10. Chapter 10
Walm was struggling with the adventurer who suddenly accelerated his movement and attack, but when his friends were injured one after another, the movement of the man in front of him clearly slowed down, and finally, the decisive end would soon be reached.
Walm’s halberd pierced the shoulder of an adventurer named Al, and Walm pushed him against a large tree.
“You’re not used to killing humans huh… Really, I envy you.”
“Aaaaaahhh, aaaAAAHHH!!!”
Perhaps he was a man of good fellowship. As a human being, he was admirable. Therefore, Walm felt sympathetic for him. He wasn’t fit for the battlefield. He tried to draw the halberd, but his shouts weren’t helpful at all.
After a short break, Walm pulled out the longsword and tried to cut his neck with a single horizontal slash.
If he died, the rest would be easy.
There, Walm’s skin exposed from the armor caught the wind. It wasn’t a natural wind. The intuition that had helped him survive on the battlefield until now conveyed an unprecedented sense of crisis.
A storm broke out next to Walm who had barely jumped away. Its power and density were incomparable to that of a wind blade created with mana.
Walm turned around, but a sharp pain ran through his right arm. Small scratches were visible on the armor, numerous scratches were also carved on the exposed fingers and joints, and blood flowed from some cuts.
“What is this magic!?”
Is this some kind of trump card? Damn it!
While cursing in his heart, Walm was looking for the magic user, and saw the girl who should be dead by now if only he wasn’t interrupted. Her frightened face that he had seen a short while ago was no longer there, and as if it was a lie, she was staring at Walm with a sharp look.
“Was it you?”
Walm tried to close the gap, but the next shot came without interruption.
“Don’t F*ck with me”
Walm jumped behind the trees.
The trees that were involved in the attack were cut down. The soldiers’ blood in the attack was scattered in the forest. It was really an attack with enormous force. And the rapid shoot was indeed effective. Not only Walm, but the others too, the wind randomly overran the forest.
“It’s a ranged attack. Scatteeer!! Don’t group!!”
At the direction of Squad Commander Duwei, the soldiers evacuated to a place where they could hide. Walm was no exception.
By the time the wind stopped, adventurers and a few soldiers had begun to flee. The adventurer that Walm stuck on the big tree had also disappeared.
Walm picked up a blood-soaked halberd and realized that he failed to kill him from the amount of bleeding.
“With that great attack, more so in succession, they didn’t get killed?”
Willart said so while wiping the soil and branches on his body.
“No doubt. More than that, it was just a little more, I almost got him.”
The Squad Commander, who carried a war hammer on his shoulder, looked ashamed.
“Squad Commander, what about the chase?”
Jose, who accompanied Noor and Barito, also appeared through the gaps in the trees.
“Of course, No need. The main force of the defeated soldiers has been destroyed. The rest is only the residue of the adventurers and the Myard soldiers who aren’t commanded. The rest is the work of other squads. We don’t have to be so hardworking.”
“Roger. Then, I’ll gather the injured enemies and survivors. Oi, you guys, you didn’t help in the battle, let’s go.”
“T-that’s not true!”
Barito shouted in protest, but was prodded by Jose and got his mouth covered. Noor was smarter, because she didn’t put up any unnecessary resistance.
Walm looked over the forest while wearing a tourniquet himself. Other units would be responsible for the rest. If the adventurers were lucky, they might succeed in escape for sure.
Walm opened his fingers and checked his numb arm, as he reminded that the enemy’s sword was sharp, and each blow was heavy.
The salvation was that the adventurers weren’t used to killing people, nor to seeing their friends killed. If the adventurers were used to seeing people killed, Walm would have got his skeleton exposed long ago. And whether he liked it or not, the words of the adventurer who had escaped kept running through Walm’s mind.
“I don’t kill others because I like it.”
Without telling anyone, Walm muttered this. It might sound funny. It might sound ironic. No one would believe such words in a forest full of corpses. In truth, as long as one fought only against monsters who were the natural enemy of humans, there was no need to taste such a human conflict, but for Walm, who had become a soldier of the Highserk Empire, it was inevitable.
4 more years huh…
―― In four years, Walm would be able to choose whether to be discharged or not. Some made their own business with the pay and loot from the wars, others returned to their hometowns to buy fields and settle down. Some continued to fight as soldiers, while others became adventurers. Desperate to live in the present, Walm had never thought about the future.
Is it unusual for someone who has just killed people, to think about himself?
―― The adventurers who mourned the injuries and deaths of their comrades and expressed their anger were undoubtedly more human in Walm’s eyes. Walm was aware that the better of a soldier he became, the less human he would be.
By the time he was discharged, Walm worried whether he would be the same Walm he was now.
SIGH!!
After Walm sighed a little, he wiped the blood off the longsword, and collected the halberd.
And so, the forest regained its tranquility.
◆
“Run Leethia. Or do you want to die?”
It was Fleck who carried Al and Amy on his back. He lost his right eyeball and had numerous cuts all over his body, but he was the least injured in the party. Even though Fleck was accustomed to running through the forest with a large shield, the two adventurers were still a great weight. Nevertheless, he couldn’t let them go.
Right now, Fleck overcame the blurry field of vision only with his fighting spirit.
“Everyone, everyone is, Lefty is…!!”
“I know!! Lefty is okay. Think of how many times he’s been saved from a crisis.”
Fleck knew that, even if he didn’t like it, the wrath of the Highserk soldiers could come from behind. The only saving grace was that the two soldiers who had badly injured Fleck and Al weren’t after him. More so, Lefty became the decoy to let the group members and the remaining Myard soldiers escape successfully.
Lefty, who had a bad mouth and lost money quickly, was easily misunderstood as a reckless person, but Fleck knew that he was a man who could be saved from disaster even if he staked his own life.
“He’s okay”
Fleck kept running, telling himself that. The blood of the two people on his back hasn’t stopped flowing, and their lives were at stake.
TN : Here, the full image of the character design of Willart
WILLART (Character Design 3)
TN: Join my discord channel if you want.
Willarts a girl not what I expected ngl