Vol 1 Chapter 43 (2/2)

Royce bowed. Dissatisfaction clearly lingered on his face.

“…Lieutenant Royce. What’s with that expression? I see… You really are scared of the enemy.”

“I don’t fear them. I don’t even know who our enemies are.”

“By the way, your squadron was in charge of protecting that commoner. I had told you to stay in the back, but if the commoner hangs around among the other knights, it would affect morale. You will protect the commoner in the rearguard.”

“…Are you referring to when we reach the battlefield?”

“That’s right. Life is precious to you, right? Honorable Count. You will comply with the request, right? You will be sent to the back to protect the commoner. The orders give you the perfect opportunity to flee from the battle. Rather, you will become a hero for saving the people.”

Royce smiled along with Feyl’s coa.r.s.e laughter.

“I see. That will be fine. I do think life is precious. I will take the commoner to the rearguard and protect her there.”

With a salute, Royce left the tent.

“What a coward!”[3]

Feyl spat at Royce’s back.

Royce paid no heed to him and continued to walk away.

‘Good. I have now removed him from the battlefield. There is no way he can meddle anymore.’

Feyl looked at the orders solemnly. They were to use their numerical advantage to overrun the enemy’s camp.

‘Those guys are history. I have the upper hand. Soon, I will…’

Those thoughts made Feyl more determined.

“Thanks for your work, Lieutenant Royce. How did it go?”

Royce shook his head.

“Rejected as usual. He didn’t listen.”

The previous night, Rosefeld had visited Royce in secret. He told him where the the enemy base was.

“I had wanted to stay behind and observe.”

“Is there a problem?”

Royce recounted his exchange with General Feyl.

“It’s clearly a trap. What should we do?”

“We can just stay at the back and protect the civilians. I promised to do that. We can act independently. I don’t want to fight, but it doesn’t seem that we can avoid it. If that happens, Reeno and Wedge’s movements will become critical. Well, I guess all my preparations won’t have been in vain.“

Royce smiled at Kelvin.

Kelvin couldn’t be faulted for thinking ‘Whoa, what a vicious smile.’

Under the pretense of going to the rearguard to protect the commoners, Wynn’s platoon advanced and went towards Doria village, the village Rosefeld had indicated.

Right there, was the enemy base.

Reeno and Wedge were currently headed towards Count Elstead’s territory.

They carried a letter from Lieutenant Royce—Count Elstead— asking him for reinforcements.

As a n.o.ble with the influence of a Count himself, Royce had his own personal knight order.

It would be beyond his authority to arbitrarily summon troops, but Royce wasn’t attached to his own status. He would do anything to protect his territory.

Wynn’s squadron approached the edge of the village, observing it. They could see several houses, a few fields, and some chickens being raised.

The chickens were grazing outside the coop, clucking.

It seemed like an ordinary idyllic village.

However, instead of villagers, armoured men holding swords and spears walked the streets and fields.

They weren’t the original inhabitants of Doria Village. It was likely that they were all confined in one of the buildings.

Some of the men wore simple clothing and worn-out leather armour. They weren’t Petersian soldiers, they were probably the bandits and mercenaries that were colluding with them.

Among them, they could see a group of soldiers with uniform metal armour and weapons.

Unlike the unruly bandits, their disciplined movements clearly indicated that they were knights.

“Hm? That man… Where have I…?”

Upon seeing an aged man among the group, Kelvin felt a tinge of unease.

If he was from Petersia, Kelvin shouldn’t have met the old man before, but the old man still felt familiar.

The man who appeared to be the leader rode on horseback at the front of the group.

They were planning on attacking the advance force from behind.

The three people could only grind their teeth in frustration as they watched the group depart. The reinforcements from Count Elstead had not arrived.

They could only see seven or eight people left behind to guard the base.

It would be better for them to join up with the reinforcements from the Knight Order of Count Elstead’s fiefdom. Sherry and Royce had stayed behind to wait for the reinforcements.

Locke, Wynn and Kelvin quietly turned back— rather, they were about to turn back.

With a crash, a young girl was flung out of a building.

Two— no, three men came out from the door. They wore vulgar smiles on their faces.

They kicked the girl, who was desperately trying to get up and run away while screaming, and then leaned over her. They ripped off her plain villager’s clothing.

The girl screamed once again.

Wynn clenched his teeth, trying to hold back his anger.

“Those… those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.”

Locke clenched his teeth, watching the barbaric scene angrily.

“Please bear with it. We need to wait for reinforcements first. Then we can save them all.”

