Monster

Meanwhile, Lud had left to search for Sven, and thinking she had probably barged into the church in her rage, he headed there first.

Sven got carried away when she was angry, so it was likely she was causing trouble for Marlene.

The thought of Sven rampaging through the church made Lud's face pale.

He rushed to his truck and turned the key, but the engine responded with a faint, rumbling sound and wouldn't start.

With one final pop, it went silent.

Why at a time like this? Lud wanted to hurl abuse at the truck.

Instead he got out and began to run.

Lud took a back road that wasn't in use. It was pitch black outside, but compared to the night marches back in the military, this was easy. The ten-minute drive up the beaten road took about thirty minutes on foot.

Then he stopped.

A familiar feeling ran down Lud's spine.

He sensed the presence of someone, and felt a mixture of fear and hostility.

The intuition he had forged in the military informed him of this presence, even after two years of civilian life.

He crouched down to keep out of sight and used all his senses.

There was someone there! Some men... carrying weapons. There were three... No, five of them.

They weren't moving away but they were fidgeting as if they couldn't settle down.

Looks like guard duty... What are they guarding?

Lud suspected that these men were not soldiers but knew how to fight.

They were possibly armed punks but definitely just amateurs without formal military training.

Or thieves? No, Lud didn't think so. Those types were more cunning. They would know that the church had nothing worth stealing.

But Lud felt uneasy. It was precisely because of this precognitive ability to sense what was ahead of him that allowed Lud to survive as he had up to this point.

Without making a sound, almost without disturbing the air itself, Lud cautiously advanced, reaching the church.

There was no one around, but Lud took precautions and waited until the moon disappeared behind the clouds before he climbed through the window and inside the church.

"......"

The chapel looked the same as always. It was completely dark, but otherwise nothing was out of the ordinary.

Lud crept silently across the floor like a cat. There were no signs of a struggle.

"... What's this?" "... Tea?"

One one of the pews sat a mug of unfinished tea that had long gone cold.

Lud tried to silently pick up the mug but it tipped and the tea poured onto the floor, leaving a pool of brown liquid.

Lud decided to find Marlene and tell her about the men outside the church. But he also needed to apologize to her for sneaking in and dirtying her floor.

Just then, the moon peeked out between a break in the clouds, and bathed the chapel in a pale blue light.

Lud felt as if he was at the bottom of a deep ocean, and unthinkly looked down at the spilt tea.

"?!"

The tea was flowing towards the altar.

Given how old and decrepit the church was, it was no surprise that the floor was warped and uneven.

What was strange was that as the tea reached the altar, it disappeared, as if sucked in.

Lud tried quietly pressing the area between the altar and the floor with his finger, when he noticed there was a slight crack.

Lud didn't want to think about it. Just thinking about it was awful.

But Lud had spent most of his teenage years as a soldier, so his thoughts could only work out one answer to what this meant.

Lud tried to push the alter with his shoulder.

The alter moved and underneath was a space just big enough fit a single coffin.

But inside was a stockpile of firearms.

"This is... An AK21 assault rifle! Why are these here?"

The AK21 was the rifle of choice for the infantry of the August Federation, but this model was from weapon's previous generation.

It was out-of-date but you could still kill someone with it.

Lud had blurted out the question, but there was only one possible answer.

Since ancient times, churches and other religious buildings were well-suited as hiding places.

It was something Lud had seen often during the war.

This church must be some sort of base for an irregular military.

"Mister Lud?"

A voice called and when he turned around, he saw Marlene.

It had been two years since Lud had left the military but he still had the instincts of a soldier.

During that time, he fervently tried to forget his past and live his life as a baker. However, in an abnormal situation, the old, ingrained habits in his body would pull him back to his time as a soldier.

But the demands of his body were suppressed by his thoughts, which aligned more with his wishes.

This is wrong. She isn't an enemy.

Despite the fact that there was no way this could be the case.

Lud completely let down his guard. He even started to tell Marlene "good evening".

Marlene shot a bullet from her handgun into Lud's laughably defenseless stomach.

It was pathetic. A comedic tragedy.

When Lud regained consciousness, he was sitting on a chair in the dark.

He couldn't remember exactly what had happened.

All that he knew was that he was in a dark room, tied to a splinter-covered, old chair, and that he had been shot in his side.

"Umph... U-ugh..."

Blood oozed from the wound. The bleeding wasn't severe, but he couldn't ignore it.

With a click, the lock turned and the door opened.

