Reunion's invasion of Lungmen is nearly over. Rhodes Island has joined forces with Lungmen's Guard Department for one final joint operation, to sweep out the last Reunion remnants left in the city.
On the surface, it's a mop-up operation whose outcome is already decided. And yet, this story is titled 'Necrosis'.
The old saying that rotten flesh must be cut away to save the rest β it was aimed at Reunion and Lungmen alike.
1. How About a Sauna? (Instructor: The Blazing Cat)
Before Reunion, cornered by the blockade, an Operator drops straight out of the sky. A cat who wields heat, the Elite Operator Blaze.
Blaze introduces herself on the spot and suggests they quietly lay down their weapons. Since they're all Infected, she says, she's giving them a chance. And if they resist, she'll warm up the air around them first β all with a smile.
This chaotic cat has been put in charge of the Doctor β carrying them around bodily across a battlefield with no comms.
Amiya quietly asks the Doctor for a favor. Not to protect Blaze by force, but to look after her heart, since she has to keep fighting fellow Infected. This is where the Doctor's long journey to earn an Operator's trust begins.
2. Ch'en of the Guard Department, and a Secret Order
The other flank of the encirclement is handled by the Guard Department. Special Inspection Team Captain Ch'en and the merchant house's young lady Swire, bickering all the while, drive Reunion's main force into a fixed position.
On the surface, it's a smooth joint operation. But behind it, Chief Administrator Wei Yenwu quietly gives someone an order β don't contact him for three weeks, and hand over all information to 'Guillory's daughter'.
And a voice from some night long ago overlaps with it. A man who called Wei his 'sworn brother' and asked him to look after his woman and daughter. He said he'd already picked the daughter's name.
β¦β¦Talulah.
"Don't take it too much to heart. I know it all already." The man says that and vanishes. Beneath Lungmen's clean-looking victory, something was already festering.
3. The Commander Who Turns His Own Men into Monsters
Cornered, Reunion's commander Mephisto resorts to the worst move to survive. He uses his own Arts to force his comrades' infections into runaway overdrive, turning them into monsters that can't even feel pain.
Those monsters don't distinguish friend from foe. They tear into people who were their own squadmates moments ago, devour them, and multiply, creating more monsters.
The sniper at his side, Faust, freezes in front of the sight. She cries out that these aren't monsters, they're living people.
And Faust silently turns around, like someone who already knows which side she has to protect.
4. Two Snipers, Back to Back
Faust, separated from her unit, is caught by GreyThroat, Rhodes Island's non-Infected sniper. Arts that erase sight, and a piercing arrow β both are lone snipers, so if they pull the trigger at the same time, they both die.
GreyThroat lowers her weapon, saying she saw Faust carry off a wounded Infected, saw her not shoot a straggling Guard Department officer. You're doing the right thing, she says.
Faust answers coldly. A person who only follows orders and leans on someone else's judgment ends up becoming something terrifying. And yet, since neither of them fired, she lets GreyThroat live this time.
For GreyThroat, so used to orders that she can't judge for herself, that one line left by an enemy lingers long after. Having given her parents to Oripathy research and lost them in the clash between the Infected and the authorities, she belongs fully to nowhere, and still hasn't decided whether to stay with Rhodes Island or leave.
To a GreyThroat like that, this invasion is full of question marks. What is Rhodes Island even fighting for β and if it helps the Infected, why does it have to aim its guns at other Infected?
5. People Erased in the Slums
Around that time, something strange happens in the Slums. Half the residents of one district vanish outright, and someone has already cleaned away the Reunion corpses without a trace.
Ch'en spots Black Hats slipping across a rooftop β an unidentified unit that erases everyone in sight, Infected or citizen, without distinction.
The truth that emerges after her pressing is grim. That special unit wasn't Reunion β it was Lungmen's own hand, unleashed by Wei Yenwu to gut the Slums outright.
Even Lin Xiya, who cherished the Slums, is complicit in this. What the citizens fear is the Infected, she says β whether that Infected is Reunion or not doesn't matter.
Ch'en forces the special unit to withdraw, but the answer that comes back is a single chilling warning: don't try to find out what happened here, and 'don't investigate the drainage system'.
