Chapter 148: 147

Chapter 147

Cataclysm (2)

Even if some time had passed after the immediate crisis, Berg Berten’s mind remained troubled. Because of this, he walked through the camp, trying to calm his heart.

‘Bawooo!’

After he had walked for a while, he heard the sound of a horn.

“The Knights of the Sky are back!” a soldier yelled.

Berg reflexively looked into the western sky. A single wyvern was flying toward the camp.

A hundred had set out, so why does this one return alone?

The old noble’s heart pounded, and his terrible imagination ran wild through his head.

“Huh? But why is he alone?”

“Surely…”

As Berg watched the wyvern, he heard the frantic gossiping of the soldiers.

The sight grew more ominous by the moment, yet Berg managed to remain patient as he conducted a closer study of the wyvern. The beast was beating its wings as if in a hurry.

Berg measured the angle at which the wyvern was descending and started running.

‘Fwoop Fwoop!’

The wyvern passed over his head. The fishy smell unique to wyverns slammed into Berg’s nostrils, yet there was also the tangy smell of blood and scorched flesh.

Berg gritted his teeth and picked up his pace even more.

The wyvern headed for a spot some distance off, and it almost crash-landed to the earth.

“Wizard! Where is the wizard with the healing magic!”

A screaming voice followed the landing. As Berg passed the barracks, he saw that a crowd had already gathered around the scene.

“What? Why did he return alone?”

“What body?”

From the noise of the crowd, the word ‘corpse’ settled into Berg’s ears.

“Let me pass! Make way!”

Berg proceeded brusquely through the massed soldiers and knights.

Beyond the edge of the crowd was the wyvern. It was breathing loudly, and its back was red, for the saddle was drenched in blood. Its yellow scales were covered in coagulated blood which had flowed down from the saddle.

Berg Berten frowned, and his eyes felt stiffened by the sight of the bloody wyvern. Instead of looking for even a moment more, he turned his head.

And he could finally see the wyvern rider, and the bloody thing kneeling by his feet looked like a man. Berg approached this wounded man, and to see him up close made his wounds appear even more disastrous. The pieces of iron armor still clinging to him had melted, and his leather armor was stuck to the skin. The flesh not covered in armor was a dismal sight, with the man’s flesh full of cuts. Yellow pus flowed from the skin that had been blistered by the heat. Of the dozens of sword cuts on the man, many were deep.

The man’s helmet was gone, and only then did Berg realize that this was his first time seeing the man’s face. The mercenary had always worn his helmet and hood. He was much younger than Berg had initially believed him to be.

No, it wasn’t enough to say that he was young – Was he maybe eighteen or nineteen?

“Alas.”

Looking at that young face, a face that had not yet left behind its boyish qualities, Berg groaned. Scabs of blood clung to the man’s chin, nose, and mouth after it had flowed across his face and solidified. His skin was bleached, as pale as a blank sheet of paper.

This was the typical appearance of knights who had fought so hard that they suffered mana reflux.

Berg could imagine it without having been there – How hard this man struggled in the forest.

“Stand aside!” came the urgent shout as someone pushed Berg out of the way.

It was a wizard of the military who went to kneel before the bloody mercenary and poured out a flash of healing magic.

The blisters upon the man weren’t so swollen anymore, yet the magic was not enough. Another wizard appeared and added his light. The cuts upon the man’s body gradually knit shut, faded. The skin, which had looked ripe and pale, regained some of its original complexion.

Nevertheless, the man’s wounds remained serious.

Then, the overall commander appeared, as well as the young vice-commander of the Knights of the Sky.

“Give your report,” said the vice-commander, and his stubborn voice made the Wyvern Knight stand on attention.

“After we had crushed the enemy’s large-scale magic, all us Wyvern Knights descended at one and neutralized the enemy’s magical capabilities. I believe that the battle is still ongoing, but our position in the battle was overwhelmingly dominant when I left.”

The soldiers and knights gathered in the crowd broke out into joyous shouts.

The news that the Sky Knights were overpowering the enemy was enough to revive their hopes for the deteriorating military situation, for, up until now, they had only been seeing their allies stumbling into the camp through the night, defeated.

“They are truly the Knights of the Sky!” the commander laughed in great joy.