Light entered the room for a moment before the door closed and it was dark again.

Someone walked past Lud and lit the lamp behind him.

"Hehehe... What a pitiful looking creature you are now, Mister Silver Wolf."

He recognized the voice and the laugh.

Standing there was Marlene.

"I thought you would be more surprised."

Marlene looked a little bit disappointed.

Another man in Lud's situation might last out, saying that he was betrayed on tricked, or he might try to appeal to Marlene's heart by saying how much he had trusted her, but Lud had been raised on the battlefield.

"I just don't show it on my face."

A soldier always prepares for the worst-case scenario and knows that anything can happen.

Lud was made up of forty percent pessimism and sixty percent pragmatism. He kept his optimism as a secret ingredient.

"So I guess this makes you a member of that Pelfish militant group?"

Lud's tone didn't reveal any despair or fear; he spoke as if he was pointing out that Marlene enjoyed football when she was a student.

"We're the Pelfe Liberation League."

Marlene's voice was cold, and something hard pressed against the back of Lud's neck.

Lud knew it was the barrel of a gun.

"For how long?"

"From the beginning. A lovely sister, bravely taking care of a group of poor, wretched children... It's effective, is it not?"

"Then the children... just a cover? No... just props?"

"Isn't it obvious? Why else would I look after the brat of some traitorous Wiltian supporter?"

A traitor's brat. The daughter of the Wiltia-supporting militiaman. Milly

"I see."

There wasn't any particular emotion in Lud's voice.

He wasn't trying to act cool. He was disinterested. He sounded as though he just wanted to confirm the facts.

"Do you have any idea what Wiltia's colonization policy has done?!"

Marlene seemed impatient when Lud didn't give the reaction she hoped for, and began answering questions Lud hadn't asked.

"Last I heard, it was annexed, not colonized." Lud said, as though he was simply correcting her misinformation.

The two words meant something completely different under international law.

"Hmph! So that makes Wiltia our benevolent ruler, is that it?"

This time Lud's answer appeared to be the one Marlene wanted.

Marlene continued as if she was trying to convince the arrogant Wiltian of the crimes he had committed.

"We lost our pride..."

Wiltia had employed many Pelfish people in the top levels of Pelfe's ruling government to avoid rebellion among the subjects.

They did this because they did not want to turn the population into guerilla fighters, but that plan backfired.

Soon the Pelfish people thought that if they wagged their tails and catered to Wiltia, they would be rewarded.

Bribery became rampant and some people even offered up their wives and daughters.

Wiltia strictly forbid this and sent out proclamation after proclamation. Those who accepted these bribes were severely punished, but the practice continued in secret, where prying eyes couldn't see.

Of course, not all the people of Pelfe did this. However, even if only one person out of a thousand participated, when you took Pelfe's population of three million into account, it as more than enough to make Pelfe look like a nation of shameless Wiltia lapdogs.

As a result, enmity built up between the Wiltians who already disliked the Pelfish, and the Pelfish people who considered Wiltia to be unjust conquerors.

This was why the townspeople ostracized Lud, and what gave birth to terrorist groups like Marlene's.

In the end, the only way for a people to truly live in freedom was for them to have their own self-reliant country.

"All you did was lengthen the chain our collar tell us you were giving us freedom!"

"That might be true, but it's dangerous to get close to August."

"They actually listened to what we had to say."

Marlene came around in front of Lud, and showed him the gun that had been pressing into the back of his neck.

"Do you know what this is? It's called a 'liberator'. It's funny, isn't it? Even though it looks like this, it's still a gun."

Composed of iron pipe, wire and plating, it was far too crude to be called an actual gun. It looked like something an intelligent child could construct.

It was nothing more than a bullet ignition device.

"We made contact with an alliance of countries that stand against Wiltia. We said that if they gave us weapons, we would kill Wiltians. They responded by giving us this crap! You people from the bigger countries always treat us like this!"

High performance weaponry increases a soldier's survival rate. To every country that values the lives of its military, providing first-rate weaponry is the highest priority.

But weapons like the gun Marlene held said exactly how much they valued the guerillas.

"I'm sure that August listened to what you had to say, but they aren't ones to keep their promises..."

Lud knew how that country operated.

"What do you know? They gave us plenty of weapons, and trained us in how to use them!"

"... That's not what I'm talking about."

If there were and armed uprising, the August Federation would use that as an excuse for military intervention. If by some chance they achieve independence, the new administration would simply be a puppet of the Federation.

