CH 33

“Then we will begin the 42nd survival training. Five people will form a team and each will receive a weapon according to their score. The game will run for 3 hours and the maximum number of personnel must return to their original positions in time to find the hidden flags in the area…………. There are no other rules of combat.”

After the briefing, the instructors assigned weapons. Some got guns, others knives; some received nothing.

Heiner fiddled with the jackknife he was given. It was a heck of a weapon compared to the automatic pistol he had last time.

Heiner was on Team D. The team members were all familiar faces. The training camp was a tight place, and everyone knew each other’s faces, even if they were not close friends.

They were given one minute for a strategy meeting. After briefly deciding on their positions and roles, they stood at the starting line. A senior member of the same team patted Heiner on the back.

“Heiner Valdemar, right?”

“Yes.”

“Amy White, fourth grade. You’re a third grader, yes? You’re no joke for someone with your age and size. Anyway, let’s give it our best shot.”

Heiner nodded. A fourth grader standing to Heiner’s left interrupted.

“I’m David. I’ve heard a lot about you. I hear you fight very well. But no weapons at all this time………. Anyway, let’s do it well.”

David fist-pumped him. Heiner did it with a blank look on his face.

A green signal round was fired into the sky. As soon as there was a ‘pop,’ the trainees sprang forward. After running together for some time, they dispersed to their respective positions at some point.

Heiner ran straight into the grass at a frightening speed. He was running like a flash, and his gray eyes bent to the side.

He quickly caught up with one of the opposing teams who had departed from a different spot. It was Germa, who was in the same grade as him. Germa had an eight-round pistol.

Heiner tossed his jackknife upward. The knife spun around several times in the air and fell back into his hand.

He quickly snapped off a sharp branch and threw it right in front of Germa. The branch flew at a furious speed and fell, hitting the tree head-on.

“Ah!”

The opponent, who let out a sound that could be either a scream or a sigh, stopped.

It was only a brief stop, but Heiner took advantage of the opportunity to throw his jackknife, which he had re-positioned so he was holding the tip. It was a surprisingly agile move.

Germa’s head belatedly turned to Heiner’s side.

His face was a mixture of bewilderment, fear, surprise, and tension. The muzzle of his gun met Heiner’s gaze.

Bang!

A gunshot echoed through the forest. The birds that had been sitting on the branches of the trees fluttered up. For a moment, the world was still as if it had stopped.

Blades of grass rustled under black military boots. Heiner walked slowly from behind the tree. He approached his fallen opponent.

Germa was clutching his neck, gasping for breath. Heiner grabbed the handle of the knife with an indifferent face. Then he pushed it in a little deeper.

Eventually Germa’s breath stopped. Heiner pulled out the jackknife and blood gushed out. He tore off Germa’s nametag. If the number of flags was a team win, the number of nametags was an individual score.

Heiner grabbed the handgun that had fallen to the ground and checked the ammunition.

There were seven rounds left. It made sense since the match had just started, but it looked like the first shot had been fired earlier.

Generally speaking, reducing the number of enemy teams from the beginning was not a very wise choice. After finding them, killing them was an easier way to take their flags.

However, Heiner needed a gun in case of an emergency situation. Because the graduates who participated in this survival training were eager to kill him.

Heiner began running through the forest again. He found one flag in a tree and one in a rock cave, killing another in the process and getting a name tag. However, the other opponent didn’t have a flag.

Gunshots and screams began to be heard everywhere in the forest. Pop. Yellow signal round was fired into the sky. It meant an hour had passed.

In the midst of falling into a side road, Heiner ran into Ethan head-on. Ethan looked somewhat nervous when he met his roommate.

Heiner silently moved out of the way. Ethan gave a small nod and chuckled, slapping him on the shoulder.

From then on, Heiner found another flag among the grass. He spotted one of the enemy team, but quietly ducked for cover as his opponent had a rifle.

Pop. A yellow signal round was fired. There was one hour left until the end of the match.

Heiner met with Amy and shared the number of flags and information. Amy focused on killing and stealing the flags rather than looking for them and took a total of two flags.

