“I’m fine.”
Seeing the look in Saito’s eyes, the Administrator’s agitated mood, for some unknown reason, suddenly settled a few notches.
She forced down the restlessness in her heart and, putting on a ‘nothing has happened here’ expression, shook her head.
“…”
Saito didn’t say a word, but his expression was very plainly screaming ‘Do you take me for a fool?’ — given the half-dead state the girl had been in just a moment ago, for her to actually be ‘fine’ would have to be some kind of miracle.
The Administrator slowly turned her head aside, as if she had no desire to keep talking about what had just happened.
“Haah…”
Saito let out a soft sigh.
Since the Administrator wasn’t willing to talk, he didn’t press the question.
Having lived alongside her for so many days now, he had more or less gotten a read on the girl in front of him — extremely opinionated, with an action-capability so formidable it bordered on the absurd, and beneath all that formidable ability, an unbelievably stubborn soul.
Stubbornness wasn’t a pejorative in itself — only this girl was very clearly the type who responded to softness rather than force.
If Saito were to keep prying right now, it might well produce the opposite of the effect he wanted.
A personality like that, though, was obviously going to make things very tough on the people around her.
Saito himself was self-aware enough to know that his relationship with the girl hadn’t yet reached anything you’d call deeply intimate — and yet, in his heart, this mysterious girl of unknown origins had long since become the person he trusted most in this whole world.
So he simply, slowly, let go of her hand, and then placed a single bluebell flower, still beaded with dew, into the Administrator’s palm.
“This is…”
“Found it back in the workers’ dormitory — must’ve been left behind by one of them.”
At the time, the flower had been on the verge of freezing to death inside its temperature-control box.
After several months, the box had long since lost its original function, and this one sprig was the only one that had barely managed to hold on.
“I used Originium Arts to just barely pull it back.
Felt like it kind of suited you.”
Looking at the flower in her hand, a hazy face seemed to flit through the Administrator’s mind — but no matter how hard she tried to recall, she couldn’t pin down exactly whose face it had been.
Even so, in this moment, she too — with the help of ‘this flower’ — seemed to calm back down.
The current situation hadn’t quite reached its most critical point yet.
The very fact that the Protocol Core had been able to be airdropped meant that, over on Perlica’s end, her message had indeed gotten through.
They still had time.
As for right now, her attention had completely shifted off the flower and back onto Saito.
“You said just now — you used Originium Arts to pull it back?”
Saito didn’t quite understand the weight of the question, and very earnestly nodded his head.
Healing-type Originium Arts and damage-type Originium Arts were two entirely different beasts — clobbering someone with a rock and saving someone with a scalpel were just not the same thing at all.
Even though the Administrator had already done her best to overestimate Saito’s capabilities, he still managed, again and again, to catch her completely off guard.
In which case — it seemed another item was going to have to get added to the upcoming agenda.
The Administrator grabbed Saito’s wrist in a single motion.
Caught off guard, Saito instinctively went to pull away.
“What are you doing?”
“Don’t be shy — come on, let me have a look.”
Why did this conversation feel just a little bit off?
“Be a good boy now, sit still, and let big sis take a peek at whether you’re developing nice and healthy, hmm?
(she meant the Originium Arts)”
“That’s, uh…
probably not a great idea.”
Saito crossed his arms tightly across his chest and swallowed hard.
Looking at the way the Administrator was acting right now, she really didn’t look much like a proper, upstanding individual.
“Quit your yapping — just let me have a peek!”
And the Administrator was in no mood to be deterred.
She’d held it in for days on end — as a researcher, her curiosity about Saito’s body had long since rocketed clean through the stratosphere!!!
“Big sis Admin, noooo!!!”
“Captain, it’s getting late.
You should be heading back.”
Atop a towering cliff face, a massively-built ‘giant’ bearing a tower shield stood gazing off into the distance.
Beneath a pair of vicious, twisting great horns sat a horrifying head with the skull laid bare, and a pair of crimson eyes that sent shivers down the spine.
“Did you see…
that falling…
Crimson Star…”
His voice was low and hoarse, like two pieces of rusted metal grinding against each other.
Two days earlier, a Crimson Star plunging from the sky had broken the silence of these snowfields.
At first, Bozkasti had simply assumed it was an ordinary Catastrophe — but over these past two days of observation, that did not appear to be the case at all.
“It’s probably just an ordinary Catastrophe, Captain.”
The Shieldguard standing beside Bozkasti thought as much himself.
In their experience, the only thing capable of producing a disturbance on that scale was a Catastrophe.
“After a Catastrophe…
Originium grows…
but I have not found…
anything of that kind…”
The appearance of a Catastrophe was inevitably accompanied by huge quantities of activated Originium.
After a Catastrophe ended, the land would, more often than not, be dotted with large clusters of Originium crystals — no matter what form a Catastrophe took, it basically couldn’t escape that rule.
“Could it be some new kind of Ursus weapon?”
The Shieldguard’s eyes went wide — a conjecture that, it had to be said, sounded fairly reasonable.
“…”
Bozkasti lapsed into silence.
He turned his head to look at this young Shieldguard at his side — a young man who had only joined the Shieldguards after he himself had left the army.
The boy’s temperament was indeed a bit too unrestrained, to the point that he could come out with remarks this…
ignorant.
“The Fourth Army Group…
has had no…
It is unlikely…
to be the Ursus military…”
“Then it’s strange…”
The young Shieldguard fell into thought along with him.
But after several minutes of silence, he raised his head once more.
“So, Captain — can you head back to camp now?”
“Why…
so persistent…
about getting me to return…”
A note of scrutiny entered Bozkasti’s gaze.
The Shieldguard standing before him was, in that instant, struck with the full presence of what it meant to be the Patriot, what it meant to be the Shield of the Infected!!
But even so, he showed not the slightest sign of backing down.
The very first lesson the Captain had ever taught them was: never fear your ‘enemy.’
Only — when it came to spelling out the actual reason, his voice took on a hesitant quality.
“It’s just…”
“When did you…
become such…
a craven coward!”
Watching Bozkasti grow visibly more displeased in front of him, the Shieldguard at last blurted out the real reason he had come.
“Captain — the truth is, it’s Little Yelena who sent us out here to hurry you back…”
The Shieldguard spoke in a quick, low voice.
And the moment those words were out, the surging presence Bozkasti had been radiating just a moment ago instantly evaporated.
This ferocious-faced Wendigo, in this very moment, was — remarkably enough — showing a rare hint of being utterly at a loss.
“Captain, you’ve been hiding out here for two whole days already.
Why don’t you just go apologize to Little Yelena?
I’m sure you didn’t actually mean to knock that giant lump onto her head.”
“I didn’t mean to…
probably?”
Watching the Patriot before him suddenly fall silent, the Shieldguard suddenly found himself a touch less confident.
“This is a trial…
that growth…
must undergo…”
So spoke Bozkasti.
____
👻🔥Seek: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Arknights Endfield: Picked Up a Gugugaga
Let’s hit these goals: