Hearing Griffin's words, Gavo immediately grew hesitant.
At nine years old, her features had become even more delicate. Although she still had the style of a tomboy and her chest was as flat as a board, she was still worried that taking off the mask might expose her true sex.
And her hesitation very obviously made Griffin impatient.
"I'm not going to hate you for being ugly, so hurry up and take it off..."
"Or are you saying you don't want to join us?"
Gavo glanced at the displeased Griffin and saw the rising hostility inside him through her emotion sight. In the end, she could only grit her teeth.
The moment she removed her mask, Griffin's eyes trembled almost imperceptibly.
He looked her over from top to bottom very carefully. As he stared at that delicate face, which carried a trace of stubborn courage beneath its prettiness, he clicked his tongue and muttered,
"Why the hell do you look like such a girl?"
Those words immediately made the weight in Gavo's heart ease.
Thank goodness. Her sex had been assumed wrong again.
But for some reason... why did that make her feel a little sad?
Griffin dipped the tip of the awl into the crimson pigment, then pressed the switch on it and drew part of the liquid into its hollow chamber.
Soon, a slightly eerie blood-tear tattoo was left beneath Gavo's left eye.
After putting her mask back on, Gavo asked Griffin,
"Now that I've joined you, what exactly am I supposed to do?"
Griffin looked at Gavo's thin arms and legs, thought for a while, then slowly answered,
"Logistics and battlefield cleanup."
"In other words, before a fight, you check our supplies. During a fight, you carry ammo and medicine to me and the others. After a fight, you search the field for anything useful we can take."
Hearing that, Gavo suddenly understood.
So basically, she was just a glorified errand runner with slightly more danger.
That sounded fairly safe.
"As long as you work properly for me, I won't treat a little brat like you badly. Got it?"
Gavo nodded.
"Good. Then get out..."
"Oh, right. Be sure to come to the center of camp tonight."
...
As the final trace of light in the sky vanished behind the dust-choked clouds, dim starlight and cold moonlight fell over this land steeped in violence and death.
In the underhive, night meant hell.
It meant despair.
Any normal person would hide away somewhere safe at night to avoid becoming food for the carnivores and mutant freaks.
"But the people in this camp are obviously not normal."
That was what Gavo thought as she looked at the Weepers devouring food beside a bright bonfire.
On top of the blazing fire, several large mutated rat-wolves that had just been skinned were sizzling and dripping grease.
If the other rat-wolves had not fled in time, they probably would have ended up as a full family bucket too.
Although the aroma of roasted meat was mixed with the rank stink unique to rat-wolves, it still made Gavo drool uncontrollably after nine years of eating almost no meat at all.
Around the fire, the rough men of the Tearblood Gang filled their cups with underhive special brew made from all kinds of fermented biomass trash, while bragging about their battle experiences.
The tiny Gavo sat beside them, looking completely out of place.
"Alright! To celebrate the joining of our new member, tonight everyone eats till their stomach bursts and drinks till their jaws fall off!"
Griffin sliced off the first piece from the roasted rat-wolf, grabbed a thick hind leg in his hand, and roared loudly.
That was the signal.
In the next instant, those who had long been drooling over the roasted meat surged forward like starving wolves, leaving Gavo sitting there alone in the same spot, staring blankly.
How strange.
This feast was supposedly being held because of her, and yet she was the lonely one.
"Dammit, brat, why are you sitting there acting all shy?"
Griffin sat down beside Gavo, holding a can of underhive special brew in one hand and that hind leg in the other.
He startled her badly. The shadow left by that cruel initiation ritual was still very much alive in her mind.
But she quickly calmed down and slowly said,
"It just feels like I still haven't gotten used to all this."
Gavo sat hugging her knees, the glass lenses of her gas mask reflecting the brilliant firelight.
"Just the day before yesterday, I was still living a life where I hid from the night and ate expired food bought with scavenged scrap."
Griffin stuffed the steaming hind leg into his mouth and tore away two-thirds of the meat with one brutal bite.
He casually tossed the remaining little piece of the leg to Gavo, then opened his can of underhive brew and asked,
"Brat, what do you think life is?"
Gavo lifted her mask a little to expose her mouth and began gnawing at the leg without the slightest complaint.
After stripping all the meat from it and then carefully sucking the grease off her fingers, she turned to look at Griffin, who was pouring a large amount of the bitter brew into his mouth, and answered his question.
"Life is the Emperor's currency."
That was the answer her adoptive father had once given her.
Griffin wiped the alcohol from the corner of his mouth and glanced at the little one beside him.
"Besides that answer, have you ever thought of any other answer to that question?"
Gavo shook her head.
In her previous life, she had not been a philosopher. And in this life, the pressure of survival had never left her enough free time to think about something like that.
This vilest scum of the underhive bared his mouth and spoke words that were almost outright blasphemous.
"In my view, life is plunder."
"From the moment any life is born, it's destined to survive by taking from other things."
"From the survival of an individual to the growth of the Imperium, it can all be summed up in two lines."
"Take from nature. Plunder from alien races."
Griffin picked up the leftover leg bone Gavo had thrown aside and began playing with it in his hand.
"So, little one, if you want to stay alive, you'd better prepare yourself to take."
"Even if you don't go out and take from others, someone else will come and take from you."
At that point, he handed the can of underhive brew beside him to Gavo.
"Drink."
At first, Gavo refused.
But Griffin repeated the order in a tone that allowed no argument.
"Drink."
Well then. Who could have guessed that drinking culture from ancient Terra before M3 would survive all the way into countless millennia later?
After just a few gulps of the harsh alcohol, perhaps because she had been bottling things up for too many years, Gavo suddenly became talkative.
Waving her hands around, she began pouring out the pain that had always been buried deep in her heart: her adoptive father's injuries.
"Hic... if only I had been with him then... hic... things would've been..."
As she spoke sadly between hiccups, the alcohol gradually climbed fully into her head.
As her consciousness blurred, the last thing she heard was a low voice.
"By tradition, every Weeper is given a unique gift."
"I think I know what kind of gift to give you..."
(End of Chapter)
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