Chapter 43: the meeting
In the afternoon, Richard was escorted to the Silver Moon facilities. According to Eimy, his escort to the underground levels, the general had given a strict order: no third parties should get involved in the city's problems.
To his fortune, Seo-Yeon had ignored that mandate without blinking. She was too busy with her novel to pay attention to the words of a man she considered little more than background noise.
They walked to a dead-end alley that hid the tavern's only elevator. The metallic jingle echoed in the corridor as the doors opened, revealing an interior narrow, almost oppressive.
Eimy pressed one of the buttons with a tired gesture and, breaking the silence, muttered with annoyance:
"Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever find a bigger scoundrel than that general..."
The elevator began to descend with a mechanical screech. The echo of the chains accompanied each word. Not receiving an answer, Eimy glanced at him sideways, raising an eyebrow.
"Doesn't it bother you what he did to you? If it were me, I would have used him as a punching bag already. And, believe me, he looks like one."
Richard barely diverted his gaze toward her. His voice, calm but cutting, clashed with the metallic vibration of the elevator:
"I didn't get angry... In the end, from experience, I know that people like him always end up in the worst way. And it tends to be... a tragic end."
The words cut the air like a knife. Eimy watched him for a few seconds, surprised, before letting out a brief, almost nervous laugh.
"Wow... you're gloomy. Seems true that the calmest tend to be the craziest. Both in the old society and in this one."
Then her smile twisted into a look full of contempt:
"Although, between us... it wouldn't be so bad if that pathetic general died soon."
Richard frowned, hoping to get a bit more information aside from her ongoing hatred toward the general.
"By the way..." his voice sounded like a sigh, breaking the monotony of the descent, "do we at least know where we're headed?"
He continued speaking after seeing that Eimy said nothing.
"It's not that I don't trust you and your plan, but Seo-Yeon told me something about the operation, although she didn't tell me how it would be carried out or the type of enemies we'll face in the operation."
After a few seconds of hesitation, Eimy exhaled tiredly before answering.
"It's not that we don't want to tell you. It's that we still don't know what we will face. The only clear thing is that, since that damned message appeared in the sky announcing the Fifth Punishment, everything has twisted more than any of us can imagine."
She took her cell phone out of her pocket and held it at chest height.
"As you can see, everything got out of control when infected began to appear capable of reasoning like humans. They were the ones who formed factions... and, little by little, turned parts of the city into forbidden zones."
The metallic jingle of the elevator interrupted the conversation. The doors opened with a heavy creak, revealing an endless corridor. The air smelled of recent gunpowder and machine oil. Richard watched in silence the personnel moving from one end to the other, carrying boxes of ammunition and weaponry as if they were indispensable provisions.
"Aren't you afraid this will further increase arms smuggling...?" he murmured, barely audible.
For the moment he could only follow Eimy's footsteps. He still couldn't shake her last words from his mind. It was hard to keep hearing everything he had lost during the time he had been locked in that other world.
He had survived to witness the moment the fifth message appeared in the sky. From that instant, everything had become uncertain. No one could predict what other punishments would come down upon humanity.
Fortunately, everything was in a period of peace, so humanity could better reorganize.
But how much longer would that peace last?
Eimy's steps stopped in front of one of the most secure doors in the whole place, possibly the meeting area. Richard couldn't hear anything of what was happening inside.
He held his breath. He tried to concentrate, sharpening his hearing, but all he found was silence. Not a murmur escaped from the interior.
Sealed against the senses of a awakened one... even a class two couldn't hear anything.
"Goodbye to the only advantage I had..." he thought bitterly.
He wanted to shed a few tears, but Eimy took him by the arm and led him into the room where all eyes turned toward them.
The general was the first to explode.
"Didn't I tell you, Seo-Yeon?!" he roared in a deep voice that echoed off the walls.
"No outsider to the city should have a voice or vote in this meeting!"
His eyes drilled into Richard, full of fury.
"And I certainly don't want anyone else to know about the state of the alchemist!"
The man struck the table forcefully; his voice was a whip.
"All I care about is that he is the most valuable asset we have… and the only reason we're still alive so far."
The echo of his words hung in the room like choking smoke.
Eimy clenched her teeth, ready to retort, but before she could open her mouth… another voice cut in.
Seo-Yeon fixed the general with an icy look.
"We appreciate your words, General, but don't forget we need every force we can get if we're to enter the Serpent Calamity's territory."
Her tone was as calm as it was cold, and the silence that spread through the room proved she had curbed the man's exaltation.
Without adding more, with a gesture of her hand she indicated that Richard and Eimy sit beside her, dissipating some of the tension.
Richard obeyed, inclining his head slightly in a gesture of gratitude.
"As we discovered, to our misfortune," Seo-Yeon continued while laying out several documents on the table, "the area where the Lunar Dewflower appeared is guarded by a calamity. As we classified them, these are creatures capable of leading large groups of infected."
Her small hands flipped through the pages of the report one by one. The still-fresh ink showed sketches, diagrams and hurried annotations.
"From what we found, the creature appears to be injured after a territorial dispute. Tomorrow should be the best time to enter and take the Lunar Dewflower."
The general could no longer contain himself. His fist slammed the table with a crash that made the water glasses tremble.
"If we know that serpent is injured, we should kill it!" he roared, his breathing ragged.
"If we split into two groups, we could secure the flower and, at the same time, obtain the calamity's core. With that, one of our awakened could ascend and strengthen our defenses."
Richard watched him carefully. For the first time he noticed details he had previously overlooked: the labored breathing, the overly tense muscles, the skin marked by dark veins. Everything about the man's body screamed overuse. He had been forged on cores without proper tempering. A strength that, in appearance, was imposing, but which in reality hid a heavy price.
And yet… he had a point. Killing the serpent now would be an invaluable opportunity.
But there was also an error that no one else seemed to notice.
Richard narrowed his eyes, resting his elbows on the table.
"That creature is not injured," he interrupted in a firm voice.
Several heads turned toward him.
"The reason for its weakness is not an injury… it is preparing to become something much worse."
He tried to warn them; after all, this was the problem of the Fifth Punishment that had caused the destruction of many cities. Not for nothing, before the Fourth Punishment only five monarchs had been discovered in the entire world.
Or at least monarchs created naturally.
Everyone turned their gaze to Richard when he raised his voice and pointed at the image projected on the table.
"Unlike a normal infected," he said firmly, "when an irregular finishes evolving, its bloodline acquires a dominion that makes it invincible on its own terrain against opponents of the same rank."
The general frowned, visibly irritated by the claim.
"And what are you basing that on? I doubt you can speculate all that from a single photograph."
His intervention managed to cool the room momentarily; heads nodded in a dull assent. If what Richard said was merely conjecture, any misstep could delay or ruin the operation.
Richard gave a short, cold smile.
"I understand the distrust. I am not against the mission. I am against us splitting into two groups to face that creature."
He fixed his gaze on the general, stabbing it at him like a dagger.
"You can call me a liar, if you need to. But everyone here knows that what I just said is not something that can be proven true or false right now. If we go out divided and our awakened die, the responsibility will fall on you. Are you willing to assume it?"