Chapter Eighty-Three: Treatment Time (II)

One soldier after another fell, one life after another vanished. Each shot fired by Chris and Eluka carried off one life, or several. Their deaths came without a sound, unnoticed by anyone else.

"Hah..."

After changing magazines once more, Eluka kicked aside the corpse at her feet and then, bent low, slipped around the corner of the wall and trotted up the stairs. This was the Federal Army’s encampment, and also the soldiers’ quarters. By now it was deep into the night, and most of the troops had sunk into heavy sleep. The few guards that remained had also been silently eliminated by Eluka and Chris before they could so much as react. With Kurona’s psychic sensing marking their targets, the three of them had no need to worry about being discovered. At close range, Eluka went in directly and suppressed the target with a burst of fire; at long range, Chris settled it with a single shot. Working in concert, the three sisters had wiped out the Federal Army soldiers almost effortlessly, without even the slightest commotion.

And within the camp, all was equally still.

This was not because the Federal soldiers were careless. After the Great Cataclysm, aided by the system, everyone possessed a psychic network. That meant that whenever anyone noticed something amiss, there was no need for alarms or walkie-talkies. They only had to activate the network and report it, and every member on the same network would receive the message.

That was far more powerful than the pre-cataclysm alarm systems. Precisely because of that, the soldiers resting in the camp were less tightly on guard. Even if someone tried to infiltrate, they would almost certainly make some noise for one reason or another, and as long as a single soldier noticed and triggered the alarm, the entire camp would enter emergency status at once.

For that reason, the various gathering places that arose after the Great Cataclysm generally adopted a security system of tight defenses on the outside and looser vigilance within, along with rotating patrols. The goal was simple: not to insist on stopping every intrusion, but merely to detect the enemy. That was enough.

But for the three sisters, such defenses were useless.

As members of the Hound Squad, they had infiltrated gathering places countless times to carry out missions, and destruction and slaughter were nothing new to them. They naturally knew that this seemingly unsolvable network system had a very obvious weakness: as long as you were not discovered, there would be no problem at all.

"That should do it..."

Carefully placing a proximity mine in the exact center of the corridor outside, Eluka quickly lifted her head and looked around. Seeing no movement and the silhouettes still seemingly asleep, she nodded in satisfaction. Then she tiptoed back the way she had come and descended the stairs once more.

"Done, sis?" Kurona, clutching her teddy bear and hiding in the shadows, cautiously poked her head out when she saw Eluka coming down. Lowering her voice, she asked the question.

At that, Eluka nodded smugly and gave her a thumbs-up.

"Done. Contact Chris and the commander. We'll move to our combat positions."

"Okay, sis."

Kurona nodded and quickly extended her right hand, typing a string of words at high speed in the air before sending them off.

Anesthesia complete.

At the message before him, Feren smiled faintly. Then he lifted his head and looked toward the small building ahead.

It was a two-story house, originally meant to be someone’s private villa. But now it had become the command center of this gathering place. According to that soldier earlier, the commander of this settlement lived here. So all that remained was to "remove" him, and the procedure could proceed much more smoothly.

Thinking this, Feren reached out and closed the information panel. Then he pressed a hand against the iron fence and sprang up, vaulting soundlessly into the garden within the villa.

The moment Feren landed, the guard in front of him happened to turn his head toward the other side. And when he sensed something was wrong from the corner of his eye and tried to look back, a cold surgical knife was already driving into his throat, taking his life in an instant.

"Splurt!"

Blood burst from the artery in his neck like a fountain. Feren, prepared for this, immediately shifted aside. Then he raised his right hand, and with a twist and flick of those slender fingers, several more surgical knives appeared out of thin air and shot out like bullets, instantly bringing down the patrolling guard nearby.

After confirming that all the guards in the garden had been eliminated, Feren stepped out from the shadows of the bushes. He straightened his clothes, glanced at the camera mounted on the villa wall, then smiled faintly and walked toward the front door.

"Hm?"

At the same time, in the villa’s monitoring room, the soldier in charge of surveillance gave a startled cry. For some reason, just now he seemed to have seen a man dressed all in black appear on one of the camera feeds. But the figure had moved so fast that in the blink of an eye it was gone.

A person? A ghost? Or an illusion?

Just as the soldier was rubbing his eyes, trying to make sense of what he had seen, he suddenly caught sight of a figure behind him in the reflection on the screen.

That was...

Whoosh!

