Chapter 75
We weren't exactly in a situation where we could all sit down, share stories, and comfort one another. So, I ignored Oliver, the trembling child, and instead got to business.
“Merk is working his way here. We need to hold down this position until reinforcements arrive. Axel and I were sent here to assist.”
One of the masked men stepped up.
“Our team leader fell during the first attack. I am the next in command. Identify yourselves.”
“Rex Jaeger. Chamite class in the IMA.”
The others all followed suit in introducing themselves, with Axel once again faking his identity, claiming to be a gold class student instead.
“Acknowledged. Thank you for the assistance.”
The man gave a respectful bow to both Axel and me.
“We have more civilians holed up in the rooms; some are too injured to leave this position.”
He nodded to Oliver as he gave a quick report.
“Those of us who remain are not typical frontline fighters, and our equipment is poorly suited for defensive tactics. Do we have an ETA on our reinforcements?”
I assumed a humanoid form again and shook my head.
“I see… we may need to consider abandoning this post.”
Despite our overwhelming victory just moments earlier, the morale of this team was at an all-time low. Though I could not claim it was without reason.
These men were clearly intended as a close-range, ambush force, given their weapons of choice being daggers and shortswords. Against a group of well-armed and armoured soldiers, they could only hold on for so long.
“Hm… wait a moment.”
I stretched out a tendril of water to about two metres long, then froze and detached it.
The process was repeated multiple times until my body had lost so much mass that I was no longer able to see over Evelyn's bar.
“Use these. Get anyone able among the civilians to take one and form a spearwall.”
With my body being what it was, I could not rely on it any longer for combat. I dismissed the spirit and returned to my normal form, ignoring the expressions of shock that followed.
To make sure I had not messed anything up, I picked up one of the frozen spears and tried striking the body of one of the mages I had taken down earlier.
It went through with only a small level of resistance. I then withdrew it and inspected the ice. Not a single fracture, and no sign of the ice melting anytime soon.
“I'd say it's at the level of bronze weaponry. Not the best, but easy to handle. Maybe wrap some cloth around the base so you don’t freeze your hands off.”
“I see… Yes, this will do. You two, go get the others out here. Anybody capable of holding these will be put to use.”
His men saluted and wasted no time rushing upstairs. The others acknowledged Axel and me with a respectful salute, then quickly took up their own defensive positions yet again.
For the time being, it seemed there was no risk of imminent attack, so Axel and I approached our wayward dormmate.
“Olly, how're you holding up? Any injuries?”
I asked.
There was no response. He was holding himself tightly and staring wide-eyed at the carnage we had wrought on the Soleans.
“Yo! Olly! Get it together, man! These people could use you right now. Are you just gonna cower up in your room?”
Axel talked next, though I doubted his abrasive approach would be any more effective.
“...tch, seriously?”
Axel made no effort to hide his disdain for Oliver's continued silence.
“Calm down. He was never meant to be in a combat role, remember?”
I tried to placate him.
“Yeah, he wanted to well, he sure as shit didn't support us just now. And judging by the bodies, he didn't do jack we arrived either.”
Axel began to raise his voice. The earlier rabid joy with which he approached the fight was nowhere to be seen.
Whatever happened during their time in Duke Vogel's lands must have resurfaced in his mind. Otherwise, his reaction wasn't warranted.
I stepped up to Axel and spoke so only he could hear me.
“Not all broken tools can be fixed with a hammer. Go keep an eye out for any nails.”
I nodded to the front entrance.
Axel clicked his tongue one last time, removed himself from the conversation, and joined the Imperials in reforming the defences.
“Olly, don't worry about it too much, you’re just a first year, nobody expects you to fight. But your enchanting save some lives here, y'know?”
I crouched next to him and spoke while at eye level.
“...it's not that…”
Oliver finally spoke, though it was such a low whisper that I had to strain to hear him properly.
He trailed off, but I remained silent in the hopes that he wouldn't feel pressured and open up on his own.
“...it's easy for you. know who the enemy is…”
I wanted to retort. Wasn't it obvious who we needed to fight?
But I held my tongue and let him continue.
“I-I can't help you… sorry… I can't… they're m-my…”
He bit his lip and swallowed the urge to cry. I could feel the barely restrained emotions threatening to burst out.
Two minds expressed their opinions from within me. It was becoming difficult to distinguish their feelings from my own.
“Alright, I get it. This is pretty crazy. If anything, the one reacting normally here.”
I smiled slightly and placed my hand on his shoulder, ignoring my intrusive thoughts.
“Listen, I won't make you do anything here. But you should know this place is probably going to keep getting hit until we drive them off completely… if you follow my directions like before, I have some ideas on how we could minimise casualties.”
I waited patiently for a response.
And finally, Oliver shifted his line of sight to my feet.
“...mhm…”
A small nod, and he slowly reached to take my outstretched hand.
But just before he could, an overwhelmingly vile taste surfaced in my mouth. With it came the feeling of something foreign forcing its way up from my stomach and into my throat.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I stepped back as Oliver watched on meekly.
