Bad Born Blood - Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The Force user left a significant impact on me.

My back, caught in the explosion, was a complete wreck with no intact spot to be found. My pelvis and hip joints, damaged from high-speed maneuvers, had turned pitch black with necrosis.

For a lower-class citizen, it was a severe injury. Artificial skin made from synthetic fibers, medical-grade alloys to replace bones… Even just these would cost quite a bit. If I hadn’t been a cadet in the Imperial Guard, I doubted I’d be able to pay it off, even after a lifetime of work. For this level of injury, a lower-class family would give up on treatment and request euthanasia instead.

Fortunately, as an orphan, I had the solid support of the Imperial Guard in place of a lower-class family. By the time I drifted in and out of anesthesia a few times, the surgery was already over.

“Hmm.”

I turned around and looked at myself in the mirror. The artificial skin adhered smoothly to my back. Only faint, map-like seams remained, slightly crooked.

‘The doctor said that once the integration is complete, the seams won’t show at all.’

Though it wasn’t necessary to make it this pristine, the care taken in the surgery was obvious.

Creak.

I stretched out my hand toward the table and displayed my body map in a hologram. The joints and bones that had been replaced with metal glowed in blue. They seemed like they could last for a century.

‘It’s a body I’ll eventually discard anyway…’

In a few years, I’d have a fully cybernetic body. My natural flesh was like a baby tooth—something to be used temporarily and discarded. If I’d expended it with as much purpose as I had now, I couldn’t ask for anything better.

‘At any rate, I survived.’

I let out a small sigh as I sat on the edge of the bed. In my head, the Force user’s final moments replayed over and over.

‘The Force user withdrew his attack at the end. He didn’t kill me.’

No matter how many times I thought about it, I reached the same conclusion. The Force user had let me live. He’d looked closely at my face, then withdrawn his hand with a bitter smile.

‘I also tried to spare the Coran boy. But that’s because he was a non-combatant, incapable of killing me.’

I found it hard to forget the Force user’s last words. He had looked at me and called me young.

‘I am already a warrior, a soldier. If you spared me just because I was young… you’re a fool.’

It infuriated me. If there was any way, I wanted to bring him back to life and fight him once more.

‘Thanks to the Old man’s pathetic mercy, I survived.’

I didn’t want to admit it. But like it or not, it was the truth. An unchanging, immutable truth.

I don’t believe in an afterlife, but if there is a world beyond, I hope he’s watching me from there.

‘I’m going to kill more Corans in the future. Watch your own people die by my hand and regret it, even from the afterlife.’

That was my revenge on him. I would never make the same mistake he did.

* * *

I spent an entire month running and walking inside a water tank filled with healing fluid, charged with microcurrents. I felt fully recovered, yet the doctor still refused to issue my discharge report.

Another month dragged on like that. The healing fluid in the water tank was blue—a depressingly pale blue at that!

To make things worse, its texture was unpleasantly sticky. Spending hours every day walking and running in it made me feel like I was losing my mind.

I started to think I’d rather be stabbed or shot than go through this. For the past two months, I was no different from a rat running on a wheel.

“I need psychiatric counseling.”

I spoke to the Imperial Guard Captain through the hologram screen. He looked at me with a puzzled expression.

-Are you traumatized from the injury? That doesn’t seem like you…

“No, it’s not because of the combat.”

I quickly shook my head. As a mere cadet, I shouldn’t be contacting the Imperial Guard Captain over something like this. But I was that desperate.

“If I spend even one more day here… I’m going to grab the doctor by the head and shove him into the tank. This isn’t a joke.”

The Captain burst into loud laughter as soon as he heard me. He laughed for a long time before finally speaking.

-Psychiatric counseling isn’t necessary. You’re perfectly normal.

The next day, a member of the Imperial Guard came to get me. My attending physician looked dissatisfied but signed the papers the guard handed over.

One glance at the guard’s uniform was enough to recognize him from a distance. His black coat with a crimson lining hung heavily, almost sweeping the ground as it swayed. On his chest, there was an embroidered golden insignia of a sword.

Thud.

The guard who had escorted me out of the hospital stopped walking. He looked down at me, his gaze steady. I saw his shoulders and arm shift slightly.

Here it came.

Thud!

The guard’s heavy fist landed in my abdomen. I doubled over, groaning. It felt like my insides were twisting up.

“You know why you’re getting hit, don’t you?”

The rim of the guard’s pupils glowed with a red light.

“I overstepped my boundaries.”

I managed to squeeze out a response. The impact made it hard to catch my breath.

“Good. If you’d said you didn’t know, I would’ve beaten you to a pulp and sent you back to the hospital.”

A mere cadet had made a personal request to the Imperial Guard Captain. I didn’t offer any excuses. In truth, there was nothing to excuse—I deserved it, plain and simple.

“…Thank you.”

I placed my clasped hands behind my back, keeping my torso exposed. If there were more blows to take, I was prepared for them.

The guard, seeing my stance, gave a slight smirk, barely lifting the corners of his mouth.

“Make sure you become an Imperial Guard, Luka. I feel like training you would be worth it.”

He spoke while placing a hand on my shoulder.

* * *

Two days had passed since I returned to the training camp. Being able to move my body again made me feel alive.

“So, how does it feel to comeback from the afterlife?”

Ilray spoke as he lifted a hundred-kilogram dumbbell with one hand. During free time, many cadets gathered at the training grounds.

“Look who’s talking. You nearly died too.”

