“Ev-everyone shoot—Arghh!”
“17.”
Alexis annihilated the one who was about to order another attack.
“Don’t make a sound! With the sound—Ahhnn… !”
“16.”
What the guard had just said was right. Focusing on his hearing, Alexis closed his eyes and eliminated his enemies around him one by one. He visualized the surroundings in his mind as if through infrared vision. He focused his attention, heightening his hearing and smelling abilities, and began to assail the gatekeepers.
“Urgh!”
“15.”
“Ahh!”
“14.”
As if they were insignificant, Alexis effortlessly removed the wardens.
“13.”
“Agh!”
“12… 11… 10… .”
Around the time the dust started to settle down.
“You are the only one left.”
“Sp-spare me… Aha…”
The trembling guard looked up at him. Since there was only one left Alexis asked again,
“Where is the Kerno chief?”
-Bang!
The bullet flew straight to his head.
“Ha ha ha… !”
The recoil from the bullet threw his head back.
“Again. Oh, how boring.”
Clearly bored, as if it was nothing, he spat it out. Shocked, the patrolman fell to his knees and murmured in disbelief:
“No, no, no… .”
“Will you speak or die?”
Seeing that the guard’s pants were damp, Alexis didn’t want to bother taking him with him.
“You can just die.”
“Huh…”
Alexis pressed his finger on the guard’s head as he tried to back away, then released it. There was a hole where his finger went in and out. And in that hole, the guards’ blood began to pour out.
“Sp-spar … arpe… .”
“It’s already too late.”
The body of the last guard fell to the ground as he walked toward the interior of the rebel base.
Alexis went in for a while, reached the very heart of the rebel camp, and stood there.
A bit at a loss, he scratched his head as he paid attention to the breaths of women and the sounds of children around him, almost all non-soldiers.
Alexis took human life lightly, including his own. But he couldn’t help his newfound reluctance, not wanting to kill the women, perhaps because of Aselia. So he pretended not to hear them and continued walking, though the sound of their breathing was very disturbing.
He thought that if he hadn’t met Aselia, he might have killed all the women and children.
He hated the women because of the researchers and just hated children.
But he didn’t want to kill them when he went wild with the idea that Aselia might give birth to a child resembling them both.
He knew only through imagination what having a family was. That’s why he felt uncomfortable killing a woman and a child who might be a family member.
‘I just need to kill in moderation. If you kill too many, it will take a long time to burn the bodies.’
He remembered an annoying exchange with the deputy director a long time ago.
‘I know that? Whenever I see women on missions, I kill them thinking of you, Isabella.’
When he first started going on missions, Alexis loathed Isabella, the deputy director.
‘Yes, good. Kill a lot of them, and listen to me.’
However, Deputy Director Isabella treated him well after he awakened, so that hatred quickly disappeared. More than anything else, his title, land, and property he had to buy for Aselia and him to live in and start their family with were all things he required her help with.
“Does anyone know where the leader of the Kerno tribe is?”
Now there were no men around after he killed all the guards.
Although he abhorred the idea, he might have to use the women to find out.
-Pak!
“Ah!”
“Hey, the other rebels… .”
“Ugh! Let me go! Help! Ahhhh!”
Alexis grabbed a kid hiding in the nearest hut by surprise by the back of his neck. But the brown-haired kid refused to listen as he struggled.
“Quiet.”
“Ugh! Ahh! Argh! Save me! Ughl!”
“Ha.”
He clenched his fist and swung it in front of him.
“Huh—!”
Then his fist stopped right in front of the child’s nose.
“Kernos chief. Where is he? Or the other rebels?”
Alexis stared at the kid, feeling strangely relieved that the child was now quietly listening to him. But then, the child started to tremble and wail violently.
“Hunnh… .”
“What? Hey—Why aren’t you answering me?”
“Ahhh!”
Seeing the child struggle and cry, he was agonizing over whether he should really hit him.
That moment—
“Stop it. I am the head of the Kerno tribe.”
Alexis dropped the child in shock because of the man who appeared before him.
“You… .”
“What’s going on here—”
“What the hell is going on?”
He widened his eyes in surprise when he saw that the Kernos chief’s face was exactly the same as Kalisten’s.