Nightmare Mythos

Chapter 196 Thin Slices Corpses

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The moment the announcement rang from that communicator, the soldiers and Cesar had no choice but to end their dinner abruptly.

With a few bites from their plates to not waste the effort that Ernest had given, they prepared their current post to the city and proceeded to the next destination as per order.

"It was a short time everyone, but I was glad to meet you all. After the war, I would like to buy everyone lunch or just let Ernest cook for us all,"

It was a short time, indeed.

However, the promise that Cesar made might not come true because all the things he can see from these soldiers are death.

Cesar didn't want to give them false hope, but if that's the thing that needed to be done even if he wanted to lie about it, he would willingly do it with a glib tongue.

Soon, these soldiers lined up and saluted to Cesar who was far younger than them but understood that the age or position of an individual didn't define a single soldier in this war.

What they saw in him was a young talented man who just deserved to be respected.

"After the war, okay kid?!"

"Yeah, we'll definitely see each other! There's no way I would waste a single penny on any of you after the war,"

"Promise, okay?"

Borrowing a vehicle from a nearby unit, Cesar waved goodbye to the soldiers and began to depart from his next destination.

Vwoosh—!

Driving in an instant to hasten the pace, Cesar grabbed a map inside of his storage from the Librarian's Key and opened widely while going through the tough roads and broken pavements which is the result of the ongoing war's onslaught.

"Fender City... Fender City..."

Tracking his eyes around the map for a few minutes to find the name of the said city from the communicator, Cesar finally tracked it down with a tired sigh.

"Northwest in this road. I don't have to enter the Langston Bridge to go at it. Man, if only Nightmares didn't exist in the skies, I could've used one of those planes that the Army has. What a bummer..."

Cesar silently navigated the road by himself, fully disappearing into the sights of the city before he decided to mutter something to himself.

"Cedeit, are you there now?"

Cesar didn't expect that the business Cedeit had would take so much time... at least for human time.

A few months or years might not even matter to these Nightmares that Cesar met a while ago now.

But Cesar knew that shouldn't happened. If Cedeit was going to disappear like this as he kept accumulating his consciousness, then it might be better to not get anything for him at all.

Cesar wanted to deny it but he needed Cedeit's guidance in all kinds of things which he kept receiving from time to time whenever he encountered a problem.

And The Nightmare was right about it every single time.

"I guess not,"

Since nobody had talked to him inside his head which weirdly evoked mixed emotions, Cesar knew had other means to gather intelligence for himself which was not relying too much on the Army.

"Cesar?"

There was Reyna, Quentin, and Nike on the same team.

That should've been impossible since Reyna and Nike are still awkward with each other.

It was impossible that the grudge that Nike held within him would just be gone because there was an ongoing war that needed to be taken care of.

"Yo, long time no see. When have you come here?"

It was Reyna who answered that question as she also explained the situation around the city.

"Cesar, it is a mess here. The Army wanted to keep everything under wraps and keep the soldiers from learning about this massacre. We were told to 'count' the number of casualties but that's just it. To not demoralize our side, it seems they are planning on administering Code Red. By the way, we came here yesterday,"

'Code Red...'

Knowing that Code Red involves cases that need to be hidden until the time comes to the mass is only administered when something is just terrible, Cesar nodded and said.

"Good for them to do it. Honestly, if they informed me the bodies that the Fender City were cut into thin slices and were left there for everyone to see, we would've thrown up,"

Quentin tilted his head and asked, "Why would you throw up? It's not like this is new to you,"

Cesar paused, "Dude, we were eating. That's enough explanation, noh? Anyway, how about we finish this task fast and go on our merry ways?"

Knowing useless chatter would just do no good for them, Cesar and the rest began their search to calculate the casualty in the city.

...

While in groups, with four of them together calculating the casualty in their side of the wall, Nike couldn't help but ask.

"So, you've defended three cities at your first deployment just last week. Talk about some mighty aura there,"

"Aura?"

Nike chuckled then tried to explain but failed halfway through.

It's a trend these days. This 'aura'— you know what, never mind. There's something about these corpses you know. About how they were sliced up."

He immediately comes back to the topic as he furthers his stance.

"What about their slices?"

Nike paused, "Well, you can say that this is pretty much the work of a Nightmare rather than a human being. It looks like this wasn't done by Vanke but by some Nightmare, do you agree with me?"

Cesar could only shake his head in defeat since he already received information from someone else that it was indeed Vanke who had done this massacre.

It was the words of some Nightmare after all.

Or Doubt could be lying, who actually knows?

Anyways, that's why finding out the reason behind this action is important even though the job requirement was to only count for casualties.

And a clue might've resurfaced when Reyna called them from the side.

"Hey guys, I found something,"