I kept shuffling forward in a daze, completely lost in my own pointless overthinking.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash as it skimmed across the thick shoulder plate of the hulking captain in front of me. A split second later, my right chest felt like someone had slammed a fist into it.
The impact was absurdly strong, completely without warning, and it punched straight through me. My whole body lurched backward on reflex, and I nearly sat down hard on the ground.
Who the hell just elbowed me?
That was the very first thought that crossed my mind. I instinctively tried to lift my head and curse, but no sound came out.
A strange, scalding heat spread rapidly from the spot where I'd been "punched." Immediately after, a sharp, tearing pain erupted in my right chest.
I sucked in a breath, only to feel like my lung had sprung a leak. The air I drew in carried a sweet, bloody taste, and it still couldn't fill my chest.
Suffocation.
I looked down.
On the chest of the plaid shirt I'd worn for ages, a dark red stain was blooming fast.
That red patch… kept spreading.
Warm liquid soaked through the fabric and clung to my skin, sticky and slick.
I… I was…
"Sniper!"
"My lord's been hit!"
"Cover! Get cover, now!"
Arbitrator Kairen's roar—so frantic it cracked out of key—exploded in my ears at almost the same instant as a burst of gunfire ripping through the air.
But those sounds felt distant, like they were coming from the other side of deep water.
In that moment, my world snapped into slow motion.
I saw Kairen fling himself toward me. Beneath his half-mask helmet, his granite-carved mouth was wide open. For the first time, real panic showed on his face—panic so naked it looked like the terror of a faith collapsing.
I saw that bald, chainsword-waving old bastard with the receding hairline go berserk, raising his chainsword and charging toward some direction like a madman.
I saw the soldiers around me dissolve into chaos—shoving, pulling, scrambling. The shock on their faces, the expression of "How can a god be wounded," was more ridiculous than the fact I'd been shot.
My legs went soft. My body lost every ounce of strength. My vision blurred.
Sky, buildings, silhouettes—everything spun and warped until it became a meaningless smear of color.
In the final second before I blacked out, there was only one thought in my head:
Too cool for three seconds.
Fucking… too cool for three seconds…
…
"Water…"
The memory—painful both mentally and physically—finally ended. I struggled on the camp cot, trying to sit up, but the savage pain and weakness made me taste that near-death helplessness all over again.
"Don't move, my lord." Kairen immediately pressed a hand to my shoulder. His touch was light, but there was no arguing with it. Another soldier moved fast and handed over a military canteen. Kairen unscrewed the cap and carefully fed me a few mouthfuls.
The icy water soothed my cracked throat and cleared the fog in my head just a little.
I sank back onto the padding, gasping for air, but every breath tugged at the wound. The pain made me suck in sharp, involuntary hisses. My chest felt like a slab of stone had been laid on it—heavy, tight, aching. Every breath was torture, but not breathing wasn't an option.
In this state, I looked like a miserable wreck—like a dead dog hauled out of the water. There wasn't even a trace of that so-called "Savior" swagger left in me.
Vulnerability.
A kind of vulnerability I'd never felt before wrapped around me.
I wasn't some badass. I wasn't some "chosen one." I was just an ordinary person—someone who could be hurt, bleed, and die. One stray round from who-knows-where was more real than every horror I'd seen before. It told me the truth with brutal clarity.
I was scared.
I was genuinely scared.
In movies, heroes get shot and keep cracking jokes. In games, protagonists catch their breath and bounce right back. Reality was this: a single stray bullet—one that might not even have been meant for me—dropped me like a torn sack, helpless and in agony, completely dependent on other people to keep me alive.
"Am I… am I going to die?" I grabbed Kairen's arm like it was the last lifeline left to me, panting hard, my voice trembling with a whine I could hear myself and hated.
I felt so cold. That hard-to-describe cold of life draining away. In front of death, every bit of bravado looked pathetic. I didn't want to be any kind of god. I just wanted to live.
The big brute froze for a moment. He stared at me, his expression complicated beyond words. Like he hadn't expected me to ask such a… human question.
He fell silent for a few seconds, as if something clicked into place. Then he answered, unbelievably firm, even carrying a trace of fervor:
"No, my lord. You will not die."
"That bullet… was vile," he said heavily. "A custom round coated in toxins drawn from the power of darkness. Made specifically to deal with heavy-armored units like us. For an ordinary man, even a scratch would be enough. Flesh—and even the soul—would be corroded to nothing in seconds."
He paused, looking at my bandaged chest. The zeal in his eyes burned even hotter.
"But you… my lord, you endured it. The bullet struck you, yet the witchcraft and poison it carried were utterly ineffective against you. Our medic says you only suffered… suffered a fairly severe 'physical injury.' The round broke one of your ribs and caused a pneumothorax, but it passed clean through…" He hesitated, as if this rigid man was forcing clumsy words into place to comfort me. "…In short, your vitality is beyond imagination. We performed emergency treatment. The wound has stopped bleeding, and your vital signs remain stable."
Then his tone shifted into something that looked wildly out of place on that hard face—something almost gentle.
"I have every reason to believe that shot was meant for me, the obvious leader. But… you bore and dispelled those sufferings for me, for all of us. I, and my squad, are grateful to you."
I just stared at him, completely dumbfounded.
Witchcraft poison? Ineffective? What the hell was he talking about? All I knew was I'd been shot and almost died.
And what did he mean, "only" a physical injury? Since when was a physical injury not an injury? A broken rib, a punctured lung, and all the blood cells that had decided to permanently part ways with me—was that all imaginary?
I looked at his face, written all over with "this is yet another miracle," and a deep exhaustion rose in me.
Between me and them, there was a gulf the size of an entire worldview.
In their eyes, me getting hurt by a "vile" bullet wasn't embarrassing. Instead, it became… evidence of a "miracle." Proof that I could "purify" the evil on the round. That I had suffered in their place.
They could even spin it back into that?
"This can still be a miracle?!"
"So… the shooter?" I forced myself to ask.
A flash of cold killing intent crossed Kairen's face. "In the second after you were hit, he was blown into fragments by Karl's bolt rounds. We searched the building. It was a heretic sniper cell—three of them. All purged on site."
I let out a shaky breath, and then the fear hit me even harder. If that shot had hit my head…
"My lord," Kairen said again, his voice turning solemn, looking straight into my eyes as he spoke each word carefully. "Please be at ease. From now on, we will never allow any threat to approach you again. Not even a speck of dust."
Behind him, every surviving soldier in the cabin turned their heads toward me. They looked at me with the same unwavering, fervent certainty. Their hands tightened on their weapons, like they'd just sworn a blood oath.
I looked at them, then lowered my gaze to the wound in my chest that still throbbed in dull waves, and my feelings tangled into a bitter mess.
It was like I'd gone from "suspect," to "good-luck charm," and then—after taking a bullet—been involuntarily promoted again into a "relic."
That escalated way too fast. Like a roller coaster.
And I wasn't happy about it at all.
The price of being a "relic" was taking bullets. Real bullets. And it hurt like hell.
And these idiots who treated me like treasure seemed to think it was a perfectly reasonable "trial."
I closed my eyes, feeling the shuttle's vibration and the pulse of pain from the wound.
There was only one thought left in my head.
This world is too damn dangerous.
I just want to go home.
(End of Chapter)
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