The Return of Lilietta - Chapter 27

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 27

Rita was a processing-type Oathbinder.

A talent specialized in processing Oaths to transform them into different properties. Even if her Oath aptitude was poor and the amount of Oaths she possessed was small, her ability to process them was superior to anyone else’s.

She obediently approached the Squad Leader, pretending to discard her existing oath while changing the Oaths she possessed into properties that would explode with smoke.

Tremendous smoke billowed up as the scene exploded. Both Gid and Sera gasped but their reactions were swift. The healer’s protective magic enveloped Oli and the children, and Gid, who rushed out through the smoke, struck the Squad Leader’s neck.

What followed was a chaotic battle.

The squad members who had been playing around while leaving the fighting to the Pascals were pathetically overwhelmed despite their numbers. When more than half died and defeat seemed imminent, they all fled.

In the blood-soaked campsite of the ‘Fair’, only Pascal’s Children survived to become the new masters.

Sera cursed while treating Rita, who had done something tantamount to self-destruction.

“What did you think my eye signal meant, you reckless fox?”

“Didn’t it mean that you could cover for whatever I did?”

“Did that mean you should self-destruct? Just because I call you Cherry Candy, did your head actually become a lump of candy? If you had messed up your Oath control even slightly, your head would have become sugar crumbs!”

Gid looked at her with a pale face for a moment before opening his mouth.

“Rita, your judgment was right. You were the one who could create that situation, and I was the one who could attack the enemy in that situation. It was a rational and calm judgment, the optimal strategy. We won thanks to you.”

After speaking calmly, the boy covered his face with his hands. A trembling voice flowed out between the fingers covering his face.

“But Rita, never do that again.”

“…Yeah.”

“Really, never do such a thing again, Rita Pascal.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry.”

She immediately apologized because she understood her only comrade’s feelings.

“I know I worried you.”

“No, you don’t know.”

The boy wore a strange bitter smile.

Of the 10 Pascal’s Children who had been in the Fair Autonomous Squad, 8 remained. One died during the chaotic battle, and another was a traitor who fled.

Among them, Ys Pascal, who looked most adult-like and had the calmest disposition, infiltrated the city as a representative and bought the identity of an adult citizen who would vouch for them from a black market dealer.

Age 16.

They established Beacon in the ruins of Fair. As an Autonomous Squad officially registered with the Last Defense Line Command.

After discussion, Gid became the squad leader and Rita became the deputy leader. They fought monsters together, built camps together, and shared everything they obtained.

Not everything was smooth from the beginning.

The children learned that the adults who had run the squad had more work to do than they thought.

Dealing with the sloppy yet demanding Command, the knack for gauging the difficulty of assigned missions, what to prepare to avoid having commission fees stolen, negotiations when receiving material distributions, methods to fulfill the duty of defending the Last Line of Defense while avoiding being pushed into death traps or used as meat shields.

Even in a world overrun with monsters, people were always more dangerous. The children learned this with their whole bodies.

Many things happened as they learned one by one. They made mistakes and failed. They fell into crises due to wrong judgments and suffered great losses from being deceived.

They lost comrades in battles defending the Last Line of Defense, and some comrades left on their own, saying they had found their families.

They also saw those comrades die after being used by the people they called family.

Conversely, they also found new comrades.

“Gid, that squad’s Pascal, something’s strange about him.”

Rita discovered him while they were summoned to the Last Line of Defense for a defensive battle.

A boy with golden-brown hair, Ethan Pascal.

“He’s skilled but too reckless. He fights like he wants to die right here. He doesn’t seem sane. He looks lacking in stamina too… just like someone who’s been starving for days.”

“He’s definitely strange.”

“And in that squad, except for that kid, there’s no one who fights properly.”

Interfering in other squads’ affairs was difficult.

But Gid, who didn’t ignore Rita’s words, managed it. He somehow obtained inspection authority from Command.

While they visited that squad under the pretext of inspection, Ys used his familiar to scout the interior.

Then he reported shocking contents.

“Junior, this squad… their performance is terrible so they barely received food rations. But they didn’t seem particularly starved, so I checked the food storage… there were human skulls. And butchered meat too… probably unregistered orphans or vagrants.”

She had heard that among the poor inside the Last Line of Defense, it wasn’t uncommon for people to eat each other due to food shortages, but this was the first time she actually saw it. Rita had lived outside the Last Line of Defense until now.

Command somehow supported food for those fighting monsters, and if that didn’t work, there was also the method of cooking and eating monster carcasses. Though it was cooking that tasted terrible and would contaminate and kill non-Oathbinders rather than being digestible.

