The Actaeon bombing in Sankt Jeder claimed the largest number of lives yet.
It was also the first Actaeon bombing carried out with clear malice. She exploded in the middle of a large Holy Birthday market, without avoiding people or issuing any warnings. What’s more, the girl carried a large number of nails. These metallic fragments heightened the killing potential of her blast, and she’d intentionally walked into a crowd to blow herself up, deliberately picking a place of celebration, where people were allowed to be happy despite the difficult times.
And the worst part of all that, as if to precede this tragedy—the truth about the Actaeon had been disclosed to the public.
The Republic. Again, the Republic. Secretly developed suicide-bombing weapons. Suicide bombs using Eighty-Six as components.
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Following this, the news coverage on the Actaeon resumed in full force, with people demanding that they be hunted down, that every last one of them was captured and disposed of as soon as humanly possible. Human-formed suicide-bomb weapons were dangerous enough by virtue of being indistinguishable from normal people, so anyone suspected of it should be arrested right away. Along with the terrible, inhumane Republic people who made them.
As he listened to such radio shows, Miel frowned, feeling a chill of inexplicable terror run through him. The news hadn’t been so vicious when he first came to this country, nor had every show on the radio dripped with clear enmity and suspicion.
This was true of both the Actaeon and Republic people like Miel. It didn’t feel like they were…hateful or scornful of the Republic, but more like…
“They’re afraid of us…?”
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Usually, the staff officers and battalion captains would set the TV in the dining hall to the morning news to catch up on recent events, but at this point, Shiden and her group couldn’t stand to watch it. It was all reporting and arguing about the Actaeon.
“It’s such a shitty mood,” Shiden whispered to no one in particular.
“I’ve seen this mood before,” Raiden replied. “Who did wrong, who’s at fault, who’re the traitors…and how you should punish said traitors.”
Yes, it was like when they were little in the Republic, and the early stages of the Legion War were all over the news.
Of course, back then, Shiden thought of it in simple terms. The Empire was the bad guy, and her now-late little sister parroted her. But Raiden had been kept safe in the Republic for longer, so maybe he saw what the news was like after that. How the people and the news fanned each other’s emotions on.
“It’s like they’re looking for…,” Michihi whispered. “No, like they crave an enemy… An enemy that’s not the Legion, but one that’s more simple.”
An enemy that’s easier to one-sidedly trample—that’s weaker and fewer in number.
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“…This is what Lord Willem feared,” Jonas whispered as TP approached the window, trying to open the half-closed curtain.
His black eyes seemed to be looking in concern past the room, to the base outside the lodging facility.
“…What do you mean, ‘this’?” Lena asked dubiously.
Jonas looked at her in confusion for a second before nodding. “Oh, right, you can’t hear it… The civilians are clamoring outside the base. Maybe they’re trying to make demands of the army HQ, or they’re just trying to agitate the passersby. ‘Tell us the truth. Apprehend anyone related to the Actaeon, the Republic people, the evacuees. Disclose the location of wounded and returning soldiers. We know they’re infected, so just exterminate them all.’”
Annette looked up at him in shock. Using the term exterminate on human beings was horrible enough, but what’s more—
“Wait… You can hear the voices from outside the base that clearly? With the window closed?”
“House Degen is a bloodline that carries that kind of power among the Onyxes.”
Superior combat prowess was the Onyx race’s unique power, with some clans among them having particularly sharp senses. The family of Willem, the chief of staff—or rather, his old warrior clan’s attendant family had this power as a result. Or perhaps they secured and kept hold of this power over time because of their position as attendants.
“Dear cells only behave similarly to viruses, but they’re not capable of being contagious. But the civilians seem to believe the Actaeon are infected with a bomb virus, and there are loud voices demanding that those who are infected are dealt with. Or otherwise, that they let the civilians deal with them.”
In other words, discover, quarantine, and dispose of the “infected.”
But of course, since no one was actually infected, there was no one to discover or quarantine. The army and the police were occupied with disclosing accurate information, which made them come across as unconcerned about the “suicide-bomb virus” or, at worst, as attempting to hide information after the fact, which further angered the citizens. And the outcome of that was this situation.
“…There are already a few cases of victims of the bombings and their families hunting down returning soldiers and their refugees in what they call an Actaeon hunt. They were influenced by that theory that the origin of the virus is the Legion…and that everyone on the battlefield and all areas near it are already infected.”
The civilians were already harboring discontent at the displaced evacuees for eating away at their peace and abundance, so they clung to whatever reasoning let them lash out and expel them. They expanded the label of Actaeon from the Dear cells test subjects and attached it to the territory evacuees, since they were disturbing their peaceful lives.
And then they appended it to the army staff, who kept letting them down and losing. If the infection originated from the battlefield, then those living in the capital area, far from there, must be clean. And since they were clean, they wouldn’t need to be expelled—it was an easy logic to embrace.
Jonas narrowed his eyes. His keen hearing likely picked up on what Lena couldn’t: awful words of rejection and anger repeated ad nauseam.
“It makes them think the Republic, with its many betrayals, is the true evil, and that evil should be expelled…that they’re allowed to expel the Republic’s people so long as they have a justified reason. This is what he feared.”