SSS Gacha Master: I Can Only Gacha Bikini Warriors-Chapter 49. He’s Been Watching Us Longer Than We Knew
"I’ve been thinking about whether I want to, and the answer is that I want you to be who you are, which means I want you to keep loving your warriors the way you do..." She paused. "But I need you to tell me that..."
"I won’t become just another warrior... or just another bond level on a list."
"Come on now... that’s impossible," he said, and he really meant it. "Glacielle... you’re one of a kind for me only."
"The bond we have is unlike any other. And of course, that’s not me trying to act all nice, but the system probably told you the same thing."
He gives her head a pat. "Soulbound means exactly that."
"Mm..." She got closer to him. "Promise me."
"Of course! I’ll promise on my second life," he said. "And even with everything, I am."
They kissed quietly and without a rush, and they didn’t need anyone else to see it.
Lucian went to sleep later. Glacielle moved to a spot near the fire that was both comfortable and allowed her to see both the camp perimeter and Lucian at the same time, which was just what she was.
Octavia sat next to Marshal on watch duty by the river.
"The ice princess did a good job with that." Octavia said, "And she did even better than most people would have expected."
Marshal was looking at the tree line, but her body language was less tense than when she was really on guard for combat. "She shows more strength than she really has, and I know that she’s still holding on to something."
"She loves him in a way that lets other people love him too," Octavia giggled.
"That’s not a common kind of love from a warrior like her." She tilted her head. "So... what about you?"
Marshal’s eyebrow twitched. "What ABOUT me?"
"Are you still doing that thing where you call it a professional respect?"
And then there was a long pause between them.
"I don’t know what I’m doing," Marshal said. "I know how to lead soldiers."
"I know how to read a battlefield and make choices that save lives and sometimes cost them, and I also know how to train someone from nothing into something worth leading." She looked at the trees. "But... I don’t know how to feel."
"But you do have them, right?"
"I didn’t say I didn’t have them, but I said I don’t know how to do them."
Octavia smiled at the water. "You had a commander once," she said, not asking a question.
Marshal didn’t respond right away. "Yeah..."
"He died at the Solen Pass," she said. "He held the line so the rest of the legion could fall back, and when it was over, he was gone."
"It took me a long time after that to care about anyone’s survival in particular." She stopped again. "I cared about everyone’s survival in general, yes..."
"That’s duty. But specifically, that’s vulnerability."
"And yet," Octavia said.
"And yet," Marshal said, not wanting to. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦
"He is growing," Octavia said. "Not just technically?"
"I’ve seen Masters grow before, from the summoning realm. Most of them stay competent, and some get to be capable."
"But him...? He’s heading toward something else, and I don’t know what the word is yet, but I’ll know it when he gets there." She looked across the camp at Lucian, who was sleeping.
"Marshal, I know you’re trying to avoid some feelings, but I wouldn’t do it forever." Octavia looked back at Marshal. "We’re on the verge of a war, and the passage of time in wars can be swift."
Marshal didn’t say anything, but she didn’t ignore it either.
...
They left before dawn on the second day. They moved at a pace set by Marshal that wasn’t too comfortable but wasn’t too harsh either.
By midmorning, the capital should have been visible on the horizon, a smudge of towers and smoke against a sky that had turned greenish-gray, like it was about to rain.
Marshal stopped them in the middle of the road by just stopping and holding up one fist.
Lucian came to a stop, and everyone who followed came to a stop as well.
She was reading something that was on the ground. She observed scuff marks, weight impressions, and a patch of grass that looked disturbed.
"A group of six came through here in the last few hours." She said, "They’re moving quickly..."
"They were carrying gear, combat gear, because of the weight of the tracks and the spacing."
"Which way are they going?" Lucian asked.
"Same direction we’re going," she stared at the marks for a little longer. "Except they left the road here."
She pointed to a spot where the grass was bent in a way that led off to a group of hills to the northeast. "They went out."
"Corvus?" Glacielle asked.
"More likely scouts." Marshal stood up and looked at the group. "We should look around."
"If there are enemy scouts on the road ahead of us doing reconnaissance, we need to know what they found."
What they found was not a scouting operation. They found the scouts themselves, two hours later, in the remains of what had been their camp, because the scouts were all dead and had been for approximately six hours, by Marshal’s assessment.
They had died quickly, from the look of it, and the camp had been left exactly as it was, undisturbed, which was a message in itself.
They found a communication crystal that was still faintly active and a hand-drawn tactical map that was much more detailed than any map a casual scout should have had.
There were fragments of recent messages in the crystal, and Corvus’s voice distinctly instructed others on their tasks and directions. Just look. Report the number of warriors and their strength. Verify if Thiren is present.
"He knew about you before we even left the dungeon region," Lucian said to Octavia.
"He’s been tracking this party for longer than we realized," she said. Her tone was level, but he watched her hands.
The map was worse. It showed three main force positions around the capital with such accuracy that it looked like they had done a lot of scouting ahead of time, not a quick job.
A dragon legion symbol and numbers marked the eastern approach, which made Marshal’s face go blank. The western approach had huge cavalry and heavy assault units.
The merchant had been too scared to describe the southern approach clearly. It had a symbol on it that Lucian didn’t recognize, and next to it was a note in handwriting that was too careful to be anything but deliberate.
"Mythic unit deployed. Primary siege asset."
And then, on the map, there was a circle around a village fifty miles north of where they were, with the words "Test Site 5" written below it in the same careful hand.
For a long time, Marshal stared at the note. "Five sites," she said.
Lucian said, "We should check it!"
...
It took them four more hours to get there because they had to go northeast and then southwest to get back to the main road. He knew that the deadline for the capital was getting closer. He went anyway, and no one said anything.
A signpost at the edge of the road said that the village was called Hesten. Everything behind it was gone, though.
The damage was thorough yet peculiar; it wasn’t the type of destruction typically associated with a raid, such as burning and pillaging. Instead, it felt as if something had swept through and removed the village entirely.
Walls were shattered. Roofs had collapsed. Beneath the scent of devastation lingered an ancient chemical odor.
And there are no bodies were found.
