Temporary Camp
Surface
Beside a withered tree root, a petite, silver-haired agent sits with downcast eyes, staring into her palm.
Tiny, jagged crystal clusters spread silently across it, fading with each slow breath.
Eek...! L-Luna...! Your hand...!
...I-is the Ascension-Network acting up again?
I'm not sure.
Her eyes fall shut. Deep within, she feels the Punishing Virus surging out of control, churning relentlessly through the Ascension-Network.
Something else is tampering with it. My sight is cut short. I can't make out what's agitating the virus.
S-something else? You don't think... a new agent?
Nervously, Lamia hugs the oddly shaped tree branch close in her arms.
Possible. But I suspect a more... immediate source. That "domain" that opened the other day, perhaps.
That "domain"...
Luna tilts her head back, Lamia mirroring the gesture, and together they gaze up at the sky.
Oh... you mean that rift, the one that just... appeared...!
Lamia remembers that harrowing encounter all too clearly.
The moment Luna learned Babylonia was under attack, she changed course. Outwardly, she showed no sign of concern, yet she steered them straight toward Babylonia's plummeting trajectory.
...Does Babylonia really need us?
If they fall and the Red Tide swallows their data, the mess becomes ours. This is a necessity. Nothing more.
O-oh... that's... a shame.
...
...What's wrong?
The Ascension-Network... it's trembling...
Luna's head jerked upward. Still connected to the Ascension-Network, Roland and Lamia felt the anomaly ripple through them too. All four turned their eyes to the sky—
That's...
Across the sky, a starship bearing the Babylonia-F.O.S. College insignia hurtled past, flying dangerously low, as though it might crash into the earth at any second.
The F.O.S. starship? Why would it be here, of all places...
It's not alone...
A dark rift split the sky without warning, and through it came grayish mist and thick, churning clouds of Punishing Virus.
The F.O.S. starship's engines flared with blinding light, a last, futile struggle.
Against gravity's absolute grip, the enormous vessel was nothing more than dust caught in a gale, pulled irreversibly into that foreign domain.
S-so some "power" from that domain leaked out... and it's disrupting the Ascension-Network...
But... what kind of place is even... full of Punishing Virus like that?
Lamia tries her hardest to help Luna string together an answer.
...The Hetero Tower.
...What?
Forget it.
The hazy memory she caught through the Ascension-Network remains hers alone. She is not about to share it with anyone.
I've returned, Miss Luna.
Roland rushes back into camp, his frame still road-worn.
Babylonia's fall has been paused. What comes next in their grand performance remains unclear.
The F.O.S. starship's vanishing act is confirmed. Babylonia has scrambled its Task Force squads and Engineering Force units, all chasing smoke. But no trace so far, not even a whisper.
...
Ah, and a most curious encounter at the camp's edge... Lithos, the very same who once played loyal shadow to a certain Mr. Vonnegut...
Roland hesitates briefly, then decides to forgo the honorific entirely.
He's not exactly playing hide-and-seek. If anything, it's a very deliberate little parade: "Look at me, I'm harmless." Shall I shoo him away?
Leave him. He'll go once it's time.
As you wish.
With the mission done, Roland scans for a comfortable spot to catch a quick rest, only to notice that the camp's silent guardian has vanished from sight.
Hm? And where has our dear Miss Alpha wandered off to?
She told Luna she saw someone... had to go check... Luna didn't want her to, but then, then...
Sis caught a trace, possibly connected to that "domain." She went after it.
Mm...
But the stage out there is crawling with danger. A solo act seems rather...
I upgraded her frame.
With Selene defeated, Luna reclaimed her agent authority and drew upon the Ascension-Network's power to reconstruct Alpha's frame.
At first, Alpha was caught off guard by the gift, given seemingly for no reason at all.
A new frame? That's unnecessary.
Don't waste your strength on me.
It isn't a waste, Sis.
Luna firmly held Alpha down.
It's... the path forward.
She was never going to forget what she had heard in that call.
...
Alpha offered no more resistance.
It still won't bring her back to her prime, but it's beyond what she had.
Even knowing the Hetero Tower has yet to descend, the ache buried deep in her M.I.N.D. keeps urging her to remain vigilant.
The silver-haired agent gazes out in the direction Alpha left, then closes her eyes once more.
Sis... she always knows what she wants.
She will find her own path.
The wind drives sharp sand across the barren expanse, sculpting the silhouettes of ruins that once rose in splendor.
F.O.S...
After changing frames, Alpha senses a strange force gathering in her left eye, welling up within the pupil and pressing down the restless Punishing Virus.
It holds the quality of vision, a sight engraved forever in the crimson eye that marks her "original self."
