Darkness covered the sky, so that sunlight could not penetrate the stratus clouds, and only faintly flickered above the haze.

The land was almost pitch black, deprived of the favor of light, and only the artillery fire reflected the chaotic battlefield.

At the end of the horizon were countless huge black shadows, and a trembling roar resounded through the wind and snow of the ice field.

The human front retreated again and again, and they launched round after round of artillery bombardment, but the darkness that obscured the end of the landing land seemed to be endless, and they went forward one after another.

It was the last war of the Dark Ages, the war of humanity's evacuation of the southern ice fields.

Yanagihara had been involved in it, and her last memory of this war was like a middle-aged man grabbing her and saying to her.

"Originally, we can't leave, we have to stay, for the rest of the troops, but you can still leave, you can still live. You have the ability to cross the ice fields alone, so, live, for all of us. ”

As soon as the words fell, the "monster" rushed into the human camp.

The screams were incessant, the sound of artillery fire was deafening, the "monsters" were converging with human blood, and the soldiers were roaring, crazy and desperate.

In the dazzling firelight, the middle-aged man put on his coat for Yanagihara, patted her shoulder heavily, pressed down his hat, and turned to walk towards the battlefield.

Before leaving, he smiled and glanced back at Yanagihara and pulled out the pistol at his waist.

"Take care of Caterina for me, and tell her that she is the most precious treasure of my life, the brightest light I have ever seen in this darkness."

"Please also forgive me and Leila, as a parent, I can't be there for her, please tell her that we love her, so we have to leave her."

Humanity is going to survive, humanity needs a future, so someone has to fight.

So someone has to make the necessary sacrifices.

That's what scavengers are all about, they sweep away the filth of the darkness, they are born to find their way.

On the battlefield, it should be a hot wind with flames rolling up, and the smoke and dust obscured Yanagihara's eyes, she tightened her coat and turned to leave.

I didn't listen to the hopeless wails of pain behind me, and I didn't listen to the desperate roars around me.

She simply left, with the shame of a fugitive, with a mandate.

She just left, with that heart that was no longer beating.

In Yanagihara's memory, the middle-aged man was the son of Oltov, the head of the scavenger corps, and a friend of hers.

Katarina, on the other hand, is the man's newborn daughter.

Three years later, the dark times are a thing of the past as the centuries-old smoke and dust in the sky gradually dissipates.

Humanity sees the light again, and Yanagihara also takes on the responsibility of taking care of Katarina.

But as a premature baby, Katarina's health was so poor that she was often unable to go out because of weakness when she was young.

But it's not like something good has never happened to her.

At the age of twenty-seven, she fell in love with a man and were married two years later.

Unfortunately, everything did not go in a good direction because of this.

At the age of thirty-four, Caterina gave birth to a daughter, but she herself died in a hospital bed due to difficult childbirth.

Her husband died a year later due to excessive grief.

The newborn daughter of the two became an orphan in this way.

As a last resort, Yanagihara had no choice but to make the decision to continue to raise the girl to grow up.

Thankfully, the girl is healthy.

I'm sure Caterina would be happy to know about it······

When the girl was two years old, Yanagihara gave her an official name, Angelica.

She is a very lively little guy who will often climb on her lap to let her tell stories while Yanagihara is reading.

Every now and then, he would knock over the furniture in the house, and then look at Yanagihara with an innocent expression.

Every day when she goes out, she either climbs the chimney or plays in the mud, so that when Yanagihara takes her out, she has to tie a rope around her waist to barely control this little guy.

For Angelica as a child, the happiest thing is to ask Yanagihara to make a birthday cake on her birthday every year.

It's something that can't be eaten anywhere after a disaster, not even with rare ores, because no one will make it.

But Yanagihara was able to find ingredients from all kinds of beasts and make this delicious dessert like magic, and she couldn't stop it.

So Angelica looks forward to her birthday every year, what kind of pastry Yanagihara will make next time, every day in the future, every year, and forever and ever.

