Deus Didymus: Rend

Chapter Eighty: Once More

"Another team failed?!"

The room quivered as a man slammed his fist on the table. Silence followed; no one wanted to speak up, for they feared it would be their last time. Stone walls enclosed the medium sized space, each holding a torch sconce.

"I will not accept another failure on this mission!" the man continued. "Not only is IZLand weary of us now, but they're starting to investigate us."

"And whose fault is that?"

The room turned to the small voice at the door. Yuri leaned against the door's frame with her ankles overlapped. She picked at her thigh buckle, standing straight with a quick breath.

"I may not know a lot, cause I'm a 'child' in your eyes, but there's one big problem that you guys don't seem to care about."

The young girl strutted through the room, grinning. A belt held onto her dark shorts while a similarly colored plaid box-pleated design ran around most of her hips--starting mid-waist and ending in the middle of her right thigh. A belt similar to the one on her thigh hugged her midriff, interrupting the white space between her shorts and black crop-top.

"It's not our men that are incompetent. It's you, Minsu."

"The fuck'd you just say to me?" Minsu snapped.

The man's breath hitched as Yuri held a sword against his throat.

"I thought so."

Yuri waved the weapon away, swapping it with a spear. She pointed to the map stationed on the war table, tapping on large red circles marked with the words 'failure'.

"In both of these tries, the person that stopped our men was Ahn Y/n. By all means someone like him shouldn't be able to beat our men. He's too weak. Makes sense, right?"

The surrounding men nodded in silence.

"Kay, so why do we keep forgetting that there's more to him? Park Ji Hoon's assassination, the tournament operation, the dwarven city, these two attempts, it keeps happening over and over."

"So why don't we kill him-?"

Yuri glared daggers through the soldier, freezing him on the spot. "Because I'll kill you if you do."

The young girl continued her path around the room. She pointed to a third circle disconnected from the prior two. "Why did we choose this spot?"

A soldier raised his hand timidly, "Because it's the furthest from any threats?"

"Wrong."

Another soldier raised his hand. He stared at the map placidly, "Because that's the most opportune place to strike."

Yuri sighed, "Sure. In this country, we have people who can cross the city in minutes. We have people who can raze the country if they chose to, yet here we are trying a stupid operation to disable and capture their youth."

"What are you getting at?" Minsu questioned.

Yuri rolled her eyes, "I'm saying: this whole thing is stupid! Gosh."

"So why don't you do it?" he argued. "You're the prized weapon of ORCA, so you should be able to run in and do all of this yourself."

"'Cause I'm not stupid," Yuri scoffed. "The moment I step into that city, every hanam they have, especially their pillar, will rush to kill me. Sending these fodder was actually a good idea."

She leaned forward with a mischievous grin, "But, that gives me a fun idea..."

Chaeyeon sighed, shaking her head. "I guess I'll have to do it."