonal city. Statues lined the square. At first, Raiden thought he was looking at a statue of a young woman, perhaps an empress, clad in a needlessly gaudy uniform and an overly long mantle. But upon closer inspection, Shin’s gaze wasn’t fixed on the statue, but rather on the autumn sky that was its backdrop. To the east.

“What’s wrong?” Raiden asked.

Shin turned his bloodred eyes to him and blinked. He didn’t even notice Raiden had approached him.

“No…” He fell silent, pausing for thought for a moment…or perhaps lending an ear to some voice in the distance, before eventually shaking his head. “It’s nothing… We’re probably fine.”

“…?”

That meant there was cause for concern. Were the Legion nearby? Thinking back on it, Raiden did see him look around curiously a few times during their journey.

“They didn’t notice us, and I don’t think there’s much of a chance of us running into them,” Shin continued. “Nothing should happen, assuming we don’t approach them ourselves, that is.”

“Oh, so it really was the Legion.”

It was easy to forget, especially on days like this one, but they were within Legion territory. A place where humans couldn’t live. They were walking through a place like this with just five Juggernauts. If they made even one wrong move, they could all get wiped out in the blink of an eye.

Raiden turned his eyes to Shin again. They were all exhausted by the Special Reconnaissance mission. And Shin had it especially bad.

“You tired, man? If you want to take a breather, that pillbox should be hard to spot. If we go back there, you can take your time and rest for a while longer.”

They were in a land teeming with Legion, and no one could do Shin’s reconnaissance duties for him. There were countless more ghosts prowling the battlefield compared with the Eighty-Sixth Sector, and he had no way of blocking off their voices. It wouldn’t be strange at all if he was much more exhausted than the rest of them were. Maybe this was why he said they’d take a wait-and-see approach today.

For a moment, Shin stared at him, dumbfounded, but upon understanding what Raiden meant, he snickered.

“…The hell?” Raiden asked.

“Sorry,” Shin said, still smiling. “But I already told you. I’m used to hearing the Legion’s voices. Coming to the territories doesn’t matter that much to me.”

“You say that, but you…”

Raiden had known him for nearly four years, and he knew that, perhaps as backlash for his ability to hear the Legion, he would sometimes go out like a light. Raiden knew better than to assume Shin was fine and used to this just because he said so. If nothing else, this was definitely weighing on him.

“Given that we’re not going to get any supplies, we’re limited in how many days we can keep going. So rather than taking a needless break, we should be focusing on getting farther ahead.”

How many days they can keep going. In other words, how many days they can survive. The first ward’s frontline base had only given them supplies for one month, and those reserves were gradually being whittled down.

Raiden heaved a deep sigh. Well…if he says so, so be it.

“Roger… That said, we finally made it to the Empire.”

“I didn’t think we’d get this far. I honestly didn’t expect we’d survive this long.”

“…Does this place bring back memories?” Raiden asked, glancing at Shin.

Shin’s parents emigrated to the Republic from the Giadian Empire, making him a second-generation Republic citizen of Giadian descent. His family hadn’t been Republic citizens for long. Raiden thought he might be familiar with the Empire’s culture due to his parents’ influence. If his grandparents or other relatives had remained in the Empire, perhaps he’d even visited the country once before.

Shin, however, simply shook his head.

“No, I’ve never been to the Empire. I can hardly remember my parents anyway… It just feels like a foreign country to me.”

He then breathed out and moved his gaze back to Raiden.

“What about you? Weren’t your family immigrants from the Empire?”

“Nah, that was my grandpa’s grandpa…or even their grandpa…”

It must have been two hundred years ago that Raiden’s family moved to the Republic. Even calling them his ancestors felt like too close of a description. An entire village moved away from the Empire to the Republic, Raiden thought as he looked at how the thick azure blanket of the sky melted into the horizon. Shin glanced in the same direction, likely feeling the same thing he did.

They’d reached their so-called homeland, the place their bloodlines derived from. Had things been just a little different, this could have been their native land. But though they’d finally set foot here…

“In the end, this place…isn’t where we belong.”

“…I guess not.”

Somewhere in the distance, they heard the high-pitched calling of a pheasant.

Fido really outdid itself.

“…A solar water heater. I see. I’ll admit I didn’t think of that.”

“And its water pumping system and solar power generator are still operable…”

“This thing can probably heat up a container’s worth of water no problem, but…isn’t Fido a little too smart?”

They drew water from the river, putting them in high-capacity tanks that warmed up the water using solar panels. As Anju and Kurena exchanged an enthusiastic high five, Fido looked ever so slightly boastful.

