“Do I look weird?” Black Mamba stared at Sun WooHyun with a raised brow.
“No. Wakil is always right.”
Lines creased in Sun WooHyun’s face. At his sudden attempt to smile, his expression had turned into a weeping face.
“We were going to kill them anyway. What’s the point of reasoning, and crying crocodile tears? It’s all an act and an excuse. A painless death is the greatest gift. Have you ever heard of the saying, ‘follow your heart?'”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you need to do as your heart wills and that you shouldn’t hesitate in what you’ve chosen to do.”
Black Mamba swayed as soon as he finished speaking. Sun WooHyun rushed to support him. Black Mamba’s face turned white as a sheet. His movements had caused the blood to drip out from his shoulder and side.
“Wakil, nevermind about that, look at yourself. Did you have to push yourself so far! Do you have a death wish?”
Sun WooHyun spoke with a strained voice, unlike his usual self. He pitied the man who sacrificed himself to save his friends.
“Damn it. He still looks great even when he’s giving a lecture.”
Sun WooHyun had lived for his gains. He had lamented the loss of an easy path to success upon hearing the persecution of his father. He didn’t know a young man could look this cool.
“Lackey, abandon the thought of tomorrow. Life is about a tomorrow that never comes.”
Black Mamba shoved Sun WooHyun’s hands away before fixing his posture.
“S***, a baby is discussing the semantics of life. But it was well phrased, I suppose.”
Sun WooHyun rubbed the blood on his palms onto his pants. Black Mamba looked up at the top of a palm date tree, 30 meters away. Glaring, he charged his Pamus with a clack and aimed.
“My heart’s not willing,” he murmured, before lowering his gun.
“What?”
“It’s a scared rat. Let’s go.”
A face as black as coal peeked out between the palm leaves. After stretching his neck out to check the path Black Mamba had left to, he slid down the palm tree.
He was the Sala tribe’s child, Nitanga, who was hiding atop the tree. Once he reached the ground, Nitanga drummed his chest and began to breathe. Once his airways opened, he panted rapidly. Nitanga finally collapsed to the floor after finishing a one-man show by himself.
“Thank you, Allah. Your servant nearly had a heart attack. Thank you for saving me from the grasps of the Kanma. The Kanma had left due to Allah’s grace. Allah is the one and only. Bismillah!”
Nitanga was a normal teenager who used to love catching yakori in Dombrey forest. After the DGSE’s contact, Nitanga’s job was to watch over the eastern gate’s entry and exit of FROLINAT’s north-eastern command post.
His job wasn’t hard at all. It was a simple job that required him to check the soldiers coming in and out of the north-eastern command post while catching yakori.
Nitanga, who was completing his usual routine, had zoned out at the sight of the north-eastern command post being attacked. The command post had gone up in flames, and countless soldiers were jumping out. Surprised, he had hidden on top of a variant tree. Nitanga hadn’t been able to move an inch until the battle between Black Mamba and FROLINAT had ended.
A tremendous battle of tanks and field artillery began. In the battle between the legendary Kanma and hundreds of soldiers, Nitanga had been watching the devil’s fight without even breathing. The Kanma had appeared dripping in red blood. The Angel of Death, Azrael, who took humans’ names as he willed, had appeared after hundreds of FROLINAT soldiers had been erased.
He had nearly fallen out of the tree when he met his icy gaze. When the gun was lifted to aim, he nearly leaked. Fortunately, the Kanma had left without killing him. The priest had been right. The reincarnated Azrael only killed those who were evil.
When praying to Allah, one always had to kneel on the floor. After finishing his prayer, Nitanga quickly climbed up another tree. He shivered in fear, afraid that the Kanma would change his mind and cut off his neck.
Nitanga finally climbed down the tree by sunset. He carefully entered the forest but soon ran back out with a yellow face.
It wasn’t a forest of trees but a forest of corpses. It wasn’t the ground but red paint. Countless corpses were strewn all around the forest. Rocks were shattered, and trees were broken. The entire forest had been upturned. The smell of gunpowder and blood flipped his insides.
“Eeep, it’s the Kanma!”
After several convulsions, Nitanga wrote a report according to how he was taught. The report was simple.
[Destruction of FROLINAT’s north-eastern command post]
Place: Bata province, Berdalle, Dombrey forest.
Dead: 500 to 600 people.
Losses: The entire command post, all of those stationed.
Eraser: Kanma.
Nitanga handed in his report and resignation to the DGSE regional headquarters in Algeria, Africa. The reason behind his resignation was written as, “I don’t want to die with my head blown off or my neck sliced off.” He had finally realized how scary an informant’s life was, something he had jumped into without fear. Nitanga returned to his life as a yakori gatherer in Toruba village.
Black Mamba shook his head in the midst of climbing on the bike. His sight blurred. His grip loosened, and his hand on the handle fell loose.
“Damn it. I’ve bled too much. God, my precious blood!”
His consciousness continued to darken.
“Wakil, look at me!”
Sun WooHyun’s voice faded away as though he was underwater.
“Wakil is human, after all!”
Sun WooHyun gathered Black Mamba, who had turned into a frog and clicked his tongue. It was hard to hold onto Black Mamba with his small frame while boarding the bike. It was fortunate that their camp was nearby.
Black Mamba returned. No, a blood demon which resembled Black Mamba returned. The camp turned into a swarming beehive that had been poked with a stick. Even the patients who had lied down to recover from dehydration crawled out. Black Mamba was someone who had survived several battles and walked out of them, fine. They couldn’t even guess how fierce the battle had been.
Bronin took off the battle uniform with a pair of scissors. Bellman’s hand began to shake as he checked Black Mamba’s condition.
