Chapter 64 - Episode 7: The Shadow of Betrayal

His dart shot pebbles which crushed their heads and killed them by dropping large rocks on top of them

Once something was held in Black Mamba’s hand, it was an assassination tool, a fatal weapon. Blended with the darkness, he was no different from the kanma.

A boring battle lasting over four hours continued. The battle between the FAP’s scout teams and Black Mamba which had begun at one in the morning lasted until daybreak began hazily over the sky.

A bloodied figure of a human appeared behind the machine gunners’ camp. A strong hand grabbed the rifleman’s neck, who had been watching the clearing.

Crack!

The cervical spine and occipital shattered with pure pressure.

A palm slapped against another rifleman’s chest in passing. The sound of chest bones cracking rang out.

‘Damn, I’m tired.’

The enemy had been immobilized, but he hadn’t been able to kill him. The machine gunner twisted his head the moment he realized something was wrong, just as he raised his Kukri.

His eyes zeroed on the sight of a bloodied devil rising against the moonlight. The smell of blood rushed from the devil before his nose.

“Ka, kanma!”

The machine gunner felt his logic fail him. Before his brain could react, the blade glinted against the moonlight. The kukri sliced the neck as though it was butter.

“Kuk!”

A red line appeared on the rifleman’s neck.

“Huya!” The junior staff pulled out his short sword with a strange shout.

Clang!

The junior staff had barely touched his short sword’s handle. The kukri which had just passed the rifleman’s neck twisted around following the elbow’s movement. It was the Crane Wing’s movement, in the theory of a crane hitting the eagle with its wings. The junior staff’s head, which had been attacked at the temple, crumpled inward.

It was then that the other’s neck fell off.

The rifleman’s headless body and the junior staff’s smashed head hit the ground simultaneously.

The eyes of the chest-smashed rifleman widened incredibly.

His face turned pale like paper. He had seen the kanma rumored to drink human blood and eat their flesh.

“Agh, ka, kanma!”

The moment Black Mamba turned around, he frothed in his mouth and fell backward.

“Huh, he died himself!”

He had been preparing to deal the final blow, which made him smile in incomprehension. The rifleman’s heart hadn’t been able to deal with the fear on top of its injuries, hence it had ceased to beat.

The machine-gunners’ camp was covered in red blood. A grenade, still pinned, rolled out of the junior staff’s chest. He hadn’t been able to use it. As Black Mamba grabbed the grenade, with a flash, darkness cracked apart on the other side.

“That f****** Allah wand!”

With the flare, Black Mamba immediately kicked against the ground.

Bang!

The warhead decimated the three corpses in blood.

“Ack!”

Black Mamba was swayed like a falling leaf in the explosion’s impact.

His muscles which surpassed abnormality had grown tired in the long strenuous hours.

His LTHR had reached the limit, making his muscles unable to exert the full output. Black Mamba, who had been thrown onto the ground, rolled a few ways before finally stopping.

He had been battered by stones and pierced by wood splinters. His consciousness wavered. His mind’s resonance had grown in the time he had fought the life-or-death battle. He hadn’t landed a severe injury as he had landed with the flow of the resonance’s waves, not against.

“Ya ilahi, la- astati-wu- an usaldikah! Taswa kanma. (By Allah, I can’t believe it. I’ve gotten the kanma.)”

Black Mamba stood, battered.

He could see a guerrilla who was dancing with his hands in the air. He was but 70 meters away.

The kanma of their religion didn’t die. The guerrilla who had fired the RPG at close range opened his mouth as wide as a lantern.

“Ka, ka, ka, kanma!”

The human had just been shot by an RPG. The guerrilla looked scared out of his wits. Despite having a handgun by his side he panicked, trying to shove another warhead into the launcher. An RPG didn’t launch if the warhead and launcher weren’t aligned to their degree. It was, in a sense, a safety measure.

Black Mamba regained his equilibrium. The guerrilla’s hand shook like a twig under the glare of the devil, his soul escaping him. It was to the point his shivering form looked pitiful.

“Goodbye. Although I don’t know whether Allah would accept a speck of dirt like you.”

The dark object which sped through the air punctured the guerrilla’s lungs and went out the other end. It was the Soviet grenade Black Mamba threw without even activating.