Sitting in its roost between the bushes, the small animal was gnawing on the bones of the fish the strange creatures had thrown it earlier that day. But then it suddenly heard a peculiar howl echo from afar across the afterglow and prickled up its ears in concern.

“Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaa, so waaaaarm…!”

It was a curious sound, unlike the howling of a wolf. Maybe it was those strange creatures from earlier. It certainly had a weird tone that would fit those strange creatures. It didn’t hear that voice again after that. And so with a wag of its fluffy tail, the fox returned to its task of gnawing on the bones.

“Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaa, so waaaaarm…!”

“Kurena, the Legion might hear you if you shout that loud.”

But Kurena was so excited by the prospect of a bath after such a long time that Anju’s warning didn’t quite get through to her. She looked happy to the point that if she had a tail, it would surely be wagging vigorously as she splashed into the container full of hot water. This container was large enough to contain multiple 57 mm cartridges, and they hid it inside a building that had its ceiling missing, giving them a view of the reddening sky.

Visibly satisfied, Kurena soaked herself up to her shoulders in the water, which was heated up by solar power.

“It really feels so good… It’ll probably get colder as time goes by. I wish Shin and the others could go in with us, too…”

As one might expect, the three boys weren’t there. They let the girls get the first dip and were waiting outside the building, loading a small supply of canned foods onto Fido’s container. Seeing Anju sigh and regard her reproachfully with one eye closed, Kurena jolted.

“Wh-what did I say?!”

“You say some pretty daring things without even thinking about it, but you can’t bring yourself to actually act on them. That’s your problem, if you ask me.”

Realizing what she’d just said, Kurena went red up to her ears.

“N-no! That’s not what I meant—”

“Also, I feel strange even having to mention it, but you do realize that only little girls would say that, right? Begging your big brother to take a bath with you and the like. I’m pretty sure said big brother would start losing his patience with you.”

“But that’s not what I— Wait, really?!”

Despite sitting in hot water up to her shoulders, Kurena grew very pale this time, prompting another sigh from Anju.

“…And to top it off, saying it out loud when we’re within earshot is one of Kurena’s bad habits…”

Sinking into the water, which had gotten a bit colder with the passage of time, and resting his arms on the edge of the container, Theo looked up at the violet sky as the darkness of night crept in and the stars became visible.

Shin himself feigned ignorance and pretended not to have heard her, while Raiden remained silent, looking away as he couldn’t find any words to address this with. Shin probably had the worst of it, though. Theo didn’t expect an answer and didn’t say anything else.

When they’d heard Kurena’s comment, they all choked on their pine-leaf tea. Bathing with them wasn’t an idea they could agree with, of course.

“Shin… Why do you think Kurena’s such a little kid on the inside…?”

“…Don’t ask me.”

…Fair enough.

They returned to their camp at the pillbox and immediately helped themselves to the canned soup and hard biscuits they found. The boys then wrapped themselves in warm, newly washed blankets that smelled of sunlight and soon fell asleep.

Their unsupported march through enemy territory depleted their supplies every day. This lack of equipment tightened slowly but surely around their necks like a fine silk noose. They camped out for days in the chilly temperatures of autumn, eating synthetic rations that weren’t worthy of being called food and certainly weren’t meant to keep Eighty-Six alive.

This journey only exhausted them and gave them little chances to rest. Their fatigue was definitely accumulating; they just weren’t aware of it. And they all realized, deep down, that if this were to go on, they wouldn’t last long.

The chilling rain had passed the previous day, and the Legion weren’t nearby. The pillbox they were in wouldn’t allow the mountain wind or any animals to disturb them.

And so having found a safe resting place for the first time in a while, the boys fell into a deep sleep. The quiet hooting of the owls would not disturb their slumber. Only Fido sat squatted by the pillbox’s small window, bathed in moonlight as it listened to their silent breathing.

—Mm.

Hearing a voice tug at his consciousness, Shin awakened from his shallow slumber that morning.

One of the voices had moved closer compared with the previous day. It was only one unit, meaning it probably wasn’t on patrol. Legion patrol units moved in platoons or companies. And the odd direction it was moving in implied it wasn’t looking for them, either…

No, this voice was…

It’s…calling?

But it wasn’t calling Shin. It wasn’t calling anyone in particular.

Someone. Anyone.

Please… Somebody…

…end me…

Narrowing his eyes, Shin tore the thin blanket from his body.

The other unit seemed to have stopped for today. And so Shin got to his feet silently.

When they woke up, Shin was gone.

“…What’s that idiot doing?”

