Some people would have said that the devastation Tom caused resembled the work of a demon…
But to a child soldier, a boy raised his entire life seeing heretics slaughter innocents, this wasn't demonic at all.
To him, this was divine.
"What…" T-3 whispered as he slowly pushed himself up from the dirt. His eyes fixed on the heretic encampment, the very same hell where his squadmates had died without meaning.
He stared at the tornado of blood in stunned silence.
"Hm? It's terri—" Moriarty began casually, but he stopped when he heard the boy's low whisper.
"…It's beautiful…" T-3 murmured through his gas mask.
"What?" Moriarty narrowed his eyes, unsure if he heard correctly.
T-3 turned toward him abruptly.
"General was right. You really are angels!"
"…Not really," Moriarty replied. "I've actually seen a real angel before."
But T-3 didn't hear him, not over the roaring storm of blood and the chorus of dying screams.
"…Nevermind," Moriarty muttered.
The battle ended the same way it began, abruptly.
Silence fell over the field, leaving behind only the mangled ruin of the heretic encampment beneath the elevated ridge where we stood.
Tom walked toward us, brushing dust off his shoulders like he had just finished a light workout.
"What kind of world are you living in?" he muttered, eyeing the barren terrain below. "You can't find any water even ten kilometres beneath the surface?"
"Water?" T-3 repeated, sounding genuinely confused — his voice trembling as he snapped out of his shock. "What is that?"
Tom blinked at him. "The stuff you drink? You've never had water before?"
"You mean this?" T-3 unhooked a small brown pouch from his belt and handed it to Tom.
Tom opened it and frowned at the dark red liquid inside. "What is this? Pomegranate juice?"
"Blood," the kid answered plainly. "Most of us can't get it filtered."
"You a vampire or something?" Moriarty asked, attempting to lighten the mood, even though all of us were unsettled by the answer.
"Well… that's gonna make a great origin story for Dracula," Tom said, joined in the joke with a laugh.
"What is a Dracula?" T-3 asked, genuinely curious.
"It's a fictional villain. We'll talk about it once we reach the camp," Moriarty replied, gently patting the top of T-3's head through the mask.
As we walked toward the main encampment, we finally began piecing together fragments about this world from the boy.
Apparently, the dragons that once ruled this planet had long been extracted and relocated to a Training Planet, because of their valuable bloodlines or something similar. The only dragon that stayed behind was killed during that same operation, and now, humanity had built one of their strongholds directly on top of its corpse.
"You know," Tom said casually, "I once saw a living dragon. Didn't stay alive for long though. My dad killed him before he could even react."
T-3 froze mid-step. "Your father is a heretic?"
"No. He's a hunter. And it's… complicated." Tom rubbed the back of his neck. "Unlike your relationship with your dead dragon hero… on training planets, we're basically enemies."
"Dude… you're traumatizing the kid," Moriarty whispered sharply, pulling Tom aside before he could say anything worse.
"Well, we need information about this planet before we reach the stronghold," Tom argued quietly. "And that kid… he's just a kid. If we don't understand what we're dealing with here, then he, and many others like him are going to die."
"I get that," Moriarty replied, voice low but firm. "But look around you. This world doesn't follow the rules of a Training Planet. We are the outsiders here. Which means we can only change things slowly. If we rush this, even one small miscalculation, we're dead. I know how you feel. I feel the same. But for now… just adjust. Alright?"
Tom looked ahead at T-3, the little soldier already walking ahead of us with his shovel, then finally exhaled.
"…Alright," he said quietly.
"That's our stronghold," T-3 said, pointing ahead.
We stopped walking.
In the far distance, beyond the broken horizon, a colossal skeleton stretched across the land. It was bigger than any skyscraper I had ever seen. The ribcage alone looked like curved white mountains, and the spine ran so far left and right that the ends vanished into the dust haze. It wasn't just large, it was architectural.
Inside that titanic ribcage were structures of stone, fortress-like buildings carved directly into bone and fossil. Thick wings, fossilized and jagged, curved forward like a protective shield, enclosing the settlement like some ancient cathedral of bone.
Surrounding all of it was a massive spherical barrier, a dome of shimmering yellow energy extending hundreds of meters into the sky like a second atmosphere.
