Chapter 271

Chapter 271

Remember, Luka. The imperfection of memory.  

We rely on memory to live. Memory is the foundation that constructs the self and consciousness. And we believe that our memories are the truth and reality.  

The wavering of memory is the wavering of the self and consciousness.  

But a wise person must question their self-awareness and memory.  

Memory is neither reality nor even a mirror reflecting it. It is merely an incomplete afterimage of reality. And even that is an imperfect painting, filled with subjective distortions. That is the true nature of memory.  

We build our identity and shape our existence based on such an incomplete memory.  

…When things are uncertain, focus on the present.  

Luka, what kind of situation are you in right now? What is your present?  

Blink.  

I opened my eyes. Dust and dirt touched my lips. My eyes stung from acrid smoke, and my throat felt rough.  

‘Heat and flames.’  

The air was hot, and the burns ached.  

There had just been an accident or an explosion. I had been caught in its aftermath, lost consciousness, and collapsed.  

‘Why am I here right now?’  

My memory was hazy. It felt like parts of it had evaporated. I couldn't clearly recall what I had done today. Desperately, I tried to piece together the shattered fragments of my memory.  

My temples throbbed with heat. When I touched them, my palm came away soaked in blood. Right… I must have suffered a head injury.  

‘Focus on the present. Observe things and deduce the past from what’s happening.’  

If I had passed out without being able to react, then the situation must have been extremely dangerous.  

Creak.  

Instinctively, I reached for my weapons.  

‘Crucis, Ruina, Mothblade.’  

I hadn’t managed to retrieve the Firelight Saber. It’s a useful weapon against heavily armored beasts.  

‘…Heavily armored beast?’  

Who was I referring to?  

I grabbed my knee and barely managed to stand. My creaking prosthetic leg and arm moved flawlessly. Every time I faced a crisis like this, I felt grateful to Lapis Lazuli.  

I remembered my prosthetic engineer, Lapis Lazuli, with perfect clarity. That meant my missing memories were only short-term ones.  

‘Heavily armored beast.’  

Heavy armor, full-body prosthetics, Legion—damn it, Mushir al-Kashura.  

Right, I was being pursued by Mushir al-Kashura. How did it come to this? I had risked everything to lure Kinuan outside of Border City, and at the decisive moment, I ran into Kashura, whom he had planted in advance.  

I needed to seize my vanishing memories and set them back in place. But recalling them sequentially would take too long.  

‘This is a crisis. Start from the most recent events. There’s no time to ruminate at leisure.’

I bit down so hard my tongue felt like it was about to be shredded. A cold surge of pain shot up to the top of my head. It was like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over me, snapping me into full awareness.  

‘Ilay!’  

Ilay had come to rescue me, smugly showing off his high-performance aerial bike.  

But where was Ilay now?  

Only then did my field of vision expand.  

I looked around. The outer shell and components of the aerial bike were crushed and scattered. The anti-gravity engine that Ilay had been bragging about was half-destroyed and burning.  

‘We got hit.’  

The escape had failed.  

‘We were shot down. Probably by Mushir al-Kashura.’  

Even the prototype MAU and the Shadow Legion couldn't stop Kashura. He had torn through the chaos I had created with sheer brute force, his combat power defying all logic.  

‘Against overwhelming power, shallow tricks are useless.’  

I had realized that all too clearly. The limits of Akies Victima as well.  

Kashura was likely one of the ultimate forms of what modern humanity could achieve as a warrior. Even if his body was patched together with every possible trick, his raw strength was an undeniable reality.  

Pressing my bleeding forehead with my palm, I spotted Ilay tangled in the wreckage.  

"Ilay, can you move?"  

Ilay reacted to my voice.  

His pupils regained focus. It seemed he had only just regained consciousness.  

The rims of his cybernetic eyes glowed as he used his virtual interface to scan his condition.  

"My spinal cord’s severed. Sorry, but you need to run on your own."  

"Acting all high and mighty, and now look at you, dumbass."  

I lifted and pushed aside the wreckage, then turned Ilay over.  

