[Chapter Shot]
"I'm sorry for your loss, man."
After giving Kave a can of heated food, he held it, feeling the warmth of the fire on his palms.
Life was brutal to him.
He saw his mother eaten by a dragon, his father sacrificed himself for him, and the door to the shelter was welded shut by the dragon's fire.
Lucky for him, the Tanaka family have always kept the shelter stocked. Moreover, Mrs. Tanaka was infamously frugal, always visiting the farmers markets to stock her house with cheaper farm produce from potatoes to onions and garlic. There was a room fully stocked with root vegetables in the shelter and everyone knew not to get near it.
Thanks to that, Kave survived those past three months… somehow.
He said that the first month was the easiest compared to the time when the generator went down. The second month was spent in total darkness, but the third was when madness plagued him.
He wasn't sure still if this was real. He has been out of the shelter many times, but every time it is in his head. The existence of a Star Paladin looking at them from afar wasn't helping either.
Adam tried his best to calm Kave down before asking him about the miniatures. He didn't want to come out as insensitive, but he started explaining how the world functioned to Adam those past 100 days.
Kave looked back at the shelter, covered in Adam's blanket, and didn't feel like he rolled a 20.
He lost everything… every fucking thing that mattered.
"Can you… kill me?"
Kave's world was shattered so many times now. He looked at Adam and asked the unthinkable. Adam didn't turn to him but kept looking at the fire.
"A survival rate of 5% means that only 1 of 20 people I know survived," Adam said and smiled as he stroked the fire. "I don't think I ever knew 20 people."
"… please…"
"… No." Adam let out a sigh and rested his back against his backpack. "You owe your life to your father; killing you wastes his sacrifice… but I think you already know that."
"…"
"Remember the saying?" Adam asked as he turned to Kave.
Kave twitched and looked at Adam.
"Pity not those who died…" Adam said and waited for Kave to continue, "… but those who survived… for every waking moment…"
Adam's words finally moved something within Kave. His lips twitched, reciting the prayer of self-pity.
"They see the end… beckoning…"
These words, however, attracted the attention of the uninterested Star Paladin.
"The words of Jafar the Undying." He spoke the name of the one who recited those quotes.
Kave looked up, and after hearing the Star Paladin speak, a sense of madness took over him as he stood up, walked to the Paladin, and the latter looked back at him.
"Of all the fantasies in my head… why are you real?"
"…"
From the confines of his armor, Captain Creed gave the little man a pitiful look that was in no way conveyed through his armor, worn only by the Solarium's angels of death, the Slayers.
"I am to blame here… I think," Adam spoke from the back, making the two look at him. "It's the reason I am here, actually."
Adam also stood up and faced Kave, saying:
"Buddy, I know it is not the right time to make selfish questions, but I need your Wartopia collection."
Adam's request didn't seem to have fazed Kave, who remained sitting yet swaying from his lack of balance. He then looked away and shook his head.
Adam frowned and looked at the shelter nearby, before glancing back at his friend.
"You ate them by any chance?"
A smile of self-mockery appeared on Kave's face as he shook his head again.
"Then?"
"They are gone, Adam."
His words made Adam, who is usually rather chill, almost feel light-headed.
"All of them? Everything?"
"They were outside when it happened. Otou-san (father) told me to take them out and move them… then it happened."
Adam knew about the situation between Kave and his parents from three months ago. They were supposed to find a new place for their collection, but to think the apocalypse decided to happen the same time when Kave was moving it.
"At least tell me something remained."
"… I don't know…" Kave replied passively and looked at Captain Creed, "Tell me about that."
Adam calmed himself and started telling Kave about his day, telling him about his newfound power to summon actual characters from Wartopia.
Kave frowned about everything, but then it was Captain Creed who presented the first piece of evidence.
"From your speech, it is evident you possess affinity with those so-called Runes," Creed said, then presented a piece of cloth to Adam. "This relic—my systems detect something alien from it. HereTech was my first guess, but you may know more."
