A desolate figure twitched in the cold snow, its pitiful body shivering, as if attempting to heat up whatever pitiful heat it had left in its body.
The figure tried to open its eyes at first, but sensing the cold sting of the wind, firmly shut them. A few moments later, it slowly opened its eyes despite the burning of the wind, its blurry vision clearing a bit.
'Wh...at happened? How am I ... still alive?'
Noel slowly raised his face that was planted in the heavenly white snow with its ever-bluish hue, reflected from the gloominess of the sky, as he touched his nose that had turned red, and brushed off the thin layer of ice on his cheeks.
However, at the lack of the familiar sensation that was supposed to be called his fingers, he hurriedly looked down at his hand that had turned a very frightening pale color, with the ridges slowly ... barely visible but slowly ... darkening.
His expression rapidly fell into panic.
'F..frostbite?!'
He flexed his fingers several times, blowing hot breaths against them, curling them, as if fearing he would lose his fingers forever.
However, despite flexing them several times, the numb sensation did not even mildly disappear, as if he was wearing wooden gloves on his hand, which made his slow heart rate gradually rise, as he rubbed them and slowly stood up, looking around him in confusion.
'... It looks like rubbing them has no effect. I need to quickly warm them up somehow before I get frostbite. I can't risk losing my fingers here of all places. Shit, it would simply be signing my own death warrant at this point.'
Or so he was supposed to do.
CLACK-CHUCK!
-CHICK-
His breath got caught, as he suddenly dropped to his stomach immediately, pretending to be dead. He acted before his mind even registered where he was, or what he was doing.
'Fuck, a rifle shot?! Where even am I? The last thing I recall was that I was in the train that was falling off the bridge.'
His brain functioned quite well in high-stress situations, and with him pretending to be dead, holding his breath in.
His eyes half closed, and he strained his ears, listening to the nearby footsteps and gibberish language, which caused his forehead to crease into a temporary frown.
'Enemy soldiers?' He wondered inwardly, as he tried to get any other hints.
From what he heard of the crunching sound of snow around him, he was able to tell that more than a few soldiers were stationed near him. And judging from their language that he was unable to understand, well ... it was evident that they were enemy soldiers.
Definitely not allied soldiers, or they would've at least checked on casualties and whatnot.
Still, he was in luck that he had regained consciousness before they had approached him, lest he transmigrated once more to who-knows-where.
'Well, at least Exil did his damn job, and actually informed me of potential enemies. Speaking of which, why did he leave me and go?'
And of course, without a shred of doubt, they had to be the UPG. And with the few more hints he had retained from the crashing train, they were the perpetrators of the incident.
Noel gritted his teeth at his weakness. He knew it was unforgivable, collateral, that he wouldn't survive for a few days at this rate with this weakness.
He was pathetic, undeniably so.
He dug his teeth into his lower lip, the metallic tang a sharp reminder of how little control he had over his own shaking limbs.
This thought made him feel quite down, loathing at his own self.
Yet, he brushed the thought aside for now, his heart complicated at the complex emotions he was feeling.
It wasn't the right time for that now.
Exil most likely knew the possibility of this happening, so he must still be alive. But that leaves the question, why did he leave Noel alone?
Noel half-lidded his eyes, as he tried to look in front of him, seeing nothing but the distant boots of the soldiers walking back and forth, communicating with others, as a few strolled to other .... oh. To other corpses, a pair of black, leather boots stopped inches from a body.
A puff of grey breath hit the air, shot them a time or two, causing the corpses to twitch in life for a few seconds, a hot, brass shell hissed as it hit the snow. They flipped over the bodies, checked their faces and walked to another corpse.
The appearance of the corpses jerking up for a moment at every shot caused Noel to darkly chuckle inwardly, containing his nausea by attempting to avert it to a different emotion.
'They seem to be looking for someone among those corpses.'
Noel had a feeling that it was probably Exil....
Noel's mind went silent, his expression unreadable as his mental alarms blared in warning.
Shooting corpses and flipping them over?
In shock, Noel almost opened his eyes wide, his held breath turning into shallow breaths. He needed to move, NOW.
If he didn't?
Well, he would basically be number X that got shot in the back of his head and flipped over like a flaccid pancake.
Undesirable? Pretty much.
Desirable? Mm ... not so much.
Ever since coming to this world, Noel's mind had been attempting to calculate every move he took, making sure he didn't slip, didn't make a mistake that would spell out his end in the clearest of words.
Yet, it was quite evident that because of how many factors he did not put into consideration, every single one of them failed.
