This Universe Needs Old People - Chapter 62



Only Noblemtl

Apocalypse Needs Old People Episode 062

58. Promise (5)

Plato, is that guy asking if his dad kidnapped my friend?

“Mr. Haydam?”

As I stood there dumbfounded, Plato called my name with a worried look on his face.

“I asked because I thought you knew about it, Haydam… Are you sure you don’t know?”

After a brief delay, I came to my senses and answered.

“No… Of course I know that. I just didn’t think you’d ask.”

I frowned and asked.

“But how do you know? Anton wouldn’t have told you… … .”

“My father said he heard about the graduation speech from Haydam. I thought it was strange that someone who didn’t even come to my graduation ceremony met Haydam separately, so I looked into it myself.”

Did you really go around investigating your father?

“I chose my adjutant well.”

Plato smiled a little shyly and continued.

“So… if it is true that my father was rude, I would like to formally apologize.”

I wondered why he was asking such detailed questions, and the conclusion was that he was trying to apologize.

In the first place, it wasn’t Plato’s fault that Anton kidnapped Banggu Seok Yeobo, and he was a second lieutenant and Banggu Seok Yeobo was a private, so he had every intention of apologizing.

The moment he heard that Plato, who was hiding in a corner, was going to be appointed as his adjutant, he started arguing with me, so it’s really a comparison.

“It’s nice, but in the end, he was the one who caused the inconvenience, so I don’t think he needs to apologize.”

“Is that so?”

“But you didn’t get kicked out even after doing that?”

“I am currently staying in the officer’s dormitory.”

You got kicked out.

“When I told them that I would be taking an entrance exam instead of a recommendation system, they didn’t say anything, but as soon as they announced that the person who would be setting the exam was Haydam, they kicked me out.”

“Oh, like that.”

At that moment, I noticed that the team members who had been ahead of me had stopped in one place and were muttering.

“It looks like we found something up ahead.”

As I hurried forward, I saw the commander and Meursault, who had arrived first, talking about something with serious expressions on their faces.

“What’s going on?”

As I approached and asked, Meursault answered.

“Because of the crevasse.”

Simply put, a crevasse is a crack that forms between the ground.

The game’s explanation was that an ice age had arrived in this world and most of the land had become covered with glaciers, and that the glaciers had split apart, creating endlessly deep holes.

“On the map, this area ahead is a crevasse area… but the snow hasn’t melted yet up to here, so the crevasse is covered with snow and cannot be seen.”

Crevasses vary in size, and while most are large holes that can be seen with the naked eye, there are also those that are so ambiguous that they are indistinguishable from the ground when snow piles up.

However, even if the hole is of such an ambiguous size, it is usually large enough for an adult to fall through.

In fact, if it hadn’t snowed, it would have been possible to safely pass by, breaking down the hole under the piled snow that looked blue, but now that the snow was continuing to fall, it was difficult to distinguish the color of the ground with the naked eye.

Because of this, the expedition is supposed to take place in the spring when the snow has all melted, but it seems that because they went out to search far away to chase the monsters, they ended up in an area where the snow had not yet completely melted.

“It will be difficult to continue the search.”

Team 1 followed the footprints left behind by the monsters as they fled.

But even those who were running away in a hurry started to move while erasing their footprints with their tails.

The snow that had started to fall a little while ago covered the remaining footprints, making it impossible to follow their trail any further.

While continuing the search based on the direction of the last discovered footprints, they encountered a crevasse area.

The cracks in front of this area, covered in snow and invisible to the eye, are wide enough for an adult to fall through, but large monsters can pass through without a hitch.

If he ran away beyond this point, there would be no way to catch up.

If we go around this terrain, we can get to the other side, but if they come back through here in the meantime, there will be a hole in the search net.

Anyway, since our team’s goal was not to catch and kill the four that had escaped, but rather to keep watch to prevent a surprise attack while the wounded soldiers were returning, the commander seemed to be inclined to end the search at this point.

In fact, if I hadn’t felt a strange sense of discomfort from the monsters, I would have chosen to go back a long time ago.

Visibility is still fine, but as the snow starts to fall harder, not only will flares become a problem, but finding your way back to the area will also become difficult.

We were already too far out of the area.

“Go back.”

Eventually the commander decided to return and fired a signal flare to signal a retreat.

So we returned to the agreed meeting place.

An unexpected problem arose there.

“Team 2 isn’t coming back?”

Of the five teams that were split into groups, teams 1, 3, 4, and 5 all returned to the midpoint, but teams 2 did not return.

The leader of Team 2 was a colonel from the pro-Hayden faction, and he was the one who personally chose Lucas and Bones from among my Team 10 members and brought them with him.

Meursault continued his report with a frozen face.

“Team 3 said they saw Team 2 heading in the opposite direction.”

“You saw Team 2? Weren’t the areas they searched quite far apart from Team 3?”

“At that time, I thought that the two teams had taken the wrong path and their search areas overlapped, but since they haven’t come back yet, I guess… … .”

Just hearing that far, it was obvious what was going on.

‘You’re blinded by promotion.’

The reason the 2nd team’s colonel took such a risk is probably because his promotion is at stake in this punitive battle.

After Anton of the pro-Cindaphne faction announced his retirement, there are rumors within the military that Josef of the pro-Heyden faction will also decide to retire soon.

