Chapter 34
A mother
Location: Kapsan hospital, Hyesan province, Kim Sungta
Day: 11th of June 5027
- Yawwwn –
One of the guards wakes up from his sleep and yawns.
He looks up at the sky and sees the moon shining down on him he then looks to his side and sees his squad mate lip-syncing and head-banging to a song.
He couldn’t hear the song his squad mate was listening to, as his squad mate was using a feature of the extranet that projects the sound directly into the ear canal to act as a headset without the need for one.
His squad mate’s rifle was left on the ground resting on the wall behind them.
‘ he still has that habit, he will get in trouble if the sergeant catches him without his weapon’
The guard thinks to himself then hugs his rifle tightly before descending back into the land of dreams.
Faint footsteps could be heard walking toward the two guards but neither of them could hear it.
The door behind the two guards opens slowly causing the receptionist to look up from her holographic screen but she sees nothing beyond the door besides the two guards.
She shrugs her shoulders blaming it on the wind and goes back to watching her favorite steamer.
The invisible intruder walks inside and internally sighs at the lax security or supposedly government hospital.
‘This country is surviving on the grace of God alone, well, at least it’s working in my favor’
The invisible intruder slowly makes her way through the hospital looking for the office of the general.
As this hospital is run by the military of kim sungta, most workers in it are members of the army and it’s run by a military rank system.
All the doctors carry the rank of lieutenant or above and the general acts both as CEO of the hospital and its medical director.
It takes her a while but the intruder eventually finds the general’s office in the basement of the hospital of all places.
Next to the office door, there is a small room with four guards inside.
The four guards seemed to be playing some sort of card game with holographic cards.
Each of the cards had a weird symbol on its back; the symbol started with a star in the middle surrounded by a circular maze of lines inside a rhombus shape, four oval shapes extended out of the rhombus, one out of each edge of the rhombus, the four oval shapes intersected with another bigger circle making the full symbol look like a complex magical spell.
Below the weird symbol stood three females, one very young, one mature looking, and one very old.
The invisible intruder stops in front of the young guards watching them play with a sorrowful look.
Military service is mandatory in Kim sungta.
Once you reach the age of sixteen years old and finish your primary education, you have to join the military for three years, unless you pursue higher education at which point military service is delayed until you finish your education.
The sight of the young teens playing card games caused the heart of the invisible intruder to ache.
The young teens were only a few years older than her own child.
She silently mourned the lost childhood of her daughter and wondered if her daughter would have enjoyed playing card games as well.
The invisible intruder sighs internally and firms her resolve.
She uses her light magic to create the illusion of the little girl to catch the attention of the guards.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
She subconsciously makes the illusion look like what she imagines her child to look like right now.
One of the young guards notices the young kid.
-huh? How did you get in here little girl –
The intruder makes the illusion of the girl giggle and then run across the hallway.
-hey Kid wait –
The guard shouts then runs after the little girl.
-what’s wrong with you all of a sudden?-
One of his squad mates asks in confusion.
- there is a little girl here, I think she might be lost or something –
The rest of the guards get up to check on their mate and another one of them asks.
-well, did you find her? –
-no, she disappeared I don’t know where she went -
Click
- are you sure you were not imagining it? How would a child get here? –
One of his mates asks with a chuckle.
- I am telling you I saw her –
Clack
Because of their confusion, none of the guards noticed the faint clicking sound of the office door opening and closing behind them as the intruder makes her way inside the office.
The office was very simple and it had almost no electronics at all.
The military of Kim sungta had adopted a minimalistic or perhaps even primitive approach when it came to their organization or intelligence work.
The reason for that was to avoid the world government; since they could never match the world government in terms of technology, they decided not to play that game in the first place.
After all, no matter how advanced the world government is, they can’t hack a carrier pigeon and they can’t hack a device if it’s not there.
But that comes with its own downsides, especially in terms of efficiency, evidenced by the mountain of papers on the general’s desk and filling every inch of his cupboard.