Despite his words, Wynn could see unbridled rage in his eyes.

“…I’m sorry, Vice-Captain… I wanted to… No, I will becme a knight who protects the weak. Before my eyes is somebody who needs help. I can’t just abandon her!”[4]

“Wynn…”

Kelvin sighed.

“…As a commander, I would have to reject that reasoning. It’s too idealistic. If you lose sight of the forest for the trees, you could lose everything… However…”

The corners of Kelvin’s lips curled up slightly.

“Frankly, I also agree with your point of view. Captain Royce might get angry, but if it’s just some bandits of that level, the three of us will be fine.”

“Right now, everybody is looking at that girl. They’re full of openings, Vice-Captain.”

Locke, who was monitoring the village as he listened to Kelvin and Wynn’s conversation, cut in.

Even the men who were supposed to be keeping watch were also looking at the men surrounding the woman, not paying attention to their surroundings..

“Let’s go!”

On Kelvin’s command, they all leapt from behind the thickets where they were hiding.

“Wha!?”

“What is it?”

Wynn slipped past the guards, who had their backs turned to him. He jumped into the middle of the men surrounding the girl.

He swung his sword. All the men around the dishevelled victim were cut down in an instant.

They couldn’t put up much resistance, since they taken off their armour and thrown their weapons off to the side.

Wynn slashed the backs of the men who were crawling away while letting out pitiful moans.

“You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!”

The lookouts came to their senses and tried to counterattack, but were stabbed in the back with the spear in Locke’s hands.

“I’ll leave this place to you!”

Saying that over his shoulder, Kelvin leapt into the building where the other villagers were being held.

He wanted to defeat the bandits before the ones inside realized what was going on outside and took hostages.

They heard angry shouts from the bandits and screams from the villagers, but it soon became quiet.

“That was easier than I thought.”

Kelvin walked out of the building, blood dripping from the sword dangling in his hand.

“Wh- Who are you…?”

An elderly man followed Kelvin out of the building. After him came an elderly woman, who rushed towards the woman that the men had pinned down and hugged her.

“Now, we should evacuate… but that will be a bit difficult, won’t it?”

‘s.h.i.+t… I’ll kill them.’

One of the men Wynn had cut, the bandit group’s second-in-command, felt his consciousness slowly fading away. However, fueled by anger and vengeance, he held on.

He was once a knight of a knight order.

He simply loved to kill.

But during the war with the Demon Lord’s monsters, that personality was not a problem.

Rather, skilled as he was in the Knight Order, he was a hero on the front lines, where his personality was extremely convenient.

However, after the war, his personality became too much for the knight order.

When those times of spending everyday doing nothing but fight were replaced by a time of peace, he couldn’t adapt.

One day, he went a bit too far during one of the missions.

Instead of just killing just the monsters, he ended up attacking civilians and other knights too.

After fleeing the Knight Order before they could punish him, he eventually ended up as a bandit.

As a former knight, he was more skilled than the chief, but since he disliked thinking hard, he was content as the second-in-command.

‘I’ll kill them… I’ll beat them to death. I’ll kill you all too!’

In the end, he was taken by surprise, and would die a dog’s death, but he put the last of his energy into chanting a spell. It was an explosion spell he learned during his time as a knight.

Not much time had pa.s.sed since the aged man had left Doria Village with the troops.

“Locke! That one is still alive!”

‘Too late! Go to h.e.l.l, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!’

With a ghastly smile, the man detonated a nearby building with his spell..

On the brink of death, the explosion wasn’t as large as he had hoped, but it was enough to bring down the worn-out building.

The building collapsed with a thunderous crash.

“Shoot!”

Locke finished the man off with his spear.

“Hurry up, please. That sound will cause the enemy to come back!”

‘How could there still be somebody who could use magic…!’

Kelvin clenched his teeth.

The enemy would be able to chase them down on horseback if they simply fled.

“To the forest! Hurry!”

They could only flee into the forest, where the horses couldn’t follow. Kelvin showed the villagers the place where Royce was waiting.

‘Now the rest is up to fate. I’ll leave it to you, Wynn. I’ll also rely on you, Captain Royce!’

The sound of the hoofsteps gradually grew louder. The sounds announced impending death, but Kelvin just smiled fearlessly and drew his sword.

“Now then, I think the chances of winning this gamble are quite high. I just have to try a bit harder!”

Wynn held up his sword, and Locke prepared his spear.

And then, in the corner of the town square, three men faced off against two hundred men.

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