Chapter 26 Part 1

Perhaps in El’s eyes, Ode was stealing the show. But if someone could peer into Ode’s mind at that moment, they would be overwhelmed by the anguished screams crushed amid the flames of war:

“East District 1 has fallen!”

“Damn it… There’s a bunch of shortsighted idiots in West District 3 who opened the defense zone gate to the enemy! The soldiers stationed in West District 3, they’re all…”

“I told you everyone coming in or out has to go through security checks!! Why didn’t you enforce it?! The enemy can swap souls with living creatures—look down there, look at those corpses under the fortress! They all died because of you!!”

With a buzz, the cacophony of voices fell silent.

Ode realized he was standing before that familiar painting again—everything around him shrouded in pitch blackness, save for Eva’s face, which hung eerily in the void, clearly visible and staring right at him.

“Do you still want to keep fighting, human?”

“No matter how many you kill, my kin possessing them won’t truly die. They’ll just return to our original bodies. Your persistence is utterly pointless.”

“All you’re accomplishing is ensuring your own people’s still-living bodies meet a true end—end—”

Eva’s voice suddenly stuttered and repeated like a glitching machine. Then those eyes turned flatly toward Ode. Their expression was much the same as the possessor’s, but Ode could tell: this was Eva’s own consciousness.

She said: Don’t trust anyone.

She said: Please kill my husband for me. Don’t let him feel pain. Don’t let him feel alone.

She said—

“Shoot. Before I completely lose my mind.”

“I was born a Soviet. I should be buried as one after I die.”

Bang!

The gunshot echoed in his memory. In reality, Ode let out a silent cry of grief and streaked from the eastern edge of the battlefield to the western one in the blink of an eye.

When he came to a halt amid the billowing clouds of sand, the writhing giant bugs behind him froze all at once—then collapsed to the ground with a thunderous crash!

“Damn! That’s badass!” El had been about to sprint back and greet this trainee he’d never met when he heard Eva hum questioningly over the comms.

【His eyes look wrong. He—he hasn’t snapped out of it yet!】

Eva was a researcher at heart, and by the time the words left her mouth, it was already too late.

From the roiling waves of pale sand surged Ode like a specter, appearing right in front of Faust. Those eyes, glowing an eerie green, stared coldly at his former comrade—now occupied by a monster.

“Rest in peace.”

The “resting” Faust: “Holy shit.”

But Faust didn’t so much as flinch. He even had the leisure to brush the ash from his cigarette.

In the next instant, Ode—his face set in ice—tensed the muscles of his arm, ready to drive his fist straight through “Faust” with all the momentum of his wind-up. But before he could, a little old man materialized out of nowhere.

The old man gave him an amiable smile and fanned downward with his faded palm-leaf fan. “Sleep now, child.”

The windswept sand died instantly.

Ode toppled forward into the old man’s arms, dragged under by the sudden pull of sleep.

·

Ode drifted in and out of sleep, with no idea how long he’d been out in total. When he finally stirred awake again, his body felt like it had fallen apart, all limp and powerless. Still, the Sahara sun stabbing through the window forced him to flop over on the bed like a dead fish, seeking shelter from its poisonous glare.

The infirmary physician seated at the desk glanced up at the creak of the bedsprings. “Awake? Any discomfort left in your body?”

Ode took stock. “A bit dizzy. Probably overslept… Why the weird look?”

The physician’s expression turned subtly awkward as he opened his mouth. “It wasn’t oversleeping. Last night, Chief Eva climbed through the infirmary window and swiped some of your blood. El was on patrol and caught her red-handed on her way out—with the bucket clutched in her arms. She got hauled off to the brig for reflection.”

Ode: “…”

Ode: “……………”

The patient on the bed went rigid, his pale lips twitching after a long moment. “‘Bucket’?”

The physician nodded with some sympathy. “Yeah, 2000cc. Lucky your self-healing is top-notch, or she’d have drained you dry. But Chief Eva was totally unapologetic during questioning. Said you chowed down on her Red Flood—that whole carrier’s worth of nutrients was more than enough to replenish your blood and then some.”

Last night’s memories slowly resurfaced. Ode, who had started to feel a bubble of incredulous laughter rising, suddenly went stiff. After a beat, he let out an awkward cough. “About last night’s da—”

Clang!

The infirmary door flew open with a bang.

Ode jolted upright off the bed and instinctively reached for a weapon. Instead, he watched a pile of young figures in military uniforms tumble through the doorway like corpses on their last legs. The trainees stacked up by the entrance, all stretching out toward the room with wide, unblinking eyes. “Roo…mmate… hey… there…”

Ode: “…”

He glanced around the empty infirmary and pointed at himself. “?”

“Roommate… so… coooool… eeeek!”

The “corpses” by the door didn’t even finish their hellos before a sturdy leg swept them aside like so much trash. A chorus of pained “owwws” filled the air.

Ode turned to the newcomer and spotted a familiar dark-skinned face sauntering in with hands in pockets and a cheeky grin. “Ignore these brats. Probably your dormmates. You made one hell of a splash yesterday—every trainee in the outpost wants to meet you. No matter how brutal training gets, they’ll crawl here to do it. Right?”

The trainees on the floor writhed like grubs, voicing muffled protests. But the iron-hearted El just slammed the door in their faces, blocking them out.

