The morning meeting was stiff as stone. Every woman in the Ice Regiment wore a darker face than the last, and Sophia Reid hadn’t cracked a smile once.
“Killing mutated animals can’t rely on Captain Magnus alone...” she said flatly.
Magnus Specter frowned at the way she called him “Captain Magnus,” but she kept talking anyway.
“Tonight I’ll take a small squad out for a test run. If we run into danger, you—” Sophia cut her eyes toward him, sharp as a blade. “You come save us.”
Since she threw the look his way, Magnus answered without hesitation.
“Taking one squad is too risky. At least three. One dedicated to aerial defense. The other two focus on ground kills. And I don’t recommend going at night. Bats in the dark are much nastier than the daytime sparrows. Go during daylight. Pick a narrow alley—wide enough for us to fire, tight enough to block the chickens, ducks, and geese. Start by dealing with the sparrows. Then I’ll lure a domestic beast over, and you shoot from inside the alley.”
His reasoning was solid—too solid for Sophia to find a hole in. She tried to force a rebuttal, came up empty, and only let out a cold snort, refusing to show she agreed.
...
Electricity, running water, hot meals, and the freedom to walk around—since last night, the Ice Regiment women finally felt like they had a home again.
Days of bumping around in vehicles, choking down cold food, and living under constant pressure washed off them like dirt in a stream.
Magnus walked alongside Sophia and Emily Ward from the first floor to the fifth. Someone had been using the shower on the sixth all morning, so he didn’t go up. Sophia and Emily each picked fifty women who had awakened twice and told them to get ready. They all gathered at the main gate of the underground parking lot.
When the women ignited the patch of meteoric earth at the entrance, Magnus boarded Harper Quinn’s vehicle. With the half-duck carcass strapped behind them, they rolled out of the parking lot. Sophia led her fifty fighters in a bunk coach right behind.
They’d barely made one turn out of the garage when another group of women drove a jeep out, hooked a steel cable to the half-duck remains, and dragged it back inside.
After a few hundred meters—far enough from the mall—Magnus told Harper to ease the vehicle into a narrow hutong. Sophia’s bunk coach followed close.
Harper killed the engine. Magnus got out with a Super Fire Crystal in hand, glanced up at the sky. Every now and then, a mutated sparrow skimmed past the top of the alley.
Holding onto a steel rod jutting from the jeep’s side, he pulled himself onto the roof so the women in the coach could see him clearly. He drew out an automatic rifle, switched off the safety. A sparrow swept by at the height of the fourth floor. Magnus snapped the muzzle up, tracking its path in one smooth, sharp motion.
Gunshots cracked through the alley.
Three bursts. Three hits.
Huge feathers drifted down like pieces of broken night. The sparrow screeched, slammed into the building wall, slid halfway down, then fought to regain balance. Its wings flapped wildly as it tried to rise again.
Magnus didn’t give it the chance. Two more shots.
Another pair struck home.
The sparrow tumbled toward the ground. As soon as it dropped, he aimed again and fired at its head—two shots, one clean hit. The creature twitched a few times and went still.
Magnus glanced back at Sophia, who’d been watching through binoculars from the coach window. She lowered them with a sharp huff and turned away, signaling her squad to disembark.
He jumped down to the bunk coach door, ready to shield them.
The fifty women each crushed a Metal Crystal in their palms. Sophia led the way as they stepped onto the street, eyes tight on the sky.
Ever since the second red flash, this was their first time breathing the outside air. Car cabins and building hallways might let air through, but they were always stuffy. Now, with open sky above them, the women couldn’t help but draw in deep, steadying breaths of the cold, harsh air of the wasteland.
From a distance, another sparrow cut across the sky. Sophia Reid lowered her voice and ordered, steady and crisp, “Squad One, get ready. Shooters One through Five, fire in short bursts. Everyone else, keep your aim steady but don’t shoot yet.”
The five women marked One through Five squeezed their triggers almost at the same time. Five rifles barking together were sharper and cleaner than Magnus Specter’s single shot. Each woman only sent two or three bullets, but that was enough—the sparrow snapped mid‑flight and tumbled down, wings twitching on the ground.
One of the women, nerves tight but eager, rushed forward, trying to finish the bird off just like Magnus had earlier. Magnus caught her by the arm, voice low but firm. “No. Not in real combat. If the creature has lost the strength to resist, you don’t waste bullets on it.”
They trained like that until four more sparrows fell. When Magnus felt they had grasped the basics, he stepped back, vaulted onto the roof of the off‑road truck, and summoned the Nature Crystal, its faint glow ready in his hand in case he needed to intervene.
Sophia Reid led the fifty‑woman squad carefully in the opposite direction from Magnus. In the distance, six sparrows swept toward them. Sophia reacted instantly. “Raise rifles—fire!”
Fifty gun barrels lifted as one. Shots cracked in the air.
It wasn’t as terrifying as they had imagined. With the Metal Crystals keeping their nerves steady, they found they *could* survive out here on their own.
Magnus watched from atop the vehicle as they fought for over an hour, sparrow after sparrow falling until the narrow alley was littered with small, feathered bodies.
When he judged they had enough practice, he hopped down and gave a few last instructions. Then he slipped around the corner alone. On the far side of the street, he spotted a massive white goose. Circling behind it, he swung a thick wooden log and drove the towering creature toward the alley entrance.
The goose—three stories tall—loomed closer and closer. Sophia and her fifty women felt the pressure immediately, a weight so heavy it tightened their chests. When the creature finally lumbered within twenty meters, Sophia shouted, “Open fire!”
Thirty women unleashed their shots at the giant goose. The other twenty focused upward, alert, rifles tracking the sky. Five sparrows dove toward them, and the twenty gunners fired in coordinated bursts.
Bullets hammered the giant goose like a summer downpour. Each hit drove it backward step by step. Its white feathers shook as blood spurted through them like water from a cracked sieve. It tried to turn and flee, but its legs buckled. With a strangled, pitiful cry, the creature toppled sideways, trembling on the ground.
That was it? Just like that... dead?
Sophia and her fifty fighters stared, stunned. Even Magnus—who had slaughtered countless giant fowl over the last days—stood there for a heartbeat, just as baffled.
He had never let the women face such a creature directly. He had always handled them alone—first blinding the goose, then leaping onto its back, slicing its neck open with a blade, and finally using the searing red glow of the Fire Crystal to finish the kill.
He never imagined fifty people would bring one down this fast.
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