"I'm sorry for your loss, man."
After giving Kave a can of heated food, Kave held it, feeling the warmth of the fire on his palms.
Life was brutal for him.
He saw his mother eaten by a dragon, his father sacrificed himself for him, and the door to the shelter was sealed shut by dragonfire.
Lucky for him, the Tanaka family had always kept the shelter stocked. Moreover, Mrs. Tanaka was infamously frugal, always visiting the farmers' markets to stock her house with cheaper farm produce, from potatoes to onions, and garlic. A room in the shelter was fully stocked with root vegetables, and everyone knew not to go near it.
Thanks to that, Kave survived the past three months… somehow.
Kave said that the first month was the easiest, especially compared to the time the generator went down. The second month was spent in total darkness, but madness plagued him in the third.
He still wasn't sure if this was real. He had been out of the shelter many times, but every time it had been in his head. The existence of a Star Paladin looking at them from afar wasn't helping either.
Adam tried his best to calm Kave down before asking him about the miniatures. Adam didn't want to come across as insensitive, but Kave had started explaining how the world functioned to Adam over the past 100 days.
Kave, covered in Adam's blanket, looked back at the shelter. He lost everything… every fucking thing that mattered.
"Can you… kill me?"
Kave's world had been shattered so many times by now. He looked at Adam and asked the unthinkable. Adam didn't turn to him but kept looking at the fire.
"A survival rate of 5% means that only 1 in 20 people I knew survived," Adam said and smiled as he stroked the fire. "I don't think I even knew 20 people."
"… please…"
"… No." Adam let out a sigh and rested his back against his backpack. "You owe your life to your father; killing you wastes his sacrifice… but I think you already know that."
"…"
"Remember the saying?" Adam asked as he turned to Kave.
Kave twitched and looked at Adam.
"Pity not those who died…" Adam said, waiting for Kave to continue, "… but those who survived… for every waking moment…"
Adam's words finally moved something within Kave. His lips twitched, reciting the prayer of self-pity.
"They see the end… beckoning…"
These words, however, attracted the attention of the uninterested Star Paladin.
"The words of Jafar the Undying." He spoke the name of the author of those words.
Kave looked up, and after hearing the Star Paladin speak, a sense of madness took over him as he stood up, walked to the Paladin, and the Paladin looked back at him.
"Of all the fantasies in my head… why are you so real?"
"…"
From the confines of his armor, worn only by the Solarium's heralds of death, the Slayers, Captain Creed gave the little man a pitiful look, though none of it was conveyed through the armor's impassive shell.
"I am to blame here… I think," Adam spoke from behind them, making the two look at him. "It's the reason I am here, actually."
Adam also stood up and faced Kave, saying:
"Buddy, I know it is not the right time to ask selfish questions, but I need your Wartopia collection."
Adam's request didn't seem to faze Kave, who went back to sitting, yet swaying due to his lack of balance. He then looked away and shook his head.
Adam frowned and looked at the shelter nearby, before glancing back at his friend.
"You ate them by any chance?"
A smile of self-mockery appeared on Kave's face as he shook his head again.
"Then?"
"They are gone, Adam."
His words made Adam, who was usually rather chill, almost feel light-headed.
"All of them? Everything?"
"They were outside when it happened. Otou-san (father) told me to take them out and move them… then it happened."
Adam knew about the situation between Kave and his parents three months ago. They were supposed to find a new place for their collection, but the apocalypse decided to happen at the same time that Kave was moving it.
"At least tell me something remained."
"… I don't know…" Kave replied listlessly and looked at Captain Creed, "Tell me about that."
Adam calmed himself and started telling Kave about his day, and his newfound power to summon actual characters from Wartopia.
Kave frowned at everything, but then it was Captain Creed who presented the first piece of evidence.
"From your speech, it is evident you possess affinity for those so-called Runes," Creed said, then presented a piece of cloth to Adam. "This relic—my systems detect something alien about it. HereTech was my first guess, but you may know more."
