86 - Volume 3 - Chapter Ep

Hint: To Play after pausing the player, use this button

Add to favorites

EPILOGUE

WE’LL MEET AGAIN

It could be concluded that the first multinational joint operation since the outbreak of the war with the Legion was a success. That said, they failed in retaking the entirety of the Legion’s territories, but the opinion of the three countries was that the line they captured along the Highway Corridor and to the west of it would be pivotal in expanding their spheres of influence.

The Legion failed in an offensive that took years to prepare for, and having been forced into retreat, they likely wouldn’t be able to promptly recommence their invasion.

If the forces of humankind stood together, it was possible to resist the Legion. And that was a faint yet monumental hope.

“That said, this isn’t a situation where we can rest on our laurels.”

Outside the window was a view of light morning snow falling on the Federacy capital, Sankt Jeder. Standing before the large desk in the president’s office, the western front’s army’s chief of staff and the commander of the 177th Armored Division spoke.

“We’ve lost well over sixty percent of the western front’s army. We don’t have enough standard troops to fill in the numbers, so we’re talking with every military academy, special officer academy, and conscription camp to push their curriculums forward, as well as pushing for more reserves. We can’t afford to have insufficient training, though. And encouraging more to join the conscription camps will lead to a decline in our national power.”

During wartime, the military is the kind of industry that consumes large amounts of resources and manpower despite not producing anything. And so the age groups in charge of production activities and increasing the population are forced to flow into the army’s pool of personnel, gradually chipping away at the country’s potential national power. The United Kingdom and the Alliance were likely facing similar hardships. Their total population was shrinking, but the situation could very well only be becoming more and more severe.

“By contrast, we may have decreased the Legion’s main forces, but the Weisel and the Admiral remain intact. And since they’re mass-produced weapons, their reproduction speed is incredibly rapid compared to our own… The war situation is only going to become worse going forward.”

“You don’t have to beat around the bush, Major General. What you’re trying to say is that if we keep with our current strategy of slow, gradual advance, humankind will be stomped out and defeated before we manage to retake the continent… Correct?”

“Yes. And therefore, I think we need to reconsider our approach for this war…”

Even regardless of that, if another attack on the same scale was mounted against them, they would not be able to push them back. Such was the military’s perspective after how, despite having achieved all their objectives during the large-scale offensive and the Morpho takedown operation, the Legion still had the initiative and led them by the nose, forcing them to suffer massive losses.

“While keeping with our gradual advance, we will employ limited offensive strategies. While we hold on to our defensive lines as before, we will establish and deploy a special, independent force focused on launching concentrated attacks on important strategic points for the Legion. And while they were the first candidates I nominated out of everyone on the western front, I was surprised to see you come up with the same suggestion, Your Excellency.”

They—who were without a doubt elites even within a militaristic country like the Federacy.

“The Eighty-Six. The young soldiers we’ve rescued from the former Republic’s borders will make up the mobile strike force… With all due respect, Your Excellency, I never would have expected you to offer up those children as a sacrifice for the country’s peace.”

“Even if I was to speak against it, they wished to enlist—and as frontline soldiers, at that. There’s no point in arguing.”

Ernst responded quietly, looking out the window at the sights of a snowy Sankt Jeder, where tumultuous preparations were underway for the Eve of the Holy Birthday, the very symbol of winter.

“They have their own set of values, and I haven’t the right to disregard them because they don’t align with my own. If they still choose the battlefield, the least I can do is let them stay together, and besides, with regards to Shin…to Captain Nouzen, I still feel a need to keep him out of danger, you see.”

He looked down at the electronic document deployed in a hologram in midair. The personnel files of espers belonging to the Federacy had a special mark applied to them. This personnel file had the mark emblazoned on it in striking color and was filled with countless columns of text, special mentions regarding the latest sequence of operations.

“In addition to making concentrated strikes on strategic points for the Legion, the strike force is also to be dispatched to our neighboring countries as reinforcements. Said countries will also be placing their own guest officers in the unit, so it will surely draw attention from the outside… As convenient a warning device as he might be, I won’t let you use him as a guinea pig.”

