The scene shifted, returning to the holy land of Metasim.
After Aros and Pawk had gone over the operation to seize the sacred relic, they settled on their execution date: during the Phantom Night Holy Festival, held once a year in Sasfect.
Blessed by divine protection, the Seven of Dawn had once stood as living miracles, and so that their deeds would never be forgotten, an enormous festival was held every year.
That was the Phantom Night Holy Festival.
With swarms of tourists and pilgrims flooding in, the Holy Capital’s checkpoints and security inevitably grew lax during the celebration. The plan was to exploit that gap and slip their senior “bomb” assets into the city.
Of course, vital facilities like the Temple of the Phoenix would be under ironclad guard. That was precisely why they had Celestia. She could rattle the watch, create confusion where it mattered, and become a trump card strong enough to get them through the barrier.
“Looks like it’s really coming together,” Aros remarked.
“And who do you intend to have transport the flesh?”
“Oh, that’s obvious. Oakley-kun, of course.”
“Lately, I can’t help feeling Oakley’s burden has gotten excessive, but the advantage of the Mobile Fortress Plan is that it can be deployed with a small team and is extremely difficult to counter. I think it’s a good operation.”
“And even if Oakley-kun fails,” Aros said without a hint of doubt, “as long as we recover the flesh, everything returns to how it was. Once a year, we get a plan that’s all upsides.”
Pawk swept a hand through her black hair and resumed writing, pen scratching steadily across the operation dossier.
Aros talked as if Oakley were expendable, but Pawk doubted he meant it. If anything, Aros had a habit of favoring Oakley a little too much.
Well, he’s the cult’s ace. Pawk’s lips tightened faintly. Honestly, I’m expecting a lot from him, too.
When the dossier was finally complete, Pawk collapsed forward onto the desk, face down. Aros skimmed the contents once, then instructed her to circulate the written briefing to each base so preparations could begin.
Then Aros spoke again, his tone changing just slightly.
“One last thing I want to confirm.”
Pawk raised her head. “What is it?”
“What happened to the girl named Marietta?”
Marietta, the only girl to survive the assault on Metasim.
In the original story, it should’ve been Alfie, the protagonist, who lived. Instead, Marietta had endured in his place, and while her connection to Oakley was minor, it was still a thread.
When Pawk heard the name Celestia had mentioned before, she answered without hesitation, “She looks like she’ll become our enemy someday.”
“Marietta had no family,” Pawk continued. “Celestia and her subordinates took her in. Right now, the fourth-ranked Pomette is watching over her… and it sounds like the girl has real talent for combat.”
“So, we let a survivor slip through our fingers,” Aros murmured, folding his arms as he stared up at the ceiling. “And now she’s become the sort of enemy we’d rather not make. People like that have a way of standing in our path… sooner or later.”
From Pawk’s perspective, it was nothing. One more disposable stray hardly worth the caution Aros was showing. Her expression said as much, brow faintly knit in disbelief.
She twirled her pen against her upper lip, and then an electric jolt skittered through her mind.
The self-driving unit she’d left “sleeping” in the Northeastern Branch as a makeshift communicator was being forced online. Celestia’s face filled her awareness, tight and urgent, as if she’d run there without breathing.
“Hm…? Looks like Celestia’s contacting the zombie line,” Pawk said, distracted. “Hold on a sec—”
Her eyes widened.
“Haaah!?”
Aros, who’d been keeping his thoughts sharpened for the relic seizure operation, had his concentration cleanly severed by Pawk’s sudden outburst. She was always noisy, yes, but screaming out of nowhere meant something had gone catastrophically wrong.
He asked gently, “What happened?”
“The Jade Occupation Operation… failed.”
“What did you say?”
Pawk swallowed, the color draining from her face as she relayed the report.
“T-The damage is… extreme. The Raid Unit was wiped out. The Hidden Insect Corps took massive losses too… Most of the Northeastern Branch’s elite are dead… and I’m told that even counting all three executives, fewer than twenty people made it back alive.”
The masked man fell silent, words failing him outright. When he finally managed to force something out—“The cause?”—his shock still bled through the cracks.
And the details only made it worse.
Executive candidate Gerugoroi: dead.
Whip: critically wounded.
Karatena: missing.
And then Pawk, white as a sheet, delivered the finishing blow with the next words out of her mouth.
“C-Celestia and Joanne are… They’re shouting that the reason the operation failed is that Oakley Mercury betrayed us…”
“Impossible.” Aros slammed his hand against the desk before he could stop himself. A heartbeat later, he caught his breath, forcing composure back into place. “My apologies.”
For a leader known for unshakable calm to lose control like that, the report was simply too far outside anything he’d imagined.
And as if that weren’t enough, the youth in question was now missing alongside Karatena.
As Pawk continued pouring out the details, Aros found his words slipping away from him entirely.
They’d lost a huge number of capable, irreplaceable believers.
Worse still, the alleged traitor was the very executive candidate who’d carried suspicion before.
And Fuankilo Legacy, the one who’d been most vocal about doubting Oakley, was dead.
Was her suspicion right?
But the idea didn’t fit. Oakley’s contributions to the cult had been too substantial. His obedience had been too consistent, too absolute. Was he really supposed to have turned on them overnight?
It made no sense.
Accepting that Oakley had betrayed them was far harder than dismissing the whole report as a misunderstanding, some error, some distortion, some hysterical leap in the fog of disaster.
When Aros finished hearing the account of the Jade Occupation Operation’s collapse, he turned to Pawk, still flustered at his side, and gave his order.
“Pawk. Search for Oakley with everything you have. And if he’s dead, we’ll revive him with that toxin and make him speak.”
“Understood!”
“We have to confirm it,” Aros said quietly. “Oakley’s true intentions.”
“Yes!” Pawk snapped. “I’ll search for where he is with every last ounce of myself!”
The beautiful woman in men’s attire bolted from the room, urgency radiating off her like heat. The moment she was out in the corridor, she pressed two fingers to her temple and issued commands to every autonomous unit linked to her network.
“Switch to search-and-detect mode! Find him. A young man with black hair and black eyes. On the honor of the Aros Temple Cult!”
When the door finally fell shut behind his noisy subordinate, Aros sank deep into his chair.
He stared out the window at the night sky and let a slow breath spill from him.
“Oakley never lets me grow bored.”
Judging by the masked man’s reaction, the cult’s crippling blow, the failure of the Jade Occupation Operation, wasn’t what hollowed him out most.
What drained him was the loss of Oakley.
And so the Jade Occupation Operation came to its end in the midst of upheaval.
Half of Oakley’s plan had succeeded.
Half of it had collapsed.
Only Joanne, quietly, had achieved her hidden aim.
The already-warped balance of power tipped further, and the world began to sink—deeper and deeper—into chaos.