She was watching Hesta's reaction as Ava spoke each word. But to her disappointment, Hesta's expression had always been very cold.
Nothing in these conversations seemed to make waves in her heart.
Ava stood in front of the window without saying a word. She looked at the quiet late autumn outside, her brows furrowed.
"I thought about it for a long time, wondering why you would do this. I guess there are two possibilities. The first one may be bad: maybe you are simple and innocent by nature, so you have never thought about this level; the second one may be more serious. Oops – you thought about it, but you didn’t care.
"Which one is it?" Ava asked Hesta in a low voice.
Hesta looked at Ava's back, "...Is this important?"
Ava suddenly looked sideways, a kind of power bursting out of her eyes, "Isn't this important?"
Hesta fell silent again, an attitude that Ava knew all too well: a stubbornness that refused to change.
I'm afraid Hesta didn't hear a few words of what he just said.
Ava sat back down at the table, directly opposite Hesta.
"...I said before that Chiba is the worst reserve. Do you want to know why?"
Hearing Qianye's name, Hesta finally reacted. She raised her eyes again, "I just wanted to say it, your words are completely unreasonable. There has never been a mercury needle as good as Miss Qianye -"
"Looking at combat alone, that may be the case," Ava said coldly, "but Chiba has never considered what will happen after she turns thirty."
Hesta was startled.
She really couldn't refute this.
Her first joint battle with Chiba took place in November 4624, when a wave of chelates appeared in the Cracked Stone Wasteland at the southernmost tip of the Fourth District.
When they received the order to "join the battle", the AHgAs combat force's salvage operation in the Cracked Stone Wasteland had just concluded. A total of 7 children who had awakened for the first time were taken out of the hinterland of the contaminated area by the mercury needles.
This number was far less than the estimated number, but because Mercury Needle, who participated in the salvage operation, was keenly aware of the existence of "abnormals" during the operation, the operation was suspended not long after it started.
For the entire AHgAs, it is inevitable to bear risks in battle, but whether to implement it depends on the benefits - in any case, a mercury needle with rich combat experience is worth much more than a group of people who have not yet become Reserve seedlings.
Losing veterans in order to save a few newcomers with unknown futures is something AHgAs cannot bear.
After the salvage operation team evacuated, AHgAs left the "Abnormal Hunting Team" with 10 hours of combat time - it was said that it was a team, but in fact there were only two people, Hesta and Chiba.
They sneaked into the contaminated area alone, Hesta was responsible for luring the aberrants to appear, and Chiba was responsible for hunting them down.
The two must end the battle and evacuate at the specified time - the Cracked Stone Wasteland is an extremely remote place, so it is not considered a wasteland worth preserving. After 10 hours, regardless of whether they succeeded in hunting down the aberrants, 207 B3-21 bombers will fly over the entire contaminated area at an altitude of 7,000 to 8,200 meters.
By then, 461.7 tons of incendiary bombs and 27 tons of fragmentation bombs will completely annihilate everything on this land together with chelates.
Hesta will never forget Chiba when she saw her during this battle.
She had heard some descriptions of Chiba's battles from Liz: Chiba's posture when facing the enemy often made people feel that she was not trying to defeat her opponent, but was planning to die with him.
There is actually a bit of a problem with this description.
Hesta believed that those who had come to this conclusion must have watched Chiba fight from a distance - because Chiba rarely stabbed the chelate's eyes or nose from the front like other mercury needles, she Even the triangular spurs uniformly equipped by AHgAs for mercury needles are rarely used.
Chiba always likes to get behind the chelate, tightly tightening the chelate's jaw with his right arm, and at the same time pierce the chelate's frontal lobe with an ice pick that is only 36cm long from above the eyeball.
This ice pick is affectionately called a "scalpel" by Chiba, because the chelates she "annihilates" are often still "alive". Some chelates even keep their eyeballs intact, but only in the prefrontal lobe. After being crushed into pieces, they lost all desire to kill and turned into docile and sluggish walking corpses.
Perhaps from a distance, this kind of hugging and killing from behind does have the meaning of "die together", but Hesta from close up has a completely different impression.
Everything is exactly the opposite: at no time is Chiba more gentle and compassionate than when she is hunting chelates. Regardless of the other party's gender, race, or age, she always treats every manipulated soul equally - if Such a thing really exists - relief from their bodies being overrun by chelate bacteria.
Chiba always has an equal amount of kindness towards these extremely dangerous enemies.
Hesta once wanted to imitate this elegant fighting style, but the price was to have four fingers chewed off by chelates in a subsequent battle.
But because of this, she understands the dangers of this fighting style better than anyone else. In fact, Chiba is not able to escape unscathed every time. As long as she is not injured, once she is injured, it will definitely be a serious injury.
Hesta sometimes wonders whether Miss Chiba is disgusted with life itself, so she would use such an extreme method to fight against chelates? But this seems to be somewhat contradictory, because I am afraid that no one's will to survive is as strong as Chiba. Regarding this, most doctors who have treated Chiba should have felt it.
But Hesta also heard Chiba say more than once, "In fact, people don't have to live that long at all. It is enough to live to thirty years old."
Perhaps Chiba’s definition of “alive” is different from most people’s.
"This is Miss Chiba's freedom." Hesta looked at Ava, "No matter how she plans to spend her life, that is her freedom."
"I've heard this kind of talk too much... Should people have the freedom to let themselves go into the abyss?"
"...What do you mean?"
"In a few decades, you will know what I am referring to." Ava said solemnly, "I can count the number of friends Chiba Masaki has made in these years on one hand, but she has made many for herself. Where are the enemies? Maybe they can already form a small country.
""What if she wasn't as lucky as she thought and didn't die on the battlefield before she was thirty, but unexpectedly lived a long life and lived to my age by accident? What would she do?
"At that time, her body could no longer withstand the battles on the front line and she had to return to a habitable land. Would her enemies here just let her go?
"All those who have been trampled under her feet will rise up one by one, and these people will gather together to hunt her like jackals and tear her apart without mercy.
"When that happens, who can protect her? Can you?"