While the major general stiffened at the sidelong glance cast his way, the chief of staff merely scoffed.

“It saddens me to see you suspect our army to be so morally depraved, Your Excellency.”

Contrary to his words, the chief of staff wore a smile that almost seemed to boast of his faults, and he tilted his head to one side.

“Will said Captain Nouzen really consent to the idea of these guest officers, though? Isn’t the officer being chosen for his division, who he will be under the direct command of, one of his former persecutors?”

“He’s already been told the news. He came back yesterday to take a leave of absence.”

Ernst shrugged as the chief of staff raised an eyebrow. The Nordlicht squadron—Shin included—had participated in the battle to retake the former Republic of San Magnolia’s administrative Sectors. They’d managed to retake everything up to the First Sector, after which they were locked in a stalemate, alternated with another force that took over for them, and retreated along with the rest of their main force.

Combatants that fight nonstop for a certain period of time suffer a significant drop in their combat efficiency. Being a former war-oriented country that spent almost all its time dealing in nothing but war even in its current incarnation, the Federacy knew very well the importance of routine alternation of forces and allowing for rest. However brief it was, these children would need time to rest.

“I was also worried about that, but it seems my concerns were unfounded. After all…”

As soldiers only wore their uniforms on official occasions, Shin draped his heavy military coat over his uniform as he walked through the Federacy capital’s streets. The national cemetery, which occupied a large section of Sankt Jeder’s suburbs, was hazy with powdery snow. Under a bright sky blanketed in white, the grove of lilac trees surrounding the graveyard stood with all its leaves blown away, exposing its black bark to the will of the frigid winds. The gauzelike curtain of snow painted a monochrome picture against the black tombstones, and the shadows of other soldiers, of various ages and genders, who had just returned from the western front, stood solemnly between them.

During the winter, they would be decorated with flakes of snow. In spring, they would be decorated with lilac petals; in summer, by the roses blossoming in the shadows of the trees; and during autumn, by a field of scarlet sages. Such flowers would be an offering for the spirits of fallen heroes.

It came to Shin’s mind that he never did see the cemetery during any other season but winter. There was so much he hadn’t seen yet. He stopped in a section of the cemetery filled with new graves, in front of a single unassuming tombstone.

“—It’s been a while, Eugene.”

EUGENE RANTZ

That name was etched into the stone pillar, with only seventeen years between the date of his birth and that of his death. Snow that had fallen through the night and all the way until this morning piled up solemnly and quietly over the graveyard, painting everything with a faint alabaster veneer.

“Sorry. It took me a while to come visit.”

Eugene wasn’t there. And even if half of his remains were buried down there, his wishes and memories weren’t there anymore. To Shin, who could hear the voices of ghosts—of memories and fragmented wills that remained in the world of the living—this wasn’t a question of values or of the god he believed in. It was cold, hard fact. There was neither a heaven nor a hell. The dead all equally returned to the darkness in the depths of this world.

And that was why the person he was talking to was none other than the Eugene of his memories. But oddly enough, he still felt like he needed this impersonal stone slate, which had his name carved on it, in order to truly face him.

Once all those who knew him were gone, this hunk of stone, which bore only his name and dates of birth and death, would be nothing but a record. But all those who died and returned to nothingness, be they Federacy soldiers who left behind grave markers, or his 576 comrades from the Eighty-Sixth Sector, who’d entrusted him with their names on aluminum-alloy shards, never truly wished for a tombstone. All they wanted was for someone to remember that they were here.

“The western front’s the same as it was when you were there. We held the line, somehow.”

He left the bouquet he’d bought at the entrance of the cemetery in front of Eugene’s grave. It was a bouquet of white lilies raised in a greenhouse to withstand the Federacy’s cold winter. Placing them against the polished black-granite tombstone brought out their gorgeous white in all its splendor.

