The Murklin System: Rise of the Dark Hero

Chapter 2

"What can you say about the corpse, Private Corpus?" Commander Gideon Sfaira asked, staring at the woman's body lying beside a tree trunk.

The katona trainee stiffened, and his eyebrows creased a little. "What do I think?" You're the commander. Why are you asking me? he wanted to ask, but instead, he answered, "It's most likely an attack from a murklin, Commander. Our team searched the area and there are no signs of a wild animal roaming around. And the corpse doesn't have any animal bite attack."

The commander chuckled. "Good answer. And yes, it's an attack from a stupid murklin, who can't hide its footprints." He ambled near the corpse and inspected it a little more. "If you look closely at her rolled eyes, her pale and wrinkled skin, and her dry lips, you'll think that it's an attack from a cerise."

The trainee squinted in its direction and nodded. "I only know that a murklin did that because there's been news about them killing here in Fract and cerise doesn't go here since they hate us, mortals, the most. But I don't really know the difference."

Gideon straightened his back, not piercing his gaze on the woman like it would disappear if he did. "It's really hard to know the difference. But once you saw an attack from a cerise, you would know." He patted the trainee's shoulder and said, "Let's clean the corpse and send it to Banhar."

"Yes, Sir!" He saluted.

The trainee and three others did what the commander instructed. It wasn't the first time they encountered an attack from a murklin in this part of Fract. In fact, this was the exact location on the island of the mortals with the highest number of corpses. It was the poorest and most isolated, too.

"Commander..."

On his way back to Banhar, Gideon saw his sergeant, one of his katona. "Sergeant Kento, did you do what I told you to?" he asked without looking at him. He continued walking while the katona followed from behind him, his head bowed down a little.

"Yes, Commander. But some tribes kept on insisting that it was not an animal attack. Some are speculating that it's a murklin's attack."

Gideon stopped on his track. "These mortals really like getting on my nerves, aren't they?"

"I'm sorry, Commander. Someone must be leaking the information about them."

Smiling, he finally faced his sergeant. "Don't worry about it, Sergeant Kento. Whether we do something about that someone, another one will surely appear. All we have to do is do our job and let the higher-ups do theirs."

When he turned around, his smile faded. Even as a commander, he couldn't possibly act and do everything he wanted. He needed the higher-up's order before acting out. That's what a katona should do.

No matter how frustrating this field of work was for him sometimes, there was nothing he could do. He needed this position to fulfill his goal. Without this title, there would totally be nothing he could ever do. Avenging his family was his final and ultimate goal. No one could stop him.

"Come on," he called the sergeant. "There's a lot of cleaning up to do."

*

After breakfast, Finn went back to taking care of her sister. But this time, he was also tending to the woman he met in the woods that morning.

The woman hadn't regained her consciousness yet, and Finn would check on her from time to time, afraid that she wasn't breathing anymore. The last thing the family needed was a funeral and people gossiping about them.

"Who is she?" Carl asked, pertaining to the sleeping woman. "Is she your wife, kuya?"

Finn waved his hands in the air, like he was driving away some flies. "There's no way that beautiful lady is my wife." He stopped waving his hands when he realized he looked a little too defensive. "I met her in the woods this morning. She lost consciousness, so I had to take her home."