What Adam received was the cloak worn by the man who took him hostage. Upon touching it, Adam experienced a strange sensation.
"Yes, this strange sensation I don't recognize. It is like I know something, but I… oh… hold on…"
——————————
≪ Cloak of the Gobzkin Skulker ≫ < Rare Cloak >
A cloak that once belonged to a Gobzkin Skulker, a specialist in guerrilla warfare and assassination.
— Chameleon Rune: A rune bestowing upon its user the power to seamlessly integrate into their surroundings, akin to a chameleon, thereby evading any prying eyes.
——————————
"… Ah! Here it is!" Adam watched the words appear in front of his face and explained it to Kave and Creed.
"Intriguing. But without a Script Monk, we tread blind," Creed said.
"Heh!" Kave let a short chuckle escape him. "When you think you've gone crazy, the world just…"
And he started to laugh hysterically.
Fictional super-soldiers, magic items, dragons, visions, nightmares.
Adam threw the cloak at Kave for him to wear instead of the blanket and started looting the men. Kave went from laughter to crying, to laughter, to crying again. He then lay on his back and stared blankly at the starry sky.
Captain Creed started patrolling around as well, but unlike Adam, who was looting the dead raiders, he seemed to be in deep thought about this whole thing.
He felt a bit stranded and was worried about how to proceed when his Plasma Reactor's core would deplete. This might take a very long time, in fact, but in this archaic world, there was no technology like what he needed to charge a plasma core. He would be fine without his armor; he could adapt and survive like back in the day when he was a squire. As for weapons, he could build basic artillery weapons, and maybe find something worthy of this world's weaponry.
The world itself wasn't that bad. Yes, it was infested, but retired Star Paladins lived in far worse conditions all the time. To him, this didn't break the threshold where he could have eternal peace.
As he wandered, he came to the house near the hurricane shelter and looked at its structure with keen eyes. Burnt, destroyed, trampled, and left in ruins. A sight he might as well call home.
Still, the people of this world had a better life than his own world. Their atmosphere wasn't scorched by the Fossil Age, their houses were long distances apart, and even the city's buildings were built to reach the sky.
Urd was different; it was a barren wasteland. People didn't live above ground; they didn't have to. Underground was a better option. Each city was a Silo, composed of no fewer than 100 levels underground. Sometimes, a tower would be built to make extra floors above, but they only served strategic and logistical purposes.
Some Silo-cities, on the other hand, were massive. Some extended 200 levels underground, where the air was so suffocating and impossible to breathe that the people stuck there needed life support units like SAPUs (synthetic air production units). When life support experienced an outage, those who were lucky owned respiratory implants or managed to sneak into higher sectors.
Naturally, not all areas of the planet were like that. Some communities still lived above ground, but only on Urd, and these were exclusively those who had managed to escape from a silo-city.
Living on the surface required sticking together. Some towns were built, but since the atmosphere was extreme most days of the year, these people had to stick close to each other under hexdome shields repurposed for life support.
Captain Creed knew this kind of life very well as he grew up in one. He was lucky to be a Paladin, very lucky, in fact, but he remembered little of it now.
His curiosity got the better of him, since he had that strange habit of looking into every nook and cranny for some reason. In fact, he was always compelled to know what was on the left if the road told him to go right. Even after 150 years of rigorous training to control his emotions, this wasn't something he could resist.
With the large hand of his power armor, he poked the door of the house. The flashlight in his helmet powered up from beyond his visor, making it glow menacingly.
Most of the house was destroyed; many curious things lay around. However, everything was too colorful, even after most of it was burnt down.
Due to his massive size, though, he wouldn't fit in that building, nor would it support him; it would all crumble anyway.
However, there was a gate on the far side of the building. It seemed like a small storage depot, but he wasn't sure what the people of this place would store anyway.
He considered how to open that gate, but it seemed brute force was the easiest answer. He just kicked it in, and it slid open. Somehow, he was starting to like people who kicked their gates open.
But it seemed that it wasn't a storage depot per se; it housed a vehicle inside, so it was supposed to be a single-vehicle garage.
