Chapter 89 – The Great Crossing (4)

The moment Jeremy had warned about… no, the moment that was bound to be inevitable ever since we set foot on the snowfield with lacking resources and manpower, arrived quickly.

“Aaaah! My leg, my leg…!”

“Please, please save me. I, I… don’t want to die yet!”

It was at the dawn transitioning from the second day to the third day when screams began to be heard from all directions.

It was when everyone had dug pits to camp and fallen asleep inside them due to the drastically dropped temperature.

What raided the campsite was mutants, and of all things, it was a pack of snow wolves.

Although they were few in number with seven wolves, like the cunning bastards they were, they raided the campsite at the most vulnerable time.

Of course, there was a night watch.

Because the Boundless Great Snow was equally threatening even for beasts before they became mutants, so standing guard was a necessity.

The problem was the escort personnel, that is, the lack of actual combatants.

Although they had discovered them early, preventing the damage beforehand was an impossible task.

“What happened to them?”

“We shot and killed three of them, but the rest fled just like that.”

“What is the scale of the damage?”

“There are five dead and thirteen injured. Even then, there are as many as five injured who seem like their breath will cease soon.”

When I asked, Jeremy and Natasha replied in turn.

The residual scent of mana bullets was heavily lingering on their bodies.

It was evidence that they had detected the appearance of the mutants first and engaged in a fierce battle.

Even so, the fact that there was not a single wound on their bodies showed why they were called elite.

“Is there no need to pursue them?”

“That is…”

I asked at the news that four out of the seven had fled.

Perhaps because it was not their field of expertise, Jeremy and Natasha hesitated to answer.

The one who presented the answer was Sullivan, who made his appearance panting between the two of them.

Perhaps he had also fought a bloody battle, as a lot of wet red blood was splattered on his cheeks.

“Aylen, we must pursue them. All beasts, including wolves, did not change their habits even after becoming mutants. They will definitely return.”

“What is your basis for being so certain?”

“Wolves are very social and intelligent animals. As such, their family love and bond are as high as humans.”

“Cunning bastards will come back even after feeling the difference in power? I don’t understand.”

“One of the killed wolves was the mate of the leader. They will return even if it is for revenge.”

I was curious how he knew the killed female wolf was the mate of the leader, but I did not ask.

Whether it was experience or knowledge, there must be a reason why he, a seasoned hunter, made such a judgment.

I had to show that I trusted and respected him to make Sullivan my ally.

Coincidentally, Harley and Jenkins, the drivers who were said to be former hunters, were also nodding silently.

However.

“We abandon the pursuit, and strengthen our guard posture. We have no leisure, people, or time to chase them.”

I dismissed the opinion that we must pursue.

Of all directions, the one they fled to was the north, the opposite side of our ember.

Furthermore, we were engaged in a race against time: whether we would reach the ember first, or the snowstorm would reach us first.

It was a situation where we had to pursue, but could not.

“Understood. Then I will select personnel to reinforce the guard.”

Understanding that, Sullivan and the hunters quickly scattered.

They were preparing in advance, not knowing when the bastards would raid.

‘Then are the injured the only ones left to deal with…’

Withdrawing my gaze from them as they scattered, I looked around the surroundings filled with groans.

Fresh blood was splattered in all directions, and the injured were also groaning at different positions.

Because the mutant bastards launched an all-out attack for defeat in detail, the damage was distributed evenly.

“Ugh…”

“Hey, wake up! Don’t close your eyes, hold onto your consciousness!”

“…”

“Damn it…!”

At that time, just as Natasha said, deaths began to occur even among the injured.

Rather than the treatment being late, there were injured individuals whom it was impossible to treat unless one was a doctor.

The only saving grace was that except for those individuals, everyone could keep their lives attached through emergency treatment.

However, the problem was still time.

If it was time used for treatment or time used for recovery, the expedition and Randolph’s ember people would have to face the snowstorm in the Boundless Great Snow.

The conclusion of death was unavoidable.

But the real problem was that this conclusion of death did not only fall upon us.

And for good reason, as our expedition had set out for the purpose of core replacement in the first place.

Therefore, if the expedition perishes, the ember also perishes.

Our success or failure was equivalent to the success or failure of the ember.

“H-Help, someone here! The blood won’t stop from the wound!”

“What? What nonsense is that, there are no bandages! Does it make sense that we left all of it behind?”

“Now is not the time to whimper! Stop the bleeding using snow as an emergency measure. Because it will be better to lose one arm to frostbite than to die of excessive bleeding.”

Moreover, at the wailing sounds heard here and there, the citizens’ will to fight was cooling rapidly.

Losing family was one thing, but they had also become utterly terrified after encountering mutants for the first time.

There was absolutely no sign of the situation being resolved.

There were no supplies and even fewer doctors, so they were performing emergency treatment haphazardly.

Yet I could not step forward either.

How could I, who had no knowledge of medicine, do anything about severed limbs?

That did not seem fixable even with magic.

At that moment, Jeremy’s shout erupted loudly.

“Everyone, shut up!”

“…!”

At his massive shout, the people stopped instantly.

In a scenery where time seemed to have stopped, he continued speaking.