But currently, he faced a threat that was no doubt imminent.
This situation was different from the others. Albeit similar, the others held more of a natural selection if he would live or die, like how he rolled off the mountain like a fool, almost died from the shockwave in the train, etc.
But currently, the matters came into his own hands.
Should he leave his current life-or-death matter to natural selection, no doubt would his survival rate drop to the negative digits.
And so, he decided to take the next most logical course of action.
'I need to get out of here, now,' he inwardly mused, his ears strained to their maximum for any clues on escaping.
'But how?'
He fell silent for a few moments, as he contemplated it. His first option was to try moving slowly and carefully, playing dead, and looking for a passage to escape.
Earlier, he had seen that his location was near that of a forest when he had half opened his eyes.
Risk of failure? High. Very high.
Ok, cross out that plan. Next course of action would be to .... Hm ...
Noel ruminated for a few moments, before he felt loathing and anger bubbling inside of him.
There was no next course of action. Risk it all, or nothing. It wasn't really nothing, it was more like risk it all, or die.
'Sigh ... I really could make use of Exil's revolver, if he had actually thought about loading it with ammo, that idiot. If I die, it's his fault.'
Looking down at the snow, Noel's eyes widened as his ears caught a sound approaching him, the crunch of snow under its boots. Ignoring his heart that threatened to escape his ribcage, he held in his breath, listening to the sound of footsteps of a soldier approaching him.
"... Eogonilis Heayoris ie Sartina"
The voice of the soldier came above him right in front of him, as if he was talking to another soldier. His boot was inches away from Noel's wet forehead.
'Ok, it's now or nothing. If I die and go to hell, well, I'll wait for Exil there, and beat the hell out of him.'
He narrowed his eyes, his face planted in the snow, as he inwardly counted. The moment the soldier aimed the rifle at him, that would be his end. He wouldn't have a chance to retaliate.
'5 ... 4 ... 3 ... Y ... ou know what? Let's just do it now!'
With a sudden jerk of his body, Noel suddenly got on his knees, and tackled the thigh of the heavily clothed soldier, the soldier not being able to react in time to the sudden movement.
The soldier let out a heavy grunt.
Recovering quickly just before he fell, he raised the butt of his rifle before slamming it down with enough force to shatter bones to powder. Noel twisted his neck in time, but the butt of the rifle instead impacted his shoulder, dislocating it, as Noel felt one of the most intense pains he had felt in his life.
"You son of a bitch!"
Losing his mind at the pain, Noel pushed even harder despite his hardened fingers which had begun to darken even more, and tried to punch the soldier lying under him.
"Levilo!"
Yet, without so much as panicking, the soldier pursed his lips angrily beneath his scarf as he raised his thick arms violently, strangling Noel's neck.
No, he wasn't trying to strangle Noel. He was trying to break his windpipe.
"ARIOSTOLE!"
The sudden shout of the soldier beneath him alerted all the soldiers around him, their rapid footsteps loud from the crunches beneath their boots, their reloading rifles sounding.
Noel's attempted stoic face and anger faded, replaced with his blood-drained face and desperation, his eyes rapidly looking around him.
'They're coming here. I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm so fucking dead.'
His vision blurred as tears streamed down his eyes, as the hands around his neck gripped tighter, the lack of oxygen in his body visible every moment passing.
He felt dazed. Like everything around him was becoming surreal.
He tried to inhale, and failed, coughing instead, to try to do so. Seeing this, the soldier slowly moved beneath Noel's body, trying to twist it and roll to the side, to Noel's horror.
'If he rolls to the side, it's over. If the soldiers shoot, it's over.'
For the first time since coming to this world, tears streamed down Noel's face. He couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't.
Every single time, he would brush with death.
It was all his fault.
If he died on earth, no one would have cared. No, no one probably cared about him. His friends would mourn him for a day or two, and they would soon go on, and forget him.
If he died on this world, it's not that no one would care about him. No one would even know who he was.
In the end, the only person that truly cared about him was his younger sister that had once existed.
But now ... she was no more.
Forever.
Noel's trembling hand moved frantically as if trying to grab on to the soldier in any way possible, but the soldier's experience overpowered Noel's pathetic attempts.
'Is... is this the end for me ... ?'
Noel's hands that were scrambling for anything to hold on to caught on to a button on the soldier's pants, to which he quickly opened. Upon realizing what was inside, Noel's blurry eyes widened in realization, his hands touching it for a few moments as if in disbelief before he slowly pulled it out.
But the strength in his hands was beginning to weaken, as oxygen deprivation was beginning to increase.
