Roughly an hour later, after giving Beth plenty of time to read the book, I was called back into her tent. I found her, sitting at a folding table, leaning forward with her chin propped up by her hands. Her eyes stared down towards the journal of the man who, by all current accounts, never existed. Yet the words he wrote made sense.
“Commander Ne’yal… you are not to speak of this book to anyone.” She spoke in a solemn tone, catching me by surprise. “You are not to spread word of its contents. If you do… everybody will panic. Morale will shatter, and we will all fall with the next wave of attacks…”
I understood the logic behind her words, but… “So, what? Are we just supposed to keep eating the grubs? Pretend that we haven’t learned of what they’re doing to us?”
To silence me, she simply raised a single hand. “I’ll be sending word through the communication network that the grubs are harmful, and that they should only be eaten as a last resort. However… if we can’t find another source of food soon, we won’t have a choice.”
“Can’t the First Legion just expand their fields? If we incorporate a portable gateway system, there is the chance that they would be able to find exponentially more people than they had planned.”
With a sigh, Beth shook her head, reaching over for a stack of papers. “I’m afraid that isn’t possible. I found these reports in the General’s tent for your battalion… according to the documents, his name should have been Saren. And he was the true Legion General.”
My eyes opened wide at that, before I shook away the shock. “What do the reports say?”
“The First Legion’s attempts at agriculture have failed.” She spoke the words coldly, as if delivering a final verdict. “The soil is extremely rich in nutrients, but the grubs devour them so fast that it is impossible for anything else to grow. Any attempts to transplant the soil without any insects has ended in failure. Their eggs are hidden, mixed in with the soil.”
“The First Legion’s seed supply has been almost entirely exhausted in their attempts to create a proper farm. According to the reports, they’re studying the grubs to discover if there are any means of controlling them. However… there’s one problem.”
I raised an eyebrow, after which Beth pulled out three sheets of paper. “I’m not sure if Saren noticed it. If he did, it doesn’t look like he sent a response back that they could make sense of. But… they reported the ‘beginning’ of these experiments three different times. Each time, it was a new messenger sending the report.”
“Most likely, Saren did not look back through his old paperwork as often as the writer of this journal… Otherwise, he might have noticed the discrepancy. As it stands… we have to assume that the First Legion has been infected with the meal grubs. And that they have a self-defense mechanism that triggers whenever someone tries to do certain types of invasive studies, the same kind of mechanism that makes us all forget people.”
“The author of the book is an even more extreme example… It was when he began to focus on the meal grubs, recognizing them as the cause of the memory lapses, that he was ‘taken’. This might be a coincidence… or it might be another defense mechanism.”
“‘Test me, and you will be erased. Suspect me, and you will be erased. Harm me, and you will be erased.’ These are likely the kinds of abilities that these creatures possessed. For now… I will pass an order to all remaining Legions to cease consuming the grubs. I won’t tell them why. Not for two more weeks. That should be enough time to get it out of their system.”
Her words made me hesitate, looking sharply towards the general. “Ma’am… you said all remaining Legions…”
“I did.” Beth confirmed with a small nod. “I was thinking… there had to be people who noticed the First Legion’s error. I tried to think of every Legion General I knew, to figure out who I could contact. However, in doing so…”
She took a deep breath, her eyes closing. “Commander Ne’yal… which direction did the Second Legion depart from the forward base, when beginning the expedition?”
“Directly north, ma’am.” I answered immediately. We had been assigned positions based on our numbers. The First Legion stayed at the camp, the Second moving north, and then they began to rotate clockwise around the compass.
“Good. And the thirty-fifth?” She asked again. This time, I had to take a moment to focus.
“Roughly east by south-east.”
However, it was her next question that made me truly hesitate. “And the fifty-third?”
I paused, thinking back. Logically, the Fifty-Third Legion would have moved almost directly south. However, I couldn’t recall seeing them in the formation. In fact… I couldn’t recall them at all.
“What about the Seventeenth? Or the Ninth?” Logically, I knew which direction they should have moved. But those three legions… I couldn’t remember anything about them. Obviously, if there was a Tenth Legion, there had to be a Ninth. If there was a Twenty-First, there had to be a Seventeenth. So, why did I feel like those Legions never came through the gate, like they had never been trained with us in the first place?
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“Of the one hundred Legions… I couldn’t remember these three. Which makes me think that they are the ones who acted first. Once they saw the repeated pattern of disappearances, they had a method to put it together, and spread the news to their own Legion first. No doubt, they would have wanted to tell every other Legion immediately afterwards. Who knows… they might have.”