“Gather the injured and the dead together! Move quickly if you want to save even one person!”

The citizens followed his words obediently.

Even though they did not know who Jeremy Scott was, they sensed that he was out of the ordinary from the pressure radiating from him alone.

Even without the background of being the former commander of the third ember, the Ember of Progress, Jeremy possessed that much dignity.

“If you do not want to live as a cripple, stop that crazy act of stopping bleeding with snow immediately, strip the clothes of the dead to use as bandages. I will teach you the method of stopping bleeding.”

Jeremy, who tore clothes to make bandages, sat before the injured and began to demonstrate the method of stopping bleeding.

Natasha also joined in and began to help the injured.

As expected of the elite among elites who had spent their entire lives on battlefields, they appeared to have expertise even in basic emergency treatment.

‘I can leave that side to the two of them.’

I left the recovery of the injured to them and completely turned off my attention.

It was not a task I could perform, and that was why I had made them my allies in the first place.

I had to focus on what I could do.

And that task was to quiet down the people who were still floundering in confusion.

“The situation is resolved, so everyone enter the pits and take a rest! It is a command, not a request, take a rest immediately!”

I urged rest by putting mana into my voice so that everyone could hear.

Quieting them down was not merely a metaphorical expression.

Only by resolving this chaotic and agitated situation and putting the people to sleep quickly would there be no setbacks in the plan to reach the ember before the snowstorm arrived.

It was a day they experienced the major event of a first surprise attack.

One must compose their mind and hoard physical strength to be able to walk as much as the target amount the next day.

However, perhaps because they thought of my decisiveness as cold-heartedness, or because of the word command, the people reacted vehemently.

“You tell us to rest? Our family, friends, and neighbors died just now, and you tell us to sleep comfortably?”

“To sleep without even recovering the corpses. Crazy, absolutely crazy…”

“Do those words come out because the people of your ember didn’t die? To think such a selfish human is wearing a magic engineer badge…”

The people shouting in dissatisfaction simply could not accept it.

As if asking how they could fall asleep in this situation, when the blood of those who died or were injured was thickly smeared on their hands and clothes.

“Sleep, wake up, and walk. That is the way to truly benefit them.”

However, I stuck to my stance.

Since this crossing would be long-term, not a single gap could be allowed.

Even the strength spent like this now had to be saved.

The success or failure of a long-term plan is decided by keeping such minor, yet not minor, disciplines and systems.

“Is that person bloodless and tearless…!”

“While his father, Lord Demian, is widely famed as a saint, the son is completely different.”

“Lord Randolph must have misjudged the person. A fellow who claimed he would take away the core should not have been trusted in the first place.”

However, the atmosphere did not change easily.

The citizens began to pour criticisms while bringing up the fact that I had made a promise to Randolph to protect them.

It had already been a long time since the words directed at me were degraded from honorifics to informal speech.

“What do you plan to do with the dead? Surely you aren’t planning to leave them abandoned like this and go?”

Amidst such indiscriminate criticisms pouring, someone asked.

Everyone stopped talking.

Yet the hundreds of pairs of eyes looking at me were speaking more words than that.

Go ahead and answer.

Are you going to leave coldbloodedly without doing anything, just to preserve that precious life of yours?

Those gazes were filled with resentment.

However, since they were utterly ridiculous to me, I replied confidently and coldbloodedly as they wanted.

Now I also did not have any honorifics for them.

“We leave them behind.”

It was just two words.

The wave brought by those two words was indeed vast.

“A fellow who is not even human!”

“You are going to let the beast bastards eat the corpses? You piece of trash.”

“Valuing others’ lives as insignificant just for his own survival is no different from the plunderers.”

‘Not even knowing what the dead truly want… it is slowly getting on my nerves.’

The voices of those who only knew how to look at the immediate situation before them were now merely noisy.

“Shut your mouths!”

…!

As I erupted in a shout putting mana into my voice with all my might, the vast space fell silent like magic.

I began to speak, spitting out word by word.

“You have no such time, physical strength, or even heart. You must convert even that sorrow and despair into will and take one step, two steps forward!”

“…”

“Does it look like you have leeway until the snowstorm arrives? Can you only see the dead and injured right before your eyes, and not the death approaching from behind? Please realize. Your wretched reality where not a single variable can be permitted on an already tight schedule!”

“…!”

Silence raged like a swirling snowstorm.

They had finally faced the miserable reality that all they possessed was their bodies.

“So get into the pits immediately. Rest even a second more, and move even a second more. That is all you can do.”

Seeing that the situation appeared to settle in that manner, I let out a sigh of relief.

Because I had barely managed to settle the site, which seemed absolutely impossible to clean up due to the deaths of families.

This was all thanks to .

Yet, just as I had made the citizens realize their wretched reality, was this harsh reality trying to make me realize that it was not a game?

“Not a single variable can intervene? Then do those who cannot walk due to injured legs also get included in the variables you mentioned?”

“…What?”

“Let us set aside leaving the dead behind. Then what about those who are injured but alive? What happens to the people who hold back your grand plan? Ah, are they abandoned of course? Because they are variables too?”

With someone’s sneer, I was realizing that this fight was not over yet.

The real fight was beginning from now.