······

By the time the girl grew up a little more, she began to become more mischievous.

In the words of the pre-disaster period, that is, three days without the roof of the house.

She began to learn the skills of using swords from Yanagihara, and I have to say that this girl's talent is indeed very good, just in a year or two, she has already learned a little bit of it.

So much so that she was always able to beat the children in the neighborhood to the point that her nose and face were swollen, so that Yanagihara often had to come to the door with gifts to apologize, and then return home and give her a "beating".

The girl admires Yanagihara very much, and she says that she will also be a hired person in the future, to travel the continent, to explore the ice fields, to change the fate of mankind.

However, this kind of teenager's enthusiasm will always be knocked out by Yanagihara's brainstorm, so that the girl can only continue to shrink her neck and help with housework in disgrace.

To be honest, Angelica really doesn't like housework, in her own words, her hands are used to hunt wild beasts, how can she be bound by such trivial chores.

For this reason, she was often lifted by Yanagihara's neck and spanked.

It can be said that until the girl was twelve years old, she grew up in trouble and beatings.

This made Yanagihara can't help but miss the quiet Katarina, the two are obviously mother and daughter, why is the gap so big.

Until the year when the girl was twelve.

One day, she and Yanagihara were walking down the street and saw a bloodied hired being carried into a clinic.

The mercenary's arm had been severed, half of his body was horribly twisted, his mouth was moaning, and the pupils in his eyes were dilated and gray.

"Hirers, hirers, all day long, how are these people······" The doctor said this as he beckoned the nurses to carry the patient into the operating room.

Yanagihara didn't know what Angelica was thinking at that time, she only knew that the girl's shoulders suddenly trembled, and then she grabbed the hem of her clothes with her left hand and asked.

"Yanagihara, you're not going to be like this, are you?"

"No, it won't." Yanagihara replied lightly.

It's true, but Angelica doesn't hear it.

During the night, the girl had a nightmare in which she dreamed that Yanagihara was lying on a hospital bed covered in blood and covered with a white cloth by the doctor.

She cried hoarsely, but Yanagihara never woke up.

The next morning, the girl opened her eyes on a pillow wet with tears. And since then, she has become much quieter.

She began to practice her sword skills more desperately, and even began to learn how to use firearms from Yanagihara.

Unbeknownst to Yanagihara, the girl had secretly approached the Employers' Association behind her back, and carefully inquired about the chances of the Hirers dying after leaving the greenhouse.

What she got was a figure that terrified her, fifty-eight percent.

And in her impression, from childhood to adulthood, Yanagihara's tasks were almost always to leave the greenhouse.

That's when she knew that Yanagihara had been doing something in order to take care of her.

Beasts, cold snaps, ice fields, these things that Yanagihara once mentioned so insipidly, turned out to be so deadly and terrifying, it seemed that it could destroy all her warmth at any moment.

But the man never told her about the danger he had experienced.

It's funny that she has been making trouble for the other party, even in the greenhouse, but she can't let Yanagihara have a good rest.

That night, the first thing the girl did when she got home was to run to Yanagihara's side, hugged her without saying a word, and cried for an hour.

It was the first time she was so scared, afraid that she would lose her only loved one.

It was the first time she was so scared, afraid that Yanagihara would say goodbye.

Angelica seemed to be much more sensible overnight, which made Yanagihara very relieved, but in addition to the relief, she also felt a little troubled.

That's why the girl seems to prefer to stick to her.

She would be close to her during meals, sit in her arms when she was resting, and even climb into her bed to sleep with her when she was sleeping.

Isn't it said that humans have a period of rebellion when they are teenagers, how can we not see this in Angelica's body?

Yanagihara has not been very clear about this.

She didn't think much of it, though, because her idea was to take care of Angelica until she reached adulthood, and then leave to do her own thing.

She couldn't stay here forever, after all, she was an immortal.

So, everything happened on the night of Angelica's sixteenth birthday.