Chapter 33

“Ah!” It was impeccable timing. As Black Mamba’s back swayed, his weapon moved swiftly like flowing water right at the guerrilla. It was Chungpabo’s zero-gravity move. The kukri drew a circle slicing off the barrel of the gun and the guerrilla’s wrist.

“Damn!”

Black Mamba bit his lips. He was a child soldier barely 13 or 14 years old. The white eyes on his black face were opened wide in surprise.

“Ugh—”

Crack— Before the child soldier could even let out a scream, Black Mamba slammed his elbow into his face. His strength was enough to shatter a boulder. The child soldier’s head cracked open; he trembled for a moment then collapsed.

“Fck, fck!”

He cursed at no one in particular. This was the middle of hell.

“How did I end up jumping into a world like this?”

Unsettling anger rose inside him.

“Kill them! Kill them!”

Like a drum, the words chanted in his head. As the gauge of his anger increased, a viciousness engulfed his entire body. Black Mamba turned red. The Parathropus’s murderous instinct took over his mind. Black Mamba had his way with the war, and it almost revealed his godly state.

A weasel entering a cage of chicks or a beagle jumping onto a bed could not have created more chaos than Black Mamba did now. Musta’s army could not target Black Mamba who moved so fast that he seemed to be teleporting.

A third of Musta’s army had been sent to retraining. To make up for the loss, they filled their numbers using child soldiers. The brainwashed teens had lost their sense of fear. They insanely pulled the trigger and attacked head-on. Black Mamba got rid of them without a second thought.

“Johnson, 3 o’clock position, 230 meters away.”

“Mouris, 12 o’clock position.”

“Mike, 9 o’clock position, 230 ｍeters left of the boulder.”

The captain spouted order after order upon mapping out their positions.

Lieutenant Paul was the commander of the war. He opened up the path for Black Mamba to go from place to place without threat.

“Dependable Captain!”

Black Mamba exclaimed. They made it possible for him to move around like a ghost as they diverted the enemy’s attention. The kukri was dyed in blood, and the Glock continued to spit out bullets.

The Glock that Black Mamba was using was a new brand, created in 1981. It was inexpensive, able to harbor 17 bullets, compact, and dependable. It was a highly practical weapon.

The Glock was created using the plastic capsule from Austria. It had previously been overlooked because of its plastic part, some thought it lacked finesse. The French, who had realized the usefulness of the Glock, immediately bought it for their army.

Black Mamba was satisfied with the capability of the Glock. This gun is a murder weapon. The best gun was one that had the best ability to murder. There was no need for sophistication. Black Mamba’s thought coincided with that of the Glock’s inventor.

Ombuti trembled as he observed the war through his night-vision goggles. Black Mamba was like a deadly hurricane crashing through Musta’s army. They couldn’t even target him because he moved so quickly.

The arteries cut by the kukri spewed blood. The soldiers whose spines had been broken from his kicks lay in grotesque positions with smashed pieces of brain spilling out from the cracked skulls, heads smashed in by rocks, and arms and legs splayed about apart from their bodies. It was hell. The bodies with bullet holes in their foreheads or on the back of their heads were the cleanest there.

“Ah! Azrael! Oh, Allah.”

Ombuti found himself praying without realizing it. He wiped his sweaty hands on his gandura. Watching the progression of the unrelenting warrior made him unable to breathe properly. The desert warrior did not forget his resentment. FROLINAT needed to be obliterated. Their enemy continued to ravage them in vengeance.

“Allahhu Akbar ha-da-apdal yaumin pi- haya-ti-duh ssuduh Black Mamba wa ssadi! (Allah is all-powerful. This is my life’s greatest day. Black Mamba is my master!)”

Ombuti stuck both his hands to his ears and bowed toward Black Mambo. He vowed to make Black Mamba his master for the rest of his life.

The angel of death froze in his movements. Suddenly, the life in him dissipated. Black Mamba, after drenched in icy water, came back to his senses.

“What have I done?”

The ringing of gunshots in his ear stopped. He couldn’t even remember how many he had killed. The revolting smell of blood hit him hard.

Everywhere he looked, he saw numerous corpses lying around him. He saw the corpses with their heads bashed in and their chests collapsed. It was a repeat of the massacre at Mt. Bang Tae. If there was a difference, it was that he could kind of remember himself causing the havoc.

He had charred five Glock magazines. The end of the kukri blade dripped blood. There were 20 who had been stabbed by its wrath.

“Am I human?”

Black Mamba stared at his blood-soaked hands. They were the hands which had touched the pure Hae Young and had patted the bottom of Hae Soon. They were the hands that had held his mother’s breast and fell asleep, the hands that had meditated while hitting a moktak. The blood-soaked hands looked gruesome.

“How could I touch Hae Young with these hands?”

His teacher will go through a cleansing ritual for his apprentice drenched in blood. His heart was heavy, and the end of his nose burned.

He sighed heavily and reoriented his corroded mind. What could he do? He had already run into the path of blood!

And he knew that he had to be drenched in blood to protect his comrades….

His father’s last request to take care of his mother had not been kept. It was because he had no power. Even if everything was tossed into chaos, he never wanted to lose anyone close to him ever again.

Black Mamba flew up 5 meters and stood atop a boulder. He used his transportation skills. He mapped out the places where he sensed life. Now there was no life left around him. Even the smallest animals like the lizards had either fled or died.

His comrades watched the scene through their night-vision goggles and trembled at the sight.

The crescent moon shone onto the silhouette of a man standing atop a boulder. On one hand, he was holding a bloody kukri and, in the other, a gun. Through the night-vision goggles, the burning blue light in the darkness was none other than the devil.