A spiked mace traced a beautiful arc through the air and crashed heavily into the soldier’s skull. In the next instant, his head was smashed clean off, spinning a full circle in the air before slamming with a sickening thud into the wall beside him. Bone and brain turned together into a pulp, leaving a vivid smear across the surface. The headless body convulsed wildly a few times, then collapsed limply in the chair and fell silent.

Behind it, a black cat slipped soundlessly out through the half-open door and vanished into the darkness.

Under the night sky, the entire settlement remained wrapped in an atmosphere of peaceful quiet. Yet no one noticed that, before they knew it, the soldiers patrolling everywhere had disappeared. The guards stationed atop the walls were gone as well. If one looked closely, even the heavy machine-gun operators had their heads drooping, slumped in their chairs as though they were asleep...

Pushing open the door, Feren entered the villa. At the entrance, two guards were dozing off, half-asleep. Seeing the door open, both of them froze, but before they could fully wake and see what was happening, they felt a cold sensation flash across their foreheads. The next instant, they had already plunged into the abyss of death.

"Sorry to disturb you."

Lifting the brim of his hat, Feren smiled and nodded at the two corpses as though he were a guest entering someone’s home. Then he stepped inside.

He did not know where the commander of this settlement was located, but that was no obstacle for Feren. If he could not find the man, then he would simply kill everyone.

The result would be the same.

Compared with the tight defenses outside the villa, the interior was oddly deserted. Apart from the two guards Feren had met at the entrance, only a few servants and slaves remained on the first floor. As a doctor, Feren naturally could not allow the virus to spread any further, so those people too ended their lives in deep sleep, without ever having a chance to think of resistance.

Click.

The light switched on, then off again.

In the pitch-black corridor, Feren emerged like a reaper. Smiling, he walked up the stairs and reached the second floor. In a typical villa, the second floor was mostly bedrooms. If that commander were here, then most likely...

Hm?

Just as Feren arrived before the bedroom door on the second floor, he suddenly stopped and looked curiously to the side. From within the room came the creak and sway of movement, along with a man’s heavy breathing.

So this is the place?

While he pondered, Feren twirled his fingers and then took a surgical knife, sliding it downward through the crack of the door.

With that motion, the door that had been locked from the inside opened soundlessly. And then, to Feren’s surprise, an unexpected scene appeared before him.

Not far ahead, on the bed, a somewhat corpulent man was panting hard, thrusting his hips forcefully. Beneath him, a sturdy young man was writhing in soft, breathy cries, moving in rhythm with the man above him. Two solid, trained bodies, slick with sweat and thick with muscle, intertwined and twisting like serpents. The sight was almost as if...

What a magnificent scene. As breathtaking as a painting by Van Gogh.

"I thought you had more refined tastes."

Seeing the black cat who had somehow appeared beside him, Feren raised an eyebrow and said. At that, the cat turned its head to glance at him, then lifted a paw to wipe its face.

After all, humans are only human. It is hardly strange. In this world, there will always be people who, unable to endure pressure, awaken all kinds of odd habits. You yourself are no different, are you, Master?

"At the very least, I would never do something that offers no help whatsoever to the continuation of the species."

Facing Deline’s question, Feren let out a faint sigh.

"If humans wish to survive, what they need is reproduction. Spreading life far and wide is the proper answer. Such behavior, with no future at all, is nothing more than the sign of a terminal illness."

As he spoke, Feren twirled his fingers once more, and in the next moment two surgical knives appeared in his hands.

"Then let the treatment begin. The patient is beyond saving. To prevent contagion, execution has been decided."

Only then did the man, still lost in pleasure, seem to realize that something was wrong. He lifted his head and turned toward the doorway. When he saw Feren standing there, his eyes widened in shock, but before he could make a sound, Feren’s finger moved ever so slightly.

The surgical knife shot forth, piercing his skull. The man jerked violently, then pitched heavily forward and fell.

At that moment, the robust young man below also noticed what was happening. He hurriedly reached for his gun, trying to swing it around and aim at Feren, but another surgical knife plunged into his throat before he could pull the trigger, ending his life as well.

"We’re in luck."

Walking over to the two corpses, Feren casually took the ID cards from their pockets, read the information, and then smiled with satisfaction.

Found him?

"Yes."

Waving the ID cards in his hand at Deline, Feren said with a smile:

"Looks like we’re off to a good start... All right, notify Eluka and the others. It’s time to begin the second phase of the operation."