‘It’s a mess.’  

His artificial spinal cord was snapped and sticking out of his back. Various severed and tangled neural and actuator cables were protruding in a jumbled mess.  

"Hey, Luka. Stop messing around and just run. He’s after you anyway. I’ll be fi—"  

"Bite down before you end up biting your tongue off. Let’s try an old-fashioned remedy."  

Bracing Ilay’s upper body and waist with my hands and knees, I shoved his exposed spinal cord back in. The exposed circuits flickered ominously, and sparks flew.  

"Kh...! Guh...! You crazy bastard! The nerve pain... at least give me a damn warning—!"  

Ilay trembled all over, letting out gasping groans.  

It wasn’t the right time to think this, but seeing him writhing in pain was strangely entertaining.  

"If we align it properly, some of the connections should start working again, even if it’s unstable. Focus and sharpen your senses—try to move your body. I’ll tie together the parts that still conduct signals."

I forced the emergency treatment through brute strength. As long as there was physical contact, some of the actuators and neural systems would reconnect and recover. It might have looked crude, but this was the best option right now. In fact, this method was even mentioned in the manuals.  

Twitch.  

Ilay’s foot and leg moved, albeit weakly.  

Using the butt end of Crucis like a hammer, I tapped and reshaped Ilay’s spinal cord. His groans of agony were horrendous each time, but that wasn’t my concern.  

After denting and forcing the spinal cord and surrounding components into place, I jammed them together as best as I could.  

A surge of electricity crackled like a short circuit, and Ilay’s leg spasmed.  

“Damn it, this is so ridiculous I might go insane. Why the hell is this even working?”  

Despite his unsteady staggering, Ilay managed to stand up.  

“It’s the great technology of the Empire and the power of faith. Were we sniped by Kashura?” I asked.  

Ilay, still disoriented, glanced at me with a puzzled expression before noticing the wound on my forehead. Guess he was just as out of it as I was.  

“Luka, your head—”  

The look on his face wasn’t reassuring. Damn it.  

“Don’t describe it in detail. If it’s not something that can be fixed right now, I don’t want to know. I’ve got short-term memory loss—I don’t remember anything after getting on your bike.”  

Ilay checked his equipment, rummaging through the storage pouch at his waist. He pulled out a magazine with a transparent window and loaded it into his pistol.  

His pistol had an abnormally long barrel, almost like a forearm. That was his signature weapon. It normally used explosive rounds, but from the looks of it, he had loaded something else.  

“Luka, we’re being hunted by Mushir al-Kashura. He sniped our vehicle out of the sky. If he hadn’t been holding back his firepower to capture you alive, we’d already be dead.”  

I felt the blood trickling from my forehead, running down my cheek and chin before dripping off. I had come dangerously close to dying.  

‘That means Kashura rushed his shot. Even if it put me at risk of dying, he must have decided he couldn’t afford to let me escape.’  

In the distance, a thunderous roar echoed. Kashura was engaged in a firefight, trying to shake off the Shadow Legion and the MAUs.  

“What about the subordinates you had with you?”  

“The other bike was completely vaporized. They’re all dead.”  

“Your men always end up dying. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.”  

Half-joking, half-serious, I threw out the remark. Ilay’s subordinates had a history of dying on him.  

“That’s why no one wants to be assigned under me.”  

Ilay didn’t get angry. He just said it flatly.  

“…You’re serious?”

"Because the survival rate really is low. I don’t hesitate to use up my men."  

"You’re seriously messed up, you know that?"  

"You’d probably make a popular commander. You wouldn’t throw your subordinates away so easily."  

"Cut the sappy talk. What’s the next plan?"  

"There isn’t one. I was just focused on getting you out of here. That bastard was beyond my expectations—he’s a monster. I moved in an irregular trajectory, but he still sniped the engine with perfect precision."  

"He’s got an exceptionally advanced Akies Victima brain. That level of prediction is expected."  

"God, I’m so sick of Akies Victima this, Akies Victima that."  

"Same here."  

