Chapter 34: Interlude III – Howard

Somewhere along the way, I must’ve messed up.

That much, Howard Wergman understood for certain. But what exactly had gone wrong—he couldn’t say. And because of that, Howard Wergman was about to die.

Maybe the mistake was thinking that being a bodyguard would be safer than fighting hostile aliens out in the wastelands.

Maybe it was managing to rack up just enough credentials to be selected as the personal bodyguard of the Arawn Corporation’s heiress. Maybe that was the turning point.

Maybe it was blindly obeying her every command, doing things in the shadows he’d rather not speak of.

—No.

It wasn’t just maybe.

He just couldn’t bring himself to abandon the children left behind by the great Cavalier who’d been taken down in a cowardly ambush—and trying to help them… that’s where it all went wrong.

That was the mistake.

And getting spotted by the very Cavalier who should have been dead? That made things so much worse.

They must’ve been living off the remnants of some abandoned city. The place Howard had been dragged to was one of the better-preserved underground rooms—minimal decay, mostly intact.

He hadn’t been tied up or anything. But he was surrounded—seven Monoz units in total.

He recognized them.

They were the Hound’s Monoz.

It was over. That cold certainty sank into Howard’s gut like a stone.

The Cavalier and the Hound were working together.

And that Hound—he had no qualms about killing. Howard knew something he shouldn’t. There was no need to wonder what that meant for him.

How long had it been since he was brought down here?

Eventually, the rusted door creaked open, and a boy stepped in.

Black hair. Sharp, piercing eyes. Barely any presence at all, like a ghost wearing skin.

Howard knew him.

He was the Hound.

“…Was it Primula’s order?”

The voice of the Hound echoed through the basement, low and cold.

Howard was no stranger to violence; it was his trade. So, from the voice alone, he understood enough.

This was an interrogation.

And the Hound’s kind of interrogation wasn’t the sort that relied on words—it asked questions of the body.

A sharp, frigid intent to kill filled the basement. Breathing became painfully difficult.

Somewhere along the line, Howard Wargman had made a mistake.

And now, he was going to die here.

If that was how it ended, then at the very least, he would die honest—with himself, if no one else.

He’d do what he wanted before the end.

Drawing in a deep breath, he found a little calm in that one act alone.

“It’s not. Open my backpack and see for yourself.”

“…? Backpack? Oh, this? Rat Unit.”

They were probably scanning it for explosives.

The wasteland was dangerous. Of course, Howard had armed himself for the trip into this ruined city. But that particular backpack didn’t contain anything like that. Because what he’d packed inside was—

“Chocolate?”

“There are biscuits too. Not the flavorless kind meant for storage. The sweet ones… Give them to the kids.”

It was a gift.

He hadn’t even considered packing weapons alongside it.

“This… this wasn’t on Primula’s orders, was it? No way.”

“It was my own decision.”

“…Why would you do something like this?”

“Because no one likes to see children suffer.”

“Primula—”

“I mean any decent human being would feel the same.”

The Hound fell silent, seeming to mull something over.

He touched his wristwatch, then reached up to pull a necklace from around his neck. It was made of some kind of bone. Howard had seen this gesture before—this habit the Hound had of fiddling with that necklace.

Beep-beep. Beep-beep.

The wristwatch let out a high-pitched tone. Apparently, a timer had been running.

To Howard, it sounded just like a death sentence.

“…Next question. Is there anyone who knows you came here?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you have any family?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I see. Then there’s no problem if you go missing, is there?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Howard nodded firmly.

There was definitely a part of him that thought, so it’s come to this, after all. But strangely, he also felt like he’d won a little.

The Hound, in the end, wasn’t that deep. Or so he thought.

“Well then, maybe I’ll whip up a nice charred corpse for blackmail material against Miss Primula.”

“If you’ve got a shred of mercy, kill me before you burn me.”

“No way. Bullets are expensive.”

With that, the Hound stepped closer to Howard—

***

Howard Wergman was buried under a mountain of paperwork.

Procuring food, ordering defense supplies, and even providing education for the children cost money.

You can’t build a town on lead bullets alone. That part, the Cavalier and the Hound didn’t really seem to understand.

“Well, I suppose that’s about what you’d expect for their age… or maybe even less.”

They said the Hound, without any prior coordination, shot out the Tree Crystal powering the Cavalier’s centipede mech and brought it to a halt.

Everyone knows the core is a weak point. That’s why it’s always heavily armored. Piercing it takes a high-caliber round, and high-caliber rounds tend to kill.

So the Hound, they said, aimed in such a way that his bullet just grazed the surface—nothing more.

Frankly, it was a godlike feat. And not against some stationary target, but a fully active Cavalier in combat.

A level of skill so far above his own, Howard could never hope to reach it. And yet, those two boys who’d demonstrated it looked utterly helpless once they stepped off the battlefield.

There were a lot of people. And no money. So, using the abandoned city as a makeshift campsite might sound reckless, but honestly, it struck Howard as a pretty good idea.

The problem was that they were doing it without permission.

If it were just for a short while, maybe it wouldn’t be an issue. But with nearly a hundred children, finding somewhere else for them to go right away was impossible. Which meant someone had to smooth things over with the surrounding powers and come up with a legitimate reason for staying in the ruins long-term.

Sure, there was no official administrator for the place. But that didn’t mean you could just move in like you owned it.

Greasing the wheels with the right people was absolutely essential.

“Alright.”

He pressed the wax seal.

In this age where long-range communication had all but died out, letters had once again taken on an important role. This particular one was addressed to influential figures in three cities near the abandoned metropolis.

—Settlement Development Proposal—

Those words were written at the top.

The treatment of Sleeper children had been a long-standing social issue. For all he knew, this kind of effort had already been tried countless times, only to fail again and again.

But that didn’t mean doing nothing was acceptable.

Even just bringing chocolate or biscuits had been enough to make the children smile.

So then, wouldn’t building a place where they could live in safety bring them even more joy?

That’s what Howard Wargman believed.