What Adam received was the cloak worn by the man who took him hostage. Feeling it, Adam also had a strange feeling when he touched it.
"Yes, this strange sense I don't recognize. It is like I know something, but I… oh… hold on
——————————
≪ Cloak of the Gobzkin Skulker ≫ < Rare Clock >
A cloak that once belonged to a Gobzkin Skulker, a specialist in guerrilla warfare and assassination.
— Chameleon Rune: A rune bestowing upon its user the power to seamlessly integrate into their surroundings, akin to a chameleon, thereby evading any prying eyes.
——————————
"… Ah! Here it is!" Adam watched the words from in front of his face and explained it to Kave and Creed.
"Intriguing. But without a Techno Monk, we tread blind," Creed said.
"Heh!" Kave let a short chuckle escape him. "When you think you've gone crazy, the world just…"
And he started to laugh hysterically.
Fictional super-soldiers, magic items, dragons, visions, nightmares.
Adam threw the cloak at Kave so that he could wear it instead of the blanket and started going around to loot the men. Kave went from laughter to crying, to laughter, to crying again. He then lay on his back and stared blankly at the starry sky.
Captain Creed started patrolling around as well, but unlike Adam, who was looting the dead raiders, he seemed to be in deep thought about this whole thing.
He felt a bit stranded and was worried about how to proceed when his Plasma Reactor depletes its core. This may take a very long time, in fact, but in this archaic world, there is nothing like the technology he needs to change a plasma core. He would be fine without his armor; he could adapt and survive like back in the day when he was a squire. As for weapons, he can build exobal weapons, and maybe find something worthy of this world's weaponry.
The world itself isn't that bad. Yes, it is infested, but retired Star Paladins lived in far worse conditions all the time. To him, this didn't break the threshold where he can have an eternal peace.
As he wandered, he came to the house near the Hurricane Shelter and looked at its structure with keen eyes. Burnt, destroyed, trampled, and left in ruins. A sight he may as well call home.
Still, the people of this world had a better life than his own world. Their atmosphere wasn't scorched by the doing of the Fossil Age, their houses are long distances apart, and even the city's buildings were built to reach the sky.
Urd was different; it was a barren wasteland. People didn't live above ground; they didn't have to. Underground was a better option. Each city was a Silo, composed of no less than 100 levels underground. Sometimes, a tower would be built to make extra floors above, but they only served strategic and logistical purposes.
Some Silo-cities, on the other hand, were massive. Some extended 200 levels underground, to the point where the air down there was so suffocating and impossible to breathe, the people who were stuck there needed life support units like SAPUs (synthetic air production units). Those who were lucky when the life support experienced an outage owned respiratory implants or would manage to sneak into any of the higher sectors.
Naturally, not all areas of the planet were like that. Some communities still lived above ground, but only in Urd, and these were exclusively those who had managed to escape a silo-city.
Living on the surface required sticking together. Some towns were built, but since the atmosphere was a bit extreme most days of the year, these people had to stick close to each other under hexdome shields repurposed for life support.
Captain Creed knew this kind of life very well as he grew up in one. He was lucky to be a Paladin, very lucky in fact, but he remembers little of it now.
His curiosity got the better of him, since he had that strange habit of looking into every nook and cranny for some reason. In fact, he was always compelled to know what is on the left if the road told him to go right. Even after 150 years of rigorous training to control his emotions, that wasn't something he could resist.
With the large hand of his power armor, he poked the door of the house. The flashlight of his helmet was powered up from beyond his visor, making it glow menacingly.
Most of the house was destroyed; many curious things were lying around. However, everything was too colorful, even after most of it was burnt down.
Due to his massive size though, he wouldn't fit in that building, and it wouldn't even support him. It would all crumble anyway.
However, there was a gate to the far side of the building. It seemed like a small storage depot, but he wasn't sure what the people of this place would store anyway.
He marveled at the way to open that gate, but it seemed brute force was the easiest answer. He just kicked it in, and it slid itself up. Somehow, he was starting to like those people who kick their gates open.