“Rex? Do you need some water?”
Evelyn noticed my strange behaviour and offered help. I could not answer, though, as my hand had automatically covered my mouth, and I gagged uncontrollably.
“
Finally, the foreign substance forced its way out. Evelyn gasped and desperately began tearing through a drawer. Oliver looked horrified and seemed ready to run for the door, had fear not already rooted him to the spot.
“Rex! I've got a healing potion!”
Evelyn rushed over, but I calmly waved her back.
“I'm fine.”
“What!? Drink now! You just coughed up a lung! You must have internal wounds of some kind!”
Evelyn grabbed my head and was moments away from force-feeding me the foul-smelling liquid.
“Seriously, I'm okay. It's not mine.”
She stepped back, befuddled at my response.
“It happened earlier, my water form got some bits stuck inside. Damn, I must have converted that part back to my stomach when I reverted… elemental forms are tricky.”
I scraped my tongue with my fingers and spat a glob of foreign blood to the ground.
“Sorry, could I get something strong to wash this out?”
Evelyn still looked troubled, but she did pass me some prune juice. Even under the circumstances, she wouldn't hand over the good stuff.
“Monster…”
The quiet voice drew my attention back to Oliver. The blood seemed to have fled from his body as he grew ever more pale. His eyes, as though reflecting a primal nightmare, had lost any signs of rational thought behind them.
“Calm down, Olly, like I said, this is jus—”
“Stay away!”
He smacked my hand away and bolted past me.
But he did not go back upstairs. He went for the door, driven by hysteria alone.
“Oliver! Stop him, Axel!”
Axel looked back over his shoulder to see Oliver running for the exit.
“Oi, idiot. Don't ruin our barricade.”
Axel effortlessly gripped Oliver by the back of his cloak and kicked his legs out from under him.
But Oliver kept flailing. In fact, his mental state only became more dire as he found himself face to face with the corpse of a Solean that had been propped up among the wreckage. A once proud soldier now served only to plug a gap in the barricade.
“Let me go! You're monsters! Both of you! You're inhuman! Disgusting! Murderers! Traitor! Demon!”
His insults kept coming, and the whole room turned to look at him, not with the pitying eyes from a moment ago, but cold disdain.
“Shut him up, he'll harm our morale.”
One soldier commented while nodding at the civilians emerging from their rooms, holding my spears in their hands.
“Help me! They’re in here! HEEELP! HE—”
Axel delivered a firm chop to the back of his head, and he immediately lost consciousness.
“Little rat… I knew he was a worthless coward, oughta break his neck.”
I stepped up in response to Axel's words and took Oliver off his hands.
“Don't. We can't just tie him up and leave him in his room…”
Was that thought my own? Maybe not…
But I agreed with it. To think this kid had so much potential, and he overreacted to a little bit of gore.
Was I inhumane to think this way? On an emotional level, I could understand his behaviour. Oliver was a Solean, too, after all. He had just witnessed the soldiers he had been taught to admire and trust being slaughtered by his friends. And what must he have thought when I coughed up pieces of another human?
To him, I may as well be a cannibal who had done gods-knows-what to my victim.
So yes, I understood Oliver. But even so, his behaviour was intolerable. Damaging morale was bad enough, but towards the end, it sounded like he was planning to sell us out. What would have happened if he fed the enemy intel on our numbers, positioning, and capabilities? What if he enchanted all their equipment?
It would be no small matter.
Something was wrong… the feelings that impressed themselves upon me were becoming clearer. They were fully-fledged thoughts instead of vague emotional responses.
“...I'll tie him up.”
I stated firmly.
“Yeah, yeah, I got it the first time.”
Axel waved me off, not knowing that I was no longer addressing him.
“...Quiet.”
I whispered to myself as I hauled Oliver upstairs.
***
The following two hours were filled with a stressful cycle of defending against attacks and repairing our defences. We routinely shifted the front line back for treatment while the second line took over.
But without a priest, we could only rely on first aid to patch up wounds. The soldiers had run out of potions before we arrived, and Evelyn only had the one. The leader of the Imperial soldiers had ordered us to remain silent about the potion’s existence early on.
Even when one of the civilians was bleeding out from a crossbow bolt, we did not save him.
The way we saw it, we were in a battle of attrition that would last until help arrived. But for all we knew, Merk and the others were already dead, or forced to flee.
My thoughts drifted to the arena. If the fight between monarchs had ended, surely one of them would have moved to rout the remaining forces on the opposing side.
So then, what kind of battle was taking place to keep both of them out of the battle for so long?
And what of the other students? Only Lily and Oliver were accounted for at the moment.
I had to admit, I was growing fatigued as the seemingly endless wave of fighting dragged on and my own thoughts distracted me. The new voices were yet another concern.
The voice that always came first was pragmatic and offered helpful advice. I instinctively knew it to belong to the Stag Lord.