Ode tensed up involuntarily. He remembered El’s first encounter with them—gun trained on Qian Ning. He remembered those lifeless eyes in the Dream Realm. “Last night—”

“Last night? I’ve gotta thank you proper for that,” El said, striding briskly to the bedside and plopping down with vibrant energy. Whether it was Ode’s imagination or not, the guy sat way too close, obliterating any semblance of proper visiting distance. “If you hadn’t gone berserk when you did, those old-timers wouldn’t have shown up in time for the rescue. The rear outpost made it through without a single casualty—thanks to you, the big hero.”

Ode’s body gradually relaxed. “As long as no one got hurt—”

“You know,” El barreled on with undimmed enthusiasm, cutting off Ode’s relief mid-sentence, “the way you tore through that battlefield last night? Total badass! There’s an old saying: for saving a life, you gotta pledge yourself in return. So I’m nominating myself for pillow duty.”

“…………” Ode’s brain buzzed the instant it registered that familiar word “badass.” The blood loss dizziness seemed to hit twice as hard.

Not that he was complaining, but he’d had zero suit on during their first meeting. How was he still hooked up with “badass” vibes? For real, this Egyptian was just horny central??

Suddenly, the bed felt like no place to lounge. Ode scrambled off the end on hands and knees, jammed his feet into his shoes, and stood. “No need, no need. That kind of old-school thinking is out of style these days. You here to check on my recovery? Feeling great—heading back to the dorms ri—”

“Whoa, easy there.” El lazily threw out an arm to block him. “The instructors want you in their office. I’m just the messenger.”

·

On the way from the infirmary to the instructors’ office, Ode’s stomach twisted in knots.

With his memories fully returned, his heart had sunk. This wasn’t Dreamcatcher Town, where grateful townsfolk would only feel relief at surviving the ordeal. These were instructors who dealt with monsters daily—they were bound to think deeper:

Why could a human devour an entire carrier? Why could he heal so fast by eating monsters? The way he’d looked when out of it was too much like a real monster—even recalling it himself made Ode uneasy. How much more vigilant would battle-hardened instructors be, scarred by one bite from a snake and wary of wells for a decade?

The more he dwelled on it, the heavier his gut grew. For a few seconds, he even pondered what he’d do if they decided to lock him up just to be safe. Then he reached the office door, paused, and politely knocked—

Creak… The door wasn’t latched; it swung inward at the lightest tap. Boisterous voices spilled out amid curls of cigarette smoke, turning the place into what sounded like a backroom poker den:

“Oh come on, little missy. You think my fortunes can be wrong? You’re just cursed with bad luck!” The old man’s voice carried a note of sincere concern. “Look what the book says: You’ve gotta wear yellow crystal or gold-leaf bracelets to transmute that negative energy…”

“I’m loaded, okay?” Pharaoh was already being plenty respectful to the elder—if it were Faust in her shoes, forget eye-rolls; she’d have slapped him silly by now. “Didn’t I donate the cash to build this whole Sahara rear base?”

“True that. Huh, what’s going on here…” Elder Zhong hugged his book, puzzled for all of two seconds before rallying. “Must’ve been that northwest wind messing with my energy read. C’mon, missy, let me try agai—”

“Ode’s here!” Faust grabbed Ode with overflowing enthusiasm and yanked him inside. Clearly, he’d been on the receiving end of Elder Zhong’s antics too. “Give him a reading, Elder Zhong. We’re all regulars here—what haven’t you divined for us already?”

“Sure, sure,” Elder Zhong said cheerfully, thrusting his Tarot deck under Ode’s nose. “We’ll do lifespan—basic stuff. Pick a card, any card—”

Rustle.

Faust half-forced Ode’s hand to draw one, but it tugged along the two cards stuck to it above and below.

“Er… redraw, redraw.” Faust released his wrist and elbowed Ode. “That was my interference. This time I won’t—”

“Life doesn’t let you hit restart whenever you feel like it. Sometimes the interference is part of your fate.” Elder Zhong waved his fan with a jolly chuckle, sending the three cards floating before his eyes for a close look. “Hmm… ahh—this spread means you’ve got three possible ways to go. Either you die alone, or with a lover by your side, or you live forever.”

Ode: “…………”

How precise. Either he died single, or not single, or not at all.

He decided to steer things back to business—better a quick cut than a slow one. “About last night—”

“No rush on that.” Elder Zhong patted Ode’s hand with his fan, gesturing for him to grab a seat. “We called you here today to talk about your mental health.”

Ode: “…I don’t think this is any heavier than last night’s raid—cough! Cough cough!”

Faust interrupted with a puff of smoke blown right at Ode’s face. “Play along and we’ll zip through the mental health bit so we can get to last night sooner. Straight talk: Even before the incident, I could tell your head wasn’t right. And the incident itself? Proof positive of some serious PTSD.”

“If I hadn’t gotten here just in time, you would’ve hacked Faust into firewood,” Elder Zhong said, shutting down every possible retort Ode might have made with just that one sentence. “Tell me, could we really stand by and do nothing? If we did, what right would we have to call ourselves teachers? We might as well each grab a guitar and busk on the street corner pretending to be blind.”

“…” Ode fell silent.

In fact, up until last night, he hadn’t even realized how badly his emotional issues had spiraled out of control. Sometimes, he had even thought that letting himself stay in a state of rage wasn’t so bad—at least it gave him the power to fight stronger enemies, right?

Faust took a drag from his cigarette and began listing Ode’s problems one by one. “Before you escaped that town, you were obsessed with collecting Grandfather’s body and giving him a proper burial. But once you actually had the chance to do it, you started going on about how the Old Madman was more dangerous than a corpse one minute, and the next you were telling me to send Grandfather’s remains to Eva for examination. Haven’t you figured out what’s wrong with that picture?”