When two commander positions are vacant, it is only natural that the subordinates will expect to be promoted.

It seems that the 2nd team’s colonel wanted to become a general by making a contribution in this suppression war.

The commander tried to keep a calm expression, but the veins on his neck were blue with anger.

“… It seems like we need to form a search party for the monster search party.”

“sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about.”

Meursault lowered his head with a face of shame.

In my opinion, even if the 2nd team colonel returns safely, I don’t think he’ll be able to live with all his limbs intact.

Of course, I have no intention of letting that guy go off on his own two cute new officers.

In the meantime, the snowfall was getting heavier.

The commander stared silently for a while in the direction Team 2 was probably headed, then opened his mouth heavily.

“We can’t risk the rest of us because of one idiot. We’re going back.”

As a commander, it was the most rational decision he made.

But if we go back like this, they’ll all definitely die.

If the two teams had been chasing the monsters in the first place, they would have gone in the direction of the crack where we gave up searching a little while ago.

We discovered the crevasse area because the snowfall wasn’t that heavy until then.

It seemed unlikely that a group of mere colonels and new officers would have been able to notice the crevasse in this snow-blizzard.

“That can’t be.”

I was just sitting there, but some crazy guy had the guts to directly contradict the commander’s orders. When I looked up, it was Plato, of course.

The commander and Meursault stared at each other, dumbfounded for a moment at the new officer’s sly resistance. Plato took this as a signal that he could continue, and added with a serious expression.

“Team 2 also has new officers. They had no choice but to follow their superiors’ orders to deviate from the path in order to search for the monster. As you said, one idiot could end up killing a bunch of newly commissioned officers. Someone has to chase them and tell them that there is a crevasse. If you allow me, I will go and do it.”

‘It’s really consistent.’

Under normal circumstances, I would have cut ties with Plato at this point, but there are more than a few things that make me feel uneasy about going back like this.

‘If we go back now, we may never know what those monsters saw and ran away from.’

The expedition only takes place once a year, in the spring.

The large monsters that have escaped now will not come near the area until next spring, and they may even die and disappear from this snowfield before next spring.

‘It’s a shame that I started educating him so early… … .’

No matter how much I showed them the spicy taste through training simulations, it is not something that just anyone can do to be alert and respond appropriately to a child they meet in real life.

In that respect, Lucas and Bones are too good to be wasted like this.

‘Okay. I’ll go look for it.’

Having decided so, I held out my arm, made Plato take a step back, and then stepped forward.

No, I was going to come out

“Don’t come out, Haydam.”

As soon as I took a step forward to defend Plato, I was immediately stopped by the commander, as if he had expected me to do so.

“I’ve overlooked your reckless behavior several times so far, but now is not the time for you to step forward. Your recklessness does not always lead to good results.”

As a father and a superior, this is something I can say to myself.

But I couldn’t back out here.

When I heard the word ‘Man-Yong’, I thought of the faces of those guys who used to applaud me during my graduation speech.

“father.”

I looked straight at the commander and said.

“You wouldn’t call the courage shown by those new officers in their commencement speeches an exaggeration, would you?”

“… … .”

Plato found it funny how he knew what he was doing, but Lucas and Bones had no choice but to do whatever their superiors told them to do.

If we leave them to die in vain, when they have only just begun to hatch, who will take seriously our claim to enroll all the children in the district in military academies in order to nurture them into talent?

“And I wasn’t trying to tell you to go find Team 2.”

“then?”

“The crack we saw a little while ago. We’ll just go there, mark it as a dangerous area, and come back.”

The commander looked at me for a moment, speechless, and then said.

“You plan to go yourself, right?”

“Because other people wouldn’t want to risk their lives because of one stupid person.”

“Do you really need a young person like you to go there just to show danger?”

“You’re not like an adult when you’re fighting monsters and a child when you’re doing something dangerous, right?”

The commander stared at me with an unknown gaze.

“How can you be so reckless and arrogant… … Sometimes, I wonder if you are really my child.”

You are sharp.

“Meursault.”

The commander spoke without taking his eyes off me.

“I’ll lead the rest and go back first.”

“yes?”

This time Meursault started to freak out.

“What do you mean? Surely Your Majesty, you don’t intend to stay?”

“You don’t think these two guys would just show danger and come back quietly, do you?”

For a moment, I tried to hide my stinging expression, then I met Plato’s eyes.

Judging by his expression, he didn’t seem to be planning on having a nice time.

At that moment, I felt eyes on me and raised my head, and there in the corner of the room was the lady looking at me with an anxious look.

I shook my head because it seemed like he would raise his hand to follow me at any moment.

If Banggu Seok-yeo-bo had been left out of the returning group, the returning group could have been in more danger than us.

Since the commander and I are leaving, we need to leave Banggu Seok Yeobo, one of the forces capable of catching large monsters, with the returning team.

The commander followed my gaze, glanced at Banggu Seok Yeo-bo for a moment, then quickly looked away and spoke.

“If you’ve decided, let’s go. If we delay any longer, both you and I will end up lost in this blizzard.”

and.

Before we even reached the crack, we discovered a bloodstain that stained the pure white snowfield red.

Plato began to look around cautiously, perhaps thinking it was the work of a monster.

I knew it at first sight.

this.

It’s not the work of a monster.