And the Infected informant 'Nine', who had been attached to Ch'en, quietly leaves the Guard Department after seeing all this. Because she's learned Lungmen has no intention of protecting the Infected. No matter where they live, she says, the Infected are all in the same position.
6. Eno and Sasha
Mephisto and Faust both had names, once.
In the sewers of Chernobog, there was a child who always smiled, Eno. A child who, even while enduring abuse, sang songs for his only friend, Sasha.
Eno believed that if he just did as people told him, everyone would be happy. So he moved the children who bullied him like chess pieces, burning away everything that had hurt him β thinking Sasha would be pleased.
Sasha said through tears β not what you're forced to do, not revenge, just do what you actually want to do. The two children swallowed Originium together and became Infected together, vowing to survive as one.
It was Reunion's leader who gave Eno a new name. She told him the past-him no longer existed, and to seek his ideal along with the name 'Mephisto'. She called herself Talulah.
But Sasha notices. That after passing through that village, Talulah had changed completely. That she'd become someone who even exploits Mephisto's trust.
7. Sasha's Last Arrow
Once it becomes impossible to bring their transformed comrades back, Faust has her unit retreat toward the Slums and decides to stay behind as bait. Since those monsters won't attack her, she says, they can buy time together.
Mephisto cries out β we promised to survive together! Faust answers quietly. If you come to choose for yourself and want something, she says, whatever it is, I won't blame you for it.
And she uses her final Arts, knowing that using it again will destroy her infected organ. There's no reason left for me to hold back now, she says.
Even alone, that's fine β just live. Don't die. This is myβ¦ last wish.
β Faust
The Phantom Crossbowmen hold nothing back with high-explosive rounds for her β exactly Faust's own way of saying no tribute to a fallen comrade is ever too much.
8. Just Falling Out of the Sky
Meanwhile, Amiya's group is surrounded by the Snow Devil Squad in the ruins. That's when Blaze drops from the sky with no rope at all, and clashes head-on with Reunion's frost Arts user.
That opponent is Frost Nova, commander of the Snow Devil Squad. A dying Infected whose whole body is wrapped in cold colder than winter itself. Blaze, showing respect for her strength, urges her not to push herself any further.
During the fierce battle the ground collapses, and the Doctor falls into the ruins below along with Frost Nova. Blaze uses compressed air to slow the Doctor's fall, protecting them all the way down.
The remaining Snow Devils make an unexpected offer β a ceasefire. Aren't both our commanders rabbits anyway, they say. These people, who seemed like they'd be as cold and merciless as ice, turn out to value their comrades' lives above all else.
It was actually them who came here to hunt, they say. They'd long wanted to clean out a Reunion that hurts the innocent, like Mephisto does. And so Rhodes Island and the Snow Devils begin digging through the ruins together.
9. Kal'tsit and Crownslayer
Elsewhere, Rhodes Island's doctor Kal'tsit captures the Reunion agent Crownslayer in the Slums, with the wolf-scented girl Red holding her down.
Crownslayer curses Kal'tsit as a traitor, saying it's Kal'tsit's fault that Ursus slaughtered her father and the other scientists. Kal'tsit calmly tells her about her father Illya, and about Crownslayer herself as a child.
The real traitor wasn't Kal'tsit, but a greedy empire that trampled on the scientists' devotion. Kal'tsit says she's no Caster, summons Mon3tr, and lets her go alive even though she could have killed her.
Leave this place. And find another path β the true path that can change this world.
β Kal'tsit
Kal'tsit believes she will someday become a 'seed of unrest' that wakes from Reunion's madness. We don't stand in for the law, she says, and we have no right to judge anyone.
10. Beneath the Ruins, Facing the Frost
To the Doctor trapped beneath the ruins, Frost Nova tells her own story β a kind of thank-you for the Doctor not killing her while she couldn't move.
She was born at a mine in the tundra of northwestern Ursus. Her parents and grandmother were taken and killed one after another, and at eleven, her turn came. That's when Arts burst out of her and froze her executioners to death.
The one who took her in was Bulldrokarsty, an old war hero of Ursus. Even with an armorless arm about to go necrotic, he wrapped the ice-cold child in a tight embrace β she called him father.