The voice that followed every time was savage and abrupt. But I felt there was an underlying purpose to what it said beyond empty bloodlust. This one always caused my chest to tighten as it spoke. Whether it was The Watcher or the parasite it placed in me, I could not be sure.
“Gods… what the hell is taking our reinforcements so long? We must have made a big enough dent in their forces to ease the pressure on the others.”
An Imperial soldier cursed as we were both being patched up by one of the less combat-capable civilians.
“What if the others already fell? It would certainly explain why we have our hands full here.”
Another soldier commented, his sword broken and arm scorched from an earlier fire spell
“Keep that thought to yourself. Regardless of what is going on out there, we have our mission: Hold the tavern.”
Seeing as the pressure had temporarily eased up, I decided to indulge in my curiosity.
“Why you guys guarding this place? And where are the other teams stationed exactly?”
The two soldiers exchanged a glance and shrugged before answering my question.
“The Burning Sprite is the most central building in town, which is both sturdy and limited in terms of entry points. In the scenario of a wide-scale attack—”
He gestured around himself.
“—we could more reliably hold the place down.”
The next soldier then jumped in.
“The other teams are stationed in the barracks, the chapel, the toll booth, and the blacksmith's. All similarly defensible, and closer to the gates on either side of town. I won’t lie to you, kid, we pretty much have the most dangerous position here.”
“We signed up for it… But you could still get out, you know? I’ve noticed the Soleans ignoring students who aren’t hostile to them. You could hop out the window you came through and just leave.”
“Hey! Ignore that, kid. You and that beast in human skin over there have been tearing through attackers. I ain’t too proud to admit we need you here.”
The two men glared at one another until I spoke for myself.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. And Axel’s having too much fun to leave.”
We all looked over at the muscle-bound lunatic shadow-boxing as he prepared for the next attack.
“Has he taken a break yet?”
“Nope. He’s nowhere near his limit.”
I responded with a chuckle.
“We’ve got incoming!”
The lookout yelled, and as if the response had already become second nature to me, I moved straight into position with an ice-spear in hand.
The usual process followed. Soleans began busting down the barricade—which by now had become more corpse than furniture—and those of us with spears began thrusting.
But something was different. These Soleans were few in number and seemed more desperate than fierce. I thought perhaps this was their final push, until the real cause of their desperation was made clear.
A soldier came flying right through the boarded-up window in my direction. I nearly skewered him on reflex, but stopped myself as I noticed he was without a head.
“Weaklings! You dare trespass in my town!”
Another man burst through the next window, both arms ripped from their sockets.
“Come on, kid! You’re not even at half my score!”
That hauntingly familiar voice put me on edge more so than any Solean attacker had up until now.
“Shut up! You’re three times my size!”
An angry feminine voice yelled back.
Right after, there was a heavy thud against the outside wall, followed by a terrifyingly rapid procession of hefty bangs. The wall began to crack and buckle under the weight of the onslaught until finally it was broken down completely.
A Solean soldier collapsed from the other side—bludgeoned to death by the looks of it.
And on the other side, the ones responsible for ruining our defence made themselves known.
“Oh, you were here, Rex? Fighting the good fight, huh? Hahahaha!”
Klaus Eisenruf laughed heartily as he snapped the neck of a man he had dangling off the ground with one hand.
“Rex!? You’re okay!”
Felicia stood by the broken wall, her fist still extended after her recent flurry of attacks.
It appeared the two of them had already cleared out the attackers outside, and they strode on in, brimming with confidence.
Perhaps it was their therian nature, but they looked—for lack of a more considerate word—wild. Their pupils were dilated, and their fur stood on end. Their claws, normally retracted, were fully extended and dripping with blood. They must have used their teeth as well at some point, considering the scarlet liquid dribbling down their chins.
So when the bubbly, attractive Felicia excitedly ran towards me, it was not the heartwarming sight one may envision.
She stopped right in front of me, her breathing heavy and ears perked up.
“We’re gonna go tear up the elves. Wanna come?”
“What? The two of you?”
She laughed at my question and turned back towards the broken wall.
“This is the one who beat my girl?”
Another therian walked in, three more following close behind.
This man, however, carried a similar aura to that of Merk. He was lean in build and only a few centimetres taller than me. He wore a bandana, but his furry, white and black striped ears still peeked out from the sides.
He strode towards me, looking over the wreckage inside the tavern as he walked. Unlike the others, he did not seem to have let his bestial nature affect him.
“I must admit. You’ve done well.”
He stood uncomfortably close to me and sniffed the air deeply.
“A lot of blood in the air today.”
He looked at me as if he were inspecting an unpleasant insect.
“Shadowpaw Major, Draven Pancia. You are all to join us under orders of The Umbral Arm.”
He turned on his heel and addressed the whole room.
“The Soleans have been routed, but their king remains engaged with our emperor. We are to secure the academy and—”
He paused and looked directly at me.
“—ensure that the students are kept under strict supervision.”