If another independence movement emerged, a merciless and relentless purge of the dissident elements awaited them.

In the name of "thought control" they already had a track record of killing their own citizens in the millions.

Marlene and her group didn't understand what they were doing.

No, Lud thought. They knew. They just didn't have any choice.

They were trying to endure beneath all the misery and misfortune, and hurled their anger at the colossal thing known as the nation state.

By playing God, they were escaping from their hopeless reality.

With this being the case, Lud knew that anything he said would be a waste of breath.

"Marlene, do you mind if I reminisce a little?"

"What? Are you planning to repent? You know I'm not a real sister, don't you? I can't pass anything you say on to God.""I know."

Lud had no intention of being forgiven.

Marlene was pointing her gun at him, but she stuck out her chin, as if telling him to say whatever he had to say.

"I'm the third type of soldier."

"Third Type...? What's that?"

The first were voluntary recruits and the second were drafted.

"Whether they're war orphans or something else, the third type are the neglected children taken and raised to be soldiers."

Lud's family was reasonably wealthy, but they tried living on money they didn't have and ended up bankrupt. His father chose to take his own life, and his mother soon followed. Lud was the only survivor.

"Oh..., well it's not that uncommon, right? I don't have any parent's either. That doesn't--"

"Yeah, it's something that happened all the time back then."

Lud sounded indifferent. His face had even less expression than usual.

"But, well... The food I ate, the bed I slept in, the sheets that covered me, the roof that kept out the rain and the walls that protected me from the wind - it all went to pay their debts, and I had to find another way to survive."

Even as a child, he was given extensive, rigorous instruction.

He endured such brutal training that only one out of a hundred could make it through.

By the time he was thirteen, he could kill several adults with his bare hands.

He was sent to do the dirty jobs, the missions that had little chance of success.

"One mission... Ever heard of the city called Lapchuricka?"

Lapchuricka wasn't on any map. Wiltia had used Lud to wipe the city from the face of the earth.

-- It was before Lud became a Hunter Unit pilot.

The city of Lapchuricka was in a section of the Kingdom of Haugen, which directly bordered Wiltia.

The town had an anti-Wiltian resistance organization.

The residents and the Haugen government thought they would show their patriotism and spirit by disrupting Wiltia's military operations.

In order to solve the problem, Lieutenant General Genitz at the western front headquarters came up with a strategy that even his own troops were against.

His plan called for complete and utter annihilation using large railway artillery, newly-developed incendiary artillery shells, and biological weapons.

The city was completely destroyed and the entire population eradicated, along with the resistance.

Hundreds upon thousands upon tens of thousands of people.

Everyone in Lapchuricka was dead.

Men, women, children, elderly, sick, priests, pregnant women, mothers, teachers, book stores, fruit vendors, fishmongers, general stores, and bakeries...

As a member of the Special Forces, Lud sneaked into Lapchuricka to investigate the resistance in preparation for the attack.

Lud was a soldier, but he still looked like a young boy. He lied about his identity, and got a job as an assistant at a bakery called Tockerbrot.

It was a small bakery, owned by an old man and managed by his granddaughter.

While he was there, Lud was taught to bake bread.

"You're a quick learner, Lud, you've got talent. Especially this rye bread, it's super tasty. It might even be better than Grandpa's."

"If he can make my own specialty better than I can," the grandfather laughed, "there's really nothing more I can do, is there? How about it Lud? You want to take her for your wife and inherit the story?"

His infiltration  was flawless, and the two of them treated Lud well, never suspecting he was a spy. Lud gave them his artificial smile.

He didn't feel guilty at all.

These two are fools, they know nothing about who I really am, he thought.

One the day of the military operation, Lud ran to the bakery at the edge of the strike zone.

It was already gone.

The first round of railway artillery had destroyed the entire area.

"Wha... Ah... Aaaaaahhhh!"

Lud screamed. He was in tears. He vomited up his inside and tore at his body.

In his head he had known that it was all a lie.

But in his heart, he had thought of them as his family.

Even as he deceived them, his affection for them had grown.

He had finally found a warm place of belonging and he destroyed it.

It was small, and it hadn't enjoyed great success, but the simple honest Tockerbrot Bakery that he had helped keep afloat was now gone.

"What do you expect me to do, hearing a story like that..."

Marlene looked uncomfortable and appeared at a loss for words.

"Nothing, it's just..."

He wanted her to understand that Organbaelz was in danger of repeating the same mistakes as Lapchuricka.