Fido was still there, and so was Undertaker. Which meant he didn’t just run off on them. They tried connecting to him through the Para-RAID, but he closed the Resonance as soon as they connected, which didn’t make it seem like he was in trouble. But he did take the assault rifle he kept in Undertaker’s cockpit and his usual pistol with him.

Really, what the hell is he doing?

They waited for a while, but he didn’t come back. Kurena started fidgeting in concern, and so Raiden decided it was time for them to go looking for him.

They descended the high ground and thankfully found a muddy road that still had a fresh pair of footprints leading to the city ruins. The muddy footprints soon dried out and disappeared, so they could only see the general direction he’d walked in. They traveled along the outer edge of the city, eventually finding…

“…A zoo?”

The word was written on a large sign in gaudy, gilded letters. The sign was atop a gate that was designed like rose vines and surrounded by white stone walls and a silver fence. It wasn’t a large zoo, though. Perhaps the city’s governor had made it as part of a hobby and opened it to the public. Indeed, the cages and the flagstones of the pavement seemed to be arranged chicly.

This was a provincial city near the border and a military fortress, so the nobles of the Empire must have had a lot of time and spare money on their hands to build this.

But those were about the only things that’d been left of the past.

This city had likely been evacuated and abandoned to escape the Legion. Based on how many of the supplies here were left untouched, it was easy to imagine that the evacuation was done in quite the hurry. And of course, the people were so keen on getting away alive that they didn’t have any time to free the animals from their cages.

Lying behind a cage with its bars designed like coiling grapevines was the bleached skeleton of some large animal. The dusted plate next to it said it was a tiger, but there were no longer any traces of its imposing physique or brilliant striped fur left.

A lion. A polar bear. An alligator. A peacock. A black eagle… All of them reduced to skeletons. One of a hyena sat in its cage, its jaws clenched on the bars in an attempt to bite its way out. Perhaps it died of thirst before the Legion arrived to kill it.

These cages were meant to keep the rare animals from escaping, but they also kept the carnivores, like wolves and foxes, from eating the corpses. This instead allowed the smaller creatures to simply decompose. Thinking of these animals, which had been taken from their faraway homes and locked up in cages, only to rot on the concrete without ever becoming nourishment for anything… It gave the four of them a terribly hollow feeling.

They, too, had been taken away from their homeland and locked up. For them, they were caged in the battlefield, where they were forced to die pointless deaths in battle. Their lives would leave nothing behind. Their lives wouldn’t be allowed to hold any value.

These animals are just like us Eighty-Six…

Perhaps being named after a dog gave it an odd sense of kinship, because Fido stopped stock-still near the bones of what was supposedly a strange canine of eastern origin. It likely felt something similar to what the Eighty-Six felt, despite being used to seeing skeletons thanks to its work collecting the corpses of the war dead.

The corpses of animals, left to perish without anywhere to go or any purpose to their lives.

“Is this how we’re going to…?” Kurena whispered softly.

She then pursed her rough lips, trailing off like she was afraid to finish that sentence. But they all felt like they knew what she was going to say.

Is this how we’re going to die? Or…

Unknown to anyone, unable to touch on anyone’s lives, simply gone and forgotten…?

Four people and one machine marched through this abandoned zoo, lined with decorated cages that incarcerated the lifeless remains of those animals. They passed silently through this display of boundless death.

And at the farthest edge of the zoo, they found one silver cage that was larger and more decorated than the rest. Inside it was the large skull of an elephant, gazing at them through its empty eye sockets. There, Shin stood, his back turned to them. And right in front of him, it lay, its eight legs bent and broken…

A Löwe.

Raiden felt all the blood drain from his face at once. The gruesome memory of how one of their squad mates, Kaie, had her head lopped off by a Löwe’s brutal attack surfaced in his mind.

“Shin?!”

He hurried over to Shin before he could even think it through. He slid his assault rifle’s strap off his shoulder, gripping it in his hands in a familiar motion.

“You idiot! What are you doing?!” He growled.

“—It’s fine, Raiden,” Shin said quietly. “It’s not dangerous… It can’t move anymore.”

His bloodred eyes were fixed on the Löwe, which sat crouched and crumpled, seemingly incapable of moving. Approaching it made it clear just how broken it was. Its turret was tilted sideways and still, and its menacing 120 mm barrel was torn straight across. Its machine guns were missing, apparently having been completely blown off.

And finally, the Legion’s lifeblood—the silvery Liquid Micromachines that served as their central processor—flowed out of it, unable to retain their form as they leaked from a large hole…which had likely been inflicted by a 120 mm caliber shell.

