Chapter 113: “Perhaps We Are Already Quite Fortunate.”
“Commander, the citywide flood-prevention measures are in place. Here is the conscription roster of citizens for the next seven days.”
“Mm.” Yves took the roster, reviewed it, and signed his name.
“Starting tomorrow, the boundary between day and night will blur. Once the Rainy Season sets in, the high walls must be held twenty-four hours a day!”
Seated at the head of the table, Commander Yves clasped his hands, his expression grave.
“Understood,” Keith nodded. “Apart from one unit managing daily exchanges and the detachment stationed along the route to the Chinese Restaurant, all other city guards have halted their regular duties.”
“Personnel have been organized into four divisions. Two will take the eight-to-eight day shift, and two will take the eight-to-eight night shift. The interior squads will patrol within the walls to eradicate mosquitoes and insects, while the exterior squads will hold the line outside the walls to repel the beast surges.”
Keith delivered his report with concise efficiency.
Yves nodded, continuing to listen as Keith outlined the respective duties of the inner and outer divisions.
—Once the Rainy Season began, the power of mutant flora and fauna beyond the high walls would surge at a terrifying rate.
Without Awakeners arriving beforehand to sanitize the buffer zone, this season’s beast surges would likely hit earlier and strike harder than ever before.
Fortunately, Yves had dispatched the Awakener teams from the Red Flag Society and Dark Star to cull several abnormally high-tier mutant targets in advance.
Yet that was far from enough.
During the previous Rainy Season earlier in the year, even after Awakeners from the Three Great Cities had swept the perimeter, the buffer zone still managed to spawn an A-rank monstrosity amid the downpours.
Had a squad of Awakeners not been stationed within the settlement, the ramparts would have been battered open.
Every past Rainy Season had been fraught with mortal peril.
When mosquito eggs fell within the walls, any delay in exterminating them meant the hatched mutant mosquitoes would spread a virulent, high-fever plague throughout the populace.
The eggs were insidiously invasive. Even with civilians conscripted each season to assist in pest eradication, foolproof containment was impossible.
Civilians inevitably suffered bites.
The crude medical capabilities of a frontier outpost were fundamentally incapable of saving so many lives.
Fever and venom festered side by side, compounded by the sheer difficulty of venturing beyond the gates in torrential rains—not every citizen possessed enough saved City Coins to buy their seasonal rations in advance.
Every Rainy Season saw the outpost suffer its steepest casualties.
Panic gnawed at every heart; sickness and despair flowed like rainwater through every corner of the settlement.
The premature onset of this season had caught Seed City entirely unprepared.
The populace had no time to brace for it, and neither did the administration.
They could only scramble to assemble a defense in the eleventh hour, doing everything within their power.
Had Boss Ling not given them advance warning, Yves hardly dared imagine the catastrophe. If they had only realized the rains were upon them come morning… how utterly helpless the regular sentries would have been against a sudden beast surge, and how many millions of parasite eggs would have silently settled within their walls.
Yet now was no time for idle relief.
The situation remained exceedingly dire.
“The garrison at the South Wall cannot be touched,” Yves said. “Though the mutant population there has been thinned, the rains will only accelerate their corruption.”
“Understood.”
“Are the protective barriers for the Black Fields secure?”
“They are. All designated plots have been covered, and a sufficient detail of overseers has been retained.”
Yves added, “The downsized fields must be completely sealed before dawn.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mercifully, fortune had favored them—scaling down the Black Fields right before the monsoon had been a stroke of luck.
With the wounded inspectors steadily recovering, a detachment had been freed up from the quarantine sector.
“Scott, take your overseers to reinforce the exterior squads.”
“Understood, Commander.”
“At six sharp tomorrow morning, the Awakeners from Dark Star and the Red Flag Society will deploy to reinforce the North, East, and West Walls. Their precise tactical assignments will be finalized once Chris returns. All exterior squads are to cooperate fully.”
“Yes, sir!”
The division commanders answered in unison.
