288 – Monia is Alive (4)
“Thanks to you, I was able to complete a great work. This is the answer. I wish you all the best in what you wish for.”
After reading Billium’s letter in her wagon, Monia crumpled it into her backpack, into her pocket where she kept the tinder.
“He was a grateful person. Is not it?”
“Sure. Thanks to that, she was able to move more comfortably than she thought.”
Originally, she should have sneaked out of the mansion and ran hard.
“Because the secret villa is here.”
Monia went to Billium’s mansion and marked her location by unfolding the map of the Kingdom of Be End that she obtained from a suitable person among the nobles who had come to see her.
“I think it will arrive in about 10 days if nothing else gets caught!”
“It would be difficult to move so smoothly in the current situation.”
“I guess so.”
A group of mercenaries turned into bandits. Villagers turned into thieves. A defeated soldier who turned into a band of bandits. The wandering knights turned into bandits…… All the people walking around the battlefield were considered thieves.
There was no way they would just leave the wagon rolling in undisturbed. Even the wagon prepared by Billium was made huge considering Urgo and Rex, so it could be seen that it was an expensive and high-quality wagon, at least decorated.
There’s also Rex, who’s currently sitting on top of the wagon and rolling around, so he’ll stand out even more.
“Dad! How about this?”
As we were discussing what to do if something unexpected happened, Rex opened the window and he showed us his newly made mace. Chester smiled at the mace, which was tied more tightly than before, and praised Rex.
“They are well tied.”
“Yes! Right! If you get hit, it will hurt!”
Excitedly, Rex jumped off the wagon and swung his mace wildly as he ran after it. The mace, wrapped in a thick rope, cut through the air with an intimidating sound.
Rowan was watching the scenery outside where Rex was playing.
Now they were running through a burned field. It is the very meadow called silk green. I don’t know how beautiful it used to be, but now the burnt fields have turned into dead meadows with corpses strewn about.
‘It’s serious.’
Even the outskirts of the war are like this. I could see how terrible the war that had swept the kingdom of Biend was.
“I take pride in having traveled around the battlefield often.”
Rowan lived as a mercenary and traveled to many battlefields. He had a strong desire to be great, so he went around really hard.
At the same time, I don’t know if it was Rowan’s own pride that he didn’t decorate himself as a knight, or what happened to the knight in the past, but that’s Rorowan’s situation, so there’s no need to dig deep into it.
The important thing is that Rowan traveled around the battlefield a lot.
He began with a small dispute that sparked and spread from a trivial quarrel to a fight for pride, a territorial war in which the lords of two territories were enemies for generations, a full-scale large-scale war in which one country attacked another Narya, and all countries united as one continent. Even a war of aggression rushed in to devour the world.
He went through a lot of wars and experienced the horrors of those wars firsthand.
When I was a newbie when I was just starting out as a mercenary, I almost died from getting sick after drinking well water from which the villagers threw a lot of feces and urine. There were times when she endured by eating food infested with maggots, and there were times when she fought against a man who fought desperately to the point of literally dunging herself all over her body when she had no weapons or armor.
War is devastating, and that is why the heroic flower that blooms after eating the corpses and blood that pours into it shines even more brilliantly.
However, even Rorowan had never heard of a war of conquest in which the entire continent flocked to one country.
Originally, war is done because there is something to be gained. That’s why there is such a thing as ‘degree’.
Unless a war is waged only out of resentment, there is no fool who would foolishly burn everything without gaining anything from a war that costs a lot of money once waged.
It shouldn’t have been.
But what if madness engulfs people?
Is it because of the rumored ‘devil’? A demonic army led by a duke. Is that what made people this far?’
Rowan felt chills. He also felt the fear of what kind of war he would step into from now on.
Chester and Monia were saying that it would be nice if they could get through without a fuss, but Rowan knew.
War is like bottomless mud, and the moment you step in, you are sucked under it.
You won’t be able to get past it without a fuss.
Never.
* * *
Chester and Monia are not completely ignorant of ‘war’.
I also saw other noble families approaching to build relationships while being taught by the duke’s family to engage in mock battles with the duke’s knights, and to stop the savages from coming down with an army so outrageous that they couldn’t even use their hands. I watched Reynolds personally lead his knights and march out to fight.