Having slain the Legion as many times as he had, Raiden could tell this was fatal damage for a Löwe. As could their comrades, who watched over their exchange a short distance away, and Shin, who’d fought and survived battles with the Legion longer than any other. He stood defenseless with his assault rifle still hanging on his shoulder, in front of a gigantic Legion monster that could normally tear a human in half with a single swing of its metallic legs.

He looked at this crumbling combat drone with a gaze that almost felt somber.

“I could hear it getting closer since yesterday. It couldn’t be a scout on a patrol, and it looked like it was going in a different direction. So I thought I’d just ignore it… But this morning, I got the feeling it was calling.”

“…Calling?”

“It said it wanted someone, anyone, to be by its side.”

And the reason it wanted someone to be there was clear to anyone who saw the sorry state of this Löwe.

I don’t want to die alone.

“That’s not what it said on the brink of death, so I just got the feeling that’s what it meant. All I can hear is a repeat of their final words.”

“And what’s it saying?”

“I want to go back.”

It was a silent, gentle voice, but some part of it seemed like a reflection of Shin’s own desire, and upon hearing it, Raiden felt his own heart tremble. It was like an expression of a desire nestled deep within him, too.

I want to go back.

Yes, perhaps so. Maybe some part of him had been wishing for this all along.

I want to go back. To go back.

But go back where? They didn’t have anywhere to return to. They didn’t remember such a place. There was nowhere to return to.

“It wants to go home one more time… It’s an Eighty-Six. And unlike us, he’s the kind who can still remember his home and family.”

This Eighty-Six was probably older than them, or maybe they simply didn’t survive long enough as a Processor to have their memories burned away by the fires of war. Either way, this Löwe wanted to return to that place so badly that even after its death, it was trying to drag its broken, shattered body in an attempt to go back.

But in the end, it couldn’t get there. There was nowhere to return to, and so in the end…he was no different than Raiden and the rest. An Eighty-Six cast out to the battlefield, where he was forced to live and fated to die. An Eighty-Six who didn’t belong anywhere except the battlefield. And so…

You slipped out of camp and came all the way here for a mechanical ghost of someone you don’t even know?

Raiden scratched his head, half-exasperated. If so, there wasn’t much else Raiden could say. Not to this Headless Reaper who took on the duty of collecting the comrades who died along the way, remembering them and carrying them with him to his final destination…

“That doesn’t make up for the fact that you up and left without saying anything. Dumbass…,” Raiden grumbled at him.

“My bad,” Shin said.

But he didn’t say he regretted it, which Raiden begrudgingly admitted to himself was typical of Shin. Even as they spoke, Shin kept his gaze fixed on the Löwe. Raiden narrowed his eyes dubiously. It couldn’t be, but…

“You’re not thinking of taking him along, are you?”

“No, I can’t manage that. I don’t know his name or anything about him.”

Shin could hear the Legion’s voices, but he couldn’t communicate with them. Like Shin just said, all he could hear was the unintelligible rustling of a mechanical intellect or a constant repetition of the dead’s last thoughts before their life came to an end. He couldn’t communicate with any of them, not even Shepherds, who retained the memories and mental faculties they had in life.

That said, if Shin knew even as little as just this person’s name, he would have been hell-bent on taking them along even if they were a Legion. In fact, Raiden could never recall Shin referring to the Legion as pieces of scrap or cursing them in the same ways others usually did.

He cherished his brother enough to spend the last five years searching for the Legion that contained his head…and he likely saw the other Legion as humans who deserved to be put to rest just like his brother.

“So I thought that since he happened to be nearby, I ought to at least see him off.”

The Löwe’s leg joints creaked and rattled. Its instincts as a killing machine spurred it to slay the enemy standing in front of it, and so it tried to move its body. But it couldn’t so much as get up, its legs failing to support its weight of fifty tonnes. And it couldn’t move enough to even scratch the ground it was on.

Its optical sensor flickered irregularly as its gaze moved from Shin to Raiden and then back to Shin, whom it had beckoned here. Its movements gradually grew slower, and little by little, its legs stopped thrashing. When it finally calmed down, Shin reached out and placed a hand on its now-still optical sensor.

“It’s fine.”

Having been optimized for battle, Löwe weren’t equipped with language-analysis functions. Even knowing this, Shin touched and spoke to it like he would to a dying comrade.

“You can go home now.”

Let me go back home. To the home in my memories.

Or perhaps to the final resting place of all who died…the darkness at the depths of the world.

The Reaper drew his pistol. His final weapon, which he would use to put his dying comrades out of their misery. The last bullet, he would save for himself, when the end came to claim him.

