The tent's curtain rustled softly as it was lifted.
Spades tightened his hand over Bai Liu's lips and whispered close to his ear, "Here they come."
Bai Liu's gaze moved past the obstacles blocking his view and landed on the shoes of the person who had just stepped into the tent — a pair of well-made prop shoes.
Spades' prediction was correct. It was indeed his teammates who had come in.
Someone muttered, "Spades left the body he looted here. What the hell?"
"Judge, what do you think?"
The Reverse God looked around and said, "I think he's going to use this place as a base."
Bai Liu, hiding under the bed, narrowed his eyes. The Reverse God's voice was an AI-synthesized mechanical tone so close to a human voice that it was almost indistinguishable unless one listened carefully.
Bai Liu had worked on games involving similar technical interfacing, and one of the synthesized voices had been almost identical to the Reverse God's. He recognized it instantly.
— This guy uses a synthesized voice in front of his teammates, not his original human voice.
He shifted his gaze upward, trying to see the Reverse God's face. Spades' grip tightened behind him, but eventually Bai Liu caught sight of the Reverse God walking to the bedside.
It was a face so unremarkable that even someone like Bai Liu, who was good at remembering facial features, had to stare at it for several seconds to commit it to memory.
— And even then, he wasn't sure he would recognize the Reverse God immediately in a crowd next time.
The man's features were so ordinary they blurred together.
Just like his voice, there was something subtly unsettling about it — as if it had been artificially adjusted to be overly balanced and neutral.
The Reverse God did not linger by the bed. He soon turned away with the rest of the team. "Spades probably found a better stronghold and abandoned this one…"
"But he didn't even take the body with him…"
"…Probably found one with a higher verdict score on the way and dropped this one. It's not the first time he's done that. Last time, against the Kabbalah guild…"
Their voices faded as they left the tent.
But Spades remained motionless, pressed against Bai Liu's shoulder, as if waiting for something.
"There's another wave coming in," Spades said quietly.
As his words fell, the curtain — which had only just been closed — was lifted again. Through the gaps between the clutter beneath the bed, Bai Liu saw several pairs of army-green rubber shoes dragging in a bloodied — no, mutilated — human figure on a stretcher.
The man had no limbs left. Semi-coagulated blood poured from his mouth, smearing his face beyond recognition. Blood continued to spurt from the severed stumps, splattering across the tent.
One soldier tried desperately to tie bandages around the torn limbs to stop the bleeding, but it was futile. The flow merely changed from a fountain to a stream, with no sign of stopping.
The soldier's voice trembled in panic. "He's still alive! Why didn't the medics take him when they cleared the battlefield? They just left him there — and he got blown apart by sweeping shells!"
"He could have lived!"
He pulled the bandage tighter, his hands shaking from exertion.
The other soldier spoke more calmly, though his voice was heavy. "Haven't you noticed? We've been finding more and more living people when we clean up the battlefield."
"…There are more wounded soldiers, but supplies aren't keeping up. We don't have enough resources to treat them all. Leaving them unattended hurts morale, so the rear command is preparing…"
The soldier binding the wounds cut in sharply, his voice strained. "— So they just stopped saving them? Let us collect them as corpses so there won't be wounded soldiers — only martyrs?"
The other soldier fell silent.
The first soldier gave a bitter laugh. "A reissued metal medal for a martyr's merit. Costs less than five cents wholesale for these sergeants. And they think that's worth a life?"
His voice broke. "This corpse lying here — yesterday he was eating and sleeping with us, collecting bodies, writing letters to his mother and fiancée. Do you think a medal is worth his life?"
"…I don't," Guy replied quietly. "But Alex, this is war. The value of our lives isn't decided by us — not even by our corpses."
Alex finally let go of the bandage and sank limply to the floor. "Yeah. It's war. And isn't that what those high and mighty sergeants want most? A corpse to command — no emotion, no value, not even life."
There was no more blood flowing from the body on the stretcher.
He was already dead.
Guy held the dazed Alex and rested his chin on his shoulder. "But there are no such corpses in this world. We're human beings forced to fight like corpses. And we're told we shouldn't have humanity anymore."