She wants to uncover its source, yet the time for answers has not come.
!!!
A single flash of steel, and a grotesque Corrupted and the crumbling F.O.S. College sign both fall, split clean in two.
Alpha dismisses her fleeting familiarity with F.O.S.—just stories of that renowned commandant who hailed from there—and hesitates no longer. She kicks aside rubble and twisted metal, pressing straight ahead.
She is certain of it: that strange "Ravenge" is here.
Ravenge is dead. Lithos, the Ascendant, had no reason to lie to her. So this "Ravenge" can only be a phantom conjured by that anomalous power.
And that power has already touched Luna.
Demons crawling out of Hell or parasites clinging to that frame, it matters little. She will drag them all out and cut them down, one by one.
The ring of steel echoes down the corridor as Alpha sheathes her blade. With the path carved open, she presses forward, her purpose unwavering.
...Commandant, so this is F.O.S.?
Over broken bricks and weathered rubble, two figures quietly emerge from the far side of the Prism Square.
So this is what F.O.S. looks like... on the surface.
With the Corrupted cleared from both sides, Lucia surveys the area, her gaze balanced between vigilance and curiosity.
You never thought you would see the original F.O.S. College like this—
Weathered to ruin, it mirrors every other shattered relic scattered across Earth. Only the broken prisms glinting in the dust and that one tower still reaching skyward remember the brilliance that once lived here.
Commandant, you've never set foot here before either, have you?
As early as the mid-to-late Golden Age, F.O.S. was grooming a starship of its own, designed to host a flawless replica of the surface campus.
Harvey Moran, the iron-fisted superintendent who personally launched F.O.S. into the starship era, stood in the college auditorium. His eyes outshone every star in the sky, his aspiration a tangible force.
F.O.S. was never meant to be just a college. Our horizon can't end at Earth's atmosphere.
The future lies among the stars, in the cosmos itself!
Along the starship's main keel, industrial machines toiled while F.O.S. wagered its entire legacy on a monstrous leviathan of steel.
The main engine array flared to life in unison, azure flames slashing across the heavens. Everyone believed, with unshakable certainty, that this is the future of F.O.S., the future of humanity itself.
Then came 2160, the year of the Punishing Virus outbreak. The visionary who once stood at the summit of that auditorium, orchestrating every detail of the starship's design, never lived to see it fly.
Then Alister Vance, former Dean of Tactical Command, took up the mantle of superintendent at F.O.S.
Humanity needs us now. They need everything F.O.S. has to offer.
F.O.S. must take to the battlefield.
No flowers greeted him. No cheers. Only the silent battlefield lay ahead. He stood in the battle-scarred auditorium, his voice raw and hoarse.
F.O.S. is the blade humanity drives into the abyss.
So long as a single breath of our civilization remains... F.O.S.'s strength will never be extinguished.
F.O.S. College rose in full force.
Battle after desperate battle. Strike after suicidal strike. Students who had once burned with life became only names, drifting back on the endless stream of casualty reports from the front.
They saved the city's Central Purification Filter. They secured the civilians' path to evacuation. The only thing they failed to save was themselves.
Humanity crossed into the Post-Pandemic Age. F.O.S. College lost more than half its number, teetering on the brink of total annihilation.
Midway through the Post-Pandemic Age, the Corrupted surged forward in a massive invasion. Somewhere behind a desk buried beneath resource charts and tactical reports, Superintendent Alister Vance quietly stopped breathing.
Until that final moment, he had given every fragment of his experience and knowledge to calculating the optimal outcome of each battle, leading humanity to victory time after time.
No gunfire. No explosions. Just a slow slip into silence, with the dull thud of his terminal hitting the floor the only sound that announced his end.
This... can't go on.
Arthur Heidrich, Chief Instructor of F.O.S. Military Command College at that time, stepped into the role of superintendent. Without a word, he draped his worn, faded instructor's coat over Alister's body.
The vast F.O.S. auditorium had once held thousands in assembly. Now it was so deathly still that the whisper of fabric carried across the hall. Below the stage, scarcely a dozen students stood to bid Alister farewell.
They could not even form a proper formation. Empty sleeves hung where arms had once been. Bloodstained bandages wrapped around their heads, and their eyes carried a hollow grief so deep it had bled into numbness.
The war won't end for years. But F.O.S... it can't end here.
Even if they brand me a coward for it... I have to preserve what's left of F.O.S.
It's time for the F.O.S. starship to set sail.
He invoked the superintendent's emergency authority, seizing what remained of F.O.S. College's resources and pouring them all into the starship project.
There were those within the college who insisted F.O.S. should stay on the surface and share humanity's fate to the bitter end. They branded him a coward and a traitor, a man who had abandoned F.O.S.'s honor. Arthur pushed forward with the launch anyway.
