"I don't get it. How did this even happen?"
The voice belonged to a man in his late seventies, echoing sharply through the heavy silence of the room. The office was opulently decorated with an array of prestigious military badges of honor, gleaming medals, and historic operational photographs hanging neatly along the walls. His mahogany desk was buried beneath towering piles of tactical documents. Though the room was dimly lit and a specialized coolant vent continuously blew crisp, frigid air into the space, the machine's efforts weren't nearly enough to cool down the suffocating tension.
Seated on the plush leather sofas facing one another were high-ranking military officials. But in the presence of this raging man, they all seemed to mellow down, their eyes glued to the floor, completely unable to lift their heads. It was because this furious officer was none other than General Brownman—the commander in chief of their inner-wall sector, as well as the outer Sector C. This single man was directly responsible for the lives of millions.
"How were these devils able to gather in such massive numbers without our knowledge?" Brownman slammed his fist on the desk. "Is our entire intelligence team completely asleep on the job?!"
"Sir... we were just as shocked as you when the deep-range scans flagged the anomaly," one of the officers spoke up, his voice trembling slightly. "We've been continuously monitoring our area of command. It seems this gathering of devils materialized so rapidly it was as if it happened in the blink of an eye..." The remaining officers in the room nodded in spontaneous, anxious agreement
"Since when do devils possess the tactical cohesion to gather that quickly? Don't tell me..." General Brownman trailed off, a cold dread pooling in his stomach.
The terrifying truth hung heavily in the air. The only reason feral devils could form an organized, disciplined vanguard like the one displayed on the monitors was if they were being telepathically commanded by a higher-ranked entity—most likely an A-class devil capable of dealing catastrophic damage. Or, God forbid, an S-class threat.
Looking at the live, encrypted drone footage on the tablet in his hands, Brownman could only watch in grim silence as thousands of feral devils stood in rigid, organized formations just outside the perimeter of the outskirts.
"Sir, even if they launch an immediate assault, the populations in the outskirts will naturally bear the full, devastating brunt of the vanguard," another officer chimed in smoothly, his expression entirely indifferent. "Before the devils can completely break through that sector, they will have already eaten their fill and exhausted their momentum. There should be no immediate need for them to advance toward the main walls."
General Brownman's eyes snapped toward the speaker, widening in pure, unadulterated disgust. "How can you, a sworn soldier of the NHF, speak like that? You want to use millions of innocent human lives as a literal meat shield?!"
The dark government ideology that the unawakened people of the outskirts were nothing more than harvestable farm products had never sat right with General Brownman. Seeing an officer utter it so bluntly, without blinking an eye, sent an icy chill down his spine.
Holding himself back from saging something awful the man, Brownman let out a slow, somber sigh and dropped the tablet onto his desk. "There is absolutely no reason for a high-ranking devil to organize thousands of monsters just to feast on humans. You are severely underestimating them. These high-rank variants possess an advanced intellect that is entirely on par with humans... So why would they waste their time organizing just to feats when they have the power to slaughter anyone in the outskirt"
"Yes, sir. That is correct... I deduced as much from the satellite routing," the first officer spoke up, his posture incredibly tense. He leaned forward. "What do you recommend we do, Sir?"
General Brownman closed his eyes. He had too much to carry, too many lives hanging on his signature.
"Gather the troops and mobilize immediately," the General ordered, his voice cutting through the room with absolute authority. "Deploy as many active battalions as the sector can spare. Strip the reserves for as many B-class combat soldiers as you can find. I'll personally pull some strings with the brass to see if I can get one or two A-class elites dispatched to reinforce your flank. Go out there and investigate."
He paused, staring fiercely at his command staff. "Use lethal force if you determine that whatever they are plotting can be neutralized by raw power. But your primary objective is to investigate and uncover what this gathering is truly about. Minimize casualties to the absolute best of your ability."
He knew the final command was a bitter lie; minimizing casualties in a clash of this scale was an operational impossibility. But it was the only phrase he could utter to give his own conscience a shred of solace for the potential flood of lives that were about to be lost.
"And scrap the disgusting idea of using the outskirts as a meat shield," Brownman added, his voice dropping into a dangerous, icy growl. "We are soldiers. It is our fundamental job to march directly into danger before anyone else."
The officers instantly snapped to their feet, delivering a synchronized, crisp military salute. General Brownman smoothly saluted back. A nearby aide stepped forward, presenting an official deployment file and a security tablet. Brownman firmly pressed his thumb against the glowing biometric glass sensor to authorize the troop movement, before picking up a traditional fountain pen and aggressively signing the physical paper documents.
Minutes after the high command staff filed out of the room, leaving the space completely silent, Brownman pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his dress uniform. He lit one up, took a deep, agonizing drag, and leaned entirely back into his heavy leather chair.
With his head thrown back against the headrest, watching the gray smoke drift up toward the dim lights of the ceiling, he let out a single, exhausted breath.
"Fuck."