Chapter 86: Payment in Love Is Fine

I ate Shinzo’s daifuku.¹

Not because I was hungry. Not because I was tired and craving something sweet. I had no choice.

“…”

The rice stretched out in a long, gooey strand.

Delicious.

But I really had not intended to eat them. Their expiration date was close.

I had no choice, I swear.

“…”

Three days had passed since the siege began.

Somehow, we were holding out. Holding out, and nothing more. Inch by inch, little by little, the end was drawing closer.

We had building materials in stock. Food too. We even had water.

What we did not have was Monoz.

The Monoz were only decreasing in number. That was bad.

Among my Monoz, the Dragon Unit had broken too. Its core was safe, but the body was wrecked. Since Arawn Company’s Taranis had a complicated structure, repairs would apparently be difficult. Tatara Heavy Industries bodies, which could be handled roughly, were strong in this kind of long battle. That was what I thought.

“…Now then.”

What should I do?

I pulled up our current strength on my terminal and went back over the enemy intel the scouts had brought in.

Today, the enemy did not attack.

The reason was simple. They had decided to get serious about crushing us.

So they had focused on expanding their nest.

They were mining tree crystals and carrying them back to the nest. They were probably preparing a Queen. Their answer to our numbers game was simple: drown us in even more numbers.

Simple is best, as they say.

Because it was simple, it was hard to counter.

So think. I toyed with the bone necklace. My thoughts sharpened. Still not enough. I put it in my mouth. Ran my tongue over it. Again and again. It cut me. A tingling pain settled on the tip of my tongue. I let the bone go and spat onto the ground. It did not seem to be bleeding enough for red to mix in.

Rudo was sniffing the spit. Improved breed or not, a dog was still a dog. He might lick it, so I picked him up. Apparently, a corgi was not a dog meant to be adored on one’s lap.

Heavy.

I groaned and stretched. Leaving Rudo to play on my lap, I thought. Thought. Before I knew it, I was touching the bone necklace. Maybe because I had been biting it earlier, it was wet with saliva, so I wiped it on Rudo.

“Think too much and you’ll go bald, Touji.”

“I usually don’t think very much, so I’ll be fine, Yuri.”

A voice called out to me as I sank into thought. A cold voice. Yuri stood at the entrance to the tent.

She must have just come back from a sortie. Sweat shone on the sickly pale skin of her albino body, and her red eyes were wet with the excitement of battle.

“…It’s about time. I have a feeling they’re coming. This is bad.”

“What’s your basis?”

“My gut.”

“Well, well.”

How reassuring. Your gut is usually right.

I mixed a curse into my sigh, quiet enough that she would not hear it.

“More importantly, Touji. I want to take a bath.”

“It’s break time, so go ahead.”

Supplies were limited. Heating a bath required Monoz.

Neither of those was exactly welcome under the current circumstances, but Yuri’s contributions made that problem fade into the background.

The one-armed albino killed Insectum at walking speed. Since her condition directly affected our odds of survival, a request like that barely even counted as selfish.

“You really are thoughtless. Look at me.”

What she showed me was the left arm she did not have.

“…Why not regenerate it or get it mechanized?”

As I knew from personal experience, in this era, losing a limb was not a major problem.

You could grow it back or attach a replacement.

“This is why I’m strong. So, help me wash.”

“I refuse. There are female soldiers here too, so ask one of them.”

Or just ask your Monoz, Chikuwabu, like usual.

“Are you stupid?”

“…Well, yes, I suppose I am.”

“Listen. If someone were washing your body, would you prefer a man or a woman?”

“A woman.”

“Exactly.”

Yuri nodded, satisfied with my answer.

“…I think it’s different for men and women,” I said half-lidded, while stroking Rudo on my lap.

“Is it?”

As she said that, Yuri sat in a chair facing me.

She stole the water I had prepared for the daifuku.

“…”

Choking would be bad, so I decided to chew the rest properly.

“Now to the real matter. Have you received the damage reports up through yesterday?”

The color of her voice changed. I straightened my posture a little. Rudo, whose sitting space on my lap had shifted, began to panic slightly.

“Sheep Unit is compiling them now… Is there trouble?”

I had eaten my snack, so I was already full, you know?

“No. Same as always. We fought, they broke through, walls were destroyed, weapons were destroyed, and Monoz were destroyed. Mine too. Chikuwabu was taken out. The core is safe, though.”

“Can it be repaired?”

“Apparently not.”

“…”

So it had finally started affecting even Yuri’s front-line Monoz.

“The nest is getting bigger. They’ve circled around behind us too. We’re surrounded. Can we hold?”

“…Who knows?”

Really, who knew? What were we supposed to do?

I could not think of any plan beyond the empty morale talk of holding out until Shinzo came back.

***

According to Yuri, I was the type who could think.

Unfortunately, that did not mean I was particularly smart.

So I decided to ask someone.

If a fool’s thinking was as good as resting, then I should ask someone clever.

For the time being, I went to the Operations Staff Officer.

He had been making a racket about handing command over to him, so we had prepared a VIP room for him, confiscated his Monoz, returned only their cores, and left him to spend his days there.