However, they knew. The war they saw and experienced was only the surface.
I have never tasted any of the horrors that can often come to mind when it comes to war.
The desperate journey of going upstairs with a broken leg after fighting a bear, the desperate moment of fighting Urgo on a floating island, wandering the open sea with a single raft, the bloody battle with Anubis in the pyramid, Matoto Until the moment I fought a monster human on the continent.
Chester and Monia’s life history certainly had a lot of intense and brutal experiences that others couldn’t easily experience, but it wasn’t a ‘war’.
“Are you a deserter?”
The coachman that Billium had assigned had long since run away and died after being hit by an arrow shot by deserters.
Rowan, who was pulling the wagon in place of the coachman, nodded at Chester’s words.
“Looking at the condition of the equipment, it seems like that! Probably desperate! Because I’ve been starving for a long time!”
“Indeed. Then it would be hard to just shake it off. Rex!”
The moment Chester shouted, Rex, who was on the roof of the carriage, laughed and began spinning the mace he was holding.
When the unidentified creature on top of the wagon jumped up and started spinning something heavy, the frightened deserters shot arrows at Rex, but Senna, who was sitting on a modified backpack behind Rex, quickly got up and grabbed her shield. He held out and blocked the arrow instead of Rex.
Rex, who happily turned the mace while Senna blocked the arrow, let go of the rope hanging from his finger and released the mace.
A cannon ball tied to the end of a rope with a monkey’s fist knot flew at terrifying speed and collided with one of the deserters.
From noble mtl dot com
Peruk!
As it was, the body of the deserter was separated from the top and bottom along with the horse he was riding and the armor he was wearing.
“… ….”
“… ….”
A comrade who was running right next to him suddenly dies in a gruesome way, scattering blood, flesh, and internal organs.
It was similar to the way humans were killed by ‘weapons’ such as cannons and ballistas, instead of being killed by ‘weapons’ such as spears and knives.
“Right! Got it right!”
Rex pulled the rope and retrieved the mace, excitedly spinning his body, adding the momentum of the mace and the momentum of the body to quickly throw the retrieved mace again without any separate process.
However, even in the face of the mace bombardment, which would normally be avoided and run away, the deserters rode wildly and tried to cling to the wagon.
I’ve already starved myself for enough time. There was a limit to eating grass and bark like a horse.
“Aagh!”
“Stay! You can’t throw it if it sticks!”
“Yes!”
“Shoot a bow and get in the way!”
The deserters poured down all their arrows, a resource they had saved, and interfered with Rex’s attempt to throw the mace.
So that Senna could not be blocked by the shield, and so that he would not fall prey to the mace at once, he spread out his arrows and fired arrows at the horses pulling the wagon at the same time, interfering with them.
An arrow went through one of the horses, and Urgo and Chester also responded by leaning out of the window to the deserters.
Urgo saw the flying arrow and violently swung his ax to create a wind. A gust of wind created by Urgo knocked the arrows away, and on the other side, a golden curtain made by Chester blocked the arrows.
While the arrows were blocked for a moment, Monia, who held out her arm equipped with her star wisher, fired wind arrows at the deserters without unfolding the star wisher.
The power may be weak, but in a situation like now where aiming is impossible, it is very helpful to just scatter arrows and fire wildly with a guess. In fact, one horse was hit by an eyeless arrow and rolled around.
“You are tenacious!”
Senna broke through the obstacles and gnashed her teeth as she thrust her spear at the deserter close to the wagon.
“Suck! Whoops!”
While Senna was interfering with the deserter’s movement, Rex retrieved the mace she threw away, grabbed the mace’s rope short, and swung it at the deserter.
A deserter whose chest was hollowed out by being hit by a mace flies away.
In the meantime, Senna used her backpack as a stepping stone and quickly moved to an invisible blind spot from her Rex’s field of view, covering her Rex’s field of vision and gaps.
How long did he run while fighting the deserters? The desperate deserters killed one of the wagon’s horses, and the party, which quickly lost a coachman and a horse from the start, had to stop shortly after entering the kingdom of Biend.