Chapter 118: To Colonel Yves, Commander of Seed City
“Firefly City?”
Yves straightened in his chair and took the envelope from Mo Zeya’s hands.
It was thick, sealed with Firefly City’s official wax stamp.
He flipped the envelope over; in the upper left corner sat a vivid crimson letter “S.”
The highest priority, most urgent classification for frontier dispatches.
Yves immediately opened his desk drawer, retrieved a letter opener, slit the wax seal, and extracted the parchment.
As he opened it, Mo Zeya delivered a concise report:
“Fifteen minutes ago, sentries patrolling the East Gate spotted two soldiers from Firefly City wearing standard outpost guard uniforms. After verifying their credentials, the soldiers stated they carried urgent military intelligence requiring your direct attention.
“Shortly after entering the perimeter, one collapsed from massive blood loss. The other was in equally dire condition—severe trauma, advanced toxic necrosis, noticeable delirium, and hypothermia.
“By the time the report reached me, both had been rushed to the infirmary. This letter was handed to me the moment they saw my rank insignia.”
“Did they say anything else before collapsing?” Yves asked, unfolding the pages.
“They said Firefly City is on the brink of total collapse. The rainy season broke without warning, and they are begging Seed City for emergency relief.”
Mo Zeya’s voice grew heavy. “Given their critical trauma, they fell unconscious immediately after speaking those words.”
Yves’s heart sank as he spread the pages flat on the desk.
“[TOP SECRET — URGENT MILITARY DISPATCH]
To Colonel Yves, Commander of Seed City:
This dispatch is written on the night of July 16, Year 10 of the Cataclysmic Era—the second night of Firefly City’s rainy season.
The monsoon arrived thirty to forty-five days ahead of schedule, accompanied by abnormal physiological mutations and rapid power surges in local flora and fauna. The scale of the seasonal beast tide far exceeds anything previously documented. Without prior sweeps conducted by the Awakener detachments from the Three Great Cities, the perimeter buffer zone has spawned A-rank mutated organisms, with several showing indications of evolving beyond A-rank.
Within forty-eight hours, our garrison has suffered forty percent casualties.
Communications are entirely severed. Both ‘Carrier Pigeon’ and ‘Stealth Hawk’ mechanical relays failed to locate target anchors and could not transmit our coordinates; the emergency long-range ‘Bluebird’ terminal is completely unresponsive.
Inside the walls, the insect swarm has breached our containment lines. Nearly four hundred citizens are afflicted with acute hemorrhagic fever, and over one hundred are coughing up blood. Because our reservoir was not sealed prior to the rains, our supply of potable water has been contaminated.
The A-rank mutant siege beast on our western flank is targeting the ramparts directly. We project catastrophic structural breach by tomorrow morning.
In accordance with the Frontier Outpost Military Protocol of the Cataclysmic Era, Firefly City has enacted the final directive: the Commander shall lead the surviving garrison in a holding action to the death, buying time for the civilian population to evacuate.
Adjutant Joyce will spearhead the exodus, leading the survivors southwest toward Seed City. The evacuation begins tomorrow at midday.
This dispatch has been entrusted to four separate courier squads in the hope that at least one operative reaches Seed City before your own rains begin. If the season arrived early for us, it will inevitably hit Seed City. I urge Colonel Yves to make preparations immediately.
Should this letter reach your hands after the rains have fallen and Seed City’s perimeter has breached, I ask that you exhaust every available avenue to transmit word of our falls to the Three Great Cities and our sister outposts. We are dispatching couriers toward the interior metropolises as well, though the distances are vast and their odds of survival remain minuscule.
The growth rate of these mutated horrors is deeply anomalous, pointing toward a secondary phase of global mutation. The situation is dire; this intelligence must break containment.
We sleep beneath the endless night, praying that humanity’s hope endures.
Colonel Wen Lin, Commander of Firefly City.”
…
Of the four surviving frontier outposts, Firefly City sat closest to Seed City, and vice versa.
