Chapter 384: The Rotten Dog of Nouvelle Vague (2)  

Name 'Garm Nord'. Rank Second Lieutenant. A junior officer in the suppression squad in Nouvelle Vague.

A 21-year-old man characterized by a timid stance, a dark expression, bushy uncut hair, and large burn marks on his face.

This was the "new identity" Vikir had been observing for the past two years.

Vikir did not escape.

Or, more accurately, he made a pretense of escaping and then returned to Nouvelle Vague when BDISSEM was unconscious.

After all, stealing a gulper eel wasn't going to get him away, and he still had work to do in prison.

'I need to activate Poseidon.'

There was nothing else to do.

Once he fulfilled certain conditions and activated the Poseidon, his work here in Nouvelle Vague would be done.

'... Honestly, I wouldn't mind dying here if I could get this done.'

Simply stopping the Rainy Season of Fear will save more than half of humanity.

The rest was up to the survivors.

But Vikir wanted to do the job perfectly.

It would be a good business if he could do it with his own life.

Then.

TOOOOOOOO-!

The sound of a horn announced the guards' wake-up call.

.30am.

The guards wake up half an hour before the prisoners, who wake up at four.

Garm, or rather Vikir, pushed himself up from his room, which was just over 3 square meters.

The shower room is a stone cubicle, barely big enough for two people.

Vikir turned on the rusty tap and washed his face and body under the dripping cold water.

Unsurprisingly, the water is seawater, so even when he scrubbed soap into it, almost no foam came out.

When he got out, his skin still felt sticky.

When he looked in the mirror, he could see nasty burn marks under his wet hair.

With the strength of the basilisk, Vikir could erase the scars, reshape them, and so on.

His voice, too, could be modified by swallowing hot charcoal and burning his vocal cords.

Decarabia on Vikir's chest spoke wearily.

[Human. Doesn't it even hurt, how awful!]

"That's what it takes to enter the Iron Maiden and be thrown ten thousand meters under the sea, walk across bladed bridges, fight leeches, endure sulfurous showers, and mine under a volcano so hot that it burns the flesh."

In any case, the initial jailbreak was a success.

The Night Hound was declared dead, and he was turned into a guard.

This was a good thing, as it would be much easier to keep an eye on Poseidon's movements as a guard.

Vikir glanced away as he prepared for roll call.

His desk and bed were piled high with palm-sized notes.

They were the journals that Garm had kept every day of his life.

Hundreds of these journals piled up in a room that was already cramped.

But Vikir didn't throw them away.

Instead, he treated them like treasures, reading and memorising every word on the damp, smudged pages.

'It's good to know the daily routine of the lower guards.'

Garm's diary reveals the lives and struggles of the lowly guards, living in a single, flat room.

Vikir finished reading the diaries, as there was still some time before the horns sounded and the morning watch began.

He had spent the entirety of last night's dawn reading, and there was still quite a bit left.

Vikir decided to cut through the nonsense to get to the essentials: the structure and systems of the Nouvelle Vague, information about the people in Garm's life, and other things to keep in mind. ....

Other than that, the overwhelming majority of the information was personal, revealing the thoughts, beliefs, and humanity of Garm.

Vikir had decided that he didn't need to see the personal records of Garm, but he couldn't help but read through the voluminous pages and read every single line.

And in the process, he came to understand his humanity to some extent.

" ... It's a good thing he doesn't have many close people around him."

Garm had an extremely narrow circle of friends. However, he was able to observe others neutrally and objectively, and these views are reflected in his diary.

Nouvelle Vague seen through the eyes of a prisoner and Nouvelle Vague seen through the eyes of a guard are surprisingly similar.

For example, in most of Garm's diaries, the last sentence was 'I want to get out of here'.

It was like reading a prisoner's diary.

"...Now that I think about it, the places where guards and prisoners live are similar."

Vikir looked inside the cramped stone room.

There were no windows, and it was practically a coffin.

It wasn't much different from a prisoner's cell, except for the handcuffs and bars.

...No, the guards had handcuffs and bars too.

"Morning call! Everybody out!"

It was an insanely dense rotation and shift schedule.

It was like an invisible bar that trapped and manipulated the guards.

The guards, who control and manipulate the prisoners, were controlled and manipulated by the system.

Vikir stood up and closed Garm's diary.

...No, he tried to cover it.

"Hmm?"

Vikir turned to the next page.

From there, the diary began to reveal things it hadn't before.

Until then, Garm had been writing in his diary in a calm and dry handwriting, even including himself.

But now, bordering this page and every page thereafter, there is something different.

It was about Kirko.

About how spirited, how strong, how determined, how great, how admirable, and how pretty the girl across the room named 'Kirko Grimm' was.

From one page to the next, Garm's diary was full of talk about Kirko.

There was even a pretty good sketch of her.

The story of how she came in first in the end-of-month evaluation.

How she briefly quelled a prisoner riot.

How she was promoted first among her colleagues.

How she won first place in a swordsmanship competition.

.

.

And the last entry in the diary, which had always been the same, was slightly altered.

After the line "I want to get out of here," the line "with her" began to appear.