Even in the midst of everyone’s rejoicing, Berg Berten’s face remained firm.

His gaze was settled on the members of the Veil Mercenary Company as they forced their way through the crowd.

The men and woman stared blankly at their drooping commander and went to kneel in front of him.

“…!” the young man shouted something with a distorted face, yet none here could understand the unfamiliar language of these people. However, they all grasped the meaning of the shout.

The celebratory atmosphere ended as if icy water had been poured over it. Cheers were no longer heard.

“Move him inside,” ordered the vice-commander of the Sky Knights. The wizards, sweating, nodded.

Soldiers approached the man, loaded him onto a stretcher, and carried him off to some barrack. The members of the Veil Mercenary Company followed them.

Berg Berten stared blankly at the scene.

* * *

The Knights of the Sky returned after their engagement with the enemy. Twenty-one imperial wizards, two hundred ninety-four knights, and two paladins: This was the reported kill-tally of the Sky Knights. The atmosphere might have briefly become subdued, but now all the soldiers celebrated the overwhelming victory, praising the deployment of Dotrin’s secret weapon.

However, the Sky Nights weren’t content with the outcome at all.

“When we arrived, the enemy was in a poor state. They were terrified and could not even form lines to resist us. Even the proud paladins of the empire were the same. All we had to do was pierce our lances through the chests of men who couldn’t even hold swords properly.”

People thought that the knights were humble.

They even thought that the Sky Knights said such things to elevate the efforts of the soldiers and knights of the outpost who had been slaughtered throughout the night.

Yet, this wasn’t so: A surprising tale came from the mouths of the Sky Knights. Theirs was a story of the incredible kill-tally achieved by a single mercenary commander.

Three hundred knights, twenty or so wizards, and five paladins: This was the number of enemies slain by the mercenary before the Sky Knights had reached the battle.

The Wyvern Knights went on to say that they were only able to inflict their own great carnage due to the considerable losses the enemy had suffered under the overwhelming assault of the mercenary.

They emphasized that it was he who had contributed the most to the battle and that he had made the greatest effort to save his fleeing allies.

Of course, people didn’t believe it. It didn’t make any sense.

Even a passing dog would not believe the story that a single mercenary, not even a knight, had achieved a kill tally greater than that of so many Sky Knights.

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But there were also believers: They were the survivors of the outpost who have been saved by the mercenary commander.

“We lived because he stopped a terrible lightning bolt.”

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“He cut through thunder with his sword.”

They testified as to the great efforts of the mercenary commander. They visited his barracks every day, saying that they wished for him to regain his consciousness as soon as possible.

The Veil Mercenaries stayed in the barracks of their commander day and night.

* * *

When Doris arrived before the barracks of the Veil Mercenaries, there came a great noise from inside. There was a deep rumbling sound, yells, and the screams of a young woman, and all these sounds flowed over one another.

Doris hurriedly opened the door, entered, and halted where he stood.

Men with bruised faces were grappling a woman, holding onto her limbs.

“Damn! Hold her!”

The woman was frenzied as she struggled with the men. Each time she tried to escape their grasp, one of the men was wildly shaken about.

“What’s this then?” demanded Doris, and the men looked away from the woman for a split-second.

‘Pak! Pchuk!’ in that gap, the woman managed to rip her arms from their grasp and punched into the heads of two of the men. Then she jumped away from them.

Doris only now saw the eerie glow in her eyes.

“Dammit! Catch her! Hold onto her so she doesn’t run out!”

The men squealed in terror as they ran to recapture the woman. However, before they could reach her, she grabbed a sword that stood in the corner of the barracks.

The men halted in their tracks.

The woman stared at them, her eyes flashing in many colors.

“I told you to get rid of the swords, didn’t I?”

“I put them all away. That’s His Highness’s sword.”

The woman took a step forward, and the men took a step back.

Doris stared at the woman, and after having seen the reaction of the knights, he instinctively put his hand to the hilt of his sword, as if in the presence of a wild beast.

“Never pull a blade! If you draw a blade, it becomes a big deal!” one of the men shouted.

But it was too late: Doris had already half-drawn his sword.

Light began to pour from the eyes of the woman as she saw the glint of steel.

Her intentions were murderous.