Seed City was established on the fringes of an old-world metropolitan ruin, while Firefly City similarly bordered pre-cataclysm remains.
As for the other two outposts… Tide City was situated along the inland sea and maintained the most advanced flood defenses, while Cellar City was buried within the Barren Gorge Desert, where the monsoon rarely touched.
Firefly City differed structurally from Seed City.
Backed against sheer mountain cliffs, it possessed only three exterior wall faces, making it naturally defensible.
Five years ago, during the great “Evolution” when cloud-tier outposts fell across the northwest, the majority of displaced refugees fled toward Firefly City.
Seed City remained modest, housing several thousand souls five years ago, whereas Firefly City’s population had climbed past ten thousand.
…Tragically, civilian casualties had steadily mounted across the wasteland over the following years, grinding every survivor down.
During the year-end video conference, when Colonel Wen Lin delivered her annual briefing, Yves recalled her report stating Firefly City held approximately 4,600 civilians and a garrison approaching eight hundred personnel.
Yet this dispatch stated that forty percent of their armed forces had fallen in just two days…
When Colonel Wen Lin put pen to paper, over three hundred soldiers had already laid down their lives.
To face a full-scale beast tide and an internal parasite outbreak with zero preparation and no external support—the savagery of Firefly City’s frontline was self-evident.
Grave concern etched deep lines across Yves’s face as he passed the sheets to Keith and Mo Zeya.
Scanning the urgent dispatch, both adjutants turned pale with shock.
A chilling realization crossed their minds: had the Chinese Restaurant not appeared, Seed City’s fate would have been even more catastrophic.
Firefly City appealing to Seed City for rescue was a desperate last resort born of absolute helplessness.
The closing lines of the letter revealed that Colonel Wen Lin harbored little genuine hope that Seed City was still standing.
When she dispatched those couriers, she could not have known whether the nearest sister outpost would serve as a lifeline or a shared grave.
Yet Seed City possessed the means to be that lifeline.
While his adjutants read through the dispatch, Yves pulled open his lower drawer and retrieved a matte-black terminal.
Harboring little optimism, he keyed in the codes and pressed the transmission toggle.
The display emitted a faint, cold blue glow before flashing: Transmission Failed.
—Yves had attempted this the moment Boss Ling warned him of the incoming rains.
As the storm clouds rolled in, the single-use “Bluebird” emergency terminal linked to the Three Great Cities had gone dead.
The mechanical “Pigeon” and “Hawk” couriers launched the night before had fared no better.
Shortly after launching the high-speed and low-altitude drones into the airspace, their telemetry signals went dark on the clock tower’s radar console.
Neither had cleared the perimeter to reach its designated relays.
Precisely as Colonel Wen Lin described: all three communication protocols were severed.
“Keith, summon Sergeant Major Mori. I want her in the war room in twenty minutes. Track down Zhou Xue and Heixi—have them report to the war room within the hour,” Yves ordered, locking the black terminal away.
“Understood, sir. But our own perimeter defense…” Keith murmured, catching the Commander’s drift.
“I will make the tactical adjustments.”
“Understood.”
“Mo Zeya, inspect the motor pool and check our remaining fuel reserves,” Yves said, checking the wall clock. “Prepare the convoy to roll out by 1900 hours.”
Seed City maintained ten heavy transport haulers, traditionally escorted by high-ranking Awakener detachments sent from the interior during the biannual grain tithes.
The Three Great Cities supplied fuel allotments strictly calibrated for a single round trip with each pickup. Because the autumn grain levy was still months away, their stored fuel was sufficient to reach Firefly City and back.
The problem lay in operating beyond the defensive perimeter. Without escort detachments from the Three Great Cities, could Seed City’s internal forces successfully rendezvous with Firefly City’s evacuation column?
“Keith. Once the summons are issued, pull an inventory of our crystal reserves, City Coins, and harvested beast cores. Before the convoy departs, we are making a stop at the Chinese Restaurant.”