The nation-state was a giant monster that could wipe out an entire town as if that was their only course of action.

If Organbaelz lit the spark that ignited another war, then either the Federation or Wiltia would wipe it off of the face of the earth too, along with everyone who lived there.

"It's just... I'm the monster who did those things. That's why... I want you to kill me."

Lud meant it. He believed he was evil and shouldn't be forgiven for what he had done. He didn't want the deeds of his past to be forgotten or forgiven.

"Just as I said, I'm a monster in human flesh. So, let's put an end to it here."

"Are you offering to be the scapegoat so I won't harm any other Wiltians? Hah! Such admirable patriotism." Marlene sneered.

"I'm not as patriotic as you are, that's for sure... Although, I don't hate my country either."

He needed the strength of his homeland in order to survive. That was all.

He didn't love it enough to sacrifice his life for it.

"That's why... when you finish this, go  back to being a sister. For the children's sake."

Lud's words touched a part of Marlene's heart that she didn't want him near.

"Don't judge me, you Wiltian scum!"

Marlene struck Lud's face with the grip of her gun, and Lud took the hit without moving.

"Do you think if you put it like that, I won't kill you?"

"How many rounds are in that gun? First, shoot me in both legs, the thighs are the best, the bullet will entwine with the muscle and double the pain. Also, shoot me as if you are whittling down my body; the pain is sharper near the edges."

Lud spoke with a matter-of-fact voice while he stared at Marlene.

"Hitting me on the side of my heart near the base of the lung is also good. Blood collects in the lungs and it's difficult to breathe; that's an ugly way to go. It might not be bad to crush my genitals too."

Lud was usually not a smooth talker, but he instructed Marlene fluently without faltering.

Perhaps Lud had envisioned this before. An awful death best suited him.

He had to have an awful death, and being covered in mud and tossed in a ditch was the kind of death that suited him.

So he could rattle off the best ways for him to die, one after another.

"I don't need you to tell me how to do it..." But Marlene's hands were trembling and Lud understood.

She had never killed anyone before.

He couldn't say exactly what part of her or her behavior made him think this, but she didn't have what Lud would describe as the stench of dirty work.

Lud thought this was the perfect solution.

She needed to kill a monster like Lud and fulfill her desire for revenge. Then, she could return to her old life.

She still had a life to return to. If the price was Lud Langart's life, then it was cheap.

Marlene shook with frustration but kept the gun trained on Lud.She was frozen with her finger on the trigger, like a young mouse being stared down by a snake.

Lud could hear her breathing.

"It's too late... I'm not going back. I'm a terrorist! I can never go back to my old life..."

"It's okay." Lud spoke gently.

"If I kill someone... How could I face the children? I'd be deceiving them, you know?"

Lud knew.

The same children that Marlene had earlier called her cover, her props.

Lud knew how much she cherished the children.

When Milly hurled insults at Lud, Marlene would bow her head and quietly insist that Milly wasn't a bad child, and Lud cold see how much she cared.

"I've... betrayed them..." Marlene went on.

Lud thought that Marlene was feeling the same way he had.

He wasn't aware of it himself before, but the moment that he lost everything, he understood.

The place he had slipped into in order to hide his true cruel and cold-blooded self, was in fact what he wanted most of all.

"Don't worry, kids are perceptive. No matter how much I tried to pretend otherwise. Milly realized I was evil, didn't she? You'll be fine. Even deceiving God is easier than trying to pull one over on a kid."

Maybe He just wasn't looking, but God had yet to aim a lightning bolt at Lud.

"Those kids have lived happily with the Marlene they know - the kind and beautiful sister, who's just incredibly bad at making tea." Lud smiled a little.

"Bad at making tea? What, that can't be true..." Marlene was clearly insulted.

"It's true. You need to use very hot waster, just on the verge of bubbling over, and steam the tea until the tea leaves open. You're too impatient. The tea you serve is almost a declaration of war."

Lud decided that he might as well tell her before she killed him.

Marlene's face grew red but her thoughts were on something else.

"... Still, all of this... Alec won't forgive me..."

Alec.

He might have been a lover, a family member, another character from the tragedy of war, but his existence must have given her the resolve to seek revenge against Wiltia.

"I doubt we're going to the same place, but I can ask Death to tell Alec not to bed mad at you."

Lud realized as soon as he said it that this was a terrible joke.

Marlene raised the gun and aimed at Lud's forehead.