He fixed the sights of the pistol like he was turning his gaze toward it. He aimed at the hole where an APFSDS projectile had torn into the flank of its gun turret, from which the Legion’s central processor leaked.

The sound of that gunshot was swallowed up and silenced by the cages and ruined buildings without reaching anyone. Like a dying man’s swan song playing through an uninhabited wasteland, never to be heard.

On the back of the now eternally silenced Löwe’s turret was a hole pierced by a 120 mm APFSDS shell. 120 mm. The Juggernaut’s main gun was a 57 mm caliber. And the interception cannon they’d hardly ever seen in use—in fact, their final Handler’s one usage of it was the only time they’d witnessed it—was a 155 mm caliber.

Whoever destroyed this Löwe wasn’t from the Republic. It was either another Löwe’s 120 mm cannon, or perhaps—

“Raiden, if there were other factions that survived beyond the Republic…”

Raiden snorted at the suggestion. That was something he’d heard a few times before they’d left for the Special Reconnaissance mission. Beyond the Republic’s old borders and even farther than the Legion’s territories was an area where Shin couldn’t hear anything.

Of course, Shin couldn’t tell if there were any people still alive there. Maybe there was another reason—for instance, a place polluted by radiation intense enough to impede even the Legion from operating there. Or perhaps it was simply beyond the limits of what Shin’s ability could hear.

And yet if…if there were survivors except for the Republic, maybe they could reach them and survive.

That was a theory Raiden didn’t find appealing in the slightest.

“So what, we go there and live peaceful lives? I can’t even imagine that.”

By now, he could hardly remember his life before he was sent to the battlefield to be a Processor. Before he was sheltered in that small school. He couldn’t remember what his house looked like, what dreams he had, or how he spent his days. Neither did the others. Neither did Shin.

Living a peaceful life now? After all this time? Besides—and he kept this thought to himself, not putting it into words—he doubted they would make it even if this kind of place did exist. Giving voice to such things had a way of welcoming bad luck. That’s what the old woman would always say…

“If this was a fairy tale, we’d find utopia at the end of our journey, though,” Shin said, indifferent and uninterested.

“What, are you saying the twist was that what we said yesterday was right, and we really passed through the gates of heaven? Getting to go to heaven only after you die is no fun.”

“What, don’t you want to see what it’s like there?”

“’Course not. Who needs that after all the shit we’ve seen?”

If he’d had any expectation that there was a paradise in the afterlife, he’d have blown his brains out a long, long time ago. One of their past comrades did just that, in fact. He put up a strong front, screaming at Raiden and Shin that he wouldn’t become insane like them before he did it.

Shin carved his name into an aluminum grave marker and took him along. That way, in case the lost comrade didn’t find the heaven he sought, he wouldn’t end up leaving him behind.

Raiden saw the bloodred eyes opposite him look down. Like they were sinking somewhere dark and deep, all alone. And Shin moved his lips, whispering the words so only he could hear them.

“Still, if I can get there…”

The sound of the wind drowned out his soliloquy. Shin then turned his back on the Löwe’s remains.

“Let’s go. We’ve stayed here for long enough.”

Ever since they departed on the Special Reconnaissance mission, Shin had started smiling more often. Like a weight he was shouldering had been lifted, like he’d been set free. Like he had no more lingering regrets, nothing left to his name in this world.

And so Raiden thought he looked…awfully unsteady.

Five Juggernauts and their faithful Scavenger crossed the bridge. Having confirmed their safe passage, a certain Dinosauria unit rose to its feet. It stood seven kilometers away from the bank the Spearhead squadron was hiding in. Over the four days the five of them spent there, the Dinosauria had remained where it stood, outside the effective range of its tank turret, following them from across the horizon while keeping its distance.

Shourei Nouzen.

The one Shin had pursued for five years. The remnants of the ghost he sought out and finally defeated. Thanks to the Legion’s fail-safe systems, he just barely cheated death. But it wouldn’t be long before he disintegrated.

But until he did, he would spend what little bit of borrowed time he still had to watch over and protect his younger brother’s journey. And with that sole desire, his ghost lingered in this world.

Being a Legion unit, Rei knew what awaited Shin at the end of his journey. Another country that wasn’t the Empire—a country that would protect them.

I’ll probably disappear before it’s all over.

But if I can at least bring him—bring them—to safety, that’s all I need.

On two sides of the horizon, between the two banks of the river separating the world of the living from the world of the dead, stood two brothers—the elder dead, the younger still living. Neither of them aware that both had resolved to do the same thing.