I replied while doing handstand push-ups. Ilray had also been caught in the Force explosion and sustained considerable injuries.

Maintaining a delicate balance, I pushed off the ground with my arms. Spinning in the air, I landed lightly. Luckily, even after a couple of months of rest, my reflexes hadn’t dulled. I was ready to jump right back into training.

Even with cybernetic implants that had predetermined output, training was essential—not for muscle development, but for the nervous system’s coordination and responsiveness.

An untrained civilian couldn’t control a fully cybernetic combat body well enough to utilize its performance, and they’d barely be able to manage their own movements. They wouldn’t even be able to defeat me in my natural state. A body the mind can’t keep up with only leads to disaster.

In particular, we had undergone chemical treatments to optimize our nervous systems and completed rigorous daily training to prepare for eventual use of the Legion combat exoskeletons.

“…The Guard Captain must have known the Force user was there. He just kept quiet and put us to the test.”

Ilray remarked, throwing a punch while still gripping the dumbbell. His arm accelerated, and he began shadowboxing with the hundred-kilogram weight, the motor sound from his cybernetic arm roaring intensely.

“No fatalities—so that’s good enough. Get up here, Ilray.”

I spoke nonchalantly as I stepped onto the sparring ring.

“Luka, my arm got completely trashed in the fight, so I upgraded to a better one. Think you can handle it?”

“You’re full of talk. Did you replace your arm, or was it your tongue?”

I wiggled my index finger to taunt him. Ilray tossed the dumbbell aside and hopped up onto the ring with ease.

“Luka, don’t you think it’s a bit strange that there were no fatalities?”

He assumed a fighting stance in front of me as he spoke.

“Sounds like you’re saying it would’ve been better if there had been casualties?”

I replied, lightly throwing a punch. Ilray tilted his head back, easily dodging it.

Whoosh!

We threw punches and kicks in quick succession. We were only loosening up, moving just slowly enough to dodge each other. Of course, “slow” was a relative term. If any of those blows landed solidly, they’d have enough force and speed to break bones.

“That’s not what I mean. That Force user could’ve killed me, I think. He deliberately kept his distance and triggered the Force explosion. That’s why I survived—and so did the other cadets caught in the blast.”

Hearing Ilray’s words, I couldn’t hold back the irritation bubbling up. How weak could that Force user have been? He’d only wanted to subdue us, not kill.

‘That’s why he ended up dead by my hand!’

I let my anger drive the speed of my punches up. Ilray reacted quickly, deflecting my fist to the side.

“Hey, are you trying to smash my face?”

Ilray grumbled at the sudden increase in pace.

“I’ve always wanted to flatten that smug face of yours.”

“Seems I raised a tiger cub.”

There was a hint of amusement in Ilray’s relaxed grin.

“Oh please, who’s raising who? Now, let’s go all out, Ilray.”

I paused, taking a deep breath and focusing. I visualized expanding the bandwidth of my nervous system. Electrical signals and chemicals surged through the extended neural pathways, connecting my brain and body in perfect synchronization.

I could see the pores on Ilray’s skin with my heightened vision. I could even hear his heartbeat in my ears. My sense of smell became so acute that I could probably guess what he’d eaten for breakfast.

Ilray, too, had finished activating his body. His eyes had a faint glow, like he could see right through me.

The clanking in the training grounds came to a halt. Other cadets had gathered to watch the match between me and Ilray.

Hands and feet moved in a blur. I sharpened my senses, dodging and deflecting Ilray’s attacks. He did the same. The shifts between offense and defense happened so rapidly that it was hard to tell who held the upper hand.

Eeeee—

A high-pitched sound, one only I could hear, resonated from my limbs. Now that we’d entered high-speed combat, I was quickly approaching the limits of my cybernetic body. My movements were starting to slow, just slightly. I needed to either stop here or bring this to a decisive end.

‘Looks like Ilray really did upgrade his arm to something better.’

Ilray’s arm was still moving at full speed. I opened my outstretched fist, attempting to grab hold of his arm.

Creak!

My fingertips caught onto Ilray’s arm. Pulling on it, I threw him off balance.

Success. Ilray wobbled. The opening was brief, but for me, it was more than enough time.

Thud!

I kicked his leg out from under him and slipped to the side.

Thud!

Ilray fell and looked up at me. I waved my hand, which had started to smoke.

The cadets who had been watching let out low exclamations and gasps of admiration. They could all tell that I’d turned the disadvantage around with a bit of quick thinking.

“I thought I’d win this time…”

Ilray panted, chuckling. When it came to hand-to-hand combat, I always had the upper hand.

“If getting stronger were as easy as adding better parts, then why would we go through all this trouble?”

I extended a hand toward the fallen Ilray as I spoke.

Ilray took my hand, standing up while fixing his gaze on me. His usually steady smile faltered just a bit.

He cautiously began to speak.

“Luka, back then, you…”

Sensing the eyes of the other cadets, Ilray trailed off. Even without him finishing, I knew what he was going to say. I wondered why he hadn’t asked me sooner.

‘He probably wants to know why I tried to let that Coran boy go…’

Thanks to Ilray, I managed to cover up my mistake. His bullet had gone through the Coran boy’s head instead of my blade. I still remembered that moment with perfect clarity.

“It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

I responded quickly.

Hearing my words, Ilray narrowed his eyes, giving a slightly forced smile. By now, I could read his expressions well enough to get a sense of his emotions.

…Most likely, Ilray wasn’t looking for this kind of canned response. He remained as unreadable as ever.