The distance was short from where she stood. Marlene could easily kill him.

She pulled the trigger.

The shot echoed through the room.

"WAAAAAAAAAA!"

Marlene let the gun slip from her hand and began sobbing like a child.

Her sadness, her rage, and her frustration mixed together in her tearful sobs.

The bullet hadn't hit Lud, but it put a hole in the wall behind him.

"You're human after all, Marlene." Lud said quietly.

He didn't mean it sarcastically.

She had refused to become a murderer.

She stopped herself before she crossed that line and was twisted by her righteous cause.

How much stronger than him must she be, Lud wondered.

"Just shut up! Always with that damn sullen face of yours! You're telling me you never accepted my invitations because the tea taste bad?! Even if you weren't from Wiltia, I'd hate you!"

Even her words had become childish.

But Lud had a warm look on his face.

She had told him that she hated him but for some reason Lud was happy.

Before he could respond, the door opened and the people who entered cut him off.

"What are you doing, Marlene?"

There were three men, and two were holding the assault rifles hidden in the chapel.

They were Marlene's comrades, members of the Pelfe Liberation League.

But the third man in front had the scent of someone who earned his living killing other people.

"M-Mister Dolchev..."

Marlene's voice shook as she said his name.

"Pleased to meet you, Silver Wolf. Even in my country, your name is well known. It is an honor to meet one of the top ten Hunter Unit pilots of Wiltia."

The man called Dolchev looked so hard and forbidding that Lud suspected peeling off his skin would reveal nothing but icy steel.

"You're the one who's been teaching terrorism to these civilians?"

"All I've done is give the oppressed a way to regain their freedom."

"You're one to talk."

Lud guessed that Dolchev was a spy and had provided weapons and fighting instructions to the Pelfe Liberation League. The instigator who implanted fangs into the mouths of herbivores.

Dolchev now turned to Marlene. "I left this up to you because you insisted that you wanted to torture him yourself."

He shrugged, but he seemed unsurprised.

Even a marionette controlled by a street puppeteer would behave more naturally than Dolchev just now.

This man hadn't had any expectations from the start. He had no faith in the Pelfe Liberation League.

"That's not it, Mister Dolchev! I thought we could use him like thi--"

Marlene tried to justify herself, but Dolchev silenced her with a slap of his outstretched palm.

"I don't have time for this. I need to make the final adjustments to the T-3 II. You two, put this wolf down."

Dolchev left the room.

Marlene had fallen to the floor. Her cheek was already swollen, and blood dripped from a cut on her mouth.

"I'll do it! Let me kill him! It would be the highlight of my life!"

"You idiot, I let you kill the last one. My gun is dying to shoot off some fireworks."

The two men began arguing like children bickering over who would go first in a game of marbles.

"Hey, big bad wolf! You can't get out of here! So go on, howl! We might even consider killing you quickly."

Because they feared death, men sought to control it.

To have control over someone else's life gave them joy, as if they had become God.

Men often take great pleasure in doing to other people what they find most awful.

However, Lud sat in silence, biding his time.

"Well, say something, go on!"

The men each hit Lud in the face with the butts of their rifles.

"... You're the one who tied me to this chair?" Lud asked.

"Yeah, and? Do your hands hurt? I'm soo sorry!"

He looked at his companion and began to laugh.

"I just have a piece of advice for you." Lud offered. "When you're restraining someone, you want to tie them at the thumbs, not the wrists."

Lud raised both his hands. He held a loose rope.

"Huh?!"

The two men gasped in surprise.

They had certainly tied Lud up securely, enough even to cut off his circulation.

There was no way that a bundle of straw or logs they had tied up would fall apart.But, with the method they used, it wasn't possible to completely tie up a person. Unlike wood and straw, people could tell that rope was loose.

One aimed his gun toward Lud in a panic, but Lud stabbed him where the bones of his met the inner that held the weapon. His hand opened and Lud snatched the gun.

He knocked the man out with a slug to his cheek. Not really necessary, but satisfying payback.

Then Lud pushed the gun against the scrawny thigh of the other man and pulled the trigger.

This was known as a human silencer.

Firing a gun while it's pressed against a person's body let's the body act as a soundproof barrier, covering the noise of the gun.

Without any sound leaving the room, Lud robbed both men of their ability to fight.

"Gyah--!"

Lud drove his elbow into the man's chest and knocked him unconscious.

"Huh?!"

When Marlene finally raised her voice at what she had seen, it was already over. Lud's brilliant technique was like the wind.