“Crazy bastards, they should rather eat monsters, how could they think of such a thing!”

“Well, there are probably quite a few secretly. Especially places with insufficient performance.”

“Senior, have you seen this kind of thing before?”

“I’ve been around longer than you, Junior. I mainly go in and out of the city too. This kind of thing is more common in the slum areas.”

“…”

“Actually, naturally speaking, it’s a matter of course. People are easier than monsters. To catch and to eat.”

“…I understand what you mean. It would certainly seem efficient at first glance. But ultimately it’s not.”

“Ultimately?”

“Humans’ strength is sociability and altruism. Humans haven’t lost to monsters yet because they can form societies and risk their lives for others. Humans shouldn’t abandon that strength. So it’s not natural for people to do such things. It shouldn’t be natural either.”

“…I see.”

“Besides, the poor at least have circumstances where they have no other choice, but these guys don’t even have that. They chose the easy way while knowing it wasn’t right. I can’t leave them alone. We must stop them immediately.”

“Yeah… this is why I follow you, Junior.”

“This kind of person?”

At her question, Ys Pascal only smiled.

They soon devised a strategy.

While Gid dealt with the squad leader, Ys rescued the ‘food’ that was still alive.

And Rita secretly infiltrated to meet Ethan Pascal. He was bound in chains.

“What? Escape? Hey, fuck, do you know what oath Pascal made me swear?”

“‘O Oaths, I swear. That I will always obey my master’s commands, I pledge in the name of Ethan Pascal.'”

“Got it? Escape is impossible. My master right now is that squad leader bastard. Want to know how that bastard used me? Fuck, shall I show you what kind of things I’ve been doing to survive?”

Ethan Pascal went crazy and tried to kill her. However, the boy was weak because he had been starving by refusing the horrifying meals and repeatedly breaking his oath and receiving Oath punishment.

Rita easily subdued him, then pointed a gun at his forehead and ‘commanded’.

“I won, Ethan Pascal.”

“If I just move my finger like this, you’ll die. Right?”

“If you want to live, serve me as your new master from now on.”

The boy’s eyes widened. Rita saw his pupils trembling finely under the gun barrel.

At that moment, he recognized Rita Pascal as his new master. And he was freed from his existing constraints.

She unlocked his shackles and gave her first command.

“Do whatever you want to do.”

Ethan Pascal killed the squad leader who had been his former master. He also killed all those who had forced him to eat inhuman meals and the squad members who had made him do all sorts of dirty deeds.

“That’s how it happened, Gid.”

Gid listened to Rita’s explanation, sighed once, then manipulated the scene using monster carcasses.

Command didn’t care about things like the annihilation of an Autonomous Squad that had almost no performance due to failed monster subjugation.

Ethan Pascal thus became a member of Beacon.

Many things happened after that too.

Rita re-subjugated the Mimic she had missed at 14 together with her comrades at 17. They also dealt with several other notorious Named monsters.

The reputation of Autonomous Squad Beacon grew higher and higher. Pascal’s Children scattered everywhere flocked to Beacon. Rita and Gid accepted any Pascal.

Beacon’s scale grew. Too many Pascal’s Children gathered.

Enough to annoy the Last Defense Line Command.

Age 19.

Command ordered them to subjugate the Kraken. It was a troublesome Named monster that had occupied the sea.

There was a trap in the ship Command provided. Among the Pascal’s Children who joined late, there was also a Command spy.

The ship sank. Beacon fought a bloody battle with the giant octopus-shaped monster Kraken on the sinking ship.

Many children died on the sea. After subjugating the Kraken, only six squad members survived.

Rita, Gid, Oli, Sera, Ys, Ethan.

Rita, who had been shocked when she lost friends at 14 and wailed when she first lost squad members after establishing Beacon, didn’t cry this time.

She just held a careful funeral with reddened eyes. She personally erected tombstones one by one for children who had no family to come looking for them.

After the funeral ended and they had fully recovered from their injuries, Gid said.

“Our squad can’t grow big.”

“Because Command doesn’t like it?”

“Yeah.”

“I see.”

Rita understood what he meant.

Command didn’t want Pascal’s Children to gather together and become some kind of new force. They wanted the Pascals to be divided into small numbers across different squads, functioning solely as ‘weapons’.

She gritted her teeth at this. But she didn’t say anything more.

The Ruins filled with graves of squad members she had created. Most of them contained only personal effects since the bodies couldn’t be found.

It was winter. Snow began to fall from the sky.

Among the ash-gray tombstones that rose like ghosts and the white snowflakes slowly settling down, Gid gazed at her with his one eye and asked.

“Rita.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you wish we could establish a new Command Center?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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