‘this is going to take a while ‘
The intruder dispels her invisibility to conserve her mana.
She knows she doesn’t have to worry about cameras since they could also be hacked.
The invisibility spell slowly deactivates revealing a slender woman in her early thirties.
Her body was abnormally thin showing that she hadn’t been eating well.
Her muscles were toned and defined but not pronounced, after all, her body wasn’t one crafted by rigorous training and careful nutrition like that of an athlete, her body was one molded by the harsh reality of her situation, one that was forced to be strong out of necessity not out of convenience or desire.
Her long straight black hair seamlessly blended with her black shirt and pants and her black leather jacket.
Her face looked tired, depressed, and lonely, which contrasted with her narrow, focused, and determined eyes.
Leather belts crisscrossed over her shirt and below her jacket and from each of them hung a spell pistol hidden by her leather jacket.
The lonely mother walked to the general’s desk and began looking through his papers.
It takes her a while but she eventually finds a file with the name “Lavi” written on it causing her face to light up for what seems to be the first time in a long long time.
‘my child’
The mother hurriedly opens the file and using her light magic begins to create a holographic copy of it.
-Good evening, Sir –
-Good evening, Sir –
-Good evening, Sir –
-Good evening, Sir -
the mother hears the four guards shout in unison from beyond the door and hurries up her copying process.
-Good evening, boys –
The mother flips through the pages quicker as she hears footsteps approaching the door.
The door knop begins to rattle as the mother quickly flips through the final pages of the file as fast as she can.
The general opens the door with a smile to find his office empty but his files are in a different position than how he left them and the cover to his air vent is removed.
He immediately rushes to ring the alarm bells and shouts.
- seal the vents and close all the exits we have an intruder –
-yes, sir – the guards quickly run to follow his orders.
The invisible mother rushes out of the office planning to use the chaos she caused by faking a vent intruder to hide her actual escape route.
Unlike the inexperienced guards, the general is able to pick up on the sound of additional footsteps with seemingly no source and reaches out toward the mother as she runs past him grabbing her arm.
- invisibility spell –
The mother is shocked for a moment not expecting to be caught but immediately turns around and kicks the general in the face making him let go of her before continuing to run away.
The general groans holding his face where he was kicked then shouts as loud as he can.
-invisibility spell-
The guards that hear him shout the same before taking out goggles from their vests and putting them on.
-invisibility spell-
-invisibility spell-
-invisibility spell-
One after another shouts then puts on their goggles and in a matter of seconds, everyone in the building is wearing the goggles that let them see through invisibility.
-sh*t –
-STAND STILL, DON’T MOVE-
-STAND STILL, DON’T MOVE-
-STAND STILL, DON’T MOVE-
-STAND STILL, DON’T MOVE-
The mother curses as multiple soldiers quickly shout at her while surrounding her and pointing their rifles at her.
- don’t arrest her you idiots, shoot her -
The soldiers hesitate and some of them look at each other.
Although they trained on what to do many times, these young and inexperienced soldiers never killed anyone before and they weren’t ready to start killing now.
Since Kim sungta is very peaceful most soldiers can spend their entire service time without having ever shot anyone let alone arrested one.
That is especially true for a rural province like Hyesan and especially more so in a hospital.
None of them expected to have to kill someone or was prepared for it.
-What are you waiting for you idiots? SHOOT HER –
As the young teens struggle with the decision, a beam of white light descends on them from the top right as though it came from heaven to alleviate them from having to make that hard choice.
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR
The loud thunder like roar and powerful shockwave arrive a mere moment after the white light, turning what looked heavenly into a hellish scene.
The powerful shockwave blows away the guards sending them flying.
Bits of charred rubble from the walls of the basement fly away
A trail of molten lava and charred ground is left in the path of the light that leads from the basement all the way to the surface.
The mother looks up the trail of lava to see a blonde guy dressed in all black holding a vicious demonic skull with its mouth open and two girls standing next to him.