Before he was saddled with the name "Silver Wolf", he was taught this method of hand-to-hand combat as a Hunter Unit pilot.

Whether they called themselves guerillas or terrorists, they were still amateurs after all.

Lud had only waited until Dolchev was too far away to hear the shots.

"Lud... You were able to break loose from the beginning?"

"No... but when you drew his attention, I was able to get the ropes off."

Lud only had a few seconds to spare, and while it was easy to deceive civilians-turned-terrorists, fooling a professional soldier was much harder.

"... Um... That stuff about asking me to kill you... were you serious?"

"I meant it. I'm not clever enough to fake that."

When Lud was trained as a spy, he learned the techniques of how to deceive people, but after what happened in Lapchuricka, he could no longer use them.

That was part of the reason he was driven out of Special Forces and became a Hunter Unit pilot.

"If I was that good an actor." Luke went on. "I would have learned how to smile for my customers."

Lud slightly twisted the sides of his mouth and made sort of a smile.

"You're an idiot... If you died, you couldn't run the bakery anymore."

"That's right... But if I had wrestled you into submission, made you out to be the bad guy, and stood over you in triumph, I couldn't return to the bakery anyways."

Lud had things he wanted to do. He had a reason to keep on living.

But if she was going to fall into the same world as he once had, and writhe in agony, it didn't matter whether he died or not.

"And if I did that, Milly would definitely never want to eat my bread. That would... be awful."

"You..."

Marlene looked close to tears, unsure what to say.

"Do you know what apple bread is?" she finally asked.

"Apple bread? You mean apple danish? Bread that's made by kneading butter into thinly stretched pieces of dough that you then lay on top of each other..."

"I think that's it." Marlene nodded. "Milly said that she loves it. I don't remember when but I heard her say that once."

"Really?!"

Lud raised his voice in delight.

If he offered Milly her favorite type of bread, maybe she would forget her principles and eat it.

"Apples... the sweetly boiled ones that you use in apple pies, right? Instead of really sweet apples, making it with tart ones might taste better. I need to hurry and see the farmer..."

With a look of excitement on his face, Lud worked out how to make his apple danish.

His face wasn't that of a Hunter Unit pilot, nor was it the face of a Special Forces spy who specialized in sneaky, underhanded missions; it was simply the face of a rural baker.

"I've got to try this right away! If I can make it fragrant, that will arouse her appetite even further. I could try using a bit of liqueur... Yeah."

Lud appeared to have put his thoughts in some kind of order. He nodded and looked at Marlene.

"Hey Marlene, The Pelfe Liberation League, is this guy Dolchev planning something?"

"I think it's a raid on Baelz Mine. The second mine that's being dug experimentally... It sounds like they found a vein of Rezanity."

Rezanite emitted a blood red glow and as an enduring metal, it couldn't corrode or be destroyed. One theory was that it came from the mineralized hearts of ancient dragons.

"I get it, destroying that would be a heavy blow to Wiltia."

In old times, Rezanite had only been used for decorative ornaments, but recently a scientist referred to as a "sorcerer", discovered a use for the metal that no one expected -  as the fundamental element of the Hunter Unit's hearts, the Rezanium Reactor.

The war was over. But new weapons and new strategies were being developed in preparation for the next war, and the one after that that. The Hunter Units were being improved and Rezanite lay at the core of this development. Wiltia needed plenty of it.

"If their plan is carried out, the mine wouldn't be the only thing destroyed..."

Organbaelz was a mining town.

If the main industry in the town disappeared, the flow of goods and people into the town would also vanish. It would be a death sentence for the town.

"My shop would go under... and what about the children of the orphanage?" Lud asked.

The children weren't the terrorist's accomplices, but they would either be sent to different orphanages, or worse, become street urchins, wandering about the streets of the town.

Even though there was finally a possibility that Milly would eat Lud's bread, everything would be ruined.

"Marlene... I'm sorry, but I'm going to stop them."

"You'll stop them as a soldier, you mean? To save your country from danger, is that it?"

Marlene averted her eyes as she questioned him.

"No, I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm just a baker and I have to stop their malicious interference with my business." Lud replied.

"Really? I see..."

Lud's answer appeared to be the one Marlene wanted.

"In that case... As a sister, I want to protect this town and the children in this church!"

Marlene smiled, with her swollen cheeks and puffy, red eyes.

Lud had never seen her really smile before, and it was the most charming smile he had ever seen.