'N-no, I need to pull it out quickly, I c..can't die ever. I can't, can't, can't. I, I have to live, even if no one else would care if I did.'
Parting his lips, his eyes bulging red, he used every ounce in his trembling and strained arms before pulling it out, just as the soldiers rolled on the ground, with Noel beneath him, and him above him.
His heavy weight strained Noel's breath even more, at this point, faint, as if any moment Noel's life would be snuffed out of him.
Yet Noel did something unexpected.
He spat on his face. Specifically near his eyes.
The soldier let out a muffled curse, a growl, as if enraged, closing his eyes for a moment, his thumb digging deeper into Noel's neck to the point Noel felt a burning pain in his neck, as if it would snap.
'I, I have to do it now!'
STAB
A six-inch blade dug halfway into the right carotid of the soldier, who had opened his eyes at the penetrating sensation in his windpipe.
Before he was able to react, Noel, with his trembling eyes and gaze, twisted the knife with what little strength he had left, pulling it across in an arc at the front of the soldier's neck.
The strength behind the soldier's grip disappeared instantly, as the soldier tried to hold his neck when he became unable to breathe, as to stop the blood flow from flowing out of his neck. His teeth reddened as he drooled sticky lines of blood, and Noel shuddered in horror as he watched the pink vocal cord trembling, as if trying to pump blood into the brain.
And a few moments later, the soldier collapsed atop Noel.
Yet, Noel couldn't move.
'I di ... d it? .I ... I killed someone? W-with my own hands?'
The hot blood that had poured onto his body was still there, a stark reminder to his crime.
No, it wasn't a crime. He was just trying to survive.
Yes, it wasn't wrong, he tried to justify.
Pushing aside the body with his weakened body, he limped forward to the only destination where he would have a chance of survival.
The forest.
He didn't look back at the soldiers who had been running after him, as he ran to the forest. Upon coming closer to the thick-trunked grey tree-filled forest, his expression subtly brightened, yet his guilt crushed him under its weight.
He had killed someone for the first time today. He felt nausea at the thought.
But even more so, it was almost a miracle that he hadn't gotten shot until no-
Noel's steps stopped, as he suddenly felt cold at his side. With a trembling gaze, he moved his only good arm and felt the area around his liver, before he raised his finger and looked at it.
It was dyed red.
He heard the chuckle of soldiers nearby, their arms already reloaded. His vision blurring, he stumbled for a moment, before realization dawned on him when he saw a dark red piece of flesh in front of him, with six rounds embedded into the snow.
'M-m...y ....m-my ...'
"Aaaaaaaaaaaah!"
He let out a shrill scream at the pain of his liver having gotten shot out forcefully from the effect of a shotgun, hyperventilating as he stumbled away with all he could muster.
He would die at this rate.
The soldiers earlier didn't shoot him because they never saw him as a threat.
Instead, they saw him as prey to be hunted, just like a deer.
'I, I need to run away. Sob, sob, I need .... to ... run ... away.'
With a few of them muttering angrily, a soldier let out a hearty laugh as he leaned his head on the scope and ... pulled the trigger, his body shaking slightly from the recoil.
And the bang reached Noel.
This time, Noel fell forward into the snow, swallowing some, as he began to spit it out, and crawl on his four hands and legs in desperation.
His pierced foot was mangled, and left a blood trail in its wake.
He finally reached the forest, but instead of being happy, tears streamed down his face pathetically, as he dragged his body. The tip of his fingers had blackened completely, his body bloodied, and he felt like collapsing.
He heard the clapping of soldiers far away, yet paid them no heed, his consciousness was beginning to fade with the loss of his blood.
Yet he slowly stumbled and moved until he touched the nearest tree near him, before he collapsed, losing consciousness. Had he been focused on his surroundings, he would have noticed a white line engraved at the start of the forest.
A line that separated The Empire's state and the UPG.
The soldier raised his rifle once more, aiming at the collapsed figure's form, yet a bald man wearing a heavy military coat with a pipe in his hand blocked the rifle's muzzle, shaking his head, and tilted his chin towards the figure with a frown.
"Lower your steel. Let the winter have what is hers, the earth is a hungry thing. He has sought sanctuary in the waste. He will be bone before the moon births. He has passed the border. For now, we cannot move an inch's worth, I reckon, but later, when the time to raise the barrel is to come..."
The man gave one last look at the collapsed figure, before taking out a puff of his pipe, and walked in the opposite direction.
"We eat the wolf's portion of lamb. God is with us."