TRL 28

Chapter 28

Rita didn’t tell Gide that what he was saying was impossible. Somehow, she felt that if it were him, it might just be possible.

After a moment’s thought, she spoke honestly.

“No. I just want us to stop following the command center’s orders. That’s all.”

“You don’t want revenge?”

She clenched her fists. Her voice came out hoarse, but her answer was calm.

“I do. But… even fighting the monsters is overwhelming. Going after them would just spill unnecessary blood. If we fight the command center, the final defense line could fall. That would mean even more people would die.”

“Then what do you hope for?”

“I want this war to end. I want all of us to survive, and live peacefully in a world without monsters.”

“I see.”

“That doesn’t mean I forgive the command center for what they did. I’m not saying we should just let those bastards off the hook. Just…”

“You mean it’s about priorities, right?”

“Yeah. Once the war with the monsters is over… a new world will come. One that won’t need a final defense line, or a command center.”

Gide reached out his hand to her. His scarred, rough palm touched her cheek gently, and he smiled faintly.

“Then if that’s your dream, it’ll be mine too.”

“Was your original dream different?”

“A little. But it doesn’t matter.”

Rita asked what his original dream had been, but instead of answering, Gide asked her a new question.

“Rita, do you really think there’s a way to end this war? A war that’s been going on since long before we were born?”

“Don’t you know better than I do? We’ve been mapping out the ruins as we explored them, remember? And you’ve been constantly measuring mana pollution, haven’t you?”

She looked up at him and added,

“You’re tracking the direction of the mana contamination, right? You’re thinking that if we trace it back, we might find the source of the monster war—something like the origin of the mana pollution.”

“…You really are amazing, Rita.”

“I’ve just known you for a long time.”

With a small smile, she asked him in return,

“Gide, do you think we can actually find a way to end this war?”

Gide smiled faintly. Rita knew then that they were thinking the same thing.

“Let’s find it—and mark the end of the war. Just like our name, Beacon.”

In the winter of their nineteenth year, on a day when cold snow quietly blanketed the tombstones, when fleeting deaths were covered in white—

She set a new goal together with him.

The surviving members heard their story and their new goal—and agreed.

From that point on, Beacon no longer accepted new recruits. With only six members, they did it all.

Except, just once—

There was one exception to their rule of not taking in newcomers.

“I’m a weapon, right? You just have to pull me out when you need me.”

“I’m very capable. Let me out and I’ll fight really well.”

It was Olly who found the boy.

Olly Pascal, a skilled mage who had gone to carry out a mission for the city’s upper class, found Luca Pascal among their “collection.”

The boy had been living trapped inside a large glass box. A beautiful display piece. A living weapon. He didn’t even realize that he had gone half mad.

“Gloves? They put them on me because I chewed my fingernails down to nothing. They told me to stop, but I just couldn’t.”

“The scar on my forehead… it’s from me banging my head against the wall. I know it’s embarrassing, but I couldn’t help it.”

“Mage, could you talk to me just a little more? It’s been so long since I’ve talked like this… it’s nice…”

Olly made a deal with the upper class to buy the boy, glass box and all. It was practically a forced trade.

“Damn it, the kid was clearly mentally broken, and I couldn’t just leave him like that.”

Gide and Ys handled the political backlash from that action, and Sera took charge of rehabilitating the boy after getting him out of the box. Rita and Ethan retrained him.

That was how Luca Pascal became the seventh member of Beacon.

At age 20, they completed an independent autonomous unit.

They took down named monsters, known as Commanders for leading many sub-monsters. Gide earned the nickname “The King.” Their strength gained them notoriety, and Rita and the others earned nicknames of their own.

The command center had no choice but to accept Beacon’s existence. They couldn’t stop them from disobeying orders.

As the command overseeing the final defense line, there was nothing they could do to restrain a unit that piled up monster corpses like mountains, sustained itself without rations, and defended the line on its own.

Two years passed.

With just seven members, Beacon wrote legends as they defeated named monsters like Red Queen, Malefic, Crawler, and Doppelganger.

And finally, they headed beyond the final defense line, deeper into territory humanity had never reached.

A place no one had ventured to—filled with nameless, horrifying named monsters.

At that point, for the first time since their training, they received contact from Archmage Pascal.

Ten years had passed, yet the archmage looked exactly the same as he had when they’d trained with him.

“Do you know where you’re headed?” he asked.

“To the source of mana contamination. The origin that creates the monsters,” Gide answered immediately. Then he asked, “Do you know what’s there?”

The archmage paused, then answered briefly.

“I do.”

Then he turned to look at Rita.

“It’s you.”

It was a statement with no context. Before she could frown and ask what he meant, Gide stepped in front of her, shielding her.

Pascal didn’t react to the gesture. He simply pulled a bundle of papers from his robes and handed it to them.

“These are what lie there.”

“You’re right. That place is the starting point of this disaster.”

“I wish you success.”

And with that, the archmage disappeared as if he’d never been there. The bundle of papers he left contained sketches of ruins and a simple map of the site.

A ruined castle.

Beacon fought their way through intense contamination and nameless monsters to finally reach the place.

Strangely, there were no monsters inside the ruins. Monsters wandered around the outside but never stepped inside.

This allowed them to rest, but the outlook wasn’t good.

They had been battered in brutal battle just to get there, and now they were completely trapped within the monster-surrounded ruins. There was no hope for reinforcements.

While the others rested, Ys Pascal used summoned creatures to thoroughly scout the ruins and its surroundings.

Gide, who had heard the results first, called Rita aside and held up three fingers.

“Three bad pieces of news? Damn, what are they?”

Inside the still-intact spire, he explained Ys’s scouting results.

First: they’d explored the entire interior of the ruins but found nothing special.

They confirmed the locations in Pascal’s sketches, but that was it. There was nothing inside. No food, no supplies—no means to last long there.

Second: the number of monsters outside had grown dramatically.

Since they entered the ruins, every nearby monster had gathered. With Beacon’s current strength, there was no way to break through.

Third: the mana pollution level inside the ruins was steadily rising.

Right now, it was only mildly uncomfortable, but at this rate, even oath-bound soldiers like them wouldn’t last more than 48 hours. Depending on individual mana reserves, some might hold out a bit longer, but the result would be the same.

All signs pointed to their isolation and eventual demise.

Rita stayed silent, then held out her hand to Gide.

“Give me all the sketches Pascal gave us.”

She righted a toppled marble table and spread out the map on it. Then she placed each sketch depicting a part of the ruins on the corresponding locations Ys had identified.

The images were spaced out in a clear pattern. Gide saw it immediately.

“A hexagon.”

“Or maybe a hexagram. Either way…”

Rita connected the six sketches with lines and pointed to where they intersected.

“Let’s check here.”

It was a small garden tucked into a corner of the fortress. All the flowers and trees had long since withered, and the statues that had decorated the garden lay broken and toppled.

“Wait a sec, that statue’s pattern… I saw it earlier!”

Rita found a matching pattern on one of the statues in the landscape sketches. She stood the statue facing the direction shown in the picture.

One by one, they set the remaining six statues in their proper positions. Then, a faint light emitted from them, revealing a magic circle.

And with that, a door to the underground opened.