After leaving Amy, Heiner headed in the direction of 5 o’clock as per the information. Just as he was about to jump over the creek, he sensed the slightest sign and reflexively lowered his upper body.

Bang!

A flying bullet struck a tree near his head. Heiner, who escaped death by the slightest margin, quickly hid behind the tree. He heard a familiar voice from the other side.

“Damn, you’re filthy quick.”

It was Benjamin Holland, one of the men who had lynched Heiner. Benjamin lightly tapped the muzzle of his gun and said.

“I’ve been looking for you and just this is how we’re meeting.”

“Hey, that guy really almost died.”

“Then you want to save him?”

“I don’t want to kill him. I’m just wondering if there’s another kid who looks like him in the training center.”

Grumpled Olivia, who had told her colleagues not to touch Heiner’s face. Heiner stood leaning against a tree and watched the dynamics.

There were four opponents. They were all a herd that had tormented Heiner badly. They were about to graduate anyway, so they seemed to have given up on the score and were trying to survive.

“Hey, is this your friend?”

Grita, famous among the seniors for being an idiot, kicked something over. It rolled through the grass to Heiner’s side. It was a dead body.

Heiner’s eyes narrowed slightly as he checked the corpse’s head, which was lying on its side. The head had  shoulder-length hair and was relatively small in stature. It was a familiar figure.

“If we’re on a different team tomorrow…………”

“Let’s just keep each other alive.”

It was Ethan.

They tried to help each other, but he had died sometime. Judging by the fact that he had not yet developed rigor mortis, it looked like he hadn’t been dead for too long.

Grita and Hayden chuckled and taunted Heiner.

“Your friend wasn’t even f*cking good at fighting. How have you survived so far? Did you give your body and survive?”

“Did you give your hole to that bastard?”

“I’m sure he gives it to the instructors. One sausage after another, hahaha.”

They chuckled at their own low-grade jokes.

Heiner took his eyes off Ethan’s body and looked around. It looked like a good place to take cover as it was dense with trees.

Four opponents. Benjamin and Grita in particular were quite capable. If they were outnumbered and confronted head-on, they were likely to lose.

Olivia and Hayden were relatively less talented, but they too were seniors.

Considering their survival rate to graduation, they were at least in the upper-middle range.

Heiner quietly regained his grip on his pistol. Laughter and trivial jokes went on. His opponents seemed to be completely relaxed.

Ethan had once told him.

“Why do you keep getting beat up all the time? Frankly, if you die, they’ll be in trouble. You have to show them that if they touch you, they’ll fall too.” (E)

Ethan’s not entirely wrong. Despite being a third-year student, Heiner was bigger than his peers and was the trainee that the instructors were watching closely.

The first or second graders in senior classes could not overpower him. However, despite his strength, Heiner had never attacked them back.

“…It is forbidden to kill trainees in any situation other than survival training.” (H)

“No. Who told you to kill them? Just show them your strength.” (E)

“It won’t end there.” (H)

“What?” (E)

“It won’t end unless you break or kill them.” (H)

There were different types of violence. Heiner knew very well about the violence that takes place in closed spaces.

He had experienced it countless times since he was a child, when he couldn’t remember much.

It was impossible among the trainees, just as it was among ordinary groups. Among them, Benjamin’s group was the leader.

In the training camp, power was absolute. As seniors, they would never have tolerated the humiliation of being trampled by third-year students.

An ambiguous victory would only lead to greater violence. If there was one thing Heiner learned most clearly at the orphanage, it was precisely that.

Violence was something inescapable in his life. The sequence of his life growing up from a child to a boy was imbued with that kind.

If he had to face it anyway, it was better to avoid the greater violence. Unless the very person to whom the violence was inflicted was removed.

Heiner exhaled slowly, holding the pistol to his chest. Whoosh. The grass that encased Ethan’s body swayed in the wind. A faint light drifted in his indifferent gray eyes.

In survival training, murder was condoned.

It also meant that he could see the end.