Black Mamba had received nine bullets. Three had landed on the upper half of his bulletproof vest, which ended up as blue bruises. He had received the other five on both sides and his stomach, which turned out into black bruises. The bulletproof vest was useless. An average human would have hovered between the boundary of life and death due to the broken bones. Bellman pulled off the bandage on his left arm.
“What the hell?”
A large wound the size of an Olympic flame, skin, and muscles which were burnt together, marks of a rummage—it was a mess.
“Ha!” Bellman gasped as he checked the bullet wound.
The entire muscle had been ruined after attempts of digging the bullet out. The blood and muscles surrounding the wound were blue from the secondary contamination. The surrounding structure was as good as a crumpled paper.
“Lackey, I need an explanation.”
A vein popped on Sun WooHyun’s head. Dogs and cows seemed to call him lackey, just because Black Mamba did.
“Took out the bullet with a knife.”
“What!”
“God, isn’t that just a story from those legends?”
Emil and Jang Shin were surprised.
Taking out the gunpowder from a bullet to sterilize and removing a bullet from a bullet wound with a knife, those were all fake stories that were only possible in movies. A human’s body was incapable of withstanding pain and shock.
“Putain, you idiot, aren’t you risking tetanus?”
The Captain jumped, having lost Chartres to tetanus.
“You f****** weaklings, what about it!”
Sun WooHyun’s face crumpled at the swear.
Bellman smiled as he pointed to the contracted muscles with his scalpel.
“He sterilized it rather well. All the extra gunpowder and foreign substances from the bullet’s rollback had been removed. I’ve got a lot less to do, thanks to that.”
Bellman organized the injured area with his skilled hands, before sewing it up.
“Mh!”
Pulling out the last bandage on the side, Bronin lost his cool. It was a large wound, 20 mm across, and 80 mm long.
“Sergeant Bellman!”
Bellman tilted his head at the wound.
“Is it possible for a shard to enter at that angle?”
“Sergeant, look here.”
Emil took out a crushed Pamus magazine from Black Mamba’s spare bag. Both sides of the magazine had turned into paste and were entangled.
“It is a field artillery shell from its size. The shard landed on the magazine first, before bouncing into his side.”
Bellman finally understood the diagonal wound. If the magazine hadn’t become his first protector, Black Mamba would have his job transferred to a purgatory’s station guard. Bellman’s heart grew cold.
“He rummaged around his skin and pulled out the shard.”
“He did an impossible feat for a human’s endurance,” Pieff concluded.
The mercenaries, who were standing about, turned pale.
“He even dragged his rib back into place.”
The Captain pointed at two black bruises. Blood drained out of the mercenaries’ faces. How vicious he was, to pull his broken rib back into place!
“I’ll bring Wakil’s bike over. Veteran, let’s go together.”
Sun WooHyun, who hadn’t heard anything good about his troubles, brought a hovering Ombuti to the backseat of his bike and disappeared. Emil and Jang Shin stared at each other.
“How horrible. He took out a bullet with a burning knife by rummaging around the muscles. Could we do that?”
“I refuse. We’re ordinary people. We can’t even move during diarrhea. It’s only something Black can do.”
“His temperature is dropping. He needs a blood transfusion.”
“What’s his blood type?” The Captain replied to Bellman.
“Blood type B, a Rh+.”
“That’s me, me. Take just enough so I won’t die. I’m giving it to sergeant Mike and my partner. Am I some sort of a donor or something? It’s driving me mad,” Emil complained as he revealed his arm.
Both Centienne and Maxim also raised their arms.
Sun WooHyun lashed out at Bellman upon his return with the bike.
“How is the Wakil? How long does he need to recover?”
“There’s a side wound, broken ribs, ligament injury, tissue necrosis, scapula ligament tear, and blood loss at 25. He won’t be able to use his left arm for a while. It’s a 48-week diagnosis. At least two weeks, even if it’s Black.”
Sun WooHyun’s face rapidly darkened.
“Damn, it’s because he attacked the command post at the very end…”
Those were injuries a normal person would have died from. The aftereffects of straining to destroy the command post were large. Ombuti and the Captain returned from their search for water and entered the tent.
“Lackey, what happened?”
Sun WooHyun glanced at Black Mamba’s sleeping figure helplessly before answering.
“We were given the wrong information. There were over 600 soldiers, equipped with tanks and field artillery. The Wakil and I got rid of them all.”
He gave a short reply, leaving out the fact that he had been hiding throughout the entire battle.
“He cleared a tank and 600 soldiers!” The Captain shouted in surprise.
“Right, I recommended a night battle, but Wakil was worried about their tracking and rushed.”
“I see.”
The Captain nodded his head.
Black Mamba was the god of night battles. He had thrown away his advantage for his comrades’ safety. 600 was a horrible number, even if they were untrained guerrillas. It was fortunate that he had returned alive.
“Black was hurt critically, but why are you fine, lackey?” Emil asked an unwelcomed question.
“I’m Namir, Sun WooHyun.” Sun WooHyun kept bluffing.
He became small in front of his Wakil, but there was nothing to fear against some stray mercenaries.
“Thank you so much, lackey. Wakil is safe, thanks to you. You’ve saved two lives.”
There were tears in Ombuti’s eyes. Sun WooHyun’s chest twinged. Ombuti wasn’t a servant but a father who loved his son. He suddenly recalled his own father that he had forgotten about.
“There is nothing to thank. I wasn’t able to help much. Wakil is the Azrael. I was honored to be with such a god.”
Sun WooHyun smiled wryly at Ombuti’s acknowledgment. Sun WooHyun still didn’t know what type of man Ombuti was. The two lives Ombuti had mentioned were his own and Sun WooHyun’s. He was a person who would have shot Sun WooHyun without question if he had been the only one to return alive.