In other words, he was under house arrest.

“That’s why! That’s why I said it! I told you the enemy force was massive!”

He had not.

“You should have been able to tell from the scale of the reconnaissance!”

You had not been able to tell.

“And yet… ugh, damn it…! No one… No one believed me!”

Apparently, he suffered from that particular kind of illness.

I gave up on asking this thing anything. I felt like shooting him dead, but right now, even a place to dump the body would be a waste. Alive or dead, he was a nuisance of a life-form.

“Are you listening? It’s not too late! Give me command and…!”

Bullets would be a waste, so I hit him in the face with the butt of my pistol. One of his front teeth seemed to bend inward.

This life-form was bad for the planet as long as he was alive, so next time, I might use him as bait and let him contribute to environmental protection.

Next, I headed for operations headquarters. Like me, there was someone there taking command, and unlike me, that person had received a proper education.

“Touji-sama.”

On the way, a narrow-eyed man in a double-breasted suit stopped me. Suen. An Abacus agent. The man gave me an elegant bow.

“…Your university is the worst.”

“Oh? We do not run any universities, you know. Abacus simply means soroban, after all… I imagine there are companies out there with similar names.”

“I see. A name that sounds like it would bring good fortune in business.”

“Indeed, does it not?”

“…”

“…”

For a while, I glared at the narrow-eyed man. Without putting any emotion into it, I simply stared at those eyes, which I could not even tell were open.

“I will file a complaint through the proper channels. I hope that will satisfy you.”

I surrender. Suen raised both hands and yielded.

“…So, why are you here?”

I did not ask how he had gotten here.

It was not that I had no interest in the mysterious techniques that let them appear anywhere, but since I could not use them anyway, it did not matter.

“First, this battle has been judged to be a turning point in human history. Second, a Hero is present at the scene. Based on those two facts, our company has judged this to be a case requiring intervention.”

“…Still looking down from above as always, I see.”

I did not like it.

“My apologies for that.”

Suen smiled in a way that could not have been more suspicious.

“…You said this is a case requiring intervention. What exactly are you going to do?”

“Provide supplies.”

“…”

“Is something the matter?”

“That’s it?”

Was the impressive wording not matched by the actual contents? A case requiring intervention.

“That alone should be enough to pick up a victory on this battlefield.”

“…”

Was that so? Yes, it was. I came to the same conclusion.

“What’s the price?”

“Please allow us to choose your next battlefield, Touji-sama.”

I made no attempt to hide the disgust on my face. I did not have a very good impression of Abacus as an organization. What should I do? I thought it over. The terminal in my pocket vibrated. I took it out. Looked.

And smiled.

“That’s expensive.”

So,

“I don’t need that product. Take it back and put it in a warehouse somewhere.”

“Huh?”

Suen showed me a wonderfully stupid face.

I hated Abacus. But I did not hate Suen the agent quite that much. Still inexperienced, he let his agent mask slip easily and showed what was underneath.

“Shinzo’s back. With reinforcements.”

“Impossible! That road takes four days one way!”

“I may be an idiot, but I’m not that much of an idiot. In this situation, I wouldn’t send a messenger who needs eight days for an eight-day round trip.”

It was a common enough trick, but the kind where “as the crow flies, it isn’t that far.”

“Even so, that’s too fast. And bringing reinforcements with him…”

“How does Abacus evaluate Shinzo?”

“As a skilled cavalryman.”

“That’s it?”

That’s all?

“To be honest, the【Piloting】skill is not terribly useful. As Monoz bodies evolve, it becomes easy enough to reproduce.”

“I see. So self-driving still has a long way to go.”

That was impressive.

But your organization was lacking in all the wrong places.

“Shinzo’s true value is his eyes.”

You could tell by having him drive over bad terrain.

He was good at driving, yes. That was part of it. But more than that, his route selection was incredible.

The eye that could instantly choose the fastest path was Shinzo’s true value.

“He must have had the Monoz memorize the route on the way there. If he shared that data with the reinforcements… He could bring them back at the same speed as himself. But that’s…”

“I’ll recommend him for this Hero thing of yours.”

As I said that, I operated my terminal. Headquarters had already confirmed Shinzo’s return, it seemed. I applied for the formation of a breakthrough unit. Have Yuri make the path and send supplies through. Then, once we were resupplied, we could hit the nest from both sides. How would that be?

Well, anything would work now.

At this point, we had the advantage in both quantity and quality.

In a numbers game even an idiot could play, the side with more numbers won.

“Now then, Suen. Want to stay and watch?”

“Gladly.”

“I see. I’m no merchant, so I’d like to say payment in love is fine, but I’ll settle for one daifuku.”

“Huh? Er, a daifuku, sir?”

“That’s right. Ah, and make it chunky red bean paste.”

“…Understood, sir.”

Suen nodded despite his puzzled look.

Turning my back to him, I found myself looking up at the sky.

To think he really made it back in three days.

I had thought it would take five. As expected of Shinzo.

The wrapper I was gripping in my pocket crinkled.

The expiration date written on that wrapper was four days after Shinzo’s departure.

Tomorrow.