He was out of bullets and darts. The grenade he had just thrown like a rock was the last weapon. Lieutenant commander Payze, once the tyrant of Sahel and commander of the scouts, died by a grenade. If Payze had been in his right mind, he could have shot Black Mamba, who had lost his footing with his gun. Only the strongest survive. There was no ‘if’ in the battlefield.

With the death of Payze, the explosions and gunshots of Er Ekdim stopped.

The black valley with its grey fog had turned into the Gehenna, or Islamic hell. A human figure walked out of hell covered in blood, with dawn on his back. It was the Azrael who reaped 120 souls, Black Mamba. When the bloodied devil appeared, the bloodlust expanded as though it was pushing away the fog.

His footsteps were sure, his expression closed.

Unlike what it seemed, Black Mamba’s legs were trembling minutely. Behind him, the path he had walked was littered in blood. It was a line of blood, of both his own and his enemies’.

There had been a guerrilla hiding in the place he had thrown himself towards in order to avoid the grenade’s explosion. He was stabbed in his calf. The guerrilla, who had given a cut, had his neck sliced off in exchange. There was none to tell the story of how the guerrilla managed to land a hit on the kanma.

After Black Mamba left, a bloodied human figure crawled out of the machine gunners’ camp. The human crawled around after escaping the bunk without a sense of direction until it gave out in a heap of blood. It was the guerrilla whose heart had stopped in fear. He had survived under Allah’s protection of extreme fortune.

The Payze sentry unit of Habib’s main army sealed their fate in the Er Ekdim valley. It was the result of staying faithful to their lives as mercenaries while fighting against the angle of death.

The Er Ekdim valley was a sedimentary rocky region.

The rock’s surfaces had rounded after years of passing winds overall. There were several mushroom rocks that had their bottom parts rounded off by time.

Black Mamba collapsed under the largest mushroom rock. It was a good spot for concealment, as it had an emptied root’s hole, and gave shelter from sunlight and windstorms.

His injury from the poisoned dart had already healed and scabbed. His poisonous state had also healed. The other scattered injuries, stabs, bruises, and tears looked fierce in nature but weren’t much. The problem was the stab wound in his left calf. It was one inch deep and five inches across.

He ripped his gandourah to stem the bleeding and pulled out pieces of wood and metal embedded in his body. After pulling out most of the flints he collapsed back onto the ground.

He didn’t have the strength to move. His legs began to tremble from the nightlong use. It was the result of using strenuous techniques that bunched up his leg muscles. Not even his iron-hard muscles could withstand the strain.

Black Mamba felt, for the first time, how important his comrades’ assistance was. The enemy’s ten-point formation was the most advantageous against die-alone soldiers like himself.

The heaven’s net which often appeared in martial arts novels hadn’t been a lie. If Emil had provided cover against the RPG with his machine gun, the battle would have ended easily. Of course, the chance of Emil dying in the process of doing so was 100 percent.

He also felt the difficulty of going against a prepared enemy, even if it would have been a similar battle. He couldn’t use the poison as his excuse. The enemy could use as many methods to kill him as he would. There wasn’t a matchstick savior on the battlefield after all.

Black Mamba stared at the eastern skies, which began to bleed red. The fog which had surrounded the valley began to climb up the cliff’s surface. It was the sight of sunrise he often viewed on the small bridge, on top of the boar rock.

“It’s over.”

At Burimer’s words, ten bloodshot eyes turned towards the Captain. Everyone had clenched their hearts in waiting throughout the night. It had been four hours of continuous explosions and gunshots. There had been over three hundred explosions counted throughout the night.

Even if Black Mamba was talented, he was their team’s youngest. There was no mercenary who found comfort in sending the youngest off to chaos. Even Mike who had been ordered to stay put found his insides burning black.

– Black. Black!

The Captain opened his headset and shouted.

There was no reply. Black Mamba had ran and rolled all over the explosions and aftershocks. It would have been strange if his headset had remained intact.

The mercenaries’ faces crumpled. Everyone imagined a result they disliked. Only Ombuti remained calm. A human was a human, and an Azrael was an Azrael. His owner wasn’t going to be defeated with just a few herds of Basenji hunting dogs. Ombuti’s faith remained unwavering.

“Burimer, Mike, begin the search.”

The mercenaries left, leaving only Chartres behind.

Ombuti looked everywhere for Black Mamba.

Parts of the cliff had been destroyed. There had been small and loud explosions throughout the night. The ground had flipped and rocks had shattered. After witnessing the scene, worry began to creep in.

“Ombuti!”