“Devil!”

Burimer murmured. Everyone agreed with Burimer’s words.

“I can’t believe it, Black Mamba!”

The captain sighed without realizing it. He could not calm his trembling heart. Even though he believed that the world held secrets that he would never understand, he still couldn’t believe his eyes.

There was no way a man who could kill 60 men with his bare hands was human!

The number of men that Black Mamba had reached 150. It was impossible to not call him the devil.

Black Mamba placed the bulletless Glock into his holster. Three or four guerrillas that were trying to escape fell as if they were dancing in a shower of bullets from his machine gun.

“It’s over!”

Only 20 minutes had passed since he charged at the guerrilla forces like a rambunctious beagle.

“All clear. Let us return.”

“C’est incroyable! (I can’t believe it!)”

The captain didn’t realize that drool was spilling down from his mouth. In the 20 years that he had been back and forth in war, he had never witnessed such a shocking battle. No, he couldn’t even have imagined it. It was not a fight but a slaughter. It was an unimaginable holocaust.

“Burimer, report back after checking it out.”

“Yes, sir.”

With expressions of fear, the rest of the team members crawled out of their bunker.

In 1948, the term “genocide” was first defined. In 2000, it was recorded in the international criminal courts and described as the following:

If a country or its leaders decide to attack citizens, nations, or ethnicities based on differences in religion, political, social or economic interest, gender, health, or region and a large population is affected by it, it was noted as a genocide. It was a plan to obliterate a population based on any of the above reasons.

France, a powerhouse nation, had sent their agent, Black Mamba to target the special group, the FROLINAT, in the mission Rescue Raccoon that killed about 170 people and obliterated the entire population.

This fell into the category of genocide.

Black Mamba jumped off the boulder and collapsed onto the floor. Severe fatigue overtook him. Like cotton soaked in water, his body felt like it was sinking. Five hours had passed since his first kill. Even the great Black Mamba could not be immune to it.

The once orange-brown uniform was blood red. Covered in blood and dust, he looked like a monster. He scratched his body through his clothes. The smell of blood was revolting, but the itching was driving him crazy. He was so exhausted, even scratching was tiresome. He threw off his clothes and rubbed his back against a rock until his skin was raw.

“Captain, Black Mamba is acting weird.”

Emil reported after seeing Black Mamba’s strange behavior.

“Oh dear, it’s war syndrome. Emil, bring a water bottle and follow me.”

The captain tore off Black Mamba’s clothes.

“Black Mamba, I am the baptizer. Prepare yourself to be released from your sins.”

His serious expression and tone of voice made it sound legitimate.

“Alright.”

Surprisingly, Black Mamba passively played along with this joke-like ritual. The captain stood in front of him with the thing between his legs dangling.

“Kneel.”

Emil lifted the water bottle and poured it over his head. The captain chanted like a pseudo priest.

“Black Mamba, this is a war baptism. You did not kill humans; you killed the enemy. The enemy is not human; they are just an enemy. The enemy’s blood has now been washed away by the waters of baptism. Your soul is cleansed.”

The captain uttered the nonsense as if he believed it.

“Oh! I’m fine.”

Black Mamba shot up. The unexpected phenomenon caused him to speak with an accent. The insane itch disappeared as if it never happened.

“How?”

The captain prodded Black Mamba’s private parts and laughed.

“Haha, he’s got good stuff. It’s nothing to be worried about. You subconsciously received the psychological stress of a holocaust. The brain releases hormones to combat this pressure induced by murder. That’s what would have caused the itching. It happens sometimes during war. When you received the baptism, it caused a placebo effect. It stopped the flow of hormones and stopped the itching.”

He wasn’t sure if there was proof or not, but it explained.

Black Mamba exclaimed, “Mon Dieu! C’est ve? (Wow, what in the world, is that true?)”

“Oui, C’est ve! (Of course, it’s true). It was in Dr. Lauren Giese’s dissertation.”

“Paris’s second university’s Dr. Lauren Giese?”

Black Mamba jumped in surprise. Giese was the person who he had saved at Mt. Bang Tae and she was a friend of his. The world was large yet small.

“Do you know Dr. Giese?”

“I know she is a famous person.”

Not wanting to explain in detail, he answered the question ambiguously. He was so tired that he didn’t even want to open his mouth. As his comrades were tidying up the war scene, he plopped down and couldn’t move an inch.

For 20 minutes, they pumped air into him. If he was a normal person, this would not have been enough. The sudden blast of air caused his muscles to stiffen.

“Bellman! Relieve Black Mamba’s muscles.”

The captain, having had a lot of experience, recognized Black Mamba’s condition immediately. Black Mamba’s first fighting initiation was a bloodbath. It was the emergence of the monster that his teacher had been worried about. After his muscles were massaged, he crawled into his sleeping bag and fell asleep.

“He’s on the move.”

Black Mamba opened his eyes. The cold air had woken him up. He opened his eyes and stared out blankly for a while then shook his head hard. The falling sunlight blinded him. His blurry vision started to focus. The captain’s gray and blue eyes were floating in front of him.

“How’s your condition?”

“Good.”

Black Mamba took the water from the captain and drank it in, his Adam’s apple jumping furiously. The water was warm, but it brought back life into his body.

“How long was I out?”

“Nine hours have passed.”

“Hm! Nine hours?”

Black Mamba lifted his upper body in surprise. He had been dead asleep for nine hours. The psychological stress had been much greater than the physical one and had made a greater impact on his body.

“He ran away afraid his penis would fall off. Hahaha!”

The captain laughed without opening his mouth, his signature laugh.