When the old flower-vendor woman saw he was a soldier—which she probably realized at a glance, given his uniform—she pretty much pushed the bundle of flowers into his arms, insisting he take them for free. An old woman, standing in front of a national graveyard this early in the morning, running a flower stand. As if to say that was her mission, with her lips pursed and her back straightened.

“All the Eighty-Six who survived in the Republic were given shelter by the Federacy, and now a new unit is being organized, with them as the core. A mobile unit specialized in operating Juggernauts. Once my leave ends, I’ll be assigned there, too.”

The number of its ranks was only slightly under ten thousand troops, making it the size of a large brigade. The majority of surviving Processors enlisted into the Federacy’s army, reaching the same decision Shin and his group had come to only a year earlier.

“…You asked me once about what I fight for.”

To be exact, he was about to ask, but was cut off halfway through, in what would be the last time they met before it all ended. Neither Shin nor Eugene thought it would be their last conversation. Death came equally to all—and just as suddenly. And that was why, at the very least, one had to live each moment in a way they wouldn’t come to regret. They, the Eighty-Six, pledged to live and fight on while embracing that pride. Because they didn’t have anything else to cling to yet.

“If I’m being honest, I still don’t really know. We… I don’t think I have the sort of reason to fight that you were thinking about. I’ve got nowhere to come back to and nowhere to go. Nothing…and no one to defend.”

His family was gone, and he had no culture to draw on, as it was all within the memories of his homeland, which had been destroyed a long time ago. And then, with the voices of the ghosts as his way markers and the countless memories of his comrades etched into his heart, he’d pressed onward with nothing but the desire to end his brother as his sole motivator. And now that his brother was gone, looking to the future ahead was still too hard for Shin. Both the distant future, which he didn’t know if he would live to see, and even the tomorrow that lay directly ahead of him were both so hazy and vague. It was difficult for him to look up at them.

He still had nothing to look forward to and nothing to live for. But…

“But if there’s one thing I understood… It’s that I don’t want the sight I show to them, to everyone I promised to take with me, to be another battlefield.”

Or to her, the girl he’d told a year ago that he was going on ahead, who’d fought all alone ever since, struggling to survive on the Republic’s battlefield. For the girl who tried so hard to catch up to them, showing her a battlefield where he lay beaten and defeated at the end of it all would be far too cruel. He didn’t leave her with those words on the final night before the Special Reconnaissance mission, with the possibility that help may come and the imploration to fight on until it did, because he wanted her to see this.

“…And the sea.”

When was it that Eugene stood before him, saying he wanted to show his little sister, who had never seen the ocean, that scenery? Something she had never seen and never known?

“I still can’t say I want to see it, really. But I do want to show it to others. To show others things they don’t know. Things they’ve never seen before. I think that’s all the reason I need to fight for now.”

The Legion stood in the way of that wish. It couldn’t come true with the world as it currently was. Of course, the tombstone said nothing in reply. Eugene’s ghost wasn’t there. But he still thought he could hear his amiable, kindhearted friend saying with a smile, “Sounds good enough to me.”

“I’ll come visit you again… And next time, I’ll bring you stories of places you’ve never seen before.”

The tombstone said nothing, and as if in its place, the bustling of the ghosts silently crept into his consciousness. The fragments of his dead comrades’ consciousness that were still trapped on the battlefield, whispering their final moments as they sought release.

I haven’t forgotten about you guys, either.

He turned on his heels silently, when he saw a figure raising a hand to him from the distance. It looked like Eugene—and his brother who had long since disappeared—and when he looked at it again, it turned into a silhouette of a long-haired girl who was disappearing into the snowy veil of winter. It looked like Kaie and, at the same time, like the girl who had caught up to him before he knew it. Both the dead who had already passed on and those who still wandered the battlefield. Before Shin knew it, they stood shoulder to shoulder, pursuing the comrades who were not yet there.

The countless heroes who slept there for eternity watched over the Reaper silently as he left the cemetery, covered in powdery snow.