It was funny, but I was actually enjoying this situation. I couldn’t remember the last time I had such a laid-back conversation with Ilay.  

Faced with a common enemy on the battlefield, we could cast aside complicated schemes and conspiracies and just laugh.  

‘If only I had given up on everything and lived as just another soldier…’  

Maybe I would’ve enjoyed my life more. But my path had already veered too far. The future where I was "Luka, the Empire’s loyal soldier" no longer existed.  

"Luka, I’ll say this one last time. I’ll buy you some time—run."  

"Can you hold off Kashura for even ten seconds?"  

"Truth is, I came here to drag you back to the Empire. I spewed all that bullshit about trust because I couldn’t stand the thought of watching you get captured by him. I had no real plan—just intended to deliver you straight to Ivan."  

Ilay curled his lips. He probably wanted to make me feel betrayed.  

"That doesn’t exactly make me feel betrayed. You’ve always been a liar. To me, Ilay Carthica is just a liar."  

"Haha, is that really how you saw me?"  

"You think ‘Carthica’s Fox’ was a nickname given in a good way? Shut up and get ready to fight. The dust is… rising."  

The flames and smoke wavered before surging, brightening our surroundings.  

Beyond the hill we had come from, a plume of dust and smoke was billowing into the air. The sound of Kashura’s movement could be heard.  

"Ilay, got any trump cards? What about those rounds you just loaded?"  

"They’re anti-Legion rounds. Custom-made penetration rounds, painstakingly crafted layer by layer by my family’s artisan."  

I checked Ilay’s hands and legs. His movements were jerky and imprecise. His balance was completely off.  

‘Yeah, it’s not gonna work.’  

Even if I forced him to move, he wasn’t in any condition to fight a formidable opponent. His prized mobility and marksmanship would be nearly impossible to use effectively.

Anti-Legion rounds wouldn’t be enough firepower. Kashura was beyond a Legion-class threat.  

‘If I were alone…’  

I might have decided to fight Kashura to the end, hoping for a miracle.  

I closed my eyes. There wasn’t much time.  

Kashura wanted to capture me alive, but he would kill Ilay without hesitation. With his firepower, it wouldn’t even be difficult.  

A memory from my youth surfaced.  

A girl appeared vividly in my mind. Lilian Lamones, who had lived a miserable life.  

‘Luka, please…’  

It was as if Lilian were whispering to me, asking me to save Ilay. But of course, Lilian was long dead. I didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits.  

The voice asking me to save Ilay was probably just my own wish.  

Long ago, Ilay had pointed a gun at Lilian’s head to save my life. He had shattered a part of himself when he pulled the trigger.  

That day had led Ilay completely into darkness.  

… I didn’t know if this was the right choice.  

Ilay Carthica—the Fox of Carthica—could have betrayed me. He might have turned into something far more twisted than I had imagined.  

But still, Ilay Carthica was my friend. I didn’t have the stomach to choose his death.  

Thud!  

Moving swiftly, I grabbed the crown of Ilay’s head and struck his jaw. Even with his full-body prosthetics, that much impact would have rattled his brain.  

His pupils began to lose focus.  

"Ilay, if something happens to me, take care of Giselle. No matter what crimes I’ve committed, if I’m alive… protect her in my place. Then and now, you’re the only one I can ask for something like this."  

"L…u…"  

Ilay stubbornly tried to grab my arm. I couldn’t tell if it was sheer willpower or the durability of his prosthetics keeping him conscious.  

Thunk!  

I struck his temple, rocking his head sideways once more.  

Ilay’s consciousness finally cut out completely.  

Thud.  

Still gripping my arm, he slumped to his knees.  

Swish.  

I pushed his hand away and turned to face Kashura.  

Shhhhhh.  

Wrapped in steam and smoke, Kashura approached. His glowing eyes flickered as they scanned the surroundings, taking everything in.  

Creak.  

Without needing an explanation, Kashura immediately understood my intentions.  

"Very well. Come with me, Luka."  

Like a suitor proposing to a lover, Kashura knelt on one knee and extended his hand toward me.

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