Faced with what looked exactly like her own grave, the weakling shook like a leaf and frantically shook her head.
“Please spare me.”
For the first time, she spoke clearly without slurring.
Wow, she really was that cold.
Seeing the weakling’s lips turn from blue to outright purple, Chloe felt a pang of pity and kindly kicked her straight into the hole.
“Spare me!”
“I just did.”
But the weakling, oblivious to Chloe’s kindness, desperately tried to crawl out and escape.
She was begging so earnestly to be saved—how could Chloe refuse? With a clean chop to the back of the neck, Chloe knocked her out cold and tossed her back into the pit.
This was an act of saving one person from hypothermia.
“Wait a second! No matter how you look at it, that’s too much! Sure, she’s dead weight, but we’re supposed to at least try to keep her alive! Why are you burying someone who’s still perfectly alive?!”
Unable to hold back any longer, the short-haired girl shot to her feet and confronted Chloe. Honestly, saying out loud what everyone had only been thinking—“weakling = dead weight”—made her the excessive one.
Chloe shrugged.
“I’m not trying to bury her alive; I’m trying to save her. Hiding your body below ground level is way better for retaining heat. If I wanted to kill her, why would I bother digging?”
Still met with suspicious glares, Chloe settled the matter by kicking the short-haired girl into the pit for a personal demonstration.
“Argh! What the—hey, it really isn’t cold in here?”
Only after experiencing the cozy temperature firsthand did the short-haired girl drop her suspicions.
“Let’s see… two more could probably fit and sleep comfortably.”
The moment those words left Chloe’s mouth, the redhead and the gentleman dove into the hole like their lives depended on it.
“Get out! I’m not sleeping on cold, hard ground!”
“Don’t make me laugh! You think the rest of us grew up on silk sheets? And the inside of the hole is still ground!”
“Ladies? Might I be granted the honor of spending a comfortable night alongside you both?”
After a fierce scuffle, the one ultimately ejected from the hole was the gentleman.
The two girls, unable to stomach any more of his greasy flirting, had teamed up and shoved him out.
Undeterred, the gentleman stood up, trudged over to Chloe, and unleashed round two of shameless pickup lines.
“If I may remain by the side of such a dependable and lovely lady, I believe I could endure even the frigid wasteland night.”
“Feel free to freeze to death. Just so you know—if you try using the cold as an excuse to snuggle up to me, I’ll kick you so hard your ribs will sing. Try it if you want to find out.”
At Chloe’s utterly sincere threat, the gentleman quietly moved to the opposite side of the fire.
Grabbing the shovel, Chloe stood and looked down at the three people now crammed into the narrow pit.
“You’re… not planning to cover us with dirt right now, are you…?”
The short-haired girl asked cautiously, eyes trembling. Chloe scratched her cheek with the shovel handle.
Hmm. If they’re seriously asking that question, does that mean I’m successfully coming across as a proper scoundrel?
Using the shovel, Chloe scraped soil from spots a little distance away from each corner, then gently laid the waterproof tarp over the hole like a blanket. She weighed down all four corners with heavy rocks.
The tarp now served as a roof that blocked the wind.
The moment it was in place, the sound of snoring and deep breathing penetrated the tarp—they’d passed out instantly.
Chloe tossed the remaining tarp to the gentleman, who was still stubbornly sitting upright despite looking dead tired, and gestured.
“You sleep too. I’ll take the watch.”
Chloe had never planned on sleeping anyway. Staying up one night was nothing to her.
She also had zero trust that the gentleman wouldn’t try to run off with the food and water, and zero faith that he could handle a sudden emergency.
Instead of lying down, the gentleman draped the tarp over Chloe’s shoulders and asked her a question instead.
“How did a lady like yourself end up in a rough place that doesn’t suit you at all?”
She was impressed by his stubbornness—he’d seen everything she’d done in this wasteland and still thought this place “didn’t suit her.”
So why exactly was a Royal Central Military Academy graduate and active-duty lieutenant starting over as a cadet in the hellhole that was Northport—?
“Lieutenant Chloe Tessa! Let me do it! I’ll root out every last one of those damned coup remnants, wipe them out, and definitely earn imperial honors!”
The mission her Intelligence Operations Department had just received was to track down the remnants of the coup forces from fifteen years ago and locate their base.
“Lieutenant Tessa, even a single star comes with a noble title these days. I know your circumstances, but this isn’t a mission to take lightly.”
“I still have a full twenty years until I’d normally make major. Life’s all about that one big shot, right? And think about it—I’m the closest in age to a real freshman cadet. If senior officers who graduated ages ago infiltrate as freshmen, there’s only so much you can excuse with ‘looking old for your age.’ So this mission absolutely has to be mine!”
It was a mission that concerned the prestige, honor, and security of the entire imperial army on a large scale—and Chloe’s long-cherished personal goal on a small scale.
The key location: Northport Military Academy on the frontier.
Her task was to disguise herself as a new cadet, infiltrate the academy, and hunt for traces of the coup remnants without raising suspicion.
In short… a disaster Chloe had brought upon herself.
Of course, she couldn’t say any of that, so she recited the cover story she’d prepared.
“I lived too freely and got kicked out. You?”
Whether he was tired or just like that naturally, the gentleman’s eyes were half-lidded and catlike as he scratched his cheek, startled.
“Me? Well… I was trying to satisfy multiple ladies at the same time, so…”
In one sentence: he’d been two-timing (or more) and got exiled to Northport for spreading scandals. Handsome guys really did live up to their faces.
“Instead of wasting time chatting with me, you’d be better off catching a bit more sleep. I’m waking you up in exactly four hours.”
“What are you talking about! I could never let a lady stand watch!”
The gentleman righteously shook his head, eyes wide—then less than ten minutes later he was nodding off and finally slipped into dreamland.
“Knew it.”
Chloe clicked her tongue.
Four hours of watch passed—keeping the fire alive and scanning the surroundings.
The pitch-black sky gradually took on a bluish tint. The icy temperature slowly began to rise.
She woke the gentleman first, then headed to the pit where the other three slept.
Morning dew had formed on the tarp due to the wasteland’s extreme temperature swings.
If they hadn’t looted extra supplies yesterday, they’d have had to ration drinking water and collect even this dew—but now they had water to spare, so no need for such pathetic measures.
‘Might as well wash my face.’
Chloe scraped the droplets together with the flat of her knife, washed her face vigorously, then yanked the tarp open.
“Everybody up! Snap out of it—move!”
She then roused the remaining three, who were tangled together in blissful sleep.
“I actually slept in a place like this…?”
“Bro, humanely you’re supposed to let us sleep at least seven hours, no?”
“Liquor…”
Faces grim at the horrific realization that sweet rest was over, the group set off for Northport again under Chloe’s direction check.
* * *
After another grueling forced march, Chloe’s party finally reached what had seemed the endless end of the wasteland.
Having suffered together for dozens of hours, something resembling camaraderie had formed between them.
Across the river, the fortress-like Northport Military Academy finally revealed itself. Northport—they’d never seen it before, yet they’d missed it so desperately.
The problem was the river blocking their path.
The current was ferocious, the river wide, and even by eye it was impossible to gauge the depth beneath the churning waves.
Jumping in bare would mean getting swept away instantly.
“So… to return to Northport, we have to cross this river?”
The short-haired girl muttered in a stunned voice.