Liner sat in front of the bonfire burning at the entrance of the large tent, wrapped in a blanket and sneezing nonstop. While others were nearly collapsing from the heat, seeing him shivering alone with that mountainous physique made Charlotte think the muscles on that body were utterly useless.
She glanced at her superior—foolish, yet cool-headed enough to risk his life by leaping off the cliff after the Council Commander—then filled a canteen with warm water and handed it to him.
When his saliva splashed on her hand as he tried to take the canteen, she wanted to throw it straight in his face. But she let it go, roughly wiping her hand on his combat uniform draped over the chair, giving weight to his hard-earned survival. As she passed him the canteen, she spoke in a slightly pitying tone.
“Please stop making such a fuss. The Council Commander isn’t showing any signs, so why are you the ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ only one acting like this, Battalion Commander?”
“Hey, seriously, try being with me. You’d die of hypothermia before lack of oxygen.”
Liner glared at Charlotte, who sat beside him speaking so casually. Charlotte avoided his gaze, turned her head toward the tent where the Council Commander lay, and said,
“Still, it’s thanks to the Council Commander that we survived.”
“What are you talking about? It’s because I followed him that we both survived.”
Deliberately adding that remark, Liner drank a sip of water and followed her gaze.
Inside, the Commander, the 1st Battalion members, and even the medical team had gathered in numbers.
Liner, with his exceptionally strong physique, showed no serious problems aside from some symptoms of oxygen deprivation and hypothermia.
The reason Hugo and Liner endured in the crevice of falling rock was partly Hugo’s solid ice wall, created to secure oxygen and shield their bodies, but also thanks to Liner’s ability to harden substances and the parts of his body in contact, blocking the rocks and clearing a path.
But unlike the relatively unscathed Liner, the medical team around Hugo was quite busy.
A fairly deep wound remained on Hugo’s right arm, grazed by sharp rocks—too deep to heal with ordinary recovery magic. Because of this, the medical officer, performing surgery for the first time in a while, was tense.
Still, one fortunate thing: for an ordinary man, bacteria would have multiplied in such a wound after being buried in the hot ground for so long, leading to tetanus or necrosis. But Hugo had instantly cooled the injury, preserving it well.
Thanks to that, after washing and disinfecting, stitching the skin with a heavy needle, and finishing the outer wound with regeneration magic, the officer looked satisfied with the result.
Since the internal injury hadn’t fully healed, however, he wrapped a compression bandage and repeatedly warned Hugo not to overuse his right arm.
After carefully checking the 8th Platoon Leader’s forehead and swollen wrist, the officer moved out to treat others. Once the medical team followed him out, suffocating silence filled the tent.
Sensing the heavy air among the 1st Battalion members, Charlotte, sitting near the entrance, signaled to Liner with her eyes to leave. Though reluctant, he read the mood and followed her.
Hugo pulled on his compression armor and combat uniform, which he had removed for treatment. The only sound in the stillness was the rustle of fabric.
Flynn didn’t cry, but he offered the Commander a handkerchief, his face looking as though he were holding back tears. Even though it was only a brief suture, performed without anesthesia, beads of cold sweat dotted Hugo’s forehead.
Hugo fastened the last seam of his combat top, took the handkerchief, and sat on the cot, lightly wiping his face. His lowered lids looked heavy with fatigue.
The atmosphere was grim.
After hearing the platoon leader’s account of what happened just before the ravine collapsed, all of the 1st Battalion were seized by guilt.
Most had heard Kenis’s radio transmission, and some had even gone to support the scene. But in the end, only the platoon leader and Leonardo Blaine had stayed by his side.
Because the flood of monsters seemed to chase the newcomer in particular, most who went to support had chosen to fight them off instead of staying.
It hadn’t been the wrong call, but it had been the decisive reason they failed to reach him in the most critical moment.
It was a grave mistake by the Council not to consider the outsider with the newcomer as a threat at all. For someone suddenly found alone in the middle of the peninsula, he couldn’t have been ordinary. Yet they had left such a man with the newcomer.
And in the end, with that same man committing a terrorist act against the Council, the fact that the one who vanished trying to save the newcomer was Leonardo Blaine—whom they had never truly accepted—only deepened their guilt.
The 1st Battalion fell silent, each reflecting. The 8th Platoon Leader, head bowed, hesitated as if she wanted to speak.
She knew she had no right to ask. The truth was already clear, with only the Commander and the 9th Battalion Commander returning. Still, she clung to a shred of hope.
After staring at the floor, biting her lip hard, she raised her head as if steeling herself. Facing him, she slowly opened her mouth.
“Commander.”
At her voice, the hand holding the handkerchief paused after wiping his forehead. His hand lingered near his brow before lowering. His hidden blue eyes appeared, slowly turning toward her.
Meeting that gaze, her words stuck in her throat.
His eyes were cold, sunk deep like an abyss. The gaze that was always upright now brimmed with futility, reflecting his heart.
Though she had called him, her mouth refused to open. Unable to withstand that heavy stare, she dropped her head to avoid his eyes.
The words she wanted to say died unspoken. She already knew the answer without asking.
She couldn’t bring herself to say, “You couldn’t find them, could you?”
Her face twisted with bitterness. Forcing her trembling voice steady, she whispered,
“I’m... sorry.”
Hugo silently watched her.
“I should have stayed conscious until the end. I have no face to show.”
Her mind endlessly cursed her incompetence, her failure to protect them. And the more she blamed herself, the more tangled her feelings became toward Leonardo, who had held onto her and Kenis until the very last.
Why was it that whenever she was involved in matters concerning him, she became so pathetic? The frustration was unbearable.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry.”
Following her, the members echoed one by one, hands clasped.
Seeing them step forward as though to accept punishment, Hugo found it hard to say the same words he had used to encourage Liner. Not because he thought they were at fault.
His eyes, which had strained for composure, flickered again with worry and confusion. He lowered his head, looking at the dirt-stained boots before him. Deep shadows spread across his tired face, as though darkness itself had settled there.
Bowing his head, he murmured,
“It’s my fault.”
At the low voice, every member, Flynn included, looked at him. Hugo, seated on the cot, leaned forward slightly, clasped his hands, and stared at the floor.
The elegant line of his furrowed brow was visible in profile. Though his gaze was hidden, the emotion in his eyes was unmistakable. The Commander’s usual calm steadiness looked terribly fragile.
In Hugo’s mind, every image of Leonardo—his weary back as he left, his final outstretched hand—was painfully vivid.
He had been falling, mana faint to nonexistent. In that state, even with a minimal barrier, the impact would have been brutal. And carrying another unconscious man, the burden on Leonardo must have been more than twice his weight.
Thinking this, Hugo’s clasped hands tightened, veins bulging. His thoughts circled back to bitter regret.
When Hugo had pulled the water stream from the cliff, seeing only the 8th Platoon Leader tied at the end, he had assumed Leonardo had secured her and released his grip voluntarily.
And he had assumed it was to save Kenis, who had vanished with him in the chaos.
Now, confirmed by the 8th Platoon Leader’s words, he had to face that his thoughts and actions had been wrong.
Leonardo Blaine was someone who always put others’ safety before his own when there was someone he wanted to save.
Even if his control had faltered before, causing unintended mishaps, in that moment he had acted with others’ protection first.
And Hugo’s own complacency, reassured by that, had become the very poison that sent Leonardo away.
Because he had never once considered that the one trying to save might end up in danger himself.
Hugo unclasped his hands and rubbed harshly at his furrowed brow, his thick Adam’s apple moving as his hand slid down.
I shouldn’t have let you go alone.
His low breathing sounded unusually loud.