"Alex, stop growing attached. It hurts too much."
Alex clutched Guy tightly and buried his face against his shoulder, his sobs restrained and shaking. "I can't, Guy. I can't — I'm not a corpse."
"I can't stop feeling sympathy. Doubt. Hatred. Love."
Through tear-blurred eyes, Alex looked past Guy's bloodstained shoulder at the disfigured body on the ground.
"Guy… if corpses could move and keep fighting the war like they want — would anyone need to die? Would soldiers like us only have to collect bodies?"
Guy stroked Alex's hair with a tired sigh. "You're not even twenty yet. These aren't things you should be thinking about."
"What you should be thinking about is surviving."
Alex lowered his head against Guy's chest. Then suddenly, he lifted it and kissed him, wrapping his arms around Guy's neck.
Guy wasn't surprised. He leaned back onto the bed, letting Alex's desperate, feverish kisses overwhelm him. It clearly wasn't the first time.
They pulled at each other's bloodstained clothes. For a long moment, they breathed heavily, staring at one another. Alex trembled as if trying to restrain both his emotions and his desire.
He knew it was wrong.
But he no longer knew what was right.
Sensing his hesitation, Guy raised an arm over his eyes and forced a casual tone. "Hey, relax. There's a way to use condoms wisely. Tom in the next tent goes through ten boxes of Warlock condoms a month at the town brothel."
"We just… it's just…" He paused. "It's like going to a brothel, you know? Not exactly the same. It's just that neither of us wants to go to one… so we let off steam like this."
Alex kept his head lowered and said nothing.
"God!" Guy suddenly cut himself off. He dropped his hands and stared blankly at the blood-spattered roof of the tent, muttering in a daze, "What am I even saying to you… Alex, you're still a child."
"You shouldn't be doing this with me — not in a place like this, not at a time like this… I've led you astray. God will punish me."
Guy tried to push Alex up.
"Then God should punish me too." Alex lifted his tear-reddened eyes. "Because I wanted this. I couldn't help it. I couldn't imagine doing this with anyone else but you."
"You're the only person here who makes me feel like I'm not a corpse."
"I love you, Guy."
Alex pushed the stunned Guy back onto the bed. The narrow steel-framed cot creaked and rocked violently, as though it might collapse beneath them at any moment.
Spades, who had been concentrating on the main storyline only for it to abruptly switch to an "adult channel" midway through, looked utterly confused.
"…?"
Bai Liu, who had been following the main thread closely and realized halfway through what was about to happen, fell silent.
So Guy and Alex were actually a couple.
Although Bai Liu had read plenty of unconventional studies, he knew that in certain harsh, isolated environments where women were absent, the proportion of men engaging in same-sex relationships could rise sharply.
Not necessarily because they were inherently attracted to men, but because in cramped, high-risk conditions, it was difficult not to develop attachments that surpassed ordinary camaraderie toward the comrades they lived beside and entrusted their lives to.
One of the most direct manifestations of this was the emergence of intimate relationships — including sexual ones — between men in such environments.
Bai Liu had anticipated the possibility of witnessing something like this in the dungeon.
He just hadn't expected it to happen like this.
The steel frame at the foot of the bed rattled violently, occasionally knocking against the back of Bai Liu's head. Just one thin board above him, tangled breathing and heated murmurs echoed through the cramped tent.
If Bai Liu had been alone, he might have shamelessly crawled out from under the bed.
But… with someone else present, everything became—
Spades, after confirming that the two men above were too absorbed to notice minor movements, leaned toward Bai Liu and asked in a solemn whisper, "Is what they're doing relevant to the main plot?"
Bai Liu turned to him calmly. "Not particularly. It just establishes the relationship between the two NPCs."
"Why do you ask?"
"Oh." Spades nodded as if enlightened. "I see. You suddenly ducked down when Alex was about to… move further. I thought it was something crucial to the storyline and you wanted to listen carefully."
Bai Liu: "…"
Spades looked at Bai Liu in confusion: "Why is your face red?"