“I can’t guarantee that cutting the supply of grubs will prevent further problems. In fact, I am almost certain that you and I will be in the next wave of ‘chitinites’ that attack our camps. However, I have to believe that cutting the supply without informing the troops of the reason is a method that neither of the three ‘Lost Legions’ have attempted.”
“When you leave this tent, I am going to pass an order along. Every general and commander will pass the order independently to their own men, making everyone write it down themselves. Even if I disappear as I suspect, they will have the written instructions from their own hand. They should remember their own commanding officers giving the order, instead of remembering it coming from me myself.”
As she said that, she slid the book across the table, towards me. “Just in case I don’t make it in time to give the order. I wrote another entry at the back of the book to remind you of my decision.”
I gave a small nod, accepting the book. As I did so… I had an idea. It was a strange idea, and I needed to verify it on myself before I could spread it. If it worked, it might be enough to save everyone. If it didn’t… then telling others would only doom us all.
As I left the General’s tent, I quickly moved towards my own battalion, making my way into my own tent. From there, I pulled a pen out, and quickly began writing within the journal. The original writer of this journal had clearly retained enough language knowledge when losing his memory to continue writing, so it made sense that I would be able to read it in the worst case scenario.
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Your name is Krash Ney’al. You are a proud member of the heroc race. In order to save the future of your planet, you chose to join the Keeper’s army. You are one of the ten thousand Disaster Commanders, serving under one thousand Dragon Generals. The original size of the army was two million.
Upon arriving to this world, the army began consuming a strange insect with high nutritional value. You must not do this. This insect has a property that allows it to alter your memories. If you are reading this, you have likely already forgotten yourself, and everyone you know has forgotten you as well. Keep this book on you at all times. Use any means necessary, but do not eat the grubs! If you find anything else edible, store it in the hidden space within your scabbard. It has an enchantment to keep food fresh longer.
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After I wrote the simple message to myself, I closed my eyes and began focusing. This insect governed over the realm of thought. There was a high likelihood that it was able to infect our mana, or use a similar source of energy to transmit information between host minds.
If it was about sealing my mana, that was an easy task. I was able to do that in a matter of moments. But that was not the main idea I had. In order to expel this infection from my body, I swept through my body with my spiritual energy, looking for anything that felt… wrong.
Sure enough, I soon found something. At the very base of my primary brain, something tiny and white, with thin tendrils leading deeper. I thought that it looked vaguely similar to the grubs, at first… The grubs are simply the larval stage of the creature.
I felt a theory starting to come together in my mind. After another being consumes the grubs, they begin maturing, attaching to the host’s brain and controlling their memory. They can’t affect learned skills and muscle memory, because I saw chitinites using magic. No… what they affect is ‘identity’.
When the insect feels threatened, it will ‘consume’ the identity of its host. Which means that they have to work on a hive mind. When the identity is consumed from one host, all hosts forget the individual. Instead, their ‘identity’ is replaced with that of a chitinite, and that is how the other hosts begin to perceive them.
That’s why other creatures have poisonous blood and meat… it is a defense mechanism against these insects. They can’t survive in those conditions, and aren’t able to take root.
I felt like I should have figured it out. But… maybe because I wasn’t saying anything out loud, or giving any visual indicators of my suspicions, the defense mechanism hadn’t been triggered yet. So… what was faster… me killing the insect, or it consuming my identity?
I materialized my spiritual awareness as a spike that stabbed into the body and mind of the insect. As I did so, I felt a stab of pain in my mind, and heard the startled shouts of those outside the tent. The insect’s pain as it died seemed to have been transmitted to the other hosts… the other soldiers in the camp.
I muttered a quick, mental apology to them, ensuring that any trace of the creature was gone from my own brain. Only when I had done so did I open my eyes, and walk out of the camp. Several soldiers were looking around in confusion as they gripped their heads, clearly not understanding why they had all felt a mental spike of pain.
Some ran past, sending strange looks towards me as they rushed to check the perimeter. I needed to go report to Beth quickly. I had managed to kill the insect within myself… and the soldiers weren’t treating my like a chitinite.
Once I made my way to the tent, I found Beth staring in confusion towards a paper that she had just written. A written instruction of the order that she had only just told me that she would be delivering. However, she didn’t seem to understand it, or maybe didn’t understand why she had it.
As she looked up to me, I realized just what my idea had caused. “Commander, identify yourself.” I had killed my ‘identity’ within the hive mind. They didn’t recognize me anymore… That’s why I was getting strange looks from the soldiers, not because I seemed to be the only one that hadn’t suffered as much from the mental spike.
My armor clearly marked me as one of the Commanders… but they couldn’t remember ever seeing me. And because my ‘identity’, and everything I had informed Beth about was erased… she didn’t know why she had been preparing to issue this order anymore.