The world outside the city gates was a study in grey. The sky was a featureless, overcast sheet, offering no hint of a sun. The ground beneath our feet was a mixture of cracked, lifeless earth and a strange, gritty black sand that crunched under our boots like corrupted data-shards. There was no wind, only a profound, unnerving silence broken by the low, static hum that seemed to emanate from the very air—the sound of an unstable world.
Our party moved in a tight, professional formation. Erina and Miyuri took the lead. Erina, ever the adventurer, moved with a practiced alertness, her hand never far from the hilt of her sword, her eyes constantly scanning the desolate horizon. Beside her, Miyuri held a crystalline slate, its surface displaying a shimmering, complex map of glowing lines. She wasn't just navigating; she was reading the very flow of the land's data, looking for the tell-tale signs of stability the Builder had described.
Elara walked just behind them, a silent, graceful presence. Her eyes were unfocused, her gaze distant, as if she were seeing something beyond the physical realm. I knew she was using her own unique senses to supplement Miyuri's device, feeling for the subtle vibrations and resonances in the world's broken code.
That left Silas and me to cover the rear. He moved with a predator's quiet confidence, his sharp eyes darting from shadow to shadow, while I did my best to look competent, my hand resting on one of my maguns.
For hours, we walked in this disciplined silence. The sheer emptiness of the wasteland was oppressive. There were no monsters, no ruins, nothing but the endless expanse of grey. It was a landscape designed to wear you down, to make you drop your guard out of sheer, mind-numbing boredom.
And Silas, it seemed, had reached his limit.
"So," a low voice whispered beside me, cutting through the silence. I glanced over to see Silas had moved closer, his usual smirk firmly in place. "Serious question."
I raised an eyebrow but kept my voice low. "What is it?"
"Our esteemed female colleagues up there," he began, nodding his head toward the three women in front of us. "You've had some time to observe. From a purely objective, aesthetic standpoint… which one's the best?"
I stopped walking for a half-second, my brain struggling to parse the question. I looked at the three women leading our life-or-death mission into a corrupted hellscape. Then I looked back at Silas, the elite, super-powered summon created by a near-godlike being.
"The… best?" I whispered back, completely bewildered. "What are you talking about?"
Silas rolled his eyes, as if I were a hopelessly naive child. "The chest, Kael. The assets. The divine blessings. Keep up."
My jaw went slack. I was aware that the summons had their own personalities, their own quirks that made them feel more human than machine. But this… this was a level of flawed, crass humanity I had never, ever expected from one of the Builder's creations. It was so shockingly mundane, so profoundly out of place, that I couldn't form a coherent response.
"You're a summon," I finally managed to stammer. "You… you think about that stuff?"
"Why wouldn't I?" he shot back, his smirk widening. "The Master may have summoned my form, but my aesthetic sense is all my own. And from where I'm standing, the data is pretty clear." He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, launching into his unsolicited analysis.
"Take Elara, for example," he began, and a cold spike of fear shot down my spine. "Elegant, mysterious, powerful, sure. But let's be honest. The girl's as flat as a perfectly planed board. No dimensionality. All function, no form. A tactical non-asset."
I wanted to tell him to shut up. I wanted to put my hands over my ears. I knew, with a certainty that chilled my very soul, that this was a spectacularly bad idea. But I was frozen, a deer in the headlights of an oncoming train of terrible opinions.
"Erina, now," he continued, his critical gaze sweeping over our adventurer friend, "she's not bad. Decent stats. Balanced. You could say she still has room to grow, a bit of an upgrade potential. Solid Silver-rank material, if you ask me."
My palms began to sweat. We were in a hostile environment, tasked with a mission critical to the survival of our home, and my partner in the rearguard was verbally ranking our female companions' breasts. This had to be some kind of fever dream.
"But Miyuri," he said, and his voice took on a tone of almost reverent appreciation. "Now that is top-tier design. See? This is what I'm talking about. Proves my theory that the nerdy, quiet ones are always the best. That girl is absolutely blessed with—"
THWACK.
Silas's sentence ended in a choked, strangled yelp. His eyes went wide, and he crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, landing in a heap in the black sand.
Standing directly where he had been a moment ago was Elara. She hadn't turned around. She hadn't made a sound. She had simply taken one step back, swung the heavy, rune-etched staff she carried in a swift, brutal arc, and connected perfectly with the back of Silas's head. Her usual serene, distant expression was gone, replaced by a look of cold, crystalline fury.
The other two had stopped walking as well. Erina and Miyuri slowly turned around, their expressions in perfect, terrifying sync. They had heard. They had heard everything.
"Elara," Silas groaned from the ground, trying to push himself up. "What was that for? There was a corrupted data-flea on my back, wasn't there? Good reflexes."
Elara's response was to kick him, hard, in the ribs. "You are a tactical non-asset," she stated, her soft voice laced with a deadly venom that was far more terrifying than any shout. She then proceeded to methodically, and with a terrifyingly calm efficiency, beat the ever-living crap out of him. Silas yelped and scrambled away, but Elara moved with him, her staff a blur of punishing impacts.
While the "corrective action" was taking place, Erina and Miyuri's attention shifted. Their gazes moved past the flailing form of Silas and locked directly onto me.
Three pairs of eyes. Three distinct flavors of feminine fury, all aimed at a single, terrified target.
I felt a cold sweat break out on my forehead. I held up my hands, a gesture of universal surrender. "Whoa, hold on," I said, my voice cracking. "I didn't say anything! That was all him! I'm an innocent bystander!"
Erina took a slow, deliberate step toward me. Her face, usually so open and cheerful, was a thundercloud of disappointment and anger.
"An innocent bystander," she repeated, her voice dangerously low. "So you just stood there and listened? To think, here we are, risking our lives, trying to find a new home for thousands of people, and that's all you boys can think about. Objectively ranking us like… like pieces of gear!"
"I wasn't ranking!" I protested weakly. "I was being held hostage in a deeply uncomfortable conversation!"
Miyuri pushed her glasses up her nose, her emerald eyes sharp and judgmental behind the lenses. "Your silence implies consent, Kael-san," she stated, her voice as cold and precise as a legal verdict. "As a participant in the conversation, you are equally culpable."
I looked from Erina's fiery anger to Miyuri's cold judgment to Elara, who had finally finished her… disciplinary session… and was now staring at me with an expression that promised a future of immense and creative pain. I was surrounded. There was no escape. My brain, which had successfully formulated a strategy to defeat a seven-foot-tall combat golem, could not produce a single coherent sentence to defend myself.
All my arguments, all my frantic pleas of innocence, they all died in my throat, strangled by the sheer, unified force of their collective glare. There was only one thing left to say. One word that could possibly hope to appease the goddesses of fury I had inadvertently angered.
"…Sorry."