By the mid-to-late Post-Pandemic Age, the F.O.S. starship had reached full completion.
F.O.S. will stand as humanity's last hope. As for the war on Earth... it's ours to fight.
He stood on the surface below, watching as the F.O.S. starship climbed skyward.
Dust and rubble swirled in the wind as the steel leviathan rose, carrying the countless names of the fallen, and with them, F.O.S.'s last spark of hope. Against the fading embers of sunset, it ascended to join Babylonia.
The shattered bricks beneath his feet might once have recalled F.O.S. College in its glory days, but the ruins had long since been swallowed by the Red Tide and the Corrupted.
As time ground on and most of the surface fell, there was no longer any need to hold these Golden Age ruins for the sake of pride.
The new superintendent evacuated everyone who remained. And with that, the original F.O.S. College site was consigned to the flames of war, abandoned forever.
Amid the ruins, fractured light catches on glass shards strewn across the ground.
In your mind, hazy "impressions" drift and layer over one another.
"Prism Square"
Her boots trace unfamiliar steps. Alpha's hand rests on her blade, yet she leaves it sheathed. It feels like... she's walked this ground before.
Deja vu prickles at her senses. She can't place which part of these ruins triggers the recognition. Her brain simply registers the "anomaly."
Why does this place stir her so? She has no clear answer, only a nagging sense that something hovers just beyond reach. Could that "power" be at work?
The broken mirrors at her side catch her reflection. A faint sound echoes from behind. She whips around. For a fleeting moment, it feels like someone should be calling out to her—
The Corrupted lurking behind the mirror shards let out piercing shrieks.
...
She sheathes her blade and flicks an indifferent glance across the square, toward the corridor beyond. The Corrupted's shadows bleed from behind the mirrors, converging from all sides.
...Pathetic. That's the best you can do?
The wails die as the Corrupted fall, one after another. Alpha takes her last step from the corridor, her gaze drawn instinctively to a mirror beside her.
Over there...
Was there supposed to be a podium?
Which leaves you exactly one way to go.
She sees the square teeming with people. They stand below, faces tilted upward...
She hears countless voices murmuring a countdown...
Five... Four... Three...
...Who's there?!
Alert, she raises her hand, willing the inexplicable phantoms to disperse.
But nothing happens.
In the shattered mirror, she is still alone.
...What's that sound?!
Several Corrupted lunge from either side of the corridor, their shrieks splitting the air.
...Was it them?
After cutting down the Corrupted that ambushed the two of you, Lucia turns back.
One thing, however, is clear: something about this place is wrong.
Up until now, only a handful of Corrupted have crossed your path. The silence here is unnerving.
Up until now, only a handful of Corrupted have crossed your path. The "cleanliness" here is unnerving.
Did someone pass through here already, or...
Commandant, over there...
Prism Square opens ahead. There, the weathered base of the F.O.S. Monument waits in silence, enduring across the years.
The starship had taken only the upper half, leaving the base behind.
Long ago, the instructor who brought you into F.O.S. explained its meaning—that one day, every cadet would find their way back to—
Commandant!
Hmph.
Lucia's blade flashes from its sheath, parrying the long sword a breath before it reaches you.
I was here first. The question is yours to answer.
Why is Alpha here at F.O.S.? Did she get word of this place too...?
A thunderous crash rings out. Not far away, the F.O.S. sign—long dangling by a thread above the corridor—finally yields, hurled to the ground as if it could endure the tension no longer.
...
The crash snaps Alpha back to attention. Lips pressed tight, she disengages, using the force of their locked blades to push herself back.
...Commandant, stay behind me.
Lucia shields you, backing away slowly, mirroring Alpha's movements until both sides settle at what barely passes for a safe distance.
A fallen sign wouldn't make Alpha back off.
You follow her line of sight to Prism Square. A grayish fog creeps across the ground from nowhere, and within it, shadowy figures begin to take shape in the corners of the square.
...Again?
Without sparing either of you a glance, she turns and strides into the square.
A flicker of recognition stirs at the sight of the grayish fog. The dreams that have been plaguing her M.I.N.D. for days now stand before her, made real. Lucia's brow furrows.
It's not just fog. This is the Punishing Virus. Commandant, we need to fall back—
Before the final words can leave her lips, the gray fog convulses, thrashing like a sentient thing, and drags you and Lucia into its depths.
Commandant!
Silently, a dark rift yawns open. Every word you might have spoken is swallowed as a foreign domain claims you.
Moments later, the fog recedes as quietly as it arrived. The crumbling ruins alone remain, standing guard over a square now hollow.