Unable to let anyone touch her because of the cold, only able to feel warmth from hot drinks, a single spicy candy is her one pleasure. She plays mischievous pranks on the Doctor, then quietly laughs and apologizes.
She doesn't hate the people of Ursus. Even those raised to hate the Infected were, before hatred blinded them, just ordinary people. Her only enemy is the 'Ursus Empire' that drove the Infected to the brink.
She says a person who doesn't fear death is someone with no attachment left to the world. And yet, she quietly admits, she herself has failed to find the answer to that question for over a decade.
Now she thinks she has to stop even Talulah, who seems to have deceived the Infected, with her own hands β she has to keep, within whatever time is left, the promise to give her brothers and sisters a place to live.
11. The Snow Devils' Last Toast
The squad knows Frost Nova doesn't have much time left. Her Arts have been eating away at her body, so she grows lighter every time they hold her.
They decide to entrust their sleeping commander to Faust's unit, to be sent to her father Patriot's side β and to stay behind themselves to hold off the pursuit.
Warriors are bound to die someday, they say, sharing vodka they'd smuggled along, even passing a sip to their youngest member. Dying without ever knowing the taste would be too sad, after all.
When we're free, that's when we'll cry out loud⦠We haven't won yet, so we've no right to cry!
β Snow Devil Squad member
The last sip is offered to that cat who once said she'd drink with them β praying that everything works out for those kids. Blaze rushes over too late, and in the end can't break their resolve.
12. Winter Falls
Having lost all her brothers and sisters, Frost Nova waits for the Doctor's group beneath the ruins. With no one left beside her now, she says, for the first time she can give it everything she has.
She gathers the cold of the whole world to bear down on them, freezing all ten of Amiya's rings solid, shattering GreyThroat's arrows in midair. Asked why she goes this far, she answers.
As a commander, she's already lost, she says, but as a warrior, she hasn't lost yet. If I can't even beat myself, how could I face Talulah β beat me, and show me hope.
Amiya reads her rage and weeps, sensing that what Frost Nova endures β the pain in her heart β is many times greater than the pain of drawing out an Originium crystal.
So they don't hold back, and fight to the end. And they win. Frost Nova smiles and lets her head drop.
She asks the Doctor a favor. Stop the Talulah of now, she says, but help the 'real Talulah' who once walked that muddy road with her. And she wants to die at her father's side, to pick with her own hands the fruit of what she planted.
The rotten part has to be cut away. Defeat me, and defeat Talulah. And the body that was colder than winter grows quiet and cold at last.
13. Don't Investigate the Drainage System
After the battle ends, Ch'en keeps hearing the same warning β 'don't investigate the drainage system.' Swire tries desperately to stop her, but Ch'en opens the door in the end.
The smell tells her where the erased people of the Slums went. Ch'en heads straight for Wei Yenwu.
Ch'en confronts him β that he erased the very Lungmen citizens who trusted and supported him, wholesale, just for being Infected, to protect his own position. And she brings up a secret long buried β that it was Wei who killed Talulah's father, and Wei who entangled Ch'en's mother.
At the same moment, Amiya visits Wei and voids the successful contract herself, because Lungmen deceived the Guard Department, the citizens, and the Infected alike, using people as game pieces.
You must not treat living people as game pieces. A person is a person.
β Amiya
Rhodes Island doesn't fight only for the Infected. Clearing the shadow of Oripathy from this world, while never using anyone as a tool β that's the principle Amiya upholds.
Epilogue β A City Draws Near
But the real crisis hasn't come yet. Through the entire annihilation of Reunion in Lungmen, its supreme commander never once showed her face.
Talulah had been in Chernobog the whole time. From the moment the fire started to the moment they caught their breath, she had always been watching Lungmen.
Kal'tsit reports it. Chernobog's core is approaching Lungmen, endlessly broadcasting to the whole city. The message that leaves even Wei Yenwu speechless is a single sentence.
"This city is the territory of Ursus."
β Kal'tsit
In Lungmen after Reunion was driven out, those who claimed to protect the city cut into its own flesh, and the Infected with nowhere to go closed their eyes not for ideology or revenge, but by their own choice. And where winter had fallen, an entire frozen city now comes bearing down. Necrosis is not over yet.