But it seemed that it wasn't a storage depot per se; it housed a vehicle inside, so it is supposed to be a single-vehicle garage.
A single vehicle garage? How inefficient! Or maybe it is efficient. Who is he to tell otherworlders how to do things? The slayers kill first then do anything else later as their legion canon dictates.
Still, he didn't like the look of the vehicle; it seemed too blocky for his liking, even if he couldn't get into it anyway. He favored curvy vehicles like the War-Bug—light, efficient machines that, after some modifications to accommodate his armor, could carry him and run across the plains of hell, grinding demons under its modified chained-wheels.
Peak satisfaction, it was!
As Captain Creed looked into the garage that he could thankfully enter, amidst the looted wheels and broken car parts, he noticed something discarded alone in the corner and, to his surprise, it bore the same sigil he was wearing on his chest: the golden winged sun.
The Solarium's Sigil!
Finding with his golden fiery eyes that what Adam said was the truth was one thing; witnessing a trace of his home world in front of his very eyes, that was something totally different… out of the scope of reality even.
He held it up and gave it a meaningful look, words written on its back in a language he found alien to him.
As he flipped it to its face, he saw a scene of glory conjured from a memory he would never forget.
A squad of Men-at-Arms, two fire teams of eight Troopers, two Corporals, and one Sergeant. Simple auxiliary corps men: medics, a comms expert, a grunt, a scout, and a mechanic.
Those valiant men and women were rushing ahead, beckoning to one another, and charging at an army of demons.
His blood would boil every time he sees those weak humans with their blazer guns rushing to the front, invoking the name of Sol Imperius, praising the Solarium, and laying their lives for a greater purpose.
He turned around and headed towards Adam right away. He would explain more to him with this relic in hand.
Seeing Adam and Kave as soon as he returned, the two seemed to be brawling, Adam sitting above Kave and forcing him to do something. Only the heavy steps of the Paladin broke their brawl, which seemed nothing serious.
"GET OFF ME!"
"I told you to wear it, you moron! The bugs will eat you alive if you remain naked like that."
"Greater demons have tried!"
"In your goddamn crazy head, they did."
Adam seemed to be trying to make Kave put on some clothes from the ones he looted, but that wasn't possible with the caveman refusing all manner of help to make him human again.
"Adam."
"Sir?"
Adam stood up while kicking Kave away, and before Creed would say anything, Adam's eyes were already wide with surprise.
"That's… a Man-at-Arms set?"
Without even minding the Paladin, Adam snatched it right away and raised it up with a smile that kept growing. Behind him, Kave noticed the set and stood up, staggering from the pants that didn't fit right as he raised them and looked at Adam.
"Those… I bought those last… they were in the car…" He said and walked to Adam.
"I know you wouldn't disappoint, Kave."
"Fuck off!"
Kave walked away and left Adam and Creed behind.
"Where you going?" Adam asked him.
"Away from here! I don't care. I'll just roll up and die somewhere."
Seeing Kave storm off that way, Adam let out a sigh and shook his head.
This was a common sight actually. People who lost everything and gave up on all manner of hope, they'd do things like these.
Adam turned to Creed with a complicated face, and the latter seemed to have understood.
"No threats remain. His safety is assured," Creed said.
"Glad to hear. He'll come back anyway. So… you seem curious," Adam said and watched Creed, trying to assess the expressions of the man behind the armor.
"Identify the artifact."
"A miniature set for Men-at-Arms… let's see, Auxiliary squad, engineer, medic, scout. Well, these are hard to find these days since the company is focusing on the more expensive units. We have to print out Men-at-Arms ourselves, but these ones, these are genuine."
"And what purpose does it serve?" Creed asked.
"We call it war games. It is like Chess… but where you come from Chess is a bit more brutal from what I read in your lore," Adam said.
"So I was a chess piece."
"A masterpiece, not just a piece."
"…"
"Either way, a squad of Men-at-Arms to learn my own magic on is something I am dying to try, but first…" Adam said and smiled, "I'll need to scrap some tools."