The old lady always standing in front of the nasshinal grabe yard’s entrance asked if she came to visit her brother again and gave her some flowers for free. Holding a bouquet of lilies that was too large for her small body to carry, Nina walked down the now-familiar path to her brother’s grave. Over the past six months or so, Nina finally realized that her brother dying meant he would never come back, and she would never see him again. That her brother was killed by someone and would never return because of that person.

That was sad, painful, wholly unbearable, so she lashed out against that person in her letter, but no answer ever came. Maybe they were simply such an awful person that they wouldn’t write back, or maybe they never got the letter at all. The wor apparently became worse, and a lot of people died, so maybe that bad person died, too.

Nina thought that if he went to heaven, he should tell Eugene he was really sorry. Eugene was nice, so he would definitely forgive him. And then they could be friends there. Hurting someone made her feel prickly and bad. It probably wasn’t a good thing to do.

She approached her brother’s grave, only to find a shade of milky white different from the snow. Nina tottered over and picked it up… It was a bouquet of lilies. The snow hadn’t piled over them yet, so they had probably just been placed by the grave. She saw a retreating figure walking quite a distance away in the walkway between the gravestones. It was a boy, a bit taller than Eugene, dressed in the same steel-blue uniform she last saw her brother wear. He looked familiar somehow—as if she’d seen him and Eugene laugh together at one point.

“…Um!”

She gave a faint utterance in spite of herself, which should not have reached beyond the curtain of snow. Was he coming here? For remembering? Or maybe…for not dying like Eugene did and coming back alive? Little Nina didn’t know what spurred her to say the next words. And yet, she felt compelled to say them all the same.

“Um… Thank you very much…!”

This little girl’s voice, which had scant experience with shouting, could not have penetrated the buffering curtain of white to reach him. And despite that, she thought she saw the hazy figure on the other side of the snow turn to look at her.

It was at that small spring garden where the Juggernauts and their faithful attendant at the end of their journey rested forever. A young Federacy officer, likely her age and clad in a steel-blue Federacy uniform, smiled at her peacefully.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve met. Although, I suppose it is the first time we’re meeting face-to-face.”

Lena still had no way of knowing the reason for the flood of emotions contained in that statement.

“It’s been a while, Handler One. My name is Shinei Nouzen: a captain of the Federacy military and former leader of the Spearhead squadron.”

Her expression turned utterly astonished. Lena’s large silvery eyes widening in surprise, she looked up at the young man who presented himself to her. A boy roughly her age, barely old enough to have recently graduated from the special officer academy but already promoted twice to receive the captain’s rank insignia on his collar. His black Onyx hair and crimson Pyrope eyes. His white, handsomely sculpted face.

Lena never did know his face. The quality of the picture she had was too rough and distant to make out anyone’s features. But his voice… That serene, gentle voice, which was somehow pleasant despite being so curt…

“……Shin…?”

Sure enough, the boy broke into a wry smile.

“It’s the first time you’ve called me by that name. Yes, it’s me, Major Milizé.”

“You’re…alive…”

“I am. I failed to die again.”

That cold tone. That blunt manner of speaking. The tears welled up in her eyes before she even knew it, but she restrained them with all her might. She didn’t want to look away because of her tears. She felt that if she looked again—if she so much as blinked—he would disappear again.

So instead, she smiled from the bottom of her heart. Her expression was probably terribly awkward, but she couldn’t care less about that right now. She wondered what had happened to him over these two long years while the Republic had stagnated and eventually collapsed. How they crossed the Legion’s territories to reach foreign lands and came to wear the uniform of a different military.

But even without asking, she knew they’d probably kept on fighting for these two years. Because it was them, the ones who set out on their road, with the resolve to fight on as their pride.

“…I’ve always, always chased after you.”

The smile in his red eyes deepened.

“I know.”

“And I finally caught up to you.”

“You did.”

For some reason, it didn’t feel like it had been that long since she’d heard his serene voice. She took his extended hand with both of hers. The tears she’d held back until now finally flowed freely, but her earnest smile never wavered. She’d thought she would never get to speak these words aloud, but she could finally say them now.

“From this day forth, I, too, will fight by your side.”