Doris frowned. He did not know the details of the matter, but it was clear that the woman was not sane. His first priority now was to subdue her, and he didn’t know whether this was possible.

She hadn’t even noticed him before, yet the moment that his blade left its scabbard, the energy that had awakened in her was enormous. Doris swallowed the spit in his dry throat as he faced the great, bestial energies flowing from her.

The woman stepped forward.

‘Duk!’ a dull sound was heard all of a sudden, and the woman stopped. In front of her stood a cloaked half-elf who had appeared like a ghost. The woman curled up as she brought her hands to her stomach. And in the next moment, the men rushed forward, grabbed her, and pressed her down.

The woman, subdued and breathless, began to sob in sorrow.

“Why do you keep holding me? I’m just here for His Highness…”

The woman was so utterly sad, and Doris began to wonder whether the men had been bothering her.

However, that eerie light still flowed strongly from her eyes. And when Doris studied the scene, he saw that only the men had bruised faces. It was clear that the woman wasn’t the one who had been assaulted.

She now sobbed so much that she couldn’t come to breathe, and she fainted.

The men let go of her in relief.

“Woo! It gets worse and worse. I will get too exhausted to stop her before His Highness wakes up, mark my words.”

“We might all die before his eyes open.”

The men were wildly breathing as they lamented the situation.

Meanwhile, the half-elf had picked up the sword dropped by the woman and tied it to her waist. She then mercilessly bound the woman with a length of rope, as if she was a rebel or a criminal.

“What the hell is all this about?” Doris asked with a blank face as he took in the scene.

“We had to calm down the cute, caring girl who wants to claim vengeance for her master.”

“If she was twice as cute, we’d all be dead by now.”

“We’re lucky that she is as she is, then?” demanded the man as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“I’ve come to see if there is an improvement,” stated Doris.

“It is exactly as it looks like. His flow of mana remains irregular and there have been no signs of consciousness,” came the man’s frank reply.

Wizards had channeled their healing magics over several days, but all that was healed were the wounds of the flesh. The prince remained unconscious, showing no signs of waking.

This was already the fourth day.

Doris was looking at the prince with a stern face when the man said, “As soon as his condition improves, we will return him to Leonberg.”

Doris frowned upon hearing the sudden declaration.

“If he has to die, if he has to bleed, it will not be in Dotrin but in the lands of Leonberg,” said the man, ignoring Doris’s expression, adding, “I think he has already paid the price for gaining Dotrin’s favor and friendship many times over.”

Many lives were saved, for the prince had remained in enemy territory on his own, attracting the attention of the enemy’s archmage. He had saved thousands directly and indirectly.

He had long since paid his debt for Dotrin aiding him in his assassinations in the empire if one studied a list of the enemies he had defeated.

No, even before this, Doris had never held the intention of holding Leonberg’s prince here by using such debts as an excuse. What concerned Doris at the moment was that the prince would be returning in such a damaged state.

“If you need my aid, then say so. The Knights of the Sky will help you to return.”

Doris had no just grounds to prevent the prince’s subordinates from taking their master back to their country.

“Thank you,” was all the man said as he grew silent.

After that, Doris watched the prince for a while and then left the barracks of the Veil Mercenaries. The atmosphere of the military camp was not as dark as it had been after the setbacks of a few days ago.

This was by virtue of the fact that more troops had arrived from the outpost than had at first been expected, for it was initially surmised that half of their number had been wiped out.

The improved morale was also due to the kill tallies that the Knights of the Sky have steadily reported over the past few days.

The war entered a lull.

Once the Wyvern Knights came to occupy the airways and launched their occasional surprise attack, the Imperial Army dug itself deeper into the forest instead of marching out. The thick trees provided them with cover.

There was nothing much that the enemy could do if the Sky Knights launched their surprise attacks, but there was no need to overdo things.

The Knights of the Sky have already widened their operations beyond the forest, and they have already posted impressive kill tallies. In a state such as this, there was no need to draw a great army, tens of thousands strong, from where it hid in the forest.

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The troops of Dotrin were now watching and waiting, lest the enemy ever tried to pop out where they were not wanted.

“What the hell is the third princeps thinking?”

Doris shook his head as he thought about the princeps who had become overall commander of the Imperial Army.

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