The sight was surreal.
"By the Emperor…" Moriarty breathed out. "How did the heretics even manage to kill something that size?"
"According to the stories we heard," T-3 said, voice low, "the dragon was already old and dying when the extraction began… and when the heretics attacked…"
He stopped, unable to finish.
Tom exhaled in a strangely respectful tone.
"Never thought I'd say this but… he died a hero," he murmured. "But the one my dad killed was way stronger—"
"Tommy! Not the right time!" Moriarty snapped.
"Right… yeah. My bad." Tom coughed.
"You both should take these," T-3 said, turning toward us as he handed each of us two blank cards.
"What are these?" Moriarty asked.
The moment he touched the card, information materialized across the smooth surface, his name, his status, and even a small photo of his face on the left side, like the card was printing reality out of thin air.
"Is that magic? Or some kind of high-grade tech? Oh I have to research this immediately!"
"That is an identification card," T-3 explained. "You'll need it to enter the stronghold. It also scans whether you're a heretic or possessed by a demon. If you are, the barrier will prevent you from entering."
Tom raised a brow. "Why not just use the Codex then?"
"The Codex works properly only in worlds that are fully conquered," T-3 said quietly. "We do not have full authority here."
Both Tom and I fell silent at once.
"…I can't even contact anyone?" I asked, briefly taking control.
"That's your concern?!" Tom shouted. "We can't even check our status! We won't even know how close we are to evolving again! What if we just... accidentally trigger another metamorphosis?!"
"I believe communication might still be possible through the communication center," T-3 answered. "Though it is unstable at times. And we do have a training center."
"Fine, let's go meet your general," I stated.
The moment we crossed the barrier, the air changed.
We walked until we reached an enormous metal door built beneath the ribcage of the skeleton, we couldn't identify the material, but it resembled iron fused with bone.
"I have returned with the angels!" T-3 shouted toward the sealed gate.
A blue ray swept over our bodies from head to toe, cold and clinical, before the massive door slid downward with a hydraulic hiss.
What we saw beyond it…
I don't think any of us were prepared.
The door opened into a spiral staircase carved entirely from pale stone — steep, narrow, and without any railings. And as we looked down, the world below swallowed our breath.
Millions, no, more than that, human lives packed like grains of sand.
A city beneath the earth, built inside the corpse of a dragon. Floor after floor descending deeper than our sight could reach, each level overcrowded beyond anything we could rationalize.
A living ant-hill of despair.
When they noticed us, thousands… tens of thousands… lifted their heads toward us.
So many eyes.
So many faces warped by hunger, disease, and hopelessness, faces we could never possibly remember, yet their grief burned itself into us instantly.
"All these people… how can they even survive like this?" Tom whispered, his voice cracking.
Footsteps echoed above us.
"The General is expecting you," said a soldier wearing a black gas mask, slightly taller than T-3. His voice was distorted through the mask as he walked down the stone steps. He gestured for us to follow.
Walking up the stairs felt suffocating, but knowing that these people were going suffer the longer we delay was even more painful.
"You sure care a lot for someone who had once taken so many lives," Ryuk laughed.
Those were necessary. But this? This is nothing but a massacre waiting to happen without a reason. I thought.
From what we had seen after entering the stronghold… I honestly wasn't expecting the General to be any better than the rest.
But apparently, today was full of surprises.
The General's so-called office was inside the hollowed skull of the dead dragon. But instead of a war room or command center, he had prepared something like a "feast."
On a circular stone table, several types of canned food had been placed neatly upon steel plates. Each plate was aligned like a ritual offering.
Around the table were chairs carved directly from stone and on the far side of the room, stood the General.
He wore a uniform similar to T-3, but with more rank insignias pinned across his shoulders. Like the others, he had the thick filter-type gas mask, black gloves, and a green cap with a yellow star stitched on the front.
"Welcome. I have been expecting the two of you for quite some time. Please… sit," the General said, voice polite, tone restrained.
Something felt off.
The food… There was a smell.
A very particular smell that made the back of my neck tighten. Something I had smelled before, something that didn't belong in a feast.
"What is that?" Tom asked, pointing directly at the canned food on the table.
"That's corpse starch," T-3 answered casually.