At the sound of a lion roaring, Ombuti cracked his head around. Underneath a mushroom rock, his Wakil lay with all four wings spread apart.

“Uwah!”

Ombuti ran towards him in a frenzy and flew into tears as he hugged Black Mamba. Ombuti had trusted his Wakil’s abilities, but his chest had turned into coal.

“Uh, what are you doin’?”

Surprised, Black Mamba spoke in his Gyeongsangdo accent.

“Wakil, you are safe! Allāhu Akbar! Allāhu Akbar!”

The man over 40 years old cried in ugly tears.

“Ombuti, I’m hungry.”

Black Mamba was about to die in hunger. His hunger was as large as the energy he had spent. Ombuti hurriedly pulled out his C-ration and chocolate bars from his backpack.

“Bell Man, here’s Wakil.”

His comrades rushed over after hearing Ombuti’s shouts.

They were horrified upon finding a lump of blood instead of a human. Only his eyes remained black and white, while everything else was dyed in red. Even his face was crusted with dried blood.

Bell Man rushed to check his injuries.

The small scratches weren’t severe. They were tears from rock splinters or wood pieces that had torn through by the explosions. The large wound was his knife-torn calf.

His muscles had been overturned by the foot-long tear.

Bell Man immediately sterilized the wound and began suture. He placed nearly a hundred stitches.

Black Mamba ate five C-rations while Bell Man was stitching. The moment his meal was over, Ombuti rapidly lit a cigarette and offered it. It was a loyal servant Ombuti’s dessert service.

By the time the suture had nearly ended, Bell Man slapped his forehead.

“Ah, anesthesia!”

It was a mistake he often forgot.

“You forgot again?”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Bell Man questioned his question.

“I thought we were short of anesthesia. It hurts. Don’t forget next time,” Black Mamba replied expressionlessly.

All the mercenaries shook their heads. One was a psycho and the other was a monster.

The Captain grabbed Black Mamba’s hand.

“Good work.”

There was nothing to say.

“Badger’s meat is thick.” Black Mamba smiled.

Now that he was full, sleep came.

It was his natural instincts in order to speed up the recovery process while decreasing the amount of energy spending.

“Black! Yup.”

Ombuti immediately slapped a hand over Mike’s mouth.

“Be quiet. He fell asleep.”

The members who arrived later hung their mouths open.

“Zzz- Zzzzzz-”

It was ridiculous.

To think there would be a human being who sleeps so comfortably with a snore, after a bloodthirsty battle, in the middle of a battlefield reeking of blood! They were rendered speechless at the level of uncaringness.

Ombuti pulled out his Beretta and stood guard in front of Black Mamba. Jang Shin and Emil watched the back. Bell Man cut open Black Mamba’s clothes and began his treatment.

“Soldier, there’s a bunch of dedicated ladies.”

Burimer smiled, speechless.

“Leave him; even if it’s Black, he would be tired to death.”

The Captain stared at the snoring Black Mamba with complicated eyes.

“Jang Shin, Emil, leave the guarding to Black’s servant and follow Mike.”

“But Black looks injured…”

Jang Shin and Emil dragged their feet and refused to leave.

“What are you bastards doing? We need to hurry with clean up. Take what’s needed and stuff.” Mike’s professional sadism began.

“I should take a look at the masterpiece the angel of death worked on all night,” Emil said leisurely as he slung his Minimi across his shoulder.

He, too, had become a veteran who was no longer moved by Mike’s orders.

Black Mamba continued snoring without a care in the world.

Burimer and Mike formed teams and climbed the surface of Er Ekdim’s valley.

“Ugh!”

“My God!”

The mercenaries who found the scene of battle shivered. Mouris clicked on the camera’s shutter rapidly.

The entire cliff had been overturned.

With pieces of splintered rocks, exploded tree stumps, uprooted plants and grass, and entangled corpses, they could tell how fierce the battle had been, in just reflection.

“That snake bastard’s flipped the entire cliff upside down. F***, I can’t even breathe from now. I’m never going to look at Korean bastards again,” Mike murmured under his breath with a tired expression.

The battlefield was nothing compared to the rows of corpses. There was a never-ending supply of that.

The corpses ripped from explosions weren’t surprising. Aside from Jang Shin and Emil, they were all mercenaries who had once been the vanguards of the battlefield. They were seniors who opened their C-rations to eat in front of pieces of bodies.