A single vehicle garage? How inefficient! Or maybe it was efficient. Who was he to tell otherworlders how to do things? The Slayers kill first, then do anything else later, as their legion canon dictates.
Still, he didn't like the look of the vehicle; it seemed too blocky for his liking, even if he couldn't get into it anyway. He favored curvy vehicles like the War-Bug—light, efficient machines that, after some modifications to accommodate his armor, could carry him and run across the plains of hell, grinding demons under their modified chained-wheels.
Peak satisfaction, it was!
As Captain Creed looked into the garage, which, thankfully, he could enter, amidst the looted wheels and broken car parts, he noticed something discarded in a corner and, to his surprise, it bore the same sigil he was wearing on his chest: the golden winged sun.
The Solarium's Sigil!
Finding, with his golden fiery eyes, that what Adam said was true was one thing; witnessing a trace of his home world in front of his very eyes, that was something else entirely… out of the scope of reality even.
He held it up and gave it a meaningful look, with words written on its back in a language alien to him.
As he flipped it over, he saw a scene of glory conjured from a memory he would never forget.
A squad of Men-at-Arms, two fire teams of eight Troopers, two Corporals, and one Sergeant. Simple auxiliary corpsmen: medics, a comms expert, a grunt, a scout, and a mechanic.
Those valiant men and women were rushing ahead, beckoning to one another, and charging at an army of demons.
His blood would boil every time he saw those weak humans with their blazer guns rushing to the front, invoking the name of Sol Imperius, praising the Solarium, and laying down their lives for a greater purpose.
He turned around and headed towards Adam right away. He would explain more to Adam, with this relic in hand.
Seeing Adam and Kave as soon as he returned, the two seemed to be brawling, Adam sitting atop Kave and forcing him to do something. Only the heavy steps of the Paladin broke their brawl, which seemed to be nothing serious.
"GET OFF ME!"
"I told you to wear it, you moron! The bugs will eat you alive if you remain naked like that."
"Greater demons have tried!"
"In your goddamn crazy head, they did."
Adam seemed to be trying to make Kave put on some clothes from his looted clothes, but that wasn't possible as the caveman refused all manner of help to be civilized again.
"Adam."
"Sir?"
Adam stood up, kicking Kave away, and before Creed could say anything, Adam's eyes were already wide with surprise.
"That's… a Man-at-Arms set?"
Without even a glance at the Paladin, Adam snatched it and raised it up with a smile that kept growing. Behind him, Kave noticed the set and stood up, staggering, his ill-fitting pants raised, as he looked at Adam.
"Those… I bought those last… they were in the car…" He said and walked to Adam.
"I know you wouldn't disappoint, Kave."
"Fuck off!"
Kave walked away and left Adam and Creed behind.
"Where are you going?" Adam asked him.
"Away from here! I don't care. I'll just roll up and die somewhere."
Seeing Kave storm off that way, Adam let out a sigh and shook his head.
This was a common sight, actually. People who lost everything and gave up on all manner of hope would do things like these.
Adam turned to Creed with a complicated face, and Creed seemed to understand.
"No threats remain. His safety is assured," Creed said.
"Glad to hear. He'll come back anyway. So… you seem curious," Adam said and watched Creed, trying to assess the man's expressions behind the armor.
"Identify the relic."
"A miniature set for Men-at-Arms… let's see, Auxiliary squad, engineer, medic, scout. Well, these are hard to find these days since the company is focusing on the more expensive units. We have to print Men-at-Arms ourselves sometimes, but these ones are genuine."
"And what purpose does it serve?" Creed asked.
"We call it war games. It is like Chess… but where you come from, Chess is more brutal from what I read in your lore," Adam said.
"So I was a chess piece to you."
"A masterpiece, not just a piece."
"…"
"Either way, a squad of Men-at-Arms on which to learn my own magic is something I am dying to try, but first…" Adam said and smiled vividly, thinking of his favorite part of his hobby, "I'll need to scrap some tools."