“Seed City stands at a precipice of life and death. The walls must hold, at any cost,” Yves said, his voice dropping into a solemn register.
“Understood!”
With a heavy exhale, Yves laid out their contingency of last resort: “Reinforce the detachment beyond the West Gate. Keep the route to the Chinese Restaurant secure. If… if the worst should happen, and a purple flare is fired, all Thirds in every unit are to immediately organize an evacuation of all civilians toward the Chinese Restaurant!”
“Beverly, if that signal goes up, you hold total command over the evacuation.”
“Yes, sir!”
A commander lived and died with his outpost; Yves had long made peace with the prospect of falling in the line of duty.
“Commander, Captain Chris has returned.”
“Send him in.”
“Yes, sir.”
The door swung open, and Captain Chris of Team Y strode into the room. He had already stripped off his hazard gear, dressed in crisp combat fatigues.
“What is the situation?”
Yves asked immediately.
He knew all too well that over recent months, mutants beyond the walls had proliferated aggressively, with numerous entities encroaching on the buffer zone that far exceeded safety thresholds.
Even with Dark Star and the Red Flag Society mobilized, their sweep had begun too late to yield sweeping results.
Fortunately, the A-rank organism outside the North Wall and the B-rank horror outside the South Wall had been eradicated; otherwise, Seed City’s plight would be far more desperate.
“Reporting, sir…” Chris began. “Here is the reconnaissance dossier on the mutant entities within the buffer zones outside the three gates.”
Catching the hesitation in the scout’s eyes, Yves’s heart sank.
Was the situation even bleaker than they feared?
The division commanders in the room straightened up, their expressions tightening.
Yves took the folder Chris extended.
—The pages were indeed dense with new annotations in Chris’s hand.
Proof that the wasteland outside had shifted dramatically.
And yet… every single entry was crossed out?
The deep knot between Yves’s brows slowly relaxed in sheer bewilderment.
The first page: outside the North Wall.
Setting aside the F- and G-rank entries, well over half of the E-rank mutants had been struck through with heavy ink.
He turned to the second page.
Another sea of crossed-out entries.
Virtually not a single C- or D-rank entity remained unmarked.
Yves flipped further.
Every B-rank was wiped out.
?
“This… Were these crossed-out entities consumed by other predators?” The Commander’s tone was heavy, laced with profound confusion.
“Unknown, sir, but they have all vanished,” Chris said. “Had it been mutual consumption, I should have encountered higher-tier entities that gorged themselves nearby, but… there were none.”
“What do you mean, ‘none’?”
“Nothing was left at the sites where they disappeared—neither fruit, foliage, nor carcass. This manner of disappearance sounds remarkably like what Dark Star described…”
Yves froze, finishing Chris’s thought: “Boss Ling?”
A bizarre hush descended over the briefing room.
“Commander, didn’t Boss Ling imply she wouldn’t step in to aid Seed City…?”
Keith broke the silence, keeping his voice low.
Yves slowly laid down the papers. “Boss Ling possesses unfathomable means. Her actions were not necessarily taken to save Seed City; it is far more likely she simply needed them.”
“…”
“Perhaps we should consider ourselves blessed that her needs happen to align with our survival.”
With that, Yves glanced out the window, his eyes dark with contemplative depth. “Perhaps we are already quite fortunate.”
“…Yes, sir.”
“Though this may have been a casual whim on Boss Ling’s part, it has granted us an immense lifeline—one we cannot take without reciprocating.”
Yves turned back, his posture snapping rigid.
“Factoring in Chris’s latest reconnaissance, we will restructure our defense doctrine from the ground up.”
“Understood!”
…
The lights within the clock tower burned straight through the night.
Dawn crept over the horizon, yet the day brought no true light.
No sun broke through the firmament; instead, bruised, leaden storm clouds piled high across the sky.
The rain was coming.
Twenty kilometers east of Seed City.
A battered, blood-spattered squad drove hard through the driving sheets of rain, hurtling toward Seed City.
The uniforms they wore were identical to the black fatigues of Seed City’s own guards.