-I want to show her the outside world.

-If only I could show her the blue skies, salt-free lakes, and wild animals running through the fields where I was born...

Vikir closed his diary at this point.

Suddenly, Vikir remembered something that came to him out loud.

-'About twenty years ago, I think, there was an incident where a prisoner forcibly insulted a guard, which is why the guards at Nouvelle Vague are so sensitive to the lower levels.'

-'Kurururu- I heard that a child was born as a by-product of that unpleasant process.'

-'You're a frog, born and raised in a well, and you've never seen the outside world, have you? After all, what right does a bitch born of rape have to walk this earth? You're worthless, and you're stuck in these deep seas!'

Garm's records said so.

Kirko was born and raised in Nouvelle Vague. A girl who knew nothing of the earth.

"Hmmm. Unrequited love? Or longing? I'm not sure about the emotions of kids this age."

Vikir muttered quietly to himself.

Even though he had spent quite a bit of time at the Colosseo Academy, he still found it difficult to understand the teenage emotions of young people.

However, he did know this.

Both Garm, who wrote this diary, and the girl in it, Kirko, were blossoming 21 years old.

What if they had attended the Colosseo Academy on earth instead of here in Nouvelle Vague?

Kirko is a very talented girl, so maybe she would have been the head of the Cold Weapon Department. No, she might have gone beyond that and become student council president.

Because from the glimpses Vikir had seen of her, her talent, her potential, her will to improve, was more than Tudor or Bianca or Sinclair or Dolores.

" ... but reality is harsh."

Not everyone can be a flower and live beautifully.

Where there is a top, there is a bottom.

You didn't have to come through the Age of Destruction to know that.

Vikir closed the diary and turned away.

He left the cramped stone chamber and closed the soundproof door behind him. Kikigeek- Tung!

A narrow, smelly corridor opened up.

Everywhere he looked, there was damp, slimy moss.

The musty smell of sea moss, the salty dampness that clings to the skin.

Cheap cigarette smoke hung from the salty, dripping ceiling.

A constant smell of decay emanated from the crumbling plaster in the corner of the corridor.

Through a side door that was slightly open, he could see his fellow guard lying on his bunk, looking at a tattered pornographic magazine.

(The magazine was over 60 years old, so the models in its pages were probably already dead.)

Soon, it was time for roll call.

The junior guards all came out with wide eyes and lined up in two rows facing each other in the corridor.

There was no distinction between men and women as they shared a room.

Due to the Nouvelle Vague's directive that there are three genders: men, women, and guards, everyone here is considered to be of the same sex.

Then.

"...!"

Vikir took note of the one person in the group of junior guards with rotten fish eyes.

She was Kirko.

Kirko lived in a cell diagonally across the room from Garm's.

'It's strange to see her in person after having seen her on paper.'

Vikir was looking at Kirko in awe.

... snap!

Someone slapped Vikir hard on the back of the head.

"...?"

Vikir turns his head to look at something and sees the next room, and the guards across from him, giggling.

"Hey, stupid Garm, spying on Kirko again today, you sullen pervert. You should know your place."

"Tidy up your clothes, straighten up your angles, and don't show off your shitty uniform. Don't you want to be seen as a jerk by the prisoners?"

"In the meantime, why did you put an old name tag on it? Who took it off?"

"As expected, he is like a 'Rotten Dog' from morning."

Aka 'Stupid Garm', or 'Rotten Dog'. That was the nickname that always followed him.

Vikir, who had read his diary, was of course well aware of this.

'Humans are like that everywhere.'

In the army before the regression, in the Colosseo Academy afterwards.

Humans will always bully those weaker than themselves, and when that bullying becomes a systemic phenomenon within an organization, it actually serves to solidify it.

So when Garm was bullied by his colleagues, his seniors and superiors turned a blind eye.

If the other guards could build solidarity at the expense of Garm, it was a win-win situation.

This was because it was a profitable business if one guard could be sacrificed to increase solidarity among the other guards.

"You must be a bit lazy today after your crazy shift yesterday."

"Since you're free, why don't you go out and bully stupid Gareem?"

"Hey, you stupid bastard, why didn't you show up for the night watch last night? You weren't even on duty. Were you really in distress?"

"You do understand that failing to show up for inspection is a military offense, and you could end up with a 'black tongue', you know?"

Then. Kirko's eyes met those of one of the bullies who had been harassing Vikir.

Seeing the mixture of pity and patheticness in her eyes, the bully chuckled and called out.

"Hey, Kirko, why don't you come to your boyfriend's rescue, you two are in a relationship!"

All eyes then turned to Kirko and Garm.

Kirko's frown widens.

"...crazy assholes."

Kirko jerked her head away.

Only the snickering mockery echoed behind her.

Just then.

TOOOOOOO-

The horn sounded once more.

Everyone wiped the smiles off their faces at this sudden alarm, which sounded completely unrelated to the roll call.

Suddenly, from the other side of the corridor, an off-duty guard burst into the room, shouting.

"Riot, there's a riot! There's a riot! There's a riot in the Level One area! Emergency deployment of suppression squad!"